Birdie Jaworski lives under devil-forked sky in the sullen middle of fricken nowhere with two young boys a dog, a pig, two birds, an overgrown spider plant and the stern decrepit crow who lands on her adobe wall every sunrise, cursing the day, dropping mottled white pitch on her green plastic chair. She calls him King Waldo. She doesn't know why.

My father drove a fire truck
in our small midwest town.
He wore special overalls
and a fireman's helmet
but they never let him
touch the hose.

He tended to freak out at fires,
run away from the vapor
and hiss and heavy acrid stench.
They let him stay
on the other side of the truck,
putting bandages on cuts
and handing out teddy bears
to scared smoke dust children.

My father lived at the station
more than our house,
and I walked there after school
during fourth grade
and sat in his wooden chair
and listened to the police
scanner with him.

He would mix me
instant hot chocolate
and let me wear his hard fire hat
with the special shield on the front.

He smelled like black licorice and rubber,
thick gummy firehouse tar,
and he played checkers for hours
with the other men at the station.

He juggled, too,
pieces of licorice and apples
and eggs and small balls,
three, four, five, six items at a time.

I never saw him drop.
He taught me to juggle, too,
and I could spin plates
and grapefruits in the air with abandon.
I had to do it better than Dad,
had to pick heavier,
chunkier things to toss.
I once tried to rotate
three glass bottles of Coca-Cola
but I didn't take into account
the motion of the liquid
and it all came crashing down,
one on my head.

I passed out to the sound
of Dad laughing,
saying, "You're crazy!"
It was the day before Thanksgiving,
and I had to march
in the football parade
with my gold baton,
short purple skirt
and a starch white
firehouse bandages
taped to my forehead.
I still have a tiny scar,
at the point my hair begins,
a banana-shaped imprint.

Dad drove the big red ladder truck,
not the small black backup pump truck.
He drove it his entire adult life,
started at age twenty-two,
just out of the army.
He shined and drove
and washed and waxed,
first the small pumper
then the big truck,
then the new extension truck.
He knew how to fix them, too,
how to replace the ladder
and fiddle with the suspension
and check the pumps and valves for leaks.

Most of my memories of Dad
are of him standing in a pile of parts
next to that big red beast,
thick rubber boots on his feet,
pointing a piece of hose
at one of the men and
explaining a better way to fight a fire.

"Doc Pepper's a fire genius,
too bad he runs scared,"
the other firemen would note,
calling him by nickname,
drinking warmed over coffee,
eating stale glazed donuts.
"He always sees the best way
to handle a fire,
but you have to put a man on him
to pull those ideas out.
He can't stand the smell of it.
He's an animal."

One day a fire broke out north of town,
in the woods where the lake
meets the fish hatchery.
I don't know much
about what happened that night,
just remember the phone ringing
late into the night,
my mother wrapping me
in a blanket and pushing me
into my neighbor's house,
her face red and blotchy,
spilling over with tears.

I didn't have to ask, I knew.
I heard later that Dad
ran from the woods,
afraid of the trees bursting
like firecrackers into open flame,
into the pitted road
where another fire truck hit him.

© Birdie Jaworski 2006.