Tasmanian Devils

TASMANIAN DEVILS The house next door had flames in the windows We watched from the street as the firemen arrived, four rigs responding, Engine Company 5 – The Tasmanian Devils Engines and ladders, axes and hoses, abundant testosterone surrounded and entered, laid into that fire like an infantry platoon doing necessary work through the hedgerows of France in the summer of ‘44 “Cute little girl!” said the tall young man as the water and smoke later sizzled in the char Twelve years later, at a different address, three rigs responding, Tasmanian Devils and a gasoline smell in the storm sewer system, same tough young men, little action this time, a band of paratroopers with no enemy in sight The tall fire lieutenant remembered my face but not my new wife and proffered the question to set memory right “How’s your little girl?” said the voice of command with the steely gray eyes I said “She died a year later!” and he looked through us both, reached for the catalogue of the suffering he had seen, shifted his gaze and called out to his men, mounted his rig and tightened his face, surprised once again at the number of ways that a fireman finds death!