HERO

by ardavenport

** **** ** Part 1

"Well, we can't salute ya,

Can't find a flag,

If that don't suit ya,

That's a drag!"

The song was all howling, screaming and discordant electric guitars.

"School's out for the summer!" Johnny dramatically mouthed the words to the song and gestured over the steering wheel.

"School's out for – ever!"

Sitting in the passenger seat of Johnny's Rover, Roy grit his teeth and stared forward at the traffic. He couldn't say anything. He had promised not to say a word during the song before telling his partner what he thought of it. The music, such as it was, shrieked and howled on through the chorus and on to another excruciating verse.

"Well, we got no class,

And we got no principals,

We ain't got no intelligence,

We can't even think of a word that rhymes!"

Johnny gave a quiet, open mouthed scream going into the chorus.

"School's. Out. For. Summer!"

Johnny turned onto the main street going toward the station. They couldn't get there fast enough for Roy. He hardly ever came into work with Johnny; they did not live within easy carpooling distance. But Roy's car was in the shop and Joanne had to take the kids in for a doctor's appointment. And Johnny had the radio on when he arrived and their choice of station had turned into a dare for Roy to just listen to one song all the way through.

Thankfully, the song wound down to its painful end.

"School's out for summer!

School's out forever!

School's been blown to pieces!

School's out completely!"

Johnny exhaled as the DJ launched into a commercial break. "Well, what do you think?" He glanced at Roy as he continued driving and turned down the sound on the ad.

"What do I think?"

"Yeah, what do you think?"

"That was terrible! I don't know how you can even listen to that stuff!" Roy didn't mean to raise his voice so much, but he'd been holding it in for the whole song.

Johnny looked incredulous. "You didn't like it?"

"No!"

"You don't like Alice Cooper?"

"No!" Roy could not imagine why that noise was called music or 'Alice Cooper'; he was sure that had been a male voice doing all the screaming.

Johnny just shook his head and turned into Station Fifty-One's driveway. "I don't believe it. That's incredible. You're incredible. That song is fantastic!"

Roy did not give him any more argument. He was happy that he was 'incredible' enough to not appreciate 'fantastic' music. As long as he did not have to listen to it again. Johnny parked his Rover and they got out under the usual cloudless blue California sky. Captain Stanley's and Mike Stokers' cars were already there as usual. Waving a greeting to Fred O'Brien and Greg Grodnek on C-shift, they went to the locker room to change. Johnny told Mike Stoker about Roy's distaste for Alice Cooper. Roy felt vindicated when their taciturn engineer just shrugged and said that he'd never heard 'her' sing before as he headed out of the locker room. Johnny just shook his head and finally let it drop.

Roy finished dressing first.

"Hey, I'm going to talk to the Cap about what Joanne saw on our last shift."

Johnny stopped buttoning his shirt. "You're gonna tell all the guys, too? Right?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm just going to talk to him about a few things, uh, married man to married man."

Johnny, the committed bachelor, accepted that. "Oh, okay."

Roy greeted Captain Hookrater, in civilian clothes, on his way out of the office. Nobody on any shift at the station was particularly fond of the hard-nosed captain, but he was still a decent firefighter, so no one was openly hostile to his face. In short-sleeved blue uniform shirt and dark pants, Captain Stanley sat at the desk, the small office's big window behind him.

"Roy, come in." He pushed his chair back from the desk. "Tell me, is there anything wrong with this desk?"

Surprised, Roy looked at the plain gray metal desk against the station's red brick wall. Manuals lined up on one side, some pens, file folders, a dictionary, typewriter.

"Uh, no, Cap. It looks just like it always does."

Stanley leaned forward on his elbows, dark brows lowered and muttered, mostly to himself. "Yeah, well, tell him that."

Roy didn't know what to say and Stanley looked up as if he just realized that he'd spoken his thoughts out loud. "What'd you need, Roy?"

"Oh, well, I just wanted to talk to you about that crane rescue on our last shift." Roy closed the door behind him as he spoke. "Uh, privately."

Stanley's brows rose. "Sure, but I don't know what I'd know that you wouldn't. You and John were the ones who got that guy down."

Roy pulled up a chair as plain and government-issue as the desk next to him, the wooden legs scraping on the concrete floor, and sat down. "Well, it turns out, um . . . " He pressed his lips together. "Did you notice that department store across the street from the construction site?"

Stanley shook his head. "Uh, no. Was there something else going on? Is that where that TV crew was filming from?" They had seen a few seconds of themselves on the 11 o'clock news later that night, but went to bed grumbling about the reporter who hogged most of the camera time during her report.

"Yeah, they were there, but, uh, it turns out . . . Joanne was there, too."

"Joanne? She was there? She saw that?" Stanley leaned forward. "You almost fell."

"Yeah." The safety line had easily caught him, but Johnny had to pull him up, while keeping the victim from panicking again. Now he was just glad that he did not know who was watching at the time. "She saw it." Even from across the street anyone could read the '51' on the engine and squad. "There was a sale on sheets and towels there and she went with her friends and they saw the whole thing when they were coming out."

Stanley whistled, shaking his head. "Whoa, I don't know what to tell you. I don't get too specific about the job with my wife. And she doesn't ask. Was she upset about it?"

"Well, Joanne's pretty tough and pretty realistic about it. I guess a lot more realistic than I really gave her credit for." His lips curled in a slow smile. "But she was really happy to see me when I got home. I mean, really . . . happy."

Stanley's brows rose in a knowing way this time, of a husband who knows what a wife's loving appreciation could be like. "Ooh, well. Good job."

Roy openly grinned in agreement. "And Joanne told me that, after we got the guy down, the crowd outside the store cheered."

"Really?" Stanley remembered seeing the crowd, but there was a street with four lanes of traffic between the rescue and them. At the time, he was just glad that the bystanders couldn't get in their way.

"Yeah, they applauded."

"Well, I'll be . . ." He sat back with wonder. "They sure didn't show that on the news, did they?"

Roy agreed. His grin faded, "That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, Joanne said she almost had the kids with her, too, but they decided one of them would babysit while the others did the shopping. And she was worried - - and she's really got a point - - what would she tell the kids if something happened?" He ended with a helpless gesture.

With a long exhale, Stanley grimaced. "I don't know what to tell you there. I kind of don't talk much about that with my wife either."

"Yeah. I mean, I guess if anything really bad happens," Roy shied away from saying exactly what 'bad' was, "we're not going to be the ones who have to explain things. And Joanne, she understood, but she asked me what I'd say to your family if something happened to you."

Stanley sat back in surprise. "Uh, what did you say?"

He shrugged, embarrassed. "I don't know. I guess I'd just go to her and hope the words came."

Stanley pressed his lips together and shook his head. "Yeah."

Station Fifty-One was Stanley's first assignment since being promoted to captain. Roy knew that he had not had to have that talk with any of the family members of his men under his command. "Yeah."

Roy could hear the soft tick of the hand movement on the wall clock. It was time to go back to work. He got up.

"Well, I better get to work. Thanks for the talk."

"Oh, yeah. Any time." Stanley shuffled and straightened a sheaf of blank pages on his desk. "You better get going; I'll be out for roll call in a minute."

Roy had time for a few sips of hot coffee and Chet Kelly, who came in just in time, as usual, did not get a chance at the coffee pot before roll call.

Stanley paced before his men as he ticked off the items. C-shift before them had taken care of most of the remaining building inspections for that week.

. . . Stoker. Lopez. Kelly . . .

But there was a lot of hose hanging on the tower out back that needed to be stowed. And they needed to inspect the remodeling at a used bookstore that had skirted around the edge of being barely within the county fire codes for years.

. . . Gage. DeSoto. . . .

Stanley held up a sheet of paper from his clipboard.

"We've got an unusual one here sent down to us from Headquarters. Apparently the Fireman's Welfare and Benefit Fund has received a very generous donation of twenty thousand dollars."

Mike Stoker whistled. The others looked at each other in equal surprise before breaking out into grins.

"That's great, Cap. But why did Headquarters send that down to us?" Roy gestured to them all.

"Because, Station Fifty-One, specifically our shift, is cited by the benefactor for his thanks for helping him out during that earthquake we had last year." Stanley's dark eyebrows lowered in puzzlement. "The problem is, I don't recognize the name at all."

"Well, what's the name?" Stoker looked curiously at the paper that Stanley held.

"Sedgewick Dalrymple." Stanley pronounced each syllable as if perhaps sounding it out would jog his memory. He just shook his head in bafflement. Suddenly Johnny's eyes lit up and he raised a hand.

"Sid!"

"Who?" Roy turned to his partner.

"Sid! It's Sid!"

"Sid?" Roy's brow furrowed and he pointed as he captured an old thought. "Sid? From the earthquake?"

"Yeah! Dalrymple, that's his real name! I had to fill the forms out for him when he was in Rampart." He held up his own palms, semi-miming the nails that were driven into Sid's palms when he fell through a floor in the building his work crew was preparing for demolition when the earthquake hit.

"Sid?" Kelly's eyes lit up. "Whoa, that's Sid?"

"Yeah!" Johnny grinned.

"Yeah. You only visited him a half a dozen times in the hospital. You didn't know his real name?" Lopez elbowed his fellow firefighter.

"Well, you didn't!"

"Yeah, but I didn't want him to be my guru."

"Hey, you guys all agreed, Sid was special. He had like an energy, an aura of pure calm all around him."

No one was willing to go quite that far, but Lopez and Stoker nodded, conceding at least part of Kelly's point. They usually did not see the victims after their rescues. But Sid had been exemplary. Even injured, and in danger from aftershocks, he stayed calm, never panicked, did what they told him, helping them when he could. They never saw him after he left Rampart; he said he was going back east and implied that his brush with danger had inspired him to attempt to make amends with his estranged father, but he did not give any details.

"Yeah, he was special. He didn't look like he was loaded, though."

Captain Stanley agreed with his engineer. "I'll say." He held up the paper. "And the Chief told me that he also gave a large and undisclosed donation to Rampart as well."

"Well, didn't I tell you." Chet pointed to himself as if this was all about him. "Special! That guy was special!"

For once, they all absolutely agreed with him.

They finished roll call and went back to the day room for some more coffee where Roy told them the story about Joanne seeing the crane rescue on their last shift and the onlookers applauding when they brought down the injured man. It was a good way to start the shift as they went to their respective chores. The hose tower, paperwork in the office, taking out the trash. John had latrine duty. He just finished and crossed the equipment room, coming around the back of the squad when he saw that they had a visitor.

"Hey! Sid!"

** **** ** End Part 1