By Ross
LA County fireman/paramedic, John Gage, paused in his polishing and glanced up. “I can’t recall ever rescuing a shoe salesman. Can you?”
His partner, Roy DeSoto, was in the process of giving their rescue squad’s windshield another squirt of Windex. He also halted, right in mid-spritz, to give his questioner a strange stare and a shake of his blond head.
John resumed his polishing. “Still, I can’t imagine me being a shoe salesman. Not that there’s anything wrong with selling shoes. I mean, somebody has to sell them, or we’d all be running around barefoot. Man! I could never hack that job, though. All those sweaty sox and grody feet! And the boredom! I hate to admit it, but I’m addicted to the lights…the sirens…the action…the excitement…the danger! I love it! It’s in my blood! Compared to this,” he paused again, to give their firetruck a few affectionate pats with his polishing cloth, “selling shoes would be about as exciting as watching paint dry,” he wryly surmised and flashed his partner a broad grin. He caught his companion’s strange stare and his smile immediately disappeared. “Wha-at?”
“Nothing. I just tend to forget—from shift to shift—just how…eccentric you really are.”
“Oh. Ain’t that just great. I share my innermost thoughts with my best friend, and he thinks I’m weird.”
“I never said that!”
“Eccentric is just a fancy way of saying ‘weird’. THEY call very important people eccentric. But THEY mean weird. And, I’m no V.I.P.. So that makes me ‘weird’.”
“Yeah? Well, I said ‘eccentric’. And, I meant eccentric! After all, you’re my partner. That makes you pretty damn important…in my books.”
John thought all that over for a few seconds. Then, failing to find fault with his best buddy’s logic, he resumed his polishing.
Roy pursed his lips and went back to his window washing.
Chet Kelly exited their fire station’s rec’ room and paused in the parking bay, to bug—er, to scrutinize the job John was doing on the Squad. “You missed a spot,” he teased.
“Forget it, Chet,” John advised him. “I’m not falling for that.”
“Falling for what?” Kelly innocently queried. “I was just trying to be help—”
The alarm went off.
All three firemen froze.
“Battalion 14…Engine 51…” the dispatcher began.
Gage and DeSoto untensed.
“—ful,” Chet finished and obediently began trotting toward Engine 51.
“Assist Truck 123 and Station 12 with a structure fire…”
Station 51’s paramedics turned their full attention back to the task at hand.
“I’m probably going to regret this,” Roy realized, speaking loud enough to be heard over the commotion of their crewmates scrambling and their Captain acknowledging the call, “but, what was all that talk about a shoe salesman?”
John flipped his polishing rag over. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be a shoe salesman. That just happened to be the safest job I could think of at the moment.”
The Engine left the station with its lights flashing and its siren wailing, and the garage door slowly began grinding its way back down.
The two remaining firemen tensed up again, as the tones suddenly resounded.
“All units responding with Truck 123 and Station 12…Cancel.”
“It’s gonna be one of ‘those’ days,” Gage glumly predicted, but then instantly brightened. “A reporter! I can’t remember ever rescuing a reporter, either. Yeah. Yah know, that wouldn’t be too bad.” He flashed his bewildered buddy another broad grin. “Might even be a little ‘exciting’…at times.”
His partner promptly went from incredibly confused to deeply concerned. “You’re not actually thinking about quitting…Are you?”
John gave his extremely anxious-sounding associate a ‘Wha-at? Are you nuts?’ look. “Of course not! I worked a split shift with Mark Griesen last week. And we sort a’ got to talkin’ about what we would be doin’, if we weren’t doin’ this,” he paused to pat the Squad again. “To make it more of a challenge, Mark suggested we go from the most dangerous, to the safest job imaginable. Looks like Mark and I are gonna be workin’ together again tomorrow. So, I was just lining up some ‘safe’ occupations.”
Roy heaved a huge, silent sigh of relief and then stepped back from their rescue vehicle to admire its glistening windows.
There was a loud ‘click’ and the garage door began grinding its way back up.
They watched Mike Stoker back ‘Big Red’ into its recently vacated parking space.
The engine crew stowed their coats and helmets away and then climbed stiffly down to stand beside their shiftmates, in the center of the apparatus bay.
“Wish all our calls were like that,” Hank Stanley wistfully stated. The Captain’s eyes caught sight of the ‘spit and polished’ Squad and he let out a low whistle. “Nice job, gentlemen!”
The rest of the guys gave the glistening firetruck a critical examination and then nodded in agreement.
“Thanks!” the polishing pair replied, speaking in perfect unison.
“Lookin’ good, Gage!” Kelly quickly contributed. “Except for that one spot you missed,” he added, with a wink to his fellow firefighters.
The engine crew exchanged grins. The four amused firemen saw the dark-haired paramedic’s head start to swing around, and their expressions instantly sobered.
“Where?” an extremely skeptical John Gage inquired—er, demanded.
Chet stepped up to one of the truck’s side compartment’s doors and made an ‘X’ in the air. “Right there.”
The polisher placed his face right up to the spot in question. “You should probably make an appointment to get your eyes examined,” he finally determined, “because I don’t see anything ‘right there’.”
“You just can’t see it from that angle,” Mike Stoker joined in.
“Yeah,” Marco Lopez agreed. “It’s right there.”
John studied them, and then the compartment door, carefully. He turned back to Kelly’s co-conspirators just in time to see their grins vanish. “Nice try,” he told them, with a sarcastic smirk, and went to put his polishing cloth away.
“Toss me the rag!” Kelly called after him. “I’ll wipe it off.”
“There’s nothing there!” Gage shouted back over his shoulder.
“Too bad,” their Captain commented, and started heading for his office. “Sort a’ ruins the whole effect.”
John stopped dead in his tracks and turned back toward their truck, looking a little less certain.
“You’re really not going to wipe it off?” Mike incredulously inquired.
“No. No. I am not going to wipe it off,” John assured him. “Because there’s nothing there to wipe off.”
“Tacky,” the engineer sadly determined and started heading for the rec’ room.
“I’m no ‘perfectionist’,” Marco admitted. “But I’d sure wipe it off, if it were my job.” That said, he gave the compartment door one last distasteful glance and then followed his chum, Chet, into the rec’ room.
“It’s not gonna work you guys!” John smugly informed his fellow firefighters. “Because I know there is no spot!” he confidently added and turned to his partner for further assurance.
“Don’t worry about it,” Roy advised. “I probably left a few spots myself.” He gave the truck’s glistening glass surfaces a final inspection and then left the garage, sporting a smug smile of approval.
His polishing partner’s confident look completely vaporized. He stepped back up to their spiffy-looking firetruck and studied its entire passenger side—from many different angles. “There is no spot,” he triumphantly told the empty garage. But then, just to be on the safe side, he re-ran his polishing rag over the compartment door in question. Upon hearing his friends’ suppressed laughter, John’s arm froze—right in mid-re-swipe. He grimaced and reluctantly turned toward the rear of the Squad. He saw his grinning shiftmates peering back at him, and groaned.
“Behold!” Chet dramatically declared, looking and sounding tremendously pleased with himself. “It’s ‘John gullible Gage’…in the flesh.”
“Oh-oh shut up, Chet,” the paramedic insincerely chided. John gullible Gage tossed his polishing rag into his gloating tormentor’s mustached face and then grinned right back at his still-snickering Captain and crewmates. “Now that really hit the spot.”
The End
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