It was a relaxing week with perfect weather and warm sea water. We decided to walk every inch of Blue Harbor and we did, saying hello to everyone we met along the way, a remarkably friendly group of people, mostly homeowners but many just there for the week or weekend.
Next door to us, going back toward the bay, were families that had been coming to Fire Island for years. Across the street were a couple of larger, older houses that the owners had rented out to groups, to the consternation of the nearby owners, and I have to admit, to our own. The people were young and friendly, but they were up late and very noisy. Their garbage overflowed the cans and lay on the ground till it was picked up. There were disagreements between members of the groups that flared into shouting matches, sometimes causing us to burst into laughter. They seemed to argue about the silliest, most mundane things, mostly whose turn it was to do some chore that apparently no one wanted to do.
But when we ran into them on the beach or on the street or in the grocery store over on the bay side, they were smiling and pleasant.
We found the village had a large freshwater pool and I started swimming there every afternoon. Eddie also preferred the freshwater to the salt, and by the end of the week I was sure he was on his way to being a swimmer. Not bad for a little boy who hadn’t yet stood on his own two feet!
Jack indulged one of his deepest desires and did all the cooking, a double pleasure for me because I’m not very good at it and I consider it work. I decided not to think about pounds added till we were home, and from the way Jack ate, he must have made the same decision.
On the Saturday that marked a week since our arrival, we started out on a morning walk as we had done each day, waving to our neighbors, the Jorgensens, and then their neighbors, the Wagners. When we reached the bay we took a turn and found ourselves in front of what looked like a firehouse.
“I never thought about community services,” I said. “But I guess you can’t live without a fire department, even on an island.”
“They probably get a kitchen fire every once in a while. Let’s go in and show Eddie the fire engine.”
The door was open and we went inside. Sure enough, there were two fire trucks in there, bright red with ladders and other equipment, and a couple of smaller vehicles, just like at home in Oakwood. These looked as though they had been polished moments before.
“Good morning,” a man’s voice said.
I turned to see a nice-looking man in cutoffs and a bright pink shirt walking into the garage with a bucket in one hand and a bunch of rags in the other. “I’m Chris Brooks, and this is my husband, Jack.”
The men shook hands.
“I’m Ken Buckley, glad to meet you. And who’s this little fella?”
“This is Eddie,” Jack said, and Ken Buckley gave our son a practiced tickle that caused giggles.
“I remember when mine were that size,” he said with a grin. “A lot less trouble than they are now. You folks renters?”
“We’re staying in Max Margulies’s house,” I said.
“Oh, right. I heard Max was having guests for the end of August. I hope you’re staying for Labor Day.”
“We are,” Jack said. “It’s our first vacation in a while and it’s been great.”
“Nothing’s better than Fire Island, and Blue Harbor’s as good a village as they come. Don’t miss our parade on Monday. It’s the last blowout of the season.”
“We heard,” I said.
“And the party on the beach afterward. Courtesy of the Blue Harbor Fire Department.” He held his hands out expansively.
“Of which you’re a member.”
“Of which I’m chief. Max is one of our inactive members. Basically it means he’s over sixty. You turn sixty and you’re inactive. Unless we need you.” He smiled.
“Where’d you get your training?” Jack asked.
“A fire school on Long Island, very high-tech. We keep pretty up-to-date with drills on the beach. Haven’t had a fire since two summers ago when some weekend renters smoked in bed.”
“Were they all right?” I asked.
“We got them out but the house was a mess. Everything’s wood around here and it had been a dry month. What wasn’t burned was soaked. Anyway, that’s history. How’re you enjoying Max’s mansion?”
I left Jack to banter while I showed Eddie the fire engines. These were the first motorized vehicles I’d seen since we got off the ferry. Even the taxis around here were boats, and I wondered how something as big as these fire engines could get around.
When Eddie lost interest, I went back to where the two men were still chatting. “I hope we didn’t leave any prints on your nice, clean fire engines,” I said.
“Not to worry. They’ll be gleaming for the parade.”
“How do you move them around the village? The streets must be too narrow and most of them are made of wood.”
“We’ve got a concrete street that crosses from the bay to the ocean and Main Street runs from east to west. Otherwise, we use the beach. If we get stuck in the sand—and we do—forty of us get together and lift ’er right up.”
Jack and I laughed. “That must be something to see.”
“Won’t happen at the parade. We’ll roll right down Main Street.”
“We’ll be there,” Jack said.
“How big a parade could it be?” I asked, when we were back outside. “It’s such a small community.”
“Roughly three hundred fifty houses,” Jack said. “He was telling me about it while you were leaving prints on his fire engines. About fourteen hundred people, less during the week, more on the weekends. But it’s close to capacity right now. Even the men take the end of August off.”
“Even cops.”
“Cops who thought ahead and put in for the time when the snow was this high.” He held his hand at a level I had never seen snow reach. “He said Mel’s Uncle Max was the chief back in the Eighties for a few years. He made it sound like the firemen are some kind of royalty. Anyway, there’ll be a high school band from the mainland and then late in the afternoon, the party.”
“Do we need tickets?”
“He said it’s the fire company’s gift to the community.”
“Sounds great. Let’s walk over to the store and get some milk before they’re all sold out. It’s a big weekend and everyone’s going to want to cook.”
“Especially me.”
Happily, I had married the right man.
On Sunday the Jorgensens invited us over to share their barbecue dinner. I got Eddie ready for bed and stretched out the stroller in their house, and he cooperated by falling asleep. We stayed late, listening to tales of towns growing, gossip about people we didn’t know, and descriptions of past parades and post-parade parties.
“Those firemen have it good,” Marti Jorgensen said, as we sat in the light of anti-bug torches after dinner. “But they give back, which is nice.”
“What do you mean, they ‘have it good’?” I asked.
“It’s a social thing, you know, being a fireman. They get together every week and have a good time. The department is insured by a company that pays back Fire Island two percent of the premiums for what’s called ‘benevolent purposes for local fire departments.’ In plain English that means beer money.” Everyone laughed and Marti went on. “It’s about three thousand dollars a year, so it’s a lot of beer. I guess they use some of it for the party though. That costs more than five thousand.”
“That’s an expensive party,” I said, always the penny-pincher.
“It’s fun,” her husband, Al, said. “It’s the end of the season, everyone’s feeling good. After Labor Day things calm down, the ferries don’t run as often, the groups go home, and by fall there’s only about twenty families left, mostly couples. We’ve been out here in the winter a few times and it’s eerie.”
“Are the other towns like this one? We’ve walked into two of them but haven’t looked around much.”
“Every town has its own character,” Al said. He took a sip of the cognac he had poured for himself and Jack. “Green Bay’s the richest one, lot of celebrities living there. Silver Beach is gay.”
“A whole town is gay?” I said with surprise.
“Well, I can’t vouch for every person there, but that’s the reputation. It’s a very old community. They’ve been coming to the island, I’d guess, since before the Second World War. Nobody bothers them.”
I found it very interesting. I leaned back in my chair and listened as Al spoke. This town, that fire department, the senator’s son, the deer encroaching from the park at the end of the island, the need to repost the house, the winds, the tide. Still I felt myself drifting off.
“Al, that’s just gossip,” I heard Marti say firmly. “You shouldn’t talk about it.”
“It’s not gossip if it’s true. And it’s true. We all know it.”
I was alert but had no idea what they were talking about.
“I think my wife’s falling asleep,” Jack said. “And missing the juiciest stuff.”
“What did I miss?”
“Who’s-sleeping-with-whom gossip,” my husband said.
“The fire chief has a well-earned reputation,” Al said, taking another sip of his cognac.
“We just met him yesterday at the firehouse. Nice-looking man.”
“That’s what the ladies say.”
“It’s really a small town, isn’t it?”
“Very small,” Marti said. “And the houses are close together. Al always says when you tell a joke in one house, the people next door laugh. But it can work against you.” She looked rather grim.
“He seemed like a friendly man,” I said.
“Too friendly.” Al didn’t want to let it go.
“He’s done wonders as fire chief,” Marti said, as though to move on to a more favorable side of Ken Buckley. “They’ve come to every house to inspect the kitchens, they’ve given us all good tips on grilling out of doors. And of course, they throw the best party of the year.” She smiled.
“Well, we’ll be there.” Jack stood up and stretched. “I think we should pick up our son and make our long way home.” “Home” was about twenty feet away.
I was glad he’d made the first move. Ten minutes later, Eddie was in his crib and we were getting ready for bed.
The next morning Eddie ate his cereal with gusto and drank his milk from the silver cup St. Stephen’s Convent had given him at his baptism. His little teeth were making fine scratches and dents in the rim, which my mother’s old friend Elsie Rivers assured me made it a keepsake. When he was happily crawling on the floor, Jack and I sat down to our breakfast. It was Labor Day and the parade was at ten, giving us lots of time to eat, dress, and walk over to Main Street.
“Sorry I missed the revelations last night,” I said. “I must have drifted off.”
“You did. Al obviously has a grudge against Ken Buckley.”
“Maybe Buckley invaded a friend’s territory.”
“Could be. The way Al describes him, he’s a real ladies’ man.”
“He was so sweet to Eddie, I thought of him as fatherly.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Buckley said he had kids. But it sounds as though his philandering is well documented.”
“I can’t see how you could carry on an affair in a town as tiny as this one.”
“There’s the big city everyone goes home to eventually. Don’t forget that.”
“Well, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He made my son giggle.”
Jack gave me a grin and went back to his breakfast.
We got to Main Street in plenty of time. People of all ages were already lining up in front of the houses that faced the street. It had rained last night and there were still small pools of water under the houses. You didn’t need to know much else to understand why so many were on stilts and basements were nonexistent.
I heard the band from a distance and turned to look. They looked pretty spiffy, with a high-stepping baton twirler at the front and plenty of brass following him. Al had told us that the band played for the privilege of spending the day on the Blue Harbor beach and attending the party. There were a good-looking bunch of teenagers from a school called Bishop Palermo.
“Look at the band, Eddie,” I said, holding him up to see.
The band was followed by the fire engines and other vehicles, which just barely made it down Main Street. Several young firemen were aboard, waving and tossing candy to the children in the crowd.
Behind the trucks came the rest of the firemen, led by Chief Buckley, all in spanking new uniforms. As they marched by, I became aware that off to my left there was a smattering of applause that seemed to be moving along toward me as the parade advanced. I stood on my toes, trying to see what was coming, but couldn’t see anything.
“What are they clapping for?” I asked a teenaged girl standing near me.
“Probably Chief La Coste. They always give him a good round.”
“Is he a local hero?”
“He’s everybody’s hero,” she said. “He’s the oldest man on Fire Island. He’s ninety-two.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He lives out here all year long. He was fire chief back around World War Two. Or One. I’m not sure.”
At that age, it could conceivably have been either. I handed Eddie off to Jack and looked for the old chief. I knew he couldn’t be far because the applause was rippling its way toward me. Finally, as the girl beside me started clapping, I saw him.
He was a weathered old man, thin, walking as upright as the men half his age. He was wearing an ancient uniform with silver braid on the sleeves, and with great aplomb, he smiled and waved to his fans. I clapped along with everyone else and leaned over to tell Jack who he was. I thought it was pretty amazing that someone his age would be marching instead of sitting comfortably in a fire engine.
The parade was concluded with a children’s parade, the little ones dressing up in costumes almost as if it were Halloween. They were quite inventive and we gave them a lot of applause as they passed. As the last of the parade went by, everyone standing on Main Street fell in behind the marchers and we all ended up at the firehouse where there was punch and cookies, presumably to tide us over till the real party.
Eddie thought the sugar cookies were pretty terrific and I took an extra one for later. We hung around, talking to people who lived in Blue Harbor and to the band members who couldn’t wait to put their bathing suits on and jump in the water. I couldn’t blame them. It was a warm day and I was looking forward to cooling off myself.
After a while, we walked home and I fed Eddie and put him down for his afternoon nap. The party was scheduled for late afternoon, which would give him a chance to sleep and me a chance for a swim. A good way to spend Labor Day.