3 days ’til Xmas
As soon as Lucy opened the door to the fire station she heard the rumble of the men’s voices. She nodded at the dispatcher and went past his desk into the common room, where CPR classes and training sessions were held. The last time Lucy had been there was when she covered the rabies clinic last spring; then the big room had been filled with assorted dogs and cats, and their owners and the conversation had been friendly as people chatted about their pets.
Tonight, the mood was much different. The gathered firefighters were angry and sullen. Lucy could feel the tension when she entered the room, and it made her pause. The only thing that kept her from turning and fleeing was the knowledge that Ted was counting on her to cover the meeting.
Heads turned and people stared at her; someone snickered and she realized she was the only woman in the room. Dot had been right on the mark when she said the Tinker’s Cove Volunteer Fire Department was a men’s club. “She writes for the paper,” she heard someone say, and the word was passed through the room. Lucy felt uncomfortable under the gaze of so many men and looked for a familiar face. She was relieved when she spotted Bob Goodman, Rachel’s husband, and Hank Orenstein sitting in the back. There were empty chairs next to them so she approached them.
“Hi, Lucy,” Bob said with a smile. “Sit yourself down.”
Bob was a tall, lean man with wire-rimmed glasses. He was the only man in the room who was wearing a suit.
“Thanks. For a minute there I felt a bit unwelcome. This doesn’t seem like a very friendly group. And thanks for calling Mr. Humphreys. Elizabeth went back to school today.”
Bob nodded. For a lawyer, he was remarkably taciturn.
Raised voices and the crash of a chair falling caught their attention, and Lucy glanced nervously around the room.
“Are these guys always so rowdy?” she asked.
“They’re not so bad when you get to know them,” said Hank. “They’re just a little upset.”
Hank was shorter and heavier than Bob, with a round face and a beard. He ran a cooperative that sold heating oil and energy-saving devices at discount prices.
“Do you think they’ll really strike?” asked Lucy.
“Might,” said Bob.
“A lot of them want to,” said Hank. “At least the ones I talked to today. They feel like those boys are getting a raw deal.”
“Ted says it was an awful lot of stuff—worth thousands of dollars.” Lucy kept her voice low; she didn’t want to be overheard.
Hank snorted in disgust. “Those boys were just plain greedy.”
Bob nodded. “This time they went too far.”
“What do you mean?”
The two men exchanged a glance, then Hank broke the silence.
“So, how’s Bill doing? Is he keepin’ busy this winter?”
“Bill’s fine. And you don’t have to worry that I’m going to quote you in the paper. Anything you say is off the record. Promise. But I sure could use some background information, and from what you were saying and from what I’ve been hearing around town it seems like there’s been an unofficial policy that it’s okay to salvage stuff from fires. Is that true?”
Hank bent closer to Lucy and spoke very softly. “Yeah. I’d say that’s true. The boys only get a small stipend—a hundred fifty dollars a year cause it’s a volunteer force. And you know what the economy’s like in this town. And now with the lobster quota, well, a lot of the guys are really hurting. If they see something they can use, or sell, they’re not going to walk away from it. Chief shoulda put a stop to it a long time ago, if you ask me. At first, they didn’t take much, but when he never said anything it started to escalate. It’s really gotten out of hand.”
“So you think Tom Scott did the right thing?”
“Now I didn’t say that.” Hank’s face reddened. “It could have been handled differently. There was no cause to put those boys in jail overnight.”
“It wasn’t necessary,” added Bob. “They all have families in this town; they weren’t going to go anywhere.”
Lucy nodded, aware that the meeting was beginning. A huge man, still wearing his bright yellow fisherman’s waterproof pants pulled up over a ragged sweatshirt and a plaid flannel shirt, was banging on a table with a gavel, calling the meeting to order.
“Quiet down,” he roared, his droopy mustache and the bristly whiskers on his chin making him look a little bit like a walrus. “None of us wants to be here all night, so let’s get started.”
“Who’s that?” asked Lucy.
“Claw Rousseau—he owns the lobster pound out on Cove Road,” whispered Hank.
“That’s the same name as two of the men who were arrested….”
“His sons, Rusty and J.J.”
“And he’s president of the volunteers’ association?”
Hank nodded, and Lucy wrote it all down in her notebook. This could get interesting, she thought.
“This meeting has been called at the request of some of the members,” said Claw. “In fact, I have here a petition signed by more than two-thirds of the members calling for the department to go on strike until criminal charges against four of our members have been dropped.”
“I move we strike,” called out a voice. “Let’s vote and get this over with. The Pats are playing Dallas tonight.”
This was greeted with raucous laughter.
“Hold your horses,” said Claw. “We gotta do this by the rules. First, we gotta have discussion. Who wants to go first?”
Before Claw Rousseau could choose one of the men who had raised his hands, a middle-aged man with a white beard got to his feet and took the floor.
“This isn’t right,” he began. “What the hell’s going on in this town? Here we have four fine young men, willing to risk their lives in order to help other folks, being treated as if they were common criminals. What we have here is a crime all right, but the crime isn’t what Lootenant Scott thinks it is. The crime is taking our good men, they hadn’t even had a chance to get out of their gear, and throwing them into jail. That’s the crime, and we’ve gotta let them know that we’ve not gonna take it. You can’t throw us in jail and then expect us to come runnin’ to save your ass when you’ve drove into a ’lectric light pole or put a pot on to cook and forgot all about it and all of a sudden the place is goin’ up in smoke. Ain’t gonna happen.”
The men cheered and stamped their feet in approval, and several jumped to their feet to speak.
“Who was that?” asked Lucy.
“Mike O’Laughlin,” said Hank. “He’s always got something to say.”
“Got a big mouth,” added Bob, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms on his chest. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
“He’s right!” said a thirtyish man in jeans and work boots. “I say we strike ’til the charges are dropped. Let those guys in Gilead cover for us—make ’em earn their fat salaries for a change.”
The crowd greeted this with hoots of approval.
“A strike’s the only thing that’ll teach ’em,” said another.
Lucy recognized Gary from the gas station, where he worked as a mechanic.
“I mean, we drop everything when that siren blows, we never hesitate for even a second and we never know what we’re gonna face. Last year, Jack Perry and Bill Higgins went to the hospital. Jack had burns and Bill broke his ankle. What do they get for their pain? A big fat nothing. Don’t get me wrong. We’re all volunteers here, and that’s the way it oughta be. People helpin’ people. But don’t we deserve a little appreciation? A little consideration? That’s all we’re asking for, and we’re gonna get it or they’re not gonna get their calls answered.”
This also was met with noisy approval. But when Claw recognized Stan Pulaski, the fire chief, the crowd fell silent. Lucy could almost feel the men bristling as he began speaking.
“I know how upset you all are,” he began, “and I know how proud you all are to be a volunteer force. But if we go on strike, how are people supposed to have confidence in us? They’ll say you can’t depend on a volunteer force, and next thing you know we’ll be a call force taking orders from a bunch of college-educated strangers who’re getting paid to tell us what to do. I think a strike’s a bad idea.”
“The chief is right,” said Claw. He spoke slowly, and his words had weight. “The people of this town have faith in us, that we will answer their calls for help. They trust us and depend on us; we can’t let them down.”
A sullen silence followed his words. A few of the men looked a bit ashamed of themselves; others were clearly angered.
“Whatsa matter, Chief?” demanded one young man. “What happened to sticking together, like you always say?. We gotta work together, isn’t that what you’re always telling us. Well, we gotta stick behind Rusty and J.J. and the others.”
Lucy followed his pointing finger and recognized the two brothers, sitting along with two others who she assumed were the other men who had been charged with stealing. They shifted uneasily in their seats as their fellow firefighters cheered and applauded. After giving vent to their emotions for several minutes, the men quieted down and a single voice was heard.
“Those men broke the law.” It was Tom Scott, speaking from the doorway.
His entrance wasn’t greated with boos, as Lucy expected. Instead, the men seemed subdued, like a classroom of kids who had lost control when their teacher left the room only to scurry back to their desks when she returned. He strode to the front of the room, where he stood next to Claw Rousseau.
“I know you’re angry about the arrests,” he began, holding his official blue hat in his hands. “Maybe it’ll help if I clear some things up. First of all, I want you to understand that nobody in this town is above the law.”
This drew some chuckles from the firefighters, but Scott wasn’t fazed.
“Second, I want you to understand that I respect what you do. You fellas are willing to put your lives on the line for your neighbors, and that’s a fine and noble thing to do.
“Finally, the district attorney has informed me that he is open to a plea bargain in this matter and is prepared to be lenient.”
Scott turned to face Claw and extended his hand. Claw hesitated a moment and then grasped it; Scott pulled him close in a bear hug. From the crowd, there were murmurs of approval as well as mutters of discontent. Claw banged his gavel and called the meeting to order once again.
“There’s a motion before us,” he said. “We’ve gotta vote. All in favor, that means a strike, raise your hand.”
Tom Scott remained beside him, watching as he counted the votes.
“I count nineteen in favor.”
Listening closely, Lucy thought she sensed a note of relief in Claw’s voice.
“What does it take? Two-thirds?” she asked Bob.
He nodded. “They don’t have the votes.”
“Opposed?” called Claw. “A no vote means no strike.”
Hank and Bob were among those who raised their hands.
“I count sixteen. The motion fails. No strike.” Claw disregarded the angry epithets uttered by some of the thwarted strikers. “Any other business?” He banged down the gavel. “Meeting adjourned.”
Lucy got to her feet and tried to make her way to the front of the room to get a comment from Claw. He was already engaged in discussion with several of the firefighters, so Lucy turned to Tom Scott instead.
“Are you pleased with the vote?”
Tom thought for a minute, weighing his words. “I think this is the best possible outcome to an unfortunate situation. A few of the firefighters made a mistake, and that’s being addressed by my department and the justice system. I think it’s to the credit of the volunteers that they understand their responsibility to the town.”
“A majority voted to strike,” Lucy reminded him. “Do you think there will be friction between your department and the firefighters in the future?”
“There’s no room for petty squabbles in this business,” said Scott. “We’re public servants, and we work together.”
Lucy wrote as fast as she could, but when she looked up to ask her next question she saw that Scott had walked away and was approaching the firefighters who had been charged with theft. The crowd of supporters gathered around them dissipated as he drew near.
Lucy watched as the four men huddled around Scott, wishing she dared to attempt to overhear their conversation. Instead, she wove her way through the scattered groups of firefighters and greeted Claw.
“Lucy Stone, from The Pennysaver. Do you mind if I take your picture?”
Claw shrugged and Lucy produced her camera. When the flash went off there was a moment of silence, then the buzz of conversation resumed. She snapped the shutter a few more times, then tucked the camera away and pulled out her notebook.
“Are you happy with the vote?”
“Like everybody else, I can go home tonight and know that if I need help, help will be there.”
“What about the men who were charged? Two of them are your sons?”
Rousseau’s face sagged and Lucy thought he must be older than she had guessed at first, probably closer to sixty than the robust fifty she had noted in her book. “At times like this you have to have faith,” he said.
His answer took her by surprise. She had expected him to defend his sons, or at the very least to point out their heroism at the fire.
“Thank you,” she said, and put away her notebook. She didn’t want to bother this clearly troubled man any further.