Up in Smoke (3 page)

“Excuse me?” I snapped at him.

“Sorry.” He shrugged slightly. “Just figured maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree. I don’t want to waste my time working on getting you a free hotel stay if this isn’t even a reality for you.”

“No. I have money—plenty of it, kid—but I’m not sure about Vegas. I’ve been coming here for decades playing at my little five-man table. Seems extreme to go to Vegas.” I didn’t really have a ton of money, but I wasn’t going to reveal that to some kid.

“I understand. Just think about it,
Blaze
. Last time I went, I placed sixth and walked away with a hundred grand.”

His comment piqued my interest. That was a lot of dough for sixth place. “How many people bought in?”

“Three hundred,” he replied.

That was a lot of people, but only two hundred more than what I was used to at North Bend. “I’ll think about it, kid. Thanks.”

Heading out of the casino, I hid the cash in my inside coat pocket so I could sneak it back into the bank before work on Monday without drawing any suspicion from Susan. I hid all but five hundred to show Susan. She’d be happy about it and I could put that portion back into checking. It was the only way I could share in the victory without mentioning that I took money from the other account.

As I rode the elevator up to my room in the hotel, I thought about Robert and that tournament in Vegas he had been talking about.
Ten thousand dollars is too much for one shot. But then again, that kid did walk away with a hundred grand.
The best I did in any of the tournaments was getting a buffet coupon. I didn’t entirely discount the idea of going; there was a lot of possibility in it.

B
ack at home
two days later, my favorite smell in the world tickled my nose as I came down the stairs, causing me to crack a smile: bacon. Susan made me breakfast the first morning of every work week. It helped motivate me for the week of work ahead. Coming into the kitchen with a smile, I walked to her side and kissed her cheek.

“Finally feeling a bit better today, dear?” I asked as I took a seat at the table. “I didn’t hear you get up once last night.”

She brought over a plate of eggs and bacon and set it down in front of me. “Yes. Much better, thank you,” she replied. “Coffee or orange juice?” she asked on her way back around the kitchen island.

“Coffee, please,” I replied, bowing my head to say a quick prayer over the meal. I picked up the newspaper and thumbed to the sports section.

Susan returned back to the table with a cup of coffee and set it down beside my plate. I looked at her with an appreciative smile. “Thank you.” She smiled at me and then went over to the sink to start on the dishes.

After eating my breakfast and reading the paper, I showered and got ready for work. On my way back down the stairs, Susan met me near the front door to open it for me.

“Why are you leaving early?” she asked, her eyes innocent, her face soft.

It broke my heart every time I had to lie to her, so I’d look for ways to modify it. My lies were more comfortable that way. “Just dropping off the extra money I won from the other night.”

She smiled. “I can take it for you, dear. I have a list of errands I have to run. I’ll just stop by and drop it off in our savings account.”

“No!” I accidently snapped from nervousness. “I mean . . . sorry, it’s not a big deal. I like the extra commute. It gives me more time to listen to my new audiobook.”

“Okay,” she replied, a little taken aback. She looked at me and said, "Have a good time at work. See you after your shift.”

Relieved that she didn’t keep pushing it, I kissed her and told her I loved her. I stepped out onto the porch and thought to myself,
crisis avoided, again
. It seemed that almost every time I withdrew money from the account, I was just a few wrong words or moves away from her discovering my trespasses.

I wanted out of gambling a year ago, but by that time I was already down over half the eighty grand I started with in our savings. Every day at work, every moment I had alone in my days, my mind continuously searched for a way out of the mess I had gotten myself into. The only solution I ever found was winning the money back somehow. On my drive to the bank, I turned off the audiobook I had started and thought about the Vegas proposal the kid had mentioned.

It sounded good, but it was a lot of money.

It would take almost everything I had in my savings. The tournaments I had participated in at the casino were only a grand here and there, nothing that big. Not ten grand!

I made my mind up right there on the spot. Vegas wasn’t an option, I wasn’t going to do it.

I pushed the thoughts away and turned the volume back up on the audiobook.

Even with the pit stop by the bank, I arrived twenty minutes early to work. I made my way into the multi-purpose room to catch the morning news on the television. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I saw Ted already there, his eyes glued to the TV.

“Hey, Alderman,” he said without looking.

“Sherman,” I said, taking a seat.

“Did you win?” he asked, again without breaking eye contact from the television.

“Of course,” I replied.

A smile crept from the corner of Ted’s mouth as he looked over at me. “You say you win every single time you go up there. If that’s true, when you going to say goodbye to being a firefighter?”

I laughed. “I love this job. I’m not going to leave because I won some money. Well, I take that back. I would leave if I won the lottery.”

“Whatever,” Ted laughed. “You still putting your money on the Mariners for the game this Friday?”

“Yep.”

Shaking his head, he replied, “Easy money for me. They suck this year.”

“We’ll see. I have a good feeling about this one.”

“You saw their last game, right?” Ted asked with a raised eyebrow, looking over at me.

“No, but I read about it.”

He shook his head. “Huh. Well, you want to put your cash on a team who’s not showing up to play the game, that’s fine. I’ll be showing up to collect.”

“We’ll see.”

Ted and I watched the news until about eight o’clock. Then we joined everybody as they showed up and headed over to the training room that was adjacent to the dining hall. We had meetings once every two months in there. The meetings were mostly to go over any concerns and to talk about upcoming trainings on-site or out of town. They were usually a pretty cut and dry type of thing. This time it wasn’t.

“Thank you all for being here,” Chief Paul Jensen said as he stood at the front of the room.

“Like we had a choice in the matter,” I said with a grumble.

“Put a lid on it, Alderman. We have some serious stuff to talk about today.”

Sitting up a little more in my seat, I leaned forward and asked, “What’s going on, Chief?”

Cole walked to the front and stood next to Paul. He looked worried. His arms were crossed and he stood like a nail about to get smacked with a hammer. He wasn’t one to be upset over a kinked hose, so it made me worry a little.

Paul crinkled up the paper in his hands and threw it into the waste basket behind him. “I’m not going to read that stupid memo from the Mayor’s office. Basically, our station is having part of its budget cut.”

“What? Why?” Kane asked.

Brian chimed in. “What’s this mean?”

The room was in an uproar. Micah and I were about the only guys keeping quiet. Once everybody settled down, the Chief spoke again.

“Everybody knows the economy has been on a downward slump. We’re not immune because we are firefighters.”

Grunting a little, I cleared my throat. “Sure doesn’t seem to affect the twenty people it takes to stand around a pothole in the middle of the road while one guy fixes it. That Francis Street road project is a joke!”

“Yeah,” Kane said, nodding as he looked over at me.

“The city just wasted a ton of money by putting in a splash pad in that new park over on the west side. Why do we get punished for the city’s lack of budgeting and responsibility?” Brian added.

“I swear, this city gets dumber by the minute,” I said. My words were heavy with grief as I thought about the downward slide the city had been going toward over the last decade or so. Looking up to the front of the room at the Chief, I said, “Paul. Is there anything we can do to stop it?”

Shrugging, he replied, “I’m doing everything I can since I found out. I’m going to meet with some of the city officials to see if there is any possible way around this.”

“What exactly are the cuts going to do?” Ted asked the Chief.

“No raise this year for starters. That’ll be frozen. Some personal cuts, pensions, that kind of stuff.”

Everybody started talking at once, so nothing was comprehendible. My worry soared at the mention of pensions. I was only a few years out from retiring. Once the yapping died down again, I looked Paul in the eye. “You’d better fix this.”

“We’ll figure this out, Alderman,” Paul replied, giving me a confirming nod. It helped that he seemed so confident.

Cole unfolded his arms and said, “We protect the people in this city. We suffer, the city suffers. I think we can draw on that fact alone and hopefully get some adjustments made to the budget.”

Cole was right. The city officials were aimed toward helping the community, and cutting back on safety wasn’t helping anybody. They’d be jeopardizing their own citizens. “Yeah. Maybe they’re just unaware,” I said.

“I’ll keep you all updated and in the loop. Would anyone object to a group prayer?” Cole asked.

There were no objections.

Cole bowed his head, and we all followed suit.

Cole said, “Dear Heavenly Father, we come to your throne with humble hearts today. We are worried about our station and the men that serve this city. Please let your will be done with the matters of the city. Not our will, your own. We pray these things, in your name, Amen.”

I liked Cole. He had a good head on his shoulders and was a good fit for the role of captain after Thomas Sherwood passed away. The Chief had approached me first about the open position of captain, but I declined it. It was too much of a headache to deal with all the drama and the guys around the station. I wasn’t cut out for caring that much. I just liked showing up and doing my job and then going home.

While the meeting went on for another half hour, I didn’t pay much attention. I kept thinking about my pension.

A call came in later that day for a fire. Suiting up in my turnouts, I turned to Cole as he walked behind me on his way to get into the ladder truck. “Hey,” I said.

“Yeah?” He replied, stopping and looking at his watch. “Make it quick.”

“If you and the Chief have issues getting Mayor Gordon to fix this . . . I say we take it to the streets.”

One of Cole’s eyebrows shot up as he crossed his arms. He looked slightly confused at my wording. “What do you mean, Alderman?”

“Door knocking. We can get her fired or something. The community loves us firefighters.”

Cole nodded. “We don’t need to get her fired, but you think that’d work? To get supporters.”

Shrugging, I replied, “It couldn’t hurt anything. At least a petition or something. We get a pretty good return for the boot fundraiser thing we do every year.”

“Yeah, but that’s for children with muscular dystrophy.”

“Still, it’s us out there. I think it could work.”

Cole nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He climbed up into the truck’s front seat.

Getting into the back seat, I looked over at Ted as he sat next to me. “Sherman. Don’t you think that we could knock on doors and get people to support us and help stop—”

“Let me stop you right there. I don’t think this city cares about anything other than having fun and doing whatever they want. People all over this country have turned a blind eye away from what the government is doing, and they only focus on themselves.”

“This isn’t political, Sherman,” I retorted.

“Yeah it is! Everything is political. Don’t you get that? Have you looked at the city budget? We might be getting cut, but the special programs for the down and out are getting a surge.”

“Really?” I asked, skeptical.

“Yeah. It’s all on the city’s website. They put it out there for anyone to read. But like I said, nobody cares about what the government is doing, even on the local level,” Ted replied.

As the fire truck rolled out of the bay doors, I shook my head. “What happened to the good old days, Taylor?” I asked, leaning up toward him and Greg in the front.

Cole looked back at me. “They’re called
old
for a reason. We’ll get it figured out. Don’t lose any hair over it, Alderman.”

Sitting back in my seat, I looked out my window as we flew down the street toward the fire down on the 1600 block of Garfield. The trees, cars and scenery looked like a smear across my field of vision as I thought about the looming financial troubles between the station and the city.