February 2002

The Fire Engine

George K. George

Gregor was given many nice things. Once, an aunt brought him a snow globe all the way from Nepal. As with every new and glittery object to fall in his hands, short work was made of the foreign treasure. In a shimmering plume of backyard homerun derby, an artifact from generations of family apprenticeship was knocked squarely to shards. Gregor’s life had been a systematic rampage of premeditated trinket murder. Joy was not found in simple appreciation. Most things needed a little unlocking.

A twist of the jackknife to Mini-Liberty’s neck sent satisfaction sky high. Souvenir booklets were easy except for the decision of whether the pages became self-actualized by removal in ascending or descending order. Flat, stamped pennies from far off ports gave Gregor the worst trouble, until he discovered in his father’s workshop an electric grinder. "Copper does make the best, most durable toothpick," he decided one afternoon, just before nearly grinding his thumb into a similar nub on the machine.

This boy had a multitude of abroad relatives with pocket cash and plane tickets home. However, he did not have many toys. Under his bed were tubs of building blocks of plastic and wood, but what child’s stuff it was. He remembered the wooden blocks coming out of storage once. It was a tall tower with turrets, archways and even a little flag on top. It had life. Gregor felt obliged to heckle it a little before kicking it squarely in the shins. Surely a rush, but such predictability in the demise and promise of regeneration.

Gregor was not without attachment to the unfamiliar things the familiar faces brought as unknowing sacrifice. In a similar tub as held dormant creation, under his bed was an admirable slurry of broken glass, headless statuettes, copper filings, shredded paper and plastic bits of miscellany. "I will treasure it always," his standard line for receiving the doomed merchandise. And so he did. On the slower days, when flights were delayed on account of jet stream forces thousands of miles away, Gregor would reflect on his efficiency reclined on his candy-striped carpet and examine the shrapnel for missed opportunities of further pulverization. Once a class of rough, unfinished peers were gathered from the tub, appropriate measures were taken to make them fit in with the group.

So many discoveries were to be had in these lazy afternoons. He passed hours testing malleability of different plastics and soft metals with a variety of research tools. Loosen with the crevice-defying needle-nose, yank heartily with the more blunt version. Then, sever surgically with a few taps of a ball-peen on a long flathead. Gregor’s virtual choir of Lady Liberties, the figureheads of thriving American empires, now lacking limbs and heads, more resembled looted art from the fallen Roman Empire.

"Do you know what these symbols mean, Dear?" asked Gregor’s mother of Gregor’s father one bright Sunday afternoon.

"Let’s see. One thousand... seven hundred... seventy-six. Why do you ask?" he sipped some coffee with raised eyebrows.

"I found it in the vacuum filter after straightening his room. It made such a racket going down the hose, I thought it might have been one of those glass coins Charlie brought back from Cambodia, so I opened it up."

Gregor’s father considered the fragment and its numerals from behind his bifocals, while Gregor’s mother stood silently in expectant suspension.

"Wasn’t your sister Judith in New York City this July? For the big fireworks display, you know? I don’t know what made me think of it," Gregor’s father’s mouth gaped slightly in further consideration of the tiny green arm and slate. He rotated the particle nearer to his spectacles. Gregor’s mother placed her hands on her hips and leaned in for her own closer surmise.

"Yes," Gregor’s father spoke up after some long, silent and unproductive thinking, "Judy brought you back that nice T-shirt, and—remember? How much I enjoyed framing that post card booklet for the study."

"It looks so nice, dear."

Gregor’s father sighed a gruff, perplexed sigh, now consumed with the question of the tiny object’s origin

"And... Our Gregor was given an adorable little statue, if I remember," he said and frowned.

"That’s right. He was so pleased as always. You know, I’d like to see that little statue again. Where’s Gregor? It was such a nice gift. Gregor? Gregor?" she began chiming. Gregor’s father joined the calls with a loud imperative voice, so out of sync with Gregor’s mother that deep in the basement-workshop, Gregor heard only muted, overlapping bellows from the floorboards.

Gregor lifted his safety goggles to his forehead and cut the power to the drill press. He sighed annoyed and pocketed the half-sphere of amber resin he’d been reducing to waxy, brittle corkscrews—a once perfectly preserved dung beetle specimen.

Small parts of his parents’ nature acted as blessings of accommodation to Gregor's ritualistic habit. Gregor’s father had built the downstairs woodworking nook ultimately for image and "have’s sake." A stack of unfinished kitchen cabinet doors hung to a concrete wall by tethers of ancient cobwebs. The skeleton of a tall ship model lay indefinitely dry docked on the dusty frame of a small bookcase. Many of the saws were so oxidized from neglect that Gregor found them useless. It had been months since the final defection of pliers settled in Gregor’s bedroom, and his father had not made an opportunity to discover their absence without leave. So, Gregor squatted the woodshop, while the most wood his father set hands on was the financial page of the Sunday Times every week at breakfast.

Gregor was now in the midst of strengthening another necessary part of his parents’ nature. This one, he realized, depended in part on him. In addition to giving unconditional thanks for exotic gifts, Gregor reacted immediately when called. It was a co-founded conditioning in this cordial family. Gregor never made his parents wait, and Gregor’s parents were never made to burst in on anything shattering.

His feet pounded a rhythm for the guttural chorus and melodic accompaniment getting more and more imperative from the top of the concrete steps.

"Greg-or!" came his mother.

"Greg-oor?" interrupted his father in low harmony. It couldn’t have continued for more than four bars before Gregor was at attention.

"What are you doing with my goggles, Son?"

"Oh, uh," Gregor fumbled the goggles from his forehead, "Nothing, just playing, Father."

"Were you in my workshop?"

"Yes, father."

"What else were you playing with?"

"Nothing."

Gregor’s mother didn’t like this at all.

"Dear, ask him to show us Aunt Judy’s statue?" she said in order to save her son from any more trouble than he deserved for simply playing in the basement.

Gregor went pale. For one unexplainable phenomenon—such as being seen wearing safety goggles in the kitchen—failsafe child’s ignorance would do. The same would have done for a misplaced souvenir.

"If the goggles had happened after the question was taken care of...." wished Gregor in vain.

But Gregor was faced with two pairs of eyes, both prying, one glaring. Two questions, no answers.

Gregor did his best to gather his wits. The subject of property rights on his father’s shop was not nearly dropped, but at least suspended. Gregor started toward his room.

"Oh, that?" he faked recollection, "I think it’s under my bed."

"What?" he shouted at himself as his father got up from his chair, his mother turned alongside, and both escorted him to his bedroom. Gregor felt heat on his back, "What a thing to blurt out!"

The three walked on the kempt candy-striped floor. Gregor’s father folded his arms while Gregor’s mother delicately hovered. Gregor himself set about glancing quickly under objects for the statue that would not be found. His nerves wracked from the developments, he picked up even books, and then thumped them down again in exasperation each time the statue failed to appear.

"You said it was under your bed, Son," interrupted his father. He, Gregor’s father, knelt down and reached for the first tub that caught a sparkle in his eye, but something stopped him. A sharp pain rocketed through his wrist. Meanwhile, code-red alarms were blaring in Gregor’s head. He shared his room with no one, not even with the occasional arranged play-date. And now, the most dangerous intruders were closing in on ground zero.

"Damn it!" exclaimed Gregor’s father and peered at a shard of off-blue glass embedded deeply in his palm. He stood back from the bed, and the sweat on Gregor’s neck cooled slightly.

"Fetch me a needle and some gauzes," he ordered Gregor’s mother, who exited soundlessly. He squatted on the crime scene, rubbed his palm gingerly and scanned the fine, colored stripes through his glasses as if they were a headset of two high-power magnifying lenses, which for all purposes, they were.

Gregor's eyes were youthful and sharp, but it was becoming apparent they were no match for the optical illusion that was the carpet he himself had chosen years ago for his bedroom. A small particle—even if it were brightly hued—could easily be overlooked on such a background. Miniaturization was Gregor's prerogative, and vivid coloration was that of souvenir manufacturers universally.

A glint caught Gregor's eye. Was it a reflective fray in the carpet's matrix of shiny fibers, or surely some more evidence? He took a few casual steps back and forth before muting it with his shoe. And what was that? Was it an expired fly or Exhibit B? The other shoe kicked over and crushed the insect. Gregor was performing the Chinese splits over what he suspected could be splinters of Russia and Japan.

"Son," Gregor's father lowered his lenses and peered over the frames, "What are you doing?"

"Stretching, Father," Gregor said over his shoulder. He raised his arms, twisted round and cracked a worried smile.

Gregor's father frowned, "Go see if your mother has found the gauzes, it's starting to bleed. Something must have broken in here...."

Thick, dry fingers curled around a tub's rim, and Gregor did immediately what he was told in order to save vital organs from the blast of the bomb.

"Thank you," Gregor looked at his shoes and sulked off to his room with the ceramic donkey.

"Is he feeling all right and well?" asked older Cousin Edgar of his aunt and uncle-in-law, who were seated at the dining room table, "He usually receives my gift with such enthusiasm and intense interest."

Gregor's mother wasn't sure how to lie. To her, the truth sounded like lies. She cleared her already clear throat looked to her son's father.

"A little trouble at school is all, Edgar," he explained through some of his own throat clearing.

Cousin Edgar was not the first to notice a change in the delivery of Gregor's standard script. Gregor's parents, for a long time, were so busy rhetorically asking Gregor what they should say to visiting relatives upon their inevitable returns, they forgot to ask themselves the same question for the purpose of planning. Uncle Charlie was told of a lingering influenza virus, deceased miniature carp and a fight between Gregor and his best friend in one stuttering string of over compensation. Charlie's confused eyes told Gregor's father that he should do better next time at diverting suspicions of an ill family. To Gregor's Aunt Judith, the delivery was more eloquent, but the tone was suspiciously apologetic. Gregor's father delivered an epic of fictitious rivalry between Gregor and his fictitious nemesis over a fictitious girl in his class, based entirely personal experience. Gregor's father began to notice that the longer the explanation took, the more confused the eyes became. He eventually tapered the story to the simple untrue point; trouble at school.

There were sighs of relief when any particular relative told the last of their journey and the door slammed behind them. Gregor was called and, by reflex, appeared with whatever the relative had brought. Gregor made no attempts to play remorse, promise or oath. He handed over the gift to be stowed for when he was older and learned to respect his own property. He stood until excused without a sound from his lips, which pointed at the floor, pursed against the implied punishment.

"I'll keep it safe," said Gregor's father and nearly crossed his eyes in listening to the words.

"You can't have nice things if you don't take care of them," chimed Gregor's mother softly as she had each time before with the same—and only—self-authored logic she let herself apply to the current situation. As expected, she then busied herself.

"Why?"

It was never asked, and it would have stumped Gregor had it been. Why does a fireman fight fires? He got drunk on it. He had not the words or analogies in his repertoire to describe it to anyone quite right, and trying would just render a need for help in their eyes.

Gregor became a recluse to his room where, from the remaining tubs, he'd pull out decaf plastic and methadone wood. He built a spaceport for a race stuck in an otherworldly freedom decade and their square-shaped, rainbow colored flying saucers. Once, the carpet turned aqueous for barges and tankers to lumber between ports and offshore drilling sites. Yellow bricks were mined in a prosperous Western boomtown complete with a saloon and a bank that was periodically robbed by little smiling yellow men in space helmets. Fascination with these distant worlds of other times sustained sometimes for hours, and in the latter days, for days at a time. But, when interest dwindled, in a meteor shower, tidal wave or cyclone of palms, wrists and knuckles the thriving civilizations met their end.

Leaves rotted, snow slipped underfoot. The neighborhood glowed and jingled with the coming days of reunion. Gregor's mother thrived in the business of preparing guest rooms and buttery green snacks for what was, this year, going to be a full attendance. Gregor's father talked seriously on the telephone to his broker about strategies of stock sales in planning for the capital drain that paralleled the traditional holiday program. Gregor was as unaffected as in years past. It was going to be another house full of people with whom he had only a few chromosomes or legal documents in common. The generation gap had widened into an impassable chasm. To the relatives, little time was available for laying claim on fenced backyards and reputable school districts when there were planes to catch and a world to conquer.

"When are you going to settle down and have a family?" Gregor's father asked in loud jest, smiling in the candlelit eggnog chaos of several tens of people talking at once. Gregor's ears perked up in hope that the young-faced Uncle Richard had wonderful news, but the question was answered with some barely audible adult-level reasoning and evaded with fantastic imagery of his latest plans for an epic world tour.

Gregor sighed and picked up his ninth raspberry truffle. He counted the events before everyone came to a lull around the sparkling tree, when packages were ripped apart and smiles broke out in thanks and welcome. He was not for any reason looking forward to this time, but at least it would mean the bulk of the active boredom was behind. Having had, until recently, a regular schedule of hands-on woodshop sessions, he had discovered where the sweaters, beanies, pocket reference books and sea monkey packets were hidden each year a few weeks prior to the big day, when he would grossly exaggerate surprise.

Flames leaped from pudding, the piano boomed off key to the agreement of all who sang along. Stories were retold—and again forgotten—by those vibrating on their fifth or sixth goblet of spiced milk and Brandy. Voices chattered the end of the longer punch lines, and the time had come.

Gregor, by far the youngest, was offered to have first go. Descending order of size, decided Gregor. He grabbed the corner of a box addressed to him and drew it out from under the tree. This took several seconds. The box did not seem to have an end. He unwrapped it slowly. The expectant, giggling faces faded into the holiday haze. A flash of red shone in Gregor's eye. Another flash of red. He raised the fire truck from the box, and heard several excited gasps from behind. Gregor's mother looked at Gregor's father, whose face twitched in a happy frown.

Gregor's speech was no more inclusive than that for last year's miniature thesaurus—but it couldn't easily have been. Though, he didn't begin straight away rolling that around the tree while making diesel noises with his lips. The ladder extended. It came with a crew of four men and a Dalmatian—all freestanding. If he pushed on the light array, they swirled and a siren sounded for a few seconds. The wheels turned—was anything locked in place? Its color was its name and its name, its color.

"It was nice to see you, Catherine."

"Brrrm! Woo-woo!"

"Bye now, Charles. Write us about Turkey."

"Brrrrrrrrm!"

"Can't wait 'til next year, Judith..."

"Woo-woo!"

"Well, that's all of them, I'm going to clean up," waved Gregor's mother and closed the door.

"Crack!"

"But I can fix it," Gregor repeatedly jammed the ladders together, fruitlessly.

"You can't have nice things if you don't take care of them."

Gregor's father agreed. One year.

Gregor brooded upward at his face distorted in a red bulb dangling from a low branch for how long he could not know.

He heard gentle snoring drift from the study. Behind the door, his father was sitting with crossed arms, facing a glaring spreadsheet screen, in alcoholic sleep. The fire engine sat retired on a shelf in the same room and was grouped with salvaged souvenirs and the array of tools his father had pulled from Gregor's dresser. One tool was missing.

Gregor shifted his eyes from the bulb to the dark stained glass artwork hanging from the windowpanes and the light from the street that barely shone through. His father had hung them yesterday, but mostly cursed viciously at his thumb. Gregor noticed the claw hammer on the sill. His father must have forgotten to put it away, as he himself would never have dared. He stood up, and stepped lightly over to it. Quietly, he slid his palm under its handle and felt the weight.

Gregor started toward his father's study.