Firefighter's Memory

           Emmet would have preferred earbuds on the way to the accidents. The blaring noise of the sirens reminded him of an oven alarm which reminded him of baking brownies which reminded him of his wife. Correction. Ex-wife.

            He didn’t like to think about it; the thing that would be waiting for them when they turned up with their hatchets and chainsaws and heavy yellow suits. He always hated the calls to the roads far more than the smoking houses and buildings. Calls to the road meant observing every horror occurring; the fires supplied thick smoke that shielded the view of displaced shoulders and crying mothers. His wife said, his ex-wife used to say, that it was because when he was young and playing hide and seek, his parents used to pretend that they couldn’t see him when he closed his eyes.

            This car had bent itself around a telephone pole. Somebody was screaming, and Emmet did not comprehend how loud it must have been until he realized that nobody had turned the sirens off and still the scream was there in the highest frequency thought possible. He was momentarily reminded of a sixth grade science teacher droning on about wave lengths and amplitudes and the undeniable frequency rattling through his ear canals now.

            There was little time to contemplate this. She’d always been saying that. Little time for reminiscing. Now is what’s now, Emmet. But he didn’t want to think of her because when he thought of her he sometimes cried and he needed his eyesight to see the wreck that he didn’t want to see. Every firefighter was bolting to the mess of a Honda and Emmet was still the first one to the vehicle despite the mess in his head.

            The battered door frame went first, and the men threw it to the side like it was made of Styrofoam. But Emmet couldn’t think of that for long because Styrofoam cups reminded him of pollution which reminded him of documentaries about saving the world which reminded him of his wife. Correction. Ex-wife.

            The window wasn’t there and there was no broken glass on the edge of the frame. It had already been removed, Emmet presumed, because he knew what broken windows looked like and it wasn’t this. But he also thought he knew what broken marriages looked like and it wasn’t that.

            This part of the job was like heart surgery. There was no room to make a mistake, when you hack out the armrest that’s putting pressure on a man’s broken leg or you break the back window to get to the other side of the backseat. There was no time for anything but doing. Perhaps a heart surgeon would disagree. That’s what she says, that’s what she used to say.

He wanted to know why she had infiltrated every part of his life and had then decided to recede. She didn’t even abide by common courtesy and clean up after herself. Instead, she left spots and streaks of her memory behind, and not only the bad ones. Emmet would have been fine to abandon the negative things that made the thought of her light up in his head the same way brake lights do on the highway. But the good things were avoided now, too, like the smell of baked ziti or the feeling of the first snowfall in November. Finishing a jar of homemade jelly in a few hours and then using the jar to catch fireflies was the best way to ruin a day. Finding good books at the thrift store and singing off-key to the Beatles were lined with caution tape. They were all sticks that prodded his burning memory, searing a hole through his ears and into his brain when he listened to the silence as he drove to Christmas dinner alone. And now, the dismantled car revealed an empty passenger seat which reminded him of his empty passenger seat which reminded him of his divorce which reminded him of his wife. Correction. Ex-wife.