Black rubber swelled like the underside of a bowl where his toes would be. The boots reminded me of ones I’d wear traipsing through overgrown fields with my dad to frosty deer stands where we’d wait for hours upon frozen hours for some action.

As a fireman, he understands.

“We can go inside where it’s warm,” he said.
“Actually, it’s perfect out here. All that adrenaline.”

His only response was a cough. He pulled from the heavens, covered his mouth with a fist, and heaved with his entire being in a sort of rhythmic chant. Tippy-toes, cough. Tippy-toes, cough.
I noticed blocky, yellow letters printed to the tail of his coat. Images of smoke thick as fog and helmets bouncing and yelling and duty overwhelmed my mind. It isn’t always waiting and casual calls of carbon monoxide to homes of worried moms in sweatshirts who want to wait on the porch. Sure they play PS4 and I don’t know, compare belly button lint? (Who really knows the goings on in fire departments?) Sometimes though, it’s stepping in engine spills to rescue a baby who isn’t breathing from an overturned car. It’s sleeping bags on dirt clods so they can keep the line of forest flames away from subdivisions. It’s testimonies of abuse and time of death.

It’s always nights away from family.

“What ages are your kids?” he asked.
“So, four, eight, and nine-almost ten.” (because for those few months they appear a year apart I seem to need to explain that I’m not insane, or part rabbit)

Tippy-toes, cough. Tippy-toes, cough.

“They go to school over there?”
“No, we’re the one section of our neighborhood that is fed across the highway.”

His partners updated me on the CO2 levels in various areas of our home. They joked about stealing Lucky Charms and I assured them I’d never notice the difference between their mess and my children’s.

Tippy-toes, cough. Tippy-toes cough. “Should be a nice weekend before the snow hits again.”
“Oh is another system moving in?”
“I think Monday,” he said. “But we’ll have the weekend. My kids will love that.”
“How many do you have?”
“A five-year old, ten-year old, and twelve-year old.”
“Do they go to school around here?”
He mentioned a town near us where pine trees abound and acreage is plenty and my heart resides.
“That is such a beautiful area. We’re looking to buy land and build a home there.”
“Yeah, I just needed more…space.”
Sir, we are speaking the same language.

Tippy-toes, cough.

He described how they evacuated because of a wildfire a couple years earlier. I told him how we’d been evacuated from another, one he’d apparently worked.
“Do you know my friend Derek?”
“Oh, yeah I know him.”
“He loves wildland season.”
“Well, it’s what we’re trained for.” Tippy-toes, cough.

The other two came back, giving me no definitive answers because carbon can be finicky, I’m told. They said to tell my friends hello and reminded me that even small amounts of toxicity still deserve a call. As in, I can tell my husband the freaking out was not completely unwarranted? I’ll be happy to let him know this.

Their heavy soles thumped down my driveway while I thanked my glorious neighbor for letting me wake her in groggy haste.

Thank you, new friends. Thank you for helping my home and community be a little safer. Thank you for your time. But most of all, thank you for caring deeply enough to get to know me.