Old Clinkers: A Story of the New York Fire Department — John Shaqi
Old Clinkers: A Story of the New York Fire DepartmentO'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold
General
Old Clinkers: A Story of the New York Fire Department
O'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold
Fire fighters -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
And when the _Hudson_ was spinning back leisurely to her quarters with
a trail of banana skins in her wake, he said to his lieutenant in the
wheel house, “I want yuh to see th’ engineer to-morrah an’ write a
report to headquarters on that low pressure cylinder bus’ness.”
Moore looked up to find the cool grey eyes fixed on him in a
calculation of how much enmity there was left in him. He flushed. “Yes,
sir,” he said, almost gratefully.
Keighley turned away before he added with an effect of kindliness, “All
right. Dady’ll explain about it to yuh to-morrah. Go out an’ tell those
boys we want some bananas in here. I guess we’re smoked as dry as they
are.”
It was not that Keighley felt the impulse of any unguarded generosity.
He knew his fire-department too well for _that_! For there is this
peculiarity in firemen: being free of any business worries or other
anxieties concerning their incomes, they spend their days in efforts
to “get even,” to avenge slights and repay friendships. They are men
of no philosophy, unable to get outside of themselves into any calm
view of their troubles, incapable of forgiving an injury and unable to
understand such a capability in others; and they despise particularly
the “quitter” and the “ingrate.” Keighley did not wish to be sneered
at, by his men, as a “quitter”; and he knew that if Moran did not help
the “Jiggers” in their quarrel with their captain, they would consider
the deputy-chief an “ingrate.” The fight was “to a finish,” whatever
interludes of good-natured fellowship might happen to relieve it.
Keighley knew it. He merely accepted the truce in the spirit of a
“game” antagonist who could fight without malice and win without spite.
He saw the boat berthed, watched the men go off to their beds, and
then turned in himself--relieved to be free of his daily reports--with
a feeling that the truce would last over the next day, at least, which
was Sunday.
IX
In the morning it was announced in the newspapers that Chief Borden
had been suspended, pending the decision of the courts on the charges
against him, and that Moran had been appointed acting-chief in his
place. Keighley opened his eyes wide upon the news, and then narrowed
them cunningly as he considered it. He had expected that Borden would
be thrown out neck and crop as a warning to all the “Anti-Jiggers;” and
there was a glimmer of something hopeful in the half-heartedness of a
tentative suspension. Keighley shut himself in his office with his desk
telephone to find out what had happened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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