A few steps past an axe-shattered doorway, he thought he heard a whimper. It was the rush of water through the hose snaking along the hall and up the stairs to the apartment where he’d just handed over the nozzle. He took another two steps and stopped again. He had definitely heard a whimper. Johnny went into the room and quickly took off his glove. He raised his hand to gauge the heat level, to see how hot it was closer to the ceiling. How near the fire might be. It was hot. The walls, the ceiling hadn’t been opened and the fire could be there, ready to flash the room. He dropped down and began his crawl, sweeping at his sides as if he were swimming. He had less than a minute to find whoever it might be. After that, they’d both be gone. An arm is what he found first, then the skinny little body. Without even checking for a pulse or for breath, he hugged the child underneath him, against his chest, and made his crawl for the door, the child’s arms and legs dragging beneath him.
At the stairs, he was able to stand up straight in the clearing smoke. Half stumbling, half falling, he made it down the one flight, tangling his feet in the hose, but managing not to trip or fall. At the landing, he placed the child on the floor. It was a girl. He tipped her head back to open the air passages and began mouth-to-mouth. But he was just giving her more smoke from his own lungs. He grabbed her up and tumbled down the next flight. At the door to the street, Tony Aponte was coming in with a halligan to open the walls. “Quick. Air. Quick!” He swung the child at him, then stumbled away to the side of the stoop, where he threw up a great black gush that included the chunks of lamb chop he’d had for dinner,
After the fire had darkened down and the smoke had vented, he went back inside to retrieve his helmet. A new one would cost one hundred and seventy-six dollars and he could think of better things to do with the money. Besides, why should he leave souvenirs behind.
He was confused about the room. After a wrong turn into a burned-out kitchen where most of the ceiling had been pulled—the refrigerator and stove were the only surviving identification—he found a room with a bed and a dresser. It had a rug on the floor and a broken window. At the baseboard of the wall to his left was his helmet.
Still coughing, he reached down to pick it up. Toward the side of the bed he saw imprinted on the rug the form of the child. There, too, on the carpet, was a stuffed animal, oval-shaped, the size of a small pillow. Through the sifted soot Johnny could see the large polka dots marking the orange back. It was a ladybug. This was the toy the child had dropped when he’d lifted her away from the floor. She had been holding on to it when he’d found her. Johnny picked it up. He’d see to it that the child got it back. The toy was soft and yielding to his touch.
Johnny slammed the helmet onto his head harder than he’d wanted to, the quick pain allowing him to make his way to the door, go through it, down the hallway, down the stairs and outside. He shoved the stuffed ladybug into the hands of a woman standing near the truck. “The kid I just brought out,” he said. He did not look back nor did he look up from the street to see if he could identify the room where his helmet had been. When the lieutenant told him the child, the little girl, would be okay, he had nodded, then helped take up the hose, pulling and draining, rolling it and bedding it in the truck. He wiped a heavy string of black snot onto his sleeve. He coughed once and gave the line an extra shove to bring the whole episode to an end.
And now the child was here, the girl he’d rescued. She and her mother had come to honor him. But it was he who should honor them for coming. He would leave his pew, go to them, and thank them for being there. They warmed his heart and lifted his spirit. He must speak to them, he must touch them. He would be blessed.
Johnny stood up. As if his rising had been the expected signal the organist had been waiting for, the massive sound of the processional rumbled through the church. The entire congregation rose to its feet, inspired by Johnny’s example. The liturgy had begun. He’d have to stay where he was.
When it was time to go to Communion, the moment when Johnny would make his speech to the cardinal, he realized he’d made a mistake. He was on the wrong side of the church. When he stepped into the aisle, joining the line that approached the sanctuary for the reception of the sacrament, he noticed that he was headed toward an ordinary priest, a monsignor at best, but definitely not His Eminence. He had assumed that the cardinal would appropriate to himself the honor of offering the Eucharist to each of the firefighters, and then allow his subordinates to join him when it came time to give Communion to the other congregants. He’d assumed wrong. There at the sanctuary step was an everyday priest. What would be the point of delivering his speech to him? Johnny had prepared himself to address a Prince of the Church and now he was being shunted off to some underling—no doubt an ordained underling and a worthy one, but for Johnny’s purposes, an underling nevertheless.
Johnny considered slipping across the aisle into the line of those destined to receive the host from the cardinal himself. But there, at the cardinal’s left, was a man of enormous bulk, an usher obviously, but the closest thing Johnny had ever seen to a bouncer—alert to any disruption and ready to intervene in the event of any disturbances. If the man were to see Johnny change from one line to the other, he might be ready for him and hustle him away before he could get the second word out of his mouth.
But Johnny intended no desecration, no sacrilege. His reverence for the consecrated bread was beyond question. He didn’t even intend to receive the Eucharist. He would simply say his speech and move on, the host untouched, the sacrament unreceived. He may have a small quarrel with some hierarchical absolutes, but his faith itself was firm. In reverence, Johnny cast his eyes down and continued his slow shuffle toward the altar. The man in front of him had a hole in the heel of his sock, showing a white circle of pale, unwrinkled skin.
Johnny was close to the sanctuary. If he was going to make his move to the other side of the aisle, it had to be now. He took another look at the priest whose ministrations he was about to refuse. The man looked like Friar Tuck in an old Robin Hood movie he’d seen on TV. His huge belly would be the envy of any Santa Claus, a promise of merriment and joviality. A second chin and a third seemed suspended from his ears, a beard not of whiskers but of flesh. His eyes bulged, expectant of wonder and delight.
The man in front of Johnny stepped forward. The priest’s husky voice said the sacred words, “The Body of Christ.” “Amen,” the man answered. He accepted the bread and moved away. Johnny had not slipped across the aisle. After a quick glance at the cardinal, at the bouncer, he took his final step up to Friar Tuck. The priest held out the host, the thin white wafer, the bread descended from the unleavened loaves of the Passover meal. “The Body of Christ,” he said. Johnny stood there. He gulped hard, then said, “Because I have to wear a condom when I’m with the woman I love, I can’t marry her in the Church. If I didn’t wear the condom, I’d get sick and die. She has AIDS. With the condom I can’t consummate my marriage in the eyes of the Church and therefore I’m refused permission to marry.”
The priest stared at him, the bulging eyes unmoving, the host still held out toward Johnny. “The Body of Christ.” The priest repeated the words. Johnny took it in his hand. “Amen,” he whispered. He put the bread into his mouth. From the corner of his eye he saw the bouncer stirring.
In his pew Johnny was at a complete loss as to what he should do. He had not expected to go to Communion, to actually accept the host. His life with Dempsey had placed him outside the community of the called and the chosen. Yet here he was, having just participated in the most sacred act available to anyone on this earth. He made a leftward turn of his head as if he might find knowledge and counsel in the stones of the north transept.