A Deeply Insouciant Volunteer
Sequel to The Insouciant Volunteer
Acknowledgments: for Mark O’Mara my least favorite firefighter who obviously inspires the Hale character at the end; for Jim Felton for first influencing me to make me a volunteer (while it lasted); for Justin Armbruster and his brother and their families, and for being cool dudes; for Bill for his taste in scotch; and for John something the guy there who perhaps reminded me the most of myself besides Ken, except he’s way more intense, but just as good looking though shorter, than I am, but not for his brother Tom because I found him didactic, and I don’t like didactic people because who does?; and for Pete Como of course for our conversations and your offer to take me flying that I still might take you up on; and for Christine Wilcocks and the fire at her house I was actually at that served as the inspiration for this scene; and lastly for Jon Lizak and our deep dark philosophical conservations who inspired the Jack Ballsock character
“You say you love me baby, please call me on the phone some time”— Muddy Waters, “Long Distance Call”
“I only regret I have but one life to lose for my country.”— Nathan Hale
“The Knight Errant” by John Everett Millais
A Deeply Insouciant Volunteer
by Jay Burkett
He was hanging out with Jake Ballsock in suspense witnessing a yawning monster of a fire sounding like it was engulfing literally and not even just metaphysically or metaphorically orgasmically and orgiastically this funny pretty woman’s backyard indeed she was one of the very supermarket moms—and very few supermarket moms— he had genuine designs on because you can’t seduce everyone, and, a divorced middle-aged unwitting blonde made for almost the ideal target— What he did was stealthily take her number right in front of his own mom. Veronica can I have your number? Sure. Because he did it right in front of his own mom, this was how his mom fell under the illusion he had no bad intentions, and also put the woman at ease because if he had had bad intentions he wouldn’t be doing it in front of his own mom. He was damned sneaky like that. Doing his sneaking in plain sight. The sneakiest most dangerous method of all in the book—it was dark; it was ten or it was eleven or it was twelve. Or it was just two in the goddamned mornin’. And but a good big mean fire made the night a lot more fuckin’ lively and lovely. Yawning. It sounded like a monster, a dying dragon behind the closed fence, a sleeping snoring Cerberus so you could hardly even see it and Colin stood there in his fire gear ready for anything, or was he? Like he never ended up actually seducing in real life any woman in that supermarket, was he really ready to fight a fire? Seduce married moms and fight goddamned fires, MEN. He stood there next to Jake Ballsock or was it Ballsack? He was Polish so he had one of those funny jarring, inappropriate-sounding Polish names. The guy was big damned big, and he looked older but he was in fact several years younger than our main character, the Insouciant Volunteer, the unsure-of-himself in his self-assurance heavy-drinking writer, who couldn’t answer a fire call not without fifty or sixty thousand or something cheap expensive dark beers, though no one knew it, and it was dark out, and it was rainy, just like the last time as fate would have it he answered one of those funny silly sodden chilly calls in the dead white cold of deader than dead sullen solemn January when it was not uncommonly warm out—that was bipolar New York— he responded to a call, and he also stood next, right next to Jake Ballsock, when a gas leak as it happened, happened, and they stood watchful in the chilly January rain, a downpour as Jake prepared Colin this house could blow the fuck up and erupt into volcanic self-engulfing spectacular flames inflammatorily with the family still in the damned house, without the sense to leave after a gas leak happened, as it happened, and he Colin would have to be ready for anything standing expectantly exhilaratedly wasted with the firehose in his ready-for-anything clutches, but was he ready, or too busy meditating on all those supermarket moms? Ready to spend all night and all morning potentially putting out a goddamned bonfire or a forest fire. Neither of which happened.
Now they were discussing religion and how Jake showed up to January 6th for an exuberant tailgate and a pool party, and the pretty woman who as it turned out was his mom’s best friend who had just moved into the general pretty area fled her house not after recording the amazing yawning smoking heavy-drinking or heavy something fire, yawning in hushed dying breaths, and said “Farewell, Thank Ye Firemen. Put this goddamned monstrosity out of its misery good luck.”
The next day she texted Colin the video she recorded. It was spectacular.
“What I believe is that God created women to provide me children and suffer the pain of childbirth as punishment for their original sin just for being women.” This was what Jake said.
“Damnit,” Colin said. Sarcastically, “Faulkner couldn’t have written that better. Sounds a little harsh for me though. I don’t know if I trust the Bible it’s nothing compared to porn or beer or whiskey or sensual delights. That’s my religion.”
Jake laughed. “Well it’s the truth.”
“Nah there ain’t nothin’ truer than a bottle of whiskey and someone’s supermarket mom.”
“You don’t believe in sin?”
“No I believe in sin alright. I just think whiskey and everyone’s mom knows a lot more about sin than you or the Bible or God does. They’re better informers, and educators.”
“You’re not an informant are you?”
“No I ain’t here to bust you only break your balls. And I believe women are evil, as evil as evil gets. I just don’t think it’s all their fault. It’s all evil.”
“Fair.”
“You should cheat on your wife!” Colin recommended.
“What?”
I.
“He’s so insouciant,” Hale the Salt Valley FD’s most annoying man observed in the rec room, in the languishing fires of bitter resentment and subdued anguish over a Bud Lite or a “trans beer,” the wittiest firemen pronounced them who avoided them. Not even a firefighter. He was just one of those funny men now who’s, like, a liberal progressive who reads the Times and drives a Dodge pick-up truck, who was a retired insurance dealer, or auditor or something, who looked up a lot of funny words to humiliate the firemen and aggrandize himself.
Even when his express purpose nobly or not was to associate himself with the lower orders here just to feel better about his progressive wealth in his self-loathing progressivism and educate these uneducated uncultured swinish swine to refinement and enlightenment and feel good about himself for doing the right thing by giving back.
“That’s a big word, Nathan Hale,” Colin addressed him who overheard him talking about himself after lunch. “What makes me insouciant?” Colin started bullying and belittling. Colin was very nice looking and outwardly pleasant and scholarly which gave people the false impression they could rip on him or tease him without him noticing or caring people without any notion that there could, there would be consequences for disrespecting him if you disrespected him at all; but he was unafraid of confrontation—he enjoyed it—and he could be even exponentially meaner than he was even very nice looking. “Because of how I dress because of my wiles with the ladies in Stop and Drop Dead Right Now, is that why I’m insouciant and my vocabulary, my youth my waywardness, despite living with my mom condemned for eternity to while away the hours in the Davy Jones Locker of my aborted arrested development of adolescence.”
“No I just think because of your looks man I think you don’t take firefighting seriously.”
“Why do we discriminate harder against good looking people than ugly people, why doesn’t anyone trust me? Is it because I’m better looking taller and younger and smarter than you are and maybe even fitter. You’re probably right though. But goddamnit I’m right. I have every right to be the most insouciant volunteer ever in the richest smallest quietest town on Long Island! Hell half the calls we address it’s some old guy who lived too long who stubbed his fucking toe. Or an old lady with stomach cramps. Or who fell. I always get back up when I fall. And I refuse to believe that when an old person falls they don’t have the inner strength to get back up on their feet; I think they’re faking it; or they’re so useless to society if they can’t get back up when we might have better manlier things to do like drink we should really just leave them where they fall. Who calls the fire department or an ambulance because you fell? A fall is not a fire and hitting your head on a stairway banister is not an emergency. Why do we firemen have to respond to rescue calls? They can call a neighbor or a friend or a relative for Christ’s sakes, or stop faking it and being lazy and get up. When I’m old and I fall I’ll just lay there. I’m like one of those stragglers in movies who melodramatically tells everyone to go on without him and then they’re like no we can’t let you die. Like Teddy Roosevelt in the Amazon, or John Wayne in The Searchers. Isn’t there a scene like that in The Searchers? I loved that movie.”
“You see? This is what I mean,” Hale hailed the other firemen. “He’s insouciant. He’s not serious. And he’s blasphemous. You can’t say that stuff! Wait till you’re old James Bond.”
“How serious are you Nathan Hale? I might be a damned insouciant even reluctant or worst case scenario unwilling volunteer, who doesn’t care if an old bastard stubs his toe or an old lady burns alive, but I’m still a serious man, ay, Hale? More serious than you are in your progressivism posing as a friend of the working class, you who doesn’t understand like I do Iran deserves to be nuked. God you would make any man more serious juxtaposed with you!”
“The CIA staged a coup,” he said, it was all he had to offer, on the subject of the Iranian menace.
“You’re dead wrong. It’s the Islamic Revolution that staged a coup and the IRGC. The common average Iranian didn’t hate the Shah. What did you watch Argo for your opinion? Keep reading the Times Hale. Be a good educated enlightened man. Good enlightened men like you make the world so good. What would it be without you?”