Yarns Without Threads 

... Before he could reply again, an alarm came through on Fontana's pager.

"Smoke in the building," came the dispatcher's report. The address was a ten thousand number on Hays Road, and as soon as the volunteers heard it, their eyes lit up and they began running for the fire engines. Even rookies knew about Hays Road.

Roger Truax jogged over to Fontana, who hadn't budged, and, being careful to keep his voice low and controlled, said, "You're not going? Smoke in the building. It could be a real fire, Mac."

"That's always a possibility."

"Look at them. I've never seen them move that fast."

"They don't want Fall City or Preston to beat them in."

"Fall City and Preston didn't get dispatched."

"No, but they'll be responding." Fontana grinned.

"What? What's so funny?"

"I were you, I'd go with them, Roger."

Truax eyed Fontana suspiciously. "If you don't think it's anything, I don't see what I could do."

"I didn't say it wasn't anything. I just don't think it's a fire."

Fontana sat in the chair Audie had vacated and crossed one leg over the other. "I'm surprised you're even in here. I would have thought you'd be in the beanery finding out about the nudists. I would think, as safety director for Staircase, you'd want to know."

"What are you talking about?" One of the misfortunes of Truax's life was that he blushed easily, and right now his face was flaming.

"That alarm they just had was to a nudist colony."

Trying to conceal his excitement, Truax exited the room without another word.

... When Fontana chaperoned Audie back into the beanery, Truax, listening to talk of the nudist camp, appeared almost at the point of collapse.

"You'd think they saw a bunch of horny old firefighters coming through the gate, they'd all jump into T-shirts or something," Ken Valenzuela said.

"Showing off," said Lieutenant Pierpont. "Pure and simple."

"That old geezer?" Valenzuela said. "What the hell was he showing off?"

"It was gross." Heather Minerich came into the beanery and began rinsing coffee cups at the kitchen sink, aligning them in the dishwasher rack.

Though he had been with the city six months, Roger Truax clearly had not realized there was only one occupancy addressed off Hays Road, a private club called Sun Country, a nudist colony. The more graphic the descriptions of Sun Country and its occupants, the pinker Truax's ears got and the more frequently he fingered the long strands of hair on the side of his head, pulling them across the bald spot on top.

"Gee, Roger," Fontana said. "As the safety director, I thought you would have wanted to respond up there. You know the chances of burn injuries are greater in a nudist colony than anywhere else." Everybody in the room laughed. All four full-timers were in the room now: Fontana, Kingsley Pierpont, and the two rookies, Heather Minerich and Frank Weed.

"I thought about responding," Truax lied. ...

"Just about every volunteer in Preston and Fall City showed up in their cars," said Lieutenant Pierpont, the only black man in the room. "Must have been twenty-five cars. Too bad the gate man only opens it for the first-in engine company unless it's a confirmed fire."

"That's why you were laughing when the alarm came in? You knew it was a nudist farm." Looking at Fontana, Truax tried not to show his anger. "Why didn't you go?"

"I've seen naked people before."

"Yeah?"

"When I was married I got a peek at my wife maybe once a week, sometimes twice." Everybody in the room laughed. Audie, not quite getting it, looked up at Fontana and smiled, pleased to be around so many firefighters. Life was good.

Depressed and angry, he drove back toward Staircase and was almost to Highway 18 when the alarm for 10010 Hays Road came across the radio. The nudist colony. Was he the only firefighter in the valley who wanted them to get their system fixed? He'd be the first arriving unit.

Fontana took the Highway 18 exit off Interstate 90 and went up Hays Road through the trees. Before he reached the top, he caught a blur in his rearview mirror, then heard a whooshing sound as Roger Truax's maroon Buick wailed up the hill past his GMC, black smoke jetting from the Buick's tailpipes. Truax didn't look at Fontana, nor did he seem nervous about being on the illegal side of one blind curve after another.

Moments later, when Fontana pulled up at the guardhouse gate at Sun Country, Truax was trying to talk his way past the uniformed guard, a young man with long sideburns.

Ignoring Truax, the guard strode to Fontana's window and held up a walkie-talkie. "False alarm, Chief. We just now got a confirmation from our head janitor. The system's been going off all day. The alarm company's in there right now."

"No problem," Fontana said, picking up his mike and giving a code green to the other units.

Roger said, "You gotta let us in. We have to confirm any false."

"Who are you?"

"The safety director for Staircase."

"You got any ID?"

"ID?"

"Like a badge."

"No, I don't have a badge. The safety director doesn't need a badge. Now open that gate and let me into your facility."

Fontana scratched Satan. Watching Truax attempting to bluff his way into a nudist colony had cheered him up immeasurably.

"Can't let you in unless we have an alarm," the guard said. "And we don't have an alarm."

"But you just had one."

"It wasn't real. We just forgot to call the alarm company."

"That's an alarm. And technically you can't reset a system without us being there."

"We didn't reset it. The alarm company repairman reset it."

"It would help if we could go in and see what he's doing. After all, the next time it goes off, you might not have any personnel from the alarm company standing around."

"Let's go home, Roger." Fontana put his truck into reverse. "And you'd better check your Buick. It was burning oil pretty good on the way up that hill."

"You're not going inside?"

"I sure do appreciate you trying to help, but I have to pee. So does my dog."

"I don't understand it. In Tacoma we would have caught hell if we'd let the residents tell us the emergency was over."

"You want to go in there that bad, get your wife and sign up. It's just a bunch of people playing table tennis without any clothes on."

When Fontana backed the truck up, Truax ran after him and grasped the windowsill. "You don't think that's why I want to go in, do you? There's protocol involved here. We can't let a man making six dollars an hour intimidate us."

"Badges? We don't need no steeenking badges," Fontana said in a heavy accent.

"Now you're making fun of me."

"Look, Roger. They won't take single men, but if you talk your wife into it, they'll accept a couple's application. With all your schooling and whatnot, they'd be tickled to have you."

Engine One from Staircase chugged over the crest of the hill, labored past, turned around in a cul-de-sac farther up the road and went back down the hill, air horn tooting. A moment later, Fall City's new engine came over the crest and repeated the procedure. Then came the engine from Preston, followed by five or six volunteers in private vehicles. All performed the same ritual and all eyeballed Sun Country's gate with the same wistful look.