From a Buick 8(86)

Mister Dillon was at the back door, nose down to the base of the screen, going back and forth. Almost bouncing back and forth, and whining way down in his throat. His ears were laid back. While I was watching, he bumped the screen with his muzzle hard enough to bell it out. Then gave a kind of yelp, as if to say man, that hurts.

'No idea,' Shirley said in a voice that told me she had no time for Mister Dillon. Neither, strictly speaking, did I. Yet I looked at him a moment longer. I'd seen hunting dogs behave that way when they ran across the scent of something big in the woods nearby ? a bear, or maybe a timberwolf. But there hadn't been any wolves in the Short Hills since before Vietnam, and precious few bears. There was nothing beyond that screen but the parking lot. And Shed B, of course. I looked up at the clock over the kitchen door. It was 2:12 p.m. I couldn't remember ever having been in the barracks when the barracks was so empty.

'Unit 14, Unit 14, this is base, copy?'

George came back to her, still coughing. 'Unit 14.'

'It's chlorine, 14, Norco West says it's pretty confident of that. Chlorine liquid.' She looked at me and I gave her a thumb up. 'Irritating but not ? '

'Break, break.' And cough, cough.

'Standing by, 14.'

'Maybe it's chlorine, maybe it's not, base. It's on fire, whatever it is, and there are big white clouds of it rolling this way. My 20 is at the end of the access road, the one by the soccer field. Those kids're coughing worse'n me and I see several people down, including one adult female. There are two schoolbuses parked off to the side. I'm gonna try and take those folks out in one. Over.'

I took the mike from Shirley. 'George, this is Huddie. Norco says the fire's probably just fuel running out on top of the chlorine. You ought to be safe moving the kids on foot, over?'

What came next was a classic George S. response, solid and stolid. Eventually he got one of those above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty citations for his day's work ? from the Governor, I think ? and his picture was in the paper. His wife framed the citation and hung it on the wall of the rumpus room. I'm not sure George ever understood what the fuss was about. In his mind he was just doing what seemed prudent and reasonable. If there was ever such a thing as the right man at the right place, it was George Stankowski that day at Poteenville Grammar School.

'Bus'd be better,' he said. 'Faster. This is 14, I'm 7.'

Shortly, Shirley and I would forget all about Poteenville for awhile; we had our own oats to roll. If you're curious, Trooper George Stankowski got into one of the buses he'd seen by busting a folding door with a rock. He started the forty-passenger Blue Bird with a spare key he found taped to the back of the driver's sunvisor, and eventually packed twenty-four coughing, weeping, red-eyed children and two teachers inside. Many of the children were still clutching the misshapen pots, blots, and ceramic ashtrays they'd made that afternoon. Three of the kids were unconscious, one from an allergic reaction to chlorine fumes. The other two were simple fainting victims, OD'd on terror and excitement. One of the crafts teachers, Rosellen Nevers, was in more serious straits. George saw her on the sidewalk, lying on her side, gasping and semiconscious, digging at her swelled throat with weakening fingers. Her eyes bulged from their sockets like the yolks of poached eggs.

'That's my mommy,' one of the little girls said. Tears were welling steadily from her huge brown eyes, but she never lost hold of the clay vase she was holding, or tilted it so the black-eyed susan she'd put in it fell out. 'She has the azmar.'

George was kneeling beside the woman by then with her head back over his forearm to keep her airway as wide-open as possible. Her hair hung down on the concrete. 'Does she take something for her asthma, honey, when it's bad like this?'

'In her pocket,' the little girl with the vase said. 'Is my mommy going to die?'

'Nah,' George said. He got the Flovent inhaler out of Mrs Nevers's pocket and shot a good blast down her throat. She gasped, shivered, and sat up.

George carried her on to the bus in his arms, walking behind the coughing, crying children. He plopped Rosellen in a seat next to her daughter, then slipped behind the steering wheel. He put the bus in gear and bumped it across the soccer field, past his cruiser and on to the access road. By the time he nosed the Blue Bird back on to County Road 46, the kids were singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'. And that's how Trooper George Stankowski became an authentic hero while the few of us left behind were just trying to hold on to our sanity.

And our lives.

THEN:

Shirley

George's last communication to dispatch was 14, I am 7 -this is Unit 14, I am out of service. I logged it, looking up at the clock to note the time. It was 2.23 p.m. I remember that well, just as I remember Huddie standing beside me, giving my shoulder a little squeeze ? trying to tell me George and the kids would be all right without coming right out and saying it, I suppose. 2.23 p.m., that's when all hell broke loose. And I mean that as literally as anyone ever has.

Mister Dillon started barking. Not his deep-throated bark, the one he usually saved for deer who scouted our back field or the raccoons that dared come sniffing around the stoop, but a series of high, yarking yips I had never heard before. It was as if he'd run himself on to something sharp and couldn't get free.

'What the hell? Huddie said.

D took five or six stiff, backing steps away from the screen door, looking sort of like a rodeo horse in a calf-roping event. I think I knew what was going to happen next, and I think Huddie did, too, but neither of us could believe it. Even if we had believed it, we couldn't have stopped him. Sweet as he was, I think Mister Dillon would have bitten us if we'd tried. He was still letting out those yipping, hurt little barks, and foam had started to splatter from the corners of his mouth.