"Since you didn't get to drink at the party tonight," He said. "I thought you might like a cold one before you headed home."
I took it and looked at him, at the surgical scar on his chest.
"You're not supposed to drink, are you?" I asked lightly.
"Screw those doctors." He told me. "If the beer knocks five years off my life than I consider it five years I wouldn't have wanted to live anyway. Drink with me."
"I won't insult you by saying no." I said, borrowing a line from Fiddler on The Roof. I popped open my beer.
Nina spent the majority of the next day in bed, leaving it only to throw up in the nearest convenient toilet. I did not go over to see her, only talked to her on the phone. She sounded miserable and she vowed she would never drink again. I believe everyone has made such a vow a time or two in their lives, usually a few days before breaking it. The following day I visited briefly but she still wasn't quite right. I could sympathize. Two-day hangovers are the pits.
Instead of coming home for the summer, Tracy elected to enroll in summer classes to knock out a few more general education requirements. She told us on the phone that she knew there wasn't a lot of money for a plane ticket anyway and besides, summer was the most pleasant time of year in the Bay Area. No sense coming back to sultry, hot Spokane when she could be basking in 80 degree days and furthering her degree. Mom and Dad were somewhat disappointed, going so far as to assure her that they had the money for a plane ticket, but Tracy was undaunted. She wanted to stay.
The testing process for the Spokane Fire Department began. On June 12 Mike went down to the Spokane Community Center to take the written test. It was this portion of the process that I worried about since I knew that Mike was not the strongest person when it came to written material. But my worries turned out to be unfounded. He'd picked up study guides at the bookstore and had gone over them obsessively in the weeks proceeding the test. He called me shortly after he returned that day and told me it was in the bag. Though the results wouldn't be mailed to him for a week, he KNEW that he'd passed. I couldn't doubt the confidence he displayed and I was right not to. When he got the letter the first word on it was "Congratulations". His score was ninety-one percent. He was scheduled to take the combat challenge at two o'clock the afternoon of June 20.
I didn't believe he would have any problems with the combat challenge. As I've mentioned, the majority of the test was leg muscles and endurance. The exercise regime that Mike had been following had strengthened both of these attributes to a level that I could only dream of. His thighs and his calves bulged with runner's muscle. He had worked his endurance to the point where he could go full out at a run for nearly five minutes. He could carry sixty pounds of weight up the library stairs at a jog and barely break a sweat. His resting heart rate hovered at around fifty. He not only intended to pass the test but to threaten the record time while doing it. I had every confidence that he would do so.
The day of the test came. It was about as pleasant as it gets in Spokane during the summer that day; the heat and humidity approaching a record low. Mike had called me the moment he'd gotten home from the written test so I knew, when I still had not received a phone call by five o'clock, that something was wrong.
It was the next day before I found out. He came over to my house about ten in the morning and we took a walk over to the elementary school. He told me the story on the way.
"I didn't pass dude." He told me bitterly, almost biting back tears.
"What happened?" I asked, feeling his pain to some degree. I'd failed the same test before of course but I hadn't wanted it as badly as he did.
He sighed, shaking his head. "My legs and my endurance were fuckin' top rate." He said. "I lit into that course like you wouldn't believe. The guys at my station helped me practice putting on the turnouts and the tank so I did it in less than ten seconds. I pulled out the hose in nothing flat, it didn't even hurt my legs. I was a little slow on the sledge hammer part. It kind of hurt my arms, but I got it done and picked up a lot of time on the ladder climb and carrying the hose up the stairs of the tower. When I got to the top I wasn't even winded and my time was pushing the record." He gave me a bitter look.
"And then what?" I asked gently.
He scowled. "I'm tellin' you man." He said. "I've spent all this time working on my legs and my endurance because that's the main part of the test. But I never worked on my fucking arms. When I started pulling the hose up the rope I knew I was in trouble. I never realized how fucking heavy a forty-pound roll of hose is when you try to hoist it up hand over hand. By the time I got it halfway up my forearms were screaming. When I got it up to the ledge and tried to pull it in, they weren't working right. I dropped the rope and the hose fell back to the bottom." He sniffed a little. "Automatic disqualification."
I looked over at him, trying to think of something to say. Like Mike, I'd never considered there would be difficulty with this part of the test. When I'd taken it I hadn't worked my arms either. But I'd also spent the previous two years constantly lifting gurneys with human beings on them from floor level to loading position. Actions which had strengthened my arms to the point that a forty pound roll of hose was nothing. But Mike had never done such a thing. His arms were used to lifting nothing heavier than beer cans.
"I'm sorry Man." I told him. "I know how much you wanted this."
He nodded, pulling out a joint as we reached our standard smoking spot. "That kinda shit happens." He told me. "Oh well. There's always next year, I guess. I'll be sure to have my damn arms built up by then."
We smoked the joint together but it didn't improve his mood much. He was in the middle of a black depression. I hoped he would come out of it soon. I didn't like seeing him that way.
As June wound onward a good portion of my time was taken up by work. Other idle time was used in researching and filling out the complex paperwork involved in applying for the college of my choice; the University of Washington at Seattle. There was also the paperwork involved in applying for the academic scholarship I was shooting for. Nina's time was taken up by much of the same process.
But it was summer and these pursuits did leave time for other pursuits. One of them was my Dad's boat. It was a twenty-foot jet boat capable of seating eight and pulling a skier out of the water in nothing flat. He'd purchased it during the height of his financial irresponsibility stage and our family had enjoyed it for about three good years. Since then it had pretty much sat in disuse in our garage, it's engine broken, it's paint faded, it's hull being used as extensive storage space for household items.
I myself had owned a small boat in my own financial irresponsible period in my first life. I'd finally sold it to help pay off a few credit card debts.
But the fever to be out on the water had stayed with me. I'd gotten Dad's tacit permission to put the boat back into serviceable condition if I could.
I knew I was not capable of doing this on my own but I also knew that Mike knew a considerable amount about engines and mechanics thanks to his dad.
And so Mike became a constant fixture at my house during the latter part of June during the morning hours before I went to work and on the weekend. We unloaded all of the crap from the boat and stored it elsewhere. We cleaned up the hull. And finally we dove into the engine compartment to try to find the source of the "engine doesn't work" problem that my dad had described. The work seemed therapeutic for Mike in a way and it served to put us closer together. For the first time since my return I was seeing an actual maturity in my friend, actually feeling kinship with him instead of tired resignation.