Waldorf Do You Think the Reader Is Expected to View Kirby and Mary Ann’s Marriage as A Good One? need this done in 7 hours not 13!!!!!!!!!! 3 full pages

Waldorf Do You Think the Reader Is Expected to View Kirby and Mary Ann’s Marriage as A Good One? need this done in 7 hours not 13!!!!!!!!!!

3 full pages double spaced total

——————————————–Question———————————————————-

For this writing assignment, you were asked to read “The Fireman” by Rick Bass. Write an essay that analyzes “The Fireman” as a story about marriage. Specifically, do you think the reader is expected to view Kirby and Mary Ann’s marriage as a good one? Why or why not?

————————-Please follow this structure carefully—————————————

1. . 5 paragraphs in total, 1 introduction, 3 body paragraphs and 1 conclusion

2. . Introduction should have a thesis statement, which proper response to the question — do you think the reader is expected to view Kirby and Mary Ann’s marriage as a good one? Why or why not?.

3. For each paragraph, you should have a top sentence that support your thesis statement. “The Fireman”
by Rick Bass
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They both stand on the other side of the miracle. Their marriage was bad, perhaps even rotting, but
then it got better. He–the fireman, Kirby, knows what the reason is–that every time they have an
argument, the dispatcher’s call sounds, and he must run and disappear into the flames–he is the
captain–and while he is gone, his wife, Mary Ann, reorders her priorities, thinks of the children, and
worries for him. Her blood cools, as does his. It seems that the dispatcher’s call is always saving them.
Their marriage settles in and strengthens, afterward, like some healthy, living, supple thing.
She meets him at the door when he returns, kisses him. He is grimy–black, salt-stained and smokysmelling. They can’t even remember what the argument was about. It’s almost like a joke–the fact that
they were upset about such a small thing–any small thing. He sheds his bunker gear in the utility room
and goes straight to the shower. Later, they sit in the den by the fireplace and he drinks a few beers
and tells her about the fire. Sometimes hell talk about it till dawn. He knows he is lucky–he knows they
are both lucky. As long as the city keeps burning, they can avoid becoming weary and numb. Always,
he leaves, is drawn away, and then returns, to a second chance.
The children–a girl, four, and a boy, two–sleep soundly. It is not so much a city that they live in, but a
town–the suburbs on the perimeter of the city–and it could be nameless, so similar is it to so many
other places: a city in the center of the southern half of the country–a place where it is warm more
often than it is cold, so that the residents are not overly familiar with fires–the way a fire spreads from
room to room, the way it takes only one small errant thing in a house to invalidate and erase the whole
structure–to bring it all down to ashes and send the buildings former occupants–the homeowners, or
renters, or leasers–out wandering lost and adrift into the night, poorly dressed and without direction.
They talk until dawn. She is his second wife; he is her first husband. Because they are in the suburbs,
unincorporated, his is a volunteer department. Kirby’s crew has a station with new equipment all they
could ask for but there are no salaries, and he likes it that way; it keeps things purer. He has a day job
as a computer programmer for an engineering firm that designs steel girders and columns used in
industrial construction: warehouses, mills, and factories. The job means nothing to him: he slips along
through the long hours of it with neither excitement nor despair, his pulse never rising; and when it is
over each day he says good-bye to his coworkers and leaves the office without even the faintest echo
of his work lingering in his blood. He leaves it all the way behind, or lets it pass through him like some
harmless silver laxative.
But after a fire–holding a can of cold beer, and sitting there next to the hearth, scrubbed clean, talking
to Mary Ann–telling her what it had been like–what the cause had been, and who among his men had
performed well, and who had not–his eyes water with pleasure at his knowing how lucky he is to be
getting a second chance, with every fire.
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He would never say anything bad about his first wife, Rhonda–and indeed, perhaps there is nothing
bad to say–no fault or failing in which they were not both complicit. It almost doesn’t matter; it’s
almost water under the bridge.
The two children asleep in their rooms; the swing set and jungle gym out in the backyard. The security
of love and constancy–the safety. Mary Ann teaches the children’s choir in church, and is as respected
for her work with the children as Kirby is for his work with the fires.
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It would seem like a fairy-tale story; a happy marriage, one which turned its deadly familiar course
around early into the marriage, that day he signed up to be a volunteer for the fire department, six
years ago. One of those rare marriages, as rare as a jewel or a forest, that was saved by a combination
of inner strength as well as the grace and luck of fortuitous external circumstances–the world afire.
Who, given the chance, would not choose to leap across that chasm between a marriage that is
heading toward numbness and tiredness, and one that is instead strengthened, made more secure
daily for its journey into the future?
And yet–even on the other side of the miracle, even on the other side of luck, a thing has been left
behind. It’s almost a perfect, happy story; it’s just this side of it. The one thing behind them–the only
thing–is his oldest daughter, his only child from his first marriage, Jenna. She’s ten, almost eleven.
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There is always excitement and mystery on a fire call. It’s as if these things are held in solution, just
beneath the skin of the earth, and are then released by the flames as if the surface of the world, and
the way things are, is some errant, artificial crust–almost like a scab–and that there are rivers of blood
below, and rivers of fire, rivers of the way things used to be and might some day be again–true but
mysterious, and full of power, rather than stale and crusty.
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It does funny things to people–a fire, and that burning away of the thin crust. Kirby tells Mary Ann
about two young men in their thirties–lovers, he thinks–who, bewildered and bereft as their house
burned, went out into the front yard and began cooking hamburgers for the firefighters as the building
burned down.
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He tells her about the man with a house full of antiques in a house that could not be salvaged. The
attack crew was fighting the fire hard, deep in the buildings interior–the building “fully involved,” as
they say to one another when the wood becomes flame, air becomes flame, world becomes flame. It is
the thing the younger firemen live for–not a smoke alarm, lost kitten, or piddly grass fire, but the real
thing, a fully involved structure fire–and even the older firemen’s hearts are lifted by the sight of one.
Even those who have been thinking of retiring (at thirty-seven, Kirby is far and away the oldest man on
the force) are made new again by the sight of it, and by the radiant heat, which curls and browns and
sometimes even ignites the oak leaves of trees across the street from the fire. The paint of cars that
are parked too close to the fire sometimes begins to blaze spontaneously, making it look as if the cars
are traveling very fast . . . .
Bats, which have been out hunting, begin to return in swarms, dancing above the flames, and begin
flying in dark agitated funnels back down into the chimney of the house that’s on fire, if it is not a
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winter fire–if the chimney has been dormant–trying to rescue their flightless young, which are
roosting in the chimney, or sometimes the attic, or beneath the eaves. The bats all return to the house
as it bums down, but no one ever sees any of them come back out. People stand around on the street-their faces orange in the firelight and marvel, hypnotized at the sight of it, not understanding what is
going on with the bats, or any of it; and drawn, too, like somnambulists, to the scent of those bloodrivers, those vapors of new birth that are beginning already to leak back into the world as that skin,
that crust, is burned away.
The fires almost always happen at night.
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This fire that Kirby is telling Mary Ann about–the one in which the house full of antiques was being
lost–was one of the great fires of the year. The men work in teams, as partners–always within sight, or
one arm’s length contact of one another, so that one can help the other if trouble is encountered–if
the foundation gives way, or a burning beam crashes across the back of one of the two partners, who
are not always men; more and more women are volunteering, though none have yet joined Kirby’s
crew. He welcomes them, as from what he’s seen from the multiple-alarm fires he’s fought with other
crews in which there are women fire fighters, the women tend to try to outthink, rather than
outmuscle the fire, which is almost always the best approach.
Kirby’s partner now is a young man, Grady, just out of college. Kirby likes to use his intelligence when
he fights a fire, rather than just hurling himself at it and risking getting sucked too quickly into its loomagain maw and becoming trapped–not just perishing, in that manner, but possibly causing harm or
death to those members of his crew who might then try to save him–and for this reason Kirby likes to
pair himself with the youngest, rawest, most adrenaline-rich trainees entrusted to his care–to act as an
anchor of caution upon them; to counsel prudence and moderation, even as the world bums down
around them.
The fire in the house of antiques–Kirby and Grade had just come out to rest, and to change oxygen
tanks. The homeowner had at first been beside himself, shouting and trying to get back into his house,
so that the fire marshal had had to restrain him–he had the homeowner bound to a tree with a canvas
strap–but now the homeowner was watching the flames almost as if hypnotized. Kirby and Grady were
so touched by his change in demeanor–by his coming to his senses–the man wasn’t struggling any
longer, was instead only leaning out slightly away from the tree, like the masthead on a ship’s prow,
and sagging slightly–that they cut him loose so that he could watch the spectacle of it in freedom,
unencumbered.
He made no more moves to rejoin his burning house, only stood there with watery eyes–whether tears
of anguish, or irritation from the smoke, they could not tell–and taking pity, Kirby and Grady put on
new oxygen tanks, gulped down some water, and though they were supposed to rest, they went back
into the burning building and began carrying out those pieces of furniture that had not yet ignited, and
sometimes even those which had–burning breakfronts, flaming rolltop desks–and dropped them into
the man’s backyard swimming pool for safekeeping, as the tall trees in the backyard crackled and
flamed like giant candles, and floating embers drifted down, scorching whatever they touched; and the
neighbors all around them climbed up onto their cedar-shingled roofs in their pajamas and with garden
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hoses began wetting down their own roofs, trying to keep the conflagration, the spectacle–the
phenomenon–from spreading. . . .
The business of it has made Kirby neat and precise. He and Grady crouched and lowered the dining
room set carefully into the deep end (even as some of the pieces of furniture were still flickering with
flame), releasing them to sink slowly, carefully to the bottom, settling in roughly the same manner and
arrangement in which they had been positioned, back in the burning house.
There is no longer any space or room for excess, unpredictability, or recklessness; these extravagances
can no longer be borne, and Kirby wants Grady to see and understand this, and the sooner the better.
The fire hoses must always be coiled in the same pattern, so that when unrolled, they can be counted
upon; the male nozzle must always be nearest the truck, and the female, farthest. The backup
generators must always have fresh oil and gas in them and be kept in working order; the spanner
wrenches must always hang in the same place.
The days go by in long stretches, twenty-three-and-a-half hours at a time, but in that last half hour, in
the moment of fire, when all the old rules melt down and the new world becomes flame, the
importance of a moment, of a second, is magnified ten thousand–fold is magnified to almost an
eternity, and there is no room for even a single mistake. Time inflates to a density greater than iron.
You’ve got to be able to go through the last half hour, that wall of flame, on instinct alone, or by force
of habit, by rote, by feel.
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An interesting phenomenon happens when time catches on fire like this. It happens to even the
veteran firefighters. A form of tunnel vision develops–the heart pounding two hundred times a
minute, and the pupils contracting so tightly that vision almost vanishes. The field of view becomes
reduced to an area about the size of another man’s helmet, or face: his partner, either in front of or
behind him. If the men ever become separated by sight or sound, they are supposed to freeze
instantly, and then begin swinging their pike-staff, or a free arm, in all directions; and if their partner
does the same, and is within one or even two arms’ lengths, their arms will bump one another, and
they can continue–they can rejoin the fight, as the walls flame vertical, and the ceiling and floors melt
and fall away. The firefighters carry motion sensors on their hips, which send out piercing electronic
shrieks if the men stop moving for more than thirty seconds. If one of those goes off, it means that a
firefighter is down–that he has fallen and injured himself, or has passed out from smoke inhalation-and all the firefighters stop what they are doing and mm and converge on the sound, if possible,
centering back to it like the bats pouring back down into the chimney.
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A person’s breathing accelerates inside a burning house–the pulse leaps to over two hundred beats a
minute–and the blood heats, as if in a purge. The mind fills with a strange music. Sense of feel, and the
memory of how things ought to be, becomes everything; it seems that even through the ponderous,
fire-resistant gloves, the firefighters could read Braille if they had to. As if the essence of all objects
exudes a certain clarity, just before igniting.
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Everything in its place; the threads, the grain of the canvas weave of the fire hoses, is canted such that
it tapers back toward the male nipples; if lost in a house fire, you can crouch on the floor and with your
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bare hand–or perhaps even through the thickness of your glove, in that hyper-tactile state–follow the
hose back to its source, back outside, to the beginning.
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The ears–the lobes of the ear, specifically–are the most temperature-sensitive part of the body. Many
times the heat is so intense that the firefighters’ suits begin smoking and their helmets begin melting,
while deep within, the firefighters are still insulated and protected, but they are taught that if the lobes
of their ears begin to feel hot, they are to get out of the building immediately: that they themselves
may be about to ignite.
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It’s intoxicating; it’s addictive as hell.
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The fire does strange things to people. Kirby tells Mary Ann that it’s usually the men who melt down
first–who seem to lose their reason sooner than the women. That particular fire in which they sank all
the man’s prize antiques in the swimming pool in order to save them–that man becalmed himself,
after he was released from the tree (the top of which was flaming, dropping ember-leaves into the
yard, and even onto his shoulders, like fiery moths), and he walked around into the backyard and stood
next to his pool, with his back turned toward the burning house, and began busying himself with his
long-handled dip net, laboriously skimming–or endeavoring to skim–the ashes from the pool’s surface.
Another time–a fire in broad daylight–a man walked out of his burning house and went straight out to
his greenhouse, which he kept filled with flowering plants and where he held captive twenty or more
hummingbirds of various species. He was afraid that the fire would spread to the greenhouse and burn
up the birds, so he closed himself in there and began spraying the little birds down with the hose, as
they flitted and whirled from him, and he kept spraying them, trying to keep their brightly-colored
wings wet so they would not catch fire.
Kirby tells Mary Ann all of these stories–a new one each time he returns–and they lie together on the
couch until dawn. The youngest baby, the boy, has just given up nursing; Kirby and Mary Ann are just
beginning to earn back moments of time together–little five- and ten-minute wedges of time–and
Mary Ann naps with her head on his fresh-showered shoulder, though in close like that, at the skin
level, she can still smell the charcoal, earl taste it. Kirby has sears across his neck and back, pockmarks
where embers have landed and burned through his suit, and she, like the children, likes to touch these;
the small, slick feel of them is like smooth stones from a river. Kirby earns several each year, and he
says that before it is over, he will look like a Dalmatian. She does not ask him what he means by “when
it is all over,” and she holds back, reins back like a wild horse to keep from asking the question, “When
will you stop?” Everyone has fire stories. Mary Ann’s is that when she was a child at her grandmother’s
house, she went into the bathroom and took off her robe, laid it over the plug-in portable electric
heater, and sat on the commode; but as she did so, the robe quickly leapt into flame. The peeling old
wallpaper caught on fire, too–so much flame that she could not get past–and she remembers even
now, twenty-five years later, how her father had had to come in and lift her up and carry her back out-and how that fire was quickly, easily extinguished.
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But that was a long time ago and she has her own life, needs no one to carry her in or out of anywhere.
All that has gone away, and vanished; her views of fire are not a child’s, but an adult’s. Mary Ann’s fire
story is tame, it seems, compared to the rest of the world’s.
She counts the slick, small oval sears on his back: twenty-two of them, like a pox. She knows he is
needed. He seems to thrive on it. She remembers both the terror and the euphoria, after her father
whisked her out of the bathroom: as she looked back at it–at the dancing flames she had birthed. Is
there greater power in lighting a fire, or in putting one out?
He sleeps contentedly, there on the couch. She will not ask him–not yet. She will hold it in for as long
as she can, and watch–some part of her desirous of his stopping, but another part not.
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She feels as she imagines the street-side spectators must, or even the victims of the fires themselves,
the homeowners and renters: a little hypnotized, a little transfixed; and there is a confusion, as if she
could not tell you, nor her children–could not be sure–whether she was watching him burn down to
the ground, or was watching him being born and built up, standing among the flames, like iron being
east from the earth.
She sleeps, her fingers light across his back. She dreams the twenty-two sears are a constellation in the
night. She dreams that the more fires he fights, the safer and stronger their lives become.
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She wants him to stop. She wants him to go on.
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They awaken on the couch at dawn to the baby’s murmurings from the other room, and soft, sleepbreathings of their daughter’s, the four-year-old. The sun, orange already, rising above the city. Kirby
gets up and dresses for work. He could do it in his sleep. It means nothing to him. It is its own form of
sleep, and these moments on the couch, and in the shells of the flaming buildings, are their own form
of wakefulness.
Some nights he goes over to Jenna’s house–to the house of his ex-wife. No one knows he does this:
not Mary Ann, and not his ex-wife, Rhonda, and certainly not Jenna–not unless she knows it in her
sleep and in her dreams, which he hopes she does.
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He wants to breathe her air; he wants her to breathe his. It is a biological need. He climbs up on the
roof and leans over the chimney, and listens–silence–and inhales, and exhales.
The fires usually come about once a week. The time spent between them is peaceful at first, but then
increasingly restless, until finally the dispatcher’s radio sound in the night, and Kirby is released. He
leaps out of bed–he lives four blocks from the …
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