Buster the Fireman

This story is called Buster the Fireman. Written by Clay Walton-Hadlock, and read by Gregory Burton. This is a LibraryCall Recording. Buster was always getting into trouble. He didn’t mean to. But sometimes his imagination would take him to such strange places that trouble was the only way back. The first time he got into trouble – real trouble that is – he was about two years old. He was still too little to talk! But he could walk around, and pick things up, and that was all he needed for mischief. In those days, his favorite toy was a little red firetruck. When you pushed it back and forth, the wheels turned some little gears inside it, that spun a tiny little noisemaker, in just the right way, that it sounded like a real siren. Of course, before long, the gears had gotten all gunked up with sand from the sand box, melted popsicle juice, string, and who knows what else, so that instead of a siren, it sounded like someone had put gravel into a kitchen blender, but it was still his favorite toy, because he thought it made him a fireman. That’s not what got him into trouble. What got him into trouble had to do with a new hardwood floor that his parents had installed in the living room. The old floor had needed to be replaced, and his parents had paid a lot of money to have a real hardwood floor put in, and a crew of workers had come in to do all the work, which was very exciting for Buster, and his parents were very happy with the results. (Old people such as parents are often excited by boring things such as floors.) Buster was too young to talk, but he could understand a few words, and though he did not understand what was so special about the floor, he understood that wood was somehow involved. No one had bothered to explain to Buster that hardwood is just a type of wood – so called because it is hard to dent or scratch. Why would a two-year-old need to know that? So, instead, Buster figured it was called a hardwood floor because it was so hard to put it in the house. But one thing Buster did know, from another time when his parents had lit a fire in the fireplace, was that wood sometimes burned. And he knew that one of the things firemen did was put out fires. So he wondered about wood, and fire, and fire wood and floor wood, firemen, and firehoses. And he wondered whether or not a garden hose was enough like a firehose to have the same kind of water, or if a hardwood floor was mostly wood or mostly hard, or if all wood turned into fire, or only some of it, or if you were supposed to put water on it to put the fire out, or to keep the fire from starting in the first place? These things might seem obvious to you, but to little Buster, only 2 years old, they were all serious questions. Buster was not a noisy baby. (Although he did love that fire truck toy that sounded like a blender full of rocks.) But generally, he didn’t like to draw attention to himself. Attention, he had learned, often meant that he was about to get in trouble, and so to avoid trouble, he kept pretty quiet, most of the time. And that is why, one day when he was thinking about these things, and he went quietly out to the garden to find the garden hose, nobody noticed. And nobody noticed him as he turned the hose on, and started spraying water at the lawn, the flowers, the dirt, the neighbor’s fence, and anything else he could reach. He just watched the water, as it arced through the air, sparkling in the sunshine, splashing with beautiful noises and shapes. Fwshhhhhh! He said under his breath. And he started imagining that he was putting out fires. The flowers in the garden were little orange fires burning on the end of green stems. The fence was a big brown flat fire. The grass was a lot of short little green fires. The dirt was smoke of course. And he was a fireman, putting all those fires out. “Fwshhhhh” he said softly as he put out the grass. Fwshhhh as he put out the fence. Fwshhh as he put out the dirt. This is not what got him in trouble. Then he remembered his firetruck. This would definitely be better with his firetruck, he decided. He was pretty sure he had left it inside, so he went to go find it. He toddled back to the house to go get his truck. Then, still holding the firehose, water still pouring out, he stepped into the living room. There were all kinds of new exciting fires in here! The sofa was a long lumpy soft cushiony sort of fire, and the curtains were tall fabric-y fires, and the floor, well, the floor was wood, and he knew wood was a thing that could burn, so that was definitely a fire! Buster the fireman got to work, and sprayed his firehose all over everything as much as he could, watching the water arc and splash and glisten. The water sounded much more interesting inside the echoey living room than it had outside. It was so mesmerizing that he forgot all about his firetruck. Fwshhhh he said again, quietly as ever. By the time his mom discovered what he’d been up to, everything in the room was soaking wet. The couch was old. It had been in bad shape already, and his parents had even been meaning to replace it. It being wet got him into a little trouble, but not much. The curtains would dry and they’d be just fine. That didn’t get him into much trouble either. But the floor. Ohhh the floor! Turns out, the living room in his house had what is called a recessed floor – that means it was a little lower than the rooms around it. That meant there was no way for the water to simply drain away. And by the time they’d grabbed the hose and turned it off, there was at least an inch of water covering the entire room, and there was no easy way to get rid of it. For a while his parents were frantic trying to soak it up with towels and mops, running outside to ring the towels out, then running back in to try to soak up more water, back and forth till they were exhausted. But it was no use. Even before they were done, their brand new hard wood floor was already starting to warp and bend and buckle as the water seeped into the tiny cracks between the boards and got absorbed by the wood. That’s what got Buster into trouble. It turns out that his parents did not agree that having a toy fire truck made you a fireman. They also felt strongly that you should only use real water to put out real fires. Which is no doubt very clear to you, but it was all very confusing for Buster, because it had felt very real to him, and he still had a lot of questions about the whole thing. But he could tell that his parents were having some Very Big Feelings, and everyone was frowning a lot, so he decided he had better frown too, and save his questions for some other time. They made him promise that he would never bring the hose inside again, and that if he ever did see a real fire, that he would try to find a grownup before trying to put it out himself. You’re probably expecting me to end this story by saying that Buster eventually became a real fireman when he grew up. He did not. But he did eventually get into more trouble, for totally different reasons. And maybe I’ll tell you about that sometime. We hope you enjoyed Buster the Fireman. Written by Clay Walton-Hadlock, and read by Gregory Burton. This has been a LibraryCall Recording.