A/N: My primary sources for all things Choctaw are the websites of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (of which I am a member) and their Choctaw Language School (Chahta Anumpa Aikhvnna). I translate most Choctaw that I use within the text, but thought I'd give a few linguistic notes here: 1) 'Hoke' (pronounced Ho-kay) is an exclamatory that translates roughly as "It is so." Many believe that this is the origin of the English term OK, and I have read work from Choctaw writers that uses hoke interchangeably with OK; 2) in written Choctaw, the letter v, often written as a Greek υ (upsilon), is a vowel. It does not represent the English sound V, but a short U as in "but"; 3) the consonant combination HL (LH before a consonant) is pronounced like a very soft "th" sound followed by the "l" sound. The Welsh have a similar sound in the name Llewellyn; and 4) an underlined vowel, as in Aki (father) is nasalized. Any language errors are my own—I am studying Choctaw, but I am a beginner and am by no means fluent. If by chance one of my readers knows Choctaw and spots a mistake, I would welcome a kindly worded correction. Finally, I suppose I should make the standard disclaimer that the characters from the series Emergency do not belong to me. However, they do spend a lot of time talking in my head, leaving me no choice but to take dictation. My fellow writers will understand exactly what I mean. On that note, I hope you all enjoy the story! Thank you!
He stepped into the office, wondering if he would ever think of it as his instead of Stanley's (who now occupied a battalion chief's office over at HQ), and sat down at the desk. After arranging a couple of framed photographs—one of the DeSoto family and another of himself with his godson, D.J. DeSoto—he opened up the file cabinet and pulled out the files on his new crew: Marco Lopez, Mitch Dwyer, Trace Morgan, Sam Goldstein, and Billy Folsom. Most of these names were familiar. Lopez had been engineer for 51's A-shift ever since Mike Stoker took over as captain of C-shift after Hookraider retired (for real this time). Dwyer (Charlie's little brother) and Morgan would serve as his paramedics, and his linemen were Goldstein and Folsom. Johnny had worked with both Mitch and Trace before and knew they made an excellent team— even if Trace did talk a little too much like Craig Brice—and he'd met Sam a few times. Billy was the one unknown, so Johnny opened his file to take a closer look. His eyes widened as he absorbed what he read there.
Billy Folsom, born November 17, 1962 in Bogue Chitto, Mississippi. Johnny shook his head and blinked, then read it again. What were the chances?! Bogue Chitto… now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. And Billy Folsom… could that be…
As his thoughts drifted to a past he had left behind years before, he reached long slender fingers under his blue button down uniform shirt to grasp the small bear pendant he always wore on a leather strap around his neck. He kept it hidden, but Chet had caught a glimpse of it once and teased him relentlessly for days about his "Smokey the Bear necklace." Johnny had never confirmed the Phantom's interpretation, but he hadn't denied it either. Let the guys think what they will, he'd decided. No one needed to know the truth. He closed his eyes now, a soft smile turning up his lips as he remembered.
Nita's tear-streaked face just about broke Johnny's heart, and for the very first time the 12-year-old boy was struck by how beautiful she was, her lips soft and inviting, her hair shining in the moonlight. He tried to banish the thought, but once it gripped him, it held him hostage. He reached a finger to her cheek to brush away the dampness, then dared a chaste kiss to her forehead. "We'll see each other again," he promised. "You'll see. I'm only going away to school—I'll be back this summer."
She pressed something into his hand, then stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against his. The brief touch made him stagger backwards, speechless. She pulled back, hurt widening her eyes, and was about to turn and run away, but he reached for her arm and pulled her close again. He leaned down to return her gentle kiss with a slightly firmer one, letting her know without words that he was not upset about her first innocent offer of intimacy.
When he let her go, her eyes were shining, this time with pleasure. "You promise, Nashoba [Wolf]? You'll be back this summer?"
"I promise," he assured her. She smiled then and wiped her tears on her sleeve, then turned to hurry home. Johnny opened his hand now and looked at what she had given him—a small carved bear on a leather cord. He chuckled. Nita was Choctaw for bear. Before she was too far away, he bent to pick up a pebble from the ground. Taking careful aim, he zinged it at her bare feet. Startled, she jumped, then stopped and turned to give him a broad smile. She retrieved the pebble from the grass and zinged it back at him. "Next summer, Nashoba!" she called, then darted away. As Johnny watched her move through the stand of trees toward her house, he could not imagine that his world would come crashing down around him before the end of the school year and that he would never be able to keep his promise to come back to her.
Squeezing the bear, then letting it slip back into hiding as he blinked the memories away, Johnny perused the rest of Billy's file, his eyes seeking out in particular the "next of kin" line: Anita Folsom... her English name. He shook his head. No way. Can't be. It just isn't possible. Her address was the same as Billy's—a run-down trailer park not far from the station. Johnny felt a shiver go up his back. He slipped the paper back into the file folder and pushed it away, shaking his head. No. Even if she really is my Nita, it's been too long. By now, she's either forgotten me or hates me. She's the one who stopped writing me, after all. Those memories are nothing but ashes, better left undisturbed. Suddenly he dreaded the arrival of Billy Folsom. With a sigh of resignation, he slipped the files back into the drawer and then moved to the kitchen to get a pot of coffee brewing. The guys would appreciate it, along with the box of donuts their new captain had picked up on the way in that morning.
Lopez arrived about half an hour early, a grin lighting his face at the sight of his new captain sitting on the couch, nursing a dark, aromatic brew and munching on a chocolate donut. Dwyer and Morgan were about five steps behind 51's engineer. Morgan took a seat at the table while Dwyer fetched them each a cup of coffee. Lopez sat next to Gage. "Well, guess we get to call you Cap now."
Johnny drew his mouth into a scowl and growled out a response. "That's a bit too casual for the first day, wouldn't you say, Mr. Lopez?" He bit the inside of his cheek to try to hold back a laugh at the sight of Marco's shocked expression, but he couldn't keep it in for long. "I'm just kidding you, Lopez," he said. He shook his head and slapped his friend on the shoulder. "I sure am glad to have a good friend on the crew."
"You heard Chet got assigned to Roy… er… Captain DeSoto, didn't you?" Marco asked, his eyes glinting with humor.
Johnny laughed. "Oh yeah… I don't envy Roy. I wonder whether he'll manage to keep the Phantom under wraps." He looked up and nodded to his two paramedics, who were now sitting at the table. "Hi, Dwyer… Morgan."
Dwyer raised his coffee mug. "Great brew, Cap," he said with a grin. "Welcome back to 51's."
Morgan nodded as he swallowed the last bite of his éclair. "Good morning, Captain Gage. Thank you for the donuts."
Billy Folsom arose early, determined to make a good impression his first day at 51's. He was done with probation at last, a full-fledged firefighter. Of course, the guys would probably still call him Boot for a while, but he could live with that. Before he got up, he reached the short distance from his bed to the top drawer of his rickety old dresser and pulled out a wrinkled article clipped a few years ago from the Bishinik.** His big sister Nita had received the clipping along with a card from an Oklahoma cousin, but their father had intercepted it and thrown it in the trash before she could see it. Billy had watched, unnoticed, from the corner of the kitchen and rescued it after the man had gone outside to feed the horses.
Billy frowned as thoughts of his father filled his head. All his life, he had watched from the sidelines as Matthew Folsom exerted all his energy in controlling Nita, as determined to keep his daughter in line as he was to ignore his son. The moment their mother had passed from this life to the next at Billy's birth, Nita's childhood had ended. Sometimes Billy wondered that his older sister didn't resent him as much as their father did. Instead she had invested her whole heart in making sure he felt loved in spite of their father. Barely 13 when her brother was born, Nita had taken charge both of raising him and caring for their father, completely pushing her own needs to the background. She made sure Billy learned to speak both Choctaw and English, and when he was old enough to attend school, she got him up each morning and sent him on his way, while she stayed home to cook and clean for their father.
Dad had never raised a hand against Billy. Sometimes Billy actually wished he would have. Any attention from the man would have been better than the cold blank stare whenever Matthew's eyes landed on the boy, passing over him as if he were nothing. Once Nita said Billy had Mama's eyes and maybe that was why Dad couldn't bring himself to look at him. The next day, the six-year-old had pleaded with her to take out his eyes so that they wouldn't make Dad sad anymore, but Nita had held him close and rocked him and assured him that Dad was the one who needed to change, not Billy.
Sometimes when Nita slept in the small room they shared, Billy would hear her call out for Nashoba—Wolf—but the one time he asked her about it, she drew her lips together in a firm line and grew pale and told him to get busy with his chores. He never asked again.
Over the years, Billy watched his father grow ever more dependent on Nita. At his insistence, she had dropped out of high school when Billy was only three, even though she had managed to maintain perfect grades and had hopes of helping their people by becoming a nurse. It was just as well that she ignored the advances of the young men who hoped to court her, because Dad had no intention of allowing anyone to win his daughter's heart and take her away from him. Billy took no notice at first of the way Dad always insisted on being the one to fetch the mail, never allowing the children to touch it until he had first sorted through it. Occasionally, Billy saw him throw things into the fire or the trash, but he never thought twice about it until he saw the envelope with Nita's name on it, the one that held the clipping.
The card from an Oklahoma cousin wished Nita, just turned 26, a happy birthday, and had the message, "Isn't this story about the boy you used to call Nashoba? Do you still keep in touch with him?" The article included a photograph of a lanky fellow wearing a crooked grin and a firefighter's uniform, his longish dark hair peeking out from under his helmet, and told the story of how John Gage, a boy born among the poverty-stricken Mississippi Choctaw, had been sent to Jones Academy*** in Oklahoma on a scholarship just a few months before his father died of leukemia. His mother had died years before, so John was left an orphan. He never returned to Mississippi, and his guardianship passed to his Aunt Taloa, his mother's sister, who had married an Oklahoma Choctaw after graduating from Wheelock Academy.*** John stayed at the school, but each summer he went to work alongside his uncle on a ranch near Battiest, Oklahoma. Just before he was to begin high school, the ranch shut down. His aunt and uncle moved to California and took their nephew with them. After he finished high school there, John Gage began his training as a firefighter and rescue man, eventually becoming one of the first and best paramedics. "The life John Gage has chosen," the article concluded, "truly embodies the Choctaw tradition of Iyyi Kowa,**** service to the community."
Billy never shared the card or the clipping with his sister. He wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was because of her reaction that time he had asked about Nashoba, or maybe he wasn't so different from his father after all—maybe he was afraid he would lose his sister to this fellow with the big smile. And perhaps he simply wanted to keep it to himself because the article had awakened in him a hope he feared would be crushed if he spoke it aloud. Each morning, he would pull out the article, reread it, then whisper, "This is my dream. This is what I want to do with my life." At 16, he joined the volunteers who battled blazes on the res, and at 17, after their father died, he insisted to his sister that they needed to break free of the cycle of poverty that reservation life represented. He convinced Nita to move to California with him. She took on work cleaning houses, and the day he turned 18, he registered for the Los Angeles County Fire Department training program. He never imagined he would actually meet John Gage, let alone be assigned to the same station where the man now served as a LACoFD captain.
He slipped the article back into the drawer, and then got out of bed and hurried to get ready for the day. He could not afford to be late his first day working under Captain Gage! Thankfully, the station was barely a mile away, an easy walk for a young man who had little chance of owning a car. "Shanks' pony," as old Olin Mackey from the res always called walking, was good enough for the likes of Billy Folsom and his sister.
By the time Billy was scrubbed and dressed, the aroma of bacon and cornmeal griddle cakes wafted through the small trailer. "Smells awful good, Nita," he said as he stepped into the kitchen.
She turned and smiled at her brother, tilting her chin up to look him in the eyes. "Sit and eat, anakfi [my brother]," she directed. "You have plenty of time."
"Hoke, hoke, [OK] Sis!" Billy obediently took a seat at the small table and watched as Nita placed a plate of bacon and griddle cakes in front of him. She set butter and syrup on the table, then fixed herself a plate and sat across from him. He picked up his fork to dig in but put it down again when she frowned.
"Say grace, Billy," she ordered. "In Choctaw."
He sighed. The language of his school had been English, but just as their mother had taught Nita to speak Choctaw, so Nita had taught him. At home, they spoke a mixture of Choctaw and English most of the time, but prayers were always lifted up in Choctaw. "You will pass it on to your children and they will pass it on to theirs. Too many have forgotten the old ways, but we will not." So his sister had admonished him years ago when he'd complained—she had repeated these words often, hoping they would take root in her brother's heart, and in a way, he supposed they had. He spoke the blessing, waited for his sister's nod of approval, and then set to cleaning his plate. When he was done, he kissed Nita on the forehead and hurried out the door.
Before he got to the street, he heard the door open. "Billy!" Nita called. He turned and saw her holding out a basket for him to take. "I made banaha bread for you to share with your new crew. The men at 110's liked it… surely the men at 51's will too."
Billy took the basket and peeked inside. Nita must have been up late last night preparing this feast of cornmeal dough wrapped in husks and boiled. "Yakoke, atek. [Thank you, my sister]." He smiled, thinking how lucky he was that she loved him so much. He would have liked to know his mother, but Nita had done a good job making sure her little brother never felt motherless. "Onnakma chi pisa la chike! [I will see you tomorrow.]" He waved, then turned away and headed to work.
At a quarter to eight, Billy Folsom walked through the door of Station 51, his basket of shuck bread swinging at his side. He stepped in and found the crew sitting around the table, eating donuts and drinking coffee. He easily recognized Johnny Gage from the picture in the article—the years had done little to change the man. "Captain Gage," he said, setting the basket on the table. "Billy Folsom, reporting for duty."
*I had a dilemma in writing about Johnny's previous stations. In the pilot episode, his gear shows him working at Station 10, but in the version of this episode presented (I think) in the fifth season, Johnny reminisces with Roy about how he was working at Station 8—that's when he mentions the fire pole. Additionally, the episode Smoke Eater (season 4) presents Station 10 as a two-man station. I decided to stick with Station 10, but figured it was worth a note here.
**The Bishinik was originally called Hello Choctaw when it started up in 1975, but was renamed Bishinik in 1978 for the little 'news-bird,' a woodpecker Choctaw legends say survived the Returning Waters (their name for the Great Flood) and later became a great friend to the Choctaw, bringing news of game to hunting parties and news of enemy movements to war parties; in 2010 the name was corrected to Biskinik. For simplicity's sake, I have taken the liberty of using the title Bishinik here, even though I imagine the article would date back to 1975 or 1976.
***Jones and Wheelock Academies were both Choctaw boarding schools in Oklahoma (though they were open to children from other tribes as well). Wheelock was a girls' school and Jones was a boys' school. When Wheelock closed in 1955, Jones Academy became co-educational.
****Iyyi Kowa literally means "broken foot," and refers to the traditional Choctaw concept of community service, which involves the community coming together to meet the needs of those who are injured, sick, or otherwise unable to care for themselves.