TURBINE | KAPOHAU

I have a story I never tell. It might bewilder or scare people or just impress them with my stupidity. Most shake their heads in wonderment at either my bravado or my foolishness. I look at the corners of their mouths to see if their lips curl up or down. My kids know the story, their eyes roll, their heads shake slowly from side to side, but their lips curl up in amusement now. 

I was in my early twenties and in training to be a firefighter. The course was twelve weeks long and physically and mentally exhausting, unless we were doing theory. Even then, at any given moment of a day, the training officer, just for kicks, could make us run hose or ladders drills — or both — until sweat and water soaked through the pair of overalls we had to wear under all the firefighting gear. Back then it was heavy woollen bunker coats, vinyl chaps holding up the leggings that covered our legs and most of our gumboots. A hard plastic, bright yellow helmet with our names blazoned across it in red tape, so the instructor could swear creatively using our surnames. 

It was the night of our last training day; a Friday, and we were going to graduate that weekend. It was always going to be a big night. The guys on the course from out of town had three flats on the Station compound, and all the local guys — me included — had booked a couch or spare bed for the night. We hit the pub after pre-loading in the flats; showering, drinking and smoking pot, mostly supplied by me. The pub was a warmup for a party at a house on the south coast we had managed to get ourselves invited to. 

I lived an hour out of town from the training base and occasionally, during those training weeks, I had driven home probably legally over the limit with a benign sense of impunity and luck. So it was quite shocking to be stopped metres from the party house around 10pm by red flashing lights and stern instructions to ‘keep blowing, keep blowing, nearly there, stop. Sorry, that’s a fail, you’ll have to accompany us to the police station, you’re under arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol.’ The car emptied rapidly and, with departing wishes for good luck and catch a cab back later, the boys in the car staggered down the street to the party. 

I was taken to a large office block building with a street level underground carpark. Directed into a lift that took us to the mostly deserted fifth floor and processed by an unimpressed and thorough police officer. He took a polaroid photo of me next to a height chart and filed it in a cubby hole along with all the paperwork in an adjoining empty office. He then took me back to the lift, down to the basement, and pushed the button to open the roller type doors that lead out onto the street. 

I stepped out into the cool air, by now feeling as sober as the judge due to trial me in a few weeks’ time. The officer turned his back and walked inside. I waited by the doors and, just as they got to about hip level, I ducked back under and stepped into the shadows inside the now shut roller doors. The officer got in the lift and went to the third floor. I waited for several minutes to make sure the car park was empty, then took the stairs to the fifth floor. It was deserted, as was the empty office with my arrest sheet and photo. I grabbed it all, shoving it down my pants and into my underwear, the sharp edges of the polaroid making me squirm and curse under my breath. 

I took the stairs again and, as I descended, heard voices coming up the stairs towards me, two police officers talking. Somehow in a blind panic I recalled I had passed toilets on the floor above, so I quickly and noiselessly raced up the stairs and slid myself into the women’s toilets. The officers stopped on the landing outside and continued their conversation for several minutes. I remembered it was the third floor where the officer letting me out had gone. I stepped into a cubicle and silently shredded the paperwork and dropped it into the toilet pan but kept the photo of myself stuffed in my undies. I heard the men’s toilet flush, doors on the landing open and close and the voices recede into silence. I looked out and, seeing no-one, flushed the toilet and raced down the stairs to the carpark basement, again checking all the cars were empty and all was quiet. 

I found the switch that opened the roller doors and let myself out, running as though the devil was chasing me all the way until I found a taxi stand and breathlessly jumped into the back of a cab and gave him the party address. I’d been gone about an hour and a half and in that time most of the boys were legless and incredulous to see me so soon, or at all, thinking I would have bailed back to the fire station flats. When I told them what I had done, I got a few ‘yeah right’ stares until I produced the polaroid picture the officer had taken of me in the station. 

I lost that picture over time. Which is a shame, I suppose. Could have been a good reminder to behave myself. Or maybe not. In the photo I look very unimpressed with myself; with bloodshot, wary eyes. What I didn’t lose was the charge. A letter still came through to attend court and I was duly convicted and fined, with a six-month loss of licence. Maybe I could have said it wasn’t me, prove it, haha, I had the picture, they didn’t. But I took my medicine and now am just grateful I never hurt anyone else.