Firefighter training in a rural volunteer department begins with instruction on the job. As a firefighter becomes more experienced, the individual may show capacity for leadership and be appointed an officer, and it is these more senior firefighters who shepherd the probies throughout the first awkward months of tagging along. It didn’t take much time for me to realize that even for a probie, I was behind. The young guys had grown up fixing propane tanks, building cars, and negotiating the other practical realities of rural life.

I grew up in the suburbs, reading historical fiction and pretending to say Mass.