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The stairwell was functioning as a chimney. It drew smoke from the first floor to the second. There were still no visible hotspots, but I knew that the fresh oxygen from the front door was sucked upstairs, too.

It would only feed the fire.

Lamar had repeatedly warned me about second stories. You had to worry about the ceiling and the floor. Both could give way without notice, and you’d be sandwiched between a ton of superheated material.

“Childress!” Loach yelled.

The three men squatted beside the back door. They beckoned for me to come back. Their coats were still unbuttoned. Proof they had no intention of rendering aid.

“This is suicide!” Loach yelled. “Don’t be a hero!”

“It’s not being a hero! It’s doing what’s right!”

 With the end of the hooligan, I jabbed the steps. The sharp tip found solid wood, so I took each step before stopping to check the next until I reach the second floor.

Inside the turnouts, I felt my sweat sizzling against the fireproof fabric. I had to get out fast. The suit could protect me from flash hits, but the material itself could scald my flesh.

Inside the foyer, smoke bloomed across the ceiling and flowed down the walls to the floor, where it formed a stew of toxic fumes. One breath of that stuff, and I’d be a dead man.

“Don’t be dead.” I stayed low, turning my head to the right and left, trying to hear the screams again. But what if it really was another possum? What if I hadn’t heard anything at all?

Three doors ahead.

One was open. In the room, I could make out the clawed feet of an antique bathtub. The other two doors, on either side of the foyer, were closed. One of them had to lead to the attic. That’s where I’d heard the voice because there was no sound until the doghouse window blew out.

But which way? Opening a door in a fire was like throwing lighter fluid on a lit charcoal grill. If I chose wrong and opened a unburned room, it could result in flashover, causing the whole area to simultaneously combust.

Both doors looked exactly the same in the thickening cloud of smoke. The visibility was only a few feet now.

I couldn’t afford to wait.

Crack!

A chunk of plaster longer than me fell from the lathing. It slammed onto the floor.

“Shit!”

A second, deeper crack opened. A beam ripped loose from the ceiling and collapsed on the landing, scattering fiery debris. Sparks shot through the smoke and coated my turnouts in embers.

The floorboards shuddered under my weight. The floor was going to collapse and swallow me whole.

Crack!

A second joist collapsed, and the lathing broke free. The mass swung down like a pendulum, smacking my head before I could react.

My helmet flew off.

My mask was knocked aside.

Noxious gas filled my lungs.

Gasping, I clawed at the mask and took a step back into space. My foot searched in vain for solid ground, and I felt myself teeter. Spit and panic flew out of my mouth, and my arms lashed about like a pinwheel twirling in the wind.

“Oh fuck.”

The stairs welcomed my fall.

4

I heard a beeping sound from far away. I thought it was the alarm clock, and I lifted my hand to smack the snooze bar. The hand wouldn’t move. My eyes wouldn’t open, either. The paralysis should have bothered me, but I didn’t have a care in the world. My head felt fuzzy and soft, and there was a warmth in my belly that made me want to sleep forever.

When I heard the beeping again, I knew it wasn’t the alarm clock. The sound was higher pitched and rhythmic. It was starting to annoy me, but the soft feeling was still in my belly.

I fell back asleep.

The third time I heard the beeping, it felt like a chime in my brain. It was sharp and unpleasant, and there was a bitter taste in my mouth. Something was crushing my hand, and my eyes wouldn’t open. I wanted to tell someone, but my lips wouldn’t move. My tongue was a swollen thing too big to fit in my mouth. I might have gone crazy if it hadn’t been for the sound of Lamar’s voice nearby. It was low, and he was telling a story.

“The worst fire I ever fought?” Lamar said. “It was about a year before I met you, I reckon. I was still working for the Greenville Fire Department. We’d run out into the backwoods on a call. It was a four-alarm fire, and we were to be relief. When we got there, an old church was ablaze. There was a tank alongside the house, and it glowed as red as our pumper.”

Somebody else spoke, asked a question that I couldn’t make out. Lamar stopped talking, and I felt a flash of anger. Lamar never told stories, and I was afraid that if someone interrupted the flow of his words, the stream would dry up.

“Turns out,” Lamar continued, “we weren’t the ready team, we were the strike team, and our target was that heating tank. The captain ordered me to open up with a quarter inch hose to cool off the tank. Steam from the spray condensed my mask and blistered my hands through the gloves. But I couldn’t take the hose off the tank for fear that it’d blow all to kingdom come. That’s when they hit me in the back with soaker spray. It was touch-and-go for the better part of an hour, me soaking the tank, them soaking me.”

“What happened? Did it blow?” Mom asked.

“I’m here.” Lamar’s voice trailed off. “Ain’t I?”

The next time I heard the beep, I woke up soaked in sweat. Light flooded in as I cracked opened my eyes. Mom stood near the doorway of the hospital room, chart in hand, conferring with a man in a white coat. It was our family doctor. The man who once had happily given me a tetanus shot after I gouged myself with a rusty screwdriver caked with turtle poop.

On the opposite wall, the TV was tuned to MythBusters, one of Cedar’s favorites. Lamar sat in a green vinyl chair. A book was opened on his lap. He was wearing reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. They were about to slide off.

Abner stood looking out the window. His hands were clasped behind him. He was fiddling his wedding ring, a nervous habit.

I struggled to blink. The brightness stung my eyes. I tried to swing an arm across my face, but the IV catheter taped to my hand hurt. I yelped softly but loud enough for Mom to hear.

At the sound of my voice, she passed the chart to Dr. Tetanus and rushed to my side. Her mouth opened wide, and she smiled so big that her chubby cheeks turned her eyes into slits decorated with curling eyelashes.

“Hey, Boonster.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “How’s my boy?”

“That’s Petty Officer Boonster to you,” I said but it sounded nothing like that. My tongue was thick and my throat too raw.

Mom had no trouble translating. “You had us so worried. All of us.”

She pointed at Lamar, who had nodded off in the chair near the foot of the bed. The ledge of the long window behind Lamar held several large “Get Well Soon” flower arrangements.

“This looks like a funeral home,” I tried to say. It came out as “Dis wookie wikes funnel ohm.”

“Looks like what?” Mom said.

“A funnel dome.”

“A funeral home?” Mom said. “Boone! Don’t say such things.”

Lamar stirred in the chair. “It almost was just that. Those boys from Atamasco saved your life.”

“Shh,” Mom said. “He's not ready for that yet.”

“How long’ve I been out?”

“Seven hours, give or take a few minutes.”

“I feel weird.”

“It’s the narcotics,” Mom said. “You were hurting earlier, so they gave you a little something.”

“It must be working.” I tried to sit up, but a needle of pain shot from my bellybutton to my left scapula. “Ow.”

Mom used the controls to lift the bed. “Take it easy. You’re lucky to be alive. What were you thinking, Daniel Boone Childress? You rushed into an empty house. The other firefighters said you risked your life for another possum.”

“Possums don’t scream in Spanish.”

“Lamar warned you to follow procedure,” Mom said. “Those procedures are in place to save your life, you know.”