Chapter 5
The water was on the floor but the hose was empty. I didn't have the words for that then, but I felt it in my left hand.
I'd been squeezing the brass nozzle the way I'd seen my dad squeeze it in the yard, waiting for the kick that never came. The red rubber stayed soft and flat under my fingers. Behind me the fire made a low crackling sound along the base of the shed, thin orange tongues licking the wood. The floor was wet and gray and it reflected everything, the flames and my one pink sock and his rope, but none of that water was coming from me. I was holding the thing that was supposed to make water and it wasn't doing anything, and for a second that was more confusing than the smoke.
He was still breathing hard against the post. I could hear it. The rope cut across his white shirt and his chest rose and fell under it fast. He'd told me twice to go find Mommy. I'd told him he was stuck and I'd told him fire needs water and neither of us had moved.
I looked down again at the floor. That's when I actually saw it.
The hose didn't end in my hand. It kept going. A long red line across the wet concrete, through a shallow puddle that smelled like cold metal and smoke, all the way to the bottom of the wooden door. The door with the black iron latch I couldn't reach. The door that was open just a crack, enough to let a bar of hard daylight cut across the gray floor. The hose went under that crack. It went outside. Something about that pulled at me before I understood why.
I shifted my weight. My bare foot slipped a little on the wet concrete and I caught myself. Rabbit was still tucked tight under my left arm, his beige ear pressed against my ribs, getting damp. I didn't let go of him. I dragged my socked foot forward half a step, then another, and the hose came with me but not cleanly. It snagged.
There was a kink about three feet from the door, a sharp fold where the red rubber had doubled over on itself. It had gone pale at the crease, almost white. I stared at it. I knew kinks. I'd watched Dad shake the hose in the driveway and snap it when the sprinkler sputtered. Water couldn't get through a kink. I bent down, or tried to, and patted at it with my right hand while still holding the nozzle. My fingers were small and sooty. I pushed at the fold. It didn't straighten. It was pinned under its own weight and maybe under the door's edge, and my push just made the puddle ripple.
Past the kink, the hose disappeared into that bright gap. I crouched low, my pink dress pooling around my knees, and put my cheek almost to the floor. The heat was lower there, closer to the water. Through the gap I could see a strip of dry dirt and a little of the yard, and where the hose kept going, up along the outside of the shed toward something I couldn't see from inside. It hit me then, slow and clear. The brass nozzle in my hand wasn't where water started. It was where water came out. The other end wasn't in my hand at all.
I sat back on my heels. Smoke was getting thicker up high. It made my eyes sting and I blinked fast. I looked from the nozzle to the kink to the bright line under the door. To make water come, I had to go to where the water started. Outside.
He saw me look. I felt him watch my face change.
"Run!"
His voice cracked on it. It wasn't loud like before, it was hoarse from the smoke, but it cut through the crackle. He leaned forward as far as the rope would let him, his dark hair damp on his forehead. He'd been telling me to run since the fire started, but now he was pointing with his chin toward the door, toward the hose. I knew what he meant without him saying more. Go outside, then turn the water on. Do the thing I was already thinking but the way he wanted it, which was away from him.
I shook my head without meaning to. My lips were parted and my throat was dry. I wanted to say it again, that fire needs water, but I didn't. I just held Rabbit tighter and held the brass nozzle tighter, like either one would keep me anchored to that spot on the wet floor. If I went under that door, I'd be on the other side of it. He'd still be in here with the rope around him and the fire爬ing up the wall.
"But fire needs water."
My voice was small and it got lost a little in the smoke. I wasn't arguing. I was saying what I knew was true. Water was outside. Fire was inside. I was inside with the empty hose in my hand and the kink in the middle.
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I didn't fix the kink. My hands weren't strong enough and it was too far to reach while holding everything. I didn't turn any water on. Nothing hissed or sprayed. The floor stayed wet with the old puddle, not new water, and the flames kept their low orange light along the edge of the shed, reflected in the concrete. The brass nozzle stayed cool and dry in my palm.
I stayed inside the threshold with Rabbit, understanding finally what the hose needed, knowing I would have to step out to give it to him. The daylight under the door got brighter as the smoke thickened above me, and the red hose lay across the wet floor between us like a question I had to answer by walking through that gap.
