Chapter 9
The water hit the flames and didn't win. It hissed.
I remembered that sound later more than any other part. I'd turned the spigot on the side of the shed the way Dad had shown me once for the garden, both hands pulling, my rabbit jammed under my chin so I wouldn't drop him. The red hose jumped in my hands when the pressure came through, brass nozzle cold and heavy, and a thin, wild spray shot out and slapped the wet concrete inside the doorway. The smoke that had been rolling low across the floor curled back on itself for half a second.
Dad was still inside. He'd sunk lower, his back against the post where the rope held him, his white shirt dark with sweat and soot. He was coughing now, not shouting.
Then Mommy screamed my name from up near the house.
I hadn't heard her come out. The driveway from our little ranch house to the shed was maybe thirty yards of patchy grass and gravel, and she must have seen the smoke from the kitchen window. She was in her house clothes, no shoes, hair pulled back like she always wore it when she was doing dishes. She stopped dead at the edge of the yard when she saw me.
"Macy!"
She saw the shed first, then me. Her hand went to her mouth. The smoke was pouring out the top of the open door now, thick and gray, and I was standing three feet outside it with a rabbit in one arm and a bucking red hose in the other, one pink sock soaked through, one bare foot white with cold.
"Macy, drop that! Come here, baby, come here right now!"
I didn't move. The hose was working. I could see the water making a dark line across the floor, pushing the orange edge of the fire back an inch, then another inch. It felt important, like if I let go the fire would remember how big it had been.
I pointed with my whole arm, rabbit and all, at the doorway.
"But fire needs water," I said. My voice was small and scraped from the smoke. "Daddy's stuck!"
Mommy's eyes snapped from me to inside the shed. That's when she really saw him.
She ran. She didn't run to me first, she ran past me to the door. She stopped at the threshold and had to lean back from the heat and the smoke. Inside, Dad lifted his head. His mouth opened but the cough took it.
"Mommy," he tried. His voice was hoarse.
Mommy dropped to a crouch right outside the door, one hand waving smoke away, the other reaching but not touching the hot wood. She looked at the rope coiled tight around his chest and shoulders, the thick natural fiber biting into his torn shirt, then at the flames crawling along the back wall near the old gas can and the lawnmower.
"Oh my god," she said. "What did you — how long has she been out here with this?"
She looked back at me. I was still holding the nozzle with both hands, aimed low the way she'd just seen, water sputtering over the concrete. My cheeks were stung with soot and my nose was running.
"I told her to run," Dad said from inside, coughing between words. "She wouldn't. She found the spigot."
Mommy crawled two steps closer, close enough that smoke made her squint hard. She wasn't going to go all the way in. I could see her doing the math I didn't have words for yet — fire on one side, rope on the other, me in the middle with the only water.
"Macy, listen to me," she said, and she turned so she was talking just to me, her face level with mine. She was breathing fast. "You did good, you did so good turning that on. You keep holding it, you keep it pointed right there on the floor like you are. Can you do that for thirty more seconds?"
I nodded. The hose kicked again and I stumbled but didn't drop it. The rabbit's ear was wet now.
Mommy looked back into the shed. "Can you breathe in there?" she asked him.
"For now," he said. "Stay low. Rope's too tight. I can't —" He twisted his shoulders and the rope didn't give.
She nodded once, quick. She put her hand on my shoulder for one second, squeezed, and then she was half-standing, looking toward the house, toward the road, trying to decide if she left us to call someone or if she tried to pull him out herself.
"Daddy needs out," I whispered.
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"I know, baby," she said. She didn't look away from the doorway. "We're getting him out."
She stayed right there beside me at the shed door, one hand hovering over my back, her body between me and the worst of the smoke, while the hose kept hissing and the floor inside stayed wet but the flames kept licking higher up the walls. Dad was still bound to the post, and none of us were safe yet.
