Chapter 11: Fire!

You don’t care for me, I don’t a-care about that

You got a new fool? Ha! I like it like that

I have only one burning desire:

Let me stand next to your fire!

—Jimi Hendrix, “Fire” (used without permission)

Thursday, August 23, 2:19 AM

Pain.

Despair.

Frustration.

Helplessness.

Rage.

Fear.

All of those awful feelings I had experienced throughout the summer, paled in comparison to the gut-wrenching terror that welled up inside when I saw the smoke and flames pouring from the eaves of the Morrisons’ garage. I knew I had to do something, but abject fear threatened to root me to the spot. I’m not sure how long I stood at my window, just staring at the conflagration. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

Save them.

The voice in my head— I was completely used to it by then— shook me out of my paralysis. I rushed down the hall and into Mom’s room.

“Mom, wake up!” I shouted, shaking her shoulder.

Mom was a heavy sleeper and it took me a few more shakes to get her conscious. By that time I had picked up the phone on her nightstand and dialed 911. I pressed the phone into her hand and told her what was happening, which woke her in a hurry.

I turned to leave and she asked, “Wait, where are you going?”

“I have to save them,” I replied over my shoulder as I left the room.

My voice sounded much calmer than I felt. Passing my room on the way to the stairs, I stopped just long enough to retrieve my doorstop, the rock I had hit with my bike at the beginning of the summer. I could use it to break the window in the Morrisons’ front door, then reach through and unlock the deadbolt.

I jogged down the stairs and out the front door, aided by that same soft yellow-orange glow coming through the living room window. I realized that I was only wearing a t-shirt and a pair of light pajama shorts, but didn’t let that bother me. Once out the front door I broke into a sprint. It felt awkward, being barefoot and having not run full-tilt since before the accident, but I ignored it. The sprint didn’t last long anyway. The panicky feeling returned as I crossed the street and grew stronger as I began traversing the lawn. My chest was tight and my sprint became a jog, then a fast walk. I was nearly hyperventilating by the time I got halfway across, and couldn’t force myself to get any closer. Nothing I had ever experienced before had prepared me in any way for this. The panic was my brain’s only choice.

“Get a grip!” I nearly shouted to myself. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I said out loud, “Panicking isn’t helping anything. Calm down and take care of business.”

The panic faded and I opened my eyes. I was only a few feet from the front door, so I took aim and threw the rock at the window pane in the front door with all my might. As I had hoped, the rock punched right through the glass. Inside I could hear a smoke detector’s high pitched wail. I reached through the shattered window, slicing a two-inch gash into my forearm on a jagged edge of glass— and couldn’t reach the deadbolt. I couldn’t get inside! The panic threatened to return, but I shook it off, willing myself to stay calm. I ignored the biting pain in my forearm and shouted to the Morrisons through the broken window.

No one replied.

I quickly looked around to find some way to get in, hoping to find another rock or something to break the front window. Rather than a way in, all I saw was the Morrisons’ meticulously maintained landscaping along the path from the garage to the front door. I clenched my teeth and growled “I need to find a way in!”

My vision blurred. I saw a vague image of the inside of the Morrisons’ garage. Flames rolled up the wall behind the freezer and into a thick cloud of smoke that obscured the ceiling. By the workbench, dozens of ants scrambled about. “They need to get organized and get their eggs out of the garage,” I thought, remembering the cheerleader from my dream. The ants instantly stopped their aimless wandering and headed back under the workbench. A moment later they began to march back out, each carrying an egg gently in its mandibles.

That is when I saw my way in: The spare key to the front door, hanging just inside the garage door where it had been for years! I was wondering how I could get to it when I saw a group of maybe a dozen ants leave the lines and scramble up the wall toward the key. A few of them crawled between the key and the wall. The key slid outward along the small nail and fell to the floor. Then my vision blurred once again and when it cleared I was seeing with my own eyes. I looked over toward the garage and saw the key sliding out from under the door!

I ran the few steps to the garage, retrieved the key and hustled back to the front door. After unlocking the door I left the key in the doorknob and charged into the foyer. The moment I opened the door, my senses were nearly overwhelmed. The keening wail of several smoke detectors assaulted my ears. Smoke choked my lungs and stung my eyes. The air in the house was uncomfortably hot. Remembering something from a fire safety day at school about how the smoke and hot air in a house stay higher while cool breathable air remains near the floor, I dropped to my hands and knees. I began crawling towards the master bedroom, giving myself another half-dozen cuts and scratches from the broken glass on the floor.

“Mr. Morrison! Mrs. Morrison!” I yelled, making my way through the smoke and haze. “Mr. Morrison! Mrs. Morrison! The garage is on fire! You need to get out!”

“Back here!” came a bellowed reply from Mr. Morrison. I followed the voice, crawling down the hallway and entered the bedroom to see Mr. M. struggling to get Mrs. M. into her wheelchair. Both of them were coughing. The bedsheets were tangled around Mrs. M’s cast, preventing him from getting her off the bed. As quickly and gently as I could, I unwrapped the sheets and freed the cast. Once the cast was loose from the sheets it only took Mr. M. a moment to get her into the wheelchair.

“Thanks, Champ!” Mr. M shouted between coughs. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Sounds good to me!” I replied. Returning to my hands and knees, I shouted to him that the air closer to the floor was easier to breathe. “You go first,” I told him.

Mr. M. bent over at the waist, getting his head as far down as he could while pushing the wheelchair. By that time the smoke had nearly filled the house and there was only about two feet of good air near the floor. We navigated our way toward the front of the house with Mrs. M in the wheelchair, Mr. M pushing her and me bringing up the rear. Between the sounds of the smoke detectors and the wailing of fire trucks coming up the street I couldn’t tell if Mrs. M was still coughing, but I could see that Mr. M was wracked with a nonstop coughing fit. We had made it almost to the foyer when Mr. M lost his grip on the chair and stumbled to the floor.

I crawled up to him. “The door is only a few more feet. Can you make it?” I asked. His answer was to push me past him to the wheelchair.

“Right ... behind you ... Go!” he gasped.

Looking toward the door I saw a red pulsing glow coming through the smoke by the front door, and heard the siren from the fire truck winding down as it pulled to a stop in front of the house. I reached forward with one hand and pushed the back of the wheelchair toward the red glow at the front door with all the strength I could muster. I then crawled after it, with my face to the floor and sucking in what little good air remained. A second mighty shove sent the wheelchair the remaining few feet to the threshold. It was met there by a pair of firefighters who were preparing to charge in with a hose.

The firefighters dropped the hose and each grabbed a side of the wheelchair. They easily lifted it over the threshold and off the porch to the sidewalk. From there, one of them rolled it toward the street as an ambulance and another fire truck came wailing to a halt. The second firefighter grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me out onto the porch. Somewhere up on the roof I heard a chain saw growl to life.

Leaning in close so I could hear through his facemask, the firefighter shouted, “Is anyone else inside?”

I nodded.

“Mr. Morrison is right behind...”

I turned back to look in the doorway, but my neighbor wasn’t there. He was supposed to be right behind me! I twisted out of the firefighter’s grasp and dove back inside, once again plastering myself to the floor as I crawled. Behind me the firefighter was yelling at me to come back, but his voice was drowned out by the combined noises of the chain saw on the roof and the smoke detectors inside. At the back of the foyer I found Mr. M unconscious, face down on the floor. I grabbed his wrist and tried to drag him by crawling backwards, but he was much too heavy. Above us I heard a heavy crunching noise and the chain saw stopped. I felt a sudden rush of cool, fresh air sweep over us as the hole the firefighters had cut in the roof began letting the hot smoke out.