The smoke detectors in Margo's house were wired together, so when one screamed, they all screamed. There were seven of them. It sounded like a marching band made entirely of whistles.
Outside, a turkey fryer was on fire in the driveway. Inside, Margo Iverson stood at her brass line and gave orders in a voice I had never heard her use.
It wasn't loud. It cut through the alarms anyway, the way a good snare drum cuts through a brass section.
"Patrice," she said. "You first."
My mother was standing in the hall in her slippers, holding a pie server. She did not move.
"Patrice. Your shoes are facing you. Step in. Don't tie them."
My mother looked down at the cubby. There were her flats, side by side, turned toward her and the door like two open hands. She stepped out of the slippers and into the flats in one motion. She hadn't even put down the pie server.
"Out," said Margo. "Down the steps. Stand by the mailbox."
My mother went.
"Gwen."
Gwen was already at the cubby. Her sneakers were waiting, heels to the wall. She stepped into them and reached for the dog.
"Leash is on the hook," said Margo.
There was a leash on the hook by the door, a heavy red one I had never seen before. It had a hand-lettered tag on it. The tag said ADMIRAL.
She had made it at 7:53 that morning. I realized this later. At the time, I just watched my sister clip it on and go.
"Miles."
My right boot was in the cubby, facing out. My left boot was somewhere in a dog's private life. I stepped into the right one and kept the slipper on the other side. I went out the door in one boot and one size thirteen, like a man who had been interrupted mid-decision.
Margo came out last. She pulled the front door shut behind her, firmly.
"Closed doors slow a fire down," she said to no one in particular. Then she turned and counted us on the lawn, pointing at each of us in turn.
"Patrice. Gwen. Tugboat. Miles."
Then she looked toward the driveway. "Vern. Calvin."
The driveway was a different story. It was also over very quickly.
By the time I got around the side of the house, Calvin had already shut off the propane valve. He had pulled my father back by the coat. Now he stood at an angle to the pot, sweeping the extinguisher across the base of the flames in short, even passes.
He did it calmly. He did it in his boots. He stood in a slick of spilled peanut oil that would have taken a man in slippers straight to the ground.
The fire went out with a cough of white powder. Then there was only smoke, and a smell like a diner that had made a bad decision.
My father stood ten yards away with the empty hook in his hand. His eyebrows were intact. His pride was not.
"It was mostly thawed," he said.
"Mostly is a word I'd like you to take out of your vocabulary, Vern," said Calvin. He said it kindly. Then he put a hand on my father's shoulder and left it there, and my father let him.
The second turkey lay in the pot, black as a bowling ball. Nobody was going to eat it. Tugboat looked at it with tremendous interest.
Calvin looked down at his boots. They were shiny with peanut oil to the laces, and dusted white with powder.
"Well," he said. "I guess these aren't going on your nice paper now."
"We'll see," said Margo.
Across the street, a door opened. Mr. Gaffney, who is seventy-eight and has lived on Fallow Street since before it was paved, came out in a plaid bathrobe. He surveyed the smoke, the fryer, and the rest of us.
"Is this a party?" he called.
"Thanksgiving," my father called back.
Mr. Gaffney nodded slowly, as if that explained everything, and went back inside.
The alarms inside stopped one by one, the way crickets do at dawn. Calvin walked slowly around to the front lawn and looked at all of us.
My mother was standing by the mailbox, still holding the pie server. Gwen had Tugboat on the leash. Everybody had shoes on. Nobody's laces were tied.
"How long did that take?" Calvin asked. "From my shout to the last one out?"
"Forty-one seconds," said Margo.
"You counted?"
"I always count."
Calvin looked at her for a long time. Then he looked at the front door. Then he took his clipboard out from under his arm and wrote something down.
"Ma'am," he said, "I've run drills with grown firefighters who couldn't do forty-one seconds."
"They don't practice with shoes," Margo said.
We sat on the front steps afterward, all of us, while the smoke thinned over the driveway. My mother handed out paper napkins she had somehow carried out in her pocket. Nobody asked why.
And Margo told us about her mother.
Joan Iverson was fifty-nine now and lived in Arizona. But for twenty-two years, she had run a daycare out of their living room. Twelve kids, every weekday, from seven to six. Twelve pairs of small shoes at the door.
"Mom's rule was simple," Margo said. "Shoes off at the door, in your own cubby, facing out. We did a fire drill on the first Monday of every month."
"Every month?" said Gwen.
"Every month. You can't get twelve four-year-olds out of a house if anyone is looking for a shoe."
She shrugged. "I was the oldest. I started running the drills when I was nine. By the time I was twelve, I could get the whole room out in under a minute."
She turned her hands over in her lap and looked at them.
"People always think it's about dirt," she said. "Dirt you can sand out. It's about knowing where everything is. So when something does go wrong, nothing else does."
Nobody said anything for a moment. I thought about fourteen months of finding my shoes turned to face the door, and how I had thought it was decoration.
My father cleared his throat. He was looking down at his brown lace-ups. They were on, untied, and pointed at the street.
"That's why she turned 'em," he said quietly. "This morning."
"Yes, Mr. Haverford."
"Huh," said my father. It was the same sound he had made that morning. It meant something completely different now.
Calvin sat a step below us with his clipboard on his knees.
"The county puts out a home fire safety pamphlet every year," he said. "Nobody reads it. It's mostly pictures of smoke detectors."
He tapped the clipboard. "Would you mind if I put your system in it? The cubby, the facing out, the counting?"
Margo blinked. "You want to put my shoe rule in a county pamphlet?"
"I want to put your shoe rule in every county pamphlet," said Calvin.
I watched her try to keep her face steady. She mostly managed.
"Yes," she said. "Okay. Yes."
My mother reached over and patted her knee with the pie server. "I'm only saying," she said, "I always knew it wasn't the arches."
That should have been the end of it. Fire out, family safe, everybody's rule intact. But I was still sitting on Margo's front steps in one boot and one slipper, and there was still no ring.
Then Tugboat got up.
He did it slowly, the way large dogs do, like a building standing. Gwen let the leash run out. He walked along the porch to the far end of the front steps, where a lattice panel covered the crawl space. One corner of the lattice had come loose.
He put his head through the gap. We heard a scrape, then a rustle. Then he backed out, very proud, with something in his mouth.
It was my left boot.
"His second place," Gwen whispered. "For special shoes."
Tugboat walked down the steps, past my mother, past my father. He came to me and laid the boot beside me on the step. He did it gently, as if returning it had always been the plan.
I picked it up. I reached inside, all the way to the end, as far as my hand would go.
The boot was empty.
Up next: Building Cleared
Continue to Part 6 →