Thankfully, the heat is more intense to my right, toward the central hall. I put my nose to the carpet, take a breath, and crawl to my left, toward the bathroom. It’s two rooms, really, a narrow dressing room and linen closet with the commode and bathtub in a smaller cubicle beyond. I go through the door on my belly, groping forward like a soldier clearing a minefield.

The dressing room is empty. As I crawl toward the commode, my nostrils start to whistle with each breath. Panic ambushes me, like a wild thing tearing around in my chest. Maybe Ruby isn’t here at all. Maybe Ervin got her out. Maybe the scream I heard was the sound she made as he dragged her out. I can’t search the whole house. That’s how firemen get killed, trying to save people who aren’t there. I grope around the commode and inside the bathtub, then scramble back to the bathroom door.

The roar is closer.

“Ruby! It’s Penn! Are you here?”

At first there is only the roar. Then a whimper floats out of the noise like a leaf from a bonfire. It came from the central hall. My lungs feel near to bursting, but I alligator along the carpet toward the corner, my eyes shut tight. The heat is nearly unendurable. Forcing my stinging eyes open, I look down the hall.

Dancing tongues of red and orange caper out of the black smoke like laughing demons. Primal terror seizes my muscles, paralyzing me long enough to fully comprehend the danger. Then my reptile brain shrieks: Death! Run!

But I don’t run. I can’t. When I was six years old, a German shepherd got out of a neighbor’s backyard and trapped me in a corner of our carport. That dog weighed ninety pounds, and when it bared its teeth and lunged at my face, all I could do was throw up my arms. When its teeth ripped into my flesh, I was too panic-stricken even to yell for help. After a seeming eternity of gnashing teeth and blood, I heard a sound like a hatchet hitting a watermelon, and saw a black woman as tall as our house swinging a shovel like a broadsword, bludgeoning that monstrous animal within an inch of its life. Ruby Flowers was terrified of dogs, but when she saw “her baby” in danger, she pressed down her fear and charged out of our house like the wrath of God.

Fixing that image in my mind, I shut my eyes and crawl toward the flames. The frantic reptile voice whispers that the orange demons are flanking me, racing across the roof to close off my escape. But I hold Ruby’s face in my mind, keep inching forward.

My hand touches flesh.

Bone.

An ankle.