Blue Smoke

answer it without revealing the embarrassing personal details and avoiding a lie. “It was hot, and I woke up because I didn’t feel very good. I got a drink of ginger ale in the kitchen and came out to sit on the steps and drink it.”
    “Okay. Maybe you can show me where you were sitting when you saw it.”
    She dashed ahead and obediently sat on the white marble steps as close to her original position as she could remember. She stared down the block as the men approached. “It was cooler than upstairs in my room. Heat rises. We learned that in school.”
    “That’s right. So.” Minger sat beside her, looked down the block as she did. “You sat here, with your ginger ale, and you saw the fire.”
    “I saw the lights. I saw lights on the glass, and I didn’t know what they were. I thought maybe Pete forgot to turn the lights off inside, but it didn’t look like that. It moved.”
    “How?”

    She lifted a shoulder, felt a little foolish. “Sort of like dancing. It was pretty. I wondered what it was so I got up and walked a little ways.” She bit her lip, looked over at her father. “I know I’m not supposed to.”
    “We can talk about that later.”
    “I just wanted to see. I’m too nosy for my own good, Grandma Hale says, but I just wanted to know.”
    “How far’d you walk down? Can you show me?”
    “Okay.”
    He got up with her, strolled along beside her, imagined what it would be like to be a kid walking down a dark street on a hot night. Exciting. Forbidden.
    “I took my ginger ale, and I drank some while I walked.” She frowned in concentration, trying to remember every step. “I think maybe I stopped here, close to here, because I saw the door was open.”
    “What door?”
    “The front door of the shop. It was open. I could see it was open, and I thought, first I thought, Holy cow, Pete forgot to lock the door, and Mama’s going to skin him. She does the skinning in our house. But then I saw there was fire, and I saw smoke. I saw it coming out the door. I was scared. And I yelled as loud as I could and ran back home. I ran upstairs and I think I was still yelling because Dad was already up and pulling on pants, and Mama was grabbing her robe. And everybody was shouting. Fran kept saying, What, what is it? Is it the house? And I said, No, no, it’s the shop. That’s what we call Sirico’s mostly. The shop.”
    She’d thought this through, John decided. Gone back over it in her head, layered the details.
    “Bella started crying. She cries a lot because teenage girls do, but Fran didn’t cry so much. Anyway, Dad, he looked out the window, then he told Mama to call Pete—he lives above the shop—and tell him to get out, get his family out. Pete married Theresa and they had a baby in June. He said to tell Pete there was a fire in the shop and to get out right away, then to call the fire department. He was running downstairs when he told her. And he said to call nine-one-one, but she already was.”
    “That’s a good report.”

    “I remember more. We all ran, but Dad ran the fastest. He ran all the way down. There was more fire. I could see it. And the window broke and it jumped out. The fire. Dad didn’t go in the front. I was afraid he would and something would happen to him. He’d get burned up, but he ran to the back steps, up to Pete’s.”
    She paused a moment, pressed her lips together.
    “To help them get out,” John prompted.
    “Because they’re more important than the shop. Pete had the baby, and my dad grabbed Theresa’s arm and they all ran down the stairs. People were starting to come out of their houses. And everybody was shouting and yelling. I think Dad was going to try to run inside, with the fire, but Mama grabbed him hard and said, Don’t, don’t. And he didn’t. He stood with her and he said, Oh Christ, baby. He calls my mother that sometimes. Then I heard the sirens, and the fire trucks came. The firemen jumped out and hooked up hoses. My dad told them everyone was out, that there was nobody inside. But some of them went inside. I don’t know how they could, with the fire and smoke, but they did. They looked like soldiers. Like ghost soldiers.”
    “Don’t miss much, do you?”
    “I’ve got a memory like an elephant.”
    John flicked a glance up at Gib, grinned. “You got a pistol here, Mr. Hale.”
    “Gib. It’s Gib, and, yeah, I do.”
    “Okay, Reena, can you tell me what else you saw? Just when you were sitting on the stairs,