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The next thing I knew, I heard yelling outside my trailer. I bolted up, trying to orient myself. Outside the window, something glowed brightly and I smelled smoke. Oh God! Fire! I jumped off the couch, flung the door to the trailer open, and looked around wildly. There was a fire blazing in the front part of the trailer across the road, where Ginny Neil lived with her two kids. I ran out the door to join the other people standing in the road in front of the trailer.
“Did someone call the fire department?” I yelled. “Is everyone out?”
“Said they were on their way!” someone answered. Holy shit, this was the worst nightmare for folks like us who lived up in the mountains. The roads were narrow and steep and the nearest fire department was eight miles away. A shack or a small trailer could burn down in a fourth of the time it’d take for them to get here.
“MaryJane! Where’s MaryJane?” I heard a woman shriek.
MaryJane? My mind scrambled to place MaryJane, but I couldn’t.
I saw Buster standing among the others and ran over to him. “Buster, who’s MaryJane?” I called over the ruckus.
“Little two-year-old girl belongs to Ginny Neil and Billy Wilkes,” he answered, pointing over to them. “She’s out, right?”
I looked around wildly, my eyes landing on Kyland as he ran up to the group, breathing hard. “Is everyone out safe?” he asked over the voices of the crowd, as shouts for MaryJane started to fill the air.
“Kyland, there might be a two-year-old girl in there,” I yelled, racing over to him.
Billy Wilkes started back toward the fire, but he was on crutches, Lord knew why. Kyland ran behind him. They conversed briefly as they moved toward the smoky trailer, flames licking out the front.
My heart raced and I brought my hands up to cover my mouth as Kyland flung the door open and smoke poured out. He and Billy both leaned back and Kyland took off his sweatshirt and put it over his mouth while Billy pulled his T-shirt up over his face. Kyland disappeared inside, Billy standing vigil by the door. I could see him shouting inside, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the loud roar of the flames and the peoples’ voices next to me.
Impossibly, my heart started pounding even harder. I moved back with my distressed neighbors as the smoke in the air became thicker. Time seemed to stand still as I imagined what was going on in that trailer. The flames seemed only to be in the front, where the kitchen was, but the smoke was so thick in the rest of it. Could anyone survive in that? And for how long? Ky.
I gripped my fists tightly down by my sides, helpless to do anything other than pray.
Suddenly, a figure came bursting through the smoke, holding something covered in a blanket. I gasped and moved forward as Kyland emerged. Billy Wilkes hurried beside him as fast as he could move on crutches, and when they were a safe distance away, Kyland handed the blanketed item over to Billy and bent over, heaving in big gulps of air and coughing. The blanket in Billy’s arms fell back to expose a small blond head.
Billy laid his daughter down on the grass and went down on his knees beside her as we all rushed forward.
“Is she breathing?” her mother sobbed, kneeling down on the grass beside her.
“Someone go get some water!” I yelled, and Buster answered, “Be right back!”
“She has a heartbeat,” someone else said. “I think she’s breathing.”
The next few minutes were a frenzy of her parents crying, Buster returning with water and washing her face of the soot, and people yelling.
Finally, finally, we heard sirens coming up the mountain. A few minutes later when the emergency vehicles got there, the paramedics loaded MaryJane into an ambulance. She was breathing and crying, which had to be a good sign. Apparently, from what I could gather of the conversations, she’d been sleeping in the back of the trailer and each parent thought the other had gotten her. In the fear and mayhem of Billy trying to put the fire out in the kitchen and both of them getting the other two children up and out, little MaryJane had been left behind. I hadn’t even known Ginny was living with Billy Wilkes or that they had a little girl between them. Ginny’s husband had been one of the men who died at the mine eight years before. I was glad to know she’d found some happiness. And now this. Suddenly, I felt badly for not getting more updates on what was happening on the mountain from Marlo while I’d been away. But it had been less painful not to talk about home at all.
