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Drew’s eyes went round. “I know. I didn’t mean we’re actually going to play with fire. That’s just an expression.”
“Don’t care,” Noah snapped. He wanted to put the fear of God into the boy where this subject was concerned. He’d lost track of the times he’d seen when mixing children and fire led to heartache. “Don’t even say such a thing is fun, you got it?”
Drew nodded and said, “Yessir.”
Noah held the boy’s gaze for a long moment, then nodded and took a step back. “All right. Put your hat and mittens back on, and you can hold the door while I get the dollhouse outside.”
“They’re not mittens. They’re gloves,” Drew corrected as he tugged his outdoor gear from his pocket. He studied the shelving. “Can I pick which one we burn?”
“No.” Noah intended to use one of his early, basicstructures, which he mainly kept for scraps, not the more elaborate designs he built today and gifted to fire stations around the state for training purposes.
“Okay.” The boy pulled on his hat and gloves. Excitement glimmered in the gaze he turned toward Noah.
To his shock and surprise, Noah was tempted to smile as he donned his coat. He liked that the kid had accepted the no rather than whine. Made him think he probably heard the word quite often.
Noah absently rubbed his aching thigh as he walked to the shelves at the back of the workshop where he stored the completed houses ready for shipping. Then, like an excited puppy, Drew scampered around Noah. He asked, “Which one is it? Is it heavy? I can help you carry it. I’m pretty strong for a kid my age.”
“I can tell. You’ve got some guns for a, what, ten-yearold kid?”
“I’m only eight.”
“Ah, well. You look older than eight.” Seeing the proud lift to Drew’s shoulders and the self-satisfied smirk form on his lips, Noah couldn’t help but smile. Probably the first one he’d cracked in weeks. Maybe months. Hell, had he smiled even once since his personal Armageddon?
That thought wiped the smile right off his face. Gruffly, he spoke to Drew. “It’s this one here. It’s not terribly heavy, just bulky. And I’m not going to carry it. I’m going to wheel it out in this.”
Noah gestured toward the four-wheeled collapsible wagon he used to tote items around his property. He couldn’t carry very much when he needed a cane to walk.
The boy eyed the dollhouse critically. “That’s not very fancy.”
“It doesn’t need to be fancy. It’s supposed to be functional. Here, you get the top right corner.” With Drew’s help, Noah lifted the dollhouse off the shelf and set it into the wagon. “Go get the door, son.”
Outside, Noah set the dollhouse atop the old iron barrel. It was a two-story structure made of plywood with a pitched roof. The interior contained four separate rooms and an attic space with sliding panel doors to access each. This particular dollhouse stood forty-two inches tall and thirty-six inches wide, which made the structure slightly smaller than a Barbie Dreamhouse. “You gather some fuel while I get my torch.”
“What sort of fuel?”
“Anything that will burn. Forage around below the woodpile. Pine cones are great for this purpose.” Noah slid open the door on the bottom right. “Put them in here. This is our burn room.”
“Okay!” Drew scampered off.
Noah went inside to get his blowtorch, a spray bottle of water, and a fire extinguisher. When he returned, the boy had a nice pile of tinder in the dollhouse. Noah pointed toward a log a safe distance away. “You go sit over there. Watch and listen.”
“Can’t I—”
“No.” The boy did as he was told, and Noah nodded at him. He realized he kinda liked this kid. Go figure. He didn’t like anybody anymore.
He began his lecture. “Like I told you earlier, my dollhouses are training tools for firefighters. The better a firefighter understands what the fire will do next, the better he can fight it. Using this house, we can demonstrate fire flow path.”
“What’s that?”
“Behavior. I’m going to show you fire behavior.”
“I know how fire behaves. It makes smoke, and you can die from smoke. You don’t have to be on fire and burn up to die.”
“That’s true,” Noah agreed. “But did you know that opening the wrong window in a burning house can speed the fire’s growth? Or that opening the right window can make the fire go where you want it to go?”
“Why would I want to make a fire go anywhere but out?”
“Well, because first, you must rescue the people inside.”
