Structure Fire, August 8, 2015 @ 0331 Hours
I kept pawing at my mask like there was a dark fog that I could wipe away. It didn’t, and every few feet I would scrub my glove across it anyway. I married my right hand to the walls so I wouldn’t get lost. Used my left to drag the nozzle and hose along the floor as I crawled, sweeping my arm out to feel for bodies. I turned on my flashlight and it did nothing and wanted to close my eyes but didn’t. It is more relaxing when they are closed, almost meditative. But I needed them open in case there was any blink or fuzz of flame, any hint of the fire. When they are open, it is the night without stars compressing into your face. So easy to get lost. Dizzy listening to every labored breath choked down by the regulator. And the house is so hot that it feels like you are squirming in a burning cocoon that you will die in. Wings, tucked against your sides. There is no turning away. This is how you feed your family. This is how you are paid.
When we first arrived at the scene, a neighbor lady out front screamed at us that the family never came out and both cars were in the driveway. A man, woman, and six-year-old boy who all had bedrooms in the second story. My heart was already trying to find a way out of my body without her saying that. It was at my temples, knocking against the straps of my mask. With the amount of black smoke puffing out of the eaves and joints of the house, I knew they were dead. She nagged on and on about how we needed to hurry the fuck up and that it looked like we didn’t know what we were doing.
“Is this amateur hour?” She asked as she stood feet away.
She said some other bullshit I tuned out while I threw on my BA, grabbed the nozzle, pulled the hose to the front door, paused for the water to fill it, and thought about how quickly I would need to find each body and get it out, how quickly I would need to find the stairs and navigate them in the dark, drag each body down them, then go back inside and do it again and again. But even while I bumped my way through furniture I wanted to go back outside, blast her with a straight stream, knock her on her ass, and say, it is 3 a.m. bitch and I have to stay calm to do my job and you are not helping. But instead I felt around for bodies, for fire, for anything living besides the darkness. My neck and ears started to sting. And as I smashed my body closer to the floor to get a little relief from the heat, I could hear that lady scream over the hiss and fit of the fire consuming.
“Do something,” she burned. “Anything.”
“Hot enough for you?” I choked out of my regulator, sounding like Darth Vader. “Fuck, this sucks.”
New guy didn’t reply.
“New guy, I am your father,” I laughed and inched my way along the floor. “Close that front door so we don’t have to hear her.”
I made it inside what felt like several hundred feet and tried pulling the hose and it wouldn’t go any further. I paused for a moment and told myself to take a deep breath, pulled the hose again and it didn’t move. I followed it back to the front door, which only ended up being about 15 feet, and was greeted by new guy sitting on it. It was pinned against the doorframe. I bumped him off the hose and he fell onto his back.
“What the fuck? Pull hose at least,” I said and pulled the hose from outside and coiled two large loops inside the doorway. “Your regulator isn’t even connected.”
“I stuck my head into the doorway and lost you. I couldn’t see anything,” new guy said as he made his way back onto all fours.
I unclipped his regulator from his BA belt and stuffed it into his mask then twisted it into place, tweaking his head until it clicked and heard an inhale and the breath out.
Captain Diaz was on the radio talking to the command center, cutting the power to the residence, checking the pump panel, and cussing at the neighbors to stay back as they pointed at the house like we couldn’t see that it was on fire or something.
“Just follow the hose. It isn’t that hard,” I unclicked my regulator to grab a few real breaths of air, reconnected it, and went back inside. I didn’t know if new guy was following me or not and wasn’t going to wait either way. I found the fire in the kitchen, and it went out easy. I turned around to show him how little water was needed. I waved my arm behind me to feel for him and called, but he wasn’t there, or was too afraid to answer. I found a door and it opened up to the backyard. I slid out onto dirt and left the door open so the house could slowly clear of smoke and I could take a quick break outside before I had to go back in and look for bodies. I patted myself to make sure I was still all there. Smoke shot out of the pockets of my pants and coat with each smack of my gloves against them. I took off my helmet, mask, and gloves. They steamed on the ground. I felt my ears and neck for any damage. They were still there. My helmet looked black, but it was dark out, so I turned on my flashlight and swept it over each item. My helmet was almost charcoal colored. I wiped it with my glove and it didn’t come off.
There is no turning away. This is how you feed your family. This is how you are paid.
I thought I heard whispers and giggling a few feet away. I raised my light across the backyard and found the family huddled in the back corner of the property about 20 feet from me. As I moved the light across their bodies it shook and glitched them. They held each other weeping. I didn’t want to see that. So, I gathered my stuff and started to move to the side yard.
“Is everybody out?” I asked before leaving.
“Did you find my dog?” the little boy asked. “His name is Cocoa. He’s brown and little.”
He held out his hands to show me the size and kept them there like he was still holding the dog, or he was waiting for me to go find it and put it there. It was the size of a softball. So small and unbelievable.
“No, but I’ll go look,” I said. My light passed through his hands and made his body a tall shadow on the dirt behind him. I moved to the side yard, which was a six-foot-wide pathway. I was exhausted and just wanted to take a break.
I could hear Cap yelling in the front yard at new guy to go inside and find me. And then he looked around the corner of the house and shined his light on my hunched over steaming body.
“You good B?” Cap said and then laughed. “I sent new guy to go look for you.”
“Fire’s out,” I turned around. Sweat poured off my head and into my eyes. I could have been crying if I wanted and nobody would have known any difference. “The family is back here too. They are alive.”
“Copy,” he smiled. It turned his mustache from a frown that framed his mouth to a straight line across his upper lip. His helmet sat so far down on his head that it pushed his sunglasses halfway down his nose. “Do they need any medical attention?”
“No, they are fine.”
“You good?”
“I said I was.”
New guy came out of the side door and kneeled down next to me and took his helmet and mask off too. His helmet yellow and shiny in the barely lit night. The reflectors glowed.
“Here you guys are. Taking a break without me,” new guy said.
We didn’t laugh.
“Looks like it was a little hot in there B.” Cap stared at my helmet, quickly holding the light over it and then over new guy’s helmet, and back again. “Now that’s a souvenir. It looks like your mask melted too. Nice work.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” new guy shrugged.
“You might be out of service, B.” Cap shook his head with a smile.
“I’ll take the rest of the night off.”
“In your dreams.”
The other Paradise engines arrived, and the crews hustled like there was still a fire to put out. Cap went up front to brief them. New guy grabbed his helmet and mask and chased after him.
My break was over, and I was ready to go look for their dog, but knew I wouldn’t find it alive anyway. I had never found an animal alive. I have been sent to look for dogs, cats, birds, and even snakes. During one of my searches in another structure fire a few years ago I came across a large dog and dragged it out like it was a human. It felt human. I thought it was. Then I did compressions and mouth to snout resuscitation in the chance I could bring it back, for the family of course, so I did everything I could. When we got back to the station the other firefighters asked if I was into bestiality. I told them that I had mistaken the dog for their wives or girlfriends and that the dog was actually hotter and didn’t put out as easy. They didn’t like that.
I went back into the house and looked around in the usual spots where I had found pets. I picked up the mattress and box springs and shoved them against the wall. I searched the walk-in closet where all the clothes had fallen onto the ground because the heat melted the plastic hangers. I gently dug and dug through clothes and it was there, in the corner, like it was trying to claw a way through the wall to get outside. Its small nails barely made a mark on the wall. The body swollen and limp, tongue hanging out the side of the mouth. I found a little blanket and softly wrapped it, covered its face, mouthed a few words for only it and me to hear, carried it outside and didn’t open the blanket for them, didn’t say a word, just held it out as an offering and they turned away crying. I took off my turnout coat and laid it down on the ground by a large western redbud, lowered the dog slowly on my coat. New guy finally found his way to the backyard. It was starting to get light finally.
“Go get a shovel and get back here,” I said. “And hurry up.”
“For what?” he asked with his regulator connected and on air.
“Walk these people to the front of the house, too.”
The family followed new guy to the front of their burned house. The outside was still standing, but most everything inside was destroyed by heat and smoke. When they walked past they scanned my long arms full of tattoos and stared at my shaved head. The boy studied the wings of my Chickasaw medicine bird, followed the feathers that ended at my wrists. He raised his head to see the Lord God Bird’s white beak open, resting against the side of my neck to sing behind my right ear. The boy’s head tilted back, the way the ghost bird was meant to be worshiped. He stood there for a moment, with his mouth open.
Maybe they were mad at me for making them leave, but I was also mad at them for not saving their dog. How could they forget it? They didn’t deserve to watch me and my ceremony. This wasn’t the first pet I had buried, but they couldn’t have known. I didn’t want that loneliness. I knew it doesn’t help anyone for them to be around while I bury. It isn’t closure to watch me dig. To watch me soften dirt with each push of the shovel. To watch me try and try to not listen to their sadness.
When new guy finally came back, I told him to dig. Even though it was a small hole, we took turns. We buried together. And when that hole was finally filled back in we took our gloves off and patted the dirt softly.
“Is this real?” new guy asked.
“I don’t know.” I looked at him. “We were asleep a few minutes ago. I remember that. And now I think we are here. But that’s all I remember.”
Cap didn’t play any music on the way back to the station. He scrolled through pics of dogs on his phone while he drove.
“What was the dog’s name?” Cap asked with a crack in his voice.
“Cocoa,” I said.
“Fuck, that’s a cute name.” Cap held one knee against the wheel to steer and wiped at his face.
“I didn’t sign up to bury dogs,” new guy said.
“If it’s not dogs, it is something else. So get used to it.”
He will see it. How nice it is to bury things this way. To leave everything suspended with that dog somewhere in the dark belly of this earth sleeping.
Ibe Liebenberg is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. He lives in Chico, California and works as a firefighter, and a lecturer at Chico State University. He is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in both poetry and fiction. He has been published in Poetry Magazine, The ThreePenny Review, Ecotone, North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, American Journal of Poetry, and Blackbird, and was a finalist for the 2023 and 2024 James Welch Poetry Prize in Poetry Northwest. His poetry collection Birds at Night was published by Texas Tech University Press (March 2025) and is winner of the Sowell Emerging Writers Prize.
Header photo by Maxi Gaspero, courtesy Shutterstock.
