Chapter 13: The Port Fire

I grabbed the padlock and it burned my palm.

I let go and screamed for bolt cutters.

Nobody in the yard had any.

The flames were coming out of the roof vents now, and the heat pushed me back from the door.

Behind the steel, the fists had slowed.

"Move," Rocco said.

He had a long iron bar from the back of a dock truck, and he was already past me.

He stopped in front of the door.

I saw it happen.

The orange light was on his face, and he didn't move, and his hands went slack on the bar.

He was fifteen again, and it was in his eyes.

"Rocco."

He didn't hear me.

"Rocco, look at me."

I stepped between him and the fire and took his face in both hands.

"Three men are in there," I said. "Pasquale is in there. You carried me out. Carry them."

He breathed once, hard.

Then he looked at me, and he saw me and not the house on Water Street.

"Hold my coat," he said.

He shoved the bar through the hasp and leaned his whole weight on it.

The hasp tore out of the frame with a shriek, and the door swung in on a wall of black smoke.

He pulled his shirt up over his nose and went in.

I stood at the door and counted, because there was nothing else I could do.

The dockworkers lined up behind me with hoses and drove the water over the roof.

I got to forty before a shape came out of the smoke, bent double, with a man over his shoulder.

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