Smoke continued to rise against the blushing sky but it seemed the smoldering kind. Ash fell like smudged snow. The danger to my property appeared past. I climbed off the roof then and fixed myself some breakfast in the anticlimax. I was on the front porch finishing my coffee when the volunteer firemen finally arrived from Doker, parked their antique water pumper in my front yard. The attendant from the Exxon station, T. Bo, was hanging on the back of the fire truck. Clarence Goodman, the grocery store man, was driving and the watermelon seller, Kendrick, was riding shotgun. The new checkout girl, Shawnda, wearing nothing but a shiny slip, was barefooted and wedged between her boss and the watermelon seller, looking somewhat uncomfortable to be there. I stepped off the porch and lifted a hand. “Y’all hungry?” I asked the crew. “When ain’t we hungry ’round here?” T. Bo asked as he swung off the back of the fire truck, then answered his own question. “We always hungry ’round here, Boy.
