“My baby is in there!” screamed a woman who ran back and forth on her lawn in front of her burning house. “My baby! My baby! My baby!”
My older brother Jessy stopped his car; he and I jumped out and ran over to the upset, panicky woman.
“Where’s your baby?!” said Jessy.
“She’s upstairs!” wailed the weeping woman who staggered into my arms smelled of smoke and fear. “First bedroom on the left! Please, for the love of God save her!”
My brother ran to the burning house. I could hear sirens. The fire department was on its way.
“We’ll save your baby!” I said to the woman as I took off after my brother.
Wherever Jessy went, I went. Whatever danger he faced, I faced. That was the way it had always been between us. That was the way it would always be.
Jessy squatted and charged through the open front door as black smoke billowed out of the door and shattered windows. I glanced up and saw fire devouring the roof. Fear clutched my heart as I followed Jessy. The smoke was thick. The heat was intense.
“Jessy!” I shouted getting rancid smoke in my mouth and throat.
“Here,” came his muted reply.
I homed in his voice. He reached up and grabbed my arm and pulled me down to the floor. The heat and smoke were not as bad down there. Together we crawled up the stairs and into the bedroom on the left. Where in hell was the baby? I followed my brother by touch as we crawled to a smoke and gloom-shrouded crib. He reached in and pulled out the squirming, blanket wrapped infant. We crawled out of the room.
Without warning the attic ceiling caved in trapping Jessy under burning wreckage.
“No!” I screamed.
But then the burning wreckage raised up as Jessy, with a super-human effort, lifted it up off his back. My big brother, who had been shielding the baby, shoved the infant out from under him and into my arms. Then, the burning wreckage had its way – it again crushed him. This time he did not rise.
“Jessy!” I cried.
I would have stayed and died with Jessy but for the infant. I crawled out, with the infant wrapped up in my arms, onto the front porch. I collapsed overcome by smoke, heat and grief. Two firemen dragged me off the porch. The house collapsed in flames. The overjoyed woman took her baby out of my arms as paramedics gave me oxygen and tended to my wounds. I loved my brother. He was my only living relative. He was the one who raised me, took care of me. He was my mother and my father. He was all I had in the world.
“Dear Lord,” I wailed. “I wish you had taken me instead of Jessy!”
They put the fire out and brought Jessy’s burned and blackened body out of the smoldering ruins.
There was some comfort in the fact that my brother, my Jessy, gave his life saving another. I could not stop crying as the woman whose house burned down and infant we rescued approached me with her baby wrapped in her arms.
“I’m so sorry your brother died saving my Baby,” she said with heart-felt warmth, empathy and a loving smile on her pretty face. “I and Baby thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank our hero Baby.”
“Meow!” said a black, green-eyed cat whose head popped up from beneath the pink blanket.
“A cat?! My brother was killed saving a filthy ass animal!”
I jumped up and knocked the attending paramedics aside. With all the hate I could generate, backed by my two hundred pounds, punched the woman in her damn face. Her glasses flew one way, her black wig the other, red blood and white teeth flew everywhere and both of her shoes came off her feet. The crazy ass woman hit the ground and cracked her damn skull. The stinking damn cat hit the ground and ran away.
It took three policemen, two paramedics and one fireman to get me off that, crazy, brother killing, sico!
THE END.
