HE SHEDS HIS COAT, HELMET, and axe, pulls off his red t-shirt, wraps it around his face like a bandit, juts his cloth covered chin toward the smoke, mouth sucking breath-dampened cotton, arms bent at his sides, biceps bulged with flexing, like handles of a human trophy, his skin glistening with sweat, drops catching light, each bead huge in the hair of his barrel chest, all of us locking arms and snaking to form a human hose, a sinew, the entire brigade, to pull him back to the engine, shouting, “Don’t make it personal,” but he’s too slick to grip, and with twin cocked fists, he walks, jabbing and juking toward the roaring flames of the warehouse, ready to clobber the walls down, saying, “This is for Spot,” us imploring, “We loved him too, Frank: he was a good, brave boy,” our Spot, our mascot, whose lungs gave out after eight years of battling smoke, all that burning asbestos, not some heroic death for the newspaper headlines, not diving headlong into an inferno and dragging a kid from an apartment complex, but banally in the vet’s office, Frank pacing outside smoking cigarettes saying over and over, “It’s a goddamn shame,” and now Frank waging war on conflagration, stealing, maybe we’re thinking, a hero’s death, something in his mind owed to us, though what, maybe we’re asking, does he, Frank, have to come home to—when “home” is the fire station, after his divorce—except half-hearted poker games he’s no good at, Dominos pizza and his pick of whatever’s on Netflix, nights he gets a turn with the Roku remote, and that empty spot, Spot’s spot, where his best friend curled beside him on the couch, and he stops at the edge of the too hot heat, sweat just pouring, turns, shouts, “I’d do it,” and we say, “We know you would, buddy; we know you would.” •


Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear or are forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, Iron Horse, Bluestem, Scaffold, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Five Stories (Sand & Gravel), came out in 2025. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs, often with his wife and son.

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