When the fire horn sounded, the volunteers of the volunteer fire department
            dropped what they were doing

and went to douse the flames. The night the Coffee Cup Restaurant caught fire
            again, they remembered to station someone

behind the building to put out the rats. From the highway you couldn’t see
            anything except billows of smoke, but in back

the rats were coming out aflame, little torches making for a tinder-dry field
            ready to go up. Walter Cooper McCandless was there

to chase them down with a fire extinguisher. The rats ran faster for his
            attentions, still smoking. It’s not always simple


to tell what’s mercy and what’s not. Our parents’ love wasn’t enough to keep
            us in a town that couldn’t afford firefighters—

as soon as we had a high school diploma and a car that would crank, we left
            there just like the burning rats

fleeing the Coffee Cup. We blamed that town for all our hurts and scars, but if
            we got out soon enough, everything was a metaphor.

For graduation, Walter Cooper McCandless ordered his daughter a red Honda
            Prelude with alloy wheels and a spoiler

in back. A younger volunteer took his place on the fire truck, but it still gave
            him a start every time the fire horn began to wail.