Dade County pine is rich in resin and makes good kindling. Houses built from it burn very fast and very hot, with blue and yellow flames that lick their way from board to board and make popping crackling sounds as they sear into the deep hollows of captured sap.
The fire at the Silver house did not seem to have a beginning in either space or time. It sprang up everywhere at once, and there was about it an awful aspect of fulfillment, as though embers had been smoldering forever, waiting with a patient malice to burst forth and consume. Flames crawled up the porch steps and lapped at the front door. In the side yards, sparks shot from knotholes and ignited shrubs and palms; green things hissed away their moisture in the instant before they caught and blackened. A ring of fire framed the backyard like something from an infernal circus; oleanders burned like pinwheels and gave off poison fumes, the great umbrella of the poinciana began to flame, its dainty leaves tore off and flew away like fireflies.
In the same horrifying instant everyone woke up. Augie and Nina, naked, feeling their skin begin to bake and coughing in the strangling smoke, ran into the hallway. Reuben, in his innocent pajamas, was already on his way to fetch them. United now, they staggered into the hell of the living room. Sheets of yellow flame were flapping like ghosts in the windows; here and there panes exploded from the heat. The picture of Fred the parrot turned incandescent in the ungodly light; the bird's red eyes absorbed flame and flashed back blood. There was a low whistling roar as the fire greedily sucked air into itself, leaving less and less to breathe.
Bent low, their hands cupped over their mouths and noses, the three of them moved toward the front door just as the door crackled and began to blaze. They wheeled through the thickening smoke, coughing, choking, eyes tearing and the tears instantly simmering to nothing. Reuben led them over the steaming floor to the back of the house, he picked up a chair and smashed the glass panels of the French doors. Fire was converging on the portal, it was becoming an unbroken archway of flame. Reuben went through first then grabbed Nina by the wrist, then Augie, and pulled them after. There was no way out of the backyard, all its borders were made of fire, black smoke billowed up, rained down, spread its toxins everywhere. Reuben pushed his friends toward the swimming pool, urged them toward the flashing water, the only thing that was not burning.
Weakly, desperately, Nina and Augie dragged themselves across the patch of lawn and tumbled in. The splash of their landing was lost in the sputter and whoosh of the fire, the mild water felt like dry ice against their reddened flesh. For a moment they did not realize that Reuben was not with them.
Then they turned back toward the blazing skeleton of their home. The tin roof had buckled, entire walls had burned away, the house was ceasing to exist. Against the wreckage of what was left, moving through the indigo smoke sparked with orange flame, they saw a slender form. Reuben was going back in; he was going to rescue Augie's canvas.
"My God," the painter said. He screamed out Reuben's name to call him back; the sound was swallowed by the fire and the futile whine of approaching sirens, for all its anguish it went no farther than an unfelt prayer.
The young man vanished in the black and choking fog. When he appeared again, the huge prophetic picture of the parrot was on his shoulders and he was struggling toward the doors. But the flames were beyond all boundaries now, there was no inside and no outside, there was only fire everywhere. The fire caught up with Reuben, and when he staggered through the blazing archway, he himself was burning. Yellow flame crawled up his legs; pathetically he tried to run and the flames streamed back behind him; a blue gleam came off his burning hair. He struggled forward then pitched down on the patch of grass; with supreme effort he tried to throw the monumental painting clear of the inferno; it landed very near him, singed but not destroyed.
Augie, dazed, acting without the need of thought, pulled himself from the water and crawled beneath the waves of smoke to the unconscious Reuben. An acrid smell came from the young man's scalp, flames still licked at his back and legs; Augie smothered them with his own wet body, choked back nausea at the unspeakable feel of his friend's oozing skinless flesh. He pulled and rolled the ravaged form toward the coolness of the pool; it left a trail of ash and blood. Nina helped him lower the unmoving body into the water, then cradled it against herself as Augie, weeping, worked desperately to breathe life back into Reuben's slack mouth.