Then I heard this: Get to the back.

I glanced around but there was no back. My cheek and knee were hot, my earlobe, and I’d cut my ankle falling. The soles of my shoes were melting. Get to the back.

There was an old fish tub made of heavy red plastic lying against the ventilation slits. I hoisted it up and put in on my shoulder, a shield from the heat. Then a white space — a square of light — opened up in the wall across from me. The silhouettes of two heads. Men’s faces. I ran around the perimeter, over a hurdle of flame, and out the door. I kept running, another fifteen metres, almost into the woods. Then I stopped and turned around. It was the guys from the truck. The old man was still up by the ramp. He leaned on the guardrail and stared down at me, astonished.

You’re all right. It was one of the men from the truck, in a white T-shirt. He was shaking his head. We thought we were going to have to go in there and get you.

Then they went at closing up the doors I’d escaped from, which looked like they hadn’t been opened in a year. They were held together with large spikes bent square at the top and driven into three clasped hinges. Cast iron doors made of the same stuff as the incinerator. They were hammering in the spikes with a boulder. It took the two of them to do it. Then they checked me over. The guy in the T-shirt: I was watching you unload and saw you fall in. I said, Lord Jesus, he just fell into the incinerator.

They ran and got the old guy. The old guy has a cellphone half a metre long, some relic of the ’80s. He was trying to call an ambulance but couldn’t remember the number.

That’s when we went for the doors.

We walked back up to Edgar Bishop. The truck still needed to be unloaded, and I was in shock. They helped me unload. We fired in bits of felt. I was standing pretty much in the same spot I’d been before I fell in. Heard the licking. The old guy leaning into the bed of the truck with his hands dangling, watching us work. He was upset. He was going to have to fill in a report. Usually I’m up here with them when they unload, he said. I’ve been here ten years now, the old guy said, and you’re the first to fall in.

When we were done, they said, You need a drink of rum.

Where’s the bar? I said.