They had been sitting in the truck drinking Lamb’s out of polystyrene cups. I followed them down to their Ford, and they handed me the bottle. If they hadn’t been there. Drinking at the dump. From Old Perlican they were. I downed their rum and then felt heat on my arm. The wind had kept me from noticing. I should get to the hospital, I said.

So we shook hands and I thanked them. I half-hugged the man in the white T-shirt. He laughed like he understood the need. They wanted to know where I was from. Where to start the legend.

There’s a local hospital four minutes from the incinerator — I’ve often passed it in Edgar and wondered what a hospital was doing this far from humanity. I strolled in, cinders head to foot. Nurses in blue flannel pajamas. What happened to you, my love. They wrapped wet towels on my arm and face. Then a young doctor, Middle Eastern, checked my lungs. Prescribed a pill for infection and a topical cream. A nurse gave me a cup of milk and a pill. Milk. When they were done, I drove to Gas Land and bought a twenty-six-ouncer of rum and two cans of Pepsi. Then I stopped at Tricon Pharmacy and filled my prescription. What happened to you?

I drove home with both Pepsi cans open. I found an easy-rock station and cranked it. I opened the window and allowed the wind to massage my face and arm. I was delirious with life. I had decided not to call my girlfriend — how could you hear what had happened without imagining your boyfriend has melted? The word “incinerator” does not often appear next to “human body.” It was a gorgeous, sunny day.

Later that night, she said, When you arrived and got out of the truck, you looked different. My hair looked too shiny. Then she saw the bottle of rum in one hand and the prescription bag in the other.

That night I woke up and kept repeating the fall. Terrifying. I added the mulching equipment or a spray of oil to keep things burning. Sometimes I landed on a long spike or a bucket of boiling tar. The old guy said I was lucky. Half an hour earlier, a dump truck had come with a huge load of used lumber and carpet ends and old diesel oil. She was going pretty good then, he said.

A week later, it was my neighbour’s birthday. The man with one leg. He’d had most of his teeth pulled out, and he was a little pissed off, sitting at his kitchen table. His son had invited me, but my neighbour didn’t seem too pleased to have me. So I made a promise to finish my beer quick and leave.

Then his cousin arrived. And said, They still don’t know who the guy is who fell into the incinerator. All they know is he’s from the cove.

I’d love, my neighbour said, to meet that man.I pulled another beer out of the fridge. Well you’re looking at him, I said.

And my neighbour, for the first time that evening, gave me a grin.