WILLIAMSTOWN - There are 36 steps to becoming a hero.
That's how many it took little Brittany Anne Mead to get from her bed to the toilet early Saturday morning.
Her long walk earned the 6-year-old Williamstown girl a hero's mantel Wednesday at town hall, where Mayor Robert Hall Jones - a cousin of her stepfather - honored Brittany for the amazing feat.
This was no ordinary trek. Never before had so much ridden on that little pair of legs. Waking in the middle of the night and making her way the length of her family's mobile home, Brittany turned left into the bathroom, took that 36th and final step, sank down on the pink toilet to cry.
Her crying woke her mother and stepfather, who had been sleeping in the next room, and almost certainly saved the entire family from dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
This week, a Christmas tree still stands in the gray trailer at the back of Cherry Hill Mobile Home Park. The last gift was given only Saturday. It was the best one of all.
Brittany didn't get her two front teeth for Christmas. What she got was even better: More time for them to come in.
She will put the teeth to good use when she does get them. The little, blond girl with the big, brown eyes smiles big and often - especially when talking about her newfound hero status.
''I think it's fun,'' she says.
City fathers gave Brittany a certificate Wednesday afternoon in Williamstown's city council chambers - the same room that members of the news media packed several months ago to turn the spotlight on the town's last hero: patrolman Greg Spillman, the police officer who saved two people from the third-floor window of the old Hotel Donald during a deadly fire.
Brittany's ascension from ordinary citizen to hero was much less spectacular than a climb up a wobbly fire ladder. But the result was the same: lives saved.
Waking at 3:30 a.m. Saturday, her head and stomach hurting, Brittany climbed down from her day bed, leaving behind the rabbit with no name, and set off through the dark trailer.
Past her purple unicorn music boxes and the porcelain ballerina that plays Swan Lake (one, two, three, four, five steps);
Past the stereo and the Blessid Union of Souls compact disc (nine, 10, 11, 12);
Past the Christmas tree her mother planned to take down later that weekend, not knowing the days would be too full of trips to the hospital (15, 16, 17, 18);
And past the deadly, white Magic Chef oven (25, 26, 27, 28).
Nothing looked much out of the ordi
nary in Trailer No. 49. There was just that sickening, sweet odor, everywhere. Rodney Jones knows carbon monoxide is supposed to be odorless and colorless, but something clearly was wrong with the air in the mobile home at the end of the lane.
''I couldn't see where I was going and stuff,'' Brittany says.
The oven was leaking carbon monoxide. Lots of it. Who would have guessed? Friday morning, Mr. Jones thought the furnace was the problem. It was cold in the trailer when the family awoke that morning. The pilot light was out, and Mr. Jones couldn't get it relit.
He turned on the oven for heat and called a friend, who came over and replaced a strand of copper tubing in the furnace for $20. Then Mr. Jones, 29, a mental-health technician, and Mrs. Jones, 27, an employee of Snappy Tomato Pizza, turned off the stove and went to work.
When they came home, they smelled something strange. ''We just thought it was the new part'' on the furnace, Mr. Jones says.
Now he thinks maybe there was a small gas leak along with the carbon monoxide leak. But it was the carbon monoxide that nearly killed the family.
Firefighters discovered hazardous levels of the gas outside the trailer. Inside, the gas was concentrated enough to have killed everyone in the family in less than an hour. After her mother awoke, Brittany's eyes rolled back in her head, and she had a seizure sitting there on the toilet lid.
Mrs. Jones was so sick she lay down on the cold linoleum.
A carbon monoxide detector did not alert the family; it had been knocked off the wall and, apparently, broken. ''If she hadn't woken up, the firemen couldn't have done nothing but zip us up,'' Mrs. Jones says.
As it turned out, everyone is fine. Even the dog, a tan Chihuahua named Chi-Chi, survived. A neighbor broke into the trailer after getting a call from Mrs. Jones at the hospital and found the dog cowering under a 101 Dalmatians sleeping bag.
Things are back to normal at No. 49. On Tuesday, the family spent its first night in the trailer since that scary Saturday. And on Wednesday morning, Michelle stood ironing a plaid jumper for Brittany to wear to school - her first day back since the weekend.
At Saint Joseph Academy, the second chair from the front in Room 1A - so nearly empty for good - would be full again.
Rob Kaiser is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. His column appears on Sundays and Thursdays. He can be reached at 578-5584.