Veiled in Smoke

by Jocelyn Green

  “What about your family?” Nate glanced around for some sign of Meg and Sylvie. “Are they here? Are they safe?” Surely his daughters could talk him into fleeing, and Nate could be on his way. The story of the century was unfolding all around him, and he aimed to cover it well.

  Boom!

  Stephen covered his ears and dropped to the ground. “Get down!” he yelled. “Take cover!”

  Understanding stabbed through Nate. He crouched beside the veteran. “That’s Mr. Hildreth creating a firebreak. He’s blowing up houses, nothing more. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!”

  He reached to help Stephen up—and found himself on the wrong end of a revolver.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you, and so help me, if you lay a hand on me again, I will blow it clean off.”

  Nate backed away, his pulse throbbing in his ears. Glancing around, he saw no sign of Meg or Sylvie and could only guess that if they weren’t with their father, they were still packing at their home. He turned in the direction of Corner Books & More.

  Then he stopped himself. Those young women weren’t children. They were smart and had neighbors who could aid them if they needed it. He wasn’t responsible for them. His duty was to document this disaster.

  People fled all around him, some with such force they nearly knocked him down. He needed to move. Now.

  The wind howled and threw dirt in Meg’s face. A scarf about her hair, she scraped loose earth back over the valuables she and her sister had buried in the middle of their father’s map of Andersonville. When Stephen had taken the cart to the train depot more than an hour ago, she’d decided not to wait for the cart’s return before doing what they could to preserve more property. She and Sylvie had managed to dig shallow graves for more books, clothing, silverware, their mother’s jewelry, the deed and title to their property and land, her paints and brushes, and bundles of old letters, including those their father had written during the war. Her back ached with the effort of breaking through the hard-packed soil, but when it was time to flee, they would do so with the clothes on their backs and nothing else.

  The dissonant clanging of bells throughout the city echoed the alarm in every bit of Meg’s body as the wall of fire crept ever closer. James and Flora Spencer had already fled, lugging a tablecloth full of goods behind them. “Go!” Flora had yelled to them while James hurried her along. Silver wisps of hair straggled from beneath her nightcap. “What are you waiting for?”

  The question echoed Meg’s own. Stephen should have been back by now. He should have returned for his daughters.

  Sylvie tossed aside the shovel. “Maybe he’s out front.”

  Sweat ran down Meg’s sides beneath her arms as she followed her sister through the back door of the shop and out the front. People were escaping from the south through Court House Square, some of their clothes burnt nearly completely off their bodies. Dogs and cats raced with them. Guests from the Sherman House hotel streamed into the street. But there was still no sign of Stephen.

  “We’ve got to go,” Meg said, though she despised the idea of leaving without him.

  At her side, Sylvie retied her scarf beneath her chin with trembling fingers. “I thought he could do it. I really thought Father would complete his mission and come back to us.”

  An enormous cheer rose up from across the street. Prisoners streamed out of the courthouse basement, running for all they were worth.

  Their urgency fanned Meg’s even hotter. With one backward glance, she stepped into the current of fleeing people, Sylvie at her side.

  Something hit the sidewalk, landing in a dark splay of beak and wings. Then another fell. And two more. “The birds,” Sylvie said. “They’re dying from the smoke.”

  Her pace quickening, Meg mentally recited the twenty-third psalm, for she could form no prayer of her own.

  The courthouse bell stopped ringing. The cupola had caught fire from a flying ember. Faintly, Meg could hear the bright sound of shattering windows.

  Turning, Sylvie looked across the distance they’d put behind them. “Meg, your studio! It’s on fire already!”

  Meg whirled to see for herself. “How—?”

  But then she knew. The pile of rags she used to clean the brushes hadn’t been washed lately. They were full of linseed oil, which could generate enough heat to combust.

  Sylvie grasped Meg’s hand. “Mother’s book,” she said. “I left her copy of Little Women in your studio the other night. Did you pack it in the crates Father took?”

  Meg thought Sylvie had packed it. Her mouth turned to ash. She shook her head. Another bird dropped from the sky.

  Sylvie’s composure crumbled. “Father’s photograph from the war is inside the book too! We’re going to lose it! We’ll lose them both!”

  Desperately, Meg wanted to say they could get another copy of the book. But this one was irreplaceable, for it held Ruth’s thoughts and musings recorded months before her death. Neither could they spare the carte de visite of their father.

  Hoisting her skirts, Meg dashed the twenty yards back home, bounded up the stairs and into the studio. She choked on smoke and the smell of burning turpentine, linseed oil, and pigment. Flames ate through the pile of rags and up the curtains, which dissolved in heaps to the wooden floor, and puddles of fire began to spread.

  Each breath seared her lungs. Meg felt struck dumb and slow with toxic fumes and with fear that plumed thick as smoke. Wind whipped through the room, bending and stretching the flames. Already, other canvases were blistering, then melting into pools of oil.

  Timber creaked, snapping Meg from inaction. On the floor, the corner of the book poked out from beneath a sheet draped over a canvas. The sheet was already smoking. By the time she reached it, the paint-spattered cloth was in flames. Faster than thought, she ripped off the sheet, flinging it away. Her skirt caught fire, and she beat it out with her hands. When she looked up, the cover of the book was burning. So was the shelf of paint supplies behind it.

  Time slowed, air thinned. Smoke and heat formed a jackhammer inside her skull and a vise about her lungs. Holding her skirts back, she kicked the book away from the burning canvas behind it. Sparks found her skirt again, and she slapped them out.

  “Meg!” Sylvie’s voice floated somewhere behind her. “Meg, leave it, it can’t be saved now!”

  But it could, and she was so close. She could scarcely breathe, let alone think straight. Flames danced over the hard cover of the book but hadn’t yet eaten through to the pages inside. A fraction of a second could change that, however, and then it would be too late.

  Lunging, she grabbed the burning book with both hands.

  Chapter Six

  Pain exploded in her flesh, consuming her mind. As Meg smothered the flames from the book, the shelf above collapsed, and a jar of linseed oil spilled over the right side of the cover and ignited, burning deep into her hand. The toppled shelf pinned her hand to the fire for too many moments, a timeless stretch of agony. She threw off the wood plank with her other hand, then tore away the book cover and cast it aside.

  A hard yank pulled her backward. Encircling Meg’s waist, Sylvie took the charred volume from her and propelled her out of the room.

  Meg’s skin was still burning, or felt that way. Without gaslight in the sconces on the wall, she could see nothing in the stairwell, could only grit the dust in her teeth and move blindly down, down, until she and Sylvie burst outside to a world painted in orange and grey.

  “Meg! Oh no, your hands!” Sylvie cried.

  Her palms and fingers felt as though they’d been branded and the hot irons had yet to leave her flesh. The right hand looked worse but now felt less pain than the left. For lack of water, Meg spit on her skin and heard it sizzle. A wave of nausea rolled through her.

  “I’m sorry,” Sylvie was crying. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault.”

  But there was no time for regrets, no time to wonder beyond the present moment. Meg clenched her teeth to trap the pain. Crows an
d sparrows continued to drop from the sky. The courthouse cupola kept burning, and a mountain of fire was bearing down on them.

  “Meg! Sylvie!” Nate Pierce darted across the street and stood before them. “You should have left long before this! Are you hurt?”

  Tears spilled over then, not just for the burns, but for their missing father, the burning city, the home she was about to lose. Yes, Meg thought, I am hurt. We all are.

  But what she said was, “Just my hands. I can walk. Or run.” With a glance at the pandemonium in the street and the glowing embers floating from the south, she added, “The book could be wrecked or lost. Or sparks could land on it and burn it altogether. We have to bury it.”

  Concern filled Nate’s soot-smudged features, but urgency soon took its place. “I’ll do it.” Pulling his jacket from his satchel, he wrapped it around the book and disappeared.

  Meanwhile, Sylvie ripped two long strips from her apron and wrapped a bandage around each of Meg’s hands. By the time she was finished, Nate had returned.

  “Come on.” He offered his arms, and the sisters looped theirs through his.

  White-hot pain pulsed in Meg’s hands as they left the raised sidewalk for the street. But once they were embroiled in the moving crowd, her nerves focused on flight.

  “We were waiting for our father.” The wind snatched Sylvie’s words away, muting her explanation to Nate. A piece of flaming tar paper traced a red spiral in the air before them.

  “Thought you might be,” he said. “I saw him.”

  “You did? At the train depot? Is he all right?”

  “He didn’t make it to the depot with the cart. It was burning when I found him beside it.”

  “What?” Meg slowed her steps, but Nate urged her along, Sylvie trotting on his other side. They swerved around a highboy and sofa.

  “Don’t worry, he’ll take care of himself.”

  “But—”

  A column of fire whipped up in a nearby alley, tearing through drifts of dried leaves and stacks of firewood prepared for the coming winter.

  “I’ll tell you more later,” Nate panted. “Right now, I can’t spare the breath.”

  Sparks rained down around them. One dropped onto Sylvie’s scarf, and she hit it out in the same instant, but the singed smell frayed Meg’s nerves even further.

  No one mentioned Stephen after that. Meg looked for him in the faces of those they passed, but in vain. Shoved from behind, she stumbled.

  Nate halted. A block ahead of them, a whirlwind picked up burning furniture left in the street, hurling it into the air. “Wrong way.”

  Everywhere they tried seemed designed to cut them off. A building collapsed on a corner, the rubble spreading over the street and sending up a cloud of limestone dust that layered their bodies, lined their nostrils, and scratched their throats. Another intersection was blocked by a fire engine trying heroically to save some grand building. The fire did not just tower over them from behind. It spread from firebrands and flying embers.

  The crash of falling buildings increased, along with near-constant explosions. Barrels of oil in a general store burst into fire with the sound of rattling musketry. Then the fire itself was the only sound, drowning out all others. No more bells rang across the city, or those that did could not be heard. A hotel plunged inward with barely a noise.

  “There’s the bridge,” Nate said at last.

  The river was patched with fire from oil pooled on its surface. Ship masts burned before breaking off, collapsing and hissing into the water. A flying piece of burning sailcloth landed on the bridge and flared up.

  “We’ll have to run for it, but the steel frame will hold us even if the wood planks fall through,” he yelled over the sound of horses and carts clambering toward the bridge. He was filmed in chalky powder from collapsing buildings, every inch of him a dull green-grey except for his blue eyes rimmed with red.

  The ground shook, and a roar barreled after it from behind. The courthouse cupola must have collapsed, and the bell with it, Meg guessed, her thoughts gliding above her physical pain. Perhaps it was the instinct to survive, or simply God’s grace in an extraordinary moment, but her mind was clearer than it had ever been. She knew that bridge would carry them and felt a magnetic pull to reach it. “Let’s go.”

  They threaded themselves into the crowd and headed for the bridge.

  Collisions happened every minute. When a wheel axle broke on one wagon, several men unloaded the coffins it held and carried them upright. When the bearers were swallowed from view, the coffins bobbed eerily above the throng.

  Pain seared. Panic threatened. But there would be an end to this night, Meg told herself, an end to the ocean of flames surging toward them. There would be an after. This was not the end of the story, or at least, it didn’t have to be, though it looked and felt and sounded like the Last Day on earth.

  Crossing the bridge did not secure their safety. Just as the fire had jumped the south branch of the Chicago River, it leapt over the main branch as well. Just after three in the morning, word spread from behind Meg that the waterworks was burning.

  A fresh wave of bedlam followed. People shoved and cried and prayed while stray horses and cows ran among them. Rats passed under Meg’s skirts and around her ankles as the rodents sought safety too. They were surrounded by the river and the lake, but without the water pumps working, the water supply to the city stopped. What little restraint there had been on the fire was now gone.

  “Keep moving,” Nate called, as though the same urgency he felt did not burn within Meg as well.

  Meg’s scarf fell back on her head, and Sylvie pulled it forward to cover her hair again, then retied the ends of it beneath her chin.

  “Thank you.”

  It hurt to speak or smile or frown. Her lips were cracked and blistered, her throat a desert, and now every fountain was dry.

  The farther north they walked, the more it seemed that half the world walked with them, for the languages Meg heard besides English and the Irish brogue included German, Polish, Swedish, Czech, and Norwegian. All of them fleeing their homes. All of them homeless at once.

  Small groups of people peeled away from the crowd, until scores and then hundreds of them sought refuge by climbing into Lake Michigan. The water would be frigid this time of year.

  Nate, Meg, and Sylvie remained with the thousands heading north.

  “I shouldn’t have sent Father away.” Sylvie craned her neck, searching, then gave up a moment later. Dust layered everyone, disguising who they were beneath. “If we find him—”

  “When you find him.” Sweat trailed from Nate’s temples, cutting narrow paths through the grime. “He is nothing if not a survivor.”

  His confidence bolstered Meg, if not Sylvie. After all, Nate had been the last of them to see Stephen during the fire.

  “But he didn’t want to go.” Sylvie’s voice cracked. “He wasn’t ready. I pushed him too hard, just like you said, Meg. I don’t know if he’ll be able to forgive me. If I’d had any idea what the night would hold for us, I wouldn’t have done it. If anything happened to him . . .” She broke off, coughing on dust and soot.

  Turning, Nate looked over their heads toward the fire. His jaw set, he caught Meg’s eye and notched his head toward the north. “Keep moving.” The roar of the fire behind them was a constant reminder of what threatened.

  Meg put her arm around her sister’s waist and kept pace with him, ignoring the throbbing beneath her bandages. “We can fix this,” she said, her speech slightly altered by her thirst-thickened tongue. “Later. Soon.”

  Sylvie leaned her head on Meg’s shoulder. “I pray you’re right.”

  At last the sun rose on Monday morning. The fire was still burning at daylight, still too blinding in its brilliance to gaze upon, still a hound at their heels. Despite night’s veil being lifted, the air was so thick and the wind such a tempest that Meg could not see to the end of the block. A steady storm of sand lashed her face like bits of glass.r />
  The sunlight failed to filter through dust and powder, so the day remained shrouded and colorless. Hunger marked the passing of time as day melted into evening. Crossing through the old German and Catholic cemeteries, they came at last to Lincoln Park, a long stretch of land along the lakeshore. Thousands had come here before them, filling the park, and Meg supposed that hundreds, if not thousands, would arrive in their wake. Piles of furniture of every sort dotted the park: carpets, bureaus, deconstructed beds, tubs, clocks, chairs, and trunks.

  The pervasive mood was that of terror spent, though fire teased them still, burning up the fence along Clark Street, which bordered the west side of the park. Embers fell on dead leaves and flared up. Great plate mirrors leaning against trees reflected the illumination. The park was lit with uncounted fire balloons sailing overhead. Flames consumed the cheap pine headboards at the old cemetery and sometimes even burrowed down into the bone-dry soil so that even the dead were not left in peace. But the living watched from the grassless bank of Lake Michigan, having already come through the crucible.

  The fire had equalized them. Twenty-four hours after the flames broke out, Irish longshoremen, Swedish maids, and businessmen with clipped accents were covered in the same ash. A group of well-dressed people from a German saloon sang while a small congregation of Methodists held a quiet prayer meeting. All of them sat in the same dirt by the water’s edge.

  “Meg.” Nate touched her shoulder, and she turned to face him. Dust filled the faint lines in his face, calling out every care that framed his eyes and mouth. He looked like one of her sketches, in dire need of color. “Come. You and Sylvie can sleep now.” He gestured to a discarded piano box he had set on its side. “I’ll keep watch.”

  She tilted her head and studied this man, so recently a stranger. “Why did you come for us?” Her voice strained to mask the agony in her hands.

  He glanced at her bandages before lifting his gaze to meet hers. “Call it an overgrown sense of responsibility. Or a tendency to make other people’s business my own? An occupational hazard.” A smile cracked his lips.