by Tom Murphy
Brooks turned then, pivoting on his crutch, and made his way back to the head of the staircase, leaving small round tracks in the deep Axminster wool of the carpeting. He gripped the smooth round mahogany railing and lowered himself, tread by tread. He might as well have been lowering himself into his own grave.
Brooks noticed, as he let himself out, that she’d changed the lock. Then he was on the street again, hailing a cab for the short ride to Washington Square. The borrowed officer’s overcoat lay where he’d dropped it in the hallway. Brooks was beyond pain now, past feeling cold. The chill that was settling on his heart had no end: a kind of infinite numbness was settling over his feelings now, an emotional frost that could keep all the glaciers of the Alps in perfect, unmelting form forever.
The little maid at his parents’ house squealed with pleasure, forgot herself, jumped up, and kissed him. Brooks smiled, but it was a thin and chilly smile. The welcome had come too late. He’d picked the wrong house to come home to first. His parents were at tea in the back parlor. The Old Gent looked very old indeed in the flickering firelight, paper-thin he looked, and brittle, as if made of some rare and fragile blown glass. His mother, unchanged, pink-cheeked and vigorous, rose with a shout.
“Oh, Brooks, thank God,” she said, and fairly flew across the room to him. “We just got your letter, and we’ve been counting every minute.”
His father rose, and they embraced. All the Old Gent said was: “Welcome home, son.”
But that was enough. Brooks sat by the fire and was soon being plied with tea and little cakes and the ginger cookies he’d loved since childhood. Brooks felt all the warmth and tradition of his family home closing around him, comforting in its permanence. Some things, at least, didn’t change.
And when he had to tell them about Neddy, his parents gallantly made it easy for him. Having expected the very worst, they were quick to assure him his survival counted as the best and biggest of miracles. And never once did they mention Caroline.
Finally, after dinner, he brought up the subject himself. They were back in the parlor, the men sipping port, Mrs. Chaffee quietly sewing.
“I won’t,” Brooks said quietly, looking at neither of his parents but into the flames, “be going back to Eleventh Street.”
“You’ve seen her, then?” His mother’s voice was restrained as ever, picking up the words with silver tongs.
“I stopped by this afternoon.”
“We’re very sorry, Brooks.”
“Who is he?”
Mr. Chaffee had said nothing until Brooks asked this question.
He poked a log viciously, unnecessarily. “That,” he said bitterly, “would be one thing. I am afraid, son, that it isn’t just a case of ‘he,’ but rather, of they.’”
Brooks had no way to reply. He sat silently looking at the fire, wishing with all his heart that Neddy’s mortarball had come to Antietam with Brooks Chaffee’s name on it. “I had no idea. None at all.”
“There were,” his mother said softly, going right on with her needlework, “rumors, even before you left, but we do not traffic in rumors.”
No, Brooks thought, that was true: the Edward Hudner Chaffees were far above gossip, although obviously not beyond the reach of its insidious whispers. Brooks remembered Caroline coming out of Delmonico’s Hotel, her tale that she’d taken tea with a girl he was sure had been in Europe at the time. He thought of Caroline’s soft skin, and her smile, and the eyes so dark and filled with secrets. Secrets, indeed.
“I have only the clothes I’m wearing. Tomorrow we can send Perkins for what I left at Eleventh Street.”
“What,” asked his mother, “will you do?”
“About Caroline? I don’t know. Divorce her, I suppose, messy as that might be. I don’t want her dragging our name any deeper into the mud than she’s done already. But, as for this minute, all I can say is, I’m very glad to be home, here, in this house. And I’m very tired. We can talk about it tomorrow, can’t we? The fact is, I’m so upset by what’s happened, I just don’t know what I want. Except to sleep.”
He stood up then, fighting the pain, kissed his mother, and got himself to the stairs. His mother’s last words followed Brooks and chilled him more deeply than he thought words from those kind lips could ever do.
“Don’t think too much about her, dear: she isn’t worth it. She never was.”
The rebel bullet that destroyed his kneecap was nothing at all compared to the casual, vulgar, greedy means Caroline had chosen to shatter his heart. The feeling was beyond pain, for physical pain carried with it the promise that it might one day cease, and Brooks knew that the hurt he had suffered this day would haunt him and torture his affections until he died. For if what Caroline had been, and so lately, could turn so easily into what she now was, how could there ever be hope for any woman? And somehow his pain was more intense for finding out, at last, that his family had known about Caroline from the beginning. Caroline was the reason for the distance that had grown between them, between him and Neddy!
Slowly, dragging now, and no longer bothering to hide his handicap, he climbed the stairs. Down the hall he knew by heart. Past Neddy’s door. All the way to his boyhood room with its neat narrow bed, the banner from Yale, the school-books and novels, the rack of clay pipes he’d felt so grown-up smoking. There might be some old clothes still, or maybe some of Neddy’s. Wear Neddy’s clothes? A shudder went through him. That would be either a sacrilege or an honor. Can’t think about that just now, thank you all the same. No, think. It would be an honor. What would Neddy want? Surely if things were different, I would want him to use my things. Some possessions rightly ought to be shared, passed on. Some things. But decidedly, oh, most decidedly, not wives! His crutches clattered to the wooden floor, and Brooks hardly heard them fall. He sank onto the bed and slept at once, in his clothes, and for one merciful night he dreamt no dreams at all.
36
Lily looked up at the perfectly blue and cloudless sky and cursed it. Six weeks now, and not a drop of rain, and none in sight, not, surely, in this fair sky.
The spring drought of 1863 came riding in on the heels of a dry winter, and now it was apparent that this was a serious long-range unbalance of the normally well-watered coastal hills north of the city. Only the dew that trailed behind the inevitable morning fog left some small residue of moisture on the land. But cattle couldn’t drink the dew, nor crops thrive on it.
Lily and Fred Baker watched the new shoots of spring turn brown and curl in the relentless sun. The hacienda’s well was deep and generous, and gave enough water for the people on the huge ranch, and for the cows and sheep to drink. If the well held out. But they had never thought to make plans for such a drought for there had never been such a drought, at least not within the memory of anyone Lily or Fred had talked to. Sheep eat almost anything, but the cattle were another matter.
If there were no crops, then there could be no fodder, and the poor beasts would starve. Lily thought of her bank account at Wells Fargo, but even that was no consolation, for there was no fodder to be bought: each farmer grew what he needed, and in this drought they were all in the same sad predicament. Day by day, as spring wore into summer, the dust rose higher and the cattle grew thinner. Squads of Mexicans were sent into the highest hills to cut what grass they could, for the fog-shrouded hilltops still supported some green. But it was not enough, nor close enough to do any real good. Fred calculated they could hold out for another two weeks, cutting grass in the hills. Then, unless something turned up, they’d have to begin the slaughter.
Fred and Lily rode the length and breadth of the ranch, seeking everywhere, anywhere, for an answer.
There were two fine streams that usually came tumbling down from the hills. Both were dry now, parched and empty, expectant and sad to look at in their sudden deprivation. When the rains do come, thought Lily, we will build a dam up here, and a fine reservoir, and pipes down to the fields, so this will never happen again.
It wa
s a fine thought but small consolation as she and Fred sat on their horses looking down over the toast-brown hills to the immensity of water that was the Pacific Ocean, mocking and unusable. If only there were a way to take the salt out of the sea!
“Could it be done,” Lily asked almost idly, “to dig a great well up here, Fred, and pipe the water to the fields?”
“It’d cost a fortune, and with no guarantees.”
“Let’s try.”
The well diggers came two days later and stayed three weeks, and in those three weeks not a drop of water was found in their drillings, and not a drop fell from the unforgiving sky.
The dust was suddenly everywhere. Lily choked with it; it was all through the house, in their clothes, in their beds even. You couldn’t hang clean-washed laundry out to dry, for it would be coated with dust in ten minutes, fine brown dust light as air, dust that lined your nostrils and grated in your throat, dust that made plumes of dust smoke in every footfall, dust that made eyes red, that coated every needle of the pines and made the desiccated leaves on the thirsting eucalyptus look like something carved from the living earth.
Lily watched the cattle slowly starving, and it cut her to the heart. Was it for this that I worked and slaved and debased myself? To find this magic world and see it bake away before my eyes, as though the fires of hell itself were turned on me? Is it a punishment after all, a judgment on my wickedness?
Lily was in the kitchen, making tea, in the third month of the drought when Fred Baker walked in. She smiled, but thought: He’s changed too, he’s drying up like the land itself, poor Fred, he cares for it all as much as I do, and what can either of us do?
“Will you take tea, Fred, or something stronger?”
“What I would truly like is a fine cool beer.”
Lily dropped her spoon. Beer! She jumped up, realizing as she did so that Fred might think she’d lost her senses.
“Beer! Fred, that’s it.”
“If you haven’t any, tea’s fine.”
“No, silly, beer is the answer. The Japanese use it to fatten their cattle. We can’t buy fodder, Fred Baker, but we can buy beer.”
“Are you sure? I’ve heard of hogs eating brewery wastes, but they’ll eat anything.”
“No, ’tis true, I swear it. I read it in one of the British journals. Tomorrow, Fred, you’ll go into town and buy all the beer they can spare, thousands of gallons. You’ll see.”
Two days later a procession of heavily laden wagons began to arrive at the hacienda. Fred had bought forty thousand gallons of beer. A special trough had been knocked together in the cattle yard and lined with tin.
The cows and steers took to the beer like old-time topers. In a day Lily and Fred could see the difference. In a week, two hundred head of cattle had consumed nearly all the beer, and they bought more. The place stank of it. But cows that had looked like living skeletons, all ribs and empty udders, now waddled about, fat and happy and, Lily guessed, more than a little tipsy. Still and all, her inspiration worked. They lost not one cow. God knows what the brewers of San Francisco think we’re up to out here, she thought, as they ordered and reordered enough lager to float the navy.
But still the sun shone relentlessly on the parched, dust-haunted land. And still there was no rain.
After the third month Lily stopped going out much, for the sight of this land that she loved so well, in its present state, depressed her profoundly. Still, she would not give up. It was her little kingdom, and she would fight for it, and even die for it if that were necessary.
At the end of the third month—July—Lily walked over to the Bakers’ house one evening after supper to bring Mary some preserves Gloria had put up that afternoon, a special Mexican paste made from dried apricots, which was the only kind of fruit they had these days, and that imported from town.
Lily paused for a moment in the big courtyard, looking up at the dazzling summer sky, blue and—dammit!—cloudless, but beautiful all the same. It was then that she smelled the smoke.
Lily knew all the smells of the ranch, and she loved them all, even the most basic barnyard odors, even the stench of warm beer in the cattle trough, for these pungent smells reminded her of where she was and what she was building here. She stood still, wondering, her head already lifted back to see the stars. No, this was not chimney smoke, not from her chimney nor the Bakers’, and there were no other houses for miles.
Yet smoke it surely was, faint but a definite presence nonetheless. Of course, the woods and the hills would be like tinder after three months of no rain at all! First drought and then fire. Lily had heard of this pattern, but only remotely. Drought and then fire. Like the Bible it sounded, another punishment, then? Must she now roast in the very fires of hell?
She walked quickly to the Baker house and got Fred.
“You’re right, I’m afraid. Can’t hear her, nor less see her, but she’s out there all the same. Depends on the wind, Lily, it might not come our way at all, but if she does…”
“Why,” Lily asked from a brief trance of fear, “do you call fire ‘she’?”
“Always has been, like ships, and even the wind, for isn’t the wind a woman?”
She laughed, not a happy laugh. “You mean fickle? Really, Fred Baker!”
“We can’t take chances, Lily. The trees can go like torches in a thing like this. We’d best get the men up now, and dig a firebreak trench, and make ready to douse everything on the compound with water, and thank God the roofs are of tile.”
Lily stood silent, and looked at him, and nodded. Yes, of course, they must begin right away.
“The cattle are here, enclosed,” Lily began. “Can we send men after the sheep without risking our lives?”
“We can try. Stupid as those creatures are, there’s no telling what they’d do in a fire, probably walk right into it and volunteer themselves as roast lamb!”
“I’ll set up the kitchen. Let’s organize shifts, Fred, so that we’ll always have some men well-rested if there is a special need.”
Lily did not want to let herself think what that special need might be. Again she lifted her head and sniffed. She was sure the smell was stronger now. And wasn’t that a kind of a glow, there, off behind the tallest hills?
They felt the fire before they could truly see it. All night long Lily worked with Gloria and two helpers in the kitchen, baking bread, brewing vats of coffee, sending the younger servants out with baskets of food for the men who were even now frantically digging the firebreak.
The glow in the sky was very evident now, and growing. And the smoke was a presence like the morning fog, dense and pungent and threatening.
Soon a strange and frightening noise began to make itself heard on the ranch. It was a rushing, crackling sound all mixed in with a sort of unearthly wailing and short reports like gunfire.
“Trees,” said Fred Baker gravely, “exploding.”
There was a big stand of eucalyptus near the main ranch house, and Fred ordered it cut down. Lily thought to protest, for she loved the graceful trees and their strange heady smell, but he told her a new tree could grow far quicker than a new ranch house, and she saw the sense in it.
They baked their bread to the groaning and crunching of hand-saws and the dramatic crash of hundred-year-old trees falling. Still, thought Lily, it could be the saving of us.
Two great water towers served the ranch, and they were both near-filled. Fred’s plan was to wet down the buildings with wooden roofs if the fire came too close, and to dampen the firebreak with hoses and bucket brigades, the better to stop flying sparks. Within the compound itself, half the buildings were tile-roofed adobe and reasonably safe from fire. The newer outbuildings—the chicken coops and storage barns and the ranch hands’ bunkhouse—were all of wood and all vulnerable.
The firebreak was completed before dawn.
Before the first light of day came filtering through the hills, they could see the flames. There was almost no wind at all, yet the course of the fire
was obviously toward them. Lily looked out from her bedroom window, where she’d gone to take a brief rest, and thought: Wind or no wind, she’s burning everything that will burn. Lily felt the fatigue in her heart and in her bones, but an anger was rising in her that swept the tiredness away. By what right was she being punished? She bathed her face, grimy as it was with smoke, and sighed, and went back downstairs.
The flames were eating the foothills now, red and greedy, their thousand eager tongues lapping at the unresisting scrub, a slow but steady carpet of fire punctuated by great tall torches that had once been fine trees. It was the devil’s own army marching at them, and Lily feared for all their lives, for surely it looked invincible. Yet she trusted in Fred and his firebreak, and the water in their two storage tanks. And if we have to, we’ll feed it on beer, too, for there’s plenty of that!
The fatigue of an hour ago had been melted by her outrage. Lily found herself everywhere—in the kitchen gesturing with a wooden spoon like a general, with Fred at the firebreak seeing that there were enough buckets for his men, borrowing pots and pans from her own kitchen, shouting encouragement, cursing a recalcitrant horse, patting a waddling steer to ease it into the corral. There were thirty-seven ranch hands in all, and twenty of them were manning the firebreak.
They could feel the heat of the flames now, even as the day’s heat grew stronger. There was a hissing, crackling hell-fire sound to it, a noise like grease on a hot griddle, popping and snapping, a live and menacing presence coming straight at them, ravenous, deadly, untamed. For one bad moment Lily thought of running, of taking Katie and a horse and galloping for Tiburon and the safety of the bay. Then she looked at the activity all around her, at Fred urging on his men, at the men themselves, and their spirit, and even the poor dumb animals who seemed to be cooperating, if only out of fear. No, I’ll never leave, not while there’s a breath in me! And suddenly Lily felt herself smile. God hasn’t made the fire that will get the best of met She passed a bucket and then went back to the kitchen to see about lunch.
