by John Jakes
She laid the gun on top of her reticule, lifted her skirt and tore the ruffle from her petticoat hem. He carefully wound the cloth around Torvald’s back and chest to soak up the blood. Then he lifted the ten-year-old and put his ear close to the boy’s mouth. He felt the warmth of Torvald’s shallow breathing. How long they could keep him alive was anybody’s guess.
They hurried down the passage between the houses. As they stepped onto the sidewalk, Gideon felt the heat of the wood walk through the soles of his boots. More fire equipment had arrived. Directly across Taylor Street, cottages were burning. Streams of water arcing from the east and west struck the flaming houses, but with little effect. The fire seemed to be consuming the entire block to the south.
People were pouring out of houses along the north side of Taylor. They carried articles of clothing, framed pictures, piles of books, small items of furniture. Most of the people rushed in the direction of the river.
A shirtless hairy man staggered out of Ericsson’s rental cottage with a heavy chair in his arms. A wizened woman followed him onto the porch. The man made straight for Julia’s landau. Miraculously, the vehicle hadn’t been stolen though it obviously was about to be.
The terrified bays stamped and tugged on their tethers, their rolling eyes huge and red. Julia marched up to the hairy man as he heaved the chair into the back of the landau.
“Get that out of my carriage!”
From the first cross street to the west, a four-horse steam pumper thundered around the corner and slowed to a stop. A two-wheeled hose cart came rolling right behind.
The hairy man paid no attention to Julia.
“Are you deaf?” she cried. “Remove that chair this instant! We’ll take your children if you have any, but we’re not hauling personal belongings.” She pointed at Gideon with Torvald in his arms. “We already have one wounded youngster to take. And Mr. Ericsson—”
The man eyed Gideon, then looked at Julia again. Her reticule was in the same hand as the revolver and hid it. The man scratched his stomach.
“Well, ma’am, I hear what you say. But it don’t appear either of you people can stop me from moving whatever I damn please. Martha and I got no youngsters. We do have some valuable pieces which we aim to cart away in that buggy whether you like it or—”
Calmly, Julia shifted her reticule to her other hand. She raised the LeMat and pointed it at the man’s brow.
“Take that chair out of my carriage or I’ll blow your head away.”
The hairy man looked as if he might swoon. He staggered to the landau, removed the chair and carried it to the cottage porch. Then, with one more terrified glance at Julia, he shoved his wife through the front door and vanished.
iii
Gideon couldn’t suppress a smile as he laid Torvald on the backseat. Julia didn’t notice. She was in the street studying the sky, turning slowly from one quarter of the horizon to the next until she’d made a full circle. She walked back to him.
“Gideon, I’m no expert on such things, but this looks very bad. Just that one block of buildings between here and DeKoven Street is on fire. But the glare is already so bright, I can read the courthouse clock. And it’s a good mile to the northeast.”
She was right. From a few feet out in the street, the clock numerals were clearly visible. The houses on the other side of Taylor were crumbling and disappearing behind a rampart of flame more white than red. The heat was so intense, sweat poured down Gideon’s face. Paint was beginning to bubble on the front of the first Ericsson cottage. More fire equipment swung into the street from the intersection to the east. Soon two more pumpers were directing streams of water on the scorching, wind-tossed bed of embers that had replaced the houses on the south side.
Sparks rained down on Julia suddenly—a whole firefly cloud of them. Gideon leaped to her, jerked her against him, smothered the sparks with his hands. People kept streaming by, carrying everything from tabby cats to chamber pots. There were children fleeing with adults, and some by themselves, their faces confused and frightened. The din was incredible; he had to shout.
“I’ve got to find Ericsson.”
She nodded, then pointed. The roof of the front cottage was starting to burn. “Hurry!”
He ran along the side of the first cottage and in through the front door of the second. He glanced back, appalled at how quickly the fire consumed these wooden structures. Already almost the entire roof of the front house was ablaze—and as he stood in the dark hallway yelling Ericsson’s name, a scrap of blazing roof paper floated to the front stoop of this one. Almost instantly, the dry wood smoked, then burst into flame.
He thought he heard heavy trampling in a rear room. “Ericsson?”
Wind-driven smoke poured through the house. He coughed as he staggered along a narrow hall and looked in each room. The heat inside the cottage had risen fifteen to twenty degrees in less than a minute. As the flames spread, the smoke took on a cherry glow.
He stopped at the last doorway, on the east side at the very back. Inside he glimpsed a hulking form holding something white. He swallowed and wiped his stinging eye.
The west side of the house began to burn, the fire leaping out both horizontally and vertically at incredible speed. Smoke poured through open windows on that side, but there was enough light for him to see Ericsson with a silver picture frame under one arm and a yellowed wedding dress in his big hands. As he fondled the lace on the dress, tears streamed from his blue eyes.
“Ericsson, you’ve got to come out of here!” Gideon yelled as smoke hid the other man for a moment.
“Is that you?” Ericsson shouted.
“What?”
“Is that you, Helga?”
Gideon whispered, “Oh my God.”
“Helga, we must go find my sister. She may be in danger!”
Gideon darted forward through coiling smoke, touched the wedding dress—
Ericsson went berserk. He dropped the picture frame and flung the dress behind him. He battered Gideon’s head with both fists. Gideon was hurled against an old wardrobe. He struck his temple so hard, he nearly lost consciousness.
Snorting, Ericsson aimed a kick at his groin. It missed only because Gideon pivoted at the last moment. Ericsson’s boot hit his calf. Everything—the rosy light, the smoke, his lumbering, demented assailant—grew more blurred. He was afraid Ericsson would land a solid blow and leave him unconscious to die.
But the big man picked up the wedding dress, secured the framed photograph under his arm and blundered back into the hall—just as the lintel of the room opposite burned in half and fell. A heavy piece of it struck Ericsson’s head.
He staggered. His hair caught fire, then the wedding dress. Gideon rushed to try to save the other man but flames leaped between and drove him back. Coughing and gasping, he ran to a window on the east side of the house. He leaped through headfirst, nearly breaking his shoulder when he hit the ground. He managed to gain his feet and run toward Taylor Street. Behind him he heard Ericsson screaming his wife’s name in a fading voice.
The first cottage on the lot, almost completely burned, was starting to collapse as he passed its rear corner. Its side wall bowed outward, the boards splitting and crumbling into red ash. Gideon leaped out of the way. He bounced against the wall of the adjacent house, which had not yet been consumed. Bits of burning board fell around him but he missed being inundated by the worst of the fiery debris. Guided only by his sense of direction, he finally reached the street. He had to jump over the fire shooting up between the planks of the sidewalk.
“Gideon? Here!”
He followed the cry and, in the center of Taylor Street, saw an incredible sight: Julia standing in front of the landau, reins in one hand, revolver in the other. In the carriage, crowding every inch of space except the seat where Torvald lay, were children from age three to early adolescence. There must have been eight, ten, a dozen, hanging off the back, clinging to the footboards.
“’Twas the O’Leary dairy b
arn. I heard that for sure,” one youngster shrieked to another as Gideon dragged himself up to the seat and seized the reins. There was no protest from Julia. She took her place beside him. She leaned her head against his shoulder and held his arm.
“I thought I’d lost you. I collected all these temporary orphans, but I thought I’d lost you. I’m so thankful you’re all right.”
She sounded ready to weep, yet at the same time there was overwhelming relief—even joy—in her voice.
iv
Gideon whipped up the team. Julia brandished the revolver to drive off adults who wanted to take the children’s places. They drove a block east, then north toward the nearest bridge. The whole sky seemed alight, though only the area behind them was burning—no, there was a second large fire several blocks north. “That’s St. Paul’s Catholic going up!” exclaimed a boy in back.
“So it is,” Julia said in dismay. “It must be all the airborne debris—good Lord. I just remembered something else. The Bateham shingle mill is within a block of the church. Wood and more wood—”
Gideon veered the team and narrowly avoided a collision with another steam pumper racing in the opposite direction. They fought across a south branch bridge through terrified crowds. It took them the better part of two hours to reach the mansion on South State.
The servants helped unload the children. Some of them had been driven to safety with the permission of their mothers or fathers who had loaded them into the landau and then fled on foot. Others had lost track of their parents in the confusion and had just been plucked up from Taylor Street. Most of the youngsters were laughing and singing as if the whole outing were a lark.
Gideon carried Torvald to Carter’s bedroom. Ericsson’s son was still alive, but pale and barely breathing.
Returning downstairs, Gideon fortified himself with a good jolt of bourbon. He’d have laughed at Julia’s disheveled hair, sooty face and torn dress if the situation hadn’t been so grim.
“I’ve got to fetch this doctor of yours. Will you write the directions for me?”
“Oh, Gideon, it’s such a long way—”
“Yes, but the fire’s confined to the west side of the river.”
“So far.”
“Julia, the boy will die unless we get help!”
“All right, all right. I’m being selfish.” She avoided his eye as she added, “Thinking of you instead of him. Come into the library.”
He left his ruined waistcoat on a chair and rolled up the sleeves of his sweated shirt as he followed her. She sat down and began to write. He consulted his watch. A few minutes after midnight. He was exhausted. Parts of his hair and eyebrows had been singed away. His clothing and his skin smelled of smoke. He’d inhaled so much of it, his lungs hurt.
Suddenly a servant ran in—the man who’d been sent to the highest point of the house, the northwest tower, as a lookout.
“Madam, the fire’s leaped the river to the south side.”
Julia laid her pen aside. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, madam, I can clearly see something burning in the vicinity of the gasworks or Conley’s Patch.”
And the wind’s blowing northeast, Gideon thought. Directly across the route he had to take to the far north side. Well, it would be a devil of a lively story for the Beacon if he lived to write it.
While the servant waited, Julia handed Gideon the directions and in the next breath said, “Don’t go. We’ll find another doctor somewhere close by.”
“Do you know any?”
“No, but—”
“And your neighbors who are so fond of you—are they going to rush to help? Of course not.”
“But you saw the people in the streets, Gideon. They’ve gone crazy! You won’t get ten blocks.”
Quietly: “I will if I take my gun.”
Suddenly he responded to an impulse, squeezed her arm and kissed her sooty, sweaty cheek—right there in front of the servant. He murmured, “Don’t worry about me.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her face against his mouth. “How can I help it?”
How natural and comfortable it felt, being so close to her. But he was aware of the man watching, and drew away. A wry and weary smile hid his apprehension as he said, “I really have no choice about going. You were married to Louis long enough to know the Kents have a passion for lost causes.”
Then he went out into a night grown brighter than day.
Chapter VIII
Into the Inferno
i
WITH THE LEMAT in his belt, Gideon started up State Street in the landau. The grooms had changed horses, substituting a gray and a graceless but sturdy dapple for the spent bays.
The carriage clattered past Courtleigh’s. The place was shuttered and curtained like a fortress. Every window was draped. Only slits of light showed at the edges. A man crouching on the roof with a spyglass kept watch on the fire for his master.
Gideon hawed to the team, driving them on. A few moments after he passed the mansion he was overcome by the shock of all that had happened on Taylor Street, particularly the thought that he’d put a bullet into Courtleigh’s assistant general manager.
The shock deepened as he recalled Florian trying to crawl out of the barn. The man couldn’t have gotten far on his own. What had happened to him as the fire engulfed the neighborhood? The same thing that happened to Ericsson?
Gideon’s arms shook uncontrollably. His head swam. He pressed the sole of his boot against the brake for fear he’d careen the speeding carriage into a fence or gatepost. Then his mind took cognizance of what he had been seeing for several blocks—masses of people running south.
The flight reminded him of what he had to do. He’d worry about the possibility that he’d caused Florian’s death if and when Courtleigh raised the issue. It might never happen. Meantime, reaching the north side looked increasingly difficult if not absolutely impossible. Time and again he was forced to slow the landau to avoid the people swarming in the street.
As a boy in Virginia, Gideon had often heard his preacher father refer to Hell. He’d never quite believed in its existence, and his imagination contained only a vague picture of what Hell might be like if somehow it did turn out to be real. Now, just after one o’clock on the morning of Monday, October 9, Gideon beheld the best approximation of Hell he ever wanted to see.
The skyline of the South Side was alight with windblown banners of fire. Clearly the holocaust had leaped the river in more than one place. One immense arm of the fire was burning a few blocks west—the area of his hotel. Where he’d left the gifts for Margaret and the children, he thought with dismay. Further north, he could make out another big section afire, and in the center, the courthouse. That meant the business district was threatened.
The wind still blew fiercely from the southwest. The heat on his left side was scorching. The unbelievably bright sky was full of blazing wood, glowing ash, cinders, occasional clouds of oily black smoke, and great masses of windblown sparks. Gideon had never seen an effect as strange and lovely as that produced by the sparks. It was as if he were caught in a snowstorm in which every flake was lighted from within.
Julia’s instructions called for him to get to the north side via a pedestrian and vehicle tunnel running under the river at LaSalle Street. By the time he’d reached State and Van Buren, he was positive the courthouse was burning. He couldn’t travel up LaSalle, then. Doing so would take him directly into the worst of the fire.
Van Buren was packed with people, but perhaps he could turn right—east—in a block or two. He remembered his first stroll around the city. He’d seen a swing-bridge over the river at Michigan Avenue. He could go north and use that.
Everywhere the flurry of sparks was touching off new fires. He passed a two-story building with a copper roof, cornice and large windows on the first floor. Suddenly fire eating through the back of the building blew the windows outward with cannonlike force. Men and women around the landau screamed. A rain of glass fell on Gideon,
gashing his neck. One fragment narrowly missed his good eye as he fought to keep the team from bolting.
People packed the street, pushing barrows, dragging trunks and mattresses, lugging bundles of personal belongings. Several tried to seize the bits or headstalls of his horses. Others attempted to put their belongings aboard. Finally he had to draw the LeMat to keep them back. He drove with the reins wrapped around his right hand and the revolver in his left.
He made slower and slower progress. Hundreds, perhaps thousands were fleeing south along lower State Street. Although rapidly becoming a prime business thoroughfare, State still had a large number of small frame residences. A man wearing five hats stacked one atop another came running out the front door of one such house. He had a small girl in his arms. He spied the landau, fought his way to it and ran alongside.
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars to hire this rig.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do it,” Gideon called back.
“Two hundred. Five!”
“No. I need it to fetch a doctor for an injured boy.”
Crestfallen, the man limped away. Two of his hats fell off and were snatched up by people behind him.
Gideon maneuvered the landau around the corner to Jackson, heading east. He hoped Michigan would be less congested. He passed several saloons whose patrons were inexplicably celebrating—singing and capering in the street. At one such place, a frantic owner was trying to load his barreled liquor onto a dray. While Gideon drove by, one of the barrels slipped and rolled down the boards laid from the wagon bed to the street. The barrel split open. Whiskey gushed. Floating sparks ignited it. A river of alcohol flowed in the gutter, burning with an eerie blue flame. Revelers at first tried to dance in the stuff. When it set their trousers on fire, they yelped and reeled away.
Behind him, green flames shot from several of the copper cornices he’d seen earlier. The night was turning into a mind-numbing chaos of color and sound. He realized that ever since he’d left Julia’s, he’d been listening to a sonorous tolling’ without quite being aware of it. Now he heard it distinctly. The courthouse bell. Still ringing even though the building was burning down.
