When We Caught Fire

by Anna Godbersen

  The door was flung open, and the heels of Father’s boots clacked against the floor. When he saw their cozy postures he paused, and his shoulders flared. Fiona stepped away, straightening up in a hurry.

  Father grunted and buttoned his jacket. “Fiona,” he said tersely. Her name never sounded as pretty when he said it. “What is taking so long?”

  “The dress could not be dried off, Mr. Carter. We had to put Emmeline in a new one, and that meant—”

  Father silenced her with a hand gesture. “I don’t need the details.” After that, he seemed not to see Fiona. His attention became fixed upon his daughter. “Emmeline, you are being very rude. All of Chicago is here to see who Frederick Tree is marrying, and you’re hiding in your bedroom. They will think you were raised wrong.”

  I was raised wrong, Emmeline was ready to say. That was the argument she always made when she was at odds with Father and wanted to get her way. “But—”

  “Miss Carter.” His voice went low and raspy, as it did when he would not be disobeyed. Such was their game. He averted his gaze and gripped the doorknob, opening the door to indicate where she should go. This angered her—but she knew that when she was willful with Father, Fiona was often in trouble with him later.

  “Oh, all right.” She pulled her skirt away from her feet. Fiona was holding very still, and Emmeline rolled her eyes and flounced out of the room to show her she need not be afraid. Emmeline hated it when her friend felt afraid. She did not acknowledge Father until she had passed the second-floor landing and felt his fingers on her arm, twisting her so that she was forced to turn toward him.

  “Listen to me, Emmeline,” he whispered, gripping her arm. “I held this luncheon for you, so that you might be introduced to a better class of people. Every last person whose opinion matters is downstairs wondering where you went off to, guessing at what has gone wrong. And hear me, they’d love for something to go wrong. It would give them gossip for the rest of the year. But I didn’t sell my family farm, didn’t buy this house, didn’t pay for tutors to give you a finishing worthy of a princess, so that you could sit upstairs giggling with Fiona.”

  “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

  His hair, silvery now and kept respectable-looking with pomade, had become disheveled. That was how she remembered him looking sometimes when she was a little girl. He was slimmer then, but broad as ever. His temper used to come on quick whenever he sensed he might be wronged. After he sold most of his father’s homestead to the railroad companies to build stockyards on—the land was swampy, and never yielded much—he built a hotel where farmers stayed when bringing their hogs into the city to sell for slaughter. Often, a man would drink too much and get in trouble at the card table, and Ochs Carter would show that he was not to be cheated, snarling and threatening to call his man at the Pinkerton Detective Agency if the bill was not paid promptly. As a little girl, Emmeline had found her father’s moods frightening, but he had seemed to mellow with age, and she had not seen that volatile version of her father since they moved north of the river.

  “I’m sorry.” He released her. He sighed, and went on. “When my father came west there was nothing here, an old fort and less than a thousand people. But he was born into a fine family back east, and we will be a fine family again. Everything depends upon this week being perfect. Next year, there will be other newcomers, and we will be the people whose favor everyone strives for. Don’t you want that?”

  Emmeline glanced in the direction of the first floor, where a procession of rich fabrics in bright colors was passing out of the parlor and toward the dining room. The staff was leading the guests into luncheon. They prattled on, oblivious to the fact that their hosts were standing at the top of the stairs. Soon they would be seated around the many tables that had been decorated with arrangements of purple hydrangea, being served iced tea and lobster salad, waiting for her return. It was her dream of what life should be, it was everything she had worked for over two long years. “Of course I do.”

  Just then Freddy ambled into the foyer, and Emmeline remembered how handsome he was in blue. The fearful, shrinking moment had passed, and with it the longing for old comforts. The world was so much more than she had thought. She only wanted to stand next to him and have everyone admire how well they complemented each other. She smoothed her skirt and touched the diadem, to make sure it was in place.

  “Frederick!” she called, and descended a few steps.

  “Oh,” he said. He swallowed when he saw her form in the new dress and a smile broke on his face. “Where have you been?”

  She smiled back. “Getting ready. Did you miss me terribly?” she asked, descending the stairs two at a time, hands outstretched for him to take.

  Four

  What hustle and bustle! What excessive wealth and degrading poverty! What a lot of speculation! What giddy building up and ruthless tearing down! What a lot of railroads, wheat, hogs, gadgets! Chicago—I have never seen anything alike to her. The whole of her civic enterprise is built on a swamp, so they simply lifted it up, bricking the streets with pine blocks, raising sidewalks of plank. The residents call it heaven, but I should say it reminded me more of that other place.

  —Lord Rathbone, Travels in America

  The lake was a dreamy blue and the clouds were shaded peach by the low sun when Fiona slipped down the back stairs and cut through the stables toward Clark Street. It was all very lovely, and all very melancholy, she thought—a picturesque view always just out of reach. Emmeline was sleeping off the afternoon’s excitement in her bedroom, and the door to Ochs Carter’s second-floor study had closed, signaling he was not to be disturbed. The cook and her assistants were cleaning the lower regions of the house, and Malcolm, who had been Mr. Carter’s man in the old neighborhood too, was nowhere to be seen. Although it was understood that Fiona had permission to visit her family one evening a week, she did not like to bring attention to her leaving. It was a privilege the rest of the household staff resented. This time, however, Fiona was at least able to justify herself with the notion that she was acting on Miss Carter’s behalf.

  Misery thickened in her throat every time she thought of Emmeline’s request, but she had no choice but to do as Emmeline wished. She tried to tell herself that she had waited a long time already, that Emmeline’s desire to tell Anders about her wedding was perfectly sensible, that it would be done soon and everything might still end just as she hoped. And yet, she had been friends with Emmeline a long time, and lived by the general principle that what Emmeline wanted, Emmeline got. If she should decide she wanted Anders again . . .

  Fiona tried not to think that way. Anyway, it was unlikely. Since she was a little girl, Emmeline had possessed hair of spun gold and high cheekbones and a regal bearing as though she knew already she was destined to arrive in the fancy world. Here the air was full of leaves, and from the top floors of the elegant mansions you could see vessels on the water, the small sailboats out for pleasure cruises and the big steamers bound for New York or the Mississippi. Tasteful wrought-iron gates told passersby that only the right kind of people were allowed inside. In the old neighborhood, blocks like these seemed as far away as New York, as far away as Dublin. But, in fact, only a few miles separated them from where she was born.

  Soon she was in another place. She smelled the river before she saw it, and approached the bridge with a sleeve covering her face. The river contained the refuse of the whole city, all its hustling and all its secrets, and in the years she had lived as Emmeline’s lady’s maid, she had become accustomed to rooms with big windows and a cross breeze. Once she was on the far side, the buildings she passed were taller, and they cast long shadows and left cold canyons in between. Men wearing brimmed hats hustled in and out of double doors. She walked fast and kept her head down, so that she would appear like any maid: invisible in her long black high-necked dress. The big bell at the courthouse rang seven o’clock. A few blocks later she turned west.

  When she saw the ship
masts of the south branch rising above the rooftops, she knew she was home. The buildings were low again, two or three stories packed close together, as though they had gone up in a day. This was where she had been born. These structures seemed to her as permanent as monuments, although they were quite the opposite.

  The alley down which her family lived had recently been bought by a shirtwaist manufacturer, and would be razed to make way for a factory. She couldn’t really believe that the tenements she’d known all her life could disappear like that—and in any case, everybody was acting as though things would go on, always the same, on this particular evening. Families soon to be displaced spilled onto the ramshackle wooden porches, enjoying the warm fall night air.

  “Fiona!”

  Running to catch up was her younger brother, Jack. He threw his arm around her middle jauntily, and they continued on together. “Hello, my darlingest,” she said. “How was your day?”

  “Good. There was a murder last night.” He grinned up at her. “Sold a lot.”

  When Jack shouted headlines telling of city hall scandal and barroom violence from street corners he sounded tough, like he knew of what he spoke. He’d be nine in November, so perhaps he did. Fiona hoped not—Jack was her favorite. Even so she couldn’t help but feel a little relieved that he’d had a good day. She brought an envelope for her family every week, but always worried that her parents weren’t saving enough for the inevitable move.

  “Since you know all the gossip, tell me this. Have you seen Anders around lately?” Just saying his name aloud brought blood rushing to her cheeks, and she couldn’t help picturing a future where they sat on porches together at the end of day.

  “He’s at Jem Gallagher’s every day now. There’s a big fight tomorrow, everyone’s been making bets.”

  “He’s fighting at Jem’s already?” Fiona felt betrayed somehow. She knew that Anders had taken up boxing, but he never talked about it much, and it surprised her that he’d be in a fight like that, with the whole neighborhood speculating on the outcome.

  “Don’t act surprised. He’s the best boxer around. Things keep happening even if you aren’t here to see them.”

  “Of course. I know that. But it was only a month ago I saw him. . . .” Was it longer? Her sense of time was skewed when it came to Anders. Although she could not remember the exact day, she knew all the details—she had been carrying an armful of irises and day-old bread that the Carters would otherwise have thrown away, and he had called out to her from a doorway and insisted on carrying her spoils home. “I think you’ve been avoiding me,” he had said with a glint in his eye, and she had hoped he meant something significant by it, and hoped he did not, for her desire for everything to be settled with Emmeline and Frederick before he kissed her again was absolute. He had asked if they could take a walk soon, saying there was something he wanted to talk over with her. And she had grabbed the bread and irises back from his arms and said yes, but that she was very busy, and it would have to wait. “He didn’t mention anything about a fight.”

  “That’s Anders Mag—doesn’t brag. Lets his fists talk.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s been around, though, asking after you. . . .”

  She wanted Jack to tell her more, wanted to know what he meant by that, exactly, but they had arrived home, and their mother, as though sensing her children’s approach, flung open the door and ushered them inside. “Hello, Ma.”

  “Hello, my Fiona.” Her mother drew her into her arms, and on into the front room of their first-floor flat, which was redolent of stew. “You shouldn’t have,” she added, as always, when Fiona handed her the envelope with that week’s earnings.

  The front room was the main room of the house, and always seemed crowded with wooden furniture. Her father had built the furniture himself, for their previous apartment, and when he lost the arm working for the railroad, they had been forced to move to a smaller place—he could neither make the same wages nor build furniture that would fit this room. His hair had gone white in the last year, and this made his eyes more vividly blue. “Hello, Fiona dearest,” he called to her, and she went to him and kissed his forehead.

  “Have you heard from the shirtwaist company again?” she asked her mother, coming around to the stove and lifting a bowl to help her ladle out their supper. Every week she expected the new landlords to have sent out eviction notices.

  Her mother’s eyes glistened and darted. “No,” she said. “Why are you thinking of that? It may be another ten years before they build that factory, and in the meantime they are happy to have our rent. Don’t frown, Fiona. Even if they do, well, perhaps you could get a job there, and then you would not be so far away from us all the time.”

  Fiona’s chest tightened, and her thoughts became an anxious jumble. Of course she could get a job like that, but her family would still be out of a home, and where would they get another one, and she would make half as much in a factory, and the work would be twice as hard, and all day she would have to imagine Emmeline off somewhere in gowns from the dressmaker that cost a whole year’s wages—and what kind of choice was that?

  “But please, let’s not talk of that now,” her mother whispered. “We have so little of you as it is.” Fiona looked at the wooden table, its wear less visible in lantern light; at her middle siblings, Kate and Brian, sitting expectantly; and Jack with his cap hung on the back of the chair. Upstairs, the neighbors could be heard dragging chairs up to their evening meal.

  Fiona wanted to protest that they must think of the future, but decided that for this evening at least, her mother was right. Tomorrow would have its way no matter what they did. What could she do but make as much as possible with the Carters, and be ready when they had to find another place? Tonight the room smelled pleasantly of wood burning in the potbelly stove, and the lantern’s flame cast everything a cozy shade. In the morning she would go to Anders—not to tell him, as she had long planned, that it was she who could make him happy, but as Emmeline’s emissary. The prospect unsettled her stomach. She was frightened, and she also couldn’t wait. But for now there was only this room, there was only her family. “All right,” she said, setting the bowl of stew before her father. Steam rose up, bringing wetness to his eyes, and he raised his hand to give her shoulder a pat.

  That night, while Fiona slept in the old room beside her sister, Kate, the city went about its ceaseless business. The barges arrived off the lake and the grain elevators began to fill up for the cold months. In the all-night churches voices surged together in hymn while the saloons filled with men who would be glad a little while, and sorry tomorrow. At half past two, a fire broke out on the South Side, and the local alderman dressed in a hurry to ring the alarm. By the time his signal came through, however, the watchman who perched high up on the courthouse cupola had already spotted the blaze through his binoculars, and guessed the location.

  The watchman’s name was Gabriel, and he was related to Anders Magnuson on his mother’s side, and he had a natural affinity for the city map, the pattern by which the streets fit together even as they stretched out to the prairie. He was at ease on high, unlike in the neighborhood where he and Fiona and Anders grew up. There, people were rarely what they seemed—the grocer took bets, and the butcher was a murderer—and though the area was only, practically speaking, a few blocks wide and a few blocks long, it was a whole world, dense with the hundreds of lives trapped in its hovels, the alleys crooked and illogical, the rules ever-shifting. Gabriel’s guess was accurate, and the Maverick Hook and Ladder Company had arrived and managed to douse the flames before they spread beyond a single building. The criminals locked up in the courthouse jail, six stories below the cupola, never even knew of the disturbance, nor did most of the city, and it was only later that the little blaze took on any significance. It was still early morning, three days before everything changed. Only afterward would people make much of the fact that there had been a fire every night that first week of October.

  T
he hours passed peacefully and the men who lived in shanties down on the banks of the south branch went about their night fishing in the deep darkness before dawn, noting a shooting star that hung briefly against the eastern sky, and disagreeing on whether this was a good omen or bad. Morning came, much as it ever did, and Fiona woke with the same thought as everyone else in Chicago: Today was going to be like yesterday, and unreasonably hot.

  Ordinarily, Fiona would have risen early and returned to the Carters’ just as the cook was lighting the kitchen fires. But instead she dressed with care in her siblings’ bedroom, as she would to play the part of Emmeline’s maid, and walked through the neighborhood at an hour when she should have been at work a long time already. Although Jem Gallagher’s was legendary—mostly as the cause of many an argument between husband and wife in the neighborhood—she had never gone herself. She wandered, trying to remember which alley it was down, her heeled boots clip-clopping against the sidewalk’s wooden planks.

  When she saw it, she wondered how she could have ever been unsure. The place had a flat front, no windows, and a big sign with the proprietor’s name nailed above the entrance.

  The black dress she wore had made her feel pretty before, but inside Jem’s the fabric seemed too fine, the waist and bust too fitted, and she wished that she had not done her hair the way she sometimes did Emmeline’s, in an elaborate, upswept bun with wispy waves framing her face. The row of men sitting along the bar inside Jem’s saloon watched her, curling their lips, and one spit on the floor, where it was absorbed in sawdust.

  “I’m looking for Anders Magnuson,” she said to no one in particular.

  “In the back,” called the barman, not glancing up.