by Alan Gratz
“Fourth Avenue to Union, then Broadway south!”
“No, Broadway will be jammed! The Bowery.”
Felix pushed with all his strength, but the cart had to stop as often as it started. Everywhere men and ladies poured into the street to see the smoke, making the already clogged avenue even worse. Cartwright rang the bell on the wagon and they nudged on, sending curious gawkers scurrying for the sidewalk.
And then they hit Union Square. The traffic was at a dead standstill.
“Make way! Make way! Emergency!” one of the firemen called.
But no one could move. The streets were so hopelessly packed it was almost impossible to cross the square on foot. Horses reared in the close quarters. Carriages scraped the sides of cabs and omnibuses. Men yelled obscenities at each other. Across the square a fistfight broke out. Cartwright gave the bell an angry clang and slapped his hat on the tank. Through the tree-lined hills of Union Square, Felix could see their destination—the open expanse of Fourth Avenue south of the Bowery.
“Mr. Cartwright,” Felix called. “The park!”
At first Cartwright didn’t understand, but then he nodded and smiled at Felix and went to work again on his bell.
“Let us through! Make way! Push on to the park, lads!”
It took them a full quarter of an hour to ford the frozen river of carriages the short distance to the corner of Union Square Park, upsetting an apple cart and managing to turn another carriage completely around on the way. Felix wondered if they’d just made things worse, but it was the fire, not the traffic, that mattered now. The closer they got, the more Felix worried the fire was in Kleindeutschland. The entire skyline to the south was grayish black.
At last the Knickerbockers pushed their engine up the curb into the wooded expanse of the park. One or two of the stranded drivers close by cursed them, but Felix thought they were probably just sore at not having thought of it first. With a heave, the volunteer firefighters started their shortcut across the square. A couple of the men near Felix gave him smiles and patted him on the back.
The smiles soon turned to scowls, however, as none of them had ever reckoned how difficult it was to run up a park hill with a cast-iron tank. Felix dug in with his good shoes and gave it all he was worth, and with great effort the brigade slogged its way up and down the rolling hills of the park. An explosion to the south—a gas line, one of the men guessed—brought screams from the ladies caught in the throng of carriages around the square. Felix redoubled his efforts. There was another sea of vehicles to cross when they reached the other side of the square, but like a needle through leather they eventually found their way through, and the angry glares from the volunteers became smiles and weary pats on the back again.
South of Union Square Felix and the Knickerbockers were back at a trot, the streets clear of everyone now but rescue workers. Everyone else had fled farther north.
“The size of that smoke cloud, three or four buildings must be on fire,” one of the company guessed. “Perhaps a whole city block.”
The sky was black as coal as they drew near, and to Felix’s relief it wasn’t Kleindeutschland that was on fire. It wasn’t three or four buildings that were burning, though. It wasn’t even three or four blocks. All of lower Manhattan was on fire. Local fire brigades were already on the scene, and more poured in from all over the city: First two, then five, then nine, then fourteen, and more, but Felix began to despair that there would never be enough. Buildings burned down Water Street as far as Felix could see.
The heat from the flames was blistering as the Knickerbockers searched for an unoccupied cistern to drop their hose in. The air itself wobbled, as though the fire was melting it. Against the overpowering heat was the strange sensation that it was snowing, and Felix watched as burned-out cinders the size of quarters fell on everything, turning the Knickerbockers’ bright blue uniforms to the color of thick gray ash. He could taste it too; it was like he had licked a stovepipe. The heat and the ash made Felix’s eyes water, but his tears evaporated almost as quickly as they came.
The Knickerbockers pulled to a stop as the blaze rose from the roof of a five-story building beside them. The wind off the East River carried the fire like swirling leaves across the street, where it set the canvas awnings of another building ablaze. Suddenly the fire brigade was not on the edge of the inferno, but inside it.
Felix spun. Fire was everywhere around him and he panicked. His family seemed very far away from him now, more than a passenger ticket away, more than an ocean away. He felt sealed off from his family back in Bremen by a wall of flame, and for the first time in his life he thought he might die before seeing his mother and father again.
A hand on his shoulder stopped his spinning.
“Keep your head,” Cartwright told him. “I never meant you to come this far, lad, but I’ll see you safely home.”
The Knickerbockers pushed on to William Street to escape the blaze, but the air there was too thick to breathe. One of the men collapsed, choking and gasping, and Felix helped haul him up onto the cart before they retreated to Hanover Street, where one of the company knew a cistern could be found. No brigade had yet laid claim to it, and the Knickerbockers pried off the lid to the underground reservoir and snaked down their hose. Two of the brawniest members of the brigade took to the hand pump, and soon water was gushing through the network of hoses Felix helped put together. Water splashed from the nozzle into the broken windows of a clerical office, but after half an hour it was obvious to Felix that they weren’t doing any good. If anything, the fire was getting worse.
From the look on Cartwright’s face, he thought the same thing.
“The fire’s too strong,” he yelled over the clang of the bells, the rush of the water, and the roar of the flames.
“What can we do?” Felix asked. His skin was coated with a thick film of sweat, and his tongue tasted like burned matches.
“Maybe farther back—Wall Street, or Pine—”
Glass shattered and rained down on the sidewalk as the fire ate its way down through the floors of the warehouse behind them.
“The dry goods!” Cartwright yelled. “Salvage what you can before the buildings collapse!”
Men traded out places at the hand pumps to keep the water coming while the rest of the brigade smashed their way into warehouses with axes and hooks. Felix stood back, waiting until the doors were knocked down and the entrances sprayed with water to rush inside with the others. The first storehouse Felix entered was filled with bolts of cloth—suit material like the kind he ran back and forth to Lord & Taylor. He and Cartwright began heaping the stuff in the middle of the street. Rolls of cottons, woolens, and silks joined bags of coffee beans, mounds of lace, stacks of paper records, bottles of liquor—anything and everything that could be saved.
Conditions grew worse and worse. One team barely escaped a vicious backdraft. Another became trapped when a second story fell in, and the men had to be rescued with axes.
“That’s it, young squire,” Cartwright told Felix. “You’re confined to the wagon.”
A man in a fire chief’s hat rode up on a horse before Felix could argue.
“The fire’s out of control, Mr. Anderson,” Cartwright said. “We’re doing all we can to save the goods in these warehouses, but—”
Felix saw the fiery piece of debris fluttering down toward the pile of stores in the street before anyone else, but there was nothing he could do—nothing any of them could have done. The moment it touched down the lace caught fire, then the cotton, and almost at once the mountain of dry goods was a blazing bonfire that drove them off the street.
“Fall back!” the fire chief called. “Retreat!”
The fire truck was trapped on the other side of the pyre, but the pumpers ran it through, singeing themselves and the cart in the process. Cartwright and the others turned what was left in the tank on the boys who’d come through the flames to make sure they were extinguished, and then everyone fell back to Wall Street.
“The glow and the smoke are so strong that crews from Philadelphia and New Haven turned out in their own suburbs, thinking the blaze was in their own cities,” the fire chief said, his horse dancing backward, the only one among them with the sense to run. “The Pennsylvania and Connecticut crews telegraphed to say they’re on the way, but they’ll not be here in time to prevent the conflagration from jumping Wall Street.”
Felix knew what that meant. Lower Manhattan was all businesses and warehouses, but beyond the road where a real wall had once stood were residences. Apartments. People. The thirty thousand souls who called the island their home. If the fire blew north, it could overtake City Hall and the Five Points slums. If it blew to the northeast, it might spread as far as the crowded tenements of Kleindeutschland—Felix’s home.
“Powder then?” Cartwright asked.
The fire chief nodded. “Some of the boys are already rowing across to the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, but they may not be in time.”
“We’ll round up what we can from the groceries,” said Cartwright.
“Godspeed,” Mr. Anderson told them, and he rode off to find the next brigade.
“We need powder, and lots of it, lads!” Cartwright announced to the Knickerbockers. “Take it from wherever you can, and meet back here!”
Felix ran with Cartwright, ignoring the command to stay with the wagon.
“Powder, sir?”
“Gunpowder. We’ll blow up the buildings that have not yet caught fire and deprive the inferno of its fuel.”
The idea sounded crazy to Felix. Fight fire with gunpowder?
They found a grocery on Pine Street and another on Nassau where they collected small amounts of gunpowder. What he knew to be only a few minutes’ run felt like a lifetime to Felix, the heat and howl of the fire at their heels like some kind of wild animal. Soon though they rejoined the other Knickerbockers, and the buildings up and down the block were divided up by team. Cartwright took their small barrel of gunpowder and Felix followed close behind.
“We’ll want to place it near a supporting column,” he told Felix. “We need to bring the whole building down before the fire reaches it.”
Felix held the cask while Cartwright broke down the door with an axe. Inside it was dark and cluttered, with crates and boxes stacked on the floor and behind counters.
“Can we at least empty the stores first?” Felix asked.
“No time,” Cartwright said. “If any of these buildings catches fire before they all go up, none of this will do any good. There—there’s a post near the back. We’ll put the gunpowder against that and—”
And Cartwright was gone, dropping from Felix’s sight with a cry and a cracking thud. Felix felt a foot step off into nothing, then caught his balance and stumbled back before he fell. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the large black hole in the floor.
“Mr. Cartwright!” he called. “Mr. Cartwright, are you all right?”
There was a soft moan from below, then a match struck, illuminating Cartwright’s pained face.
“Basement storage,” he grunted. With the light, Felix could see ropes dangling on pulleys. The hole was built to haul crates up from the hold below.
“Do you—do you need me to pull you up?” he asked.
Cartwright shook his head, wincing. “There’s a staircase. Near the back. But I think I’ve broken my ankle.”
Felix worked his way to the rear of the building, sliding one foot in front of him the whole way to avoid any more pitfalls. He set the cask of gunpowder by the support beam and found the stairs, taking them two at a time. Cartwright waited for him at the bottom. Felix helped him to his feet and supported him as they climbed back upstairs.
“We’ll have to send someone else in to light the charge,” Cartwright told him. “I’ll never be fast enough like this.”
Explosions thundered nearby as Felix helped Cartwright hobble outside. Clouds of wood and dust blasted from the collapsing structures, shattering the windows and shredding the awnings of the buildings on the other side of the street. One by one the warehouses came toppling down into heaps, the fire behind them flinching back from the detonations.
Felix dragged Cartwright into the lee of an alleyway across the street, and together they watched as bright sparks landed on the roof of the building they’d just escaped.
“Hurry—tell the men—”
Felix plucked the box of matches from Cartwright’s vest pocket. “No time!” he called, already running back toward the building. Cartwright yelled for him to stop, but Felix knew that by the time they could find someone else to run inside and light the charge it would be too late. The line had to be drawn here, now, and like Cartwright said, if one building survived, the fire would push through.
Felix dashed inside, slowing around the hole in the floor and then running to where the small powder keg sat on the floor. It wasn’t enough to let the fire outside reach the explosive and blow it up—by then the flames would have spread from rooftop to rooftop and crossed Wall Street to the businesses and homes on the other side. It had to be done now, and it had to be done quickly.
Felix eyed the long fuse on the keg, then bent it double so it would ignite twice as fast when he lit it.
“I am the fastest boy in Manhattan,” Felix whispered. “I am the fastest boy in all of New York.” He struck a match and readied himself like he was a runner on first base. “I am the fastest boy in America.”
Felix lit the fuse and ran. He ran harder and faster than he had ever run in his life. The fuse hissed furiously behind him. Felix made the turn around the hole in the floor like he was rounding third base and he sprinted for the dim light of the front door like it was home. He was almost there, almost there, almost—
The blast lifted Felix off his feet and threw him into a headfirst slide over the sidewalk. Ace! Felix thought, and then he hit the ground and his world went black.
3
Felix awoke in a strange room and a strange bed. A dim light came in through the lone window in the wall and Felix blinked, trying to focus his eyes. The first thing he saw was Uncle Albert’s face.
“Worthless boy,” Uncle Albert said. He smiled softly.
“Worthless? This boy? He very likely saved the city.” Felix turned. Alexander Cartwright sat on the other side of his bed, holding a cane.
“Do not overstate the matter,” Uncle Albert said.
“Where—?” Felix tried.
“The Brooklyn City Hospital,” Cartwright said. “Or what will be.”
Felix saw now that there were three other beds in the small room, all with patients in them. He tried to sit up, but pain in his stomach and legs pushed him down again.
“Don’t stir,” Uncle Albert said. “You’re still unwell.”
“The explosion caught you as you ran through the door. It threw you all the way across the street. Do you remember?”
Felix closed his eyes. He remembered flying through the air—scoring an ace.
“The building?” Felix asked.
“It came down in time,” Cartwright said. “The fire was contained, but it’s been burning for days.”
“Days?”
“You’ve been unconscious for some time,” Uncle Albert said. “Your aunt Jenell has been very worried about you.”
“Though she hasn’t been the one at your side day and night,” Cartwright said. Uncle Albert blushed, something Felix had never seen before, and he stood with his hat in his hand.
“My legs feel strange,” Felix said. “Cold.”
Uncle Albert put a blanket on Felix’s legs. “I—I must go and tell Jenell,” he said. “She will want to know you are awake.” Uncle Albert put a hand to Felix’s shoulder, then left quickly. Cartwright stood with the help of his cane and went over to the window.
“It’s still smoldering, you know. They say the smoke plume can be seen two hundred miles away. It’s all gone now. The last of what was New Amsterdam lays in ruins.”
“New Amsterdam?”
Felix had no idea what novel Cartwright was talking about, but it didn’t matter.
“I wonder how many Knickerbockers there really are left in New York,” Cartwright said. “Everything’s changing so fast. I imagine everything that burned down will be replaced within a year. Newer, bigger, better.”
“Your leg, sir,” Felix said. “Is it greatly injured?”
“What, this?” Cartwright said. “A sprain. I’ll be running the bases again in no time.” Cartwright caught himself, as though he had said something he hadn’t meant to, and turned again to the window.
“Your uncle tells me you stowed away to come here, young squire. That you ran away from home. I wonder, were you running to America, or away from something there?”
“Both, I suppose,” Felix said. “Things were so bad in Bremen. No work, no food. And everyone said there was both in America, that a man could make his fortune here, no matter where he came from or what he started with. My father had no money to come, so I ran away and hid on a ship. I came here to work and make money and earn enough to bring my family over so we could be happy again.”
“Do you regret it, coming here?”
“Oh no! I miss my family, but I’ve almost saved enough to bring them to America, and then I can show them Broadway and the fine ladies in their dresses and the pigs and the five-story department stores—and baseball!”
Cartwright laughed. “I think maybe baseball is America. The spirit of it, at least. Something we brought with us from the Old World and made our own, the way we made this country.” He turned from the window. “I’m getting ready to run away myself, I think. West, to California. They say the hills are full of gold.”
Uncle Albert came back in then, bringing Aunt Jenell with him. She smothered Felix in her embrace.
