The Bully of Order

by Brian Hart

  “Someone ring the bell,” Hank said. “We got a fire burning down the Arctic Hotel.” He threw Gendle over his shoulder and strode off toward the telegraph office. No one moved.

  “Get Chacartegui then, you fuckin idiots,” Tartan said. “We can’t have the whole town burnin up.”

  The bell started ringing and filled the streets with panic. And why wouldn’t it work out? Tartan thought. At least for a little while. Why wouldn’t this pay? The smoke looked brilliant as it blackened the sun. He strode off happily with the painting tilted hugely onto his back.

  Duncan

  I woke alone in the shed, with a milky yellow sun pouring in. I’d walked Teresa home some time after midnight and then came back to the shed to sleep, not wanting to walk all the way home or be there when Matius returned. The bells were ringing. There was a fire. I heard footsteps on the gravel path outside and sat up just as Macklin came through the door.

  “Duncan?”

  “Reverend.”

  He studied me for a moment and then gestured for me to stand up, to hurry. “And your boots. Get on your boots. You’re coming with me.” He passed me a shovel and emptied the tools from the wheelbarrow in the corner, and I held the door for him as he wheeled it outside.

  At first I thought they’d been burning slash and that maybe it had spread and taken a house or an outbuilding because the smell was wrong for pure timber, but when we rounded the corner of the church I saw the Arctic Hotel engulfed in flames. One building among hundreds, one match burning inside of a box of matches. Macklin went bowlegged and elbow-wide down the road, the empty wheelbarrow banging and clanking, and I followed him with the shovel on my shoulder, knowing that there was nothing to be done about a fire that size until we were looking at rubble. People were out of their shops and houses, and they filled the streets. I abandoned the shovel to help Macklin load people’s belongings from the nearest of the rooming houses into the wheelbarrow and haul them into the relative safety of the road.

  By ember the fire jumped from the Arctic to Walker’s saloon and then crossed the alley to the Olympus. The flames flapped raggedly in the wind and Macklin and I watched while the jail caught fire and the deputies let the prisoners out and put them in the bucket line. Chacartegui arrived in time to see the firehouse catch flame. He was interim fire chief, since Grosso had died in a well collapse. He couldn’t find the key to unlock the pump, and his little gang of firemen in their blue coats and red hats were antsy to get to work. The law star on Chacartegui’s chest shone uselessly. Ben and Joseph spotted me with the wheelbarrow—Macklin had disappeared, and they had me help them load Bernice Travois into the barrow, still in her rocking chair, and Joseph wheeled her into the street. The old woman had lost the ability to talk. Ribbons of drool slung off her chin. I still remembered her giving me the bread the day my mother died. When we set her down, I leaned in close and whispered into her ear, “I’m sorry that I was ever rude to you, Miss Travois.” She smiled up at me and patted my hand. Ben pinched her ear and stuck out his tongue, and the old woman smiled at him too. Mean as a snake.

  Joseph was yelling to come on. Chacartegui and the firemen wheeled the hand pumper to the end of Hume and sank it in the river. The sheriff caught us gawking and waved us over.

  This was no longer about the Arctic Hotel and the Mack Building or even the whole of Hume Street; it could spread up the hill; it could burn the whole town.

  “Look,” Chacartegui said. The water tower was burning, going up like a rolled newspaper. He had tears in his eyes. Ben and I stepped forward and took our turn at the pump.

  “You better not have had anything to do with this,” Chacartegui said to me.

  “With what?” Ben said.

  “This fire. I’ve heard Bellhouse’s name and Tartan’s, which means you two were nearby.”

  “I was sleeping,” I said.

  “I’m deathly afraid of fire,” Ben said.

  “So pump, or I’ll feed you little goujeers to the flames like pitch wood.” The shield bearer strode off to who knows where. He was a good man, so they said, but a bit of a merganser.

  The pump was gushing water all over our boots and pant legs.

  “You think it’ll stop? That it can be put out?”

  “I think she’s set to burn us all to cinders,” Ben said. A look of mischief crossed his face. “We’re combing the hair of a dead man.”

  Just then there was an explosion and the flames jumped Heron Street and the State Bank was burning. Two firemen came forward to spell us. We scanned the masses for Joseph but couldn’t find him. Ben called his name a few times and whistled, but the roar of the crowd and the wind building inside the flames drowned him out, just a wild place to be, and the heat was enough, even where we were standing, two hundred feet away, to warm the buttons on my shirt to the point they felt like they’d burn me. We went to watch the bank burn.

  “You think the money’s still in there?” Ben said.

  “Where else would it be?”

  “If it’s locked in the vault, it’d be like an oven, wouldn’t it? They won’t pull any hard currency outa there, just dust.”

  “Coins’d melt.”

  “Can you believe this, Duncan? Look at it.”

  The fire kept going north up G Street and the north side of the river, sending up neat curtains of smoke hemmed with flame. They’d raised the bridge, and ships were lined up like ducklings to leave. Ben and I made our way through the crowd and the mess of furniture and precious items vomited from the now-burning buildings and watched a few of Chacartegui’s men dynamite John Young’s place so the fire wouldn’t make it to the hospital. I don’t think anyone was thinking it would work, but it did. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. Ash rained down, and if you stopped to notice and peer through the waves of rolling smoke and tumult, it was sunny out there behind the chaos. A perfect sunny day. If only it would rain.

  Joseph found us, and him and Ben started grabbing what they could carry from the piles of belongings in the street. I took a pistol in a holster from a table, but Macklin saw me and pointed, so I put it back. Joseph was wearing four coats and two hats. If we were older or even a bit slower, I believe we would’ve been shot.

  The opera house was on fire, and Ed Hulbert’s. Men were drinking bottles of beer and some of the whores had a tit hanging out and looked swagged on something harder than lager. We stopped and watched Central School burn for a while. We’d all gone there at one time or another. Doc Haslett used to walk me to the door and wait for me after so I wouldn’t skip, but I’d go out the window first chance I got. The fat doctor couldn’t stand cleverness, so that’s all I gave him. Double helpings.

  We trudged up the hill. The big houses looked unburnable, but the pitchy gems caught the light, dripping from the siding and fascia, a thousand wicks.

  Charlie Boyerton and Oliver were in their yard with a dozen others, filling buckets from the yard pump and hauling them up a ladder to wet the roof. Mrs. Boyerton and Teresa were nowhere to be seen.

  Oliver spotted me and waved, so I passed through the gate and shook his hand and asked if I could help. Joseph and Ben hadn’t followed me and were already gone. Oliver’s eye patch had a long brown hair stuck to it. We hadn’t spoken for some time, and I’d grown half a foot taller than him. Mr. Boyerton was watching me. He knew who I was from Oliver, and I suspected he might know who I was from Teresa as well. We were different species, and the way he looked at me I felt I was still dwelling in the mud, burping at the moon, while he was strolling the esplanade. Such is the oppression of the young Occidental.

  With shame flickering in my heart I joined the bucket brigade to soak the roof shingles and found my place halfway up the ladder. Through the tall windows on the second floor I could see the portraits on the stairway wall. Grandfathers and great-uncles, uncles and cousins, no necked hatchet-asses in black suits with canes and hats and watch chains, posing, all of them dead in the War and otherwise. Teresa told me that Oliver was the end of the line
and judging by the paintings that seemed about right.

  The wind changed and the smoke rolled over us, and I had to tie my kerchief over my face to keep from choking. The rivers wouldn’t save us, and neither would the sea.

  Dr. Haslett told me once about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He wasn’t there, but he’d read all the reports. Black bricks and burned dogs, ash, all that was left. No place to sleep or even rest. He said in the end the city benefited from it, like every now and again a body benefits from a fever or a good sweat.

  Teresa passed in front of the window. She was dressed to go outside and carrying a small purple suitcase. Miss Dalgleish, the housekeeper, was with her, carrying two more. I yelled to her, and to my surprise she turned and saw me and after a worried moment she finally smiled and pressed her palm to the window. Miss Dalgleish hauled her away down the stairs toward the back of the house. When I looked down to catch the next bucket, Mr. Boyerton was looking up at me, short, squat, and from my angle all of two feet tall. It was a low, dirty feeling that passed over me, because I wanted the man to like me. I needed him to, or my life would turn away from where I planned it. Away from Teresa. Oliver was watching his father. The buckets kept coming, and the water sloshed all over and soaked my clothes. The uniformed brigade, led by Chacartegui arrived, and we all climbed down from the roof and ladders and helped them drag their big pump to the cistern in the back of the house and unroll the two hundred feet of moldering hose they’d brought with them. The sheriff put two men on the pump and they got to work and sprayed down the porch and the bushes on both sides of the street. They looked ready to face whatever came up the hill after them.

  I stood with Oliver in the yard and watched what was left of the town below be swallowed by smoke. We couldn’t do anything but wait. Boyerton had left to check on his mill. I wished I had talked to him before he’d left, but Oliver would have to do.

  “Where is she now?” I asked.

  “Father put her and Mother on a boat.”

  “Why aren’t you with them?”

  “I need to stay and make sure the house is safe.”

  “I heard you got a girlfriend.”

  Oliver blushed and looked away.

  “Who is it?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell.”

  “She pretty?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Does your father know?”

  “It’s not his concern.”

  “Does he know about me and Teresa?”

  “No.”

  “But you do.”

  “I’ve known for a long time.”

  “You wouldn’t say anything, would you?”

  “It’s not my business.”

  “I’ll do right by her. I swear it.”

  “I plan to do the same by my Mabel.” He was squirming with his unique version of glee, and he would tell me who it was if I asked, Mabel who? But I didn’t. I didn’t care, not that much. I’d find out anyway eventually.

  It was that the town was burning, the Harbor was burning, and that I could’ve chosen a better time to square with Oliver. His father would hear about me and Teresa soon enough, if he hadn’t already. It didn’t matter. The smoke was rolling out over the water now, like a storm, yellow and gray and black. This was a catastrophe. Hundreds would be homeless tomorrow. We’ll never be the same after this, said somebody nearby. I’d thought of Teresa as a fire once, a burning house. It seemed a long time ago when I was scared of her. I couldn’t imagine feeling that way now. Ships were all adrift and moving out, an armada in retreat. The Harbor was burning, and when I looked at Oliver, he was smiling, trying to hold it in, but his one eye was clearly shining with what had to be joy.

  Jacob and the Hermit Kozmin

  I’d cobbled together a shanty. Water dripped from the waterlogged shingles like honey from thin-sliced black bread. The land was unclaimed. Wind blew through one wall and slapped loose paper to the other. I didn’t poach or rage or trespass and was therefore left alone. The door was open, and the rain dribbled down on the roof and the two sailcloth tarps covering my woodpile. There was an oilcan under the eave, near the wall, and every minute or so a big wet drop would go plekink against its side. I counted it as my clock, and time went faster in relation to the storm, which was acceptable, although contrary to my experience. For the drop to form, a capillary draw was required. This of course was aided by the leaks in the roof, which relied on gravity alone, but there under the eaves, the rising and the falling drips met and formed a drop. I thought of this as being symbiotic, as it should be, not as failure, as it was.

  Someone was coming out of the forest. I closed the book I had open on my lap and nodded a greeting to the shadowy figure, said: “Evening, Cossack.”

  “Greetings, Dr. Ellstrom.”

  Kozmin, covered in clay mud, had three dog salmon strung on a piece of rawhide and looped around his belt. He untied them one-handed and stretched an arm and threw them onto the woodpile, and then removed his hat and showed his wild gray hair, ducked his head and came inside. My furniture was a couple of row seats that I’d hauled off from the burned theater on Heron Street and a table I’d made from a stump and a slab. Kozmin picked up the closed book, sat down, stretched his legs before him, and farted.

  “A man who never farts loudly will never live well,” he said.

  “Then you live well, Kozmin, often.”

  “I do. You look as awful as ever, Doctor.”

  “I don’t keep a mirror.”

  “I have a question.”

  “Ask it.”

  “Why don’t you cut off that filthy sack of shit hangin from your chin?”

  “My beard?”

  “Filthy sack of dirty shit hangin from your chin. I can smell it from here. Jesus.”

  “Who created all the heavens and earth.”

  “So they say. So they say.” Kozmin produced a kerchief and rattled and shook the pluggage from his nose. “The city burned.”

  “I was there.”

  “I didn’t see you. Were you haulin water or lootin?” His eyes darted over the features of my face.

  “Neither.”

  “How’s a city to burn if you go and do somethin to stop it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Fuckin tragedy. Nice of you to stand by.”

  “We do what we can.”

  “Little succor that.”

  “You can little succor this.” I grabbed at myself, and the old hermit smiled toothlessly.

  “Bellhouse did it, you know. Set off the Arctic to hide his murdering. He’s apparently the proud owner of three miles of Northern Pacific track.” Kozmin tapped the side of his nose with his index finger.

  “That won’t last long.”

  “I wouldn’t guess it would take long to squeeze a lifetime’s worth of wages out of those rails.”

  “No, a solid month would do.”

  The oilcan dinged, and we both looked at it. Kozmin studied the source of the drip, waited for another, then spoke.

  “What of the War?”

  “Which is that?”

  “It’s been two years since I seen you last. Your friend Perlovsky told me you up and joined the Oregon Volunteers.”

  “You saw Perlovsky, when?” The two of us had been sawyers together in the redwoods, but he’d disappeared one day. I pulled on the saw and he didn’t pull back, ten feet of tree between us. When he didn’t answer to his name I hopped off my springboard and circled, but he was gone. Never returned to the camp.

  “In the spring. He was in Willapa Bay with the oystermen.”

  “I thought he was dead.”

  “He thought the same might’ve become of you.”

  “I unjoined my regiment not long after joining it.”

  “They let you do that?”

  “They do if you volunteer.”

  “Did you make the trip across the ocean?”

  “No, I quit while we were garrisoned in San Francisco. They hadn’t even given us rifles
yet, or pay.”

  “They say it wasn’t much of a fight. The paper said that.”

  “Tell that to the Spaniards swimming in the wreckage.”

  “Someone had to lose,” Kozmin said.

  “Funny you saying that to me.”

  “Not that funny.”

  “I know. I know it’s not.”

  He opened the book and thumbed a few pages. “I saw your boy the other day.”

  My heart like a fat toad leaped into my throat. “How’s he keeping?”

  “Honestly, I think he’s destined for trouble.”

  “Is he living with the Parkers?”

  He gave me a hard look. “Ain’t been stayin there for years. They kicked him out. He’s with yer brother as far as I know, gettin pummeled if’n he gets caught.”

  “If he’s breathing, I’d say he’s doing fine. He’d like to kill me, you know.”

  “Maybe it’s time you tested his mettle.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bring him up again.”

  “You’d appreciate it? Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “A courtesy for being in my house.”

  The hermit laughed like only a mad hermit would. “I know who I am, Jacob. I’m a man that gets drunk and pisses himself a few times a week. I’m not welcome most places. The whores won’t even have me. Not interested. Keep your money, they say. You need it more than me.”

  “Your point is?”

  “You’re givin us hermit types a bad name. With that goddamned beard and the rest. You’ve turned into a rotten swamp goat, is what it is. What I see at least. You’ve gone garbanzo, friend.”

  “They still want to hang me for what I did.”