A sigh slipped from her. “Then what on earth do I do about this? This is your newspaper, and the writer has slung mud at your name too. What are you going to do?”
Brow furrowed in thought, he ate the last few bites of his pie, swiped the napkin over his mouth, and wrapped his hands around his mug. “I’ll discuss it with my editor, but I stand behind my article. The writer of this opinion piece is anonymous, which indicates a lack of confidence. He or she refutes no facts from my article. There is nothing in my feature story to correct, so there’s no need to print any type of retraction.”
She leaned forward, nodding at his every word. “Will you respond to the accusations at all, in a rebuttal of sorts?”
“Miss Townsend . . .”
“Call me Meg.”
“Right. Thank you. Then you must call me Nate.”
“You were saying?”
He watched the steam rise from his coffee, choosing his words with care. “The things this writer said about your father . . . some of them are true. It may be best to let the letter die a natural death. Let the next day’s news eclipse it.”
“But I can’t imagine allowing it to go un—” She halted as the waitress approached and refilled their coffee, then carried their dirty plates away.
“Do you have a solution in mind?” Nate asked.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be here asking you for one.” Meg crossed her arms, clearly frustrated. A light sprinkling of freckles fanned across her slightly upturned nose, reminding him of his stepsister Edith.
Edith was Meg’s age but had been married for four years now and had two children just outside Chicago. Edith’s younger sister and brother had both remained with Nate until just this summer. Harriet taught school in a small town in Iowa now, and Andrew, only eighteen, had gone west to work on a railroad.
During the years he’d been their sole provider, Edith had often said they weren’t related to Nate anymore since their parents weren’t alive to make them a family. She’d been angry about how life had turned out for her. She missed her father and stepmom. He didn’t blame her. But he did gently tell her that while it was true Nate was not a blood relative, if he took them to the orphanage, the three siblings would likely be split among separate homes. It had been Edith’s freckles—an adorable spray she’d long since outgrown—that reminded Nate that underneath her surliness, she was just a little girl. One who had lost too much, too soon.
Freckles notwithstanding, the woman sitting across from him now was no little girl.
“Listen.” He ran his hand over his stubborn cowlicks. “You asked me for my opinion, and I gave it to you. Let it go. Don’t engage with an anonymous attack. I get the impression your father doesn’t read the newspaper. Is he around people who might bring it to his attention?”
Meg shook her head. “He keeps to himself.”
“So I’ve gathered. The people who know your family best will not believe what is untrue. If you’re worried about business suffering from the slander—don’t be. With Bertha Palmer as a patron, others will follow suit.”
With a resolute nod, she pinned her hat back into place. When she stood, so did he. “Thank you, Nate.” She shook his hand and smiled.
“You’re welcome. Now, if you will allow me.” He took the maligning newspaper from her. “I’ll put this rubbish where it belongs.”
Thankful the matter was so easily resolved, he bid her good-bye and wished her family well.
He meant it. The struggling Townsend family had touched a chord in him, more so than the other veterans he’d interviewed. In fact, he had half a mind to follow up with the Townsends later, to see how they were getting on.
But their welfare was not his responsibility. He’d had his share of that raising Edith, Harriet, and Andrew. At last, the only one he was truly responsible for was himself. Did he miss his stepsiblings? Sure. What he didn’t miss was the burden of knowing three vulnerable souls depended upon him for provision and guidance. While he’d invested all his spare energy to their upbringing, his coworkers had snapped up stories he didn’t have time to chase, and they still had time for leisure.
Now it was Nate’s turn to focus on his career, to sleep at night without worrying how to make ends meet. Maybe he’d even pick up a hobby—or at the very least, a good book.
The Townsends were on their own.
Chapter Four
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1871
The fire bell was ringing again.
Meg groaned. With this incessant clanging, her father wouldn’t be able to rest tonight. Again. If only he could, he’d be more at ease, more himself. But it was wrong of her, that her first thought should be for this small comfort, when others might be in harm’s way.
“How many strokes was that?” Sylvie asked when the last one fell away.
Meg hung her hat on the rack at the hall mirror. It was half past nine at night, and they had just returned from evening church services. “I don’t know. Let’s go to the roof to look.”
When they reached the tar-covered roof, they found their father already there. He had long since given up attending church, unable to bear the crowds.
“What do you see?” Meg asked him. Her corset pinched as she inhaled deeply, alert for the smell of smoke.
Stephen pointed south to a patch of sky glowing orange. “Looks to be the same area that burned last night, or very near it. It could be that the ruins reignited themselves.”
Meg squinted, trying to gauge both the distance and the intensity of the color, but it was a mere smudge of light scrubbed against the dark. It wasn’t near enough to bother them here.
A strong wind freed wisps of Sylvie’s hair from her snood, swirling them about her face. “I think it’s farther away than last night’s fire. Don’t you?”
“Can’t say.” Stephen wiped a handkerchief across his brow and struggled to stuff it back into his pocket. Fire agitated him from any distance. “I’ll stay here and keep a watch on it.”
“Are you sure?” Meg asked, somewhat mollified when she noticed he was not carrying his gun. It had been four days since the anonymous letter had been printed in the Tribune, and as much as she wanted to put it from her mind, she couldn’t. Whoever had seen her father on the rooftop—most likely their tenants—might be watching even now. “Won’t you come to bed?”
“Please, Father,” Sylvie added. She had seen the letter too, of course, and had been as upset as Meg. None of their customers had mentioned it, but more boys than usual had come by, spying through their fence. If Meg hadn’t suspected it would humiliate Stephen further, she would have burst into the yard and scattered the rascals herself.
His eyes darting from one rooftop to another, Stephen ran his fingers through his beard. “I’m sure I’m not the only one outside fire-gazing tonight.”
But the walk home from church had not shown a city concerned. It was a warm night, and the German beerhouses were full of merry singing. Promenaders, still in their Sunday apparel like Meg and Sylvie, strolled down sidewalks and through parks. If this evening was unusual, it was for its pleasantness.
Sylvie covered a yawn, then held her skirts to keep them from billowing indecently. “You can’t believe that our safety depends on your vigil. If the danger increases, we’ll hear of it.”
Reluctantly, Stephen agreed. As they all headed back inside, Sylvie’s shoulders relaxed.
Stephen’s didn’t. He went to the parlor and stared out the window across Court House Square. He did not sit, nor did he turn on any lamps. He mopped his brow again.
Meg approached him from the side, as she had learned long ago that to come from behind would startle him. “Do you need anything before I retire?” She raised her hand to touch his back and then, thinking better of it, curled her fingers into a fist and lowered it into the folds of her skirt.
He opened the window, and the hiss of gas lamps on the street below floated into the shadow-cloaked room. It looked like a stage set, without light, without movement, save the wind that ri
ppled the curtains. Stephen stood there, taut with suspense, like a player in some Shakespearean tragedy waiting for the curtain to rise.
He hadn’t had another episode since his breakdown at Hiram’s house a week ago, but a few times he’d teetered on the brink. If only these fires would stop and the fire bell with them! It was hard for anyone to function without enough rest. At some point, surely, his own exhaustion would overtake him.
As if he hadn’t even heard her question, he finally noticed Meg with a start, then whirled to find Sylvie waiting for her in the curtained doorway. “Why are you watching me like that?” His breath pushed hard against the thin wall of his chest. Coughing, he turned back to the window.
Without a word, Sylvie brought him a pitcher of water, poured him a glass, and left both on the tea table beside him.
“Good night, Father,” Meg whispered, then looped her arm through her little sister’s. When they left him, his coughing had ceased, but he had begun tapping the side of his thigh. “He’ll come around,” she told Sylvie in the hallway between their chambers.
“Get some rest,” Sylvie replied. “Tomorrow will be a big day for you.”
Fatigue weighted Meg’s limbs and eyelids as she slipped into her room. Since Wednesday morning, she had sketched and resketched the portraits for Bertha Palmer, her emotions swinging from jubilation over her new commissions and the opportunities before her, to lingering distress over the slanderous letter about her father. As she changed into her nightdress and collapsed into bed, her singular aim was to sleep long and soundly. Her luncheon with Mrs. Palmer was little more than twelve hours away.
Sylvie was right. Tomorrow would be a big day.
Smoke stung Nate’s eyes and choked his throat as he made mental notes for his story. Before him, Chief Marshal Williams wrangled a thin circle of engines around the fire that had started on DeKoven Street an hour and a half ago. Horses harnessed to the engines stamped the ground and flicked their tails, nickering.
By Nate’s count, there were five steamers, three hose carts, and a hook-and-ladder wagon, all pumping water into the fire from all sides. The streams hissed and boiled upon hitting the burning wood, sending up columns of white steam. Neighboring buildings were smoking, ready to ignite. The other firemen who had been called out had been sent to the wrong location.
“You there! All of you!” Williams shouted at Nate and the knot of spectators who had gathered. “If you don’t want this blaze to spread, do something about it!” He gestured to the wooden fences and sidewalks, all fuel for the fire.
They sprang into action. Taking an ax from a fire engine, Nate rushed back to the sidewalk, heaved the tool over his head, and brought the blade down into the planks until he could rip the pieces out with his bare hands. A man named Richard took the ax while he did so, hacking away at the nearby fence, while others cleared the wood away to a place Nate did not see, nor did he have time to consider. No longer a mere spectator, he threw himself into his task. Shards of wood must have cut his palm, for he noticed a trickle of blood. He didn’t feel it.
“Think they can hold it here?” Richard shouted over the roar of the flames. The fire had already eaten through five blocks.
Nate wanted to say yes but knew too much to believe that. Half of the one-hundred-eighty-five-man firefighting force had fought last night’s seventeen-hour fire in the West Division well into today. Then, as was their custom, they had unwound by drinking. After only a few hours of sleep, they’d been called up again. Only now they had to work without equipment that had been damaged last night. There had simply been no time to repair it.
Sweat rolled into Nate’s eyes, and with his wrist, he pushed up his spectacles before tearing at the wood again. It was warm in his hands and beneath his knees. Getting warmer. The fabric of his trousers ripped as he moved to a new section.
“The fire is getting out of control!”
Not slowing in his task, Nate looked up to find a former alderman by the name of James Hildreth shouting to Chief Marshal Williams what he surely already knew.
“What you need is a firebreak, a real one! Tearing up sidewalks and fences won’t do it. Blow up those houses.” Hildreth pointed to a row of them.
Williams’s eyes were bright in his soot-streaked face. “Just blow up those people’s homes? I don’t have that kind of authority.”
“This is an emergency,” Hildreth persisted. “Take emergency measures, man! A few will suffer the consequences in order to save one hundred times as many, maybe more. If you don’t blow up those houses yourself, the fire will devour them anyway.”
“Even if I wanted to, I don’t have powder.”
“I know where to get it!” Hildreth yelled.
With a forceful thrust of his arm, Williams shouted back, “Then go!”
Nate stood, surveying the wreck he and the other men had created, and knew Hildreth was correct. Against such a blaze, with the winds blowing as hard as they were, their efforts had only succeeded in getting the bystanders out of the way. He predicted the fire would come this way in less than half an hour, either by lapping along the ground or by sending firebrands through the air, landing on the rooftops. Evidently of the same mind, Richard returned the ax to the fire engine and fled.
Nate stayed. This was tomorrow’s front-page headline.
An updraft sucked pieces of burning cloth and wood into the air over the fire. A man’s burning shirt sailed into the sky, its sleeves outstretched as though reaching for help. Sparks landed on the remnants of the sidewalk and flamed up. Nate stamped them out, one after another. Other spectators did the same.
Legs planted wide, exhausted firemen sprayed water on the flames in what appeared to be a futile exercise. One of them dropped his hose, ran beyond Nate’s vision, and returned moments later carrying a wooden door, which he braced on the ground as a shield between himself and the heat of the fire. With the door leaning against his shoulder, he resumed hosing from behind it.
The door ignited. The firefighter leapt away when it burst into flame, jerking back as though burned.
“You’re next!” Nate shouted in alarm, still stomping out small fires himself. The fireman’s uniform had begun to smoke, and his leather hat twisted out of shape in the heat. “You’re catching!”
“Come out of there!” Williams called to the men. “Wet the other side of the street or it will burn!”
Nate and another man sprang forward to help reposition a cart while the fireman held the hose. Before they reached their destination, however, the water pressure dropped to a trickle. Nate’s nerves began to unravel. “What happened?”
Face grim and as slick as melting wax, the fireman pointed. “That steam engine just arrived and took my hose from the water plug so he could use it himself.”
Though more powerful, the steam engine didn’t get to their position fast enough. Nate watched as five houses across the street blazed up. Chief Marshal Williams bellowed in frustration.
The smoke made it difficult to breathe. The constant sparks landing around Nate, and on his clothing now, made it a feat to concentrate. Helplessly, he witnessed another steamer malfunction, rendering it without water as well. A quick repair recovered the stream, but not long afterward, an old section of hose burst, and the water stopped again, this time for good.
Williams scrambled to reposition the working engines that were left, but the wind had shoved the fire well past his men. It was pushing the flames northeast, racing across the wooden sidewalks Nate and the others had given up on. As the tongues of fire spread, nothing stopped it. Everything in its path—fences, trees, chicken coops, outhouses, clapboard houses—was consumed.
By now the updraft was even stronger, lifting flames hundreds of feet in the air, turning the sky a lurid orange. Policemen arrived, and more citizen-volunteers, who frantically set about tearing down sheds and fences. This time, Nate didn’t join them, convinced the fire was too far gone to be contained by such efforts.
Glowing embers fell like red snow
on his hair, his shoulders, each one a stinging needle digging into his flesh. He slapped at the sparks as soon as they landed, all the while committing the scene to memory.
“The river will stop it, at least,” said a man behind Nate. The south branch of the Chicago River flowed between the West Division and the business district.
But no sooner had the hope been uttered than the steeple of St. Paul’s Church caught fire. Through clouds of smoke, Nate watched as showers of sparks blew through the sky, arcing directly into the heart of the city.
The fire was jumping the river.
Sylvie awoke to a pounding on her door, then listened as the noise echoed on Meg’s down the hall.
“There is devilment afoot.” Her father’s voice registered a constrained alarm.
Stepping into the hall, Sylvie found him pacing. “What’s wrong?”
The courthouse bell was ringing—without stopping. Church bells, too, sounded the alarm. An unnatural light spilled into the parlor. Sylvie ran to the window and peered out. The streets were full of people, all of them looking up, looking south to an orange sky as bright over that section of town as the morning sun.
“What is it?” Meg joined her, still rubbing her eyes.
“It’s—it’s the fire. Is it . . . ?” Sylvie leaned over the sill, as if that would help her get any closer to answers. Where exactly was it? How fast was it moving?
Stephen stood behind her. “It’s coming,” he said. “Mark me, it is coming this way.”
“You’re sure?” But her pulse was already galloping, telling her to run.
On the street below, a few fingers extended into the sky, pointing at something Sylvie couldn’t see. Then more people joined the first to observe. It wasn’t until she heard the screaming that she realized what it was. “Cinders.”
Meg gasped. They were falling like giant grey snowflakes all over Court House Square.
“It’s coming,” Stephen repeated, almost as if in a trance.
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