Dottie stirred a little cinnamon into her tea and breathed in the scent. Her expression mellow, she leaned back in her chair and made a steeple of her fingers. Her eyes twinkled. Al liked her this way, without the pressure of working at the boarding house the entire day. Of course, he’d liked her the other way, too. The silence built, but like something good, and Al felt the knots in his shoulders stretch out a bit.
“Are you saying you’d be willing to live in my drafty old barn, Dot?”
That wonderful dimple appeared in her left cheek. “I’m saying that drafty old barn holds a lot of your family history. Why, your father was born in that house. And you can’t deny the oak flooring is second to none in town.”
“Nope. But it’s curving more and more. You probably haven’t noticed, but the living room floor is cattywampus. We’d have to bring some hefty machinery to straighten it out—stretch it somehow. That would cost a fortune.”
“Still, your dad was born right in the downstairs bedroom. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s a fact, and his eight brothers and sisters. Can’t believe they’re all gone now—even Dad’s baby brother, Uncle Sam.”
“I remember his wife—Myrna, wasn’t that her name? She and Sam took in Howard and Lizzy Froy when they lost their parents in that flood over in eastern Iowa. Kindest couple in town.”
Al reached over to squeeze her hand. He was about to compliment her on her great memory when the front door burst open, and she scrambled from her chair.
“Dottie, is Al here?” Two sets of boots thunked in, and male figures swathed in heavy coats and hats met them in the dining room. Why, it was George and a younger fellow—one of the Bell brothers. The storm had laced them in white head to foot.
George’s hair stood on end when he took off his stocking cap. “You’ve gotta come right away, Al. There’s a fire over at the school.” Al grabbed hold of a chair back, a fire of his own roaring through his gut.
Dottie ran to the kitchen for his coat and boots. He put them on in a couple of hops, and as the men retraced their steps, he looked into Dot’s eyes, since she’d stepped right in front of him.
“Your face is too white, Al. What is it?”
He closed his eyes for a moment. His sigh quivered from the depths, but this was no time to give in to the onslaught inside him.
“Pray, will you please? It’s almost ten, and they hadn’t called school off yet for the storm when I came over here.”
The lines of her face froze in comprehension. “Be careful.”
He leaped into the back of the car, and George twisted in the front seat. “I’m not on the department, but it’ll be all right if I help, won’t it?”
“Sure.” Al’s hands shook so violently, he had trouble getting his gloves on, but the warmth of Dottie’s hand on his shoulder and the feel of her lips on his cheek still lingered. He clung to those sensations as Nigel Bell accelerated into whatever lay ahead.
****
“We have to keep those sparks from dropping on the Byerlys’ roof. The wind’s in exactly the wrong direction.” Henry Olson, smelling like chicken feed and feathers, edged up to Al.
Heston’s volunteers had already arrived—that was a good thing, since the Sternville pump truck could only handle so much, and between loads, the fire might move at will. Al’s heart beat so wildly he wasn’t sure he’d be the best man for on-the-line work.
Del, perspiration draining down his temples into his fire coat, waved him over.
“Keep the older guys from doing anything foolhardy, Dad.”
He hurried back to his position on the hose line, his comment grinding in the pit of Al’s stomach. Old guys? Why, Del had been only a youngster when the newspaper office burned, and it was the old guys who saved the day.
No use fanning that flame with real flames surging from the east side of the schoolhouse. Harm Byerly’s place and Ruth McPherson’s could use whoever else wasn’t on the fire line.
“You’re right. Henry, George, let’s do something about Harm’s roof.” Henry lit out and soon returned back with three more men.
“Let’s open those two front windows and wet down the porch shingles—the water’ll turn to ice, but that’s better than dry shingles.”
Nobody argued, so he led the way. Mabel opened the door and shooed them all inside. “Don’t know why things like this have to happen on such awful cold days.”
“We need to wet down your front porch roof. That all right with you?”
“Do whatever you need to.” She opened her mouth, shut it, and tears sprang into her eyes. “You think our houses might be in danger?”
“Better to be prepared. We need some pails.”
“In the basement, this way.” George followed Al down the stairs. “Mabel, where’s Harm’s toolbox?”
“Down there, too.”
George wrapped the ungainly hose around his shoulder and hurried up the stairs while Al searched for pails. Mabel met him in the kitchen, her scrub mop in hand.
“Sorry about the mess.”
“It’s all right. Gives me something to do.”
Men pounded, and muttered at the front windows. “Caulked shut.”
Al dropped the pails and ran to a side bedroom to look out. A spark burst into flame on the porch roof. He scampered back into the hallway and yelled. “Knock ’em out—a spark’s already caught out there.”
Glass shattered. Mabel appeared in the doorway. “You broke—?”
“Flames are catching on your roof already.”
She swayed. Al caught her elbow. “Don’t worry. Del has plenty of glass down at the hardware. Maybe you should go on downstairs for a while.”
Her lips pursed. “I’m okay. Pay me no mind.”
“Your children?”
“They all went to school—I imagine the teachers herded them into the west side when the fire started.”
Al raced into the bathroom, where George had the nozzle hooked up to the bathtub faucet. He guided the ungainly thing down the hall.
“Good work. Go ahead, I’ll turn the faucet on.” Water sprayed when Al turned the knobs, so he tightened the nozzle. The sizzle of water on hot shingles sent a shiver through him.
He’d better check the bedrooms—how many children did Mabel and Harm have? This old house, built around the same time as his, contained simple furniture—beds and dressers handed down over the generations—memories and whatnot.
Another spark shot up not three feet away from the first, and the men sprayed it down. Al concentrated on breathing. He wiped his forehead, surprised at how wet it was, and flashed back to a time long ago and far away—a time he’d tried hard to wipe from his memory. He clenched his teeth against the recollection and kept his eyes off the schoolhouse. It was all he could do to remain standing.
“Keep up the pressure, Henry!” George’s animated voice brought him back. He stuffed down his emotions. They’d better check Ruth’s roof—she’d be terrified by now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dottie hated to do it, but she rang one long ring on the telephone to summon Hilda. The operator’s breathless response hinted she’d been dying for a call.
“Got any word on the fire yet, Hilda?”
“It’s still raging. Elmira Peterson stopped in here on her way from there, Dottie, and it’s awful, purely awful. They got all the children out—the flames are confined to the east end, so far, so that would be the elementary. First, second, and third grades on the first floor, and on the second, the fourth, fifth and sixth. But there’s smoke everywhere. Oh my. I’ve got a grandson in fifth, you know, Val’s his name, and—”
“Yes, I know, Hilda. But I wondered how many fire trucks have come—any from out of town?”
Several rings vibrated in the background.
“Why, of course. Heston and a couple from Mason City, even. Can you believe that? It’s a massive conflagration. I don’t recall a fire this big in…maybe twenty years, and I heard, too, that some men are over wetting down th
e roofs of nearby houses—”
“Thank you. You’d better answer your other calls.”
An image of Al wielding a fire hose and climbing a ladder straight up the side of the schoolhouse gave Dottie a sick feeling. She hung up and grabbed her coat. She couldn’t stay here when he might be in danger. Besides, there must be something she could do. She called down the basement stairs.
“Bonnie Mae? Would you mind coming up here?”
Bright red hair flashed around the landing corner. “What’s up?”
“I finished browning the chicken fried steak and set it on the back burner to simmer. The potatoes are almost ready to mash—think you can handle dinner? I want to go over and check on the fire.”
“Sure. I’ve got everything under control.” Bonnie Mae brushed back her unruly flock of curls. “You don’t need to come back, Dottie. The weather’s so awful, and Helene won’t be back ’til tomorrow.”
“You’ll call me if you need me?”
“You bet. Be careful out there.”
The temperature must have warmed the slightest bit, because freezing rain pelted when Dottie stepped out. By the time she reached the west end of the schoolhouse on Sixth Street, she sloshed through a mountain of icy slush. Before she could make out anything more than indistinct figures on the Byerlys’ roof, something told her Al was involved.
The knowledge seeped through her, as had a similar kind of knowing the week before Doc Schulz diagnosed Owen’s condition as terminal. That was a long time ago, and she hadn’t sensed that kind of thing since. Rounding the corner, she faced Ruth McPherson’s house. A hatchet broke through one of the windows situated above Ruth’s front porch, and the chopper wore a brown coat just like Al’s.
Dottie splashed close enough now to recognize the men on the Byerlys’ roof. One looked like Mr. Crowley from the meat shop, and Henry Olson leaned halfway out the window. She moved down Ruth’s sidewalk, and there Al was, halfway through a broken-out window, manning a garden hose that added water to waves of ice pouring from the sky. She banged on the door and it opened.
“Ruth, you here?”
The tiny older woman stood with a blanket around her shoulders, staring out the front room window. “You all right?” Dottie pushed the door farther.
“Oh, Dottie. Is that really you?”
Dottie put her arm around Ruth’s slight, childlike frame. “You doing okay?”
“I am.” But Ruth’s voice shook like the telephone wires outside the house.
“Let’s brew some coffee for the workers.”
The elderly woman perked up and threw her blanket onto an armchair.
“Should’ve thought of it myself. I’ve got cookies in the back porch, baked ahead for Christmas.” She bustled toward her tiny kitchen set at the back of the house.
“Those poor men out in this miserable weather, and here I stand, doing nothing. Scared to death and doing nothing…”
In no time at all, Dottie carried hot coffee and a tray full of cookies upstairs. She made two trips, maneuvering carefully with all sorts of wild scraping and calling overhead.
George saw her first. “Why, Missus!” He ducked his head. “You’ve brought us coffee—just like at the boarding house!” He filled his big paw with several cookies and grabbed a cup of coffee.
“Could you—would you mind handing a cup out to Al? It’s so cold out there.” George dutifully reached a cup out the window.
“Anything else I can do?”
“Can’t think of anything.” He scratched his head. “Oh—Al mentioned something a while ago. A good rope, he said.”
“I’ll find one. Be back as soon as I can.”
Dottie hurried down the stairs and asked Ruth.
“There’s a strong one out in the carriage house.” Dottie slipped and slid behind the house, forced the door open, and rummaged through odds and ends. Finally, she found a rope, dragged it across the yard, hauled it up the back steps, and dropped the cumbersome thing just inside the door.
“Let me give you a hand getting it up the stairs.” They grappled it to the second floor.
Just then, Al’s leg came through the window opening. “Ah—exactly what I was coming in for. You’re a lifesaver, Dot.”
His jaw, set like stone, lent a peculiar slant to his face. He held her eyes for only a second as she dragged the monstrosity toward him, but in that brief interlude, she knew something wasn’t right. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but his eyes revealed a distantness she’d never seen—something almost tortured.
****
Al knew he was the last man, because he’d counted. Waited and counted in the penetrating cold that convulsed the old firehouse. Through the air vent low on the storage room door, steam rose from the concrete floor. Like dry ice, deceptive—cold enough to burn you, yet steaming.
He slunk into this back corner before the rest of the men brought in the pump truck but still shivered in spite of his coat and gloves. His thighs trembled like an old, old man’s…like his father’s when he took to his bed for the final time. Al’s soul felt the same way, as needy as a newborn.
Voices drained away as men headed home. He waited a few more minutes before he ventured out. He hadn’t want Del to see him this way. Now, he caught a glimpse of himself in the still-wet side of the pump truck. Ghostly.
He had to get hold of himself, calm down his erratic heartbeat and the sense that things could never be right again.
“You’ve got the best woman in the world waiting for you. Only a few blocks away, she’s cooking up something good for supper.”
The thought of Dottie waiting for him to come home bathed him like a benediction. What a lovely word—home. He breathed it aloud.
That word had kept him alive in the trenches, alive through carrying out inconceivable missions. Knowing Nan waited for him held him together over there. Made it possible for him to catch a little sleep now and then, to keep trudging when they moved, to keep sane when they didn’t.
He rounded the fire truck three times, aware only of the shuffle of his boots. And then, from a blackened stick of lumber that somehow managed to land on the truck, he caught another whiff of that awful smell—smoke out of control. Plastered against the side of the truck, he swayed.
“Help me—help me. Make it go away!” His plea rose hollow in the crisp air.
Minutes later, a key scratched in the doorknob, and he jerked his head every which way, seeking a place to hide. But it was too late. Rubber galoshes swished toward the pump truck. Al sucked in his breath. He’d know that heavy tread anywhere.
He filled his lungs and stepped from the shadows as Del approached.
“I thought everyone was gone. I came back for some…” Del stopped a foot away, his forehead bunched up like when he was a little boy aghast that his pet rabbit escaped during the night. Al gave thanks for the few high windows letting in minimal light.
“What’re you doing here, Dad?”
“Just making sure everything…” Al mumbled something he knew Del couldn’t make out. “Just making sure.”
****
By the time he walked home, the throb in his head released a bit. Dottie met him at the corner. “Come over for supper after you get cleaned up, Al. You look like you could use a good meal.”
He turned off at his sidewalk. “Yeah, it’s been a long day. I’ll be over.”
He seemed the same as always now, but exhausted. And no wonder—he’d worked like a twenty-year-old for hours up on that bitterly cold roof. Dottie hoped he wouldn’t catch a terrible cold.
He turned before he shut the door, and she waved. His fingers barely rose in response, and worry tightened gnarly tendons around her heart.
She defied the bad thoughts. If she let one take her mind, soon she’d have Al down with pneumonia, their wedding and the trip to see Cora postponed. No. She wouldn’t allow those imaginings to fill her mind.
Food—that was what Al needed. After all, he hadn’t eaten anything but cookies since breakfast.
Let’s see, what did she have in the house? Since he’d begun taken charge of supper, her supplies had run low. But she hadn’t emptied the potato and onion sacks, she knew for sure.
In the Frigidaire’s miniscule freezer, white-wrapped packages of meat stood in a row. Rump roast. Perfect. She unwrapped it on her granite countertop next to the stove. Nothing so tender as pressure-cooked beef. But she also liked the crusty texture that oven roasting created.
Well, she’d mix and match—twenty minutes in the cooker and then a half hour in her roaster in a hot oven. That would heat up the kitchen for Al, too. His face looked sunken in with cold. Nearly four-thirty, plenty of time. She ran a cup of water in the bottom of the cooker and lit the back burner.
Millie gave her that cooker for Christmas in 1940, the last Bill spent with them. A year later, he’d already enlisted with his best friend Ron and couldn’t get leave once the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor.
Dottie twisted on the lid and set the pressure gage. By the next year, Ron was already buried overseas, and the army reported Bill missing in some godforsaken part of Africa. Algeria? No, that wasn’t it.
But one scene, she could never forget. In the dead of winter, officers arrived with Bill’s dog tags. After they left, Owen couldn’t stop talking about him, but one day in spring, she’d put the tags into her keepsake box on their closet shelf. After that, Owen quieted down.
She steered her mind back to that Christmas, a wonderful place to stop. Delivering the mail, Owen found a fine fir tree out in a ditch, brought it home to set up in the living room, and set to work. But the tree wouldn’t cooperate. Owen fumed and fussed. Finally, he stalked to the shed, came back with a couple of spikes, and pounded them right into the floor, where Dottie’s armchair sat now.
His fury became the family joke that Christmas, with everybody razzing him about his impatience. Millie, Ren, and the children came. Everyone cracked walnuts, strung dried cherries from last summer’s crop, and attended the Christmas Eve service. Dottie glanced down the church pew, completely filled with her loved ones, and peace filled her. She remembered lying in bed later, basking in the delight of having all three children under their roof again.
In This Together Page 20