by Connie Gault
“Oh, yes, I remember her,” she said. “She was with a red-haired young man. Bought a dress and shoes.” He waited. “She talked about looking for work.” Still he waited, his patient, knowing eyes looking into hers, and she thought: Take me with you when you go. He looked down at the floor, then. She didn’t care; she wasn’t embarrassed, any more than he was. She’d be one of many he’d encountered over the years. “They were heading for Virginia Valley. She said she’d never been on a ferry.”
He nodded, said thanks, a momentary flash of something extra in his glance – she was going to call it pity. He left a vacuum behind him that wasn’t going to be filled. She went directly to the back room, to the mirror, but instead of looking at herself as she’d intended, she stood as she always did, to the side, where she didn’t have to see her own image, but could observe the woman, whatever woman it was who needed to view her body transformed by a garment off the racks. The mirror was empty; only the cramped room, filled with last season’s clothes, was reflected in it, but she could almost conjure the girl – the daughter. The silvery reflection aged the brown dress, the tawny wavy hair, and exaggerated the resemblance to her father. But no, she wasn’t there. No one was there, so Peg stepped forward herself.
She was too short to wear clothes really well, although she was stylish enough. Her skin was too sallow, and those lines between the eyes – way too much frowning, and somehow the wrong kind of bitterness. Ah, yes, a woman’s resentment, aging and not alluring. She pinched her cheeks. Observed the effect. Pinched again until pink blotched the skin.
Next to the mirror was a dresser where she kept odds and ends – scarves and belts and beads to perk up an outfit or disguise the lumps and bumps women didn’t want to see. She rummaged in the top drawer and came up with a pot of rouge. She dabbed some on each cheek and blended it in with a fingertip. “Takes years from you, dear,” she said to the Peg in the mirror.
She heard the door and a hesitant step.
“Peg?”
She gave it a few seconds before she called, “In here.”
She had a curtain over the doorway to the back room, a nice voluminous length of finely woven paisley fabric that could be swept aside if you knew what you were doing, or could entangle you if you didn’t. Albert came through it like a duck through a weed patch and she had to laugh at the expression on his face when he saw her. She’d already chucked her dress and had her arms at her back, struggling with her brassiere. “Help?” she said, turning.
He ran his hands over her body. She sensed a hesitation. He was a man who put duty first. “I know it’s the middle of the afternoon,” she said.
“So do I.” He undid the clasp with ease, practised at it, and her breasts tumbled free.
The hot wind that had sent the dust devil in Albert’s direction, earlier, started blowing in earnest by mid-afternoon. Clouds of dust boiled up as high as the third storeys of the highest buildings in town and cleared the streets of anyone who didn’t have to be somewhere. In the Royal George Hotel, a few of the business travellers who figured they’d managed to get enough done to call it a day decided to go up to their rooms to take a nap. The maids were resting, too, the dining room being closed until supper time, the tables having already been set. The cook was sweating over pastry in the kitchen while a huge sirloin roast made its way towards overdone in the oven. His helper was peeling potatoes into a basin of water. In the living quarters at the back of the hotel, the owner, Mr. Macklin, was reading the Charlesville Gazette, a task made difficult by the fact that it lay across his face. Mrs. Macklin had completely given up the day as she did most days, calling herself an invalid even if the town’s doctor didn’t, and slept in the darkened bedroom next door to him. No one sat in the rotunda, as usually no one did, and no one manned the front desk because no one needed to man it. A bell sat on it, adequately visible, which could be rung to summon Mr. Macklin from his reading if anyone needed to register or complain about something. Not too far from the desk was a wood stove, which in the winter months supplemented the hotel’s steam boiler heating system and made at least the lobby bearable, and close to that was a wood box where wood was stored in the wintertime and where, in summer, all kinds of unwanted things were tossed. On this particular day, one of those things happened to be a cigarette butt a young salesman named Emil Prendergast thought he’d pinched out.
As for Mr. Huhtala, he’d grabbed hold of the back of an empty grain car on a freight train rattling out of town and was miles away by the time the cook’s helper finally smelled smoke and dropped his paring knife to go and investigate. The cook’s helper, whose name was Roy Wah, and who happened to be only sixteen, returned to the kitchen for a pail of water after seeing the flames juggling each other over the wood box. The cook came with him when he went back to the rotunda, so there were two pails of water. By that time, they weren’t enough.
The Charlesville Fire Department had one motorized fire truck, a pumper bought from the city of Winnipeg, and Albert kept its red paint and all its chrome waxed and polished. He kept it full of gas and in checked and ready-to-go-any-moment condition. Once a month he drove it around town, sometimes in a parade, if there was one. Twice a month he held drills for the volunteers under him. The list of their party-line phone numbers was posted by the fire hall telephone. The fire hall door, while Albert was absent, was closed but not locked.
Roy Wah was a shy young man, anxious about his manners. He knocked on the door and got no answer. He’d run from the hotel, feeling some degree of panic, having witnessed the cook pounding up the stairs to the second floor, screaming, “Fire!” So he opened the fire hall door, but when he saw no one inside, he was flummoxed. He went next door to the post office and asked the post office clerk what he should do. That turned out to be an intelligent choice since she also ran the telephone exchange, and with some foresight Albert had given her the list of volunteers’ names.
The Royal George, in keeping with its pretensions, had a false front that extended down both sides, and behind the false front it had a flat tarpaper roof. When the first two volunteers, remembered now only as Beasley and Conrad, arrived on the scene, they could see smoke billowing out the front door, and they could see two scared-stiff salesmen shinnying down ropes from their second-floor rooms, but they could not see that flames were already eating at the roof. In spite of the appeals of the cook, the young chambermaids, and several self-important Charlesville businessmen, Beasley and Conrad decided not to get the truck out, but to investigate first. “Mr. Macklin, Mr. Macklin,” the cook called as they went through the door. “And Mrs. Macklin, she in there.” But the roar of the fire drowned him out.
The truck’s siren alerted Albert, when finally one of the later-arriving volunteers revved it up and drove it out on the street. The sound pierced the curtain veiling the back room at the Style House, and for a second he froze, unbelieving. Peg fell back when he lurched to his feet. How his hands shook at those buttons, how white his face went, only she would know. Before his head had cleared, he was racing down Main Street, passing by a new model Chevrolet he didn’t see, a Chevrolet driven by one Emil Prendergast on his way out of Charlesville somewhat earlier than he’d expected to leave.
Albert met the truck in front of the hotel. His men were already rolling out the hose, sweating and swearing with the effort.
“Who’s in there?” Albert asked the cook, seeing him at the forefront of the crowd that had gathered.
“Nobody upstairs,” said the cook, who was wiser and more efficient at disseminating wisdom than anyone had yet given him credit for. “Macklins in back and two men went in the front.”
“Four,” Albert said. Just then a shape like a whirling dervish, almost identical to the dust devil that had assaulted him earlier, but much bigger, appeared on the roof line. This one was made of flames, flaring crimson against the black smoke that was pouring into the sky. The flames twisted and then spiralled upward and outward as if whatever it was had suddenly grown wings. Sparks bl
ew out from it. “Oh, God,” someone said. The thing teetered on the edge of the false front.
It was for him. A sign. A promise. Retribution. The fast fall of the sword. It hung on the lip of the false front. It bowed to him. His chest hurt. He willed it to fall. Watched it plummet. Then it was writhing and fluttering and coiling at his feet, and he saw it was only a long swatch of tarpaper. Another was lifting off the roof, when he looked up again, and flying over to the pool hall. Then another, flaming, curled upward until the wind took it and deposited it two doors down, on the roof of Milt’s Pawn Shop.
Running up Main Street, Peg saw the glittering tarpaper strips spiralling off the roof into the dense black smoke and thought her magazine picture had come to life. Starry Night, mid-afternoon in Charlesville. She arrived at the hotel in time to see Albert tying his handkerchief over his nose and mouth and going in. He wasn’t entering that inferno as a hero. He was going in to be punished; she knew that by the way he bowed his head.
It was hell he walked into, and he didn’t believe he’d walk out. Yet it was a slow-motion hell, almost peaceful in its own, inevitable way. The centre of the hotel was gone. Emptied, a black, black hole. Once, he’d seen a shotgun wound, a man who’d been hit in the chest, hollowed out. He thought of that. The staircase skeleton hung like a flimsy ladder leaning into space. Reminded him of himself. Any moment it could fall. And still the fire made a sucking sound as the flames ran up against the remaining structure. And every few seconds something fell from above; chunks of plaster fell, smouldering furniture fell, whole timbers fell. Ashes fell. Hot tar fell. The flames themselves fell. Calmly, he advanced.
You couldn’t tell him, afterwards, that he was a hero, although he got the four out of the hotel alive, dragged them out, unconscious, Beasley and Conrad out the front and the Macklins out the back. It was possible to do that because of the wind. The updraft it created had sucked the worst of the smoke up and out the collapsed roof so that by the time Albert was in, he could breathe. Of course, at the same time, it spread the fire, and most of the south side of Main Street – the hotel, the pool hall, Milt’s Pawn Shop, the Ambassador Café, Verna’s Beauty Salon, and the Capitol Theatre – burned down.
“The burns will heal. The throat – I’m not sure, the next few hours will tell,” the doctor said. “Sometimes the swelling increases and then – well. We’ll do all we can for the pain.”
But he was okay; the critical hours passed. Peg visited him in the hospital and found his mother and his two little girls standing by his bed. His mother gathered the girls like chicks when Peg walked into the ward, and herded them out of harm’s way.
“Don’t go,” Albert whispered, when Peg backed off. “Mother!” he hissed. “Bring the girls here. I want them to meet Peg.”
The little girls hung back by their grandmother, twisting their bodies identically towards her, but she looked her son calmly in the eye, and pushed them forward. They were around eight or nine, only a year apart. They didn’t say a word when Peg said hello. They ducked their heads, their lips shut tight against saying a word, and then their grandmother took them away.
Peg sat down on the chair by Albert’s bed. His nice square hands were thickly bandaged. The side of his face looked as if he had a bad sunburn. His eyebrows and lashes were gone and chunks of his hair were missing. Little black craters peppered his head where cinders and bits of burning tar had dropped on him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, to let air onto the burns that looked like polka dots on his shoulders and down his chest. Beasley and Conrad had the next beds and Mr. Macklin the fourth in the ward. Mr. Macklin was fitfully sleeping; the other two watched Albert and Peg through a dull, drugged haze, ready to hear whatever they had to say to one another. They didn’t say much although Peg stayed for an hour, while Mr. Macklin whimpered and Beasley or Conrad, she didn’t know which, fell asleep and cried out without waking.
Albert closed his eyes after a while; it was to let her go, she knew. She said, “You don’t have to be polite.” He lifted his lids slowly, like a comedian expressing staged surprise. “We’ve gone past that,” she said.
“How do you know?”
She just looked at him. “I’ll do my best to make your girls like me,” she said.
“The boys’ll be easier, except Garth, maybe. He’s the oldest,” he whispered.
“It’s hard to talk, isn’t it? It hurts?”
“Tiring.”
“You rest. I’ll talk.” She went on, quieter. “I’ve been thinking. We’re not going to waste time on guilt over this. Neither one of us. Responsibility is one thing, guilt’s another. You’ve done your time in that department, and I never was any good at it. Maybe they’ll fire you. Or they’ll make you a hero. Likely they will, because it’ll make them feel good about themselves to have a hero among them. It won’t matter to us what they do or what they say.”
Albert nodded. She touched his shoulder, finding an unhurt spot, felt the soft layer of flesh over the muscles, and capitulated. Knew the second it happened. Like a kid crying uncle after fighting an unfair arm-wrestle, knowing it had to end that way. “I love you,” she said.
“Hear, hear,” came from the next bed. She’d spoken louder than she’d intended. She looked up, flustered. But then she laughed.
“Sorry,” Beasley or Conrad muttered.
“Not at all,” she said.
“I’ll introduce you two another day,” Albert rasped.
“I’m going now,” Peg said. “You all need to sleep.”
A nurse came in right then and tapped her watch, although she must have heard what Peg had said. Maybe she hoped for an exasperated sigh or some sign of irritation, but Peg turned to her with a soft, incongruous smile, the kind of smile you just didn’t expect from this short, dark piston of a woman. Some of the starch went out of the nurse; it was almost as if only her stiff uniform held her back from embracing the little woman, even though she knew the gossip about her and believed it.
VIRGINIA VALLEY
The talk in Virginia Valley was all about the Royal George in Charlesville. Gossip about the event had spread as fast as any fire, and everyone was free in speculating the cause and even the results, as if those were variable and unverifiable, too. Jerry Wong heard at least six different versions of what had happened.
In those days you would seldom come across a silent person. It was deemed unfriendly, perhaps suspicious, to keep your thoughts to yourself. People would accuse you of moping, if they knew you, and of being stuck-up if they didn’t. So the man who’d arrived in town stood out. He would have been noteworthy on a day when there was no news. Even for a stranger, he was taciturn. Jerry’s brother-in-law remarked on him and Jerry glanced out the window they’d cut into the wall between the restaurant and the kitchen so people could watch them cook and see that no stray cats went into the chop suey. The man was eating with a quiet solemnity that could have been copied by other clientele, in Jerry’s opinion. He was a tall, dry man, looked as if he didn’t sweat, and if so, he was the only one in the valley who wasn’t, today. A blistering sun had set itself up over them; it must have been a hundred degrees in the shade. He’d ordered a Denver sandwich, the cheapest thing on the menu. No coffee, just a glass of water – meant he couldn’t afford the coffee. Jerry picked up the pot. Cups and saucers were always left on the tables.
“On the house,” he said.
The man tipped his head politely. His grey hair flared silver in the light coming in from the window. In the few seconds after those eyes looked up, they looked alarmed, and that surprised Jerry. He would have thought this was a man you couldn’t easily rattle. He turned to see what was going on behind him. Nothing in the restaurant was different from before, but outside a vehicle had pulled up in front of the hotel. Two Mounties were climbing out.
“Ah,” Jerry said. In a second he made up his mind. “Come.” He pointed the way to the door tucked behind the screen; it was the door that led from the restaurant to the back of the hotel. He walked behind
the man, as if his smaller body could hide him from the Mounties’ eyes if they came in before he and the man had made their exit. He led the man up to a vacant bedroom and left him there.
He was back downstairs in less than a minute. He didn’t worry about appearing out of breath. Chinamen were always hurrying, bustling around, trying to give the best service. It was one of the things, he thought, that made them ridiculous.
They ordered lemon meringue pie and coffee, their faces wet and raw-beef-red above their tight collars. Jerry’s brother-in-law watched him deal with them, and said nothing. Just before they’d arrived, the informal afternoon men’s group, ranging anywhere from three mostly old geezers to eight or nine of all ages, had departed. The man was lucky, there. The only other occupied table was two girls, teenagers who’d made their Cokes last a long time. Their pop bottles were drained, the paper straws sagging over their glasses. Before he brought the pie and coffee out, Jerry got his brother-in-law to go to the girls’ table and take their bottles and glasses away. Then he glided up to the Mounties with the pie in two plates along his left arm and the pot in his right hand. He heard the girls’ chairs scrape. He apologized for the pie as he set it down. “Too hot for meringue,” he said. “It so weepy it got golden teardrops.” He often found it useful to speak as people expected him to. He knew the men, although not by name. They were from the detachment in Charlesville. Probably they were the whole detachment. They didn’t stop the girls from leaving. They asked him if he’d seen any strangers yesterday or today.