Fire by Night

by Lynn Austin

  “But if you really need someone in the linen room,” Julia said, “and if the army is so desperate for nurses, why does Dr. McGrath deliberately drive everyone away?”

  Mrs. Fowle spread her hands. “The man is a mystery, I tell you. I don’t think he knows the answer to that himself.” The other ladies nodded in agreement. “Anyway,” she said, pushing back from the table, “it’s time we returned to work. I’ll show you the linen room, but none of us will blame you if you decide to leave. It’s a terrible job. Right now most of our patients are plagued with diarrhea and dysentery. … Well, you’ll see.”

  Julia did see. The hotel laundry was a cramped room in the rear of the building with a table, four large wooden tubs, a collection of flatirons, and a stove to heat the water. The shelves where the clean bedding was stored were nearly empty, and the mound of soiled sheets waiting to be washed stood as high as Julia’s head. The pile reeked so horribly of sickness and human filth that it made her eyes water. She nearly vomited her breakfast. She pulled a scented handkerchief from her pocket and held it to her nose.

  “Am I supposed to scrub all these bed linens myself?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Mrs. Fowle said. “The army will pay for four laundresses, but they all keep quitting, and no one has time to find replacements. Meanwhile, the laundry keeps piling up. Lena is the only laundress we have left, besides you. With so many patients suffering from diarrhea, we’re in an awful mess. Sorry, but I have to get back to my ward now. I’ll tell Dr. McGrath you’re here when he decides to show up. Oh, and make sure you speak softly to him. He’ll probably have a hangover.”

  The first thing Julia did was open a window to let out the stench. Cold air flooded the room, but she still couldn’t keep from gagging. Then she looked around in dismay. Julia had never done laundry in her life and had no idea where or how to begin. Nathaniel’s accusation came back to haunt her once again—she was a pampered, spoiled woman.

  The stove, she finally decided. She would start by finding some firewood and lighting the stove to heat the wash water. But she had never lit a stove in her life, either, and when the sole laundress finally arrived an hour later, Julia still hadn’t managed to kindle a fire.

  “You putting too much wood,” Lena explained in broken English. “You must to start with small wood, then to put big wood.”She soon had the stove blazing.

  Lena was fifteen, she told Julia, and needed the job to help support her family, newly arrived from the old country. She had worked in the hospital laundry for two months and knew a lot more about it than Julia did, but Lena was a plump, listless girl who daydreamed a lot. The only way they would ever conquer the mountain of linens was if Julia pitched in and helped.

  Together they pumped water and hauled it inside by the bucketful, filling the two copper cauldrons on the stove. “The water must be hot,” Lena said. “To kill the louse.”

  “You mean there are lice in this bedding?” Julia cried, dropping the load of sheets she held in her arms.

  “Yes, the soldier-men all have the bugs. They hop into the sheets.”

  Julia found a broom handle and used it to transfer the bedding into the cauldrons. Lena showed her how to shave the soap into the steaming tubs and agitate a load of sheets with the plunger, beating until the soap foamed and her shoulders ached. Any stains—and there were plenty—had to be scrubbed clean by hand on a washboard. Then the sheets were wrung out and transferred to the rinse water to be beaten some more. Julia and Lena each grabbed an end and twisted the sheets to wring out the rinse water, then hung them outside in the frigid air to dry. Julia’s hands quickly grew chapped and raw from the combination of hot water, caustic soap, and icy air. She had never done such menial, backbreaking work in her life.

  The two women labored all morning scrubbing soiled sheets, but by the time they hung the last one out to dry, the nurses had made their morning rounds through the wards and a new mound of dirty ones had materialized in the laundry room doorway. The only thing that kept Julia from weeping was her fear that Dr. McGrath would arrive and catch her doing it. She remembered his smirking face and scornful words: “I can play this little game for as long as you wish, Mrs. Hoffman.”

  The cooks sent a tray of food out to the laundry after the patients had been fed their noon meal, but the sight and smell of stinking sheets had made Julia too nauseated to eat. Lena devoured both of their portions. Then the girl pointed to the baskets full of dry linens from yesterday’s wash. “Those we do now.”

  “You mean we need to fold them?” Julia asked.

  Lena shook her head. “They stiff from hang outside. We must to iron. Making soft.”

  They took the cauldrons off the stove and began warming the flatirons, then cleared the wooden tubs off the table so they could use it as an ironing board. Lena was adept at juggling several irons on the stovetop at the same time without letting any of them get too hot and scorch the sheets. But Julia’s arms and shoulders ached so badly from the work she’d already done that she could barely lift the heavy irons. Twice, she grabbed a handle that was too hot and blistered her palm. When she burned an iron-shaped hole in one sheet she wanted to give up. Her feet ached from standing on them all day. She longed to remove her shoes but feared they would never fit on her swollen feet again if she did.

  The work never ended. As fast as the sheets were cleaned and pressed and put on the linen room shelves, more filthy ones arrived. By late afternoon, the shelves were just as empty and the mound of dirty ones just as big as they had been that morning. It was impossible to keep up. When Lena finally announced that it was time to go home, Julia was quite certain it had been the longest, most miserable day of her entire life. She did not wish to ever spend another one like it.

  She wanted nothing more than to sneak out and never see any of these people again, but her coat and bonnet were still in Dr. McGrath’s office. Julia would have to go through the ward to retrieve them. She drew a deep breath and opened the wardroom door, looking around for Mrs. Fowle. The least she could do was let the matron know that she would not be returning tomorrow. But when Julia spotted Dr. McGrath bending over one of the patients she changed her mind. He was certain to have a smirk on his face and a sarcastic comment to toss her way, and she didn’t trust herself not to burst into tears. Besides, she knew that she looked frightful. Her hair had fallen loose a dozen times, her natural curls frizzing uncontrollably in the steamy room, and she’d hastily pinned it back in place without a mirror. The sleeves of her muslin dress were badly wrinkled from being rolled up all day, and the front of her dress was water-stained and soaked clear through all of her petticoats to her skin. Julia quietly backed away, deciding to use the rear door of the laundry and walk all the way around the building to retrieve her coat.

  The late afternoon sky was already turning to night as she stepped outside, and she shivered in the damp, freezing air. She managed to slip through the front door without being seen and quickly grabbed her things from the rack in Dr. McGrath’s office. But no sooner had she shoved her arms into her sleeves and yanked open the door when she heard his gruff voice behind her.

  “Ah …Mrs. Hoffman?”

  Julia cringed. She stopped midway through the door but didn’t turn around, glancing only briefly at him over her shoulder. “Yes, Doctor?”

  “The matron told me you were here today. I meant to come see how you were doing out in the linen room, but we got so busy that I never made it.”

  “Your presence wasn’t necessary,” she said coldly. “I’m sure you had better things to do than visit the linen room.”

  “Yes. Quite true. So …should we expect you back tomorrow?”

  Julia knew that if she looked at his face he would be grinning, challenging her. She would not let him win.

  “Of course,” she said, then slipped the rest of the way through the door and let it slam shut behind her. But Julia had no intention of ever coming back.

  As she emerged into the dark, windy
evening, her wet clothing clung to her skin, chilling her with its icy grip. She wondered if she would catch pneumonia. There wasn’t an empty cab to be found anywhere near the hospital, and she was forced to wander farther and farther through the dismal streets in search of one. A half hour passed before she finally succeeded. She was about to climb into the carriage and sit down for the first time since lunch, when a ragged little Negro boy no more than five or six years old ran up to her carriage and tugged on her coattails.

  “Please, pretty lady, can you give me some money?”

  His large dark eyes seemed to fill his face as he gazed up at her. The boy shivered in a thin, ragged jacket several sizes too large for him. He was barefooted—in February. Julia quickly dug in her change purse and gave him a handful. He grinned and ran down the street to intercept the next pedestrian.

  “Either you’re new in town, miss,” the cab driver said, “or else you’re from up north.”

  “I’m both,” she said, sinking onto the carriage seat at last.

  “Thought so.” He snapped the reins and they started forward. “After you’ve been here a while you’ll get used to contrabands. You’ll learn not to let them get to you.”

  “Used to …contrabands?” she asked, repeating the unfamiliar word. “What are they?”

  “That kid who just duped you is one. They’re former slaves from places like Virginia or the Carolinas. Washington is full of them. Most of them ran away and followed our Union soldiers to freedom, but now that they don’t have masters to take care of them anymore they don’t know how to live. So they send their kids out to beg in the streets. You’ll learn to ignore them eventually. Everyone does.”

  “But what about the Fugitive Slave Law?” she asked, remembering what she’d learned at Nathaniel’s abolition lectures. “According to the law, don’t all runaway slaves have to be sent back to their owners?”

  “Not since the war started, they don’t. That’s why they’re called contrabands. They’re spoils of war, the property of the victors, just like land or houses or any other booty that’s been won in battle. Except that there aren’t any jobs for all these slaves and no place for them to live except in the shantytowns they build. Poor souls have never been free before, and they don’t know how to fend for themselves. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am sympathetic. But if kind folks like you keep giving them money every time they beg, they never will learn how to earn an honest wage.”

  “He was just a child,” Julia said. “And he was shivering. How could I look the other way?”

  “You got Negroes back home where you come from?” he asked. The mention of home unexpectedly brought tears to Julia’s eyes. She couldn’t reply.

  “I figured not. Like I said, you’ll get used to seeing them. You’ll learn to ignore them.”

  When they finally reached the boardinghouse, Julia’s muscles were so stiff from hard work and so frozen from the cold she could barely climb down from the carriage. She didn’t think she would ever be warm again. She pulled open the boardinghouse door and entered the vestibule, grateful for its stingy warmth. Her landlady met her.

  “You’re too late for supper,” the woman said without a word of greeting. “I believe I explained to you when you paid the first month’s room and board that we eat promptly at five-thirty, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you did. But this was my first day of work at the hospital, and I didn’t know it would take so long to finish or to find a cab. And there was so much traffic with the streets full of army wagons—”

  “Well, a hungry stomach makes an excellent schoolmaster,” she said primly. “I trust you’ll leave work on time tomorrow.” She turned and marched away.

  Julia climbed the stairs to her drab little room and found it so cold she could see her breath. She remembered then what else the landlady had told her that first day—she was responsible for her own fire. Shivering, she knelt by the hearth and rekindled the coals the way Lena had taught her, first with “little” wood, then with “big” wood. Her empty stomach rumbled and growled while she worked. It would be the first time in her life she had ever gone to bed hungry.

  When she stood, her hands black with soot, Julia caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The bedraggled-looking woman who stared back at her was a pitiful stranger with disheveled hair and a drab, stained dress. The tears Julia had been holding back all day were finally unleashed. She threw herself down on the sagging bed and sobbed. What was she doing here? How had she sunk so low?

  If she were home she might be attending a party or a ball tonight, dressed in a gown of silk and lace, with rustling taffeta petticoats and swaying hoops. Her hair would be perfectly curled and trimmed with ribbons and jeweled combs; her grandmother’s topaz necklace would sparkle around her graceful neck. She remembered the glorious feeling of entering a room, knowing she was beautiful, and seeing the admiration in every man’s eyes, the envy in every woman’s. Why had she come here? Why was she doing this to herself?

  The life Julia found herself living was not at all what she had pictured. She had given up everything to be a nurse, not a scrubwoman. She was supposed to be saving lives, offering comfort to wounded soldiers, accepting their words of gratitude and blessing— not working for a drunken, abusive doctor, scrubbing human filth from soiled sheets. She wanted to go home.

  She had sacrificed her pampered life and had changed completely on the outside. But tonight Julia recognized that she was still the same on the inside—still a spoiled rich girl. No matter how much hard work and suffering she endured, she could never change. And Reverend Nathaniel Greene was never going to love her. Tomorrow she would swallow her pride, admit she was unsuited for nursing, and go home.

  Julia awoke to the distant sounds of reveille and drums, coming from one of the hundreds of army encampments surroundingWashington City. The aroma of coffee drifted up the stairs, and she climbed out of bed, shaky with hunger. She quickly splashed water on her face, put on her wrinkled dress, and hurried down to the dining room.

  Four other girls already sat around the table, silently eating a breakfast of oatmeal, dry toast, and coffee. They were all plainlooking young women, dressed in the drab clothing of the working class—just like she was. No one greeted her as she slipped into a seat at the table. The serving girl set a bowl of lumpy oatmeal and a plate of toast in front of her.

  Back home in Philadelphia, Julia’s parents would be eating breakfast in their dining room right now, the table spread with fine china and silver and white linen. Hot food would be waiting on the buffet in silver chargers—soft scrambled eggs, buttered rolls, tender slices of ham, delicately seasoned potatoes. Her father would have his newspaper open in front of him, and he would read a paragraph or two aloud from time to time, as was his habit.

  Julia lifted her spoon and swallowed a sticky clump of oatmeal. If she hadn’t been famished, she never could have choked it down. By the time she’d finished the last sip of bitter coffee, all her lingering doubts had vanished. She would go home.

  Julia nearly raced up the stairs. She changed into her traveling suit, fixed her hair in a flattering style, and packed her plain brown dress and everything else into her trunk. She would hail a cab; she would order the driver to come to the boardinghouse and fetch her trunk; she would go to the train station and purchase a ticket to Philadelphia. Her father would probably be horrified when he found out she had traveled without a chaperone—but then again, maybe he would be so happy that she had finally come to her senses, he wouldn’t care.

  Outside, the day was bright and clear, the winter sun surprisingly warm, a perfect day to travel. Julia stood in front of the boardinghouse for several minutes, waiting for a carriage. When none drove past she finally decided to walk a few blocks east to one of the main thoroughfares. It was a bustling street with vendors hawking pretzels and fried dough cakes. Uniformed soldiers marched past in tight ranks, their guns and bayonets pointing to the sky. All manner of vehicles clogged the rutted streets, from Conestoga wag
ons and buckboards to broughams and buggies—everything, it seemed, but a vacant cab. She heard music and followed the sound to find an old Negro man playing his fiddle on a street corner. Passersby tossed coins into his hat. He was crooked and bent with age, his white hair and beard a stark contrast to his dark skin. The tune he played made Julia ache with sorrow. He played as if the fiddle were a fountain that overflowed with memories of all he had endured.

  She bent and dropped coins into his hat, then quickly turned away. That’s when she saw them—two little Negro girls, no older than three or four years, silently begging with outstretched arms as thin as kindling wood. Unheeding pedestrians hurried past, and Julia remembered the cab driver’s certainty that she would learn to ignore the contrabands, too.

  Julia slowly walked toward the girls, drawn by pity. The smaller child looked up at her with pleading eyes and said, “I’m hungry.” Something inside Julia seemed to break.

  She could leave Washington today and return to her elegant life in a warm home with plentiful food, but these two children and dozens of others like them would still be here—shivering, begging, their stomachs as empty every night as hers had been for only one. She would lie down on clean linen sheets in her four-poster bed, leaving suffering soldiers like Private Jackson to die on bare, stained mattresses.

  Julia dug two coins from her purse and crouched in front of the girls. “Do you live near here?” she asked.

  The older child nodded and pointed vaguely down the street.

  “I’ll pay you to show me where you live. I’d like to talk to your mama. Will you take me to your house?”

  The child took the coins from Julia and nodded again.

  Clutching each other’s hands, the two girls silently led her down a narrow alleyway off the main street to the shantytown where the contrabands lived. It was stuffed beneath a railroad trestle near the river, a warren of shacks made of packing crates, scraps of wood, old barrels, rags, and jagged pieces of metal. As she picked her way through the debris, following her small guides, Julia could barely distinguish the homes and personal belongings from the scattered piles of trash.