Down the Rabbit Hole

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

  Ash everywhere! I handed Gideon a broom and told him to sweep the sidewalk and porch. He said, “Not my job,” but I said, “Sweep, mister,” and he knew I meant it.

  Later

  Gideon and Adam begged and begged, and so after our midday meal we walked across the river to see the fire. The air was hot and dry and smelled of smoke. Thin columns of blue smoke were still rising from the piles of coal along the river where, thank goodness, the fire was stopped.

  Adam asked if a fire could leap across the river, but Peter said, no, that the river is a natural firebreak.

  The sheer scale of the disaster awes me. Four full blocks! Twenty acres of buildings, all burned! All that’s left are brick façades that lean at odd angles. Thick ash covers everything like dirty snow. The sidewalk planks are cracked from the heat.

  People were picking their way through charred piles of debris, trying to salvage what they could. Firemen were still hosing down pockets of flame. The firemen look exhausted. Their clothing is burned, their skin black with soot and grime, their eyebrows singed, and their eyes bloodshot and swollen from the heat. They fought this blaze for more than seventeen hours. It’s Chicago’s biggest fire ever.

  Peter said we need more firemen, but that the city won’t hire more. Hearing that the city needs more firemen lit up Gideon’s face. No doubt he’ll be the first to apply.

  We returned home, and I told Gideon and Adam there was work to do and I needed help. Gideon called tidying the house “girl’s work.” Before I turned around, both boys had absconded. I stood on the porch and called and called, but they were long gone.

  I was angry, but when I went inside, I spotted Lucy’s drawing of her family. I picked it up and looked at the seven blue circles with round hearts and stick arms and legs and my anger melted away. My heart felt full as I realized how far Gideon has come in just a month’s time. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my mother and father, but I think they would be happy for Gideon and me. Some families we are given and some families we choose and create for ourselves.

  Monday, October 16, 1871

  If I ever have a daughter, I will tell her this: Life is full of contraries, and we cannot know happiness unless we have known unhappiness; we cannot know pleasure unless we have known pain; and we cannot know trust unless we have also known betrayal.

  Last Sunday, we were walking home from evening church services. Peter was carrying Lucy, who had fallen asleep in the pew. I was carrying Sallie and walking beside Gwen.

  I remember how dark the sky was and how brightly the stars shone, and how I still had the tune from the last hymn in my head.

  I was thinking, too, about something the minister had said, how he quoted a popular orator named George Francis Train who had spoken the night before. “This is the last public address that will be delivered within these walls!” said Mr. Train. “A terrible calamity is impending over the city of Chicago! More I cannot say, more I cannot utter.”

  Murmurs of fear rippled through the congregation. I don’t remember feeling afraid. I remember wondering, what sort of calamity? And if Mr. Train knows, why wouldn’t he say? Any student of history or the Bible knows that calamity has always been with us, and will always be with us. If you predict a calamity, sooner or later, you’ll be right.

  As we walked along, these thoughts filled my head. A hot wind gusted down the street, whipping my skirt. It blew Peter’s hat off, and Gideon scurried after it. The trees swayed and creaked. Crisp brown leaves skittered across the street.

  The courthouse bell tolled. I counted the strokes and then looked across the river. In the west, the sky glowed orange.

  “Another fire,” said Gwen. “That makes twenty this week. Should we worry?”

  “No,” said Peter. “We’ve got the river between us.”

  The boys ran ahead. Gwen called after them, “Don’t go too far!”

  But of course they disappeared in the darkness.

  We turned the corner onto Sherman Street. I squinted through the darkness. A lone figure was standing on the Pritchards’ porch.

  “Cager?” said Gwen, and then “Cager!” She began to run.

  Lucy snapped awake and squirmed out of her father’s arms. “He’s here!” she squealed, and ran to the porch and launched herself headlong into her uncle.

  Cager hoisted Lucy in the air. As his duster coattails sailed around him, something began to tick like a clock in my head. He plunked Lucy down.

  “You’re early,” said Gwen. And then, remembering me, she said, “I’d like you to meet —”

  Do you know how fast a hummingbird beats its wings? That’s how fast my heart fluttered. I don’t know why I didn’t see the resemblance before — the dark, dark hair, the nose, the chin.

  Gwen’s brother was Rabbit.

  Cager took off his hat. There was something different about his eyes, but the same teasing grin spread across his face. “There’s no need for an introduction. Pringle and I are old friends.”

  The look of astonishment on Gwen’s face! “What? What? You know each other?” she said, and then, “Sit, sit” — pulling Cager inside — “I’ll pour tea and cut you some steak-and-potato pie — Pringle made it! — and then I want to hear everything.”

  Inside, we sipped tea and ate pie, and Cager said it was the best pie he’d ever eaten. There was something else, too, something in the way Cager’s words trailed off and the way he kept looking around the room as if he expected someone to burst in.

  A gust of wind billowed the curtains. The air smelled smoky. The courthouse bell tolled again, indicating the fire had spread to a general alarm.

  Outside, people were still making their way down the street. At the sound of the second bell, their voices grew raised and excited as they headed toward the bridge to watch the fire.

  The front door burst open, and Adam ran inside, shouting, “It’s a big fire! Across the river!”

  Adam stopped, nearly falling over his feet. “Uncle Cager!” he yelled, and barreled himself headlong into his uncle, just as Lucy had.

  Cager’s gaze turned to Gideon, who was standing in the doorway. The color had drained from Gideon’s face as if he’d seen a ghost.

  “Look!” said Adam. “Gideon peed his pants.”

  A large wet stain was spreading across Gideon’s trousers.

  “Gideon,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  Gideon’s mouth was clamped shut, his lips pressed in a thin line. Terror filled his eyes. Then he dashed across the porch and bolted down the street.

  If I knew then what I know now, I would have chased after Gideon. I would have followed him. But there’s no going back in time, no matter how hard we wish it. We cannot undo the past any more than we can unknow something once we know it.

  I tried to sort out what had frightened Gideon, why he peed his pants, just as he had the day he spotted the broken carriage in the carriage house.

  The answer hit me, as hard as a rock. “Gideon’s afraid of you,” I said to Cager.

  “Afraid?” said Gwen. “Why would Gideon be afraid of Cager?”

  How could Cager not say anything? How could he let me stand there? Did he think I wouldn’t fit the pieces together? Did he think I wouldn’t turn each piece to see where it fit?

  I did, and when the last piece fell into place, it formed a puzzle so terrifying that my hands shook. “What do you know about my parents’ accident?”

  The look on Cager’s face was one I’d never seen before. It was dark and haunted and it turned my backbone to ice.

  “Answer me!” I said.

  Peter must have arrived at the same equation. “Answer her,” he demanded.

  Cager washed his hands over his face and swept back his hair. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  Something slithered in the pit of my stomach and crawled
up my throat. A scream. I forced it down. “What do you mean, ‘No one was supposed to get hurt’?”

  “Cager,” said Gwen. “What happened?” As she spoke, she moved closer to her brother and put her arm on his. It was then that I knew where her loyalty lay.

  Cager’s voice sounded hollow and far away. “A few fellas and I wanted to send Mr. Rose a message about the strike. To tell your father what we thought about men like him. We wanted to scare him, to let him know we were serious about our demands.”

  “Your father,” said Gwen. “Your father is Franklin Rose?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And he doesn’t frighten.”

  “The other fellas and I waited for him. We jumped out. I grabbed the horse’s bridle, told Mr. Rose to stop, that we wanted a few words with him. But he wouldn’t give us the time of day. To him, we were nothing. He cracked his whip — look, it cut me here” — Cager pointed to the scar on his face — “and said he’d never give in to criminals like us.”

  He told how the horse reared and bolted, how the buggy jounced, how it tipped as it rounded a bend. How it snapped loose. How Mother shoved Gideon out, just as the buggy fell over the ravine. How he told Gideon not to say one word.

  A hundred pictures flashed through my mind — Gideon, too terrified to talk; my parents’ broken bodies at the bottom of the ravine, dead. How could Cager leave flowers and notes at my parents’ graves? How could he kiss me and threaten Gideon?

  I flew at Cager, screaming, “Murderer!” My hands didn’t feel part of me. They felt like somebody else’s hands that flailed and scratched and clawed and beat at him.

  “Peter!” Gwen cried. “Do something. Stop her!”

  Peter started toward me. With both hands, I pushed him away and stumbled upstairs. I shoved Gideon’s and my belongings into our carpetbags and headed back downstairs.

  Gwen and Cager sat on the divan. His head was buried in his hands, and she had one hand on his shoulder.

  “I hope you hang.” I spat the words at Cager and left, letting the door bang shut behind me.

  Peter called after me, but Gwen said, “Let her go, Peter. Let her go. I don’t ever want to see the likes of Priscilla Duncan Rose again.”

  Another Monster

  In the west, a bright, ruddy light shimmered over rooftops across the river. The night hummed with activity. Carriages clattered up and down the streets. Children played in the street. Men and women hurried past, talking excitedly about the fire as they streamed toward the bridge.

  I stood in the middle of the street, doubled over, clutching my stomach and retching and gasping for air. A strong hot wind blew a swirl of brown, withered leaves across the dark street. It tore through my hair and gusted against my face. It stank of smoke, and I remembered I had to find Gideon. For a moment, I considered which direction he might have fled.

  In the distance, plumes of smoke rose, dark against dark in the sky. The peal of fire bells floated across the river.

  I followed the sound of those bells.

  As I crossed the bridge, clouds of smoke buffeted me, stinging my eyes. I soon found myself on De Koven Street, just blocks from the previous night’s fire.

  Before my eyes, flames shot through shanty rooftops. Pumpers and engines were lined up like cannon. Firemen aimed their hoses and shot streams of water, but the fire was a monster. Its hot breath evaporated the water before it could do any good.

  “Stand it as long as you can,” shouted a fireman.

  Dozens of volunteers formed a bucket brigade that snaked across the street. Each man moved like clockwork, passing bucket after bucket of water. Each bucketful of water drenched one pocket of flame, only for another to spring up elsewhere. It feasted on the wooden sidewalks and streets.

  “Blimey!” shouted a man. He dropped his bucket and dashed across the alley. The fire had gobbled up a pine fence and was eating away at a front porch. The man disappeared inside the house.

  The fire swirled into the sky, groaning and howling. A curtain of sparks flew over my head. Debris came down in a shower. I slapped at the stinging embers that landed on my dress.

  Men stood on rooftops, smothering small fires with blankets, trying desperately to keep the embers at bay. To my left, a man jumped off his roof just as the roof burst into flames. A burning shingle tore away. The wind carried it upward like a bright kite, then hurtled it several houses away.

  An engine came flying down the street. Another fist of flame reared up behind the trees. More flames climbed up a tree trunk. The branches ignited and then fell. Burning leaves swirled about.

  A burning tree toppled over, slamming into another house. Flames shot up. The bucket brigade fell apart as the men ran to safety.

  The terrible sounds of animals! Mooing, hooves kicking, whinnying, squealing, thrashing as the fire tore into barns and stables.

  I called and called for Gideon. I searched around each engine and pumper, asking person after person if they had seen a ten-year-old boy with dark hair. But there were too many boys running around, watching the fire. No one had seen a boy like Gideon.

  I didn’t know what to do. The gawkers numbered in the hundreds now. Men, women, and children stood elbow-to-elbow, their glowing faces to the sky, watching the fire leap from rooftop to rooftop.

  “Not to worry!” someone shouted over the din. “The fire’ll burn itself out as soon as it reaches a broad street.”

  But the fire wouldn’t stop at a broad street. It chased itself up and down the narrow alleys and leaped across streets, howling and bellowing as it ran.

  The wind increased and began hurling great firebrands across the river. Before my very eyes, a blazing brand sailed like a bright bird across the river, carried by the wind. It lighted somewhere, I didn’t know where. Next I heard a whoosh, and rooftops burst into flame.

  The fire had jumped the river!

  I found myself pulled along with the screaming crowd as they stampeded toward the bridge across the river.

  As I headed across the bridge, the wind pushed at my back. I clung tightly to our carpetbags, for fear a looter might wrench them from me.

  The bridge was thronged with people, all desperately trying to cross the river, to run ahead of the flames. There were women, their arms piled with bundles. Children clinging to the hems of their mothers’ dresses. Hacks lashing their horses, ignoring the pleas for help from those on foot. Horses pulling drays loaded with furniture and bedding and household goods — bed quilts, cane-bottomed chairs, iron kettles.

  Once on the other side of the river, I looked back. The west side of Chicago had become a torrent of flames, a fiery sea. I felt crazy with despair. Dear God, I prayed. Where could Gideon be?

  My eyes teared from the smoke and ashes and grit. I needed to stop running. I needed to catch my breath. I needed to press my hands to my head and think.

  And so I did. I wiped the sweat from my brow on the hem of my dress. My dress had singed holes where embers had fallen and burned the cloth. Think, I told myself. Where would Gideon have gone?

  The answer came to me in a flash, so simple, I laughed. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? It was the only other safe place Gideon knew. My mind flashed to the closet at Peter’s office, the closet that held the mother cat and the tiger kitten with four white paws that Gideon loved.

  I headed toward Peter’s office.

  I didn’t know the time. I only knew the whole night sky was alight. I pressed through the crowd, swimming against a surging tide of people.

  I reached the corner of Adams and Franklin. Bits of burning matter whirled and danced overhead. Glowing embers fell like a fiery snowstorm on one rooftop and then another. Within a few seconds, the roofs burst into flame.

  “It’s headed toward the gasworks,” someone shouted.

  A new terror seized me.

  The heat was scorching,
the streets as bright as noon and thick with smoke. Sweat poured down my face and back. But I pushed through the smoke, the orange night sky lighting my way. The howling wind swallowed the tolling of the courthouse bell.

  More sparks and cinders burned my skin and singed my dress. My eyes felt swollen from the heat, but at last I reached Peter’s office building. I looked up. From a third-floor window, something white — a face — appeared.

  “Gideon!” I screamed. “Gideon!”

  The face disappeared. Had he seen me? Was he headed downstairs?

  I yanked open the door. A gush of heat and smoke pushed me back. I screamed for Gideon. The wind devoured my shouts.

  Something brushed past my legs. The mother cat, a black-and-white kitten dangling from her mouth. She scurried across the street.

  I pulled my skirt over my mouth and started into the building. “Gideon!” I screamed.

  Suddenly, I felt myself pulled from the doorway and dragged across the street. I fought and kicked. “Let me go! My brother’s in there!”

  Flames burst through the roof. The windows shattered, sending shards of glass flying in all directions. The air thickened and swelled. Then the office building groaned and the walls began to crumble. They collapsed with a terrifying roar and a great mushroom cloud of dark and smoke.

  Elsewhere, another mighty roar shook the ground. Another even hotter gust of wind swept over me. The fire had reached the South Side Gas Works.

  All around, it stormed cinders and fire. On the ground, I curled into a ball. I didn’t want to live. I wanted to die. Now I had nobody. I was alone.

  “Get up,” said a man’s voice.

  “I can’t.”

  A hand reached for my hand and gripped it. The hand had quiet, assured strength and later I would recall that I smelled spice and bergamot and orange blossoms. “Get up now,” the man said, and I obeyed.

  I felt as though I were walking in a dream. I reached the courthouse square. It was crowded with people, holding handkerchiefs to their faces, looking at the courthouse dome. It glowed like a huge torch, golden with flames. Still, the bell tolled, even as flames gobbled up its tower.