Mrs. Roberto - Or the Widowy Worries of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “We’ll have to open this pant leg,” said Dee. The chaos and roar of the scene without was loud in the parlor, but she had forgotten it.

  “I’ll get Jacob and he’ll find someone,” said the elderly woman.

  “The men on the sidewalk,” said Dee to the bearers, and without inquiring of Mrs. Mulligan if she minded that they use her house as a hospital. “And shut the door!” shouted Dee after them. “Mrs. Mulligan?” she did say then.

  “Yes, yes!” said the woman.

  “Put a sheet out on a flagpole, or a broomstick or something, so people will know where to come,” said Dee.

  51. Thump in a Punt

  Moosepathian letters and journals extant from the period presently at issue spend much ink in praise of Joseph Thump’s nautical understanding, and Eagleton himself wrote how “Thumps very bearing seemed ennobled by the mere mention of a spar or a mast, and once I have even seen him meet the wind off the water with a tear in his eye. Or perhaps he might have had a cold.” This is the reason some historians are startled to find that Thump had seldom set foot upon a deck by the time he reached the banks of the Kennebec that night.

  He had been on a deck, in fact, a grand total of three instances, the last having been in the previous fall when he had been duped into leaping from the deck of a vessel to a dock on Westport Island, ostensibly to secure the boat with a line from its bow. The possibility that the line might not be attached to the boat did not occur to him, and the villains on board had abandoned Thump.

  What next occurred is best considered in the light of that previous adventure.

  The Moosepathians would each write an account of their journey to the banks of the Kennebec that night, agreeing that they were out of breath with agitation when they reached the river. (’Rather done in,” was Eagleton’s way of putting it.) The scene itself was breathtaking: the milling crowd on the near shore; the shining, shifting water beyond; and across the water, the fire itself, roaring and spitting from the opposite bank, and the swarms of people in the street attempting to stem the blaze.

  “The longboats are coming!” someone shouted on the eastern shore just as the hobo troop arrived. “The ice ships have sent their boats back up,” said one of the hoboes.

  “Hmmm,” said Thump, and Eagleton would later write how his friend’s demeanor changed at the mention of these oncoming vessels. Thump’s eyes widened and his chin came up (’quite heroically,” according to Eagleton).

  With Puddle cradled in his arms, Big Eye Pfelt led his troop past the crowd to the edge of the shore, widening his titular orbit and growling to be let through. “Make way!” he shouted. “We’ve a power of road men here, and we’ve a mind to put out that fire!”

  “Are you going to sit on it?” shot back one farmer who was undaunted by Big Eye’s bluster. There was a chorus of laughter, and the hobo himself laughed, but the crowd parted and let them through.

  A small square-ended vessel (indeed, an erstwhile punt, its pole having been replaced with oarlocks and a pair of oars) was settling against the bit of gravel beach. The odd little boat was hardly large enough to fit more than its present occupant and Big Eye gave no thought to this craft but waited for the longboats that could be spotted, even now, making their way up the flame-lit river from the safely anchored schooners. A launch from Gardiner was in sight as well, coming round the nearest bend upriver.

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were mesmerized by the fire. They had never seen, nor even imagined, anything like it. It seemed all but on top of them, and they lifted their eyes to peer after the columns of smoke and sparks that met the clouding sky.

  “Look alive, there!” came a voice. “Take the painter!”

  Thump shook himself from the sight of the flames and considered the little punt even as the man in it pitched him the line. Thump caught the end of the rope—the experiences of the previous fall rushing back at him like a sudden, unpleasant wind. He was standing on the dock again, there on Westport Island, holding one end of a line that was fastened to nothing else. The boat was drifting away. The line was spooling out. Amos Guernsey was saying something to him.

  Then he was back on the shore of the Kennebec, and the man in the punt stood and hopped ashore. Without thinking, Thump crossed paths with the boatman, stepping from shore to punt. Thump stood unsteadily in the boat, then took another lurching step.

  “Hey, there!” called the punt’s owner, but Thump’s weight in the back of the shallow craft lifted the bow from the strand, and the force of his movement encouraged the vessel to slide, spinning, into the current.

  “What are you doing, you fool?” came the punter’s voice from the shore.

  Objecting to such an epithet being attached to his friend, Eagleton said “I beg your pardon?” to the punter. Several other cries of surprise, and even dismay, rose up from the crowd. Someone laughed.

  “Good heavens, Thump!” said Ephram.

  “Hmmm?” said Thump. He tottered. An eddy caught the boat’s stern and spun him faster. Thump’s view of the dwindling shore and the crowd and his friends twirled away into the daunting spectacle of the fire. Then the fire was gone and his friends and the shore had dwindled further still. Thump looked as if he might attempt to walk back. He did take a step in that direction, but the boat tipped disconcertingly, whereupon he did his best to correct this alarming trend by falling in the opposite direction. He landed upon the seat of the punt, squarely between two short oars.

  “Ever in the fore!” declared an admiring Eagleton.

  “A veritable lion!” averred Ephram.

  “What is he doing?” demanded Big Eye.

  “I’m not sure,” admitted Eagleton.

  Thump wished the punt would stop revolving.

  “Thump!” called Ephram. “Are you all right?”

  Thump’s reply, if any, was inaudible.

  “The oars, man!” shouted the punter. The dog barked, and several others, including Big Eye Pfelt, joined in, shouting, “The oars!”

  Thump looked startled. He had never rowed a boat before, but he had some notion as to the mechanics involved. Grabbing one oar with both hands, he gave it a pull that would have done a Viking proud. Unfortunately, this magnificent sweep rather augmented his current gyration and the punt spun like a carnival ride.

  A general sound of consternation rose from the crowd on the shore. The punt was not only spinning but steadily drifting across the river in the direction of the burning icehouse.

  “I didn’t know he knew how to do that!” said Eagleton.

  Thump’s confusion increased with the speed of his rotation, and he was hardly aware of the heat and flames that mounted overhead.

  “Floundering fish in a basket!” shouted Big Eye. “Quick, quick! The boats!” The last boat to cross the river was being pulled back along the shore by horse, and the oarsmen in this craft were shouting as well.

  “A great surge of effort followed Thump’s courageous example!” Eagleton would write in his journal some days later, but the events of the next few minutes were but a blur in the memory of their participants. In their minds, the immensity of the fire had rendered the overall emergency to the level of the philosophic, but the peril of a single man, whose craft was even now spinning beneath the blazing, crumbling walls, was more than could be borne quietly. There were shouts and orders, and Big Eye himself commandeered the arriving launch, dictating the rhythm of the sweeps with a “Pull away, boys!” and “Pull again!”

  Thump, meanwhile, caught hold of the second oar and stiffened it against the movement of the punt till his circuitous movement was all but halted. His stomach felt uncertain and the surrounding scene spun in his head. Shouts and warnings reached his ears, but he could make nothing of them. It was very hot, but he imagined that his recent, toplike ordeal was responsible for a rise in bodily temperature. He peered back at the recently quit bank, but it was difficult to see past the intense glare of the burning icehouse.

  The icehouse! he thought. He had only to look up
to see the tall flames. He smelled something like singed fur, and he took off his hat to fan himself only to see, with a perplexed start, that it was smoking.

  “Thump!” came a familiar voice. He looked up to see that a vessel filled with men, Ephram and Eagleton included, coursed the river toward him like a water beetle.

  “Get out of there, Mr. Thump!” Big Eye Pfelt shouted from the bow of the launch. A terrible boom sounded out.

  Ephram and Eagleton let out a single shout of fear as a section of the ice-house buckled outward in a gout of flame, the crumbling ramparts revealing the white-hot interior. The wall leaned over the river, then let go in a barrage of firelit destruction that fell between the oncoming rescuers and the man in the punt. Ephram and Eagleton gasped as their friend disappeared behind this inferno, and the expert rowers behind them only just veered the launch from the path of a floating, flaming ruin of twisted posts and beams.

  Then, a breeze came up—perhaps the harbinger of the weather to the east—and the billows of smoke and steam were wafted back toward the town.

  There in the punt sat Thump, rather contrarily (it seemed, at first glance) bailing water into his boat with his hat. He had floated past the burning ice-house and was docking rather neatly by the landing at Iceboro.

  52. Herald of the Henceforth

  Elmer Barnes was right, but prematurely: It would eventually rain buckets over the Sheepscott River. In Iceboro, the first real indication of the storm (after that single, disastrous stroke of lightning) was a northeast wind that rose in the early hours to blow hot ash and sparks and sometimes flaming debris over the roofs of the town.

  “Mister Walton!” said Vergilius Fern. “Mister Walton! You should go further down the line!”

  Mister Walton, his face the color of a boiled lobster, lifted his hat and wiped his brow with the back of his hand but looked determined to hold his position in the bucket brigade at the northern end of the fire.

  Sundry watched his friend with concern; he could attest that the excitement and labor, as well as the terrible heat, could take their toll on even a young man. Mister Walton was neither young, nor built these days for hard work, but fearing to offend his friend Sundry had perhaps waited too long to speak. “Mister Walton,” he said now as they continued to pass sloshing buckets up the line, “you should fall back, I think.”

  “I have no hair to singe,” said the portly fellow with candid humor. “I need my hat wetted down, is all.”

  “We need to wet down the buildings across the street, is my guess,” said the man ahead of Sundry.

  Another furnace blast of air engulfed them and they all backed away.

  “The icehouse is hopeless,” called a tall, blond fellow, who was just arriving. “From the river, you can see that the other end is gutted already. We should be rescuing the buildings nearby before they catch fire.”

  It was during this speech that they first felt the wind from the east; the blaze shifted and the line of men retreated further; the flames pulsed with the wind, and blistering waves of air radiated from the burning core. The fire-fighters turned their faces, hiding their heads beneath their arms as a burst of sparks erupted from the blaze and scattered over the gables and façades on the other side of the street. A full retreat was in order, and, when they reconnoitered some distance away, it was decided that they must concentrate their efforts on saving the remainder of the town.

  Already people appeared with blankets and quilts, which were quickly loaded into a wagon and taken down to the river to be soaked. A line south of them had shifted to the buildings opposite the icehouse, and this organization would hang the bedding from roof and window and keep them damped down.

  “Are you all right, Mister Walton?” inquired Sundry.

  “Yes, yes. But I fear the town will go up if rain doesn’t come.”

  “I continue to embroil you in trouble, Mister Walton,” said Mr. Fern

  “It is Fate, Mr. Fern, that embroils us.”

  “My aunt has made her escape,” said the farmer, but their attention was taken by a series of unearthly wails—high-pitched moans that seemed expressive of terrible pain or sadness. Smaller screams and whines punctured the longer moans, and, all together, beneath the roar of the flames, these sounds had the power to stop men’s hearts and raise the hair at the back of their necks.

  “Good Lord!” declared Mister Walton. “There are people in there!” and he took a step or two toward the blaze before Sundry caught his elbow.

  “No, no!” shouted the tall, blond man, who came up behind Mister Walton and tugged at his shoulder. “It’s the fire, sir!”

  “The demon in it, at any rate,” said another fellow.

  The blond man said above the roar of the fire, “It bums out pockets in the wood, and dried sap, and the Lord knows what else. You’ve heard the chirps and grunts from a fire in the hearth. A blaze like this, burning tons of wood and heating the roofs to bursting, will sound like Hell itself!”

  That’s not to mention what it looks like, Sundry thought.

  A man with drinking water arrived, and they went to him to slake their thirst. They were not meant to rest, however, for a rough-looking fellow with a single wild eye and a little dog perched on his shoulder came running through the lines shouting that another roof was on fire.

  A flash of sparks beyond the icehouse had just caught Sundry’s eye. They all turned to see where the newcomer was pointing, and more than one let out a gasp of newly revived horror. The roof of one of the boardinghouses, built to room the ice cutters, was smoldering. Many of the firefighters down the street were too involved with their work to see this new danger. The air above the threatened house was filled with ash and sparks, wavering with the blistering heat and light, and the smoke of this new danger curled into the air and around the steeple of a church hard by.

  “The church,” said someone. More sparks rained upon the boardinghouse roof. The shingles smoldered, but the roof was too high for anyone to easily get water on it. They could imagine the boardinghouse going up in a sudden roar and the spire of the church bursting into flame.

  “There’s a ladder to the belfry, I’ll be bound,” said Sundry. “We could run a brigade up inside the steeple and reach the roof from above.” He was already leaning in that direction, like a sprinter ready for the starting pistol. The blond man and the man with the dog did not hesitate but scurried up the street to the church. Sundry turned, wondering how to ask Mr. Fern to look after Mister Walton without offending his friend and employer.

  Mister Walton had a strange look on his face. The dipper in his hand dropped to the ground and, in an instant that would alter the remaining history of the Moosepath League, the portly gentleman fell like a downed boxer, crumpling to his knees and pitching forward.

  “Mister Walton!” cried Sundry as he and Mr. Fern dropped beside the collapsed form. “Mister Walton!”

  The eyes behind the spectacles were closed, the recently red face looked pale, even cold. Frightened, Sundry lifted Mister Walton’s shoulders into his arms and pressed his ear to the broad chest, but there was too much noise. He could detect nothing. Frustrated by the chaos around them, he leaned close to that round beloved face. The light of the flames flickered in the spectacles. A gout of smoke rolled past, stinging Sundry’s eyes.

  “This is where my anger has brought us!” said Vergilius Fern.

  With one arm still beneath Mister Walton’s shoulders, Sundry slipped the other beneath the limp knees and raised the stout form as he stood. “Help me, someone!” he shouted, and Mr. Fern joined him, shouting, “We need a doctor!”

  Something loud occurred behind them, but they were oblivious. There was another breath of sparks and smoke, blown like the blast from a forge. Men careened past, unheedful of what was before them. Then a raggedly dressed man slowed his flight and considered the scene. “There’s a hospital set up in the building over yonder,” he said. “Ho, beau!” he shouted, seemingly to no one in particular, though several fellows halted
their retreat. “Help carry this gentleman!”

  “I have him!” shouted Sundry. “Just clear the way!”

  How long had it been since Mister Walton collapsed? Sundry wondered. How could he have let his dear friend join in the effort to put out the fire, to let him stay so close to the heat and smoke?

  The young man was tall and narrow and his burden portly and solid, but Sundry would have carried Mister Walton a mile if he’d had to. Several roughly dressed men organized around them, and the crowd parted before their shouts and prods as if a great hand had pushed it aside. When they reached the house with the white flag, an older woman met them at the door, took one look at the fallen man, and directed them through the hall and into a pantry where a cot had been set up. Concerned faces whisked by. People stood aside to let them pass. A handsome woman in a dark kerchief came out of the kitchen; she carried a roll of bandages and a bottle of liniment, but she handed these to someone when she saw Mister Walton.

  “Put him on the bed,” she said, but Sundry was already moving in that direction. He laid Mister Walton down as he might the most precious breakable, then put his ear once more to the great fellow’s chest.

  The room went silent. Mr. Fern stood at the door, his hands folded in prayer. The woman from the kitchen stood by, waiting. The muted crackle and roar of the fire could be heard like the constant movement of the sea or a great wind, but Sundry caught the faint thump of something moving with its own rhythm beneath his ear. He passed his hand over the cold, damp brow, then carefully removed the round spectacles and put them in his own shirt pocket.

  Nothing was asked, but Sundry said, “I don’t know,” to the woman. “He just collapsed. He still seems so pale. So—” He had almost said “So lifeless” but stopped himself, or rather his voice did, since he had, lost, temporarily, the power to speak.

  The woman touched Mister Walton’s pale cheek, and when she withdrew her hand a soft blush was left behind. “He’s overdone, perhaps. But a little start to his nerves might not hurt. If we had a touch of something hard to give him.”