The utter hopelessness of that last assignment must have shown in my eyes.
“Oh, come now,” he said with an all-too-patronizing chuck under the chin. “Just think of him as a stubborn horse and apply your obvious talents. And remember this from someone who’s been around five more years than you have: Nothing worth having comes easily.”
FIFTEEN
THE REST OF THAT DAY MY HEAD BUZZED LIKE I WAS stuck inside a beehive. It had to be exhaustion, yet I didn’t feel tired. In fact, I absolutely threw myself into Mother’s household chores. Whatever she asked, I did more. I ripped away the dead morning glory vines from the backyard and went on to rake the dirt off its stubbly attempts at grass. I lugged crates down to the cellar and unpacked their contents onto uneven shelving. I scrubbed the hall floor with a tremendous ferocity. All the while I tried to summon the courage to go to battle with Father.
Mr. Stead had simply asked me to get Father’s permission, but that was like playing jackstraws: Touching one topic would invariably wiggle others. Permission to learn about veterinary medicine would lead to a discourse on what girls couldn’t do, which was attain higher education. (He’d written a column once that quoted a professor from Harvard University who believed that grappling with university-level topics caused a woman’s organs to wither.) And that would lead to a lecture on what girls shouldn’t do, which was anything outside the home, anything not corseted, buckled, bound, protected, or otherwise restrained. Certainly nothing as dangerous as treating horses.
I scrubbed so hard the soapsuds went flying.
By late afternoon, the house was spotless. Mother was soaking one of my soiled dresses and mending the sleeve of the other, and Grandmother was slicing cooked potatoes for supper—er, dinner—when James surprised us by coming in the back door. The shocked look on his face stopped my heart cold.
“No, no, she’s fine,” he said right off. “I picked up a copy of Father’s paper on my way home. His first column’s in it.”
To a one, we stopped what we were doing. Mother held out her hand, prepared, along with the rest of us, for the worst. She carried it into the parlor and sat down. We gathered behind her, making no pretense of not peering over her shoulder. After taking a deep breath, like she was preparing to jump into a pond of cold water, Mother read aloud:
“Esteemed poet and former son of Boston Mr. John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, ‘Men said at vespers: “All is well!” In one wild night the city fell.’ He was recounting, of course, the innocent trust pervading the city of Chicago on the eve of last year’s Great and Terrible Fire.
“Poets, as we know, lament the tragedies in our lives. And while their verse is beautiful to the ear, it is completely ineffectual. Rhymes are mere afterthoughts, wreaths thrown on a coffin. A singular moment of foresight, however, and one well heeded, can prevent the need for these wreaths.
“That is why I repeat Mr. Whittier’s words to those men of Boston who, at this very moment, innocently trust their city and ours to the same antiquated firefighting equipment used when President James Buchanan led our nation, when the North and the South worked shoulder by shoulder in harmony, and when fire’s presence in our homes was little more than a flame in the hearth.
“And I remind them that this is the year 1872. President Grant resides in the White House, a Great War has been fought, and many of Boston’s homes boast their own basement furnaces, which carry warmth, yes, but also the risk of fire throughout our wooden structures. Fireplaces and chimneys are abundant. Every kitchen has a red-hot stove fed by wood or coal. Lamps full of burning fluids teeter on table and mantel. In short, never before has fire been such a permanent visitor within our homes.
“But this visitor, I warn you, is not to be trusted. Having recently arrived from one of the Western states, I can attest to a thorough knowledge of firewood. And I can assure the good citizens of Boston that this city, although one of great sophistication and possessing all the latest in conveniences, is in truthfulness nothing more than a stacked cord of seasoned wood, awaiting the spark from a match head. When this spark is struck—and, trust me, such a spark will be struck—Boston will burn as the grandest campfire which history has had the privilege to witness.
“What can be done, you ask, to avert this imminent tragedy? Collar your elected officials and request, nay, demand new firefighting equipment for every fire station in Boston. Order them to erect additional fire stations. Tell them to release funds for the improvement of water mains and hydrants. Because until our wives and children can sleep soundly in their beds, and until we husbands and laborers can rest assured that our businesses and goods are secure, this editor and this newspaper dutifully warn its readers that, in Boston, most definitely, ‘all is not well.’”
Mother folded the paper, ran her hand along its length, and laid it in her lap.
“It sounds as if he’s going to strike the match himself,” Grandmother said.
“Mother!” her daughter scolded halfheartedly. But it was what we were all thinking. With Father, the end always justified the means.
It generally started simply enough: An editorial suggesting more fire equipment or a new school would appear in the newspaper under Father’s name. But it seemed he could never leave the situation at words alone; he took action. Bold action. Just last month, back in Wesleydale, he’d decided that the town’s one horsecar should deliver passengers all the way to the new bank at the edge of the business district, even though the rails didn’t extend that far. He’d first written a column proposing the change. Then, a week later, he’d boarded the car with the announcement that he had a deposit to make to his account. When the car got to the end of the line, a few blocks shy of the bank, Father refused to get off. “I want to go to the bank,” he was heard to shout over and over. “I’ve paid my dime, why don’t you take me there?” The horsecar turned around and rolled back to the other end of the track, with Father still in the front seat, fuming and demanding to be delivered to his destination. The trip was repeated time after time. When the sun went down and the horse was unhitched, Father was still sitting in the car, shouting that he’d paid his money and not received satisfactory service. The police had to be summoned, and Father actually spent the night in a jail cell. When she received the unsettling news, Mother dealt with it the only way she knew how: She cleaned. She calmly took down all the curtains in our house and bleached them, but before she could rehang them Father was fired, Peaches was sold, and we were on our way to Boston. It wasn’t tarring and feathering, but a haze of shame still clung to each of us.
Mother leaned toward one of her potted ivies, snapped off a wayward vine, and tucked the shortened offender back in line. Then she rose. “Well, supper isn’t going to get itself on the table.” No one dared breathe the word “dinner” to her.
For a habitual ghost, Mother could conjure up a respectable backbone. In Father’s presence she hung in the shadows, pressing her lips together and smoothing her tablecloth. But in his absence she reclaimed her territory. She’d never challenged him face-to-face, yet when Father went “chasing after one of his dragons,” as we called his incendiary campaigns, we instinctively gathered behind her. From experience we knew that the flames he fanned often turned on our family. And while Mother couldn’t provide us with protection, she could provide order. Rather than wait glassy-eyed for our world to be upturned, we marched to her orders and numbed our worries in routine.
Like a row of ducklings, we followed her into the kitchen. With only a disapproving look, she gave her first command. She stared at James’s gray-coated fingers.
“Sorry,” he said. “Brass polish. I’ll go wash up.”
“Rachel?” I straightened. “There are seeds in the lemonade. Please strain them out.” Even Grandmother received instruction. “Your biscuits can go on the basket-weave platter.”
We marched. The table was soon set and laden with food, and we three women, echoing Saturday, waited in our chairs for the men. A jumpy sort of silence poked at us, and
I had to sit on my hands to keep from wriggling. I knew we were each thinking about Father’s column, wondering what it was going to cost us this time.
The stewed kidneys puddled in their blue and white bowl and the lyonnaise potatoes steamed faintly among glistening slivers of onions. We waited. The pitcher of lemonade, free of seeds, sweated on the sideboard. I tried to swallow my thirst. The parlor clock ticked loudly. In double cadence, Grandmother tapped her fingernail against her plate, but she didn’t reach for her fork.
James finally came clattering down the stairs in a clean shirt, only to rush into his chair so fast that he pulled the tablecloth with him. Mother gasped as the plates and bowls and silver were tugged out of position, and she slapped her palms on the cloth.
“Sorry,” he said, as the settings were carefully rearranged. “I’m famished. After all the work I’ve done today, I think I could eat a horse. No personal offense intended, Rachel.” He pointed his fork at the kidneys. “That all that’s left of the beast?”
He was trying to chase away our worries, bless him. Grandmother laughed and I smiled and Mother gave the necessary stern look, but we all breathed easier. Until feet climbed the front steps and the front door slammed. Father blustered into the dining room and, in a wildly weird and happy sort of way, announced, “This city is a veritable tinderbox!”
“Amen!” Grandmother responded.
A faint burnt smell wafted into the room with him, and I wondered just how actively he was already promoting his column. He took his seat at the head of the table and we began passing the dishes to him, then filling our own plates.
“Everyone see my column?” He looked around the table and we nodded in turn. “Do you know that I was actually stopped on the street on my way home? People can’t hear enough of this talk, apparently; they’ve just been waiting for someone to stand up and say this very thing.” In one voracious gulp he drained his lemonade. The empty goblet smacked the table with a thud. “Yes, I’ve found my topic—’my dragon,’ as I know you like to call it,” he said. He motioned for more lemonade, speared some potatoes, and began chewing away happily. “Did any of you know that this city, population three hundred and fifty thousand, owns no more than twenty-one steam engines? That’s only one engine for every fifteen thousand people!”
I did the math in my head, arriving at a figure closer to 17,000, which actually bolstered Father’s argument, but chose to keep quiet. This wasn’t the argument I wanted to make. I fiddled with my spoon, too nervous to eat.
“It gets worse.” Father leaned into his pulpit, much like the reverend does when coming to the meat of his sermon. “There are only seven—I say seven—hook and ladder wagons in the entire city and only eleven hose companies. And this with the buildings getting taller by the day. Why, Summer Street is lined with buildings four and five stories high. You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
We all nodded again.
“Now, picture a family out shopping with, say, half a dozen children. They’re on the top floor of a store when a fire breaks out. Flames surround them, blocking escape by the stairs. How are the firemen going to save them? No ladders reach that high. How are they going to put out the flames? No hose can deliver water that high. So what can the firemen do? Nothing!” He pounded his fist on the table so hard that the butter knife leaped off its dish.
“That was exactly the subject at the station today.” James’s eyes were glowing to match Father’s. “The men were complaining about the outcome of last night’s fire—it was a warehouse,” he told me, “no horses involved—and while they got there quick enough—”
“Quick-ly enough,” Father corrected.
“Yes, sir. And while they got there quickly enough, their one engine wasn’t strong enough for the fire. Another station sent a hand pump, but that wasn’t much help.”
“A hand pump!” Father exclaimed. “A hand pump! With hardly enough water pressure to douse a match, I’ll bet.” He shook his head, though a sense of satisfaction spread across his face. “City the size of Boston,” he mused, “third largest in the nation, and we’re so behind the age that we’re still using hand pumps?” He shook his head in wonderment, smiling all the while. “Splendid! I’ll write another editorial next week that’s certain to light a fire under the bloated backsides of—”
“Mr. Selby!” Mother pleaded.
He turned innocent eyes upon her, grinning with mischief.
“There’s something else,” James said.
“What’s that?”
“They’re saying this last fire was especially suspicious. Seems it started in a warehouse that wasn’t in use and was only storing a few shipping crates. The chief is looking into it.”
“So … there’s a firebug among us, is there?” Father mused. “Even better to lend some urgency to the situation. Pass the biscuits,” he abruptly demanded. “I’ll be certain to share your information with the good people of this city.” He broke open a biscuit and spooned some pear jelly onto it.
“I don’t think the chief wants his suspicions made known quite yet.”
“Nonsense! Don’t Boston’s citizens have a right to know that some amoral hooligan is threatening their lives?”
“Well-”
“Of course they do,” Father asserted. “Here, have a biscuit.” James took one from the platter and reached for the honey. “No, no,” Father scolded, “the pear jelly. The honey’s too sweet.” Without hesitation James extended his hand further, though I knew honey was his favorite. “This is wonderful jelly, Nora. You really do make the best.”
Mother nodded but remained mute. Flattery didn’t go far with her.
“Oh, by the way, I let that woman in my office go.”
“The journalist?” Grandmother asked.
“Hmph! She’d like to call herself that. Yes.”
“How did she take it?”
He shrugged his shoulders and gulped some more lemonade. “How was she supposed to take it? She’s a woman. She cried and argued … and cried some more.”
“Did you have cause?” Grandmother asked.
Father lowered his glass. “Cause? What cause would I need? She didn’t belong there, isn’t that cause enough?” Father looked around the table for support. Although no one openly disagreed with him, none of his family voiced approval, either. Seeing our blank faces, he bellowed, “No female is going to work alongside men where August Selby has a say about it. It’s not right”
SIXTEEN
THE NEXT DAY DAWNED TO A GRAY AND UNSETTLED SKY, which certainly matched my mood. I felt as if I were straddling a gate that kept swinging halfway open, only to be yanked closed by squealing hinges. I could look down the road but I couldn’t set foot on it. And that was all my fault, because I hadn’t had the courage last night to ask Father’s permission. What a timid little mouse I was.
The only saving grace was that Mother and Grandmother were so entirely engrossed in curtain installation, requiring another trip to the stores up on Summer Street, that I had most of the morning and all afternoon to satisfy Mr. Stead’s other command: Keep studying. That rekindled my fire. I could prove to him, at least, that I was capable. I’d memorize every single disease, treatment, and tonic in my horse care manual—all 652 pages of it. Just watch me. With a newly heaving chest and what certainly had to be a fierce gleam to my eye, I lugged the heavy book off my bedside table, down the stairs past those helpless butterflies, and out to the carriage shed.
It wasn’t long before the stable performed its usual magic and I was breathing easier. Musing about the events of yesterday led me once again to the chapter on foaling, and I even read some of those paragraphs out loud. I think the Girl liked the company, because she stood at the front of her stall and leaned her neck over the splintered bar, watching me.
It had been only a few days since the livery fire but her burns were already beginning to scab over, though they wept constantly with a sticky fluid that reminded me of gritty molasses. What was left of Mr. Stead’s bandages h
ung from her body in tatters; she simply wouldn’t tolerate them. Unfortunately, they revealed quite grimly how much weight she’d lost. Platter-size hollows marked both flanks, and her ribs resembled a pair of bloody washboards strapped to a protruding backbone. James was purchasing all manner of enticements for her: timothy hay and dried clover, ground oats and a little shelled corn, her daily bran mash and loads of carrots. I’d stuffed nourishment into every pail and dish and crevice so that she hardly needed to take a step in order to eat, but nothing seemed to tempt her.
Closing the manual, I rose and joined her in her stall. Out of habit, I scooped some cold mash into my hands, added oats to it, and cupped the offering under her peeling muzzle. She toyed with the wet mess but refused to eat. Then she lowered her huge head and bumped me hard, nearly knocking me off my feet: She was begging for peppermints. I didn’t have any more and reached into my pocket to show her that all I had was half of a sugared doughnut left over from breakfast. To my surprise, she snatched it from my fingers and made a great, messy show of chewing and enjoying it. As soon as she was finished, she bumped me again. I proved that my pockets were empty and patted her neck and offered her some more oats, but she followed me around the stall, stubbornly thudding her head against me.
Should I? There was nothing in the manual about doughnuts, but … I raced back to the house. Stealing the last three doughnuts from their covered plate on the sideboard, I returned and fed them one right after the other to her. I munched on one small crescent myself, happily pondering the saying that one’s company truly did make a meal.
Then I took up my reading again, glancing toward the doorway at the end of each page in the hope that Mr. Stead would stop by and find me—worthy student—studying. But that whole day the only person who stuck his head through the door was James. On his way home from work, he stopped in to thump down a bag of oats, a different brand this time and one already ground into meal.
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