Firehorse (9781442403352)

by Wilson, Diane Lee

  That dampened my appetite.

  Father lowered his paper. “Any more sign of that firebug? Any suspicions with these recent fires?”

  “The men thought the bakery and house fires were likely human carelessness,” James replied, “but the cause of the one at the furniture factory was harder to identify. I think Captain Gilmore is going to look into it further.”

  “Is that so?” Father folded his newspaper. Rising abruptly, he said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have some work waiting for me at the office.”

  “What time will you be home?” Mother asked.

  It was an innocent question, but he bristled visibly. Oddly out of character, he then masked his irritation with a smooth answer and a polite nod. “I’ll need at least two more hours,” he answered. “You needn’t wait on me. Some of the work that has crossed my desk of late hasn’t been up to my standards. Good evening.” Grabbing his hat and his coat, he hurried out the door.

  James poured himself another goblet of milk and was noisily draining it when the parlor clock chimed. That appeared to set off an internal alarm, because he set the goblet down with a clunk, pushed back his chair, and stood awkwardly. “I have some business to attend to as well. Will you excuse me?”

  “Surely you’re not heading back to the station again,” Mother exclaimed. “They’re working you too hard.”

  He’d been claiming fatigue, but all of a sudden there was a certain jumpiness about him, a sort of happy energy that I’d not seen since Wesleydale when … I knew. “I’ll bet he’s off to fern a fire, rather than put one out,” I teased. “What’s her name?”

  “You think I’d tell you?” He kissed Mother’s cheek, paused in front of the hall glass to run his fingers through his hair one more time, and went out.

  “Well, the Selby women are alone again,” she said, “and with more dishes to wash.”

  We worked side by side with little more than small talk, and when the table was cleared and the dishes washed and dried and stacked, Mother took up her own embroidery in the parlor. Since she didn’t invite me to join her, I tiptoed toward an escape up the stairs. As usual, she took notice of everything, and just as I was rounding the newel post, her voice captured me. “Please look in on your grandmother on your way up.”

  “I will,” I answered, though I already knew what she’d be doing: reading her Bible. That’s all she did anymore. She seemed to be surviving on air and Scripture. As I gained the top step I heard that tonight’s menu was yet another of the bitter plates offered up by the prophets. I shook my head as I paused to glance out the hall windows. Moonlight shone faintly in the backyard, silhouetting the fence and the carriage shed and …

  A yellow light flickered inside it. Was that …? It was. Fire!

  I grabbed up my skirts and went sprinting down the stairs, past Mother and out the back door and across the yard and into the shed.

  “Hello! Hold on there!” Mr. Benton Lee, of all people, caught me up short. One hand gripped my shoulder as he lifted a lantern out of the way.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, jerking myself free.

  “I’m sorry to have startled you, Miss Selby. Really I am. I just had to come see my girl.” He hung the lantern on its nail and ducked under the bar of the Girl’s stall, casually draping an arm over her withers. The way she curved her head around to nuzzle him filled me with an unchristian jealousy. “So many of the others have died,” he told me, “that I had to be certain she, at least, was still alive.” His fingers gently passed over her mottled face, tracing the patchy scars of pink and gray. He seemed sincere enough, though something about him always stirred the hairs on my neck. “I can’t believe she looks so good. You and your brother have performed wonderful work.” The Girl nibbled at his hand and I saw him slip her something. It was probably a peppermint, the way her teeth crunched noisily. What a traitor! She was too easily swayed by a piece of candy.

  He smiled at me broadly, ingratiatingly, and sneaked a glance toward our house. “Would your father, by chance, be at home?”

  So he hadn’t come here solely to see the Girl. He was looking for Father, the editor. He wanted his name in the paper. But why hadn’t he just knocked on our front door, then—at a more civilized hour?

  “No, he’s not,” I answered. “Why?”

  “I have some information he might want to put in the Argus.”

  The fire chief’s accusations of self-promotion were proven true. “You’ll have to talk with him tomorrow.”

  “This can’t wait.” He seemed awfully pleased with himself. “You see, there was a fire at a furniture factory this past Tuesday, and I know it was a case of arson.”

  “James already told us that. He said—”

  “I also know who started it.”

  “You do?” An image of Father’s kerosene-stained trousers loomed large in my mind. I guessed what was coming, and yet I didn’t want to hear the words.

  Mr. Lee dragged out the moment. He left the stall to examine the doorway with a rather theatrical flair, apparently to ensure that no one was eavesdropping. Satisfied, he took me by the arm, guided me to the crate, and sat me down on it as if I were a small child. Only then did he whisper his suspicions on a moist rush of tobacco and garlic. “It was Captain Gilmore.”

  I leaped to my feet in surprise. “Captain Gilmore? But… but that’s nonsense. Why would a fire chief-someone who’s paid to put out fires—he starting them?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, digging his hand into his pocket, “but have a look at what I found.” He opened his palm to reveal a small glob of brass. The Girl, thinking it was another candy, stretched her neck over the bar and nickered.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A button, mostly melted. I found it in the ashes of the furniture fire.”

  “So how does that prove Captain Gilmore started it?”

  “Just look! It’s from his uniform. That proves he was there.”

  Oh, this was lunacy. He was grasping at straws. “But of course Captain Gilmore was there. There was a fire.”

  “No, no, no. You don’t understand. He wasn’t there during that fire; he left before we got the alarm. He told us he had business down in Dorchester that day and wouldn’t return until Tuesday night.”

  “So what does this button prove?”

  “That he was there—at some time.” He turned the button around, encouraging me to take a closer look. “See? You can still make out the number eight—for Engine Company Number Eight. The chief’s the only one who wears buttons like this. So it had to have fallen from his jacket, which means he had to have been on the scene before the fire began.”

  It sounded logical. But was it truthful? Could Mr. Lee have manufactured this evidence as revenge on the man who’d suspended him? Was he now seeking Father’s assistance to publicly, and perhaps wrongly, accuse Captain Gilmore of arson?

  My mind was spinning. At least Father wasn’t starting the fires. Or at least he wasn’t starting them by himself. But what if he’d been conspiring with Captain Gilmore? Such a plot seemed absurd, except for what I’d overheard in the hallway of our very own home: Father leaning into Captain Gilmore and murmuring, “We’ll both get what we want.” His abrupt exit after dinner, immediately upon the mention of Captain Gilmore’s name, suddenly seemed all the more suspicious.

  “Have you mentioned this to James?”

  “James?” He shoved the button back into his pocket and began pacing the narrow confines of the shed in that black cat manner of his. “As much as I like your brother, he’s been asking too many questions at the station. And we’ve caught him sneaking off a time or two, so he’s not above suspicion.”

  James, I knew in my heart of hearts, was above suspicion in all matters. He had nothing to do with the fires. But question marks hung over so many others, including the agitated Mr. Lee. “Why are you telling me all this?” I demanded.

  He looked like he’d had his tail pulled. “You? Because I thought you cared ab
out her.” He jerked his head in the direction of the Girl, who was at that moment watching us so intently she seemed to understand the topic. “I thought you cared about all those horses that died in the livery fire, the one where she almost died. That wasn’t the first act of arson by this deceitful scoundrel, and it won’t be the last. That’s why I came to talk with your father. Captain Gilmore’s missing again. He’s supposed to be at the station and he’s not. I have a sense he’s up to something.”

  All at once I felt a little twitchy myself. “Well, my father’s not here.”

  “What’s he doing at this hour?”

  The awful possibilities made my stomach flip. “I don’t know.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THAT NIGHT I LAY AWAKE IN A COLD AND MOST UNFRIENDLY darkness. Even two quilts, the madder brown one with the yellow stars and the heavier nine-patch, brought no comfort. I was adrift, confused. Was Father guilty? Or was the firebug truly Captain Gilmore? And if either were true, why was I still so suspicious of Mr. Lee’s late-night appearance? What was his motive?

  I desperately needed to talk with James, but he still hadn’t come home. Where was he?

  Shivering from head to toe, I couldn’t tell if it was the cold or an awful foreboding that kept my knees twitching and jerking. I began to believe that the fire alarm was going to jangle at any moment, and as the parlor clock chimed the quarter hours I startled at every distant bang or whistle. But they were false calls, every one of them. That was fitting because nothing, anymore, was as it seemed. People wore masks and talked over your head or behind your back. No one was as they appeared. I was scared to close my eyes.

  Some time during that long night Grandmother closed hers.

  As I passed her open door the next morning, I noticed her lumpy body silhouetted under the bedclothes. That sight alone gave me another chill. Rising with the sun was religion for her. “Are you all right?” I whispered into the curtain-darkened room. An unseen fly droned and banged against the windowpane. I didn’t hear anything else. “Grandmother?”

  Having moved so far from home, we had no friends to tell. No one came to sit in the parlor and share remembrances of church picnics and blue-ribbon fudge, of first love and first steps. No one came at all except for the undertaker, and when he and his assistant carried Grandmother out of the house, the narrow brick building felt so empty.

  Mother began cooking. It was what she knew how to do. She penciled a list and put on her wrapper and went out the door. I ran out to the Girl and buried my face in her warm neck and cried and cried. The muzzle she rested on my shoulder was as comforting as any hand.

  Later, as I stirred a fire in the stove, I found myself stirring memories. Each crackling orange spark lit a photographic image in my mind: of Grandmother’s floured finger touching my nose; of her brown, well-worn Bible opened across her lap (to the Psalms, meaning she was happy); of the three of us huddled in this very kitchen, shyly sharing dreams. Tears continued trickling down my cheeks.

  Mother finally returned with a precious slab of corned beef and a basket full of all the fixings for chicken and dumpling stew. How were we going to eat it all? There was no ice to keep leftovers. Oblivious to the practicalities, she silently began chopping and measuring. I did the washing and the drying and, when asked, set about ironing Grandmother’s favorite tablecloth, the one she’d embroidered with tulips in all four corners. That task alone took nearly an hour, during which time neither of us spoke of our ache.

  Not wanting to pull Father or James from their work, Mother decided to hold the news of Grandmother’s passing until evening. She ordered the front steps swept and the hall rug shaken out and the parlor dusted. For whose eyes? I wondered. Still, I dampened a rag and began running it across the mantel. As for herself, with the beef boiling and the stew simmering, Mother began rolling out platoons of biscuits.

  When I slid her potted ivies over to wipe their crusted water rings off the windowsill, I paused to glance outside. A pleasant enough fall afternoon: hazy blue sky, yellow leaves skating down an empty street. But without any horses, all too quiet.

  I didn’t know how many more hundreds had died. I’d given up walking the pavement because I couldn’t bear to see the wheezing, snotty-nosed horses cruelly harnessed to their wagons, or far worse, the stiff carcasses, piled with legs akimbo like so much firewood. Maybe I wasn’t suited for the rigors of veterinary medicine.

  As I stepped away from the window, I tripped over my sewing basket. The unfinished sampler, with its two apples sinfully stitched in bold red, fell open on the floor. I stuffed it back in the basket with a flush of guilt, then gathered up the newspapers Father had left strewn around his chair. A small headline in one caught my eye: FIRE CHIEF REASSURES PUBLIC: HORSES STAND AT THE READY AT ENGINE COMPANY NO. 8.

  My jaw dropped. A quick scan of the interview showed it chock-full of falsehoods. ‘“I’ve personally supervised every one of the fires,’” Captain Gilmore claimed, ‘“that my company has been called out to fight.’” Farther down he stated, “‘On several occasions, when the cause of a fire has aroused suspicion, I’ve personally and thoroughly examined the aftermath. In most cases I’ve found that simple neglect, along with Man’s capacity for error, has proved to be at fault, so I don’t believe the public need worry itself about some soulless hooligan skulking around our city and purposefully striking sparks.’” Asked about the distemper epidemic, he had the brass to respond, “‘I don’t know the situation at other companies, but the horses at Engine Company Number Eight are all in fine fettle. They’re standing at the ready, just as my men are.’”

  Such lies! At least two of his horses were dead, I knew that for a fact, and he wasn’t at the furniture factory fire. Mr. Lee had to be right. And I had to tell James.

  Folding the newspaper along with the others beside Father’s chair, I hurried into the kitchen. Flour speckled both the table and floor and coated Mother’s arms in white. She shook the hair out of her face and kept rolling dough steadily.

  “It’s almost five,” I said. “Do you want me to walk over to the station to get James?”

  “No, we can wait until he gets home.”

  “But I need to talk to him. I didn’t get a chance to last night.”

  “We can wait” she snapped. “Now please fetch some potatoes from the cellar. Six or eight will do.”

  I brought up the potatoes and, at her bidding, hastily and sloppily mopped the hall and kitchen floor. Under her critical gaze I was forced to get a bucket of clean water and mop them again. I was ready to explode. Only after I’d set the table to her satisfaction was I excused to my room. Angrily, I took the stairs two at a time, ignoring her hollered command to walk like a lady. I whipped past the pinned butterflies and Grandmother’s empty room. Everything was wrong. Firemen were setting fires and journalists were printing lies and Mother was cooking for people who would never arrive. And even though this was the quietest of November evenings, with stars just beginning to poke through the graying sky, I knew a storm was brewing. I just knew it.

  I paced my room for an hour like a horse trapped in a too-small pen—from the bed to the bureau to the window and a glance down the dark street. The lamps were lit, but it still lay empty. Why didn’t James come? And where was Father at this very minute?

  Flopping onto my bed, I opened my horse care manual. I’d always found solace in its detailed descriptions of illnesses and, more importantly, its cures for them, so I tried leafing through the pages. But I couldn’t concentrate. Voices in my head drowned the words on the page. First Mr. Lee’s, which had been echoing in my ears since last night: “I thought you cared about those horses.” And then Grandmother’s, repeating a verse of a few weeks ago, “They shall go out from one fire, and another fire shall devour them.”

  Two floors below, the parlor clock chimed. I jumped off the bed, ready to run—to where? This was unbearable.

  A loud crack sounded outside: the Girl kicking the carriage shed’s wall. I cocked an ear, thou
gh I hardly needed to decipher the code. She kicked again. I pictured her pacing just as fretfully as I had been. A loud, urgent whinny split the air and that was the final dot after the dash: She was calling for me. I began tiptoeing down the stairs with the plan of sneaking out of the house. Mother caught me at the bottom.

  “That horse of yours is making an awful racket.”

  To my way of thinking, that was as good as an official leave. “I’ll go have a look at her,” I said, and before she could second-guess herself, I darted past her and through the kitchen. The odor of burned stew trailed me out the door.

  The instant I entered the shed, the Girl spun to face me. In the darkness I saw her ears prick. Eagerly she began weaving from side to side like an athlete anticipating the ball. She knew something was going to happen too, even with that cotton stuffed in her ears she knew it. Did she sense a fire somewhere? The alarm hadn’t yet rung. I decided to go after James. “I’ll be right back,” I promised, and gave her a pat on the neck. She nickered anxiously. Gathering my skirts, I tore down the alley.

  Running through the dark and drinking in the cold air was a wonderful tonic for worry. I almost imagined myself a firehorse, dashing to the blaze with utmost speed, pouring every ounce of energy into a lifesaving effort. Even with those awful shoes cutting into my ankles, with pain stabbing my side, I kept running. I pounded the pavement until my chest was near to exploding, until, gasping for air, I clattered to a stop in front of the silent fire station.

  Its lower level was completely dark, though lamps glowed in the second-story windows. The big main doors were closed. For the first time I noticed the small sign beside them that read PUBLIC NOT PERMITTED. I wondered if that overzealous dalmatian was waiting inside to enforce the rule. With my heart still thudding in my ears, I tugged the door ajar.