I SCARCE slept at all that night for my plotting. When I did sleep, my dreams were fractured things, coming and going in broken flashes, elusive, cutting themselves off at the knees and disappearing just when I thought I had a purchase on what they were all about.
Mama was sleeping, I knew that. So was Easter, in a small room next to her. Robert was reading. James was sleeping, and Landon was out on a mission of mercy, delivering Mrs. Rappaport’s baby. I thought about how, when Pa was home and came in late from a house call, I would wait up for him with a pot of hot chocolate. I wondered what he was doing at the moment.
From outside came the usual sounds of mortars, musketry, and shells, then, in between somehow, the sound of people screaming a dreaded word.
“Fire! Fire!”
Of a sudden it seemed like the whole world around me woke, like a sleeping tiger who’d been disturbed. Mama came looking for me and we met in the hallway. “What is it? Where is the fire?”
She had in her arms her daytime clothes.
Chip, who usually slept outside the entrance, had taken this night off. Now he came to alert us. “Ma’am, Washington Street is in flames. People all runnin’ down dere to help. Captain Beggs of the fire brigade already be dere.”
“Washington Street. Oh! Claire Louise, isn’t that where Landon went?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I must get dressed. Chip, you accompany me. Easter, you stay with the children and Robert. Keep them safe.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Easter said.
“The whole street,” Chip was saying, “from Brown and Johnston to Crutcher’s store be burnin’. Captain Beggs tryin’ to get as many people as he can to put it out.”
“Well, when we get there you can help, after you help me find Landon,” Mama said.
I slipped into Robert’s room while she was dressing in hers. “Robert,” I whispered, “I’m thinking that now, this very hour, would be the time to spirit you out of here. With all the confusion nobody would know the difference.”
He nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. But how do we make our exit?”
“Claire Louise?” Mama called. “Where are you?”
I stepped out into the hall. “I was talking to Robert, Mama. He thinks that during all this confusion is when people do a lot of looting. He says that Andy and Clothilda will likely go to the fire and answer Captain Beggs’s call. Robert says he is well enough to go to our house and hold off any intruders.”
Mama was lacing up her blouse in front. She came to the doorway of Robert’s room. “Are you sure you’re up to it, Robert? My son would never forgive me if you fainted on the way there.”
“Claire Louise can accompany me, ma’am,” he said. “But yes, I’m up to it. I’ve got my sidearm. And the house will be looted if someone isn’t there to protect it.”
God bless him. God bless you, Robert.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Mama snapped at me, “get yourself dressed, young lady. Since when do you prance about in your nightclothes in front of a man if he isn’t your brother?”
“Mama, why is everybody yelling so? They waked me up.”
James now. Mama knelt down and told him about the fire and how Easter was going to stay with him here until she came right back with Landon and, if he was good, Easter might even tell him stories. Would he like that?
“I want to hear about Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox,” he said.
“Claire Louise, go in the kitchen and make me up a basket of food to bring for Landon. He hasn’t had any supper.”
I got worried then. Things were falling into place too easily for me. I went into the kitchen and made up a basket of food for Landon and one for Robert, too, which I wrapped in a small tablecloth.