A JAR OF PEACH PRESERVES IN HAND, NOREEN HIKED UP the cellar’s wooden steps compiling a mental list of the other ingredients needed to make the cobbler. One cup of sugar, milk, vanilla, a dash of nutmeg . . . She opened the door leading into the kitchen and, stepping inside the room, was met with a blast of radiating heat so oppressive she immediately recoiled. Flames shot up from the stove and black smoke engulfed the kitchen. Noreen’s lungs tightened. She grabbed a dish towel from the counter and swatted at the flames, only instead of putting out the fire, the blaze roared even higher. The fringed end of the dish towel caught fire, consuming the fabric and burning her hand. Panic-stricken, she flung the flaming towel toward the sink, but it hit the window and ignited the curtains.
Get out before it’s too late. Disoriented by the dense smoke, she stumbled over a chair and fell against the table, displacing the dishes set for supper. A water glass rolled off the table, landed with a thud on her head, and shattered when it hit the floor. She winced at the sharp blow. Her head throbbed, but the shooting pain in her hip kept her still. Gasping a lungful of thick, hot air, she choked. Her airway sealed.
Don’t panic. Think. The window? Blocked. Flames had spread from the curtains and now trellised the walls. Stay low. Crawl out. She snaked a few inches on her belly, taking in short gasps of air close to the floor. The consuming scent of kerosene overwhelmed her senses. The oil lamp must have fallen over when she hit the table. Now the lamp’s contents were cascading down the table leg and soaking into the braided rug she was lying on. Noreen scrambled to her feet as the rug torched. Upright, the dense smoke burned her eyes, fogging her vision.
“Noreen!”
She froze.
“Noreen, where are you?” Thomas’s shout carried over the crackling walls.
“Thomas!” She coughed.
A distorted outline of her husband emerged through the smoke. He thrust the handkerchief he’d been using to tent his nose and mouth at her face, then gathered her into his arms. The last image she had of the kitchen was flames licking the ceiling.
Once outside and a safe distance from the house, Thomas lowered her to the ground. His dark brown eyes scanned her body with intensity. “Are you all right?”
Coughing hard, she could only manage a nod.
“Stay here.” He sprinted toward the house, covering his nose and mouth with the crook of his elbow as he disappeared back into the smoke.
“Nay!” she called, but it was too late. She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip and stared at the horrid deathtrap. Nothing’s worth saving. Please kumm back, Thomas. “Lord, what is he risking his life for? Please, keep him safe. He’s all I have, Lord.” Tears burned her eyes. A massive amount of black smoke bellowed upward. It seemed like hours before Thomas finally stumbled from the house. He reached the bottom porch step and dropped on the ground, coughing between gasps.
She ran to her husband, then sank to her knees beside him. Noreen placed her hand on his back, feeling his muscles tighten with each raspy breath. “You had me out of mei mind,” she said. “You could’ve died.”
She might as well have been lecturing to the wind. He pushed off the ground, then unbuttoned one of the lower buttons of his tucked-in shirt and removed the small tin box, which he kept buried under the winter blankets in their bedroom closet.
Noreen stood. “You went back in for that?”
He shot her an I can’t believe you’d ask glare, embedding the soot deeper into the lines on his forehead and making him look older than his thirty-nine years. Thomas shoved the tin box into her hands before running toward the equipment shed. “Put that in a safe place,” he said over his shoulder.
Noreen inched her hand over the box’s jagged edges. The old tin was where he kept his letters. She hadn’t seen it in years. Several loud pops, which sounded like a round of ammunition, fired from inside the house and drew her attention from the box.
“Noreen, get back!” Thomas shouted. He held a shovel in one hand and several feed buckets from the barn in the other.
She met him at the water pump. “That sounded like gun shots.”
“Probably mei deer rifle.”
She went to set the tin box down so she could help fill the buckets.
“I asked you to put that away,” he snapped. He cranked the pump handle, placing more thrust on the iron lever than was necessary to bring water to the surface.
“But don’t you—”
“Noreen” was all he needed to say.
She spun to face the washhaus and darted away. Noreen placed the box on the shelf above the washtub, grabbed the two buckets from the floor, and raced back to the well.
“Take the pump handle,” Thomas said, giving it another hard push. He grabbed the full buckets, two in each hand, and toted them to the fire.
Noreen cranked the pump handle and water gushed into the pail. By the time she had the next two filled, Thomas was back with the empty ones. He made a quick exchange and rushed back to the house.
Thomas’s brother Jonathan and his teenage sons, Peter and Jacob, cut across the fields separating the two properties, bringing more buckets. “Patty’s gone to alert the others,” Jonathan said, taking over the pumping. Their rural Posen, Michigan, district stretched over miles of farmland, interspersed with copses of pines and Englisch farms.
A short time later, men, women, and children from their Amish district responded. Even some of their English neighbors came to offer assistance. A bucket brigade quickly formed. Noreen was in charge of placing the empty buckets under the spigot for Jonathan to fill, then passing them to the bishop’s wife, Alice, who passed them along to the next person in line and ultimately to Thomas, who went dangerously close to the house each time he tossed water onto the fire.
Flames shot out the windows. Soon the roof was ablaze. The house groaned under the heat before caving in on itself, sending tiny orange and red embers soaring upward. Noreen’s vision blurred. For half a second she couldn’t move. Years of hard work, heartache, and joy reduced to a heap of hot embers. It all seemed unreal.
Moments later, a young boy pointed to a nearby stand of jack pines engulfed in flames. Focus shifted to the secondary fire. A flurry of men ran, water splashing over the sides of their buckets. One by one, they threw the contents of their pails on the newly spawned blaze. Suddenly everyone’s homes were at risk, given how dry the silage corn fields were for late September. The warmer summer had made the drydown quicker, but if stalks caught fire it’d easily spread to the Wagner farm and from there, every house, barn, and crop in the district would be in jeopardy.
Multiple gallons of water were tossed on the fire, only it wasn’t enough to stop the flames from reaching the first teepee-style bundle of corn shocks. The dried cornstalks fed the ravaging fire, driving it quickly across the field. Noreen grabbed a pail handle in each hand and carted them to the next person. Breathing hard, expanding her lungs to full capacity, carting the pails the ever-increasing distance from the pump was a challenge. Lord, help us, please.
Just when Noreen thought all hope was lost, firefighters from Posen arrived, using their massive hoses to squelch the flames and saturate the area’s ground.
Exactly how long it took to contain the fire, she had no idea. Her entire body was numb. With the immediate danger past, Noreen released the empty bucket, allowing it to clang to the ground. It was over. All that remained were a few standing charred wall posts still smoking. Handling so many five-gallon pails of water left her arms feeling like lumps of bread dough. When the womenfolk took turns giving her a hug, she was too weak to return the gesture. The ladies talked of plans for a sewing frolic to help replenish the loss, but Noreen stood apart, still dazed and unable to wrap her mind around all that had happened.
“I have enough material for a dress or two,” Mary Beth said.
Others chimed in what extras they had to offer and the topic shifted to surplus canned goods, kitchenware, and pantry items.
Her sister-in-law Patty came up beside Noreen. “Let’s continue this talk at mei place. We can wash up and have tea. Besides, the mosquitoes will start to swarm soon now that the fire is out.”
True. Dusk in northern Michigan at this time of the year meant either dousing yourself with cedarleaf oil or having to battle an army of mosquitoes if you wanted to be outside. She didn’t want to be outside. A chill settled in Noreen’s bones. Between losing the heat from the blaze and the nighttime temperature dropping, Noreen’s arms prickled with goose bumps. She hugged herself as much for comfort as for warmth.
Patty twined her arm around Noreen’s elbow. “Tea sounds gut to you, jah?”
A cup of tea sounded good—if she could swallow. The fire had left Noreen’s throat raw. She licked her dry lips and tasted smoke. Between the burning sensation brought on by the acid rising from her stomach and inhaling too much smoke, she wasn’t sure even tea would help. Then again, it would be nice to wash up. Soot caked her skin.
Noreen was about to accept Patty’s offer when she spotted a firefighter in a reflective jacket, oxygen tank in hand, approach Thomas. She slipped her arm out from Patty’s. “I have to check on mei husband.” She broke free from the group of womenfolk. A new surge of adrenalin infused her veins. Thomas sat slumped against the trunk of a maple, his legs splayed out in front.
“Thomas!” Her voice cracked.