I HAD SEEN THE ocean in high winds and knew the rushing terror of tall waves coming to shore, unstoppable. Prairie fire is like that but red and crackling like gunfire.
At the first hint of a distant red glow on the horizon, shouts of alarm had echoed in the streets outside. When Cherry had risen that very morning, in fact, she’d said over a lean breakfast that the hot, sharp wind was fire weather. By this time in October we might have expected to see the first rains, but a spell of dry heat had culminated in these rising winds. Thunderheads swirled in the distance, promising rain too late to quench the flames.
From the rooftop we girls watched the glow increase until the sky was drenched red as sunset. In the streets the merchants were loading wares and family hurriedly into wagons, hoping to outrun the sweeping inferno. They would head to the river south of town, Cherry told us, and wait for the fire to run out of fuel.
Safety was possible for anyone who could travel that distance faster than a walk. The winds were high, however, and a slow-moving wagon could be easily consumed, as could women on foot without decent boots, carrying their meager possessions on their back. If we got to the river and Long Grass went up in flames, the nearest town from there was another six miles. Spring River was no bigger than Long Grass and we would not be welcome. Only Cherry might have money to buy some measure of shelter.
So we would take our chances in the town we knew. The fire wasn’t the only danger outside. There were carrion like Loomis, and the decent folk who’d not share any scarce resource — water or space on the road, shade from sun or shelter from rain — with the likes of us. They would spend their money for a romp with sweet Angel or the exuberant welcome of Lisbet, a tall-built girl who had seen one season and sometimes sang when Otis played. When it came to survival, they would sacrifice us without a thought.
Like Jesus’s poor, there would always be more whores.
I did not care overmuch which of the merchants made it to safety. Had they only gathered their families and left immediately, they would have been safe. Instead they took goods with them as well and risked being overtaken by the fire once they were on the road. Given the load some of them were tying down, their chances were better staying in town, along with the other unfortunates with no horse to carry them south.
The cage of the prairie was just as it had always been, inescapable. That I had spent time with someone who thought I was a person did not change the facts. Connor had left weeks ago with “Be seeing ya, Darlin’.”
The approaching wave of black smoke met the sun and blotted it out so quickly that Greta and Lisbet, both German girls, declared in unison, “Gott im Himmel!”
“It’s going to take us all!” Angel wrung her hands whenever she wasn’t wiping away tears of fear.
“This town hasn’t burned yet,” I pointed out. “We had prairie fire three years ago and it passed us over. The cleared space around the town is even wider than before.”
“I’m so glad,” Angel said earnestly, “that you are older and know so much.”
I wanted to tell her I wasn’t born a few years earlier than her to act as her almanac, but in the ominous light of the impending disaster, Angel looked like the near-child she was. I felt immensely older.
The red glow at the base of the smoke seemed to take on solidity. I wasn’t sure I was seeing the actual flames yet, but it wouldn’t be long. I thought of Connor, wondered where under that huge sky she might be. Hoped that no matter where she was that she would spend a few moments of her day reflecting on the pages I’d given her to keep. That her Darlin’ was a memory she treasured. That she indeed could not look at her saddle and not think of me.
If the fire did take the town, and us with it, well, I could not help the fancy that I could rise from the fire. That if Long Grass rose again, so would I, somehow, and I would have choices in that life denied me in this one. Juliet found Romeo after Shakespeare looked away, I told myself. There could be a second start, just not in this place, in this life.
I knew how the church felt about such ideas. The church said we all had one chance to lead the perfect life, and if that failed, we burned for eternity. That meant, according to them, my fate was sealed for all time before I’d been fully grown.
Red fire was plainly crackling in the distance now, and these thoughts seemed important, though I’m sure the preacher would think my time better spent praying for deliverance or preparing myself to meet the flames of hell a little earlier than expected.
Conjured perhaps by my thoughts, an uncovered wagon rumbled onto the main street just beyond where we were perched like painted crows on the rooftop. The preacher and his kin were loaded closely together, along with what appeared to be pieces of the church altar.
His voice carried as he said, “I’ve done all I can to save their souls. The Lord will provide the rest!”
His words were directed at his wife’s sister. I thought I saw her hazel eyes blaze with some strong emotion, but it might have been the filtered sunlight. She did say something, however, and her gaze brushed over all of us.
The preacher’s reply made liberal use of “strumpets.”
Fancying the heat of the fire already on my back, there was no reason to still my tongue. I shouted down Hotspur’s declaration, “‘Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily!’”
With a look of both horror and fear, he whipped the reins to urge the horses more quickly on their way. Hazel looked back, just once, and it wasn’t too far from the truth to fancy she was looking at me. But what that lingering gaze meant I could not have said. The only reason she had to single me out was the impropriety she’d observed of one of the strumpets riding out of town with a cowboy.
Cherry and I herded the girls across and down the long street to the schoolhouse. Some carried their clothes or trinkets. I carried a bed sheet in which all of my scribblings and clean paper were wrapped. The schoolhouse was the building nearest the center of town and furthest therefore from blowing embers and flames looking for a roof to feed on. Its well was also dug deeper than most, and the iron pump was sturdy and fast. With no one to tell us not to, we gorged ourselves on the cool water, washed our hands and faces, and wet our hair.
The building was empty but for us, the teacher’s desk in front of a fine, large blackboard, and three neat rows of benches and tables. When other folks came in, I returned the McGuffey Reader I’d picked up to its shelf. I hadn’t intended to keep it, but later a spite might wish to say that I had. I would not like to be called a thief, if I survived the day. The newcomers took care to stay well away from us. None, however, tried to claim we had no right to stay.
The air reeked of burnt grass and it weighed heavily on my skin. A few more townsfolk found their way inside, panting with the effort to carry their most precious belongings and herd their dogs and children into the increasingly crowded room. The last arrival banged the door open with a clatter.
“Jinny! Are you here?” The man at the door was in shadow for a moment, then he stepped into the light. Her favorite customer, I realized.
“I’m here, Henry. Why aren’t you safely away?” Jinny was on her feet in a flash, trembling and ashen faced.
“I couldn’t leave you.” He opened his arms, and Jinny ran to him. Everyone saw him pull her close but with care, as if she were precious. I thought, struggling to breathe, that Henry was an unlikely Romeo, arriving before Juliet became a sheath to the fatal dagger.
Even as the air grew dim with ash and smoke, and it was a struggle to speak without coughing, the word marriage was said. Kansas City was mentioned as a stopping point on the way to a brother’s farm. They would start anew if the Lord spared them today.
In spite of the heat I felt frozen inside. Right in front of me, a miracle, a second chance, but not on a road I could ever travel.
Fire is hot, and it is loud. It roared like an enraged tidal wave, hit the island of the town, and poured around the edge, seeking fuel. We were all on our hands and knees, gasping in the thin air. The noise buffeted my ears like the percussion of thunder and all the while I watched Jinny and Henry, holding the other’s hand as if it were a lifeline.
I doubt they heard any sound beyond their words of love being whispered like prayers.
A girl knew of a girl who’d heard of a girl who’d married a customer and had a second chance at respectability. Now I actually knew the girl who had had such luck. It would always be that way, I knew that. I would know of a girl…but that girl would never be me.
The fire surrounded the town but not a roof went up in flames. The stench of charred grass was even more powerful when we ventured outside. The dusty brown ribbon of road now stretched between fields of smoldering black. The fire had turned away from the river, so it seemed possible that townsfolk who’d left in wagons would return unharmed.
The part of me that was still a hopeless schoolgirl traced the road to the horizon with the idea that I might see a solitary figure, a knight riding to the rescue of her lady. But there wasn’t even a cowboy returning to her favorite whore to see if she was all right. A stupid wish. Wasted hope.
There was a sudden flare of lightning, not far, and the almost immediate crack of thunder. Jinny walked away with Henry and never looked back. With a ring on her finger Cherry could not touch her, and even the preacher would use that other word that begins with a W: wife. Such hopes for me were as lifeless as the fields, or so I told myself.
More lightning, more thunder. I was back in my room, leaning from my window, when I saw the preacher’s wagon trundle toward the church. The woman with the hazel eyes craned her head in all directions as if she could not believe nothing had been harmed. She smiled in relief, and only she and I knew that I had been included in that search for reassurance, and that I had nodded in acknowledgment of her concern.
I would hear her voice again.
It finally began to rain.