Calico Palace (52 page)

At almost the same moment they heard sounds from downstairs—loud frightened questions from Ralph, a cry of alarm from Serena. In the crib the baby woke now, and murmured. Loren sprang out of bed.

“Stay where you are, I’ll see,” he said to her, and ran to the window that looked downhill toward the bay.

Kendra sat up too, hardly aware of the shiver she gave as the cold air struck her shoulders. At the window Loren gave a wordless utterance of horror, then wheeled around and spoke to her. He spoke in a voice more fear-stricken than she had ever heard him use.

“God help us, Kendra, the town is on fire!”

Before he had finished speaking she was out of bed and looking out of the window. Down the hill, toward the bay, she could see flames leaping into the air, streaking the sky with fire and smoke. By the dreadful glow she could see the street, and she felt a twinge of astonishment at how many people were already out there, dressed, or half dressed, or barefooted and shivering in their night-wear. She looked downhill again, across the turmoil, and then she heard herself cry out.

“It’s the plaza—it’s Kearny Street—it’s the Calico Palace!”

Loren had already begun to pull on his clothes. In the crib the baby was crying. Kendra took him up, remembered the cold air blowing in by the window, and snatched up a blanket from his crib, holding him against her own body to warm him. Loren was saying breathlessly,

“It’s the Calico Palace and a lot of other buildings too. I can’t be sure if the fire has gone as far down as Montgomery Street, to Chase and Fenway’s, but it may get there any minute. You stay here, get dressed and keep warm. And wrap up the baby, so if you have to run you’ll be ready. I’ll go down and see what I can do to help.”

Kendra hardly heard him. She was gathering up her robe of quilted satin and drawing it around herself and the baby, doing it without thinking about what she was doing, taking care of him by an instinct deeper than thought. What she was thinking, in her own awareness, was how she and Marny had rejoiced that the clouds had blown away and there was no rain tonight.

M
ARNY HAD NOT GONE
to bed as early as Kendra that night. She was not used to early hours, and she was looking forward to the luxury of an idle evening.

At a side entrance of the Calico Palace she said goodby to Pocket and Hiram. They walked on, and Marny went into the little dark hall from which the stairs led up to the living quarters on the third floor. As she reached a door leading into the public room, she paused to open it a little way. Standing back in the darkness, she looked in.

The public room was full of men. Their voices were loud against the clang of the band and the clinks of bottles and coins. But the racket was good-humored, and everything seemed to be in order. There had been a murder recently at the Bella Union. Four o’clock in the morning, everybody had been drinking for hours, two men at the bar had had an argument, and one of them had pulled out his knife and stabbed the other. And then an inquest, and a lot of ugly stuff in the papers. Bad for business. This, Marny had said proudly to Norman, was what came of keeping the bar open till four in the morning. They hadn’t had any murders at the Calico Palace.

She closed the door silently and went upstairs. From Lolo’s room she could hear the baby, Zack, murmuring in baby-sounds that Lolo seemed mysteriously to understand. The noise from below did not bother Zack. Nearly a year old now, he hardly knew what quiet was.

Her own room was cold, but as she lit the candle it looked peaceful, and she did not hear any rats scuttling about. When she had undressed she put on her wrapper, a fluffy woolen robe lined with silk; she slipped her feet into a pair of soft cuddly slippers tied with ribbons, and sat down before the mirror to brush her hair. Marny liked to brush her hair. She liked sweeping the brush in long hard strokes and watching the ruddy lights that followed its path.

After a while she began to yawn. It was still earlier than her usual bedtime, but she remembered that she had been up early this morning to help with the presents; or maybe it was Loren’s excellent brandy. Anyway, a long night’s sleep never hurt anybody. Making sure her door was bolted, she put her little gun on the table by her iron cot.

Marny always put the gun within reach. Besides the fact that she was a tempting woman, the Calico Palace had to keep a fortune in coins on hand for the gambling tables. The coins were kept on this floor, in two safes. The safes were strong, and Norman and the Blackbeards were first-class guards. But with all precautions the Calico Palace was still a dangerous place to live.

Marny blew out her candle, and stored this and her cake of soap in a tin box with a tight cover. The rats liked to gnaw on soap and candles. Having done all she could to assure herself of a tranquil night, she slipped in between the sheets and drew the blankets up around her. The cot was narrow. Marny reflected that it was just as well she was sleeping alone. Drowsily she wondered if she were in the mood for another gentleman friend. —No, she thought, if I were in the mood I shouldn’t be wondering. She went to sleep.

When she heard the noise of the fire her first thought was that the sounds meant trouble downstairs, and in her mind she cried out—Don’t tell me we’re having a murder here too! But almost instantly she heard the bells, and bangs of the gongs that hung at restaurant doors to announce mealtimes; she smelled smoke and saw the weird swirling light, she heard rushing footsteps outside her door, and from somewhere she heard voices yelling “Fire!”—as if anybody needed to be told.

Marny sprang out of bed. When she thought of it later it seemed that in those first few seconds she had acted without any conscious plan, because she could not remember doing anything. She only knew she had done it, and had done it with the speed of terror. She kicked aside her pretty slippers and without pausing for stockings she pushed her feet into the shoes she had worn to Kendra’s dinner party. They were not stout shoes, but she had no time to look for thicker ones. She threw on her fluffy woolen robe, and snatching up her gun she put it into a pocket. What roaring of flames, what shouts and screams! The whole town must be ablaze. Marny jerked a drawer open and swept up her nugget necklace and dropped it into the other pocket of her robe. Most of her ornaments were in her safe at Chase and Fenway’s—if only the store were not burning too! Tossing back her hair, she thrust in a pair of combs to hold it out of her eyes. The night was cold. With one hand she snatched her cashmere shawl from the wall hook where she had hung it before she went to bed, and with her other hand she pushed back the bolt of the door.

She was wide awake now and her senses were alert. She had a cabinet full of clothes, but clothes were not important. Not even gold dust was very important. But the coins! Coins, brought all the way from the Mint in Philadelphia. Coins, so valued that they brought interest of ten per cent a month. There in the hall were the two safes, two, because Norman had said, “If anybody gets into one, we’ll have lost only half.”

Norman, wearing shoes and trousers, was on his knees before one safe. A candle in a candlestick stood on the floor beside him; Rosabel, wrapped in a dressing gown, stood beside the candle. Even at this moment Marny felt a touch of thankful admiration that Rosabel was not screaming. Rosabel’s mouth was tight with fear, but her hands were steady as she held them out for the poke of coins that Norman was taking out of the safe. Marny heard a clatter of feet on the stairs, and cries from baby Zack as Lolo rushed down with him, not caring if she saved anything else or not. Marny noticed that Norman’s upper arms were getting soft. In fact, while he was not fat, his whole torso was a bit flabby. He was not like Pocket and Hiram, tough with the toughness of labor. What a foolish detail to notice at a time like this. Yet she was noticing everything else too, as though fright had sharpened all her senses.

Norman thrust a leather bag of coins into her hand. “Can you carry this?”

“Of course,” she said, and then thought—How? A leather bag would be snatched in a minute. She wrapped the bag in her shawl and tucked the bundle under her arm. Cries of terror rose from everywhere; she heard Norman say sharply, “Well, get out!”

He was right, there was no use trying to save any more, they would die trying. Lugging her unwieldy bundle, Marny started to flee.

She ran down the stairs, holding up the long skirt of her robe with her free hand. The wall beside her was hot; the fire was coming close. The staircase had never before seemed long or steep, but it did now. Though she was running as fast as she could her journey down to the first floor seemed to take an hour. At last she reached the hall, she rushed past the door of the public room, and then to the outside door by which she had come in, and then at last she was out in the air. Thinking of it later, she remembered that in her thankfulness the air for a moment had seemed cold and fresh, though in fact it had been hot and threatening and full of smoke.

She saw the glare of shooting fires, and as far as her eyes could reach she saw hordes of people milling around. She heard the roar of flames, and voices shouting, and her own voice crying out, “Oh God, please make it rain!”

A thousand others were sending up the same petition. But it did not rain that night. The rain had poured mercilessly upon them when they did not need it; now when it could have helped them it was not here.

Marny pushed her way through the mob, across the plank sidewalk, past the mud-puddles bright with reflected fires. Beyond the sidewalk the mud clung to her shoes like an enemy trying to hold her back. She fought her way on, through the mud, through the teeming throng in the plaza. She had thought the night was cold; maybe it was cold elsewhere, but here near the fire the heat was terrible, and she felt sweat oozing under her woolen robe. She ran on, panting as she ran, and biting back sobs of rage as she thought of all she was leaving behind.

—Stop it, she told herself, don’t think about what you’re leaving. Take care of what you’re bringing out. This poke of money—

The poke, clumsily wrapped in her shawl, felt immensely heavy, though she was in no frame of mind to estimate how heavy it actually was. —Take care of it, she told herself again. And take care of yourself. Get away from the fire.

Above the thunder of flames she heard the shouts of thousands of men around her, and as the dreadful glares came and went she saw them. Thousands. Where on earth had they all come from so suddenly? They were dressed, or in various stages of undress, all yelling, all rushing about in what looked like meaningless confusion. Marny hugged her bundle and elbowed her way among them, telling herself again and again that the only thing to think of now was how to get as far away from the fire as she could.

A man’s voice said, “Howdy, Marny!” A rough hand gave her hair a yank. Marny said, “I’ve got a gun. Get away from me before I use it.” The man slunk aside. Marny pressed on. A minute later another man put a hand on her wrapped-up shawl, snarling, “What you got in that bundle, Marny?” Marny snapped, “Clothes. Let me get by.”

She pushed past him too, and he troubled her no more. Around the plaza men had respect for Marny. They knew she was no helpless ninny who would crumple up without somebody to take care of her.

By this time her shoes were so heavy with mud that every step was harder than the one before. Her legs ached. Behind her she heard a crash. A wall falling in, no doubt. She did not pause to look around.

—Get away, her thoughts kept pounding, get away. A sudden glare lit up the sky; a flame must have leaped from the site of the crash. By its light she saw, ahead of her, standing a little higher than the heads of the men scrambling around, an auctioneer’s platform stacked with boxes and barrels. She pushed toward it. The glare faded, the platform stood almost in the dark. Another burst of flame lit up another part of the plaza. Marny did not look. She made her way toward the platform. Her strength was giving out. She had to rest somewhere, and catch her breath.

A skeleton staircase, hardly more than a ladder built on a slant, led up to the platform. Marny pulled one foot out of the mud and put it on the step. She took her hand out of the gun pocket to support herself, and pulled up the other foot. Panting, she made her way up the steps. On the platform, there seemed to be no room for her to stand or sit. She might have knocked a barrel over the side, but it would almost certainly have fallen on somebody’s head, and the last thing she wanted now was to call attention to herself. With the hand not holding the bundle she managed to move several barrels closer together, leaving a small space among them. Here she dropped the bundle, and sat, almost fell, upon it. For the moment she was out of sight, hidden by the barrels around her, as safe as she could be so near the fire and in the midst of such a frantic rabble.

Her breath was coming in such short pants that the air seemed hardly to go down at all. The struggle to get here had given her a pain in her chest and another pain in her side. For several minutes—she did not know how long—she sat where she was, hardly moving, trying only to breathe easily again and give her thumping heart a chance to quiet down.

After a while she noticed that drops of sweat were running down her face. She had no handkerchief. Lifting her arm, she wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her robe, and as she did so she looked up.

Huddled here among the barrels, she could not see what lay directly in front of her, but farther off she could see flames, and showers of sparks, and clouds of smoke swirling in the air. She could hear roars and crackles of fire, and crashes as timbers fell, and screams and shouts from many throats. The smell of smoke was thick in the air. Marny felt intensely hot, but it did no good to push back her woolen robe. There was no coolness in front of such a roaring fire.

The last phrase caught cruelly at her mind. “A roaring fire”—what a cheerful, comfortable sound those words had always had!

She felt stronger now. Taking a long breath of the smoke-laden air, she pushed herself up and stood looking across the barrels toward Kearny Street.