Mary Emma & Company (20 page)

I told Mother all about Cop Watson when I went home from work, and that he'd probably come to our house to talk to her about me, but I didn't tell her that my name had already been down on the bad-boy book twice before. I didn't want to worry her, and I was sure I could keep it from ever being written down again.

That evening Mother read to Grace and me till after ten o'clock while we were waiting for Cop Watson, but he didn't come, and she kissed me when I went upstairs to bed.

21

Fire!

S
OMETIMES
when I thought I'd had the worst luck of anybody in the whole world there would be some good come of it. That's the way it turned out about our having the fight with the boys from Edgeworth. I found that I had a lot more friends at school than I'd known about. From that time on they kept an eye on Philip and Muriel when they were delivering laundry, and no kids from Edgeworth or anywhere else ever dared to tip over our cart again.

It was only a couple of weeks after the fight that Medford had one of its biggest fires, and that was when it really helped me to have so many new friends. Our house was right next to the Glenwood Fire Station, and we were eating supper when we heard the horses clattering out of their stalls to take their places in front of the engine. Before the alarm sounded they were racing down Spring Street toward Riverside Avenue.

That evening the bell kept tolling and tolling, but it was no combination for a district in our end of town, and I couldn't understand why our engine had gone out. At last I asked Mother if I might be excused, and went out on the front piazza to look around. The sky to the southeast was so red that the full moon looked to be floating in a sea of blood above the marshes, halfway between Wellington and Somerville.

At first I was sure I must be wrong about the location, because there were no houses within half a mile of the Mystic River, and the marsh grass was too green to burn. While I was standing there trying to figure it out I heard the clanging of two more fire engines, and the pounding of horses' hoofs as they galloped eastward along Riverside Avenue, going from Medford Square toward the Fellsway. No matter what it was, I knew it had to be an awfully big fire to call out every engine in town, so I ran back into the house and asked Mother if I could go.

“Oh, no, Son!” she told me. “You're entirely too impetuous to be running off to a big fire after dark.”

“I'd be real careful,” I told her, “and I wouldn't go too close.”

“No,” Mother said. “With your name on the police book, deservedly or not, I can't let you run off alone to a fire.”

“Well,” Grace told her, “I'd go with him if you want me to, just to see that he doesn't get into any trouble, but it can't amount to much if it's out in the middle of the marshes.”

“Run along then,” Mother told her, “but don't be gone more than an hour.”

Until we were away from the house Grace didn't hurry, but just as soon as we were out of sight she ran so fast it kept me winded to stay abreast of her. When we'd passed the brickyards on Riverside Avenue, we could see yellow flames leaping high into the red glow above them, and they were coming from the Wellington Bridge, where Fellsway Boulevard crossed the Mystic River. It was a wooden bridge, about a quarter of a mile long, with a pair of streetcar tracks in the middle and a wide roadway on both sides.

There seemed to be a hundred policemen holding the crowd back from our end of the bridge, and keeping the Fellsway open so fire engines from Malden and Everett and Reading and Winchester could get through. Grace and I got closer to the fire than most people because we picked our way out through the marshes to a dry hummock right at the edge of the mud flats. From there we could see the whole length of the bridge, clear over to the south end where the Charlestown and Somerville firemen were swarming onto the bridge like ants.

The fire must have started in the engine room, right in the middle of the bridge, where they lifted the big spans to let boats go through. And it was so hot the firemen couldn't get close to it. To keep the whole bridge from burning down, they were tearing out a section on both sides, back a hundred feet or so from the flames, and letting the planks and timbers fall into the river.

At the time Grace and I reached the hummock the incoming tide was running strong, and the river was spread out nearly to the top of the mud flats. That didn't worry us, because the top of our hummock was hard, dry clay, so we knew that the tide never came in high enough to cover it.

Of course we knew what a terrible thing a fire was, and what a terrible waste of money, but just the same it was fun to sit there on our hummock watching the crackling, roaring flames, and seeing the geysers of water squirting up from the Boston fire boats, and from half a dozen fire engines at either end of the bridge. The engines from every town on our side of Boston were there, lined up on the bridge where they could pump water out of the river and onto the flames. Under the arch of the feathery streams, between the engines and the fire, a hundred or more firemen were running back and forth on rows of great timbers; prying them loose from the piling and letting them fall into the river.

The bridge had been built with heavy planking across the big timbers, and the roadways paved with wooden blocks that had been soaked in creosote. By the time Grace and I reached our hummock most of the planks and paving blocks had been ripped off, and the tide was floating them up the river past us. Half a dozen firemen would run out onto a girder that was twenty-five or thirty feet long, balance themselves as they reached under to pry it loose from the piling, then race back before it toppled into the river with a splash.

Some of the timbers were caught for a few minutes between the long rows of pilings, but the rising tide always turned them, and the wind drifted them toward our side of the river as they floated upstream through the red glare on the water. I told Grace they looked like an armada of enemy submarines sneaking up the Mystic River to attack Medford.

“Well, I wish some of them would sneak into our cellar,” she told me. “If we had half a dozen of those big timbers they'd make us firewood enough to last all next winter, and if we could burn chunks off them in the furnace it would save us two or three tons of coal.”

“Maybe I can get some,” I said. “They're just throwing them away, so they don't belong to anybody.”

“Hmmmfff!” Grace sniffed. “Don't be so silly! Can't you see how high the water splashes when they fall? They must weigh a couple of tons apiece. How do you think a little boy like you would ever get one of them out of the river, let alone lugging it clear up to our house?”

“Well, I'll betcha I'd find some way to do it,” I told her. “I could tie one to stakes on the bank, and saw it into pieces, and haul the pieces home on Philip's cart.”

“You'd better forget about the whole business,” Grace told me, “and we'd better get home before Mother worries herself to death about us. We've already been here more than an hour.”

It wasn't until Grace said we'd better go home that we noticed our hummock had become an island. The water had risen all around it, and stretched for more than a hundred feet back through the eel grass. We had to take off our shoes and stockings to wade back to the Fellsway, and we had to go real slowly, feeling for each step before we took it. Under the water there were deep pot holes of soupy mud, where we could have drowned in a minute if we made a misstep.

Mother didn't scold us for getting home late, because Grace explained about the trouble we'd had getting off the hummock, but she did tell us to go straight to bed. It couldn't have been much later than nine o'clock when I went up to bed, but I couldn't go to sleep for thinking about all that good firewood drifting up the river. I must have stayed awake till way after midnight, thinking about it, and before I went to sleep I had an idea.

The next noon when I was coming home from school Cop Watson was standing at the railroad crossing on Spring Street, talking to the gatekeeper. I didn't want to interrupt, so I just stood there for a minute. When he looked around and saw me, he leaned over and said, “Glory be! You ain't been in another fight, have you? That last shiner you got is still green around the edges.”

“No, sir,” I told him, “and I'm not going to get in any more, but I wanted to ask you a question.”

“If it's havin' to do with the law I might be able to tell you,” he said, “but if it's about keepin' your name offa that book you'll have to be figurin' it out for yourself; it's beyond me.”

“Well, it's about the law,” I told him. “I don't want to do anything to get into more trouble, but I'd like to get some of those planks the firemen ripped off Wellington Bridge last night. They let them fall into the river, and we had a flood tide last night, so some of them must be stranded on the marshes. Would it be all right if I took some of them home for firewood?”

“There's nothin' in the law agin it,” he told me, “but you'll never, never in the world lay hands on any one of 'em. Every man jack in town that's loose for the day or out of work has been down there luggin' 'em off since the crack o' dawn. There's naught left but the heavy timbers, and there's naught but a derrick barge could salvage 'em. They was drove out o' the channel by the wind, and every livin' one o' them is stranded in the eel grass above the marge o' the mud flats, where a horse would sink down to his belly and a man to his knees. Forty men couldn't budge one of 'em an inch. I was down there this morn, and 'tis a cryin' shame to see all that good firewood goin' to waste, but there's naught can be done about it. 'twill still be layin' there when you're as old as me, lest its rotted away in the meanwhiles.”

I started to go home to lunch, but I'd only gone half a block when I had an idea and went back to talk to Cop Watson again. He watched me coming toward him, but didn't say anything till I was standing right in front of him. Then he leaned over and asked, “And now what kind o' bug have you got up your sleeve?”

“None,” I told him, “I just wanted to ask you something about tides. You see, we didn't have an ocean in Colorado, so I don't know much about them.”

“Mmmm, I've heard tell they didn't have no ocean out there,” he said. “And what would you be wantin' to know about tides?”

“Is there any telling when we'll have another flood one, like the one we had last night?” I asked him.

“Of course there's tellin',” he said. “Didn't they learn you that in school? When the spring and fall moon's at full there's always a flood tide.”

“Thank you very much,” I told him. “Then we'll get another flood tide when the moon is full this fall?”

“Ah, go 'long with you!” he said. “Don't they learn you kids nothin' in Colorado? Flood tides don't just come out of no place. They keep gettin' higher and higher as the moon waxes towards the full, and lower and lower as it peters off towards the wane.”

“Then we'll have another flood tide at about eight o'clock tonight?” I asked him.

He nodded and said, “But not up to the one o' last night; the moon's commencin' to wane.”

“And how about the morning tide, when there isn't any moon,” I asked him, “will that be a flood too?”

He nodded again, and I started to run for home, but I'd only gone as far as the first corner when he called me back. He leaned down and shook a finger right in front of my nose. “I'm commencin' to get a smell o' that bug you got up your sleeve,” he told me, “but if you're smart you'll keep him hid for a bit. If ever word gets out o' what you're thinkin' about, by morn there wouldn't be a livin' one o' them timbers left on the marshes. Every man jack in town would be down there tonight, floatin' 'em adrift and towin' 'em to a beach where he could saw them up.”

“But if I got them adrift before they found out about it, and put my name on each one, and tied it to a stake out on the mud flats, could they still take them?” I asked him.

“Law o' salvage! Law o' salvage!” he told me. “What's turned adrift and abandoned belongs to him that salvages it, and the law will protect him on it, but how is the law goin' to protect a man with forty-'leven timbers staked out on a couple o' miles o' mud flats? 'twould take more officers than Medford's got on the whole livin' force, and you know the chief don't feel too kindly towards a boy what's got his name wrote down on the book three times. But what would you be wantin' with forty-'leven o' them big timbers? Time you got 'em sawed up and fetched home you'd be an old man.”