Comes a Time for Burning (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

Thomas entered the men’s ward and stopped short. The magnitude of the problem was now painfully clear. Every bed was filled, now including four young men recently brought from the camp. True to the perverse nature of the disease, there was no predicting the path the contagion would choose.

Two of the new cases were in the second stage of cholera, their evacuations like rice water, a gushing torrent that literally carried with it the lining of their gut.

Young, hearty loggers, proud of their ability to conquer the big timber, now lay as emaciated old men. Restless, anxious, in the fight of their lives with no ability to do anything about it, the men simply sank away. The cold perspiration soaked them until there was no more perspiration to be had. Their mouths were too parched to form words.

One of the loggers recently arrived showed only the lightest symptoms—a nagging stomach upset, painful gut, vomiting and diarrhea that he could managed well enough with the chamber pot without soiling his bed. There was no reason Mike Tierney should have been more resistant, but he was, healthy enough to curse his fate in the most vocal terms.

The ambulance ride to the clinic had all but killed the fourth logger, who had been in the third stage of cholera, his face sunken and unresponsive, eyes half-closed, pulse a mere flutter. He had been a big man, but now had shrunken to a pathetic marionette, as easy for Nurse Auerbach to arrange on the bed as a child. His oral temperature had fallen to 91 degrees, and at first, Thomas did not believe Bertha’s recording. He took the temperature himself, and the mercury rose sluggishly, stopping at 90.5.

Through all this, in his private chambers at the back of the men’s ward, Sonny Malone slept on, his shaved head encased in ice with periodic respites for warm wraps. He now took tiny amounts of brandy, amounts small enough that they evaporated in his mouth. The swallow reflex managed what few drops lingered on the back of his tongue.

“We must be as patient as he is,” Lucius Hardy had observed at one point.

When he had a moment, Thomas dashed up to the women’s ward, where he found Hardy now just leaving Adelaide Crowell’s bedside.

“How is she?”

“Desperate, Thomas. I have never seen such a thing.”

“And the young women?”

“I wish I could be optimistic.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “It is as if, by being so close to the initial outbreak, the virulence is somehow more intense. I don’t think that can be possible, but so it seems. If even one survives, I will be surprised.”

“And Lucy?”

Hardy gazed toward the front of the ward. “She lingers. And I suppose I could say that her struggle is remarkable in all respects. The disease has reduced her to a mere shadow, yet a stout heart drives her on. We continue to support her system as best we can. If she lives, it may be weeks before she has convalesced sufficiently to rise from her bed. And that’s without the rather lengthy list of sequelae that might impede her course of recovery.” He took a deep breath and looked at his watch. “I ramble on. I’m sorry. I’m tired. I’m hungry…but with no appetite.” He grinned. “Make sense of that, if you can, Doctor.”

“We must find help for Bertha,” Thomas said. “She has worked without pause since yesterday.”

“She is adept,” Hardy said. “I have walked through the ward more than once and seen her on the bed toward the back of the ward, sound asleep. Yet she stirs and wakes at the smallest moan from a patient. My grandfather used to call those ‘wolf naps.’”

“If this continues, she’ll need more than a wolf nap,” Thomas said.

“She spends a lot of time with the girl…with Elaine.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Thomas said. “I confess I don’t know what to say to the child. It is easy to accept her as a nurse-in-training, without dwelling on the collapse of her world. I don’t know how to help her deal with that.”

“That may be all we can do right now.” Hardy smiled gently. “Have you yet noticed that not very much of what we do here was ever discussed in the quiet, secure halls of the medical college?”

Thomas laughed. “I have noticed that, Lucius.”

“Old Roberts will see our article in the journals and say, ‘My God, those two were but pups who didn’t know one end of a scalpel from the other just a bit ago.’”

“Should we live to see it,” Thomas said philosophically. “I admit to always listening with half an ear for my own borborygmi.”

Hardy’s own laugh was quick and loud. “You must remember what we called the ‘students’ syndrome.’ With each new disease that we studied, we began to show symptoms. We died a thousand dread deaths, Thomas. We’re invulnerable now.”

“Would that were so. Eleanor has left the clinic. Did you know she was going to do that?”

“No.”

“I need to find the time later tonight to visit the Pattersons. She will be at the house, with Gerti.” He pulled out his watch. “And now, a few moments with the tiny child. I must know what killed her.”

Back downstairs, he ducked into his office to fetch his journal. The place was a sanctuary, although the smells of the wards touched each corner and cranny of the clinic. He entered and was struck by a new aroma, a bouquet that lingered, this one altogether lovely. Alvina had come to the clinic? Surely she had not brought their son into the wards. Had she done so, another presence would have followed her…the dog would not leave Alvi and the infant.

Thomas removed his shirt and dropped it in the lidded brass bucket that served as a hamper, then donned a fresh one from the ornate armoire. He had long since given up wearing a jacket, and once refreshed, he rolled up his sleeves and spent a long time disinfecting his hands, washing and rewashing, and then drenching his hands in brandy, letting the liquid drip from his fingers into the new porcelain sink.

He glanced in the men’s ward and saw that Hardy had come downstairs, now making his way from bed to bed. Taking the stairs two at a time, Thomas returned to the women’s ward and saw Bertha Auerbach tending one of the Clarissa girls. Five of the beds were occupied, and in the far corner of the ward, little Elaine Stephens sat on the end of the very last bed. Alvi knelt in front of her, both forearms resting on the girl’s thighs, both hands holding Elaine’s locked together.

As he drew closer, Thomas saw that Elaine wore a spotless new white dress, and an apron obviously fresh from under the iron. Alvi and Elaine were locked in intense conversation, eye to eye, Elaine’s head bowed so that her face were less than six inches from Alvi’s.

A hand touched his elbow, and he turned to Bertha. “Mrs. Whitman will be coming in for the rest of the night,” she whispered. “Her son stopped by to tell us. If we are able to convince four or five nurses to come from St. Mary’s, it would be a great help. We are falling behind with the laundry.”

“With a lot of things,” Thomas replied. “You are holding up?”

“After a fashion,” she said.

“You must take the time for rest,” he said. “Nothing is more important than that.”

“As she is doing at this moment,” the nurse said, nodding toward Alvina. “She shouldn’t be here, but she is.”

“Indeed she shouldn’t. Where is the infant?”

“I did not presume to ask,” Bertha said in that cold, neutral tone that she could use with such effect.

“Then I shall,” Thomas said. “Excuse me.”

“Certainly, Doctor.”

At his approach, Elaine looked up, and it was clear that the tears had been abundant. Alvi ignored her husband, but reached up with both hands to cradle Elaine’s face. She whispered something that Thomas couldn’t hear and Elaine nodded quickly in response. Alvi stood up, releasing her hold on the child only at the last moment.

She turned and slipped her arm through Thomas’ as they walked back through the ward. “You look refreshed, Doctor Thomas,” she said. “The brandy wears well on you.”

“Fortunately, Lindeman has an adequate supply, Alvi. Where is John Thomas?”

“Carlotta Schmidt stopped by the house. She is with him.”

“Really? How wonderful. Is that wise, though?”

“Wise? Why ever would it not be wise? She wanted to be of help. And perhaps she is lonely, Doctor Thomas. Her husband rode out to the camps again, and is still there. His operation is as much in jeopardy as anyone else with this thing that has come among us. Carlotta said that he would close the West Dutch Tract camp.”

“Jake told me so.”

“And if it rains, he will burn all of it.”

“And Elaine?”

“She has lost too much,” Alvi said, looking down at her hands. “She worries about her step-father, I know she does. And even more, she worries about Eleanor. She wants to go home, Thomas.”

“It would be better to remain here where we might keep her under observation. It is no safer there than here. Less so by a good deal.”

“She understands that. I told her that I would do all that I can, now and later.”

“And in the meantime?”

“There is no meantime, Doctor Thomas. First I must go down the hill. I’m sure that Gert has found neighbors to assist her with the Pattersons, but I want to be sure. She has been there all day. And then I shall return here to do what I can.”

Alvi started down the stairs but then stopped and turned when Thomas didn’t follow immediately. “You expect something else of me?”

The single syllable would not come for a moment. Finally he managed. “No.”

“Fine, then,” she said. “I will return with a full report. I will offer whatever assistance Gert needs. If the pastor isn’t ill, that will make things easier.”

“I think he is,” Thomas said with considerable resignation. “He fights it, but he is ill. He should be here.”

“Then we shall see, won’t we.” She reached out and stroked his cheek, and they walked arm in arm down the long stairway. When Thomas opened the front door of the clinic, the wash of fresh air was welcome. The late evening sky hung low, the lights of the village reflecting off the bottom of the clouds.

“Don’t worry about me,” Alvi said, and reached up to kiss his cheek. “And I shall not worry about you. All easily said, is it not?”

She laughed gently and then held up a finger, frowning. Now they could hear it, shouts in the distance, shouts so far away that the words had no meaning, just sounds floating on the air, punctuated by a symphony of dogs barking in frantic rhythm.

Lights played on the clouds, more than any lantern could throw, more even than a raging bonfire. A dull
whump
thudded, and more voices. Thomas stepped out onto Gambel Street, looking through the runty trees toward the southwest. Off in the distance, a bell began to ring frantically and then just as suddenly stopped.

“What…” Thomas started, and then another explosion, this one much louder, sent flaming debris skyward, above the trees, above the village, a cascade of burning embers.

“My God, it’s the Clarissa.”

Chapter Thirty-three

The weathered cedar siding of the Clarissa Hotel fed a giant fan of flame, a torrent that rose up the north side of the building, gaining momentum to the eaves, roaring into the night sky. Loathe to leave the clinic, but drawn by the conflagration whose flames he could see through the trees and over the rooftops, Thomas Parks cut through the alley to Lincoln Street, two blocks above the waterfront.

A dozen people milled in the street, unable to approach the burning building. The wall of flames already curled over the roof, igniting the cedar shingles. The privy on the north side of the building, a six-holer built on a cement foundation, was entirely consumed in flames, and a constant rain of embers and slivers of burning wood speared into the shallow water behind the hotel, each sending up a plume of smoke as it quenched.

Four men were attempting to operate Bert Schmidt’s small wagon-mounted pump, but their efforts were comically ineffectual. They could approach the south side of the building where the flames had not yet curled, but the intense heat kept them away from the actual fire itself.

Thomas stopped in the middle of Lincoln Street, dumbstruck. Certainly, the blaze had begun in the outhouse, but from something far more intense than a carelessly knocked pipe. The entire structure roared with flame, from foundation to shed roof and beyond. He saw Fred Jules, a silly little bucket in his hands, trying to scoop water from the inlet.

The night breeze fanned in from the north, driving the fire up the siding and over the roof to the south side.

Several of the people in the street were dressed in night clothing, ripped from their slumbers after an interminable day of cleaning and worrying. As Thomas hustled down Lincoln, he recognized Viola Jules in a billowing gown. She screamed at Fred, who abandoned his one-man bucket brigade. He embraced Viola in a helpless hug as they watched the contents of their life go up in flames. Thomas came up behind the couple and put his arm around Viola’s shoulders.

“Is everyone out?”

The stout woman nodded.

“We think so.” Fred’s bellow was drowned by the roar. He didn’t look at the growing crowd around them, instead mesmerized by the sight of the three story hotel being reduced to ash. The heat was fierce on their faces, and as the north wall began to sag inward, the eaves above it curled down as the roof timbers under the shakes ignited. George Aldrich and two others pressed through the crowd, shouting for people to move back.

The four men who had been trying to operate the hand pump had retreated to the wharf, perhaps thinking to send a thin stream of water onto the backside of the hotel. Thomas could see that their efforts were useless. As the flames swept around from the north side and from the roof, the light played on both the wharf and the steam bark
Willis Head
. On board the ship, two men stood at the bow, directly at the base of the bowsprit, shouting something at the four firemen.

If they didn’t understand the problem then, everyone did in a moment, when the fire flashed across the Clarissa’s rear wall above the inlet, rolling up under the eaves and around to the south side. As it burned, the cedar split and shredded, the tiny explosions of sap driving the embers out into the wind that the fire itself generated. When the first curtain of embers fell on the wharf, the jeopardy was clear.

Tarred timbers first smoked and then exploded in flame, and Thomas watched in growing amazement as the wharf ignited, the fire racing up the three cedar sides of the wharf warehouse. The pumpers directed a feeble stream at the timbers, then hastily retreated. But there was nowhere for the
Willis Head
to retreat, other than to the open water of Jefferson Inlet. Her boilers were cold, and her hundred and ten feet of hull lay heavy in the water.

The ship’s bowsprit rose a dozen feet above the inlet, a full two hundred feet from the back wall of the hotel, and by the time the threat to the ship became obvious, it was too late. Converted to steam, the
Head
carried a light rig of canvas, all of it tightly furled, but as the wharf’s burning warehouse blossomed into flame and sent its own fountain of sparks into the air, the jibs caught first, the flame running up the lines.

The men on board—and Thomas could see two—faced an impossible task, but it became immediately obvious what they had elected to do. He recognized the power figure of Jacques Beaumont as the captain, ignoring the blaze, bounded down onto the wharf and cast off both bow and stern lines, and at the same time, the four men who had given up on the pumper realized the problem. Covering their faces, they charged along the very edge, racing down the far side of the wharf away from the burning structures, dancing through the flaming timbers.

As quickly as they ran out on the wharf, the fire cut off their escape, roaring between them and any return to the boardwalk on shore. The roof of the warehouse fed flames to the south side of the Clarissa, and Thomas shielded his face. The light was mid-day bright, the sound an enormous rolling thunder of flames and small explosions from coal gas, coal dust, and a vast store of flammable liquids in the bowels of the Clarissa.

At first, it appeared that the six men could make no progress with the
Willis Head
, and as much as others might have wanted to join the effort, the fire had spread across the wharf and cut off the ship and crew. Flaming pitch melted off the structure and speared into the water. Because the wharf lay just off east-west, the wind worked in the men’s favor, and even as the fires danced in the ship’s exposed rigging, Thomas could see the gap between ship and wharf widen inch by inch.

The race to save the
Head
was agony. All the men were needed to push and heave, leaving none to fight the growing fires now in both her rigging and the canvas-covered cargo on her deck.

Quartering against her bulk, the wind both fanned the spot flames and helped to ease the ship backward, away from the wharf.

Something exploded with a tremendous roar in the last room of the wharf warehouse, sending debris rocketing far out into the water and across the
Head’s
decking. At the same time, flames reached out from the ship’s rigging like golden pennants, pointing down the inlet.

The first signs of smoke emerged from her single stack and Thomas realized that at least one seaman had stayed below in the ship, frantically trying to fire her boiler.

As the stern of the ship floated far beyond the end of the wharf, the effort of the six men and the persistent push of the wind sweeping down from the north gained purchase on the slab sides of the
Willis Head
.

“They ain’t going to make it,” George Aldrich yelled in Thomas’ ear. “And they’re going to have to take a plunge!” It was obvious that the six men on the wharf had two choices…clamber back on board the
Head
as soon as she cleared the wharf, or dive into the inlet and swim south, heading for shore well down reach from the fire.

The constable prodded Thomas in the ribs. “You seen the girl?”

“Who?” Thomas bent his head close to the Constable’s in an effort to hear.

“The Patterson girl. Eleanor.”

“Eleanor?” He shook his head, flinching from the heat. By now, the crowd of onlookers gawked at the race. Flames curled around the bowsprit where a curtain of burning, furled sail slumped off the lines and draped around the bow. Inch by inch, the ship drifted and pivoted, but with every inch, the fires at the bow raced and bloomed up into rigging, now even feeding on the marine varnish of the forward mast and running down the gunwales.

The black smoke from the stack billowed thicker now. As the
Willis Head
drifted far enough beyond the corner of the wharf and the reach of the men pushing her, all six scrambled on board. Had they had Schmidt’s hand-cranked water pump now, they might have accomplished something. Fire aft of the bowsprit formed a halo of bright flame around the foremast, running up the varnished wood like a mad thing.

A blast of hot air swatted Thomas’ face and he staggered backward, along with the hundred onlookers. The
Clarissa
erupted as the north side of the roof crashed inward, followed almost immediately as the inlet side of the building slumped, buckled, and then spewed out into the water, taking the south wall with it. Flaming timbers seemed to dance across the water, showering the burning wharf where fires raced along the trails of pitch toward the retreating ship.

Flames and sparks from the
Clarissa
, feeding on all four walls now and joined with the conflagration from the long wharf and warehouse, arced hundreds of feet into the air, actually curling over the
Willis Head
as she drifted out into the inlet. The six men on board now tried to concentrate their efforts on the ship, but buckets of water hauled on lines up from the inlet provided only enough water to cool their own blistering hides. The flames grew from the bow and reached another wrap of tarpaulin stretched over deck cargo.

One of the men ran forward toward the flames but was forced back. Now that the ship had drifted beyond reach from the wharf, her bow yawned away from the blaze on shore. For a moment it appeared that she would swing windward until her bow headed south, offering her stern to the conflagration, but Jacques Beaumont spun the wheel hard to keep the bark’s slab sided hull broadside to the wind so she’d make full advantage of the push. Had she been able to gain even a little headway from her engines, she might have managed, but the rudder drifted as listlessly as the rest of the ship, at the mercy of the flames and the wind.

By the time she had swung abeam the wind, her stern was fifty feet from the wharf. The smoke from her stack wisped up into the night to be swept away. With her bow now engulfed and the fires spread the length of her rigging, the men retreated to the stern, and a hundred souls on shore shouted and waved at them to dive into the inlet. A seventh man—Thomas imagined him to be the intrepid fireman who had made such a valiant effort to fire the boilers—joined the group, and one by one, shed of heavy clothing and boots, they leaped for their lives into the inky waters of the inlet. It appeared to Thomas that two of them hesitated until pushed over the side by Captain Beaumont.

The captain stood on the fantail of the
Head
, both hands on the railing, watching the swimmers.

“Don’t do it,” Thomas heard himself shout. Jacques Beaumont could do nothing about his blazing ship, and to remain on board to be reduced to a cinder was pointless.

With another roar, the
Clarissa
collapsed in on itself, and Beaumont made his decision. Turning from a final, long look at his ship, the captain spread his arms and executed a magnificent swan dive into the harbor.

All seven men from the
Willis Head
reached shore, greeted by dozens of helping hands. Beaumont swam rapidly with a powerful crawl, then stood in water to his knees, trying to make himself heard.

Thomas heard the word “oil” shouted, and the captain gesticulated urgently down the inlet. The crowd fell silent as if stunned man by man. Now well away from the wharf and the fire, the
Willis Head
drifted unhindered, wallowing before the winds that blew her southward. Thomas saw that the ship’s course, without power to drive her out into open water and safety, would carry her directly down the inlet, her hulk burning to the waterline.

One of the men who had swum ashore sat down abruptly in the shallow water with a cry of pain, clutching his left foot. Another explosion rocked the giant bonfire that had been the
Clarissa
, and Thomas hunched against the rain of sparks. Beaumont helped the injured swimmer out of the water. The captain spotted Thomas and beckoned.

With plenty of light, Thomas had no difficulty seeing what the injured man had done. The bottom of the inlet was littered with every conceivable sort of junk, and it appeared that a broken bottle or some such had slashed the man’s heal to the bone, a nasty gash that circled up into the in-step.

With a discarded shirt, he bound the foot tightly and then shouted at the men, “To the clinic! Take him there now.” Turning to Jacques Beaumont, he bellowed to make himself heard. “What’s she carrying?”

The captain pointed with both hands. “That pallet up at the bow is two thousand gallons of coal oil, but she’s got more in the hold. Dynamite, too. Lime, cordage, ninety tons of logging chain…she’s sitting heavy.”

“It’ll all go to the bottom here in a minute,” Thomas shouted back.

“God damn well better.” Beaumont gesticulated toward the southwest. “If she don’t, she’ll run aground down yonder.” As long as the
Willis Head
remained far enough out in the inlet to avoid grounding in the shallows, she would drift along unhindered as the fires raged on board, burning themselves out.

But in another mile—curtained now by the darkness—the shoreline began its slow curve toward the east, hooking out into Jefferson Inlet to form the spit where the wharfs of Bert Schmidt’s gigantic saw mill complex jutted out into the waters—the saw mill, with its endless ricks of the seasoning spruce and fir—and just beyond, the new shingle mill with hundreds of pallets of fine-grained, explosively thin cedar.

A shout just behind him drew his attention back to the
Clarissa
, but it wasn’t the fire there that had prompted the cry of alarm. To the north, high-lighting the dirt streets and scattering of buildings that rose inland from the hotel, light flickered against the clouds, and even as he watched, a sheet of flames rose high enough to tower over the village.