Firehorse (9781442403352) (24 page)

A large dog appeared at the other end of our alley. He didn't bark, but his unexpected presence startled her into a backward spin that allowed me to snatch up the trailing rope. I leaned all my weight against it, but she just went trotting off in the other direction, me the flopping tail to a windblown kite.

I ran as fast as I could to keep up with her. Children stopped their play to watch, and the Girl gave them quite a show. Her knees snapped, her nostrils flared wide. She tossed her head and whinnied again and again. I kept tugging on the rope, reminding her to behave, begging her to listen. Gradually she slowed her prancing just enough that we entered into a sort of dance.

The weather could not have been more agreeable. Clear sunlight spangled the street. Cool air filled our lungs. She snorted it out in brassy blasts, and I let it go in uncontrollable laughter. She trotted in circles, and I ran beside her and leaped along with her, throwing back my head and shouting to her joyous whinnies.

As we made our way down the street, more children came pouring out of the neighboring houses. Everyone seemed to know
her; they called out her name as if she were a local hero. And maybe she liked being a legend, because when the squeals of joy crescendoed, she came to a majestic standstill and allowed the children to gather around her and touch her and feed her the treats they'd begged from their mothers. Or maybe she was just hungry for sweets, because she bolted everything from apples and pears to jelly cakes and molasses cookies. And licked each small palm just as neatly as any mother could wipe it.

By the time we returned to the carriage shed, I was as tired as I was restored. I'd tasted freedom again, which made the perfect end to the perfect day. Until James met me there.

I expected him to scold me for taking the Girl out on my own, but he hardly seemed surprised. He asked some idle questions, all the while fiddling with the top button on his shirt. That meant something was bothering him.

“What's wrong?” I asked at last.

“It's a couple of the horses at the station,” he answered. He seemed relieved to be talking about it. “Chester and Major John are down in their stalls—been that way for two days now.”

My euphoria evaporated at the worrisome news. “What's their condition?”

“No appetite, flanks drawn. Chester's coughing a little. Neither will get up.”

“Mr. Stead's seen to them, I'm sure.”

“He's come by the last two days, but he's not sure what it is. Says it could be distemper.” He nodded toward the Girl. “Has she been all right?”

“Yes,” I answered cautiously, sensing where he was headed. “This is the first time she's been out, but I can keep her in if it's that serious.”

James tugged so hard on his top button that I thought the threads would break. “I think you should. Mr. Stead told us he's seeing lots of other horses in the city suddenly falling ill.”

“Distemper
is
a nasty disease.” I knew that well enough from my manual. Still, there was a panicked look in James's eyes that suggested more to the story. “What else is worrying you?”

“You don't understand,” he said. “Two of the firehorses at our station are down with it, and I heard there's another one at Station Five and possibly another at Station Eleven. If other firehorses get this … if
all
of them get it, all over the city … do you know what that could mean?”

A sickness stabbed my stomach. Of course. But before I could say anything, James echoed Father's inflammatory words: “With that firebug still out there, this city's a tinderbox. And without the horses, Rachel, we're all at the mercy of the next fire.”

TWENTY-TWO

I
T COULDN'T BE AS BAD AS ALL THAT
. I
REFUSED TO BELIEVE
it. After such a wonderful day—and having my bandages off and with the Girl improving, I just didn't want to think of more horses getting sick.

I could understand James's distress, though. Chester was his favorite at the station, a prankish white gelding whom he'd been teaching tricks. For nearly two months I'd been hearing how Chester could tuck his nose between his knees and bow on command, how he could search out carrots hidden around the station, and how he was “this close” to ringing a handbell as long as you first helped him get it in his teeth. He'd planned on demonstrating Chester's cleverness some upcoming morning when the firehorses were brought out for public display. Now, slump-shouldered with despair, James returned to the station.

To add to the gloom infiltrating our house, Grandmother fell again and broke her spectacles, and then she came down
with such a headache that she took to her bed. She pulled her faded red quilt up to her chin and crossed her wrinkled hands on her chest and lay so still that sometimes I had to stand in the doorway and hold my own breath to see her breathing.

Only Father seemed immune. He kept up his attacks on city officials in his columns. This week the subject was their utter failure to improve the water mains and hydrants in the burgeoning commercial districts. He even went so far as to order a huge box of matches and a thimble filled with water delivered to each of the area's aldermen, with an accompanying note inquiring, “Which is the greater?” That set off the fireworks, so to speak, and for the next several days he devoured his dinner and his newspapers with the same self-indulgent speed and rushed back to his office to create even more combustible columns. I think we all breathed momentary sighs of relief when the door slammed shut behind him.

But in his absence a melancholy air settled over our house. The stair railing sagged, the floorboards felt sticky, and Mother's new curtains slumped under the weighty task of trying to add cheer to such a dismal abode. One afternoon when I came in after examining the Girl, I found Mother sitting alone in the dining room. She was huddled over a steaming cup of ginger tea, looking especially pinched and pale.

“Oh, there you are,” she said. A small stack of coins sat beside her saucer and she slid it toward me, creating a ripple in the tablecloth that she didn't bother to smooth. “I need you to go to the optometrist's shop on Boylston Place—you know the one;
it's beside Dr. Safford's office. Your grandmother's spectacles should be ready.”

“How is she?”

“Her head's still throbbing with that awful ache, and it seems to be catching.” Mother rubbed small circles into her temples, her eyes shut. “I don't know the optometrist's hours; the store may be closing soon, so you'd better take the horsecar.”

I gathered up the coins with a smattering of guilt. I was so thrilled to head back outside on such a splendid day, the first day of autumn, that I would have gladly walked the mile-and-a-half distance. But Mother had said to take the horsecar and, well, where horses were involved, who was I to argue?

Sailing through the afternoon shadows that stretched between the brick row houses, I hurried the five blocks over to the stop. All the while I wondered which “grandfather” horse would be ferrying us along this time. I'd always called them grandfather horses because they invariably wore long whiskers and plodded steadily, deaf to the city's distractions. I imagined them settling into their straw beds at night, recalling youthful exploits, complaining of rheumatism and humming tunes from the war.

When I turned the corner, hoping it might be the kind-faced chestnut with the thinning mane, I found more than a dozen impatient people crowding the stop. The horsecar was nowhere to be seen.

A man with a white beard chewed on his pipe, forcing little blasts of smoke from the edge of his mouth. He paused long
enough to fish his watch out of his pocket and, cradling it in one hand and his pipe in the other, grumbled, “It's been over twenty minutes.”

“We could have walked half the way there by now,” his wife complained. “I'll never get all of my shopping done. Don't they have watches of their own?” She surveyed the bystanders for support. In casting her gaze across me she happened to spot my scarred hands. Her mouth fell open ever so slightly. But in the next instant she caught herself and turned away, squinting over her husband's watch. I self-consciously tucked my hands beneath my crossed arms. For a fleeting second I missed Father's gloves.

Two tall, pale gentlemen standing closer to the street exchanged glances. Inclining his head, the one murmured, “I told you something's wrong with the horses,” to which his friend returned a sober nod. The worry that I'd tried shoving aside bared its teeth.

We went on waiting, craning our heads time and again down the street. Under my armpits I had both sets of fingers crossed. More than anybody else, probably, I wanted the horsecar to appear, if only to prove that the horses were all right. None showed. The tracks stretched long and empty into the distance.

Muttering an oath, one agitated man with a hawkish bent to him adjusted the overcoat he'd draped over his arm and strode away. That's all it took, and in twos and threes and singly the rest of us, including me, began following in his wake. James's awful news clawed through me like a fever. I scanned
the cross streets as we proceeded, hoping to prove him and those two men wrong. But everywhere I looked I sensed a change. It was almost undetectable, like a tide having receded a little ways down the shore when you were busy gathering shells. Eventually I had to admit it was because there were fewer horses than usual clip-clopping along the streets.

A horsecar finally came rumbling along the tracks, but it was loaded almost beyond the poor horse's ability. So many people hung from the leather straps, swaying like smoked hams, that you couldn't even see those that were seated, so of course none of us could get on and we kept walking.

The pavements in Boston had always been crowded, but as we neared the Common, people actually began elbowing others onto the street. A thick-waisted woman clutching the wrists of two children shoved past me so hard I was spun into the path of four surveyors and their arsenal of rolled plans and sharp-edged clipboards. Unfamiliar hands set me right and on my way.

With its rolling carpets of lush green, the Common appeared more than ever as an oasis, a reward for negotiating the city's brick maze. I stowed away my worries long enough to admire its splendor. Golden sunlight slanted between the black arms of bejeweled trees. A playful wind caught up the burgundy and yellow and splotched-orange leaves and swirled them across the carpet like paper fancies. Crows bobbed and called. Squirrels dashed in a game of tag. Only the deer were beyond resuscitation. Inside their meshed cage, they flicked their white tails anxiously
and raised their noses to the air, sniffing for something only dimly remembered.

Aware that the afternoon was waning, I hurried on to the optometrist's shop. Grandmother's spectacles were ready, and in minutes I was back outside. Only then did I realize that those horrid, clunky shoes of mine had once again dug painful blisters into my ankles. The walk home was going to be torturous unless the horsecar headed out was less crowded.

The crescendoing clatter of a reckless trot tore through my pondering. It erupted in an awful scrambling—and then a loud crash. People began running toward the Public Garden and I ran with them.

A crowd already ringed the scene. I caught a glimpse of a dark brown horse stretched flat amid a tangle of harness and an overturned buggy. My heart squeezed. Someone shoved in front of me to bob up and down with curiosity, and so I had to search for another view. Sidestepping behind a wall of shoulders, I twisted between jostled packages and pointy elbows and stood on tiptoe myself. At last I could see the driver, staggering, holding a hand to his blood-streaked face. I couldn't see if there was blood on the horse. Was he dead? A young man had left the crowd to straddle the horse's head. “Hurry now!” he shouted to the driver. “Unbuckle the check.” But the man was either too dazed or too stupid to help. Others leaped in, and soon there was such a pile of people atop the poor horse that if he wasn't dead already, he certainly risked suffocation.

A burly man in an overcoat reeking of fish guts moved in
front of me, and suddenly I couldn't see a thing again except his greasy collar and the fringe of untrimmed hair below his hat. A terrible thwacking sound accompanied a panicked whinny. The crowd gasped in unison. What was happening to the horse? Spotting a streetlamp, I grabbed hold of its iron pole and pulled myself onto the base. A sea of heads and hats rippled around me, parting at the fallen horse. To my immense surprise Mr. Stead was kneeling beside the prostrate animal. I couldn't hear what he was saying over the crowd's din, but I recognized that, in his calm, confident manner, he'd taken charge of the situation. He pointed to this person and that one, and buckles were unfastened in an orderly fashion and the buggy slid away and righted. All the while he kept a hand flat on the horse's neck, soothing the convulsive trembling. At least the poor thing was still alive.

Something, I don't know what, made Mr. Stead look up and drift his gaze across the crowd. As he did so, he caught sight of me. To my surprise, he smiled and nodded a greeting before returning to his work. My face flushed warm. A heady feeling raced through me, the kind you get when bobbing to the surface of a cold pond or swinging into the sky on the jerking end of a rope.