Comes a Time for Burning (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-four

Had the circumstances been different, Thomas might have laughed. The crowd surged first one way and then another, trying to decide which catastrophe to watch. On the one hand, a burning ship loaded with chains and dynamite drifted toward the life blood of the community. On the other,
something
large was burning on the north end of the village, behind their backs, ready to mow through the village itself.

A handful chose the latter, including Thomas. From the
Clarissa
, Front Street rutted north, two carriages wide through the muck when the inlet spumed over the rude breakwater. Three narrow streets ran up the hill from Front Street into the village, and then Thomas reached the intersection with Gamble.

Without benefit of a lantern, but following a few flickering lights from others, Thomas tried to avoid most of the deepest, ankle-breaking ruts. By the time he reached Gamble, he was panting hard. Jogging inland up Gamble, he reached Angeles Street and saw the fires dead ahead, beyond where Angeles snaked up the low hill toward Patterson’s church.

By that time, Thomas needed no lantern. Flames towered above the church, feeding off the cedar siding, the shakes on the steeply pitched roof, the filigreed cedar trim around the tall steeple. It appeared that the fire had started in the rear of the church, behind the meeting hall, towering now to silhouette the building.

Thomas ducked as an explosion rocked the rear of the church, a sheet of flame and black smoke jetting high above the roof. Something whizzed over his head, and he heard shouts from others.

“The house!” someone screamed above the din. Sure enough, the pastor’s two-story frame house, with its cedar shakes and cedar siding, had become its own conflagration. Thomas scrambled up the trail, skirting the church. Nothing could be done about that structure, and everyone knew it.

Figures were silhouetted in front of the house, and as he plunged across the yard, he saw the front door open. He recognized his wife’s full figure, struggling with something. Thomas bounded up onto the small front porch, and saw that Alvi was trying to manage one end of a narrow cot, with Gert at the other. The flames swept up and over the house, the cedar shakes overhead exploding small bombs of flaming pitch-laden wood that showered over the house.

Something that sounded very like a heavy shotgun banged inside the house, perhaps a tin of oil or a gallon of liquor. With it, the roar of flames redoubled.

“Get the other end!” Thomas shouted in Alvi’s ear. She ducked around and joined Gert, and at the same time Thomas realized that the high keening wail that he heard came from Pastor Roland Patterson, now lying curled on the cot in that characteristic posture, like a small child with knees drawn up and hands clasped at his face.

No sooner had they cleared the doorway than more hands crowded to take the cot. Hands freed, Thomas reached out and grabbed Alvi by both arms when it appeared that she was headed back into the house. “No!” he cried, and as if to punctuate his shout, a portion of the roof cascaded flames and sparks that fountained down on the front porch. Through the front door, he could see nothing but the thick billows of flame-danced smoke.

“Eleanor is with her mother!” Alvi shouted, and she fought Thomas with amazing strength. Struggling to hold her, he wrapped both arms around her. From his left, George Aldrich appeared and grabbed Alvi from the front so that the two men sandwiched her in their arms.

Men with water buckets tried with a few ineffectual attempts and then gave up, the crowd backing away from the heat. As Alvi stopped struggling, Aldrich released his hold, and she sank back into Thomas’ arms, then to her knees, staring hopeless into the flames.

“He must go to the clinic,” Thomas shouted above the din. A corner of the blanket over Patterson smoked where a cedar ember had landed, and Aldrich smacked it away.

“Anyone else in there?” the constable bellowed, but Alvi ignored him, eyes locked on the burning door as if she could will a figure to appear there. A portion of the roof caved in, sending another geyser of sparks up into the heavens. Behind them, the back wall of the church buckled.

Several men with buckets now scampered back and forth from the well, concentrating their efforts on the small spot fires that bloomed in the grass and shrubbery behind the house.

Aldrich and two others trundled the pastor’s cot away from the fire, and Thomas lifted Alvi to her feet.

“You’re all right?”

She nodded numbly and reached out a hand to Gert James.

“Did Eleanor do this?” Thomas asked.

“I think so,” Alvi said, and he could hardly hear her. George Aldrich stepped close and looked her hard in the face.

“Eleanor Stephens was seen at the
Clarissa
just a few minutes ago,” he said.

“She is inside,” Alvi said, and they had to bend close to make out her words. She looked beseechingly at Thomas. “She asked me if her mother and the children were now safe.”

“She knew that they were all dead,” he replied.

“The part of her mind that still worked knew that,” Alvi said dully. She turned to Aldrich. “We heard the fire at the church. We went outside, right here, and saw that there was nothing to be done. And as we turned around, the rear of the house burst into flames.”

“We’ll find what she used,” Aldrich said.

“We dashed inside, and the fire spread so fast.”

Alvi’s face was illuminated with white light as if every lantern in Port McKinney had been turned on her, and a second later the blast hit them, followed immediately by a flat, deep-throated boom from out in the inlet. Thomas instinctively ducked, taking Alvi with him. Gert James sat down on her rump as if pushed. Off to the south, the sky bloomed noon-day bright, and as quickly faded. For a moment, Thomas saw lazy strands arcing up and out, etched against the sky, to dive back into the water like long, curling worms.

“The ship!” he cried, for that’s all it could have been. The
Willis Head
’s dynamite had exploded just before the waters of the inlet flooded over her low-riding, burning gunwales, sending ninety tons of logging chain rocketing in all directions.

“How…” Gert cried.

“She’s exploded!” Thomas said in wonder.

“Thank God,” Aldrich said, his voice surprisingly calm. Thomas looked at him in astonishment. “I better go down and see,” Aldrich said. “But she wouldn’t have had the time to drift to the spit, and right now, that’s all that matters, eh?” He looked first at Alvi and then Gert. “You two are all right, now?”

Alvi nodded.

“There is no one else inside but Eleanor and her mother…you’re sure of that?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’ll be at the clinic?” Aldrich asked Thomas, as if to say, “You’re not needed here.”

“Yes.”

“There are going to be some hurt, you know.”

“We’re ready,” Thomas said, even though he knew they were clearly anything but ready. He looked at the two women. “I can bring the carriage down,” he said.

“I want to walk,” Alvi said. “Walk with me, Doctor Thomas.”

She slid her arm through his, and Thomas turned and held out his hand to Gert, who joined them. When they were far enough from the fire that she could speak without shouting, Alvi leaned her head sideways until it touched Thomas’ shoulder.

“She fought us,” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“Gert had arranged Mr. Patterson on one of the single cots, and was just on her way to fetch the ambulance from the clinic when the church fire started, and then, the house. When we started to move the pastor to safety, Eleanor blocked our way.”

“Actually physically blocked your path?”

“She demanded it,” Alvi said. “I tried to ignore her, and when I picked up the end of the cot, she pushed me away.” She held out her left arm and turned it, showing the rip at the elbow. “I could hear the fire, and knew we had no time to discuss matters with the girl.”

“What did you do?”

“I struck her, Thomas. God forgive me, I struck her, as hard as I could.”

He felt Gert’s arm tighten around his.

“She stumbled across the room, and then behind her, the glass in the window burst inward, and the room was on fire. Gert and I managed the small cot like a stretcher, and then it seemed as if everything conspired against us. At first we could not pass through the bedroom door, a thing so simple when one is not in a panic. And then we almost became stuck fast in the hallway, with the smoke billowing around us. I was terrified, Thomas. And I confess that I did not think about the girl until we were outside. And then it was too late.”

“There is not a thing more that you could have done, Alvi. It appears that Eleanor set fire to the
Clarissa
as well
. From what I could see, it started in the privies on the north side. It spread as if the whole building was covered in nothing but pitch. I don’t know what she used…coal oil, I suppose.”

“And now I have traded her life for her step-father’s, and he is surely a dying man,” Alvi moaned. For the remainder of the walk to the clinic, not another word was spoken, and Thomas found himself cursing his tied tongue, cursing his ability to find just the right thing to say to his wife.

“We were lucky down at the waterfront,” he said as they reached the front steps of the clinic. “I saw only a man with a badly gashed foot. I believe all were able to escape the hotel, and it appeared that the crew was off the ship as well,” Thomas said. “There was nothing to be done. It was a fire well and truly stoked from the very beginning.”

When they reached the clinic, it appeared as if Gert was ready to continue on up Gamble to the house, but Thomas ushered her inside. “At least the hands and forearms, Gert. And if we can find you a clean dress, that too. Take your time, now. Carlotta Schmidt is at the house with John Thomas. She won’t want to give him up.”

Lucius Hardy peered around the ward door, saw them, and stepped into the waiting room, closing the door behind him.

“The pastor is in a coma,” he said softly. “I fear that there is little we can do for him. Had he come to us a day ago…” He shrugged. “Perhaps not even then. His step-daughter is with him.”

“I must talk to her,” Alvi said, starting toward the ward, but Thomas caught her by the arm.

“Not in the ward thus,” he said. “In any event, the girl will need a few moments alone with her step-father.”

“She does not know about her sister,” Alvi said. “I’m the one to tell her.”

“After you clean up, Alvi.”

“Elaine’s sister?” Hardy asked.

“Eleanor has perished in the house fire,” Thomas said, watching Alvi and Gert mount the stairway to the second floor.

“My God, she couldn’t simply walk out the door? The mad girl stayed in the burning house until it fell down around her?” Hardy asked, flabbergasted.

“I would guess her fate was intentional,” Thomas said quietly.

“Ah…that’s most unfortunate. And yet a bedridden man, one lapsed into a final coma, is saved. The world is a curious place, sometimes.” He brightened. “And Thomas?” Hardy nodded toward the ward. “While the town was burning down around our ears—another monumental occasion. Mr. Malone took a tablespoon or two of broth.”

“Surely he’s not conscious?”

“Well, no. But he managed a feeble swallow, which considering his state is a remarkable success.”

“I’m ready to hear of success,” Thomas said fervently.

Chapter Thirty-five

By midnight, the fires and the shouting had died. The three-story
Clarissa
had been reduced to a pile of embers and smoking rubble no taller than the average man. The wharf and warehouse had burned to the waterline, leaving blackened stubs projecting out of the water. The
Willis Head
had simply vanished, but talk had begun to circulate that men would be able to dive into the shallow, tea-colored waters of the inlet and salvage some of the expensive chain that had been part of her cargo. She had exploded more than a half mile from Schmidt’s lumber mill.

Both the church and the Patterson home had burned with a swiftness and totality that took the breath away. On the front porch of the clinic, Thomas could hear, when the breeze was just right, voices from here and there, voices filled with wonder at the disaster.

Despite the fury of the conflagration, injuries had been few and relatively minor. No one had been trapped in the
Clarissa
. The explosion that had ripped apart the
Willis Head
had lit the skies and hurled chain for hundreds of yards, but harmed no one. A dozen stitches closed the badly cut foot of the sailor who’d stepped on a broken bottle in ankle-deep waters.

Roland Patterson proved more of a challenge. Not a vestige of his temper or his umbrage were left to fight the cholera. If he knew that he had lost his entire family, including the step-daughter who had first brought the disease into his home, and then destroyed the both home and church, he gave no sign.

When Thomas checked on him shortly after midnight, he lay as if already dead, breath coming in shallow gasps, eyes dull and unfocused, body twitching in irregular spasms. Neither the tube and bulb nor the infusion through the canula appeared to make any difference to his condition. Fluid replaced in the man’s body simply was evacuated again in double, and Patterson’s body shrank and collapsed.

As Patterson sank deeper into a coma, Thomas sent word up to the women’s ward that Elaine should attend her father…that the end was imminent. To his surprise, Bertha Auerbach came down stairs instead, her step slow and tired.

“She will not leave the ward,” Berti said.

“And yet she understands the gravity?”

“Certainly she must, Doctor.” The nurse looked pained.

Thomas sighed. “She has no one left.”

“Elaine has the ward,” Berti replied. “And for the moment, it is well that she has something so consuming. I know that Alvi wishes to speak with you about her.”

“About Elaine?”

Berti nodded. “Your wife had planned to return to the clinic at dawn.”

“She can’t,” Thomas said automatically, and then realized how absurd that must have sounded to Berti Auerbach. He leaned back against the wall. “Dr. Hardy has taken a few hours. And you should too, Berti.”

“We have no one else,” the nurse said quietly. “It is Mrs. Whitman and myself for two wards. With help from the child.”

“And you?” Thomas’ eyes roamed the nurse’s face, a visage ten years older than the day before.

“I nap,” Bertha said cryptically. “That will have to do.”

For the next two hours, Thomas worked his way from one patient to another, his routine by now automatic. Shortly after two in the morning, Marcus Snyder whispered his name as Thomas rose from tending Howard Deaton.

“Doc, you got one gone,” Snyder managed. “He sat up, and then just went.” And sure enough, in the bed beside Snyder, Gunnar Bloedel, one of Sitzberger’s cabinmates at the logging camp, had expired, lips blue, eyes staring at the ceiling.

“He was havin’ trouble breathin’,” Snyder offered as he watched Thomas. “Breaths comin’ all kind of chirpy-like. Then he sat up, sucked it in, let it out, and that was that.”

“It seeks out the weak of heart,” Thomas replied. He pulled the linen up over Bloedel’s face.

“You need a hand, Doc?”

“I need for you to lie quietly,” Thomas said quickly.

“I ain’t got the strength of a mouse,” Snyder murmured. “But you ain’t got much help, do you.”

“Not much, no. But we’ll manage.” He knew that the last thing the patients needed to see was a sheeted corpse being wheeled from the ward, but perhaps they were used to it by now. The hard rubber wheels whispered on the wooden flooring as Thomas pushed the bed and its cargo from the ward.

He worked methodically, leaving the sheeted corpse on the hard surface of the operating table in the back room, to await a post mortem. Using the harshest of disinfectants, he washed down the frame of the bed and removed the rubber mattress pad, cleaning it with sublimate. The soiled linen went into the soak barrel with five percent carbolic acid, with a little crude hydrochloric acid added for good measure, to await a boiling wash outside come dawn.

Thomas disinfected his own hands for the umpteenth time, then found clean linen and remade the bed before wheeling it back into the ward. Snyder was asleep, and Thomas knelt by Patterson’s bed, examining the pastor’s face.

Patterson was neither awake nor asleep, but caught in some terrible twilight place. Thomas listened to the pulse and heard the laboring of thick blood. The flesh of Patterson’s face had shrunken around the bones, and even as Thomas watched, the man trembled as if a great cold had passed through his innards.

In a back cabinet, he found two rubber water bottles, and filled them both, nestling one in each of the patient’s armpits. A hot mustard stupe on the belly seemed to produce some relaxation, and Thomas took advantage of that to administer yet another round of hypodermoclysis, introducing more than a liter of fluids into Patterson’s system, this time with an added quarter grain of opiate.

Working thus, Thomas Parks spent the night going from bed to bed, with occasional trips to the women’s ward where he conferred with Bertha Auerbach. During those excursions, he watched Elaine carefully. The girl worked as if in a trance.

Shortly before five, he met Lucius Hardy as Hardy descended from his quarters on the third floor.

“You managed some sleep?” Thomas asked. Hardy looked rumpled and a little pasty, and he smelled strongly of wine.

“Well,” and Hardy waved a hand in dismissal. “A little burgundy to kick the system, and if I can find a coffee pot, I shall be entirely happy. You, on the other hand, look a wreck, Doctor.”

“If you’re going to be up for a bit, I want to go up to One-oh-one for a few minutes,” Thomas replied. “Bloedel, from the camp? He died earlier. I want a post, but I suspect heart failure.”

“Isn’t it always, when we get right down to it.” Hardy said. “Patterson?”

“He hangs on. He took a liter of salt solution at three. Perhaps another is called for now. Both Mrs. Whitman and Bertha are managing.”

“Then we are content,” Hardy said. “And my regards to your brave wife, Thomas. We are going to benefit from her steadying hand within these walls. Take good care of her.”

“Exactly my purpose at this moment, Lucius.”

Walking the six blocks, Thomas caught the strong fragrance of scorched cedar as the light wind shifted this way and that. He entered One-oh-one and to his surprise found the kitchen bright with light and activity. Gert James, smelling of fresh lilacs, worked in her long robe at the stove. The dark circles under her eyes were the only hint of what the previous evening had brought. At the sideboard, she was slicing ham paper thin. A basket of fresh eggs stood near at hand.

“Alvina is feeding the child, Doctor,” she greeted. “She is in the library.”

“What time did Carlotta go home?”

“I would suppose it was sometime after midnight. Her husband returned from the camps, and fetched her home.”

“All went well? At the camps, I mean?”

Gert glanced at him. “I did not hear the conversation, Doctor. I would suppose so. I did hear him say that he would visit down at the clinic, but there was still work to be done in the timber.” She regarded the ham critically. “Breakfast will be in just a few minutes. You will join us.” It wasn’t an invitation or query, but a flat command, and Thomas smiled.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How is Mrs. Crowell?”

“Grave.”

“And Howard?”

“He is resting at the moment. But this disease is persistent. It retreats, and then attacks with renewed ferocity.”

“Dr. Hardy?”

“He is with Howard as we speak.”

“Good. I will be sending a basket down with you when you and Alvi return. The Pastor?”

“I’m am surprised that Roland Patterson is still alive at this hour, Gert. He is desperately ill. He is beyond anything I can do for him.”

Gert’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly. “We’ll see, then, won’t we.”

Thomas wasn’t sure what she meant, and added, “If we can force enough fluids, maybe. If his heart will support it. We lost one of the loggers this morning. The Dutchman.”

“You know…” Gert began, then Thomas saw her lips clamp tightly. She turned to face him. “When Dr. Haines…Alvi’s father…worked an epidemic at one of the Indian camps, everyone here in town was so afraid that he would bring the savages back to the clinic to treat them. That wasn’t so many years ago.”

“Everyone…meaning Pastor Patterson?”

Gert hesitated, and Thomas found himself wondering how her loyalties and beliefs must have torn her. “He tried to force the issue with Dr. Haines, to prevent…from that moment until Dr. Haines’ passing last year, they had not spoken.”

“People are easily frightened, I think.”

“I suppose they are.”

“And Alvi should remain here, Gert,” Thomas said as he turned toward the kitchen door. “It’s not a question of fear. It’s a question of common sense. But I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to convince her.”

The older woman shrugged as if to add, “I’ve said all I can say.”

Thomas hesitated. “Gert—you did a brave thing. Thanks for last night.”

A shoulder lifted a fraction. “Sometimes help has to be forced on people,” she said. “They don’t see it in time. Roland Patterson is a bit…starched, Thomas. If he survives, and by Heaven’s grace he will, it will be interesting to see if the collar loosens a bit.” She favored Thomas with a brittle smile.

In the library, Alvi sat in front of a fire just large enough to temper the dampness, the only light to break the dim of pre-dawn. She wore a hugely voluminous robe, the infant lost somewhere in its folds. As Thomas entered, she was gazing into the bright yellow fire. She looked up at him and smiled.

“It would seem that flame is the last thing I would want to see,” Thomas said. “But it’s soothing, isn’t it. John Thomas enjoys it, I suppose.”

“He eats so much,” she said. “I feel as if he’s turning me inside out.”

“I have only a few minutes,” Thomas said. “Gert demands that I have breakfast before I go back.”

“You can’t keep this up, Doctor Thomas.”

“I know. We should have some response from St. Mary’s today. Perhaps staff from there by mid-week.”

“No one can wait that long,” she said. “You least of all.”

“I trade off with Lucius. It is the nurses who suffer the most.”

“I saw that,” Alvi said. “I am so sorry that Mrs. Crowell has fallen ill. You have hope for her?”

“There is always that,” Thomas replied. “Always hope.”

Alvi nodded and adjusted her son’s position. “Carlotta will return regularly as long as we need her. That way I may go down to the clinic for short periods.”

“I suppose it’s a waste of breath for me to ask that you not do that.”

“Why ever shouldn’t I? I am as skilled, as trained, as any—and more than most. A few hours each day won’t hurt me, and will provide some much needed relief.”

“Berti said that you were with Elaine last night.”

“Yes. I told her what had happened. I held her for more than an hour. And then she was finally able to cry, Thomas. She could not bear to look on her step-father, ill as he might be. And now she has no one.”

“Patterson might yet live,” Thomas said.

Alvi’s smile was thin. “As I said, she has no one.” She shifted the swathed infant, drawing him away from her breast. “My arms are paralyzed,” she said. “He’s a heavy brute.” She held him toward Thomas, who took John Thomas with nervous care. “You need practice, you see.”

“Precious little time for that.”

“You shall have the time, when all this is past. I want Elaine to live with us, if she’ll have us.”

The statement came so unexpectedly that for a moment Thomas wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. “Pastor Patterson may have something to say about that, Alvi. Should he survive the night, that is. And if not, then surely she has other relatives, does she not?”

“None on this side of the continent, but that’s a choice for her to make,” Alvi said. “As you know, I can be most persuasive. We can.. and
should
…provide a home for her, Dr. Thomas. She can go to school, and then continue her medical studies. She must be encouraged in that direction.”

“
Medical
studies?”

“Of a certainty. Have you ever known someone of her tender years with such skills? Such
sympathy
for the work of the clinic? It is what she wants. We must provide the opportunity.”

“She has told you this?”

“In all ways but words. In any event, she must remain with us for some time. She has no home, after all. Should her step-father survive, we shall have
both
of them under our room for some time. We can’t just turn them out.”

“We’ll have to see, then, won’t we.”

“You sound unconvinced,” Alvi said.

“But you will see to that,” Thomas laughed. He rocked John Thomas from side to side, enchanted with the tiny face and miniature hands, and then handed him back to Alvi. “If Elaine joins us, then it’s but thirteen more, Alvi. You’ll have your mantle photograph yet.”

She smiled brilliantly. “Because she will join us not as a guest, but as a member of the family, Doctor Thomas. And what a marvelous thing that will be.”

“First, we do what we can for Roland Patterson and all the others.” He frowned in thought. “And what an
odd
thing.”

“Odd?”

“Eleanor’s madness. In some ways, most calculating. She has removed the seat of contagion from the village with massive, bold strokes. Some one—I’ve forgotten who—told me a day or two ago that the best solution to the
Clarissa’s
problems would be the torch. We certainly expected no one to seriously entertain the idea.”