Brookland (71 page)

“Standing on the landing of the New Ferry. He took off his hat to me.”

“He's building an alehouse, right there.”

“He cannot—”

“Well, God bless the legislature, they wouldn't grant him a license for hard liquor. But they say we're a big enough town to support three places to drink in.” Mrs. Loosely brought out Prue's plate, and as soon as she smelled the cutlet, Prue realized she was ravenous. “Fischer's a weasel. Says he thinks people'll just stop off for a pint and a boiled egg and be on their way, but I don't know who he thinks he's fooling.”

“He hasn't your stables,” Prue said between bites. “Nor your auction block.”

“And he shan't, either. He's boxed in—there's nothing else he can buy in the area, unless Isaiah Horsfield goes under.”

Prue scanned Joe's face to see if he meant any malice; but she told herself it was in her imagination.

“Sorry to hear the news about your sister as well,” Joe said, lowering his voice. Still, all the other patrons quieted down to listen.

“Thank you, Joe. We hope we shall remedy it soon.” She could not taste her lunch, but she ate it all to show she was not troubled by the conversation.

That evening, Tem went up to the minister's to attempt to talk to Pearl, but she, too, was rebuffed, though she had only asked for the return of her coat and keys. To be inside their own house was unbearable—they all sat there gloomily, and Pearl's old cat wandered around, mewling like a lost kitten—yet Prue imagined her sister and husband felt as she did, that it would be even worse to light out for one of the taverns. Prue wished their current difficulties could sit more lightly on Ben's shoulders than on her own, but this was impossible. He loved Pearl as a sister; and his fortunes, and the bridge's, were every bit as much tied up in the distillery as Prue's or Tem's.

The week passed slowly, though there was work to do at the distillery, preparing for the holidays. Each morning and evening, one of them would walk up to Will Severn's house to ask if Pearl would see them. Each day, though Severn offered his apologies, he turned them away.

In the evenings, Prue took to sitting in Pearl's room, as if this itself could explain the pass they had come to, or bring her home. She searched again and again through the few possessions her sister had left behind—some old underclothes, her books, her embroidery, and some knitting pins that had belonged to their mother.

“We should bring them to her,” Tem said, “so she'll have aught to do there.”

“If she wants them, she'll ask,” Prue replied, holding tight to the bundle of ebony pins. “I think it might be better if she grows bored. She'll come back more quickly.”

The last thing Pearl had been embroidering was a foldback for a sheet, with a thick, satin-stitched border of jungle plants. Prue could not find the illustrations on which these had been modeled, but their outlines were traced in pencil across the blank part of the landscape. Prue had little facility with the needle, but she worked it out from where her sister had anchored it in the fabric, and began trying to stitch across the outline
of a leaf. Her embroidery looked childish by comparison with her sister's; Prue thought that if Pearl saw it, it would surely anger her. Nevertheless, she persevered. Working on this project her sister had abandoned seemed a way of being close to her; or at least, with each stitch, Prue thought she came a stitch's distance closer to understanding the boredom that had afflicted her sister in her days at home, and that same distance closer to repenting for the wrongs she had done her.

Still, she could not sleep, knowing Pearl was abroad. She almost wished Will Severn would tell them he and Pearl had married and invited none of them; it would be better than the silence that then obtained. It would be better than to sit awake each night, once the clamor of the docks and the roads had subsided, and hear the bitter shrilling of a barn owl, and wonder what would become of her sister.

One night perhaps ten days after Pearl's departure, Prue was sitting at the kitchen table with the needlework, and suddenly realized everything around her sounded strange. Usually she heard the rustle, if not the calls, of nocturnal creatures, but they were all quiet; instead, she thought she heard sounds out on the docks. Her first thought was, there were boys enough in Brooklyn to upend every fishing boat in Creation, if they'd set their minds to it; she imagined they had worked open the gate to the bridge and were out drinking upon it, and she only hoped none would fall to his death. She thought she heard something being dragged along either the docks or the bridge's wooden roadway, then stopping; a moment later, it resumed, then again fell silent. Yet though the sound concerned her, she was exhausted deep in her bones; and though she tried to remain awake, she knew she must have drifted off, for she was awakened before dawn by the unmistakable sound of one of the distillery's warning bells ringing agitatedly in the night.

She knew she did not imagine this sound, because she heard the rest of her family sitting up or resettling in their beds. “Prue?” Ben whispered. She could hear him through the floorboards, and walked as softly as she could upstairs.

He was sitting up in bed. The bell pealed thrice, then stopped; thrice again, then stopped again, which was the signal of distress. Whoever was ringing it was upset enough to choke the rope, and was not allowing the clapper to complete its swing before tugging it again. “It must be a fire,” Ben said.

Prue strained her nose but could smell nothing. Before she could answer him, he was out of bed and tucking his nightshirt into his britches. Prue went across the hall to rap on Tem's door. “Get up,” she said. “Something's amiss at the works.”

Tem opened her door quickly; she must have been standing there fully dressed. She had one hand on her forehead. “You're certain it's our bell?”

“Did you drink too much?”

Tem held up her finger and thumb to indicate a small amount.

Prue started down the stairs.

Abiah was already rummaging in the pantry and bringing forth their leather buckets. All four were crazed with a fine lattice of cracks from being stored in the dry kitchen, but they would still hold water. Abiah handed the buckets to Ben and Prue, and went to the peg for her coat. When she opened the kitchen door, Prue smelled the smoke for the first time. It was rising from the waterfront, not so thickly it obscured the view, but enough so she could not determine which building was aflame, though she could see by its proximity it belonged to the distillery.

“Look up,” Ben said, as she peered down toward the water. The very tip of the Brooklyn arm was also on fire—though again, from that vantage, she could not determine the extent of the blaze.

Prue let out a deep breath and stood transfixed. Ben went inside for all their coats; Prue put on Pearl's, though it was tight, and let Tem wear her own. “Come, then,” Ben said, and they hurried down the hill.

Halfway down Joralemon's Lane, the air began to thicken with smoke. Ben stopped and turned to the three women. “Tie your handkerchiefs over your noses and mouths and crouch down,” he said. “When you get to the water, wet the cloth.” He kissed Prue's cheek and set off toward the blaze. The warning bell was still tolling, and a crowd had begun to gather, most with buckets, a few gawking.

“I am sure they know, in New York,” Tem said, shaking out Prue's handkerchief of pocket lint. The one in the pocket of Pearl's coat was clean. “They must have sent their engine by now”

But beyond the bell, the sounds of people shouting, and the rumble of burning wood, Prue heard nothing from the river.

The southern end of the distillery, including the windmill, appeared safe for the moment, but the end nearest the bridge was clotted with black smoke. Neighbors—not all of whose faces could Prue recognize
behind their handkerchiefs—were hauling buckets of water up from the straits and dashing them at the flames, which had thus far engulfed only the rectifying house. Prue feared the machinery within would tumble like boulders if the floor beneath gave way, but her true concern was the possibility, if the cashing house caught fire, the warehouses would go next; as she thought this, she noticed the near storehouse's door lolling open. If ignited, the stores would burn with a fierce heat and intensity. “Better to keep it off the storehouses than the other buildings,” she said to Tem. Tem said nothing in reply. They tied on their handkerchiefs and ran with their buckets around the fire's periphery to the water. There Prue lost sight of Abiah and Tem but found Isaiah, also with his kerchief over his face like a bandit, looking out at the bridge. Its whole tip was engulfed in flame and burning like a torch.

He put his arm around her and said, “I've spied the engine,” directly into her ear. Otherwise she might not have heard him above the din. “God grant they can help us.”

“God grant, indeed. I'm afraid for the warehouses,” she nearly shouted to him. “I think we should let the rectifying house go, and douse the cashing room and the stores instead.”

He stepped back and scanned the scene, his blue eyes red with smoke and the reflected firelight. “I don't know what to do.”

“Do anything,” Prue said. “I deceive myself to think it matters.” She left him and dipped her bucket into the frigid water of the straits. She could not see Ben or Tem, but was glad to see ever more people streaming down Joralemon's Lane and the Shore Road to help.

Prue heaved the contents of her bucket at the foot of the cashing house, and others followed suit. Soon enough, people were passing buckets along three lines—one for the stores, one for the cashing house, and one for the blazing rectifying house. The water hardly affected the fire. When Prue glanced up at the Brooklyn lever, its river end was a ball of blue and yellow flame, surmounted by a storm cloud of acrid smoke. It creaked ominously, and with a crack like thunder, a section of the lever split off and tumbled into the river. People flinched, but continued to pass the buckets along. As she labored, alternately sweating from the fire and chilled from the water as it splashed, Prue remarked the bridge was burning fiercely—the timber had been well cured on installation, and
pitch was as combustible as oil—but she had no time to prognosticate how the fire might spread.

No amount of water seemed sufficient to protect the casking house, for the rectifying house was burning like a kiln. Prue felt a moment of nostalgia for the beautiful copper stills and the hulking press—the machines on which her father had made his fortune and taught her his art—and could not bear to think of them melting into the hard Brooklyn sand; but it was no use feeling sentimental over machines. It was fortunate no one had been inside the buildings when the fire began, and Prue would count it a miracle if no one was killed before the fire burned itself out.

It was difficult to hear anything over the roar of the burning rectifying house, but Prue dimly heard bells clanging all over town to call people to the distillery's aid. In addition, a smaller bell was ringing from the river itself, which Prue prayed meant the fire engine was arriving. She thought she heard men shouting from the water, and she so wanted to hear the plash of oars drawing nigh, she easily could have imagined that, too. In the meantime, the heat of the burning building seemed to push against her, and the air was so foul she could barely breathe. No more than half an hour could have passed, but Prue felt she had been engaged in this futile labor for days.

When at last she heard the engine pull abreast of the bridge, the relief that flooded her body was unlike any she had ever experienced, cool and sweet as summer rain. Marcel Dufresne came to spell her in the line, and she ran down to the river, where a scant few—mostly neighborhood children, whom she shooed angrily up to the safety of Clover Hill—were also watching. The engine all but filled a double-sized barge and had been rowed thither by a team of twenty men, some of whom were now dropping anchor to hold the lumbering machine steady. Others were uncoiling the enormous hose. Phineas Bates, standing near Prue on the strand, was calling himself hoarse, shouting, “Weigh anchor! Weigh anchor! Get the buildings first!” but the engine men could not hear him. Four of them began turning the enormous crank wheel, which let out a shrieking whine as it drew water into the belly of the machine, and most of the rest braced the hose as it filled with water and stiffened. Phineas took off his greatcoat and without warning dove into the straits and began to swim.
Prue thought he would die of the cold before he reached the engine, and shouted at him in horror to turn back, but though others around joined in her cry, none would venture in after him. His slick head bobbed above the icy water like a seal's.

Sections of the Brooklyn lever continued to burn, and landed as gigantic flotsam in the river. This debris began to rush downstream, and Prue thought it would batter the Luquers' trash rack and tumble down the millrace to crush their wheel. As Phineas swam upriver toward the barge, those onshore screamed their throats raw trying to tell him to look out for the burning debris. As a spray began to emerge from the tip of the fire engine's hose, the men aimed it toward the lever and slipped and struggled to control the hose's force. It looked as if a giant serpent had risen from the straits. The water fanned out in the air, its arc much lower than that of the bridge, and Prue began to despair of its reaching its intended target. Slowly, however, the men twisted the hose and angled it farther upward; and at last it made contact with the underside of the lever. Phineas reached the barge, and one of the anchormen struggled to help him on board. Prue saw the fireman remove his coat and try to drape it around Phineas's shoulders; the coat was not big enough and hung high above his knees. Phineas hunkered down to be out of the way.

At first the water from the hose appeared to have no more effect upon the bridge fire than that being ferried by bucket to the rectifying house; both fires continued to roar. Prue stood with her eyes watering, still barely able to breathe, praying that some of the arm might be spared and that no one might die in the effort. The engine crew were shouting to one another, but she could no more hear what they were saying than they could hear her.