Just those poor much-abused front doors.
I was trapped.
* * *
God bless Signor. I think I would of frozen there in horror until the roof fell on me if he hadn’t picked that moment to yell, with all the power of his deaf little lungs, right in my left ear. It shocked me into moving. And squeaking like a mouse. Like a stepped-on mouse.
Signor was standing right at the base of the grand stair, glaring at me with his one blue eye and one yellow exactly as if the whole thing were my fault. I scooped him to my chest, and the ungrateful little bastard left a bloody long trail of scratches down my forearm with his hind foot. But I hung on to him. And about squeezed him into pudding, I was so glad to see him alive.
I say “little,” but Signor was twenty pounds if he was an ounce. I crouched, hugging him, and he hid his face in my wet sheet wrap. Flakes of burning something was sizzling out on Crispin’s overcoat, the wool adding a scorched stench to every other awful smell in the room. I needed a way out. Anything. I had to pick a direction, and I was terrified that whatever direction I picked would be wrong. I didn’t think I was gonna get a chance to change my mind and try something different if I happened to get it wrong.
Maybe I could go back up the stairs? Go out a window? Crispin would be out there to catch me now, or Miss Francina. Or there might be a firefighter with a ladder by now—
And then my eye lit on the sewing machine to the left of the parlor doors. That big, industrial, ridiculous, totally overengineered, souped-up-to-Jesus Singer sewing machine. The one that Priya and Lizzie had been hot-rodding for weeks, with the ornamental metal plates all over the armature, and Miss Lizzie’s diesel engine welded in beside the hydraulics.
It hurt me to stand up. Knees, spine, everything. My lungs, from the heat of the air, even through the wrap. The wrap was nearly dry now anyway, all the water sizzled off into the fire.
Head spinning, breath rasping, I staggered to the sewing machine. It weren’t easy getting into it while holding on to an unhappy cat, wearing boots four sizes bigger than my feet. The sewing machine was hot as a bitch, but I managed somehow, and the coat and boots were a lifesaver. It burned my legs through my socks and where my night shift didn’t quite meet up with ’em at the knee. I burned my hands some, too, in the process but didn’t drop Signor and I got about half the straps catched.
That were probably enough. I just leaved the machine’s left arm hanging, because I was using that hand to hang on to Signor anyway. He quieted down a bit when I swaddled him up in the sheet and bound him against my chest. At least it was easier than getting a horse out of a burning barn — a job I only knowed in theory, though Da’d made sure I was good and drilled in it. Stable fires had been the worst dread of my childhood.
Turned out there was something worse.
I had the coat, and I had the big machine. And I had the cat, who had quit yowling and twisting and scratching and now just huddled against me, face shoved into my chest. The heat was rising as I sparked the boiler, hoping whoever’d used it last had left some water in the damned thing. It ran on kerosene, not coal — thank God — because kerosene was cleaner indoors.
I never would of gotten a coal engine fired up fast enough to save our lives. It took me thirty seconds that felt like six hours just to get the diesel engine cranked up so it would spark, and then and turning over — me praying the whole time that I remembered right that diesel didn’t explode, then remembering the kerosene.
And it turned out to be a horrible kind of blessing that the thing was hot, because the water in the boilers might already have been near simmering. Anyway, it came up to pressure right quick, with hissing and creaking and a whole mess of noise. While I waited, I managed to force the thing into a crouch by main strength and with the torque from the auxiliary engine, so I could get me and Signor closer to the floor where there was still some air lasting.
I don’t recommend any of it.
The parlor, as I said, wasn’t burning, though now flames licked out from the doors into the paneling on either side. I imagined those flames inside the walls, creeping up to the ceiling — and the fire behind me, from the kitchen, chasing down the hall. I knowed rooms could get engulfed in flames in an instant when they got hot enough. But I also knowed — I knew—that somebody had set this fire on purpose to trap us inside. There weren’t no other reason for just the door to be burning, excepting if somebody had set it on purpose to shut us in. And I knowed the longer I let it burn, the weaker the wood would be.
And the more pressure there’d be in the sewing machine, in order to break it down.
I don’t mind saying I ain’t never been so scared in my life.
Finally — it seemed like hours, but it were only two minutes or so — the gauges read 70 percent pressure and climbing. When I rose up, it was a hell of a lot easier than squatting down had been. As soon as my head came up into the smoke layer, though, everything went dizzy and rough edged. I would of swayed, but the sewing machine has gyroscopes, so it shifted around me and caught my stagger. This is a good thing, because the sewing machine weighs half a ton and if you fell inside it you might never get up unless the hydraulics kept working.
And if it fell so the weight was on you, well. You’d crack a rib or three sure as if a horse fell on you. You’d be lucky to walk away without a hole in your lung, and not even Miss Lizzie can fix up that.
Now that I was decided, I had to go fast. The smoke up here was that thick. I could barely hear the roar of the Singer’s engines over the roar of the fire. I might of missed the door, honestly, if it weren’t for those flames glaring orange. They made such a beacon I couldn’t of asked for more, except maybe a fog light.
I clutched Signor against me, turning my shoulder toward the door, and started to lumber up to a run. I aimed right at the middle, at the place the panels met. And I thought, If Peter Bantle can break it in, by God I can break it out.
I half-surprised myself when I came up on the edge of the flames, howled with all the strength in my lungs, and ran faster and more hard.
Don’t get me wrong. I knowed I had courage. But until that moment, I didn’t know I had the courage to run through a fire. We surprise ourselves all our lives, Miss Bethel would say. That is, if our lives is gonna be worth living.
The fire licked all around me, but the Singer’s big grippered feet beat the flames down, and the plates Miss Lizzie had welded to the legs shielded me a little. I hit that door screaming and I busted through so hard I didn’t stop until I fetched up on the other side of the sidewalk, against the masonry wall that held the street up. Rock dust powdered down around me. My scream turned to coughing, and all around me the sewing machine armature smoked in the cool air. Puddles hissed under its feet and its springs complained of the sudden change in temperature.
“Mother of God,” I said, turning to look back at the house.
The second story was all ablaze. I couldn’t see any higher, because smoke and flames billowed out the windows, and the narrow space of the sidewalk was near full of smoke as the inside.
I couldn’t stay here, either.
Signor wasn’t moving, but he was wrapped up close against my chest under the coat and I didn’t have time to look at him. And the ladder wouldn’t support the weight of the sewing machine.
Which left climbing.
I pulled more wrapping sheet off my head, tucked Signor into it against my chest, then strapped my left arm in with three quick jerks. If Signor was passed out — he’d better not be worse than passed out, and I didn’t have time, dammit, to think about Connie — he was probably safe enough just slung against me like a papoose. And if he started to fight, well …