The Stars Are Fire(17)

Grace helps her friend drag the canoe beside the two blankets. “Where’s Gene and Tim?” Rosie wails.

“I have no idea,” Grace says, shaken.

“Where are all the people going?” Rosie asks.

“To the schoolhouse, I heard.”

“That’s crazy. The schoolhouse will burn, if it hasn’t already.”

Grace kneels on the blanket to change Tom’s diaper. His sleeper is dry enough to stay on. Grace can feel heat on her face.

“Oh, God,” Rosie cries.

“What?”

“The Hinkel house just went. It’s only one street back from us.”

Grace has no words. When she glances up, the fire burning on the ground resembles hot jewels among the rocks and pebbles.

“Rosie, take what you can from the canoe and put it near the water’s edge. Then push the canoe out to sea.”

“But…”

“It’s wood. If an ember falls inside, it will bring the fire right to us. Wet your hair and the kids’ hair.”

Rosie follows Grace’s instructions. She’s glad that Rosie won’t see her own house go up. Already, roof shingles are burning.

“Do my kids, too,” Grace yells to buy more time.

The splendid maple next to Grace’s own house turns orange in an instant, as if someone had switched on a light. The tree collapses. Grace can’t see her screened porch, but she knows the fire will consume that next and lead straight into the house. She left the photographs, the papers, the layette, the antique tools.

Rosie’s house explodes, the fire having found the fuel tank in the basement. Rosie snaps her head up.

“Rosie, don’t,” Grace commands, and there must be something in her voice that makes her friend obey, because Rosie turns to the water and puts her face in her hands.

Grace imagines the fire eating its way through her own home. The kitchen with the wringer washer, the hallway where the carriage is kept, the living room in which Grace made the slipcovers and drapes (an image of the fire climbing the drapes like a squirrel momentarily freezes her), upstairs to the children’s beds, her own marriage bed. All their belongings, gone. Everything she and Gene have worked to have, gone.

“Rosie, listen. Go down to the water’s edge so that only your feet are in the water. Lay down facing the sand—make an air pocket—and I’ll bring you Ian and Eddie. Put a child under each arm and hold them close. Make air pockets for them, too. I’m going to soak your blanket and drape it over you. I’m going to cover your heads. Don’t look up and don’t reach out a hand or let your hair out from under the blanket.”

Rosie is silent.

“Okay?” Grace shouts.

“Okay,” Rosie says.

Grace races into the sea to wet the blanket. Men in jackets and caps carry children toward the water, as if in a great and horrible sacrificial act. The women, with provisions, follow. She lays the blanket over Rosie and her children just as she said she would. Then she sets her own children in the sand and wets another blanket. Tugging the dripping wool, she fetches Tom and lies down facing up, pulling the blanket to her face and anchoring it with her feet. She beckons for Claire to come to her. When she has the children securely beside her, she lets go for a second and flips onto her stomach, making three air pockets. She rolls the children over so that they are all facedown in the sand. Holding her hair back with one hand, she drapes the blanket up and over their heads. She checks around Claire and Tom to make sure nothing is sticking outside the covering.

She hears screams—not of pain, but of horror, and she guesses that the waterfront houses are about to go. People who have not managed to get out of town are trapped like rats running for the sea. She prays an animal will not step on her or, worse, try to burrow inside.

The heat on their heads and backs is just this side of bearable. The blanket won’t stay wet for long.

“Rosie!” Grace shouts.

Grace can hear nothing.

“Rosie!”

“Still here!”

“Squiggle back into the water till it’s up to your thighs, just short of the kids’ feet.”

“Why?”

“Do it, please.”

Grace follows her own instructions and is in water nearly to her waist. She wishes she had thought to make a cave for her stomach. She creates new air pockets for herself and the children.

“Whatever you do, don’t look up. Rosie, did you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Did you look up?”

“Yes.”


Grace takes shallow breaths, afraid she might inhale sand. She wonders if she and her children will die like this, the fire advancing to the dune grass at the seawall and then igniting Grace’s blanket. Would it be too late by the time she felt the pain, or would she have a few seconds to get Tom and Claire into the water up to their shoulders? She might have to dunk herself and the kids if the fire gets that close. Does sand burn?

She can do nothing but wait until the fire exhausts itself. The seawater must be in the mid-sixties, and she has begun to shiver under the blanket. She has on only her cotton nightgown. The children are hardly more dressed than she. She can’t tell if the shivering is simply because of the cold, or if it stems from fear. Heat leaves the body quickly when one is lying on the ground, though the top of her feels as if it might sear at any minute. She would rather suffer the cold until the fire is well and truly out. How long will that take?