Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(65)
To be honest, I’ve always found Horner a bit too eager to please, or eager to make himself valuable; and in my experience a man is either useful or he is not useful, and those who must convince you of their enduring worth . . . probably fall into the latter category. But on that night, I could not fault him, and I was glad to have such an informed busybody within the town’s limits.
After he’d gone, I raised my own alarm—ringing the bell and cranking the siren, bringing out my two nearest lieutenants, whose aid I needed when it came to fastening the horses and preparing the hoses. (The tanks were already filled in accordance with regulation.)
We maintain three such tanks, each one holding four hundred gallons, mounted on a reinforced wagon of the traditional metropolitan type; though here I must point out that if we’d received the funds for a new steam-powered engine, there’s a fair chance that we might’ve saved more of the cannery than we managed.
When we work with horses and leather, as opposed to steam and rubber, you can only hold us accountable to a given extent. We do our best with the equipment at hand, but it’s hardly the newest technology—and I’m aware that Commissioner Freeman is loath to part with funds for a town the size of ours, but progress shall catch us eventually, if we do not catch it first.
You may expect me to follow up further, on this point. Perhaps at a later date, when the insurance men are satisfied. If ever they are satisfied.
But with regard to the Franklin fire, we were fortunate, after a fashion. When we arrived with cart and ladders, we found the north end of the compound wholly engulfed, and I knew immediately that there was nothing to be done for the place. It would burn to the ground, and the only question was how much property and how many lives it would bring down with it.
The flames had burst through the roof at the cannery’s tallest point: a four-story tower that once housed the family offices. The blaze appeared to have begun there, but given the scope of the situation, I could not swear to it in court. Not yet. Not before all the investigations are concluded, and all the evidence sorted from the ashes.
Just call it the gut feeling of a longtime fireman, and lend as much weight to that as you like.
But the fire had not stopped with the tower offices, alas. It’d spread in both directions, up and down the block, devouring a smaller segment of the plant (which had collapsed before we got there), and devastating a wing where the sorting of meats once occurred. This left approximately half of the remaining structures unscorched, but in the inevitable path of a blaze that was wholly outside our capacity to contain it.
With a steam engine, we might have cut the unburned structure off with a water wall, and saved it. But with rows of buckets and heavy hoses, I regret to say that we emptied all three tanks into the inferno to absolutely no effect. In the end, we were forced to retreat—and to ask the stalwart brigade members to abandon their posts.
We reassigned them to the side streets, where they doused cinders and stomped upon embers that still glowed. We sent some to the nearby rooftops with all the water they could carry between them, pumped from wells or dragged from creeks, so that the structures might be preserved.
Containment, sir. That’s the best we could hope for, and I am proud that we accomplished even that much.
If the insurance company is unsatisfied with this account, then I scarcely know what else to provide. This was the situation, and these were the conditions. We were powerless against a problem of that size, and nothing short of the most advanced equipment—and another dozen trained men—would’ve made the slightest difference in the outcome.
I am personally insulted that the adjuster has called our efforts into question, and if he has any further inquiries—or any accusations, for that matter—you may send him to me directly. I’ll no doubt be at my post, at the station. He’s welcome to wave his paperwork and spew his nonsense as he likes, and I’ll let Thompson or Coy have a go at him. Or at any rate, I won’t stop them if they do.
It’s our honor and our ability he’s taking to task, and I won’t stand for it.
This having been established, I am frankly surprised that he’s asked so little after the bodies we found within the wreckage, in the days after the ashes cooled. Our final tally was eight, with remains that might have constituted a ninth discovered in a nook beneath the floor, where the boards had fallen. It’s difficult to say.
Word has it that a man from Boston is coming to investigate, but I’m not sure what he’ll make of the corpses. Each set of remains would fit in a drawer, so little is left. But if he wants them, he’s more than welcome to them.
No one here has the faintest idea who they might’ve been. Drifters, that’s our assumption. Perhaps even criminals in hiding, as such things are not unheard of. Regardless, we do not believe the dead men were local, for as I said above, the cannery was avoided by everyone within the vicinity; and besides that, no one is reported missing.
The cannery was a cold, wet place, and an uncomfortable one, too.
It’s almost bizarre to me, the thought that it’s somehow burned. I can’t imagine finding a surface dry enough to strike a match in there, so there’s great speculation as to how the fire began in the first place. We didn’t pump enough water in to cause such a soaking, as heaven knows we simply didn’t have it.
There were no storms, no strokes of lightning on that night. No one reported hearing any explosion, or seeing any suspicious characters lurking about. For that matter, no one had any idea that anyone lurked within, and that’s one reason we pulled back so quickly—not only could we not save the buildings, but so far as we knew, there were no squatters to be rescued. There was nothing to be lost but the timber and equipment inside, and we couldn’t see risking our brave firemen or volunteers to determine otherwise. By then, anyone who was getting out . . . was out already. And no one who went inside could expect to leave.