Firehorse (9781442403352) (11 page)

Noises from the kitchen—the clank of a skillet and repeated thuds of the icebox—told that Mother was up, and probably Grandmother, too, so I'd have to slip out the front door if I could. A newspaper rattled in the dining room. Father was up as well. That was going to make it harder. As I reached the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, I heard him preaching his own Sunday sermon, loud enough to reach his congregation in the kitchen.

“They're overly taken with calling themselves ‘journalists,' in my opinion,” he said. “Especially the female one.”

The kitchen door scraped open on its worn hinges, and
I heard china cups clink against their saucers. A heavy platter was set on the table. “You didn't tell us you had a woman writing for you,” Mother said.

A woman worked on Father's newspaper? That held me in place.

“She doesn't write for
me,”
Father corrected. “And if I have my say, she won't be writing for the
Argus
much longer. She was already on the staff when I accepted the managerial position. I can only surmise that the editor before me had some different opinions on the ability of women to contribute serious news.”

“Mmm.” Mother murmured a response that avoided commitment.

“I don't want to appear behind the age,” Father said, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes. “Women, I suppose, can take employment in a restaurant or a mercantile, if they must. At least they know how to cook and to shop.” His newspaper snapped open as he chuckled at his own joke.

The hairs on the back of my neck stiffened, but I didn't hear a response from Mother. Was she still in the room or had she returned to the kitchen? No matter, Father went on speechifying loudly. “Do you know what aggravates me all the more about this female would-be writer?” he prodded. “Who's feeding her husband? Who's taking care of her children?”

“Does she
have
a husband and children?” Grandmother now. I heard her drop into her chair so heavily that an unladylike belch escaped her. Father ignored that; he was more interested in having an adversary.

“Of course,” he responded confidently. “Do you think I've neglected the facts?”

“How about some nice tomato preserves with your hash, Mr. Selby?” Mother's remedy for argument was always a forkful of food. To be quickly followed by another.

Maybe he nodded, I don't know, but he didn't speak to her. He wouldn't now. “What I wonder is,” he charged on, “just what sort of a man it takes to let his wife—and a pretty wife, I might add, quite attractive—spend her days in a printing office surrounded by men? Not all of whom are married.” He mumbled through a mouthful, “It's too distracting, really. It's scandalous.”

“Scandalous that they aren't married?” Grandmother asked in an innocent tone.

“No, scandalous that this woman insists on working among these poor fellows. And without the decency to wear a corset!”

Mother gasped. I think she dropped into her own chair. “Oh, my goodness gracious!”

“Oh, well, that's another matter altogether.” Grandmother sounded equally astonished. “Are you quite certain about it?”

“I have eyes, don't I?” Father exclaimed.

“I'll have some of those preserves, please,” Mother interrupted. “Would you pass them?” There was a brief pause, followed by a thank-you. “Dear, dear,” she chided, “such talk for a Sunday morning.” Steering the conversation in another direction, she asked, “Have you decided on a church to attend today?” She
could have gotten the same response from the wall. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Mr. Selby?”

“Yes?”

“Have you decided on a church for us to attend? I saw a nice-looking one yesterday on Tremont Street, across from that lovely Boston Common. It's Episcopalian, I believe.”

“That church?” Grandmother snorted. “It doesn't even have a proper steeple.”

“King's Chapel. That's the place to be seen,” Father stated. He fought with his newspaper rather loudly.

“King's Chapel,” Mother echoed. “It sounds nice. Do you know what kind of a church that is? I'm only asking because—”

“Yes,” Father cut her off, “it's the kind of a church where the Selby family belongs. Are you questioning my competence?” He said it with a smile, I was sure, because I knew that smile. It was challenging, icy, and heavy with disdain. It was the kind of a smile that brought you to your knees and closed your mouth.

“No, of course not,” Mother murmured, then immediately asked Grandmother to pass the biscuits. There was yet another rattling of newspaper, a triumphant exclamation point. I seized the opportunity to dart for the door and escape.

Outside, an early morning fog had our entire row of red brick houses packed in cotton. Everything was hushed, a balm after my sleepless night. Happy to be out of the house, I hurried around to the courtyard.

Instantly I knew something was amiss. Voices were coming from the carriage shed, one of them spewing oaths. “Damn it all!
Stop that!” A horse's body thudded against a wall. There was an anxious squeal. I lifted my skirts and ran as if my life depended on it. Rushing into the shed, I found James and another man trying to corner the Girl. She was lashing out at them with both hind feet. Torn bandages dangled from her body.

“It's no use,” James said. “We'd better wait.”

“No, let me try again.” The other man feinted one way, then rushed along the mare's other side, grabbing for the rope that was hanging around her neck. But she was too quick for him. Dodging his hand, she spun and kicked, grazing his thigh. “Ow!” the man cried. He doubled over, pressing a hand to his leg.

“You're on your own,” James said as he escaped under the bar. “Stand clear,” he told me. He spread his arms as a barrier.

The man in the stall—I was sure now that I'd seen him at the fire station; he'd been the one arguing for the mare's life—wouldn't give up. Still hunched over, he eyed an opportunity and lunged for the rope again. The Girl pulled out of reach, screaming in pain or fury or both, and swung her huge head at him. He ducked, narrowly avoiding a good whack. But before he could recover, she was on top of him, attacking with bared teeth. I thought he was going to be killed for certain, but he nimbly dived under the bar, rolled once, and jumped to his feet. Grinning, he shook his fist at the infuriated horse. “You're Satan's own daughter, you are.”

I was trembling with rage. “What are you doing to her?”

“Just changing her bandages, miss, though she's not of a mind to have it done.”

James appeared equally shaken. “Rachel,” he said, by way of explanation and introduction, “this is Mr. Benton Lee. He came over to help me with the Governor's Girl. Benton, this is my sister, Rachel.”

“Good morning.” Mr. Lee's greeting was accompanied by more than a hint of a leer. He boldly looked me up and down, full length. I didn't know whether to laugh at the absurdity or cringe at the impropriety. His shock of black hair and the thick beard framing his olive-skinned face gave him a rather sinister, though certainly not an ugly, appearance. What truly caught my attention, though, were his eyes. They were so dark as to blend iris and pupil, and they wouldn't fix on anything, but kept hunting, piercing each subject on which they landed. When they kept returning to me, I instinctively made an escape: into the Girl's stall.

“Here now,” Mr. Lee shouted. His lunge was too late and too short. “James, she shouldn't—!”

I paid them no mind. I couldn't. I had to get to the Girl. She was heaving herself back and forth in a tormented—and dangerous—frenzy. Praying that she'd remember, I walked right up to her and slipped her a peppermint. To my relief, she took it, eyeing me with what I thought was new respect. I lifted the rope from her head and we stood unfettered, facing my brother and Mr. Lee.

“Seems as though you've made a friend,” James said.

Mr. Lee spluttered. He looked like a boiler ready to explode. “I still don't think-”

“Save your breath.” James laughed. “My sister is half horse and more at home in a barn than a parlor. I'll be responsible for her. Besides, I think it'll take Mr. Stead to change these bandages. You can go on back to the station for some sleep.”

A foul word escaped Mr. Lee's lips. “I won't be sleeping there for a while, didn't you hear? The chief suspended me— without pay—for ‘reckless conduct while on duty.' You probably just got yourself promoted to driver.”

James's expression balanced between friendly sympathy and selfish hope. “Did he suspend you for leaving the team?”

“For trying to save some horses' lives is the way I see it.”

“How long?” James asked.

“One week.”

“What are you going to do?”

The way he was pacing back and forth reminded me of a black cat on the wrong side of a door. “Oh, I'll find something to do,” he said, a decided air of mystery cloaking his words. He nodded toward our house. “I heard your father was a newspaperman.”

Instantly the chief's accusation came to mind— “to see if you could get your name in the newspapers again”—and I listened to Mr. Lee with growing distrust.

“He is,” James replied. “He's the managing editor of the
Argus.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It's one of Boston's smaller papers.”

“Your family moved all the way here so your father could be a little fish in a big pond?”

James laughed again. “Yes, well, he'll find a way to make a splash, mark my words.”

The dark-haired man stared at our house, deep in his own thoughts.

“I've heard there have been quite a few fires in the past month,” James said, and I could almost hear Father prompting him.

“Have you?” Mr. Lee spun and that crazy, leering grin of his took hold. “I don't think there have been any more than usual, but do you know what? My ears have been ringing all morning.” He tapped one, still grinning. “And the ringing sounds just like a fire alarm, so I'm betting there's going to be another one soon. I've just got a way with these things, you know?” He glanced at the house again before announcing, “Well, I'll be off now. You two take good care of my girl.” And he bolted through the door as if someone had struck a match under him.

James and I exchanged bewildered looks. He shook his head and then, referring to my friendship with the mare, asked, “How did you manage this?” For the next several minutes I poured out all my excitement and satisfaction at having helped the veterinary. I included the peppermints.

Oddly enough, James seemed less than pleased. “Father doesn't know yet, does he?”

I shook my head.

“Did he see you leave?”

“I don't think so. When did you get home last night?”

“After eleven. I'm done in.”

“Then why did you get up so early?”

“Benton told me he'd meet me here to help with changing the Girl's bandages. I got out of the house by telling Father I had to go to the station.” He wadded up some of the bandages at his feet and moodily tossed them into the corner. “I don't know how much help I'm going to be in treating her, though; I can't even get close to her.” He put his hands on his hips and sighed. “We're going to have to tell him about her today,” he said. “Otherwise, he's bound to find out.”

I looked up to find the Girl watching me, which gave me a chill. “I won't let him take her away,” I said, as much to myself as to him. “Not this time.”

James looked at me quizzically but chose not to question. “We'd better get back into the house. How about if I go in the front door with a bit of a racket, and you sneak past me and up the stairs. Then you can come down again, all right?”

The plan worked without a hitch, and soon we were all seated at breakfast, with no one the wiser. The air was still uncomfortably heavy with the secret we were all keeping from Father, but he was back to blustering about women in the workplace, so of course he didn't notice.

Soon afterward we were hurrying off to our first church service in Boston. Father marched us briskly to King's Chapel, and we strode straight into its blazingly white interior, marveling
at the magnificent columns and arches and high, suspended pulpit. To our collective humiliation, however, but most especially Father's, it was pointed out that the sanctuary was partitioned into private boxes rather than pews and that these boxes bore the names of Boston's most prominent families. Not a one said Selby. It was a stiffer figure that we followed back down the street to St. Paul's, a plainer church that, as Grandmother noted again, didn't even have a steeple.

Father put us on display nevertheless. As he'd always done at home, he led us down the aisle and sat us in the front pew. I think it was his way of proving, on a weekly basis, that he was aligned with might and right; that he and God, as it were, wrote for the same newspaper. I clasped my hands in my lap, giving the appearance of prayer and hiding, I hoped, my embarrassment.

The church grew quite crowded, and hot. As we waited, I began stealing peeks this way and that. The interior wasn't nearly as ornate as King's Chapel, though it used a lot of stone in a grand manner. The altar was impressive, the congregation well dressed. Hand-held fans fluttered like so many panting butterflies. At long last a man in a frilly black robe appeared at the front of the sanctuary and took his time turning the onionskin pages of a prayer book. He led some singing and some recitations and made some announcements that had nothing to do with me. The service dragged on and on. When the minister finally took the pulpit and began speaking, I had to pinch off an exasperated sigh. His chosen topic was one of my least favorite: predestination.

It was one of those sermons with which I couldn't possibly agree, one of those intolerable lectures that always set me on the back of a horse and sent me galloping. It was a wonder God didn't strike me down right there in that front pew. I'd heard it preached so many times before: Each of us is nothing more than a mindless ant following a path that has long ago been set out for us. We can't choose the path, and we can't leave the path. That would be an insult to one's Maker. The man's voice droned on, but his earnest words were lost amid the rhythm of hoofbeats inside my head.