Time and Again (35 page)

I grabbed at the knob of a door beside us leading into one of the offices on the Park Row side; it was locked, and I turned — Julia's hand still in mine — and we ran down this hall along the row of doors to one I saw standing ajar at the very end. THE NEW-YORK OBSERVER, it said on the door when we raced up to it, and we ran into a large room of rolltop desks, wooden tables, file cabinets. A window stood open, its green shade flapping, and with Julia I ran directly to it. If there was to be any exit from this building for us it had to be through this window, and I was inwardly chilled with fright. Because I remembered the building's exterior. There were no ledges running around it, only windowsills, and we were three stories up, three very tall-ceilinged stories; we couldn't jump.

There were footprints in the new snow on the windowsill: Had someone climbed out and jumped? I looked out; no one lay sprawled on the walk below. But I saw that a crowd was already gathering along the east wall of the Post Office Building catercorner across the street, and in City Hall Park directly across. The crowd grew as we stared; I could see people running to join it along all the park paths. Directly below us in the street the first fire engine had stopped, two firemen running with a hose toward a hydrant, another uncoupling the horses. Bells were clanging, and down Park Row came another engine, white steam jetting from the tall brass cylinder behind the driver, its pair of white horses running all out, manes flying, hoofs striking sparks. And far across the park on Broadway a hook-and-ladder truck pulled by four gray horses made the obtuse-angled turn into Mail Street toward us.

All this I saw in a split-second glance; then I looked back to the window ledge, and saw the sign I'd once read from the street, THE NEW-YORK OBSERVER sign directly under the ledge. It was fastened to the wall at its lower edge, but the upper edge hung out a foot or so, held by rusty wires. I had no idea whether it would take our weight; I knew it wasn't meant to. It might take Julia's weight; she had to go first before my weight weakened the sign or tore it loose. I said, "Out, Julia! Onto the sign! Crawl to the Times Building!" But she shook her head, closing her eyes, and her face went white. Eyes still closed, she stood shaking her head, and I understood that it was impossible — there are people who simply can't take the fear of falling — for her to make herself crawl out onto that sign alone. I'd slammed the office door behind us to keep out the fire when it came. I turned to look at the door and black smoke was curling underneath it.

There was no other decision left to make now, and I stepped up onto the windowsill, crouching. I put my left foot down and out onto the top edge of the slanting sign, and slowly transferred weight to it. It held, and holding to the sill with both hands, I lowered my right foot into the trough between sign and building. Then I slowly stood, letting go the sill, easing my full weight onto the sign, the wind flicking hard-edged snow-flakes into my face and eyes, and ridiculously, in spite of an agony of fear that the sign would tear loose and drop me, I was glad of my fur cap and overcoat. The sign groaned but it held, and I turned to the open window beside me. In her dark coat and bonnet, Julia stood petrified, staring at me, and before she could back away I shot out my right hand, grabbed her wrist, and pulled so hard and quickly that she had to get a knee up onto the sill or be dragged right across it. I kept up the pressure, pulling her forward, and now to keep from actually falling out she had to bring up the other knee and I kept tugging — sharp little yanks now — and with no volition of her own, but to keep from pitching out headfirst, she had to swing her legs over the sill, and then she was out, just ahead of me, half standing, half crouched on the THE NEW-YORK OBSERVER sign, a hand up before her eyes fending off the whirling snow. I saw a small kink in a wire just ahead of Julia straighten under the strain, then I was shouting at her: "Don't look down! Don't ever look down! Just
move!"
I pushed her, and then, half crouched — each with a left foot on the top edge of the sign, the other in the trough, our right hands moving along the face of the building — we crawled toward the Times Building ahead to the north, the wind moaning around us, snow and sleet slashing our faces.

This building and the Times Building were constructed wall to wall, touching or almost so, hardly a fraction of an inch between them. The two walls served as a solid, windowless and doorless, double-thickness masonry firewall and it seemed to be working: There was no sign of fire in the building ahead. But from directly below us as we crept along high over the street, a river of heat flowed up past us, partly deflected by the V of the sign, but almost scorching on our hands as they slid along the sign's upper edge. Julia moved more slowly than I did, hampered by her many skirts, and I had to stop, and again I became aware of the street and the park. Fire bells had been clamoring below us, and now I looked down through the haze of falling snow directly into the spark-belching stack of a fire engine; I saw firemen running with ladders and others standing in pairs holding brass-nozzled hoses playing thick white jets into the burning building, and their black rubber coats were already beginning to whiten with new ice. Police with lengths of rope stretched between them were forcing the crowd off the street and up over the curb and walks across Park Row. The crowd there, edging the park, was much denser now, and from here it seemed almost solid black. Strangely, to me, there were a number of raised umbrellas in the crowd against the snow, and for some odd reason the sight of the tops of those black umbrellas made me realize how high up I was. I raised my eyes from the crowd, and far off across the park on Chambers Street, a single-horse black ambulance, a white cross on its side, raced toward us from the west. I thought I heard its bell and I saw the driver, leaning far forward, whipping the galloping horse on; then it disappeared behind the Court House. It took a second or two to see those things, and Julia had crawled on no more than a yard. I glanced behind and below, before moving after her: Flame shot high, black smoke rolled and coiled from the top of every window I could see on the first floor and from some of the second; and on the ledge of a third-floor window the man and two girls who'd been running behind us stood huddled. He had one arm outstretched across the two girls, keeping them off our sign, knowing it would undoubtedly pull loose and fall from the weight of even one more person. He saw me looking, and gestured wildly, urging me on.

I crawled ahead, trying to hurry, my foot snagged a support wire, and I heard it twang and snap behind me, heard the sign groan, felt it shuddering under our weight. A woman screamed in that instant, very close, and I thought it was Julia. But it came from just overhead, I realized, and I glanced up as I crawled on. The toes of a pair of shoes projected from a window ledge directly over me, and I leaned out over the street to look up. A woman was standing on the ledge, her eyes wide and blank with terror; there was no sign under her window.

Julia stopped suddenly, crouched motionless on the very end of the sign, and I leaned out over the street to look past her and see why she'd stopped. The floors of the Times Building were slightly higher than these, so the sign under its third-floor windows hung a little above ours. The sign was short, running under only two windows, and I could see the white letters on black reading, J. WALTER THOMPSON, ADVERTISING AGENT. There was a foot-and-a-half gap between the two signs, and Julia crouched at the end of ours, frozen — unable to make herself step up and across that empty space.

Our sign began vibrating violently, and I looked back: One of the girls on the window ledge, her face wild with panic, had a foot out on our sign, about to step onto it. The moment she did it would rip loose and fall; I knew that. Julia had looked back, too, and she saw and understood what I did. Suddenly she stood upright, and — I was certain her eyes were squeezed shut — she stepped blindly up and out over the gap with her right foot. It struck the wall of the Times Building, then slid down into the trough between wall and sign. She lifted her left foot from our sign, and threw her body forward across the gap, her left foot hunting for the top of the other sign. I never want to see such a moment again — watching Julia's foot plunge down toward the snow-mounded edge of that sign, knowing that if it missed she'd fall out and over its edge. But it struck, slithered an instant in the slippery snow, then her right hand smacked the wall of the Times Building beside her, and she stood swaying for balance. She half stooped, half fell forward, and — even in her terror she remembered me behind her — she crawled on, making room for me to step across, too.

But I didn't. I crept to the end of the sign I was on, and waited: I couldn't be certain Julia's sign would hold us both but now I knew that this would hold two. Looking back once more I saw only the one girl on it, making her way toward me. Julia reached the first window and before I had time to wonder if it were open, a man's coat-sleeved arms shot out, gripped Julia under the arms, and lifted her right off the sign and in through the window, her feet kicking a little as they disappeared.

I stood up then, stepped right across the gap, and moved quickly toward the same window. Just before I reached it I looked back through the snowstorm, and now the second girl was out on the sign, scuttling along it, but the man still waited on the sill, and now an occasional flick of flame moved out past him; the heat must have been terrible. I made a little saluting gesture and smiled, hoping it would encourage him; he had nerve. Then I was at the window, the same man — young and bearded — helping me in, and Julia and I were safe.

I had an arm around her waist, grinning at her, and both her arms were tight around me, her head pressed to my chest. She kept looking up at me, shaking her head, and making a sound that was partly a laugh and partly a sob of relief, murmuring, "Thank God, thank God, thank God." With my free arm I was shaking hands, as he introduced himself, with the man who'd pulled us in. He was Mr. Thompson, and this was his office. It was a fairly large room with a rolltop desk, two wooden chairs, a wooden file cabinet, a drawing board, and a batch of one-column newspaper ads, all type, thumbtacked to a bulletin board. Two men stood smiling, and I recognized one: It was Dr. Prime of the
Observer
, the man who'd directed me to the janitor of the other building several days ago. He and the man with him, he said, had escaped over the sign as we had.

Thompson turned to his window again, to help the first girl out on the sign crawl in, and Julia and I left. We walked down the hall to the building staircase, and a man in shirt-sleeves came hurrying toward us, struggling into a coat. He called out as we turned onto the stairs. He was a reporter from the
Times:
Were we among the people he'd seen escaping into the building from the
Observer
sign? I said we weren't, that they were all back in Thompson's office. Then Julia and I ran down the stairs to the street.

We stepped out into wind and slashing snow, and instantly a voice shouted angrily at us. I looked up; a fireman out by his engine stood gesturing violently, waving us on across the street; red coals from the firebox of the great brass cylinder sifted steadily down onto the melting snow between the big red wheels.

Before we could move, four or five men ran directly past our doorway carrying a long pair of extension ladders from a hook-and-ladder truck just to the north. One of the men, a stocky, angry-faced middle-aged man wearing a dull-silk hat tied on with a blue muffler, shouted straight into my face as he raced past, "Help us!" Julia and I ran with them, they set the ladder down, and I helped them swing it up against the burning building and raise the extension. As we heaved the extension up with a rope-and-pulley system built into the ladder, I had a chance to raise my head and see what we were doing.

Three men in vests and shirt-sleeves, one wearing a green eyeshade, stood on the ledges of three adjoining fourth-floor windows, peering down at us through a curtain of snow. The man in the window nearest the Times was panicked; his forearms upraised, fists clenched, he was shaking them violently up and down, his mouth wide-open and screaming meaninglessly.

Our ladder was too short: Rising between a pair of windows, it touched the building wall just above the third floor, well below the three men on the fourth. I didn't know what to do, and looked around frantically; half a dozen yards behind me Julia stood out in the street staring up at the burning building, and something about her expression made me run out beside her and turn to look, too. And now I saw the entire face of the building.

I have, as I always will, I think, a copy of
The New York Times
of the following morning, February 1, 1882. The entire front page and most of the second is filled by an account of that awful fire. I don't want to put down what Julia and I saw now; instead I will quote directly from the
Times.

…the upper windows… were seen to be full of living forms. Terror-stricken faces of men and women peered down through the smoke upon the thousands of their fellow-creatures below, stretching out their hands for aid, and shrieking loudly for rescue. [I'll see that forever; the way they held out their hands.] The mingled smoke and flames gave to the faces an unearthly hue, and the shrieks, mingled with the roar of the fire and the hoarse calling of the firemen, came to the ears of the surging crowd below like voices from the tomb. The firemen were doing all that men could do, risking their lives fearlessly in the effort to save those of the imprisoned sufferers, but their movements, rapid as they were, seemed slow enough to the suffocating creatures in the burning building. To reach them by the stairway was impossible, so quickly had the fire done its work. The firemen raised ladders, but they only reached to the third story, and time was necessarily consumed in raising the shorter ladders to increase their length. Meantime those in the building saw death steadily and surely advancing upon them from the rear, and the preparations to save them from the outside seemed endless….