Paradise Alley (66 page)

“Sure, let 'em have the plug,” he told his own company. “It's only fair.”

Tweed's face as bland and impenetrable as ever. His small, clear eyes blinking guilessly.

“What harm can they do with it, after all? It ain't like they can wash
us—
”

Transforming the situation at once, making it
their
shame, now, if they could not wash the Big Six. Finn letting his breath out. Tweed's own men falling back to their machine, laughing and smirking derisively.

“What can they do to us, then? What can they?”

“Sure, the pups!”

“Stand by your brakes, men!”

The laddies from both companies ran to their places, by the rows of two-handed pumps. There were twenty on each side of the double-decker machines. Ten up top, worked by men actually standing on the machine, and ten below, worked by the men with their feet on the ground. Pulling the water up from the earth, the pipes running deep beneath the pavement, all the way from the Croton reservoir—

Tweed's assistant foreman from the Big Six ran back with the thick leather hose, ready to connect its riveted copper end to the Black Joke.

“Mind, now, ya don't nigger the engine!” he admonished them.

Sometimes the machine on the hydrant would try to grab a head start. The laddies would get in eight or ten strokes before the other engine was hooked up, so that the water would boil out and wash it almost immediately. Men had been knocked down and nearly killed for such a stunt—or for not pulling the butt out in time when the fire was done.

“Mind yourself! Get back t'your machine, you'll be baptized soon enough!”

The jeers and insults continuing to fly between the two companies as the assistant foreman put the butt in. The men shuffling in their traces like workhorses against the cold, eager to get to work. Tom was manning a brake pump on the ground level, with Snatchem to one side of him and Dolan, who was still with the company then, on the other. He had been surprised to see his brother-in-law there, on such a night, so far from where he and Ruth lived up in Pigtown. But he had said nothing and Dolan—was Dolan, silent and ready, just waiting to release the murderousness that was always coiled inside him.

They looked to Finn, standing up on the machine, to call the stroke. The tension palpable in the air, like nothing Tom would ever know again, save for the moments just before a battle. The fire itself nearly forgotten by now. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalks, and Tom could see that some of them seemed to be the owner of the tea warehouse and his employees—dashing in and out of the burning building, salvaging what merchandise they could. But the rest were there to watch them, in their competition, whether or not the whole of the City went up in blazes.

“All right now. Put in the butt and play away, men!”

Then they were off. Finn gave the signal, and they pressed their
brakes down as one man. The laddies on the Big Six pushed their own brakes down immediately in response—and the crowd broke into a cheer as the water spurted out in a high arc against the night sky.

Tom reveled in the feeling of the pump, springing back against his hands. The good, familiar ache spreading at once across his back and shoulders as he worked. Rapidly building up their speed—working in perfect tandem with Snatchem, and Johnny Dolan, and all the other men down the line and above him on the machine.

“Pump! Pump! Work her lively, lads!” Finn sang out from above them. They usually called back in response, like sailors hauling up a mainsail. But this night they knew to save their breath, putting everything they had into the brakes.

“Everyone a ya now, will you
work,
lads? You don't half work now!”

Soon they had built up to their top speed, sixty—then seventy—strokes a minute. The Big Six matching them easily so far, stroke for stroke. The water speeding through their two machines, cascading up through the hoses and out over the burning warehouse. The crowd growing steadily now, men and women running from the taverns and even from fancy parties to join them along the sidewalk.

“Will you
work?
”

Tom felt the nudge of his replacement against his shoulder, and stepped aside. At such a pace, the men worked no more than a minute, a minute and a half, before being relieved. The second shift taking over the top brakes first, scrambling past them, up on the machine. The ground brakes behind Tom coming in next. With a precision born from many long hours of drill, they pulled out of the line, he and Snatchem and Dolan together. Taking a single step back and to the side on the upstroke, letting the replacements move in past them so they did not miss so much as a beat on the change.

“Stave her sides in!
Say
you will now!”

When he shifted off Tom could see that the fire had already spread down the block—darting over to a saloon, and a sailors' boardinghouse next to the warehouse. When he was on, all he was aware of was the metal brake before him, putting everything he had into forcing it down, staying in rhythm with the rest of the lads, and Finn's call.

He remembered that George had nudged him once, when they were off, and told him the mayor himself was on hand. He had looked over to see a short, nondescript man in a high frock coat, buttoned to
his chin, and a high top hat. Holding in one hand, as if he were the Bishop himself, the official fire staff: a snow-white wand, topped by a gilded flame—

Tom had shrugged, and gone to grab a slice of bread and cheese. The company steward walking up and down the brake line with his bag of food, singing out his chant—“
Eat some more cheese, and a good slice of ham, and wash it well down with another good dram.
”

He grabbed the cup of brandy the man held out—taking just a sip, enough to burn and glow through his chest. He poured the rest of it into his boots, the way he had seen the veterans do it, to keep his feet from freezing. Then he moved back into the line, stepping nimbly, taking care not to let his fingers get crushed by the swinging metal pumps.

“Will you
work
now, lads?”

The battle went on and on, deep into the night. The fire only slowly diminishing. The warehouse a total loss, the tea merchant sitting and weeping on the curb, though the crowd paid him no mind. The saloon and the boardinghouse looked badly charred, but salvageable. The only question remaining—the
real
question—was if they could possibly wash the Big Six.

By now Tom's arms felt as heavy as thirty-pound weights, and he could see the strain on the faces of all the men around him, even Johnny Dolan. But Finn only picked up the pace—and they responded. The company working as it never had before, up to seventy-five strokes a minute. The runners and the neighborhood boys throwing handfuls of snow up around the brakes, making sure that they didn't spark and light the whole wagon on fire, they were working them so hard.

And still the big men of the Americus pumped the water on. Tweed himself working the upper brakes now, letting his assistant foreman give the call. The Big Six jumping and bouncing with every long stroke he made.

“Hey, Frank is coming!”

“It's Frank! It's Frank! Here he is, it's Frank himself!”

A thrilled little ripple ran through the crowd, and Tom watched the great throng part for a dapper, smiling man in an opera cape.
Now he was impressed—
seeing that it was none other than Frank Walton
himself, the greatest of the fire tenors, of whom it was said that when he sang “Napoleon's Dream” at a fire, even the old Quakers on Henry Street would weep to hear the sound of his voice.

With a dramatic flourish he loosened the cape around his shoulders, cleared his throat, and began to sing another favorite:

Shule, shule, shule agra

Sure a sure and he loves me

When he comes back he'll marry me

Johnny has gone for a soldier—

His gorgeous voice resounded through the midnight air, and the crowds grew even greater—nightcaps poking out of every window Tom could see now. He went back to his brake, thinking that it must surely be over soon, the fire all out. He did not know how much longer he could go, he felt as if his shoulders were about to be torn from their sockets—and meanwhile the big men on the Big Six still looked unfatigued, even if they did seem to be working harder now, thumping their enormous wagon back and forth.

But a few minutes later he felt a change. A slight but growing resistance, through the brake handle. Tom had helped to wash another machine before, and it had felt the same—when the wagon ahead was filling up, coming close to slopping over. Glancing at Snatchem and Dolan, out of the corner of his eye, he could tell that they sensed it as well. Finn, up on the box, quickening the call yet again—driving them up to eighty, then eighty-five strokes a minute.

“Now you've got her!” he cried out. “Now will you
work,
lads? Paint the old gal green!”

The pace impossible to sustain for very long, all the men in the Black Joke knew. The danger being that if they tried to keep it up, men would break their arms, and they would lose control of the brakes. It was not as bad as being washed, but a disgrace nonetheless—the water receding to a trickle out of the great leather hose, the fire liable to flare back up again.

Incredibly enough, though, the men on the Big Six were visibly laboring now. One of their runners hastened over to the machine's butt with a spanner, ready to release it on a moment's notice.

“The fire's about out!” he cried up to Finn.

“
Is
it out?
Is it?
” Finn cried. “Don't give me no ‘abouts.' You pull that butt before it is, an' I'll come down there an' hook you up to it instead!”

The runner stood where he was with the spanner, looking up at Finn, then back at the lads from the Black Joke—knowing every one of them would back him.

“
The fire is not out,
” a voice blared down the street.

It was the mayor himself, calling out through his black voice trumpet, and holding his snow-white wand in the air as if he were making a papal decree. The crowd sent up another cheer—and Frank Walton launched into an encore, his voice swelling out even over the sound of the flames and the ferocious competition:

I'll sell my rock and I'll sell my reel,

I'll sell my flax and spinning wheel,

To buy my love a sword of steel

Johnny has gone for a soldier—

The men of the Black Joke pumped the brakes as they never had before, up to ninety strokes a minute now, a pace they had never reached even for a few seconds. Tom's arms were numb, the muscles trembling visibly with fatigue. He could see Snatchem struggling, too, though Johnny Dolan was still working like a demon, pounding the brake up and down. Eyes locked straight ahead at the machine, as if there were nothing else in the world for him.

The pressure was building steadily, their job getting all the harder as they felt the Big Six fill up—that was the difficulty of washing a machine. But Tweed's company had lost all pretense of indifference by now. The assistant foreman called the stroke faster and faster, banging on the box for emphasis. The big men giving it all they had, some of them stripped down to shirtsleeves, even in this cold. The gigantic double-decker engine rocking wildly back and forth, its springs groaning under the effort.

“There she goes, boys! She's about to boil!”

“Not yet, not yet!”

There was a sound like a cannon shot, and the Big Six slumped over on its right side—its wheel axles finally cracking under the exertions
of the enormous men upon it. The brakes swung back down—and the axles on the left side cracked this time. The whole chassis of the machine giving way then, the wheels breaking free and the machine collapsing, the men flung cursing into the street.

And as it fell the water gushed on up and out over the engine box of the Americus company. Flowing out over the face of the snarling tiger, and despoiling all the other, grand scenes, the fine, black running stripes and the red wheel spokes. Tom and the rest of the Black Joke threw over their brakes in celebration. Pummeling and embracing each other, those who still had the strength to do anything at all but rub their arms. The crowd sweeping over them, pounding their backs and picking them up on their shoulders—no one bothering with what was left of the fire.

When they had recovered themselves, the men from the Big Six ran over, too, insisting that the butt should have been pulled when their wagon began to break, and spoiling for a fight. But Tweed was between them again—still unruffled, even though his heavy mutton face was pink with perspiration.

“Now, boys, they beat us fair an' square. We can admit when we're licked, an' give credit to a company of good Americans, an' Demmycrats!”

Even as he spoke, a sailor from the boardinghouse was tugging at the coattail of Tweed, of Finn, of any fireman who would listen.

“He stuck! He stuck up there!”

An olive-skinned boy—no more than thirteen, at the oldest—with a heavy Portuguese accent, dressed in the white trousers and short jacket of his profession, now covered with soot. Most of the crowd laughing at his frantic excitement.

“My friend, he stuck! It fall—it fall on ‘im! He burn!”

He came around the engine, pulling at Tom and Snatchem and Dolan, where they sat exhausted on the curb. Pointing up to a room, on the third floor of the boardinghouse. The window and the gable around it were blackened and charred but any remaining fire appeared to be out now, and Tom had only stared dully back at the boy, while George tried to brush him off.

“Well, then, pull him out! What more d'ya want from us—”

“Up there? He's up there?” Dolan had said, grabbing the boy suddenly by the shoulders and pointing up toward the blackened gable.

“
Sí, Sí!
Up there!”

“Show me.”