Chicago Fire(Rubye Ney) “Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Old Mother Leary left a lantern in the shed,
And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said,
"There'll be a hot time on the old town tonight."


Chicago - October 8, 1871

The lightning flashes outside my window and I see the tree’s shadows. Their branches scratch against my window. I am scared but I don’t want to wake Katie. I just lie there telling myself that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

I fumble around in the dark, trying to find a match. When I find one, I light my candle. The flame flickers faintly. It helps slightly, and I find the door. It creaks as I open it. I silently take baby steps as I walk down the hallway. The floor feels like ice on my bare feet. My candle’s light dances on the walls.

The wind whistles and screams outside. The kitchen light has been left on; probably Katie. That’s when I realize that Katie wasn’t in the bed. I wander into Mother’s room to see if Katie has crawled into her bed, but she isn’t there either. I yell her name, but there is no response. I doubt that she could hear me over the wind anyway.

Mother isn’t home from work yet, but she should be. Katie must be with her. I can imagine her curled up in Mother’s office at the factory. How long had I been asleep? I hope that Mother had something to eat. The rations that the factory workers get are small enough, but Mother probably gave Katie all of her food.

I go down the old narrow cellar steps. I find a can of peaches, but that is all. Not near enough for a meal. I keep looking in the little light I have.

I hear a door creak and the rain outside gets much louder. Then the door slams and I hear footsteps. I quickly run up the cellar stairs and see my mother and Katie. I grab Katie while my mother drops her bags and sits down, exhausted. I go to hug her too.

After a warm glass of milk, I help Katie into her pajamas, and she falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow. Once she is asleep, I carefully walk down the hallway, careful to avoid the creaky board. Mom is searching the cabinets for something to eat. She pulls out a half empty can of vegetables. She unscrews the lid and dumps them into a bowl.
The coals in the stove are still hot, so I put water for coffee on and sit down beside Mother. We talk quietly so we don’t wake Katie. The kettle whistles, and I pour coffee into our chipped mugs.

The smell of coffee makes me think of dad. Every morning I’d wake up to the smell of coffee. My mother and dad would be sitting at the kitchen table, my father reading his poetry,, my mother reading her bible. I only know him through faint memories and one photograph. I am in his strong arms, sleeping, my head on his shoulder. He is kissing Mother on the cheek. She is smiling, almost laughing. She says he was very funny; even when he was sick. The picture was taken when I was 3 years old. He died of pneumonia 4 years later. Just three months after Katie’s birth
The rain stops, and the house seems eerily quiet. As I stir my coffee, the spoon clinks against the sides of my mug. Mother says that she is tired and is going to bed. I tell her that I’m going to the O’Leary’s barn. I grab a shawl and a lantern and start down the road.

Mr. and Mrs. O’Leary are very kind. When we first moved in, they took care of Katie while Mother was at work. Mr. and Mrs. O’Leary have no children, but we are considered family. They told us that whenever we needed help, they’d be there.

When I get to the farm, I hear Mrs. O’Leary quietly humming “On a sunny Sunday Morning”. I slide the barn door open and a blast of warm air hits me. She looks up and smiles when she sees me. Their cow, Bess, moos a quiet hello. I slide the door shut and walk over to where Mrs. O’Leary is sitting.

I pat Bess on the head and sit down on a bale of hay. Mrs. O’Leary talks to me in her kind, quiet voice that makes me want to fall asleep right there. I ask her how Mr. O’Leary has been. We talk for a little while. When she finishes milking Bess, she offers me the bucket and a carton of fresh eggs. Then I start my way back home, careful not to spill the milk.
When I get home, Mother is in bed, asleep. Katie is curled up next to her. I lean over to kiss her goodnight, then carry Katie back to our bed. I know Mother only gets a few hours of rest. The factory opens at 4:30. Mother needs rest, and Katie is a fitful sleeper. I tuck Katie in beside me, then light a candle so I can read. Later, I blow out my candle and curl up next to Katie.

In my dream our house is on fire. The air is full of smoke. I hear Katie’s screams and wake up to my dream. Katie isn’t in bed, but I hear her. I open my eyes, but the smoke stings. I grapple around blindly, searching for the door. My hands are almost too sweaty to turn the knob.
I yell Katie’s name, and I hear my name called back. I assume that she is in Mother’s room, so I blindly make my way down the hall. The heat is almost unbearable. The doorknob burns my hand. As I open the door, the heat grows. It feels as though my eyebrows have been scorched right off my face.

I catch a glimpse of Katie before the flames fly up and I lose sight of her. She is standing on the bed against the wall, so I squint my eyes and make my way towards her, avoiding the missing parts of the floor. Katie screams my name. I get to a cooler part of the room and open my eyes. Katie’s leg is engulfed in flames, and she is crying in pain. I run toward her, ignoring the fire. A wall crashes down, and I trip over rubble.

I get up, bleeding and I continue fighting my way to Katie. When I finally reach her, her leg is badly burned and the flames are heading toward her waist. I grab a pillow off the bed, the one that isn’t on fire, and bat at the flames on Katie with it. I know it hurts, but it might save her. Once the flames are out, I pick her up. My original path has been engulfed by flame, so I must choose a different route; quickly.

I decide on the fallen wall. When the wall fell, it put out the major flames on that side of the room. Holding Katie tightly, I run through the rubble, careful not to trip this time. The room next to Mother’s is the kitchen. Luckily, the flames haven’t destroyed it yet. Katie is limp in my arms, but I can feel her sobs convulse through my body.

The back door is on the other side of the room. When I reach it, my hands are too sweaty to turn the doorknob. I cover Katie’s head when I hear a creaking. The ceiling comes crashing down and the impact forces me onto my knees. My vision is blurred.

When I stand up, I can see the moon; the sky is our ceiling. Fire is spreading to the kitchen, eating up everything it can find like a hungry lion. The heat intensifies. I turn back to the door, but still can’t open it.

I get so frustrated I throw the nearest thing I can find at the door. The mug I had been drinking from just hours earlier. It crashes through the glass. I exit through the doorframe. I walk on shards of broken glass. Every step sends a shoot pain through me. I know I am bleeding badly. Katie moans, and I remember why I am doing this.

I keep walking, trying to find the quickest way out of the field of scattered glass. Once I am outside, I throw up, then start crying. Once the tears start coming, they don’t stop. Finally, I manage to pull myself together just enough to examine Katie’s burns. They cover her leg, and when I touch them, just barely, she moans and starts crying harder. I try to comfort her, but there is nothing I can do.

I sit there, rocking her, until I hear sirens. Men wearing heavy canvas coats come running towards us. They talk to me, but I can’t understand them. They’re words seem slurred and I can’t focus on their faces. One of them attempts to take Katie from me, but I scream and slap at them.
Finally, after more of my screams, a large man in a coat and helmet picks Katie and me up. I clutch her hand tightly in mine. I whisper that I won’t let go,. The man carries us to a wagon parked along the road. I turn to look at the house, or at least what is left of it.

He carefully puts us down on some sort of bed. There, two women are touching my foot, another is examining my bloody knee and arm. I roll over. No one is helping Katie. I push them away and point at Katie’s leg. They nod and continue working on me.

I feel our wagon moving and I grasp Katie’s hand tighter. She groans every time we hit a bump on the dirt road. I manage to prop myself up on one elbow and look at my surroundings. The entire prairie next to our house are beautiful shades of reds, oranges, and yellows. The heat grows more intense as we travel. I ask a nurse where we are going, but she shushes me and forces my head down. I tell her I feel fine, but she silences me again. I tell myself to calm down and close my eyes.

I wake up to a woman’s screams. I open my eyes and look around as my world comes into focus. I sit up slowly on my cot. By now, some of the pain had gone away. We had stopped in front of a house that was engulfed in flames. The man that had carried me to the cart was pulling something out of the house. He finally was able to free of the rubble, but there was no saving the child. The woman ran over, tears streaming down her cheeks. She took the baby in her arms and kissed it. I looked at Katie, hoping that she hadn’t been awake to see this, but her eyes were closed.

The woman dropped to her knees, screaming at the sky. She still held the dead baby in her arms. Another man in a heavy coat motions for the woman to come with him, but she doesn’t follow. He grabs her arm, but she screams and shakes him off. He picks her up and he carries her to the cart that Katie and I are in. She is laid down on a cot similar to mine, the baby is still in her arms. The nurses attempt to take it from her, but she holds it tighter to her body. She is protecting it just like I protected Katie.

The woman looks up at me. This is the first she has acknowledged me since we stopped. I can see the pain in her eyes. Although she has stopped screaming, tears roll silently down her cheeks. I reach my hand towards her, but she flinches away.

The cart jolts, and so I lie down on my cot again. The woman stays where she is, rocking her dead baby. She quietly sings a lullaby that I fall asleep to. “Cares you know not, therefore sleep, while over you a watch I'll keep.”


Chicago - October 9, 1871

The wagon stops. I awake to see the sunlight breaking over the horizon. We are stopped in front of the wooden city of Chicago. People run along the dusty streets and on the wooden sidewalks. Women screaming, children crying, men shouting. A building near to us starts ablaze.

I sit up slowly and glance at the dead baby’s mother. She is asleep on her cot, her hand on Katie's. Another person is in the wagon, surrounded by nurses, so I can’t get a good look at the child. He is young, probably Katie’s age. His face badly burned, his skin covered in blisters. He groans as the nurses touched them.

Our wagon begins moving, but I stay upright. I watch factory workers jumping out of the four-story building that is on fire. I wonder if they know they are jumping to their death.

We continue driving, slowly gathering speed. I could sense the urgency in the air. We drive by the once beautiful Trinity Church, which is now ablaze. The beautiful stained-glass crashes to the ground, tiny fragments of the colorful glass fly everywhere. A man running from the fire is hit by the glass and it lodges in his skin. He screams. Our wagon stops abruptly and two firemen dash across the road to pick the man up from the ground. They half drag, half carry him to the wagon. There are no other cots, so I stand up and let him have mine. The woman’s eyes are suddenly wide open. She sits up, but her shoulders seemed to sag when she realizes that it wasn’t a dream; her baby was dead.

She beckons me to her cot so I sit down beside her. She seems stiff, as if having someone sitting next to her was strange. “Where is your mother, child?” she asks me. I didn’t respond. I didn’t know. This was the first time I had thought about my mother since the fire. My mind had been on Katie and her safety. I wondered if my mother was one of the factory workers jumping out of the buildings. I wondered if I had seen her fall to her death. I tried not to think about it. Suddenly, the woman put her arm around me as if she knew what I was thinking. My mother was dead. I was alone in this world with Katie. I was Katie’s mother now... The Woman started to cry, and I did too.

The wagon stopped in front of the hospital, on the very edge of the wooden city in flames. The firemen carry the patients in one by one. When it was my turn, I stood up and walked to the edge of the wagon. One fireman carried me down. I embraced him as he lifted me in his strong arms, just the way my father did. This brought on another wave of tears. The fireman’s expression changed to worried, but I promised him that my tears were not his fault.

The nurses led me and the Woman down a hallway and pointed to a room on our left. The Woman and I walked into the room. As I turned around, the door was shut and locked with a click. I ran to the door. I saw a shape under a blanket; unmoving. I screamed and pounded on the door. The shape disappeared around the corner. I dropped to the ground, sobbing.

That was the last time that I ever saw Katie; when she was carried away. I didn’t know she was dead until the nurses told me. Even then I didn’t believe them. But then the pieces started to come together. Her leg on fire. The nurses not helping her, knowing that she couldn’t be saved. Her hand getting colder.

It was the Woman who comforted me. I guess she knew what I was going through. I had lost my mother and now my sister. I was alone. She held me tightly as I sobbed in her arms. The woman whispered to me. “It’s alright, baby.” she soothed. “Get all your tears out.” We sat there until a doctor told us we had to leave. The woman held my hand as we walked out of the hospital.

When we got out on the street, we were swept away by the crowd of people running towards the river. The Woman's hand slipped out of mine. I heard her yell my name, but I couldn't find her in the sea of people. Someone behind me stepped on my dress and I fell to the ground. The crowd continued on as if I was invisible. I tried to stand, but the wave of terrified people swept over me. At last a man stopped and picked me up. My arm was limp and I fainted from heat.

When I woke I saw stars. They were beautiful. Thousands upon thousands of twinkling lights staring back at me. This was when I realized that I was alone. The man that had carried me to safety had disappeared. The screams of the people had faded. I sat up and looked around. I was in a forest. A firefly’s light glowed. Trees surrounded the clearing that I was laying in. Soft moss cushioned my body. I stood up. My leg was no longer bleeding or bruised, and the pain in my arm had vanished. There was a swishing of fabric and a hand grasped mine. It was Katie. She smiled at me and we hugged. It was a long hug, tight and warm. When we parted, Katie told me to stay strong; even if I was alone. Then I heard the rumbling of thousands of feet and Katie was gone.

I am on the other side of the river, the safe place. Suddenly, I hear screams. The flames leap across the river, eating up the wooden bridge. The crowd begins to move again, and surges forward. Once again I am pushed along by the thousands of frightened people. I am one of them.

My mind wanders to my mother. I wonder if she is alive. My eyes well up with tears. I push those thoughts from my mind and focus on what is in front of me. A cart led by two horses races past me. The driver has lost all control. That’s when I realize that this fire is a monster. It has killed the two people that matter most to me, and I have lost the Woman. I doubt that I will ever see her again. Rage takes over, and I run. I don’t know where.

Suddenly, the river is in front of me. The current is strong, and it takes over me. I am like the driver of the cart. I have lost all control.

Dying is an odd sensation. You don’t know what is happening to you until it happens. I wasn’t scared. I let the river take me with it. The river danced, so I danced. I wanted to go beyond. Back to that place in my dream. That clearing with the stars and moss and Katie. It took me under, and I stayed under. I stayed under and never came up.

Soon I was back in the forest with the soft moss, chirping crickets, and tall trees... Katie was there. We hugged again, but this time it wasn’t the strong hug it once was. This time it was light and short. Katie was disappointed in me; I could sense it. “Why?” she asked. “I couldn’t,” I responded, my gaze fell to the ground. “It was just too hard.” She took my hand. “I want you to see someone,” she said, leading me on a path through the trees. We had only walked a short while before we came upon a clearing. In the center stood a woman with her back to us. A man had his arm around her. “Mother?” I whispered. “Father?”
“Katie!” my mother ran toward me. My father stayed in the center of the meadow. My mother wrapped her arms around me, crying. We pulled apart, wiping the tears from our eyes. I looked to the middle of the clearing. There stood my father, hands in his pockets, staring at me. His eyes were brimming with tears, but he did not let them go. He walked to me.
His scent brought me back to when I was a child. His strong arms were holding me so tightly I could hardly breathe. Tears rolled down my face. He let me go. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered. “So much.”

I thought about the Woman. I knew she would make it. She would be okay without me.

We walked across the clearing, hand in hand. We were together again. Everything was okay now. We were truly safe here.

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