The mill whistle kept blowing without stopping, and in a minute the whistle on the sash and door factory joined in, and then the regular fire whistle on the waterworks started up. The oil house was just one big red flame that went up in the air and turned into the blackest kind of smoke. We saw the men with the mill’s hose trying to throw water on the oil house, and every one was shouting at the tops of their voices. We saw men on top of the nearest lumber piles, but almost as soon as we saw them we saw them dodge away and climb down as quick as they could, and the next minute those lumber piles were afire on one side. They were red flames, and they climbed right up the sides of the piles and waved at the top.
Me and Swatty and Bony kept backing down the railway track as the fire got too hot for us. There were hundreds of people, but there were more than that in other parts of the neighborhood. Almost everybody in town came to the fire, because by this time dozens of lumber piles were afire, and the sawmill had set fire to the dry-sheds and the planer. You couldn’t see the bluff at all, because there was just one big wall of flame in front of it. Whole boards went sailing right up into the air, burning as they went, and the blue smoke that blew over the town was full of pine cinders and burning pieces of wood. There never was such a fire in Riverbank. The ground seemed to burn, too, and it did, because it was sawdust and rattlings.
The brickyard burned – everything that could burn – and the bluff of yellow clay, there and beside the sawmill, was burned red, like brick – and the flat cars and the box cars all burned. It was an awful fire! Wet lumber in the newest piles burned as if it was dry. The railway bridge and two other bridges burned. At noon it was like evening, because the smoke hid the sun.
Me and Swatty and Bony kept backing away as the fire came toward us. Sometimes we would turn, and run. We backed away as far as ten city blocks would be, I guess, before we were where we did not have to back away any more. We forgot all about school, and about fishing, and about everything. It was the kind of fire where nobody thinks of going home until it is all over.
It was about two o’clock when the people in front and the firemen in front of them gave a sort of roar, as if they were a lot of animals, and everybody crowded back. The firemen on top of the sash and door factory ran from one edge of the roof to the other, looking down. Two of them jumped off. They were killed, but the others got down the ladders, and the next minute the factory and its oil house were all afire at once – just sort of spouted fire from all the windows as if the fire had been all fixed to break out that way.
Before you could turn around and then look back, the sash and door factory was one big, hot flame, and then the houses began to go. First one and then another caught fire.
We got crowded back until we were in the street right opposite to Swatty’s father’s tailor shop, and Swatty’s father was on the front step of it shaking his hands in the air and shouting like a crazy man, but nobody paid any attention to him. He was a little man and he had gray hair, but he was mostly bald. He didn’t have a hat on and he looked pretty crazy standing there and shouting.
Well, we didn’t know until afterward what he was shouting about, but I know now, so I might as well tell it. There was a cellar under his shop and it was full of barrels of whiskey. When prohibition was elected the saloons thought they would have to stop for a while and that then they could go ahead again, so they hunted for some place to hide the whiskey they owned, where it would be safe for a while, and Mr. Schwartz’s cellar was one of the places they hid it in. What Swatty’s father was trying to shout was that if his shop caught fire all the whiskey in the cellar might explode and the people standing around might be killed and the whole town burn up. I don’t wonder he was sort of crazy about it. I guess Swatty felt sort of ashamed that his father was acting so crazy.
So then the house next to Swatty’s father’s shop caught fire, and the next minute the side of Swatty’s father’s shop began to smoke.
The policemen were sort of crowding us back all the time, but we would n’t go back much, and all at once Mamie Little started out of the crowd and began to run toward Swatty’s father’s shop. But when she was halfway there the fire marshal just caught her by the arm and gave her a sort of twist and slung her back, and then the policeman nearest us caught her and jammed her back against me and Swatty. She was crying all the time; she kept moaning, “My father! My father!”
So just then Swatty’s father ran out and grabbed the fire marshal by the arm and talked to him in German, because they were both German, and the fire marshal ran toward his firemen and shouted through his trumpet, and all the firemen up the street came running back, dragging all their hose and all shouting.
It was all wild and sort of crazy, and suddenly the fire marshal ran back to where the firemen were tugging at the heavy hose and shouting, and four firemen who were holding on to a nozzle pointed the stream into the air. It was worse than any rain you ever saw. It was just “whoosh!” and we were all soaked. So all the crowd hollered and screamed, and we all turned and ran, and all I knew was that I had hold of Mamie Little’s hand and was helping her run. I was awful sorry for her because she was crying and her father was going to burn.
So Swatty said: “What’s she crying for? Why don’t she shut up?”
He meant Mamie Little. So I said:
“She can cry if she wants to! I’d like to see you try to stop her! She’s crying because your father gave her his fashion plate and it’s going to be burned up, and if you say much I’ll lick you!”
So Swatty said: “If that’s all she’s crying for, come on. We’ll get her old fashion plate for her.” So I said to Mamie Little: “Stop being a baby and shut up, and we’ll get your old fashion plate for you.”
Swatty just cut in through the crowd, and me and Bony followed after him. He went up the side street, and we climbed over the fence into the yard of the corner house and cut across that yard and over another fence. That way we got to the back of Swatty’s father’s shop without any one stopping us. Bony kind of kept behind us.
It was mighty hot, because the house next door was all afire, but the firemen were keeping all their hose on the side of Swatty’s father’s shop, trying to keep it from burning. We crouched down and kept our backs to the fire so the heat wouldn’t shrivel us, and we got to the back door and it wasn’t locked. We went in. It was hot – like an oven – inside, and the noise of all the water on the side of the house was like thunder, only louder. The inside of the shop was like under a waterfall. You wouldn’t think anything so wet could burn, but it did. Before we were halfway to the front window the fire began to eat into the shop along the floor. The water on that side just turned to steam and dried as fast as it ran down.
Bony began to cry, but we hadn’t any time to stop. Swatty took him by the hand and jerked him along, and we got to the window and I grabbed the fashion plate. Then we couldn’t go back because the shop was mostly afire and we would have been burned up. So then Bony got real scared and ran to the front door and threw it open, and a stream from a hose caught him and sent him head over heels back into the shop where it was burning; he was knocked unconscious because his head hit a table leg.
So I didn’t know what to do. I guess I began to cry. I crouched down in the window because I couldn’t get out at the door on account of the stream of water that was coming in there a hundred miles a minute, and I couldn’t go back because the back of the shop was all afire now. But Swatty crawled on his hands and knees under the table where Bony was, where the fire was beginning to burn harder, and he grabbed Bony and yanked him along the floor back to the window. I guess I helped him jerk Bony onto the window shelf, but just then another stream of water busted the window in. The glass fell all around us and one piece cut Swatty on the hand, but he only said, “Jump! Jump!”
Maybe we would have jumped, but we didn’t. The firemen had got to the back of the building and had turned the hose in at the back window, and just when Swatty said, “Jump!” the stream of water hit us like a board. It took us as if we were pieces of paper and slammed us out of the broken window