Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

He had barely got into a proper swing when there was a sharp knock on his door.

“Come in!” he called.

It was one of the club stewards. “There’s a fire!” he said, excitedly. “Mr. Gleason sent me up to tell you! They think it’s the paint works!”

Jimmie streaked from his room and down the corridor. He turned right in its “L” and came to the window at the end. He yanked up the blind. He saw a glow in the night-pinkish orange-lighting distant houses and the groomed contours of the golf course. One of the buildings—he did not know which—had caught fire. He whirled and made for his room. He seized his coat and hat. On the way down the main staircase he realized that he would have to call a cab. He had thought of swiping a car. But he remembered that he was unfamiliar with the new models. He would spend more time fiddling with gadgets than a taxi would need to get there.

He raced past the dining room and slid to a stop. Biff was inside. Biff could drive.

He went back. They were dancing; the lights had been lowered. Jimmie forced his way through the warm, perfumed resentment. He spotted the yellow-haired girl first, cheek to cheek with Biff, standing almost motionless. He grabbed his brother’s arm.

“Hey! There’s a fire at the plant! Run me down, will you?”

Biff emerged from a trance. “Oh, hello, Jimmie. What? I will like hell! This is my first real night out.”

“Come on. I can’t drive. Take a half hour to get a local cab. I need help.”

The girl said, “Don’t go, Biff!” so passionately that Jimmie’s brother scowled. She had been too possessive, too demanding, for his taste. “Okay, Jimmie,” he said. “Lead the way.” He wiped the girl’s face with his hand-downward. “Be back soon, Gracie. Wait for papa.”

Like a man who hears that a friend is hurt, without being told the details of the injury, Jimmie concentrated on the flickering glow that shone against the horizon. Was it the warehouse? The laboratories? The chemical storage tanks? The factory proper? The office building? He thought of Mr. Corinth and wondered if he were on the scene, or if he even knew about the fire; he considered telling Biff to stop so he could phone the old man at home. But the car went on. Jimmie felt, in some taut, impatient periphery of his brain, that Biff was driving at—only a moderate speed. That same dimension of his mind decided that Biff’s accident had made him yellow about driving.

“Hurry up!” he said, without knowing that he had spoken.

Biff turned a corner, slowed for an intersection, and turned again, onto the boulevard that led out to the plant. It was not far. From the wide road Jimmie could descry the outline of the buildings in a black cutout against the blood-orange flame. Other cars were passing them, blowing horns. As they approached the property the night brightened—the lurid backdrop expanded—their ears were assaulted. Something had blown up.

There was no guard at the gate, which stood open. Already a file of cars waited their turn to enter. This circumstance filled Jimmie with a cruel rage—but there was nothing he could do about it. All Muskogewan was piling into family sedans and coupes and roaring out to the paint works to see the fun. Biff slowed to a crawl.

“Pull out of line!” Jimmie said. “Go around the fence, to the back!”

The scene was plain now. The fire, a great, incandescent glow, rose from the laboratories behind the mixing plant. In front of the long low building, on the weedy lawn, people parked their cars helter-skelter, jumped out, shouting to each other, and ran forward. From somewhere down the crammed road a fire engine wailed. Biff drove bumpily along the fence. The engine wailed again and a bell banged. Jimmie’s flesh crept.

For one maniacal second he thought that he was not in Muskogewan, but in London, and this was where a bomb had fallen—that siren, the alert, and the bell, the fire engines that everlastingly ran through the raids.

Then it was plain again. He looked back. An in—pouring of cars was ripping down the wire fence, section by section. The people were coming to the holocaust as if to a game.

But the engines were nearer. The thought that he and Biff had beaten the fire apparatus gave him another moment of disgust. Then he realized that they’d doubtless seen the fire almost as soon as the alarm had been turned in, and also that Biff had been driving fast, after all.

“Pull away from the fence!” Jimmie commanded. Biff obeyed. “Now—head her toward the fence and ram through!”

“What’s the good of going in? The two of us can’t put it out! And the trucks are here.” Biff said that—but he pulled away. He glanced at Jimmie’s face, grinned tightly, wound up his window, and stepped on the gas. The car shifted its gears.

“Hold on!” he said sharply. They hit the fence. It shuddered, slowed them, and peeled back. Then they were inside. “Over there,” Jimmie directed. “Okay! Stop!”

Jimmie leaped from the car. They were alone, at one end of the cluster of buildings. The heat was painfully perceptible; the light was blinding. Now, from time to time, minor explosions threw into the air showers of colored flame, and, with each blast, the crowd roared as if the spectacle were deliberate. Jimmie walked toward the heat. Biff followed, keeping the car at his brother’s side. He opened the window again and yelled, “Better not go closer! You’re going to make me spoil the finish on this boiler!”

Jimmie ignored him. He shaded his eyes with his hand as he proceeded for a few more steps. Then he whipped off his jacket and held it in front of his head.

“Come back!” Biff yelled again. “You can fry an egg on the damn’ windshield!”

Now, Jimmie came over to the car. He, too, shouted, for the night was alive with noise. “Just wanted to get the lay of things! To see what’s burning! They can save most of it—if they know their stuff. But if it ever gets in the turps or the benzine—! I’ll tell the firemen what to do.”

“ You’ll tell ’em!” Biff’s voice was sarcastic.

“Sure! Jackass! I know what’s where—and how it’ll burn! Come on!”

They drove past the blinding light and through the heat, fast. When they approached the nearest of the red trucks a fireman waved them back. Jimmie hopped out and asked for the chief. The man said that it was the chief’s night off.

“Whoever is in charge, then!” The man turned. “Hey! Kelly! Here’s a volunteer.”

Kelly walked up in his fire helmet. He had been bellowing orders about the attachment of hose. “Get out of here!”

“I work here. One of the—the bosses. I’ll show you what to do—”

“ You’ll show me what to do!”

“Listen! The place is jammed with chemicals. Inflammables.” He saw the man’s contempt. “Gunpowder. Dynamite. Damn it, man, with poison gas! Get that crowd back, first. Don’t use water on the center of the fire now! If the shed behind catches—stand clear. You won’t be able to—!”

The man reached out and shoved Jimmie, not with much anger, but almost playfully. “Listen, son. I’m running this fire.”

“Listen yourself, you thick Irish moron! You’re running this fire! Do you want to be responsible for getting half the people in Muskogewan blown off the map?”

“Thick Irish—! Why, you—!” Kelly thought of fighting. Then he was a little scared. He turned to the men near by. “Hey, you! Get the people outside the fence! Everyone of them! Never mind the cars. Tell ’em it’s dynamite that’s about to blow! And have your men stand back. Use chemicals on the main blaze!”

“That’s better!” Jimmie nodded.

“Now. Clear out!”

“If you’ll just let me get in there and tell ’em which chemicals to use—”