The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland

Author:Rachel Beanland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

 JACK

Jack has never been inside the capitol, and he is slack-jawed crossing the rotunda.

“Is that Washington?” he asks Anderson as they pass a six-foot-tall sculpture of a man so lifelike that Jack practically expects him to reach out and shake his hand.

“Who else would it be?” Anderson says, and Jack shrugs.

The Hall of Delegates is easily the fanciest room Jack’s ever been in. Several dozen sleek desks, which look like they’ve been fashioned out of mahogany or maybe walnut, sit in neat rows that face a dais, and above their heads, a two-tiered chandelier looms.

The hall is packed with people, many of them mourners, and there’s little room to move, let alone sit. Eventually, Anderson and Jack secure standing room in the back of the hall, and while they wait for the room to quiet, Anderson whispers in Jack’s ear, “Watch how easy this is.”

Before Jack has the chance to ask what he means, Anderson turns to their neighbor, a portly man in his sixties, and says, clear as day, “Did you hear they think it was a band of Negroes who started the fire?”

The man’s eyes bulge, and he stutters a disbelieving no before turning to a skinny man next to him. “Did you hear what he said? Says it was Negroes who are to blame for all this.”

The skinny man peers at Anderson. “Slaves?”

Anderson throws up his hands. “That’s what I heard.”

Jack’s flabbergasted watching Anderson work. He’s so confident. Like he’s played this role—of concerned citizen—a hundred times and knows the part backward and forward.

“How many men?” asks a third man in a yellow scarf standing a few feet away.

“I heard there were at least a dozen of them. Maybe more.” Anderson looks around, like he’s trying to ascertain whether he is in danger of being overheard, but it’s so obvious—to Jack, at least—that being overheard is exactly what he’s after. “They’re saying it looks like a coordinated effort.”

“Who’s they?” asks a fourth man with a big beard, but Anderson is saved by Mayor Tate, who calls the meeting to order.

A hush falls over the room, and the mayor begins by trying to offer words of comfort. “We have been visited by a calamity the most distressing of which society can be afflicted. It has deprived us of so many of our most valuable citizens, pervaded every family, and rendered our whole town one deep and gloomy scene of woe.”

Woe hardly seems the word for it. When Jack looks around this room, at the families of the dead, what he sees is utter devastation.

Jack is surprised the mayor doesn’t invoke the name of the theater company in his remarks. He doesn’t even say the word theater. It is as if the fire is no different from an earthquake or a lightning strike—something delivered by God. Placide would be much relieved.

There is the requisite beating of chests, on the part of members of the Common Council, who feel duty bound to say something profound to their constituents, each in their own turn.

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