The Fires of Spring by James A. Michener

An emergency light flashed on from the top of the other pole. It swung back and forth in the night. Wind howled in through the torn canvas and billowed the tent this way and that. The light flashed eerily upon the people pinned beneath the pole.

  Jensen leaped immediately into the audience and organized a crew to remove the heavy pole. It had fallen across sixteen people. Beneath it lay one of the twins. She was bleeding at the mouth and crying. Two boys tried to lift the pole, but it rolled back down on the people, and she fainted.

  Meanwhile David stood at the edge of the stage transfixed by a grim sight. The top fragment of the broken pole, badly jagged, was held aloft by strong ropes. Swept by the wind, it flailed through the air. As the great tent sagged, the lashing, splintered pole dropped closer toward the people struggling below. It was like a pendulum whose next arc must descend and strike.

  David jumped from the stage and fought his way through the crowd. He crawled over the fallen pole beneath which the people were trapped. Now he was beneath the lashing fragment. Aloft the canvas ripped, and the pole dropped within reach. With a leap David caught it and hung on. The wind whipped him back and forth. He pushed people away with his knees, so that when the pole crashed into them it merely knocked them down and did not break their heads.

  Through the broken tent the wind howled in new fury. Far above the crowd the solitary light swayed mournfully back and forth. People struggled madly to get free of the tent before the remaining pole crashed, and all the while David clung to his thrashing pole, hurtling this way and that, above and through the crowd.

  He had glimpses of things he would never forget. Jensen lifting the fallen pole from crippled bodies. The gaping rip in the side of the tent, like the mistaken slash of a housewife’s knife cutting through a flour sack. The lonely light, smashing against the pole and tearing loose, whipping through the air and crashing into three men. And the tent! The wounded tent crying, flapping, dying in the storm! David saw it rip apart at many points. It was like a harpooned whale, foundered along the shore. Finally the entire canvas billowed up, taking David high in the air. Then it crashed upon the people. David’s pole rushed furiously to earth, and at the last moment David tried to jump free. He fell with the pole and was not hurt, but he could tell from a snapping noise that the man upon whom the pole fell was dead.

  At the edge of the crowd a man called vainly for his family. When they did not answer, he nervously lit a cigarette. It and the match were whipped from his fingers. They struck a piece of paper which flamed instantly. The paper flew madly into the foundering canvas, and in a moment one entire side of the tent was ablaze.

  In a mighty sigh the rest of the canvas exploded into flame. As the last ropes were burned away, the remaining pole roared down upon people still struggling beneath the fallen tent. Swiftly, along the path of the pole, flames swept over the canvas. Screams were muffled and death was sudden-quick.

  When this happened David was holding up a portion of the canvas so that people could break free. He saw the flames start to engulf him on either side, and for a moment he let the canvas fall in fear, trapping the remaining spectators. But he had no sooner done this frightful thing than he stooped under the canvas again and raised it so the struggling people within could see their way to flaming safety.

  The fire was now upon him. Inside lay the three men who had been struck down by the falling light shade and the man on whom the pole fragment had dropped. There was a woman, too, a dumpy woman of about fifty. She wore cheap clothes and her glasses were broken. “This way!” David screamed, but she was dazed and unable to comprehend.

  She lay nine feet beneath the canvas, and fire was on David’s left hand, but he shoved the canvas as high in the air as he could and dashed in to the gibbering woman. He grabbed her by the shoulders, and they were soft and boneless. The canvas fell about him and he felt that he must leave her; but, pulling her by the hair, he dragged her to the spot where he had been standing. With one arm above his eyes, he pushed through the burning canvas and hauled her after him. She lay on the ground, slobbering and terrified; but David was free, and the tornado roared about him.

  Then, as the last of the brown tent burned, rain came. In tremendous quantity it came, soaking the charred bodies, but too late. A nauseous mixture of smoke and flesh and old wet ashes filled the air. David and a fat man took command. “Put everyone who’s wounded over here!” the fat man cried. He was a doctor.

  David and some helpers hauled out the dead. Now the police and other doctors arrived. At the edge of the field an immense gust of wind caught a fire truck and tossed it sideways into a culvert. The fireman left the lights on, to aid the work. David found five bodies, and it was his gruesome duty to drag them onto the wet grass. The shafts of light from the fire truck were lonely, piercing the night, and there were cries of all kinds in the air.

  It was then that David became a man. He discovered this as he carried a bewildered man of thirty to a doctor. The man had been caught by the pole, and he was afraid that he would die. “I won’t die, will I, Doc?” he blubbered through charred lips.

  “I’m not the doctor,” David said consolingly. He laid the man down and stayed with him until the doctor came.

  “He’ll be OK,” the doctor said, and the man smiled up at David as if he—and not the doctor—had saved him.

  In that fleeting smile David found the alchemy that made him a man. He discovered the companionship of all men, the grand and solemn march that all men make together from the darkness of birth to the outer darkness of dying. They were all prisoners together, David, and the man saved from burning, and the Gonoph, and Old Daniel, and the dwarf Vito. They did frightful things to one another in their fear, and even a man like David might consider fleeing the burning tent to save himself while others perished, but they were all members of the same companionship.

  The rain beat on his face, and he reviewed his actions in the tent. Not until the very end had he been afraid of dying. He was afraid neither of the slashing pole nor of the fire. And even when fear finally captured him, he was able to fight it off. He was pleased that he had acted so, pleased that he had thought of others as more important than himself. He wiped his face and saw the world for the first time as a superb flowing organization of people of which he was not the selfish center. Whether he lived or died was of no moment; and that discovery—which many young men never make—was the threshold by which David passed from callow youth to manhood. He was unimportant; therefore he was free.

  Even as he watched the piling up of dead bodies he saw grief-maddened relatives start to readjust their lives. A girl of nineteen looked at her dead father and threw herself despairingly into the arms of a young man she had previously repulsed. As impersonally as white blood cells rushing to protect a wound, the neighbors of Bellehaven rushed to protect the living. The young man put his arm about the sobbing girl and kissed her for the first time. She looked up in astonishment and blew her nose. That very night the living made arrangements to compensate for the missing dead. Under no circumstances could David imagine that things would have been much different had he been killed. With a grimace he even pieced together the minor substitutions that Mr. Hargreaves would make: “Mr. Jensen! You will take Mr. Harper’s role. We’ll use the telephone for the part you used to play.” And little Vito would have to pull a few more strings. That was all.

  Yet at the moment when David concluded he was nothing, the dwarf Vito became terribly important. What had happened to the little man? “Hey!” he started to shout. “Where’s Vito?” He stormed about the field and across the charred canvas. “Anybody see the dwarf?” he cried.

  “Dwarf?” newcomers shouted back. “We didn’t see no dwarf!”

  “Vito! Vito!” David cried, and suddenly he was like everyone else. He rushed from group to group crying: “Have you seen the little guy?” When they said no he became increasingly panicky. His newly won manhood vanished and he screamed, “Vito! Vito!”

  An elderly policeman grabbed him. ??
?Look, son! Don’t get people stirred up.”

  “I’m looking for the little guy!” David cried, pushing the cop away.

  “Everybody’s lookin’ for somebody,” the policeman reasoned patiently. “Now who is this little guy. Your boy?”

  “The midget!” David screamed.

  “Oh!” the policeman said. “He’s over there.”

  David rushed to a group where Vito stood among a group of crying children, lost from their parents. He was joking with them. David pushed his way through the children and grabbed the dwarf. “You all right?” he asked.

  “Sure,” the dwarf said.

  David sat down in the rain. He was tired and wanted to sleep. Soon Jensen came up and called to Vito, “Is Dave OK?”

  “Yeah!” the dwarf cried. “He’s sitting over here.”

  The Wild Man came and sat down, too, right in the rain. The two men looked at each other. “You got no eyebrows!” Jensen said. David rubbed his forehead and charred hair fell to his nose.

  “You all right?” he asked the Wild Man.

  “I’m OK,” Jensen replied. “But the twin died.”

  David punched Jensen on the shoulder. “I saw you with the pole,” he said. Then he jumped to his feet. “You and Vito meet me at the hotel,” he said. “I got something to do.”

  He crawled into the truck, a man bearing with him the solemn franchise of manhood. He gripped the wheel and lowered his face upon its cool rim. He thought: “There at the end I was scared. But I wasn’t afraid.” He took a deep breath. The dying wind tore at his truck. “God! I hope that man lives!” he muttered.

  He drove the truck through mud and reached the highway. “You can’t come this way!” the same policeman shouted.

  “Chautauqua!” David cried back.

  “OK!” the policeman cried. “You find the midget?”

  “I found him,” David replied. The policeman stepped aside and the truck rolled into town.

  The actors were staying at the Washington Arms, an ugly frame hotel lighted with the blaze of much activity. In the crowded lobby people talked about the fire. Newspapermen were there, and as soon as David appeared the Gonoph ran up. “I saw you!” she cried. “Hey! Hey! This is the man I told you about!” The newspapermen crowded around and the Gonoph shrieked, “No eyebrows!”

  Then David saw Mona. She was wearing her second-act dress and looked nervously beautiful. For the first time in his life David felt as old as Mona. “I want to talk to you,” he said quietly.

  “David’s safe!” she cried ostentatiously to Cyril.

  “Let’s go out on the porch,” David said.

  “David! Not now!” Mona gripped his arm and whispered, “You behave!” She pulled away and went to Hargreaves.

  Swiftly David caught her arm and said, “I want to talk to you.”

  “Excuse me!” Hargreaves said. He twisted David around. “Watch yourself,” he said.

  To his own surprise, David swung on the elderly actor. Mona screamed and two men grabbed at David’s arms. Roughly he twisted himself loose and caught Mona’s hand. “Let’s get out of here!” he muttered.

  “Where we going?” Mona asked, dragging back. He led her to the truck and drove out of town. “Where we going?” she repeated.

  They came to a crossroads. The tornado had subsided and the rain was softer now. David headed the truck down a small road that had once been a cattle path. “Let’s get in back,” he said.

  “Say!” Mona cried. “What is this?”

  “You know damned well what it is, Mona,” David replied. He caught her by the arm and tried to pull her from the truck. She was warm and exciting.

  “Let me go!” she cried. There was a rough struggle. Mona held onto the wheel and could not be dragged loose. She was a little animal, scratching with her free hand. “You silly damned fool!” she grunted.

  “You’ve tried to make me one,” David puffed. “But I’ve had enough!” He caught her by the waist and wrestled with her until her stage dress tore. Furiously, he ripped at it, and then Mona stopped his craziness. She began to laugh.

  She laughed at him in a shrill voice. She was amused and contemptuous. She stopped holding onto the wheel or resisting in any way. All she did was laugh. “You having any fun?” she chided.

  “Stop it!” David insisted.

  He pulled her onto the muddy ground. They slipped and he tore away her dress and slip. Her legs were white in the reflected light from the truck, but she kept on laughing. “You are so damned silly!” she cried, not at all hysterically.

  Then David stopped. He found that he was powerless against her ridicule. Furious at her and at himself he allowed her to climb back in the truck. He stood outside and let the dying rain beat on his face. “Don’t play Napoleon!” she laughedo. “Get in!”

  He stamped his feet clean of mud and got in beside her. “We can’t go on like this,” he pleaded. “This is no summer.”

  The glacial girl wiped the mud from her dress. “What did you expect?” she asked.

  “I didn’t expect anything,” he lied. “But … this may sound silly …”

  “It does,” she interrupted.

  “Tonight when I was looking for Vito, I couldn’t find him, and I felt how much I needed you.”

  “You’ll have to go right on needing,” Mona said. Then she added coldly, “There’s nothing so dead as last year’s love. You ought to get wise to yourself.”

  “You’re a good one to talk!” he growled, determined to goad her from her laughing indifference. “You went to Paradise on Uncle Klim’s money. And to Hollywood on Max Volo’s. Now you expect to reach Broadway. What does that make you?”

  Mona gasped. She slashed at David’s face with her muddy shoe. She struck him again and again until he caught her hand and stopped her. “You cheap stinker!” she rasped. “What does that make me? Why, I’ve worked more than you! I know more than you! I’ve loved and I’ve hated more than you. People will remember me when you’re a name on a tombstone. Now get me back to town, you cheap hick ham. Or I’ll damned well have the cops on you.”

  David shifted gears and drove the truck slowly back to town. At the hotel Jensen and the dwarf were waiting. Hargreaves, his face bruised from David’s blow, had gone disconsolately to bed. “Your head’s cut!” Jensen said. “The flying pole get you?”

  “No,” David explained. “Mona socked me with her shoe.”

  “Why don’t you lay off that alley cat?” the Wild Man asked. “You’re headin’ for a lot of trouble, Dave. Cyril was fit to be tied.”

  David flared up. “I’d keep out of this!” he suggested.

  The Wild Man ignored his comment and continued to drawl, “I’ve seen lots of tough cheap women, Dave, and Mona’s head of the class.”

  David felt that he must fight such words. He clenched his fists and the Wild Man patiently groaned. “OK!” he sighed. “If it’s gonna make you feel better! I fall down go boom! See?” With sudden force he fell full length on the floor.

  At that moment there was a hissing sound from the stairway. Everyone turned to see the Gonoph. She was dressed in a flowered wrap beneath which her formless body sprawled in uncorseted abandon. “David! Hsssst!” she called.

  Jensen jumped up and punched David in the ribs. “Go ahead! To the victor belongs the spoiled.”

  Hesitantly David crossed the lobby. “You wait out in the truck,” the Gonoph stage-whispered to Jensen and the dwarf. She winked at them broadly and tried to hold back a chuckle.

  On the first landing the excited woman stopped and turned to look at David. “You’re cut!” she said. “Did Miss Meigs do that?”

  “Yes,” David replied, confused by what was happening.

  The Gonoph pried beneath his matted hair and inspected the wound. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “No,” David replied. They continued walking up the flight of stairs and at the top the Gonoph put both her fat hands on David’s.

  “Is Miss Meigs your heart’s desire?” she
asked.

  David looked at the floor. “Yes,” he said.

  The pudgy woman gripped his hands and said, “Why don’t you sneak in and see her?” Then she began to laugh and pointed at a door down the hall. As boys in school pester an angry teacher, so the Gonoph had tied Cyril Hargreaves into his room. There was no way he could break loose without ripping off his doorknob. “Mona’s room is that one,” she said.

  David started to walk toward it, but the shapeless woman in the wrap-around hurried after him and whispered, “Cyril knocks three times and then two times. He’s always used that for his signal.” She patted David on the shoulder and went chuckling to the other end of the hall.

  At Mona’s door David gave the signal. From inside there was an exhausted, “All right.” He opened the door slightly and slipped into the dark room. “What a day!” Mona sighed.

  “Mmmmm-Hmmmm!” David grunted.

  “I should think you’d had enough excitement!” Mona said harshly, twisting in her bed. “That damned fool David Harper ought to have his head examined.” She tossed again. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Mmmmm-Hmmmm!” David grunted again.

  “Where?” she asked.

  David slipped across the room and to the bed. He reached for Mona’s hand and placed it on his head. There was a long moment of silence while Mona explored the long-familiar head and the unexpected quantity of hair. There was a slight gasp, and she whispered, “Dave!”

  He placed his hand softly upon her lips. “Yes,” he whispered. Mona shuddered and then lay still. He dropped his hand from her lips and felt for her firm breasts. He caressed the long curves of her body, the protruding hipbones, and the pointed, exciting knees. She did not speak until he pulled away her gown completely so that she lay once again as she had been, a timeless feast for all the sensations of the body. Then she said in a low voice, “It’s good. It’s very good, Dave.”

  While they were lost in embracing there came a banging from down the hall. “What’s that?” Mona cried. Then she guessed and pulled David terribly close to her. “Is that Cyril?” she asked. When David nodded his head into her neck she twisted her head upon the pillow as she had done in Klim’s apartment when the great passion was upon her. “He’ll rush in here!” she moaned.