Sally’s body stiffens, and she sputters, trying to think of what to say. “Archie, she might need our help!”
“She might also be ahead of us.” His voice has grown more distant. The stairs creak under the weight of so many people, and she knows he is among them.
“She’s not, though!” says Sally. Margaret wouldn’t have left either of them behind. She turns and tries to push against the tide of people, who have grown desperate to reach the stairs. It is impossible to make any forward progress. Her only hope is to move toward the perimeter of the room and work her way back down the corridor against the wall.
“Margaret!” she screams. “Margaret!” Her throat burns and she hacks up phlegm so thick it feels like treacle in her mouth. She wishes she had thought to ask Archie for her jacket back. It might have helped protect her from the noxious fumes.
“You’re going the wrong way,” say several people as she pushes past them, but she ignores them.
“Margaret!”
Her foot brushes against the thin tissue of a silk dress and then the pliant body of a woman. She leans on the wall for support and uses her free hand to reach down and touch the woman’s chest, neck, and face. It isn’t Margaret, thank God.
As she tries to stand, Sally’s fingers brush the soft fur of a beaver skin muff, and she realizes, with a start, that the woman at her feet is likely the very same woman who allowed them out of the box just a few moments ago.
“I’m sorry,” she stutters to no one in particular, before screaming Margaret’s name again.
Sally begins to crawl down the hallway. She realizes the air is a good deal clearer the closer she gets to the floorboards, so she inches forward on her forearms.
Around her, more people collapse, and Sally prays that, wherever Margaret is, she’ll be able to hear her own name and respond to it. “Margaret!”
“Sally,” comes a weak voice. “I’m here.”
Sally’s stomach flips. Her throat is so tight she can barely speak. “Keep talking to me, Margaret,” she begs.
“My head,” she says as Sally moves in the direction of the sound. “I feel so dizzy. I can’t stand.”
When Sally reaches her friend, she doesn’t waste a second expressing her gratitude or even checking to make sure she is all right. She simply pulls Margaret to her feet and, in one fluid motion, moves her toward the bank of windows that run the length of the corridor’s exterior wall. Above them, the ceiling glows.
“The stairs,” says Margaret as she coughs into her hand. “They’re that way.”
Sally thinks of the crowded stairway and Archie’s desperation to save his own skin. If they follow him now, they’ll never make it out alive. “We can’t go that way,” says Sally, trying to contain the panic that threatens to blot out her reason. “We’ve got to get air.”
They move toward the effervescent light of the windows. Several have been pried open, and each is crowded with people taking gulps of fresh air and trying to work up the courage to jump.
Behind them, they hear a deafening crash that shakes the entire building and causes hot embers to fall from the ceiling. Sally covers her head with her hands.
“What was that?” Margaret cries, but Sally can’t say.
A man pushes past them, leaps over a half-dozen women who are clamoring to get up onto the nearest windowsill. With one hand on the window casement, he turns to them and says, “The staircase just fell through to the first floor.” Then he jumps out into the night.
CECILY
Cecily is one of thefirst people to make it out of the gallery, on account of being one of the last people in, and now she watches as men and women come stumbling down the gallery’s narrow staircase and out into the world they very nearly left behind.
She recognizes some of them from the Baptist meetinghouse, which Cecily’s family attends when the weather is good. Others she knows from the mill or the market, but now hardly seems like the right time to say hello. Old Man Sully, who is in church every Sunday, regardless of the weather, raises his hands to the heavens and utters a “Praise be” when he touches solid ground, but Cecily isn’t so sure God had much to do with their quick escape. She moves to the back of the crowd, and keeps one eye peeled for Augustine Saunders, who was behind her on the stairs and shouldn’t be hard to miss.
All of them congregate together, a few dozen feet from the gallery door, and they stare up at the building’s roofline, where the fire licks the dry timber. Cecily has seen other buildings in Richmond burn, but she doesn’t think she’s ever seen one this big go this fast.
Out of nowhere, the body of a young white man lands beside them with a sickening thud. He doesn’t move, and above him, in a window on the third floor, more men prepare to jump.
“Somebody ought to do something,” says an old woman near Cecily. “They gonna kill him dead, landing on top of him.” And yet, nobody moves.
“Move back,” shouts someone at the front of the crowd, and the group breaks up as more bodies begin to fall from the sky like a hard hail. The theater green is chaos, people running in all directions, and for the first time Cecily thinks of Maria. A wave of guilt washes over her. How has she not considered the girl until now? She rushes toward H Street, where she prays she’ll find her waiting in front of the theater, just as they planned.
From the street, Cecily can see straight through the theater’s entranceand past the lobby—shrouded in smoke—to the pit, which is setting loose the last of its occupants. The doors to the pit were, at some point, pulled off their hinges and slung onto the floor of the lobby, and now people scramble over them in their attempt to make it out of the building.
Cecily studies the faces of the women who, having successfully fled the building, collapse on the lawn in front of H Street. Some of them cry out for help, but many say nothing at all, just hack and spit into the grass, gasping for breath. All of them are covered in a fine layer of white dust, and Cecily realizes she might not recognize Maria if she saw her. As she studies the women’s faces, she tries to look for Maria’s hooked nose and cleft chin—features that no amount of soot can obscure—but it is impossible to see much in the dark.
