Ghost Town Read Free

among the ashes attempting to recover what was left of their property. I saw bodies burned almost beyond recognition and they haunted my dreams for many months after.
    Down Broadway we shuffled through this spectacle of desolation. Dan was silent, his expression one of anger and bewilderment while Lizzie was as distressed as I had ever seen her, careless even that her dress was trailing in the ashes. My mother showed only the thin grim line of mouth which I knew well, that way she had of clamping her out-thrust jaw so tight the sinew in her neck stood up, and her eyes ablaze as fierce as anything I saw the night before. Her hair was wild and she pushed it back unaware of what she was doing, and her face became blackened with soot.
    Of Trinity Church all that remained were ruined walls. Smoking beams lay tumbled upon one another and in the churchyard the headstones were charred, many of them cracked and split or fallen over in pieces, leaving only a snagged fraction like the remnant of a rotted tooth. A part of our own chimney still stood, being made of brick, the stump of it but nothingelse. Nor were we the only ones. Almost every house west of Broadway was gone. We stood with the few pitiful possessions we had carried away in the night and stared at the burnt ground where our house had once been. I looked up at my mama and all at once her eyes filled with tears, though none spilled down her face. She shook her head, she could not speak. It was Lizzie who finally broke the silence.
    —Where are we to go, mama?
    And then our mama showed her mettle. Her shoulders heaved, she lifted a fist. She said again what she had said when Howe’s fleet dropped anchor in the Lower Bay. Many of our neighbors had packed up and gone but not us, oh no, we did not flee, my mother was having none of
that
! She had relations in Jersey but she had quarreled with them years before. She declared she would rather fight the British with her bare hands than go creeping to her people at the first sign of trouble.
    —Where are we to go, she said. Where should we go, Lizzie? There is nowhere for us to go but here!
    And it was then that we heard from somewhere behind us a bark of laughter. Above the slow-moving tide of homeless people streamingdown Broadway sat a lone, plumed horseman on a tall bay mare.
    All that I have suffered this last fifty years has its beginning in what next occurred. The Englishman’s horse picked its way down past the ruins and into the scorched trees of the graveyard. Lord John Hyde sat swaying in the saddle, and I realized only later that he was drunk, having come, it may be, from some convivial gathering of his fellow officers after the excitement of the night before. My mama did not hesitate. She strode up through the headstones to where the horse pawed the earth among the blackened tree-trunks. I remember thinking how brave she was to be challenging this proud officer atop his huge animal, for he certainly terrified me. Trails of smoke and occasional spurts of flame arose from heaps of smoldering wood scattered about the graveyard, and horse and rider appeared to shimmer like a visitation from out of a romance. Our neighbors gathered about us, drawn by this plumed and swaying horseman come to inspect us in our loss and my mama standing there before him. His drawling voice carried clear in the damp heavy air of the morning.
    —Now, madam, you see what happens to those who will not pay their taxes!
    And with that he turned and began making his way back up toward the road, small clouds of ash rising under his horse’s hooves.
    —Will you not help us, Lord Hyde?
    But he said nothing more, merely flicked at the horse with his whip. My mama could take no more. It all burst out of her.
    —You painted whore! she shouted. You king’s strumpet!
    Suddenly all was still. I felt the first drops of rain. Slowly Lord Hyde turned his horse. My mama did not move. She set her fists upon her hips and tossed her head as the rain began to