I looked down that morning from a ways up Signal Hill after a sleepless night that was not a night at all. The recent midnight sky had been as bright as a day, and the morning arrived almost unnoticed, and certainly unappreciated. The only difference was the sun behind me as I surveyed the city I had come to see.
I didn't anticipate the events of the previous evening and night. How could I? And as I thought about it, with my unbelieving eyes staring down at an impossibility, I realized that I had brought this upon myself -- and upon these people. And yet I could not convince myself that it was real.
The flames still burned at the perimeter. They raged and tossed like gale force waves, tearing apart helpless wooden buildings, and the lives once held within. People fought in vain to force back the tide of blazing heat with water buckets and sand. For the most part, the centre of town near Military Road and Gower Street was cinder -- black with no light at all save glowing embers. The sun hadn't yet risen enough above Gibbet Hill to enlighten that area. That was where it had to have started. And then I knew.
Surrounding me for hundreds of feet were families of outcast people, huddling together as closely as possible, many hunting for loved ones not yet accounted for. The crying drowned out the crackling and spitting of the devastating wave of flame. The desperate shouting overrode the rustle of collapsing walls and chimneys and the shattering of heat-stressed glass. The weeping supplanted all other sounds.
The heat was that of the hottest summer I had ever experienced, but it was not like any I had ever known. I was oblivious to the weather -- it seemed inconsequential -- though it had been clear the day before, and dry. Dry for days, and very windy, someone had told me yesterday when I walked from Freshwater Road to this hill. I remember stopping to ask some wife for directions, as she hung clothes from her Cochrane Street house. I told her I wanted a view of the city. She told me how to get here, and all the while taking in my appearance. I thought I had been dressed like anyone else, but I could see that the subtleties didn't pass her inspection. The new fabrics that made up my suit, and bow tie; the synthetic materials in my bowler hat; the antique pocket watch I took from my vest pocket as I checked the time. She would report me to her husband and neighbours as a stranger. An American, she would suspect. Ironic that despite my strangeness, I was as much a citizen of this town as she or anyone she knew.
Now, as I walked by what remained of that same house, I felt regret, as much as shock. There was nothing left. The street was a row of chimneys, still erect and towering above the black rubble like a copse of brick trees. A panicked horse ran by me, its nostrils flaring, its breathing laboured. It had survived, somehow. Good people were picking through soot and wood to find valuables, or perhaps relatives. I looked down as I passed them.
You see, this was as much a shock to me as it was to these men and women and children. This was no part of my history, and I should know. This was never to have happened. My doctorate had been in History and Folklore, and my focus had always been the elaborate and intriguing history of St. John's from the first settler to the present day, and nowhere was there any mention of this dreadful holocaust. Almost fifty years earlier a fire had burned down most of the town, but this was 1892! (For one second I doubted my calculations, but it passed.)
An observer, that is what I was to have been. Working on a paper on the turn of the century, I decided I had to see it. Reading about it was not enough. I had to see it, taste it, smell it. And now it smelled of soot and ash. Nothing more. History had been changed.
Resigned, I had no hope of repairing the damage. My only hope was of escape, knowing I could never truly fly from the dreadful guilt and responsibility of my action. For only one thing was different here today than it had been when today first happened, almost two hundred years ago: me.
What would I return to even if I could? That thought suddenly struck me with an even greater fear! I began to run with the hot wind in my face towards the old barn near the western edge of the turmoil.
When I arrived there, my fears were realized. The building was now black wreckage, like some ghostly schooner smashed to pieces on the Narrows during a storm. I leapt, frantically pulling and pushing debris from my path as I entered the wreck.
I remember the barn as it had been only a dozen hours ago. It was dark, and ill used. Ideal for hiding something I would not want anyone to see. And ideal for hiding myself if the need arose. Yet the timbers were dry, as was the hay carelessly lying about. The weather of the past few days was consistently dry and windy -- unusual this early in the season. And I had not accounted for that.
My memory faded, and was replaced by the present, and the confusion of this reality, which now lay around me like careless hay. And underneath, as I pried a four by four from the heap in front of me, I found what I sought. And hope died.
The machine lay twisted, broken. Irreparable. My knowledge was nothing without the proper tools and materials. The vinyl of the seat was melted into the console, which was itself fused into a mass of metal and plastic. The heat had to have been unimaginable. Nothing was salvageable, and I knew it. So I turned my back on the pathetic, twisted skeleton, left the place and walked toward Bannerman park where tents were already being erected to house those who now had nowhere to go.
Without the Time Machine, I was as trapped here as these people, and I would never know the new future -- the future I had just created. I would never read about the great fire. My punishment would be to live it. I walked towards one of the tents, being erected by an elderly man and two children, reached for a few spikes and nails, and began pounding them into the ground as they looked on, nodding appreciation for my help.
All content of these pages © Sean Huxter.
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