California Gold

by John Jakes

  Mack heard a grinding and watched in amazement as a fissure shot across the stained ceiling, then branched into fingers…

  Then silence. The floor had stopped shaking finally; it had lasted thirty seconds or so, he judged. In the distance, someone rang a fire bell. A door slammed open upstairs, and the owner stumbled to the landing, his red flannels unbuttoned over a hairy navel. He rubbed his morning beard. “Jesus, I fell out of bed. It woke me up.”

  “What the hell was it? An earthquake?”

  “Yeah. Felt like a bad one.”

  “Well, at least it didn’t last long—”

  The floor swayed and shook again, and suddenly the ceiling opened and the light fixture dropped, along with crumbling plaster and lath. Mack kicked the door and dove outside just as the Shore Café fell down on its owner.

  Little Jim woke up about the same time as his father.

  He smelled the raw odor of garbage. Above a milk wagon at the end of the alley where he’d taken shelter for the night a streetlamp went dark.

  Jim sat against the building, stiff and cold, clutching his tramp’s bundle against his chest. He’d left Sacramento Street at dusk on Sunday. It took him that long to find his opportunity. Alex, Señora Olivar, and Professor Love were all out of the house finally, and the servants busy.

  I’m going home, he said to himself now as he shook off sleep. Three nights on his own had weakened any desire to run away. Sunday and Monday he’d slept in Golden Gate Park. Freezing. Eating the last of the apples and bread filched from the kitchen. On Monday night an unkempt man approached him, unbuttoned his pants, and showed his thing. Jim fled while the man shouted dirty invitations.

  Last night, after wandering all over, he found this narrow, trash-strewn passage. He’d slept against the wall of the four-story Valencia Street Hotel, a cheap place just below Market.

  Pa didn’t like him. Pa was a stranger. But he’d had enough of defiant adventuring by himself. He was stiff, cold, starving. Home was better than this, even with Pa to put up with…

  A sound distracted him, and he turned to the other end of the alley, the end away from the street, and saw a man’s silhouette against the breaking light, the rooftops. He was a tall man in a queer, ankle-length garment, a patchwork coat of quilt and carpet squares. The man wore woolen gloves without fingers.

  For a second Jim thought it was the terrifying stranger from Golden Gate Park. But it wasn’t; this one had wild locks straggling to his shoulders. Water trickled. The man was relieving himself.

  At the nearer end of the passage, Valencia Street, the milk-wagon horse began to toss its head and stamp. Then it neighed, as if it sensed or saw something frightening.

  I want to go home. Right now.

  Little Jim scrambled up. “Hey, who’s that?” the shadow-man called out. He slipped along the alley, toward Jim.

  Jim ran the other way. Half a dozen steps and he reached Valencia Street. The milk-wagon horse flung itself against the traces and stamped, its wild neigh signaling something awful but still unseen.

  A rumbling filled the air then, a sound like a rushing train. Jim shot looks left and right but couldn’t find the source. A few early workers trudging along stopped and looked around. Then the street was rippling like a shaken carpet. Jim’s mouth fell open. The roar grew louder, mingled with creakings and grindings and crunchings of the rickety frame buildings crowded around. Upstairs in the Valencia Hotel, guests woke, crying out, and suddenly it seemed as if every church bell in San Francisco started to ring. They pealed and clanged without rhythm or melody, wild bells filling the air.

  A huge cornice hurtled down in front of Jim like a meteor, exploding as it hit the street. With a cry he leaped back and put his face against the hotel, fragments of the cornice stinging his cheek and ear. One nicked his eyelid.

  A gloved hand grasped his shoulder. “Boy, what’s happening?”

  Jim screamed. Saw a stranger’s face above him—long locks. It was the man in the carpet-square coat.

  “Let me pass, youngster. Let old Jocker see—”

  A guest from the hotel ran into the street as the wagon horse whinnied and bucked. A chimney on a two-story frame house across Valencia ripped apart on the mortar lines and collapsed, a dozen of its bricks striking the milkman; the wire carrier dropped from his hand, corks popping out, and he rolled on the sidewalk, his blood flowing into the milk.

  Roofs tore open, a second chimney sheared in half, and sparks spun upward, a whirlpool of fiery dots. The street waved and rippled like the ocean. Jim was stricken with terror, held fast by the dirty tall man.

  “Jesus God, judgment day,” the man cried.

  After what seemed like forever, the tremor stopped.

  “It’s an earthquake,” the man panted.

  People ran out of the flimsy houses and the Valencia Street Hotel. A long tongue of fire rose from a broken chimney, then fell back, and black smoke rolled behind some windows down the block. The bells still rang across the sky, but the tolling slowed somewhat. For approximately ten seconds the morning seemed fresh and sweet and still again, the heavens sun-brightened, though hazed with drifting dust from wrecked buildings. Down toward Market, Jim heard a rush of water and saw a great foamy geyser spurt up two stories, a burst hydrant. Then he saw another.

  Jim ducked and pulled against the tall man’s hand. Then the next tremor hit. The street began rippling again. Halfway down the block, ten yards of pavement bulged up and formed a hill. The Valencia Street Hotel tilted forward, and across the way, three abutting houses leaned south, tipped to an angle of forty-five degrees in the space of a breath.

  A grinding, shuddering roar filled Jim’s ears again. Lumber fell on him.

  “Here, boy, watch out,” the man cried, throwing himself on Jim to shield him moments before the entire Valencia Street Hotel fell apart, fell on top of them, raining debris and human bodies.

  Mack drove the Cadillac north like a man demented.

  Rocks ticked and snicked against the wind screen. His white hair blew and the sleeves of the filthy duster flapped. Practically leaning on the wheel, he tried to force more power, more speed from the sputtering overheated machine.

  Behind him, Half Moon Bay lay ruined. Nearly all of its frame buildings and piers were down. An aftershock about half past five leveled the few structures that had survived the initial quake. By six-thirty Mack and some neighbors had cleared a small mountain of wreckage and rescued the café owner, who was still alive. They stretched the man on blankets by the gas pump.

  Ahead of him, filling the horizon, extending to the Pacific on his left and across the peninsula on his right, a billowing, boiling rampart of cloud showed the enormous sweep of the earthquake.

  On his left, toward the sea, he saw half a mile of railway line sunk out of sight.

  On his right, a man waved his arms in front of a collapsed pile of lumber. On it lay a ripped-down sign: ARTICHOKES! AVOCADOS! FRESH!

  “Stop, turn back,” the man yelled, waving. “Everything’s down, telephone’s out, I was calling Palo Alto—the university’s in ruins—”

  The man and the wreckage blurred away behind.

  Mack squinted. In the rampart of dust and smoke a mile high, there were new flashing colors: reds, yellows, pinks.

  He couldn’t see the City, only its southern approaches, its outlying hills. But he could tell from the color-shot clouds that the quake four hours ago had done more, much more, than demolish property.

  “Jim.” He beat on the wheel. “Jim.”

  At nine-fifteen in the morning, April 18, 1906, Mack Chance drove into San Francisco.

  San Francisco was burning.

  61

  “SPECIAL POLICE,” THE CIVILIAN said.

  He stood in front of the stopped Cadillac at the intersection of Tenth and Bryant and stretched his arm over the bonnet, his big blue Colt pointed at Mack’s forehead.

  Smoke drifted in the intersection. Directly east, south of Market Street, huge clouds boiled skywa
rd, flashing orange within. Every few seconds Mack heard windows blowing out.

  “Who deputized you?”

  “Mayor Schmitz. Me and a thousand others.”

  “Where are your credentials?”

  “In the cylinder of this gun.”

  “Get out of my way. I live on Nob Hill. My name’s Macklin Chance.”

  “Oh. Mr. Chance. Yes, sir. Didn’t recognize you right off. I’ve seen your photo many times—” He stepped away from the front of the auto. “Go on, but be careful. And pay attention to this.” He pulled a handbill from his pocket. Meantime Mack’s eye fixed on a corner hydrant. It was open, its base surrounded by a slime of mud.

  “What’s wrong with the water?”

  “Isn’t any. Just a muddy trickle all over town.”

  “The underground mains broke?”

  “That’s what they think. Listen, it’s bad on Market Street. Rubberneckers, pickpockets, people hauling out what they can save—it’s a damn madhouse. Don’t make any suspicious moves. This paper means what it says.”

  Mack looked at the proclamation. Signed by the mayor, its boldfaced words leaped out.

  KILL any and all persons engaged in looting or the commission of any other crime.

  “Kill people with no questions asked? How can Schmitz order that?”

  “How can something like this happen?” The special waved him on.

  He drove around a big brick pile, a chimney that had tumbled into the street. In the ruins of a house, a blue gas flame hissed from a twisted pipe. Up on Market, a steam pumper raced east, the manes of its horses flying. What good was fire equipment without water?

  A spindly man in a long flannel gown ran alongside, begging a ride.

  “I was recuperating in the Central Emergency Hospital. It fell down around us. I’ve got to find my wife—I’m afraid she’s left our flat in North Beach.”

  “Get in. I’ll take you up to Market Street.”

  As Mack drove, the spindly man babbled. “It’s terrible, it’s so terrible. The Hearst building is burned. The Opera House is gone, and all the Met scenery, eight freight cars of it. Caruso sang Don José last night, you know. He stayed in one of the hotels. They say he’s dead. Oh, God, I’m so worried about my wife.”

  “Where do you think she’s gone?”

  “To the Moon. All of my wife’s relatives live on the Moon.”

  Mack stopped just short of Market Street. “Good luck.” The man thanked him and got out. Mack shook his head in wonderment. The Central Emergency Hospital had disgorged all of its patients. Including the lunatics.

  Astonishing sights assaulted him as he turned right on Market Street.

  The City Hall dome was a mere skeleton now, dangerously canted.

  Soldiers were everywhere. Soldiers from Fort Mason, the Presidio, the Pine Street cavalry barracks, mounted soldiers and foot soldiers. All were armed, some with bayonets.

  Ahead, looking eastward, buildings were burning in several blocks immediately south of Market. North of Market, in what appeared to be the waterfront area, a second great cloud arose. That was the wholesale produce district. Heavy smoke rolled over Market Street, sometimes hiding most of the taller structures like the eighteen-story Call building on the south side at Third Street. The Call was still untouched.

  Down that way too, he saw huge crowds of people milling around—men in business suits and derbies, women with parasols. They were sightseeing. Incredible…

  He nosed the Cadillac ahead slowly. It was a small metal boat in a human tide flowing the other way. Hundreds of San Franciscans were fleeing west, toward the parks and ocean beaches. They dragged steamer trunks. They pushed lawn mowers and sewing machines piled high with goods. They carried belongings in suitcases and pillowcases. Two men went by rolling an upright piano stuffed with clothes, a moose head, a banjo, a dress form.

  The pervasive smoke began to sting Mack’s eyes, and he coughed repeatedly. He noticed more and more long blue coats, more and more tall helmets. Along with the soldiers and the specials, every policeman in Chief Drinan’s six-hundred-man force must have been called out for duty.

  “Clear away.” A mounted army captain in a khaki campaign hat waved his crop and rammed his horse through the fleeing people. “Squad, follow me.” Six foot soldiers with bayonets double-timed behind. The captain and his men surrounded the Cadillac.

  “We’re taking this auto.”

  “Just a minute, Captain—”

  “Get out. That’s an order.”

  Angrily, Mack flung himself to the street. “I thought the army had no use for rich men’s toys.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re moving the dead and wounded in autos. Commandeering every one. Nothing else can get through these streets. Private Allen—drive.”

  He signaled to the east with his crop. Mack stood amid the flowing crowds and. watched a grinning twenty-year-old in khaki depart with his automobile.

  He trudged on. Down side streets, he saw dead horses. Pavements were awash with the flood from burst mains. Every saloon was closed, by order of the mayor, signs said. Clouds from the two fires above and below Market rolled higher into the sky. Mack could no longer see the sun.

  A woman lay in a Market Street doorway with her skirt hoisted, both her hands clutching the door frame above her. She heaved up and down and screamed like a hurt child as a man and another woman crouched on the sidewalk in front of her. Mack saw them pull a bloody newborn baby from between her parted legs.

  Half a dozen men overtook him from behind, three pushing wheelbarrows full of canvas sacks stenciled Fairbanks trust. The other three carried pump shotguns.

  “What have you got there?” Mack asked, stepping toward the nearest barrow.

  “A million dollars in bearer bonds,” one of the armed men said, taking aim. “You want a close look? It’ll be your last.”

  “No thanks, I believe you.”

  Mack stood aside and they rushed on down Market with their barrows. Going where? The Ferry Building? Oakland? Were the ferries still running?

  He recognized a police sergeant who was trying to direct traffic and asked him for details.

  “Oh, Mr. Chance, it’s a catastrophe,” the policeman said in his lovely Irish brogue. “There’s no water except what can be pumped from the cisterns and the Bay. None of the fire alarms worked. All the battery jars at the Chinatown alarm station broke in the quake. Poor Dennis Sullivan was mortally injured when headquarters came down…” Sullivan was fire chief, a twenty-six-year veteran, and the man who’d pleaded for money to improve the water system. “…and there’s nobody as keen and sharp as him to direct the firemen. We got a third blaze, a bad one, back there in Hayes Valley.” He pointed over Mack’s shoulder. “Some damn fool woman tried to cook breakfast with a damaged flue. It’s God’s judgment, I think. ’Tis a sinful town, this one. Whores and sodomites. Sodomites and whores—”

  “How’s Nob Hill?”

  “Safe so far. Who knows for how long?” Mack watched the apocalyptic clouds. The Call building jutted like an iceberg in a smoky sea. Who knows for how long?

  He fought on to within a block of the Call. The crowds were heaviest here; thousands packed Market Street from curb to curb, asking questions, offering opinions. They weren’t typical sightseers, Mack realized when he was among them. They weren’t lighthearted; they were worried.

  “Think the Call will go?”

  “Not on your life. The building’s fireproof.”

  “The Crocker building was fireproof. It’s gutted.”

  “The Palace is standing. See her flag flying down there?”

  “Hurrah for the old Palace…”

  Some of them applauded.

  The general noise level was incredible, the roar of the south-of-Market fire background for horses trotting, windows bursting, soldiers and police yelling, children crying, autos honking as they wove reckless paths through the crowds with cargoes of bodies or the wounded. Unseen buildings contin
ued to crash down.

  Mack pulled out his watch. Almost noon. A cry went up and a plume of smoke was visible spewing from a window on the Call’s top floor. Windows began to explode, a torrent of glass falling toward the street. People around Mack pushed and screamed and ran. A triangle of flying glass slashed the back of his neck.

  The policeman had used the right word: catastrophe. The heart of San Francisco was not yet gone, but it was going.

  He turned up Grant, then west again for a quick look at Union Square. It was packed with people, and so far unscathed. On the edge of the square he bumped into a man he knew from the Bohemian Club.

  “Chance. You’re on the Committee of Safety—do you know that?”

  “No, I don’t, I just got back—what’s the committee? What’s it for?”

  “The mayor organized it to run the fire fighting, the emergency hospitals—everything. Fifty of the City’s best. Jim Phelan’s chairman. They’ve sent appeals to Mayor Mott in Oakland and Governor Pardee in Sacramento. I saw your name when they posted the committee list at ten. They’re supposed to be in session right now.”

  “Where?”

  “Not sure. I heard they left the Hall of Justice for the new Fairmont…”

  “Thanks,” he said, pushing and shoving his way onward toward the Dewey Monument with the Winged Victory figure crowning it. On the Geary Street side of the square, a man was shouting and waving. “Get away to Oakland. Launches to Oakland, Pier Thirteen.”

  “How much?” someone yelled.

  “Fifty cents.”

  “That’s thievery.”

  But twenty other people rushed after the tout.

  Mack kept squeezing and pushing forward, toward Post Street on the square’s north side. Another mass outcry turned him around suddenly. Four upper floors of the Call were ablaze. Behind it, the fire clouds rose two miles or more, darkening the sky. To the southwest, similar clouds indicated that the Hayes Valley fire, the fire from the woman’s breakfast, was spreading. The constant crash of collapsing buildings made it sound like wartime.

  Mack crossed Post on his way back to Powell. Suddenly he spied Alex Muller over near the entrance of the St. Francis. Hatless and coatless, Alex dove across Post into the square Mack had just left. Mack recrossed the street and chased him.