“Where was that, officer?”
“Here on this corner, miss.” The policeman inspected the bandage, admiring it in the fragment of mirror that remained behind the soda fountain. “Say, you ought to been a doctor. Well, the boy must of knocked me out. When I come to, I had a fight with a mob on me hands. Then Tim come along. Since then, him an’ me’s been collectin’ our orphan asylum. We got wops an’ Jews an’ Irish an’ Polacks an’ squareheads. An’ there’s some we ain’t been able to classify.”
Mary quite frankly admired him.
“I think it was a wonderful thing for you and Tim to do.”
“Oh, no, miss.” He looked at her with blue-eyed wonder. “Somebody had to do it an’ we was here. You’d be surprised, though,” he added, “how careless folks was with their kids last night.”
“What about your own relatives and Tim’s wife and children?”
The policeman looked away.
“No use worryin’ about them, except we’ll have a Mass said. They lived way downtown below Greenwich Village an’ they never had no chance to get out. It’s all under water now.”
Bob Wiston took his card from his pocket and scrawled upon it the address of his firm in Chicago. He handed this to the officer.
“You’re too good a man to lose track of,” Bob remarked. “Let me hear from you.”
We all shook hands.
“Good luck, officer.”
“Good luck to you and thanks, miss. I’ll tell them kids that their party is on you.”
As I write, other memories of that morning’s walk flood back upon me. The sun, red as the flames of a great fire in Harlem on our right, blazed down upon us.
The panic of the fugitives somewhat diminished. During the hours of darkness scarcely one person had spoken to another. Now they resumed speech and the wildest rumors flew from group to group with incredible speed.
On one corner, we heard that the entire Atlantic seaboard had been destroyed. Boston, Newport, Philadelphia were said to be razed. On the next corner, a woman was telling how the inland cities had suffered, even more than Manhattan. She said Chicago was swallowed up. Of course, there was absolutely no foundation for these tales. Manhattan had no means of communicating with the outside world since the first shock. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to believe the most improbable things.
Somewhere along our route we found the preacher. About a thousand men and women were gathered around him. He was an oldish, undersized man, wearing threadbare clothes and standing upon a heap of wreckage which had once been a house. His voice, shrill and penetrating, reached us perfectly on the outskirts of the crowd.
“Brothers, ye failed to heed the handwriting on the wall.” He spoke in a singsong chant. “So look about. See this great city destroyed for its wickedness. Yeah! Like Sodom it is cast down to perish. Ye have yet time to repent. We are not yet ripe grain for the sickle of the reaper.”
“Amen. Praise the Lord!” cried a man.
“Have a heed lest ye be pulled up with the tares, lest ye be cut down unrighteous in the flower of thy youth; lest, unwilling and unprepared, ye be summoned before the throne.”
“Amen. Amen,” several repeated.
“Brethren, this is the day of the Lord’s harvest. Are ye ready to be judged?”
“No. I ain’t ready to be judged. I ain’t ready for the reaper.” A huge colored woman, the largest I have ever seen outside of a sideshow tent, called out her answer to the preacher’s question. She made her majestic way through the crowd that parted before her, until she was close to the rubble that served as a pulpit. There she flung herself down. “Hear me, Lord. I ain’t ready, Lord. I ain’t fitten to be reaped.”
“Our sister seeks repentance,” shrilled the preacher. “Who is thereto repent with her?” He extended his arms imploringly. “Is there only one in all Sodom to be saved? Send us a sign, Lord. Send us a sign.”
He looked up to the sky, perhaps self-hypnotized into the belief that he would see a flaming chariot. My gaze followed his and, as it did, my ears caught a sound they had not heard for hours—the purring of a motor.
The roar of the motor grew louder. Then, from behind a banked eastern cloud, a great plane dived into view. A gasp of astonishment, almost of fear, went up from the preacher’s congregation. As the plane came closer, I was thrilled to notice the United States Army markings upon wings and body.
“It’s goin’ to bomb us,” called some man who evidently believed he was back in a war zone.
The plane dipped over Central Park and from it fluttered down thousands of scraps of paper. Again and again the plane turned, climbed, dipped, like a hawk over a grain field. It seemed an age before it circled near us and some of the sheets of paper quivered down in our vicinity. But long before they reached us, the flyer had disappeared, sailing toward Brooklyn.
There was a mad rush for the precious scraps. In spite of Mary and her mother’s protest, I joined the milling thousands who were waiting with outstretched hands to snatch one of the sheets from the air. One fluttered near. I jumped, seized it and fought my way back through the press of excited men to Mary and her mother. The preacher was forgotten. Bob displaced him on the rostrum and read the message aloud to the gathering:
EXECUTIVE PROCLAMATION
To the People of the City of Greater New York:
The nation joins me in sending you every possible expression of sympathy. The nation promises immediate and tangible aid. The calamity which you have suffered is without parallel in the history of mankind. It has shocked the world.
Relief work is being organized as this is written. To facilitate it, the officer commanding the military in the stricken area will enforce strict martial law.
Because of the unparalleled interruption of transportation, it may not be humanly possible for
relief trains to reach you today. Remain calm.
Remember that every resource of the government, the entire strength of the army and navy, the facilities of many corporations and private individuals are being taxed to supply your needs.
The proclamation, dated at Washington at four o’clock that morning, was signed by the President of the United States. I believe that those handbills, distributed by plane, did more real good than any other single item of the relief work.
The preacher attempted to resume his sermon. His words fell upon deaf ears.
Bob Wiston thought it would be wise for us to return to the apartment and wait there until aid arrived. But I insisted that, because of the shortage of food and water, our best plan was to push forward and meet the relief columns.
About noon we reached One-Hundred-and-Sixty-fifth Street. Looking down from the cliff, where the Polo Grounds had stood, we saw that the usually placid Harlem River that separates Manhattan from the mainland had been on a terrific rampage. The whole valley was strewn with wreckage. The tidal wave had swept between the cliffs, demolishing every structure that the quake had spared. Against the stone piers of ruined bridges, great heaps of driftwood had been piled.
Two miles above, at High Bridge, we could see a few adventurous men crossing from the New York to the Bronx bank, walking with comparative safety upon the wrecked boats, scows, houses, wooden piers and houseboats which the water had piled into a huge, misshapen heap. This was grounded upon the pier stumps and the ruins of the great stone causeway.
“There’s our only chance to get across.” Bob pointed to it.
“If those men can cross there,” replied Mrs. Hull, “I think we can manage, too.”
To understand how this river barrier had come into existence, one must imagine the miles of docks and shipping that stretched from the Brooklyn Heights district and the Battery on either bank of the East River, up past Welfare Island, to the entrance of the Harlem. Along these miles of water front, every scow, boat, yacht, many of the piers and storehouses themselves, had been snatched up by a moving wall of water that had risen like a tide in the lower Bay. Nothing quite like it was ever seen before. It must have
been a magnificent spectacle when that huge wave concentrated in the upper reaches of the harbor.
As we approached the barricade on the High Bridge piers, the river had sunk back to its normal level, although a strong current held downstream, running from the Hudson River toward the Bay.
A wrecked ferryboat rested on the mud and rocks of the Manhattan bank. We climbed through it to the upper deck and from there managed to reach the top of the wreckage, fully fifty feet above the water.
“Giants have been playing jackstraws with our belongings,” said Mrs. Hull to Mary.
Beneath our feet, heaped up by forces whose power dwarfs man’s comprehension, were huge harbor lighters. They might have been the knickknacks of a child’s playroom, drifted to one end of a bathtub. Great timbers that had been piles and heavy planks were twisted by the pressure into fantastic shapes. It was something like a logjam, except that the component parts were larger than any logs. A half-dozen wooden freight cars, swept up from some railroad yard, were mere infinitesimal portions of the whole.
It was easy to see why more persons had not used the wreckage as a bridge. Every foot of progress from the west to the east bank meant climbing over barriers, all so slippery that we constantly risked a fall to the riverbed. Mary made her way without assistance. But Bob and I had to lift her mother bodily at times.
So we toiled across, paying no heed to shouts of “Look out there,” that came from a group of men on the bank we had quitted. Once I peered over the edge of the pile and thought I noticed the water beneath us was running more swiftly.
A mangled yacht, quite a fine one, barred our path. It lay on its side but a jagged hole in the hull permitted us to crawl through into the cabin and up the companionway to the deck. There we let ourselves down on a mass of tangled planking and railroad ties. The last barrier was a sort of raft, perhaps a former floating wharf. As we were climbing up it I felt a movement beneath my feet. Startled, I looked upstream.
The tidal wave was returning.
The water had been sent up the Hudson River, between the palisades until it massed below the flats at Albany. Now the whole tremendous flood was sweeping back toward the sea. It was coming down the channel like a torrent that follows a broken dam. It was a great, swelling, racing tide that carried whole houses on its crest.
Even as I looked, a preliminary movement made the wreckage creak and groan. A higher wave was close behind. In another moment we would be swept away.
I took Mrs. Hull in my arms, shouted a desperate “Quick!” to Mary and Bob Wiston and climbed up the slippery timbers that were canted toward us. I missed my footing and fell heavily. Mrs. Hull was not injured. Mary and Bob helped me to my feet. We struggled on.
“Wait! Wait just a minute!” groaned Bob, as if he were pleading with a reasoning force. Tight-lipped and tense, Mary offered no protest or complaint.
Dirty, muddy, foam-specked water boiled up beneath our feet. The planks moved. A great snapping and screeching told of the strain upon the timbers.
The raft or platform was tilted at an angle of almost thirty degrees toward the center of the river. The flood poured over the top of the barricade. We stood helpless and I realized that we were lost.
Suddenly, as we were about to be drawn back into the maelstrom, the water raised under the outer edge. The whole mass of wreckage heaved. Our raft righted and then tilted forward, literally catapulting us across it and landing us, safe, upon the terraced platform of the parkway, above the site of the old High Bridge railroad station.
Just as we reached the secure footing of masonry and rock, the river seemed to mark us as its victims. Mary and Bob were a step in advance. I handed Mrs. Hull to them when the water rose and reached my waist. It would have sucked me downward, had not Mrs. Hull held the lapels of my coat with a tenacity and muscular strength one would not have dreamed was concealed in her thin white hands. For a moment we all tottered on the brink, then they dragged me ashore. As I turned to look back, the crest of the flood passed, carrying with it out to sea every stick of the great jam that had composed our bridge.
Exhausted by the physical and mental strain of those few tortured seconds, we sat down. It was some time before anyone spoke.
“Gosh,” Bob sighed, “that was a close connection.”
We all laughed hysterically.
We finished the whisky in Bob’s flask and then walked slowly up the hill toward the Grand Concourse and the Boston Post Road.
Although the shocks had not been as severe in the Bronx as in Manhattan Island, the miles of apartment houses seemed to have suffered more than the buildings in downtown New York. Engineers say that this was due to improper methods of construction. In the main, however, the scenes were identical with those we had witnessed before. There were the same helpless, surging crowds of fugitives. As we approached a corner Mary seized my arm.
“Look!” She pointed to a message printed in chalk upon a wall of one of the few undamaged buildings. “There’s your name.”
Someone had printed “Alex Tennay” there. Below my name was an arrow pointing out the Boston Post Road and below that the words, “Watch the arrows. About three miles.”
Uncomprehendingly, I stared at the message. I was the only Alex Tennay listed in the New York telephone directory, but I could not imagine who had this interest in communicating with me. A few blocks farther on, we saw the same message again.
We proceeded with no little difficulty through mobs that either stood listlessly in the street or moved to and fro in ceaseless, aimless wanderings. Then we heard traffic whistles. The people opened a road through the center of the street.
There was a long column of infantrymen, four abreast, route marching. The men were dirty, tired, sweating, burdened with full cartridge belts and packs from which protruded their packages of emergency rations. A wild, hoarse cheer went up from the refugees who lined their path. A first lieutenant walked smartly at the head of the column. He kept calling out:
“Rations in the rear, folks. Rations in the rear.” The regiment filed past, their colors cased as if they were moving into a war zone. Following them came an engineers battalion, with its train, their pontoons for bridges hauled by tractors. Next was a smart squadron of cavalry, preceding a complete field hospital. Then came miles of motor trucks, commandeered from corporations and private owners but manned by soldiers. The trucks literally groaned under the weight of supplies.
“You’ll find a tent city and rolling kitchens up about four miles,” called the men.
It seemed that the column would never end. Behind the army units was a navy and marine relief train from the Boston Navy Yard. More soldiers followed them, with supply trains, artillery batteries, although the horses hauled loaded wagons instead of guns. It seemed like a view of troops pouring into a captured city.
When the final detachment had passed, we walked northward again. At frequent intervals we found the “Alex Tennay” message with the arrow pointing. In the late afternoon, I discovered the final guide sign. The name had been printed upon a board nailed to a tree and the arrow pointed down to a handsome closed car that was parked below it.
“There’s my friend,” I remarked.
“I’m afraid he won’t give us a ride,” Bob returned. “There are no wheels on that car.”
It was true. The wheels had been taken off and the car jacked up on piles of bricks.
“Maybe he thought you’d bring wheels with you,” Mary suggested.
I went closer. Two men were sleeping inside the car. My hand was upon the door before I realized the identity of one of them. “Matt,” I shouted. “Matt!”
My brother sat up. The interior of the car was piled high with something that was covered by a blanket. He greeted us casually as if the meeting was the most natural thing in the world.
“Hello, folks!” Matt rubbed his eyes. He expressed no surprise at seeing us there together. With another person this matter-of-fact attitude might have been a pose. With him it was merely a logical con
clusion of a natural phenomenon which he would no more question than he would a rainy morning in April.
“I waited around here,” Matt said, “because I thought maybe you’d like to run up to my farm for a few days. That is,” he grinned, “if you can spare the time from your offices.” He shook the man asleep beside him. “Wake up, ‘Skinny.’ Our gang’s here.”
The companion, a youth I had never seen before, jumped down from his bed.
“Skinny hired out to pick apples for me,” Matt nodded at his helper. “I hired him between the second and third shocks, last night. After the train ran off the track at Peekskill.”
“Can’t we get some wheels for your car?” Bob Wiston was plainly puzzled at Matt’s attitude. He was not quite sure that Matt was sane.
“Of course, I have the wheels. I’ve been sleeping on them,” Matt hauled them out from beneath the robes. “I thought if we hid ’em, nobody would try to take this bus away from us. There’s something discouraging in trying to steal a car without wheels. Skinny and I’ll put ’em on while you eat. Then we’ll get rolling.”
We ate soup, beans and hardtack at a cavalry rolling kitchen. Then I found a signal-corps telegraph and, for a small consideration, prevailed upon the sergeant in charge of it to send the news story which McKay had given me.
Matt explained the presence of the car.
“I met Skinny and hired him. Then we decided to come back from Peekskill and find you. The road was full of automobiles then. We were looking for a car when two fellows came along with this. They didn’t look to me as if they owned it, so I stopped ’em and asked to see their license. They jumped out and ran away. So, seeing they’d abandoned it, I thought I’d take care of it for the real owner.”
By daylight, we had driven far out of the quake zone. About lunchtime we reached Mart’s farm.
I slept nearly twenty-four hours. When I finally awoke, bathed, shaved and ate, my brother’s housekeeper informed me that Mrs. Hull was resting comfortably, little the worse for her adventure. Bob Wiston, she said, had gone to Chicago on business. “Where’s Mary?”
The Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 17