1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  Christian finished reloading and saw Francis and Patrick exposed. He leapt from behind the trunk and charged, firing his revolver, trying to keep Kelly and Scarface pinned down.

  "Christian, get down," Hunter screamed, his hands trembling as he reloaded.

  Hunter fired at Scarface, tearing a hole in the oak table as Christian dove toward the wagon where Kelly hid.

  Francis pulled Patrick back into the doorway.

  Christian crouched behind one end of the wagon, five feet from Kelly, who reached up and jerked the brake loose. The wagon rolled forward, leaving Christian's legs exposed.

  Kelly leaned beneath the wagon's bed and put a bullet in Christian's knee. Christian stumbled and dropped his gun.

  I held my hands to my mouth as Hunter jumped from behind the trunk and dashed forward to protect his brother. He fired a bullet through Kelly's shooting arm while Scarface hid behind the pock-marked table.

  Christian writhed in pain and crawled toward his revolver.

  Hunter shot Kelly in the leg and then his gun ran dry. He dove behind a chest of drawers and dumped the spent shells from his revolver while Francis stepped from cover to fire at Kelly.

  Scarface grabbed Dumbrowski's revolver and sprinted toward the flat, firing at Francis as Hunter frantically reloaded.

  Kelly raised his revolver and drew a bead on Christian's head.

  Hunter finished reloading and fired first, the bullet slamming into Kelly's side. Two more shots from Hunter's pistol ripped through Kelly's chest and finished him.

  Christian clutched his leg as Hunter moved to his side.

  In the deep shadow of Christian's doorway, safe from Hunter's view and Francis' line of fire, Scarface turned and fired.

  The shot ripped through Christian's heart.

  Hunter wheeled and fired into the doorway as Scarface disappeared into the shadows. When his revolver ran dry again, Hunter turned to his brother.

  "Christian, Christian!"

  I was already racing down the sidewalk. I slowed and looked at Patrick, who was dazed and mumbling a prayer.

  Francis stood guard as I dropped next to Christian and put my arm behind his neck, a pool of blood widening into a giant red crown beneath him.

  I gazed over at Carlo's lifeless body, then back at Hunter, whose face was a mask of pain and resignation. He leaned forward and kissed his brother on the forehead.

  "Tell Mom and Dad I love them," he whispered.

  "I think Scarface is gone," Francis said. "He took the rear exit on Filbert. Let's hook Kelly's horse back up to the wagon. We have to get to the Presidio."

  "How bad is Patrick?" I asked

  "The bullet nicked his collarbone. He hasn't lost a lot of blood, he should be all right. We better move, ain't none of this over."

  Chapter 59

  KEARNY STREET

  APRIL 18, 1906. 7:15 P.M.

  At the Hall of Justice near the border of the Barbary Coast and Chinatown, aides frantically shuffled stacks of messages as Schmitz held a tense conference with General Funston, Assistant Fire Chief Dougherty, and Police Chief Donen.

  "The effort has been too little and too late," Funston growled. "A two-block firebreak is not enough. We need a much wider firebreak along this route." Funston produced a filthy map from his back pocket, and traced a crescent-shaped line from the residential area of the Mission District, down Van Ness Avenue to the waterfront, reciting the names of the streets.

  Schmitz was stunned. "Six blocks wide and four, five miles long? What is that, five thousand buildings? There's not that much dynamite in the whole state."

  "We found a ton and a half of gun cotton at the Naval base on Mare Island and another two boxcars of black powder at the Southern Pacific Depot."

  "General," Dougherty said, "what does it matter if we blow the city to smithereens or let the fire have it? Admiral Goodrich is on his way. We should position ourselves to help the Navy when they arrive."

  "Where were they when they got the distress call?" Funston asked. "San Diego," Schmitz replied.

  "San Diego. Maybe they'll arrive in time for our funeral. I've already given the orders. My men are expanding the dynamiting from California Street to Jackson to keep the fire from spreading to Chinatown and North Beach. We have teams positioned on Van Ness to take out every building on the east side and keep the fire from jumping to the western part of the city."

  An explosion blew out the windows on the east side of the building, sending everyone to the floor in terror. Shaking off slivers of glass, their ears echoing with the concussion, Schmitz and the others climbed to their feet.

  Bertrand stumbled across the room, covered in ash, a handkerchief pressed to his mouth and nose. "Mr. Mayor," he implored, "we must go now, sir. The fire is racing up Kearny, it's barely a block away."

  Schmitz looked to Funston as the building creaked ominously. "General, if your men are blasting a firebreak to protect Chinatown and North Beach, what's the fire doing outside our door here?"

  "You told me to keep you informed," Funston growled as he rolled up the map. "So, now I've informed you."

  "Let's go, sir," Bertrand begged. "Nob Hill is still safe. The car is waiting to take us to the Fairmont."

  Schmitz turned back to Funston, but he was already gone.

  Donen seized the Mayor's arm and dragged him from the building.

  Outside, a blast of heated air almost knocked Schmitz off his feet. He pulled his collar to his face and jumped into the Ford next to Donen.

  With Bertrand and Dougherty in the back seat, they lurched up Washington Street, through Chinatown, Donen working the horn. Schmitz stared to his left, where half the Financial District was now ablaze, the flames so high it was impossible to see above them.

  Help was closer than he realized.

  The USS Chicago, flagship of the Navy's Pacific Fleet, plowed past Big Sur, just south of Monterey Bay. Admiral Casper Goodrich, a lean, regal figure, lowered his binoculars and looked to the men fanned out behind him on the bridge.

  "Jesus and Mary. Seventy-five miles from San Francisco and you can see the flames already. Ensign Arthur, tell the engine room to squeeze every ounce of speed we have. And pray there's something left to save when we get there."

  Goodrich looked back over the stern at the Marblehead, Boston, and Princeton churning in formation behind him. Hundreds of sailors and Marines crowded the rail, transfixed by the flickering glow and mountain of smoke to the north.

  "Keep trying the wireless," Goodrich ordered a young seaman. "Let the Mayor and Fire Chief know I want a situation report the minute we dock." Goodrich raised his binoculars. "If there's anyone there to give us one."

  We had arrived at the Presidio after an arduous struggle with the horse and wagon that bore the bodies of Carlo and Christian. A tent city had sprung up, with row after row of torch-lit streets, complete with dining tables and makeshift kitchens where soldiers fed a growing stream of refugees. It was the first I realized that night had fallen. Tents with big red crosses painted on their sloping panels received the burned and wounded, where field medics and nurses treated those they could and sent the more serious cases on to the doctors at Letterman Hospital. Compared to the chaos behind us, it was a model of calm and efficiency.

  Through the tidy rows moved Eda Funston, the Brigadier General's wife, a dignified woman dressed in a long black dress. She stopped at every tent to offer comfort.

  I was staring back toward the city, at the wall of flame that towered several hundred feet, my fatigued mind unable to estimate how far it had advanced.

  A stoic Hunter returned from his meeting with the duty officer and tapped me on the shoulder. "We gave Christian and Carlo to the makeshift morgue. We'll bury them when this is over."

  "What about Patrick?"

  Francis was standing on my other side. "He's proof God loves the Irish," he said. "As long as he keeps still and doesn't use that shoulder, he'll be fine."

  "Annalisa," Hunter said. "Francis and I are going aft
er Rolf and Scarface before they find new recruits. I want you to wait somewhere safe for us."

  I let slip a pained laugh, so alien it startled me. "Somewhere safe? Like where? Switzerland?"

  Hunter wiped the tears washing lines down my ragamuffin face. "I'm going to stay with you," I said. "And I won't argue." I was afraid that if I let him go, I might never see him again.

  "If we stand still too long, we'll never move," Francis said.

  Eda Funston approached and offered us food and water. We gratefully accepted.

  An hour or so after we arrived, we headed back toward the inferno. With the Waltham now out of fuel, and no drug stores from which to purchase gasoline, we walked. Francis, Hunter, and I trudged up Filbert Street, each of us carrying two canteens of water.

  At the peak of Russian Hill, it appeared that the fire creeping from the Financial District into Chinatown was close enough to touch. We sagged onto fractured Taylor Street and tried to catch our breath. Through a vacant lot between two collapsed buildings, I was able to see once-stately Van Ness Avenue. Water from the broken Spring Valley line still gushed over the cobblestones, soaking discarded mattresses, family heirlooms, and suitcases. As I watched, light-headed, the cool, undulating stream turned into a watery tongue, seeping from the mouth of the fiery Demon behind it.

  I was shaking from the delusion when, near the corner of Sacramento and Van Ness, three houses exploded, flaming remnants soaring into the air, crashing down on rooftops over a four-block radius.

  "They expanded the dynamite line," Hunter raged somewhere behind me. "Those stupid fools!"

  A tiny woman hurried toward us, her efforts made difficult by the cracked streets and piles of refuse. Struggling close behind her was Ting Leo. "Miss Cameron," I called hoarsely, drifting toward her. "Miss Cameron!"

  "Annalisa! Dear Lord. We've just come from Chinatown. The girls who came over with Ting Leo are trapped in Ah Toy's place. The fire's only a few blocks away, they're going to burn alive."

  "What about the girls at the Mission?" I asked.

  "They're in North Beach, in Washington Square with the other poor souls. I'm not sure how long even that will be safe."

  "You go to them," Hunter said. "If we can get the others out, we'll bring them to you."

  Miss Cameron started off, but Ting Leo shook her head, refusing to go. She grabbed my hand and started pulling us in the direction of Ah Toy's.

  "Go ahead, Miss Cameron," I called. "I'll tend to her. You see to the other girls."

  We hurried toward Chinatown, grateful that the path was downhill.

  When we arrived outside the Jade Dragon restaurant, Ting Leo found a crack at the base of the facade. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called out.

  "Ting Leo," one of the girls shouted back. "Ting Leo!" The trapped girls screamed her name repeatedly.

  Terrified, the girls had huddled all day amid debris and dust, weeping and crying for help. Through a small crack in one wall, they could see other girls in the room next to them, crushed and lifeless. Squealing rats crawled over the bodies, their red eyes illuminated by tiny shafts of flickering firelight.

  Ting Leo shouted several times, and the girls shouted back.

  "Dead? Many girls dead?" I asked. I closed my eyes and feigned death. Ting Leo did not understand.

  "How many girls alive?" I asked, pointing to Ting Leo's fingers and then the screaming girls inside. "How many alive?"

  Ting Leo shouted and the tearful voices replied. Ting Leo shouted again. She turned and flashed both hands and two fingers.

  "Twelve," I said, repeating the gesture. "Twelve girls alive."

  Ting Leo nodded frantically. "Twel' gills rive."

  Hunter examined the building. The entrance on Jackson had collapsed into the basement, pitching the roof and brick façade halfway across the street.

  Scores of Chinatown residents ran before the approaching wall of flame, ignoring the adolescent screams.

  "We might be able to chop our way through the side of the building," Francis yelled.

  "Too dangerous, it could bring the building down on top of them," Hunter called back. "We'll have to find a crawl space beneath the floor and basement wall to get them out of there."

  Ting Leo watched intently, trying to decipher our words. I pantomimed an opening and pulling the girls through. She turned and exchanged shouts with the girls below. Then she sprinted to the back of the building.

  Without a word, she wiggled through an opening beneath the floor.

  In the dark space, barely a foot high, she crawled toward the source of the wailing. She shouted to the other girls and was shocked by the sound of her own voice. She cleared her throat of the dust and called again, to no avail. She felt her way over jagged pieces of concrete, splintered floorboards, and rusty nails, through the stench of rodent urine and droppings.

  She squeezed under a cracked beam and into a section illuminated by the glimmer of fire through a cracked wall to her left. The wailing grew closer. Finally, she slid her hand between a heavy floor beam and the basement wall. The girls below clutched frantically at her. She shook them off and felt along the opening. It was too narrow for even the smallest to slide through. Tracing the floor beam above her with her hands, she crawled to the wall closest to us, yelling through the crack she had used earlier.

  "Hunner, Hunner!"

  "Hunter," I said. "She's calling your name."

  Hunter was across the street, throwing a brick through the window of a hardware store while Francis kept watch, hoping no soldiers were close enough to shoot them. Hunter crawled through the shattered window and quickly emerged with a new Eveready and a fire ax. He ran toward us, shining the light through the small crack to illuminate Ting Leo's wide, desperate eyes.

  "Twel' gills rive!" she yelled, pointing to the beam above her head and motioning upward.

  "How does she know your name?"

  In the light of the Eveready, Hunter recognized the angelic face. He smiled. "We met in the harbor."

  Francis chopped at the adobe wall, delicately, widening the hole enough so that Hunter could slip the Eveready through. Ting Leo wiggled forward and accepted it uneasily, pointing the light along the wooden beam.

  The gleaming red eyes of an enormous rat stared back. When Ting Leo jiggled the light, it fled.

  "If we can raise this beam a foot," Hunter shouted, "she might be able to pull them out of there."

  He and Francis sprinted to Dupont Street. Once they passed beyond the relative shield of the buildings, the heat from the rapidly approaching fire hit them like an open furnace. Half a block up Dupont, a middle-aged Chinese merchant ran from his shop with a large paper box and climbed into an overloaded two-horse wagon.

  They ran to him, trying to explain, by Hunter's fractured Chinese and frantic gestures, the situation at Ah Toy's. The man shook his fists angrily and grabbed the reins. Francis stepped in front of him and seized the horses' tack, sending the man into a fury. He lashed out with a buggy whip, striking Francis' shoulder.

  Hunter pulled his revolver and jumped into the wagon, jabbing it in the man's ribs, forcing him out.

  I heard horse's hooves approaching, the sound almost drowned out by the roar of the fire moving steadily closer.

  While Francis steadied the fractious animals, Hunter knotted a rope to the horse's yoke and threw it high over a lamppost. He tied the other end around the beam that ran under the restaurant and directly above Ting Leo's head.

  Clutching the bulky Eveready to her chest, Ting Leo inched toward the screaming girls. Then she signaled to me by motioning upward with the beam of light.

  Francis slapped at the horses' haunches with the knotted reins. The rope grew taut and chattered over the lamppost. Slowly the beam began to rise.

  Lying on her belly in the dirt, Ting Leo watched the opening slowly widen.

  "More. More," I yelled. They slapped and shoved the horses, the animals growing more unruly as the heat and the roar of the fire grew by the minute.


  The beam groaned and dust rained down on Ting Leo. The girls fought frantically, shoving each other, ignoring Ting Leo's screams to push the smallest one up. Finally, she threatened to leave them unless they obeyed.

  "Hurry!" I yelled to her as the rope stretched and the lamppost bowed under the weight. I could see the fire now surging above the rooftop of the restaurant, the sound ever more deafening. "Hurry!!!"

  The smallest one was boosted up and Ting Leo pulled her through the opening, shoving her in my direction.

  "Here, over here" I yelled. "Come, come, come," I shouted.

  I realized the hole in the exterior was not big enough to crawl through. I raised the fire ax, so weak the back swing almost toppled me. I grunted as the pointed tip struck the wall, barely widening the hole. Three more times I managed to swing the ax until the adobe crumbled. I clawed at the hole until my fingers bled, fighting the urge to panic, and then I finally pulled free a tiny girl no older than seven.

  Hunter and Francis struggled to keep the horses digging forward as the first girl collapsed, gasping, her eyes burning with dust, sobbing hysterically. I opened a canteen, splashing her eyes and mouth. She gulped the water, choking, rolling over to her knees to vomit. I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, dousing her mouth and face until she spit up clods of dust.

  Ting Leo, screaming orders, pulled the second girl through and then the third. The beam slipped, wedging the fourth girl and knocking the wind from her.

  I yelled to Hunter, who put his back to the yoke while Francis flailed at the backsides of the straining animals. Slowly, they inched forward.

  Ting Leo pulled the fourth girl free, then the fifth, each one coming through more quickly. I doused each of them with water, emptying both of my canteens as I counted aloud, "six, seven, eight," lest one be left behind.

  The last two girls refused to help each other, jumping desperately for Ting Leo's hand. She screamed that she would leave them, ordering the tallest to boost the other. Finally, Ting Leo strained to pull her through.