Into the Firestorm

by Deborah Hopkinson

  From his hiding place, Nick peered out at the tiny storeroom, packed with bulky, strange-shaped packages. It was odd—here he was in something that must be a sort of grocery store, yet he had no idea what most of the foods were. Back home they’d always eaten what Gran called the “three M’s”—meat, molasses, and meal (short for cornmeal) along with beans and rice. But Nick had no way of knowing what was inside these packages—or how to cook whatever it was.

  The sounds stopped. The store grew quiet. Nick rested his head against a barrel. If he hadn’t been so nervous, he could almost have fallen asleep.

  Crack!

  “Ouch. Ow!” Nick yelled, holding his hands over his head. “Stop. Stop hitting me!”

  “What are you doing here? Thief!” spat a tall, slim boy.

  Nick looked up at a teenage boy, maybe four or five years older than he was. The boy wore a blue, loose-fitting top and pants. Like the men on the street, he had coal black hair gathered tightly into a long braid. With a stern, hard look, he raised the broom handle again.

  “Get up.” He spat at Nick. “Thief!”

  “I…I didn’t take anything,” sputtered Nick, stumbling to his feet. He raised his hands into the air to show they were empty and then quickly put them back to keep the boy from hitting him on the head again.

  “Why are you hiding in my store, then?” asked the boy in a cold voice. “You were planning to hit me and rob me. I know your kind.”

  “No, no, I wasn’t,” Nick protested. Think of something to say, he told himself. Defend yourself. But he couldn’t. He glanced beyond the boy, measuring the distance to the back door. Maybe he could run for it.

  The boy saw his look. He stepped closer, holding the broom against Nick’s chest. “You’re not running away. I’m going to turn you in to the police.”

  Nick drew a sharp breath. “No, please. I’ll do anything—sweep the store, stock your shelves. The policeman thought I stole something. But I didn’t, I swear.”

  The older boy said nothing. His dark eyes seemed angry.

  “I can prove it.” Nick reached into his pocket. “If I wanted to buy something, I could. See, I have fifty cents.”

  Nick held his quarters. They were shiny. And no wonder. Nick polished them on his shirt every night. Nick thought about offering the coins to the boy in exchange for safety. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t give them up. They were almost all he had to remind him of Gran.

  “Just let me stay a little while,” Nick added, quickly slipping the coins back into his pocket.

  Suddenly Nick wanted to sit down more than anything. His knees felt weak. He licked his dry lips. “Please.”

  The boy was silent for a long moment, his eyes flicking over Nick’s face. Then, to Nick’s surprise, he lowered the broom.

  “You are new here,” he said flatly. “I can tell. The way you talk…”

  “I come from Texas. I really would work for you. I’m looking for a job,” Nick said quickly, hoping the boy wouldn’t change his mind and yell for the police. “I…I’d take food for pay.”

  To Nick’s surprise, the boy laughed and stood the broom in the corner. “You are new. American white boys don’t work in Chinatown. They’re too busy teasing and tormenting Chinese people.”

  “Oh.” Nick’s voice fell. No job, no food.

  “I’ve been teased,” Nick offered, trying to think of something to say. “On the county poor farm—an orphanage, really, where I lived this winter. Whenever they took us into town, the kids laughed at us.”

  The boy shrugged. “Here, even poor kids tease the Chinese. Last week some boys threw stones at me when I was delivering vegetables.”

  “Are you from China?” Nick was curious. “You, uh, speak good English.”

  “My parents are from China, but I was born here. I am an American. Though people here don’t treat me like one,” the boy said in a voice laced with bitterness.

  The boy fell silent, as though he thought he had revealed too much. Nick bit his lip, unsure what to say. He looked around at the packages and boxes, all with such strange and beautiful symbols on them. Not like the alphabet at all.

  “Can you really understand these squiggly signs?”

  “You ask very strange questions for a white boy,” the boy answered, raising his eyebrows. “How could I do business otherwise?”

  Nick couldn’t imagine being able to read something so different, so extraordinary-looking. He thought again of the crystal-and-silver inkwell on Miss Reedy’s desk, which had come from some distant, far-off world. Chinatown is like a different world, too, Nick thought. A different world inside San Francisco itself.

  The tall boy cleared his throat. He seemed to have come to some sort of decision. “Business is slow. It is time for my noon meal of rice and dried fish. Will you join me?”

  Nick hesitated.

  “No need to pay. I hope you won’t mind sitting back here on the floor,” the boy added. “I only have one stool. That way you won’t be in the way if any customers come in.”

  Or policemen, thought Nick. For the first time, he looked the boy straight in the eyes and smiled. “Thanks. I’m Nick. Nicholas Dray.”

  “I have a Chinese name, which you could not pronounce or understand,” the boy told him. “But my American name is Tommy. Tommy Liang.”

  A BOWL OF RICE

  Nick tried to use the two sticks Tommy gave him—chopsticks, they were called. But in the end he gave up and ate with his fingers.

  “You’re very hungry.” For the first time, a slight smile crossed Tommy’s face as he watched Nick eat.

  Nick nodded. The rice was fluffy, white, and hot. Tommy served it in a small, shiny black bowl that felt just right in Nick’s hand. “It sure tastes good. You cooked this yourself?”

  “I learned to cook after my mother left.” Tommy paused with his chopsticks in the air. He spoke matter-of-factly. “She took my younger brothers and sisters back to China. She didn’t like America.”

  “So she just left?” Nick pushed the thought of Pa away.

  “It…it was too hard for her. I stayed with my father to help with the store. But then, after he died of pneumonia, my older cousin took over.” Tommy looked down at his rice bowl, his face closed. “He is in charge. He goes out with his friends a lot. I do the cooking and look after the store.”

  Nick wondered if Tommy’s cousin was anything like Mr. Hank. “It’s a nice store. I’d love to have a shop as fine as this.”

  Tommy shrugged. “It was my father’s dream. But working in a grocery store is not what I hope to do.”

  Nick was surprised again. “What do you want to do?”

  Tommy hesitated. “I…I love to sing. But becoming a singer is a foolish dream.”

  Nick looked down at his bowl. He couldn’t help thinking of that morning he’d told Gran about his dream. They ate in silence until the rice was gone. Tommy filled a small cup with scented, steaming liquid.

  “You ate so much. Are you a runaway?” Tommy asked.

  Nick nodded. “A few weeks ago, I ran away from the orphanage in Texas.”

  “Did you live there long?”

  “Only a few months. My gran died last fall, in October. My pa is still alive somewhere, I guess.” Nick’s teacup had no handles. He picked it up gingerly, with two hands, and sipped at the hot liquid. He hoped he wouldn’t drop it.

  “Up until last summer, Gran, Pa, and I were sharecroppers,” he went on. “We worked another man’s cotton for a share of the crop. Then, last year, around the end of May, Pa left.”

  Nick bent his head and felt the warm steam of the tea on his cheek. It had happened just a few weeks after his eleventh birthday. Pa hadn’t even tried to explain, Nick remembered. He’d just stuffed a few clothes in a sack and walked out.

  “A man can’t get ahead sharecropping. Don’t blame him. Sharecropping just whittled away at your pa’s spirit,” Gran had said. “It ain’t that he don’t love you. He just can’t feel one way or another anymore.”


  “But…how could he just leave us here, with…this?” Nick had spread out his arms helplessly toward the rows of cotton crowding close to their shack.

  Nick couldn’t understand how Gran could be so calm, accepting even. True, Gran was Pa’s mother-in-law, not his own blood relative. But Pa had walked out on both of them. How could Pa leave his son?

  “I’m grateful you’re a strong, hardworking boy, Nick,” was Gran’s only answer. She’s not surprised, Nick had realized. It was almost as if, all these years, she’d been expecting Pa to leave.

  Nick had stared out at the rows of cotton and made himself a promise. “I won’t do that. I won’t ever walk away.”

  Nick put down his empty teacup and stared at the tiny shreds of tea leaves left at the bottom of the cup. He swallowed hard. He hadn’t thought about Pa lately.

  “Where did your father go?” Tommy asked. “Is he in San Francisco, too?”

  “Pa? Here?” Nick was startled. He tried to imagine what it would be like to see his father’s face on a crowded San Francisco street. “Naw. Pa would never leave Texas. I expect when he took off, he hopped a train to Dallas or Austin.”

  “What happened then?” Tommy asked.

  “Not long after Pa left, Mr. Greene ran Gran and me off his farm. Said it was too much for an old woman and kid to run,” Nick told him. “After that we got work on a big cotton farm, but I didn’t much like Mr. Hank, the boss man there. When Gran passed, he sent me off to an orphanage. The Lincoln Poor Farm for Indigents and Orphans. And then I came here.”

  Nick rubbed his hands on his pants. It sounded so simple. The whole last year of his life wrapped in a cardboard box of words, he thought. But that’s the way he wanted it. He didn’t need to open that box and look inside.

  Tommy poured Nick more tea. “But why did you choose San Francisco? It is far away from where you lived, isn’t it?”

  Nick liked how the small teacup fit so nicely in the palm of his hand. “Gran and I…we didn’t like cotton anymore. We always planned to come to the city.”

  Well, that wasn’t quite true. But Nick had been telling himself the very same thing every night when he lay on his cot at Lincoln. Gran wanted to go—she’d want me to take a chance.

  “My parents had a dream of coming here,” Tommy said. “But dreams do not always turn out as we hope.” Tommy paused and pointed at Nick. “It’s easy to see you’re a runaway. Your clothes are torn and dirty. How long have you been here?”

  Nick counted. “Five nights already.”

  “And you’ve been sleeping in alleys and wandering all this time?”

  Nick nodded. “It’s sure cooler than I thought. And foggy! But I’ve never seen anything like this place. I love all the tall buildings and that grand hotel—the Palace Hotel. I’d give anything to see the inside of that!

  “Market Street is as wide as three roads,” Nick went on, his words tumbling out. This boy was the first person he’d really talked to here. “Yesterday I tried to cross it, and all those wagons, cable cars, and shiny black automobiles bumping along the cobblestones like a parade made my head spin.”

  Tommy shrugged. The city did not impress him.

  “You can’t wander around like this much longer,” Tommy said in a flat voice, placing his cup on a small black tray. “Any policeman who sees you will chase you—and next time you will be caught for sure. They’ll put you back in an orphan asylum. I wish I could help, but I can’t.”

  Tommy looked up at the door. Nick scrambled to his feet, his hopes sinking. He hadn’t really expected Tommy to help him, but…

  Tommy let Nick out through the back. “Try to find work in the Produce District or near the piers. And you should sleep south of the Slot.”

  “The Slot?”

  “That’s what we call Market Street. Because of the slot in the street for the cable cars. The neighborhoods south of Market are full of immigrants and poor people, so you won’t stand out so much.”

  Nick stopped in front of a sign on the wall. Like the one he’d seen on the street, it was covered with large, flowing symbols. “Those symbols there—they’re so strange.”

  “Not to me,” said Tommy. “Those Chinese characters make words and sentences, just like English. And you know, some people are masters at calligraphy, writing characters.”

  “And…and they mean something, right? You said you can understand them?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Nick waited. “So what does that sign say?”

  “That one?” When Tommy smiled, his dark eyes sparkled. “That sign reads: ‘Liang’s Grocery.’”

  ANNIE OF THE NORTH STAR

  Two mornings later, Nick woke early. He shivered and poked his head out of the doorway. He was in a small alley in the Produce District. It was, he thought, the best place to be. He’d had better luck finding food in garbage cans here than anywhere else.

  Nick reached into his pocket, feeling for his quarters. He’d gone so long without spending them, but it was getting harder. Ever since the meal Tommy had given him, his hunger had seemed more painful.

  The day before, he’d managed to beg a few hunks of old bread from a bakery and scrounge some rotting fruit from a grocery store. But it wasn’t enough.

  Sometimes he found himself hitting his stomach, trying to keep it from growling and pinching. The worst part was passing by the open doors of cafés and restaurants and breathing in the good smells of fish or baking bread. He tried not to think about how delicious a bowl of hot soup would taste.

  Nick let go of the coins. Whatever happens, I’m not going to spend them, he told himself again. He wondered: could he starve in a city full of so many stores, bakeries, hotels, and restaurants? Food was everywhere. But he needed money. And to get money, he needed a job.

  Nick rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was running out of ideas. He’d already begged for work just about everywhere he could think of: grocery stores, a candy store, livery stables, and restaurants. He’d wandered the docks looking for work, too.

  Since the day Bushy Brows had chased him into Chinatown, Nick had tried harder to keep a careful lookout. But he knew he couldn’t keep it up much longer. Sooner or later, Bushy Brows or one of his fellow officers would get him.

  “I can’t give up. I have to get a job today.” Nick poked his head around a building and scanned the street. He straightened his shoulders and kept his fist in his pocket, closed tight around his quarters. “Today my luck will change. Today I’ll find work.”

  Nick wandered the neighborhoods south of the Slot all morning. It didn’t seem to matter where he went or what he said. No one would hire him. Nick caught a glimpse of himself in a window and could see why: he was looking more like a straggly lost dog every day.

  In the afternoon, Nick crossed Market Street and headed north up Montgomery, crisscrossing side streets. He went down a pretty cobblestone road called Jackson Street and into a little alley called Balance Street, so short it hardly seemed like a street at all. At the end of the block, he stopped in front of a tall building. “‘The Eiffel Tower Restaurant,’” Nick read.

  Paris of the Pacific. That’s what Miss Reedy said folks sometimes called San Francisco.

  Nick remembered a picture of the real Eiffel Tower in Paris that Miss Reedy had once showed them. Now he recognized the shape of the famous tower on the sign before him. Nick sniffed. The air here seemed scented with spices and coffee. It might not be Paris, but it seemed as far away from the cotton fields as Nick had ever imagined he could be.

  I’m really here, Nick thought, forgetting for a moment his hunger and need for work. Suddenly he longed for Gran so hard it hurt. How amazed she would have been at all the tall buildings and smart-looking people and the boats tooting in the bay.

  Nick spotted a lodging house, a butcher, a couple of grocery stores, and a wine company. On Jackson Street and Jones Alley was a large building called A. P. Hotaling and Co., which advertised “Old Kirk Whiskey.” Nick stopped in front of another store a
few doors away, “Columbia Coffee & Spice Company.” That must be why he could smell those spicy scents.

  These were stores he had never imagined, selling items he’d never tasted or seen. A well-dressed man passed by. Nick pictured himself as a businessman one day. Why, he might even have to go to Paris to buy wine or spices. He could see the real Eiffel Tower.

  Nick was still daydreaming when he caught sight of it, nestled in a row of low buildings near the corner of Balance and Jackson streets. Nick walked over and pressed his nose against the large plate glass window. He brought his hands up to shade his eyes against the glare.

  “Wow,” breathed Nick. “Look at that.”

  Paper. This store was filled with paper. Nick could see stacks of large journals bound in dark, rich leather. A display of shiny new pens, laid out on forest green velvet, filled the window. Near the pens sat several gleaming glass inkwells, their delicate silver leaves and flowers shining like mirrors.

  “Wow…,” Nick said again. He wondered if this was the store where Miss Reedy got her pens and inkwell when she’d come to the city.

  Nick stared at the silver leaves. Something tugged at his memory. That spring when he and Gran had found some wild daisies in the field. They’d dug them up and planted them in an old tin can.

  “Oh, I do love wild daisies,” Gran had said, her eyes sparkling. “Your mother and I used to pick them when she was your age. She liked to pluck off the petals, one by one. Well, I suppose most children do that. We’ll keep these ones nice right here in front. The sun will sparkle on the tin can like silver.”

  Silver. Just like the silver leaves on the inkwell, the flowers in the old tin can seemed to promise something. But the flowers hadn’t lasted. The daisies had shriveled in the baking sun. The dirt in the can turned hard and cracked. One night, when Nick and Pa had straggled home late from the fields, Pa had reached down, seized the old can, and flung it away with all his might.

  Nick stepped back to read the sign on the door: PAT PATTERSON, STATIONER.