Into the Firestorm

by Deborah Hopkinson

  Nick helped Tommy drag the trunk out of the store to the sidewalk. Without a word, Tommy grabbed the handle. With a slight wave to Nick, he set out in a slow, awkward walk, joining the parade of people hurrying along the street.

  Nick looked after him. Somehow, even among his neighbors, Tommy seemed so alone. Tommy was the first person who’d been kind to him in San Francisco. Nick was afraid to think what might happen to him. Even if the store itself wasn’t destroyed by fire, Tommy would have no money to restock it or open it again.

  Nick put down the sack and the jug of water. He stuck one hand in his pocket. His fingertips brushed against one of his coins. The coins were all he had, except for his cap, to remind him of Gran.

  Nick thought of Rebecca and her mother. Folks who’d had so little. But they had given what they could out of kindness.

  Nick dug his heel into the sidewalk and started to run. “Tommy, wait!”

  The tall, thin figure ahead turned around. Nick pulled up next to him and, reaching into his pocket, drew out one silver quarter.

  Nick grabbed Tommy’s hand and pressed the quarter into it. “I’m sorry…about everything. This is for you. It’s a special coin. It will give you luck.”

  EVERYONE OUT

  Good thing my arms are strong, Nick thought as he trotted back toward Jackson Street with his bulky load.

  But a worry nagged at him. Oranges wouldn’t do much to help Annie’s hunger.

  Maybe Mr. Pat would be back soon. Why, he might already be there. Nick could almost hear him exclaiming over Shakespeare and taking charge of getting Mrs. Sheridan to safety.

  A blast of dynamite close by made him jump. Nick stopped to catch his breath. The sky was becoming a roiling mass of dark smoke. He coughed. Thick bits of ash flew everywhere, and his eyes hurt from the smoky air.

  The fires were getting worse, not better. Nick remembered Bill, the white-haired man he’d met near the Palace Hotel. There’d better be water and a plan, he’d said. “Otherwise, we’re in for the worst.”

  The worst.

  Nick turned onto the familiar cobblestoned street with its solid redbrick buildings. He stopped and let out his breath in relief. The fire hadn’t touched Mr. Pat’s little neighborhood—at least not yet.

  Woof!

  Nick turned. Shakespeare must have been watching from the doorway. Now he bounded out, whining and wiggling with joy. He made frantic circles around Nick, his whole body wagging furiously. He hurled himself onto Nick’s feet and barked, begging to be petted.

  Nick laughed, put down the water and oranges, and ran his hands through Shake’s silky fur. “You’re glad enough to see me now. So don’t run away again! Has Mr. Pat come home?”

  A voice called out from the other side of the street. “Hullo, is that Shakespeare? Is Pat here?”

  At the sound of his name, Shake turned in mid-air and sprang across the cobblestones. He planted himself in front of Ed Lind, who was just coming out of Hotaling’s whiskey warehouse across the street.

  “Hullo, Shake,” Ed said, pulling affectionately at one of the dog’s silky ears. “We really will have to call you Shake now, won’t we, after that earthquake? Where’s your master? I haven’t seen him since this happened.”

  Nick came closer and shifted from one foot to the other. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Ed Lind looked up sharply at Nick’s words.

  “Oh, no! I didn’t mean…,” Nick sputtered. “At least I hope not. Mr. Pat went to Oakland yesterday on business.”

  “Leave it to Pat to miss all the excitement. Now I remember—I met you the other day. What’s your name again, son?”

  “Nick. Nicholas Dray.”

  “Well, Nick, I wouldn’t worry too much about Pat. Most likely he’s having trouble getting back.” He paused to glance at the sky, where dark columns of smoke covered the sun. “But you should leave now. It’s not clear how long we can keep the block free of fire.”

  Nick gestured down the street. “I see lots of soldiers there. It looks like they’re protecting that big government building. Can’t they save Jackson Street, too?”

  “Maybe, but we need water for the hoses, and the earthquake caused breaks in the water mains and other underground pipes.” Ed Lind shook his head. “No one knows what’s going to happen. You shouldn’t take a chance.”

  Nick glanced over to Mr. Pat’s store and its shattered, gaping windows.

  “It’s…it’s not just me. I hope Mr. Pat won’t be mad, but Annie Sheridan and her mother are staying with me. You know Annie, the girl from the rooming house. Her mother got hurt some in the earthquake and can’t walk very well.”

  “All the more reason to go. I wish I could help, but I can’t leave the warehouse.” Ed Lind looked down the street. “Hold on. Here’s the captain I need to talk to now.”

  He stepped out in front of a man in uniform.

  “Captain! Stop a minute, will you? I’m Ed Lind, cashier for Hotaling’s whiskey establishment here,” said Ed all in a rush. “I’ve heard talk of dynamiting this block to make a firebreak. I’m begging you not to let it happen. For one thing, it won’t work.”

  The captain raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Won’t work?”

  “This is a warehouse, sir. A whiskey warehouse.” Ed leaned in close to make his point. “We’ve got five thousand barrels of liquor stored here.”

  The captain whistled. “Five thousand?”

  “That’s right, five thousand barrels of flammable liquid,” Ed repeated. “Setting off dynamite on this block will create a powerful firestorm. The whole block will be an inferno. You’ll destroy any chance you have of saving the Appraisers’ Building.”

  Nick stepped closer to hear the captain’s answer. The captain sighed and drew a hand over his forehead. His eyes looked bloodshot, and his face was streaked with soot. “I wish someone would give me some good news, Mr. Lind. As it is, every hour that goes by convinces me the city is doomed.”

  Nick shivered a little and buried his hands in Shake’s soft fur.

  “Chief Sullivan is on his deathbed,” the captain went on. “The quake ruptured water mains and other pipes. A lot of these men wielding dynamite don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “All the more reason to give me a chance, sir,” pleaded Ed. “I have a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  “Yes. I’m prepared to get men to empty the warehouse of as much whiskey as we can. We’ll roll the barrels a few blocks away to a place that’s already been burned and blackened. The less liquor here, the better chance you have of saving your government building.”

  The captain frowned. “Where are you going to find these men of yours?”

  “The docks. We’ll round up every able-bodied man we can find,” Ed told him. “We can pay a dollar an hour. Please, let us try.”

  “All right. You make a good case, Lind.” The captain seemed to notice Nick for the first time. He took out a handkerchief, wiped his forehead, and heaved a sigh. “So, are you strong enough to lift whiskey barrels and roll them down the street? Or will you be pressing your fine dog there into service, the way they use those St. Bernard dogs in the Alps?”

  Nick gulped. “I work in that building across the street. Shake and I will do what we can to help, sir.”

  The captain laughed. “Shake, huh? That dog is well named.”

  Nick watched the captain stride away down Jackson Street. Nick reached out and caught Ed Lind’s elbow.

  “Please, Mr. Lind, before you go, can I ask you a question? Where…where should I take Annie and her mother?”

  “Well, the fires are moving slowly, but the wind makes everything unpredictable,” Ed said thoughtfully. “You might be safe up the hill at Union Square. You could head there first and see what you find out. Can you get them that far?”

  “I’ll try,” Nick replied, stooping to pick up the water jug and the oranges. He headed across the street.

  Try. It was a word Gran had used a lot.

  Just try, b
oy, that’s all I ask of you, she’d tell him. For Gran, trying was just doing what had to be done, day in and day out. She didn’t really think about any other way.

  But Pa had looked trying in the face and turned his back. Pa would’ve been on the first ferry out of San Francisco, Nick thought. And Gran? Nick figured Gran would have been like Ed Lind, determined to save whatever little patch she had.

  “Hey, Nick!” Ed Lind called.

  Nick turned.

  “Better start now. And don’t come back,” Ed warned. “You got that? Don’t come back.”

  Just as Nick feared, Annie didn’t want to go.

  “This street isn’t on fire. It looks just the same as always, except for the windows and all. I want to stay here, Nick,” she pleaded, her big eyes wide with alarm. “What if Daddy comes back for Mama and me? If we leave, he’ll never find us. Never. He’ll look at the broken-down building and he’ll think we…we…”

  She couldn’t go on. Tears welled in her eyes. Nick looked toward Annie’s mother, dozing on the sofa, curled slightly like a cat. Her eyes were closed and her breath came slowly.

  What happens if they won’t go? If I can’t get them out of the path of the fire?

  Nick felt a flash of panic. He couldn’t fail this time. Not like he’d failed before, with Gran. And not just Gran. When he stopped to think about it, Nick could count a lot of things he’d failed at. Or maybe, like Pa, he’d just not tried hard enough.

  School, for one thing. He’d liked Miss Reedy all right. But except for writing lessons, he hadn’t bothered to work all that hard. Arithmetic or reading wouldn’t change much for a sharecropper’s kid. Or at least that’s what he’d told himself.

  “Annie, we have to go to Union Square,” Nick repeated. He wished he knew the right thing to say. “It’s just not safe here.”

  Annie’s mother opened her eyes. She struggled to a sitting position, wincing. She held out her arms. “Annie.”

  Annie ran to her, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder.

  Mrs. Sheridan smoothed Annie’s hair and nodded to Nick. “I want Annie and this new baby to be safe.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We’ve had no one but ourselves to depend on for many months,” she added, wrapping her arms around her daughter. “I never thought I’d need to ask a boy—well, a young man—for assistance. But you seem like someone who can be counted on. We’ll be grateful for your help.”

  Nick felt his face flush. Mrs. Sheridan was being kind. He wanted to tell her she was wrong—he wasn’t reliable at all. She couldn’t know how he’d let Gran down. Or how, just a few hours ago, he hadn’t even thought to check on Annie after the earthquake.

  He felt ashamed and a little scared. Nick swallowed hard and dug his fingers into his palms.

  Annie lifted her head and looked at him then. Nick felt himself squirm under her gaze. It was almost as if she could see right through him.

  Nick swallowed. “I’ll try.”

  “Just one more step, Mrs. Sheridan,” Nick said as they emerged from the dim basement office onto the street. “Annie, do you have that sack of Mr. Pat’s inkwells?”

  “Yes, but Shake won’t come,” she replied. Nick could hear her talking to the dog. “Come on, boy. You can’t sleep behind the sofa. Nick says we have to go.”

  Nick poked his head back into the dark stairway and whistled for Shake, who padded up the stairs, head down.

  “He’s scared,” Nick said, grabbing Shake’s collar. “He doesn’t understand he’s not safe in his own comfortable place anymore.”

  Finally they began to make their way down the street. Nick sniffed the air. The scent of smoke and ashes was stronger now. He couldn’t even tell if the sun was still shining or not.

  Nick kept his right hand under Mrs. Sheridan’s elbow, trying to support her as gently as he could. But her steps were slow and uneven. Sometimes she stopped with a small gasp of pain.

  Nick took a breath. In a way, he felt like they were setting off into a battlefield. Gran had told Nick about the battles his grandfather had fought in the Civil War. “The War Between the States,” she’d called it.

  Gran had been a bride of eighteen in 1861 when the war had begun. “Nowadays it’s real common to see pictures in newspapers,” she once told Nick. “But it weren’t always that way. I remember the first time I opened a newspaper to see a photograph of a battlefield and soldiers. Oh, I was so scared for your grandpa.”

  A battlefield.

  At the corner, Nick turned back to look at Jackson Street. I might not see it again, Nick realized. He closed his eyes, trying to burn an image, make a photograph, in his memory. It was a trick he’d learned from Miss Reedy. “Use your eyes to take pictures of all you see.”

  Nick wanted to remember everything. Mr. Pat’s store. The neat brick buildings lining the cobblestones. It really is the prettiest street in the city, Nick thought.

  No, it’s more than just pretty, he corrected himself, thinking of Mr. Pat. Nick struggled to find a word to describe how he felt about this little corner of the city. And then it came to him.

  He’d been here just a few days, but still the word seemed to fit exactly right. It’s home.

  Without being told, Shakespeare padded along next to Annie. Sometimes he seemed to lean into her, as if she were a lamb he was afraid might lose her way.

  Nick looked over at the big golden dog. “Good boy,” he said. “Stay close.”

  Boom! A dynamite blast made them all jump.

  Suddenly Shake turned and began to trot off, back toward Mr. Pat’s store.

  “Shakespeare, no!” Nick yelled while Annie ran to grab Shake’s collar and pull him back. “Come on, boy.”

  “I can’t carry my doll and the inkwells and pull Shake, too!” Annie complained. “Why couldn’t we just stay behind with Mr. Lind?”

  “Mr. Lind has work to do. He’s trying to save his building,” Nick told her. He’d thought about leaving the inkwells there. But what if Mr. Lind didn’t succeed?

  “Besides,” he told Annie, “if the fire comes closer, everyone on Jackson Street might have to run fast. You and I…we have to be the brave ones to help Shake and your mama.”

  “Well, then maybe we should play a game.”

  “I don’t know many games.”

  “A pretend game. Let’s pretend we’re going on a fun adventure. Where shall we go?”

  Nick thought a minute. “How about the Palace Hotel?”

  Annie nodded solemnly. “Why, thank you, Nicholas. I would love to go to the Palace Hotel with you for tea. Do you like my new gown?”

  She flounced her old worn skirt a little. “I hope the cakes are good there today.”

  Nick grinned.

  “If they are not to your liking, miss, we can go to the Eiffel Tower Restaurant instead,” he told her. “After all, San Francisco is the Paris of the Pacific. See, we’re passing it right now. I hear their sweet cakes are—”

  “Simply delicious!” Annie finished.

  But as they passed the restaurant, Nick and Annie fell silent. One wall of the building had collapsed, spilling bricks into the street. Nick helped Mrs. Sheridan skirt a pile of rubble and shattered glass.

  “Don’t let Shake walk in the glass, Annie,” Nick warned.

  He and Mr. Pat might have been going there tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow was Thursday. But all that was before. Before everything changed.

  Annie sighed. “Let’s just walk, Nick. I’m tired of this game.”

  Nick nodded. He didn’t feel much like playing, either.

  UNION SQUARE

  “Sorry about this hill, ma’am,” Nick said, holding on to Mrs. Sheridan’s elbow.

  He was trying to avoid the steepest streets on their way to Union Square. It wasn’t easy, though. Nick had been surprised at that right away. It was hard to avoid walking up and down hills in San Francisco.

  “I’m fine, Nick,” Annie’s mother assured him a little breathlessly. “I only wish I could walk fa
ster.”

  Nick glanced at the smoke-filled sky. Earlier, he remembered, there had been smoke rising from different parts of the city. But now the whole sky seemed covered with black plumes.

  “I can’t tell what direction the fire is coming from,” he said. “It’s almost as if the earthquake caused a lot of small fires that are joining together to make bigger ones.”

  “You may be right, Nick,” Mrs. Sheridan said. “I’m sure someone at Union Square can help us find out what to do.”

  Annie coughed. She had been trudging silently for several blocks now, holding the sack of inkwells, with her doll propped on top. She had refused to let her mother carry the small photograph of her father, and had put it in the pocket of her dress. Nick noticed her eyes seemed dark, as if the smoke and dust had blotted out their astonishing colors.

  “Look at that trunk. I’ve been counting trunks,” Annie said suddenly. “That’s the fifth one I’ve seen in just four blocks. I want to know what happened to the people.”

  “The trunks probably just got too heavy for them,” Nick offered. He thought of Tommy, struggling to pull his father’s heavy trunk up these steep hills. Nick wondered what had been inside. Clothes? Letters from Tommy’s mother in China?

  “The people who left the trunks didn’t die, did they, Nick? Do you think the fire got them? Or walls of buildings fell down on them?”

  “Annie!” her mother reprimanded. “You need to be cheerful for Shakespeare’s sake. Dogs can feel it when we’re frightened.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” Annie said quietly.

  But Nick knew she wouldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t, either. How many people had died when their houses and apartments collapsed and fell? How many had been trapped by fires?

  If I’d been killed in the earthquake while I was sleeping in the alley, no one would ever have missed me, Nick realized.

  He glanced over at Mrs. Sheridan. Her face was pale; her lips were pressed close together. She and Annie could have been killed in the earthquake, too. Annie’s father, if he ever did return, would have searched and searched but would never have found them.