The Strange Case of Baby H

by Kathryn Reiss

  “Baby H …” murmured Clara. A prickle of unease stirred across her mind like the breeze through the broken windows.

  She turned to Father. “I want to check the backyard.”

  “The rain barrels!” said Father with a frown. “No, dear, it could be dangerous. I shall go myself.”

  Clara and Miss DuBois looked at each other dubiously.

  Father rubbed his hands tiredly over his face. “I daresay by the time I’ve clattered down the ramp in my chair, the whole neighborhood will have heard me, and anyone siphoning our water or hiding in the bushes will have had time to flee. Well, that’s what we want, isn’t it? To make them run off?”

  “We’ll go together,” Clara suggested gently. “I’ll bring the poker.”

  Father sighed and snapped his fingers for Humphrey. “We’ll take the dog.”

  “Well, you’re a brave pair, I’ll say that for you,” said Miss DuBois.

  Clara pushed Father’s wheelchair down the hallway. As they passed the back bedroom, Mother opened the door, the baby in her arms. She stared out at them, aghast. “I want you safely in bed, Clara!” she hissed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Clara whispered back. “In just a minute.”

  “The rain barrels,” explained Father.

  They opened the back door, despite Mother’s objections, and stood staring out into the backyard. The basket Mr. Granger had hung from the oak tree swung gently in the smoky breeze, illuminated by moonlight. The rain barrels appeared to be untouched.

  “You stay here, Father. I’ll be just a second.” Clara handed him the poker and darted down the steps. She didn’t really think there were any more looters hiding around the side of the house; in fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that the two people trying to break into the house had not been looters at all. The prickle of worry she had felt just minutes before grew stronger as she rounded the corner of the house and walked along the narrow passageway that separated their house from the one next door.

  “Clara!” She heard Father’s voice in the darkness but did not turn back. She passed the kitchen window. And then there was the dining room window, where Miss Chandler had heard a noise.

  And there—there!—on a rosebush just below the window was a piece of torn fabric, caught on the thorns. Clara lifted it off carefully. In the moonlight the color was hard to make out, but Clara felt certain she knew what the light would reveal:

  A soft scrap of red.

  CHAPTER 7

  TENT TOWN TURMOIL

  It was hard to sleep after that. Clara dozed fitfully, but at every sound her eyes flew open. When pale dawn light filtered in through the broken windows, Clara rolled off her mattress and stood up. Baby H slumbered in the drawer, unaware of the mystery surrounding her. Clara glanced at her sleeping parents, then dressed swiftly, slipping silently through the house. She grabbed her shawl off the peg by the back door, then headed outside and down the ramp. She wanted to be gone before Mother and Father woke up.

  Clara thrust her hand into her skirt pocket as she rounded the side of the house. She felt the soft red scrap of cloth, the cold silver rattle, and the slip of paper with SATCHEL TO CLIFF HOUSE pasted onto it. Each of these things was innocuous enough, alone. But together they were pieces of a puzzle that filled Clara with a growing unease. And last night’s intruders were another part of the puzzle.

  It didn’t make sense that they were looters. Why would looters come to a house full of people when there were thousands of abandoned homes all over San Francisco now? No, Clara decided as she set off down the street, the intruders last night had come for some other reason. They wanted something else besides Mother’s silver platter or her jewel box.

  They wanted the baby.

  Clara shivered in the morning fog as she headed toward Golden Gate Park. It felt strange going there without her big brother—or even Father—at her side.

  The air hung thick and cold. Fog lay heavier than usual this morning, mixed with the smoke. It covered the bay and stretched up into the hills. Clara clutched her shawl more tightly.

  She entered the gates of the park and moved forward as part of the jostling crowd already in line for breakfast. The woman in red had wanted to take the baby. She had run off in the direction of Golden Gate Park. One of the nighttime intruders had been a woman. She had left behind a torn piece of red fabric on a rosebush. Where is that woman now? wondered Clara, rising up on tiptoes to scan the park.

  The place seemed to have grown overnight. Soldiers from the nearby Presidio army base had set up more relief stations to serve food and dispense first aid. There were real tents now among the makeshift shelters of tablecloths and clotheslines—stout canvas army tents that could house several families at once.

  “This way to the grub, folks!” bellowed a voice out of the fog. “Line up in an orderly manner! Bring your own bowls if you have them! This way to breakfast!”

  The crowd shifted as people moved toward the food line. Clara turned in the opposite direction, toward the notice boards with their hundreds of messages. If someone had lost a baby girl, that would be the place to post a note—

  “I’m not going for breakfast, either,” said a shrill voice at her side. “Not when there’s sweets instead!”

  Her thoughts interrupted, Clara looked over at a boy holding out his hand to her. He was offering her something in his cupped palm. “Hey, want some jujubes? I’ve got thousands!”

  “Thousands?” she repeated, looking past him at the signboard. There were thousands of messages, it looked like. All of them sad.

  “Jujubes,” he said again. “Candy.”

  She frowned at him. He was a raggedy kid about her own age, wearing old clothes and a dirty cap. He was pulling a child’s wagon stuffed with a battered brown suitcase, a pile of books, and several crates.

  “I know what jujubes are,” Clara told him. They had been Gideon’s favorite. She preferred jelly beans herself. “But—no thanks. Not now.” She headed toward the basket of scrap paper, pencils, and crayons.

  “I’ve got boxes of jujubes,” confided the boy, edging closer to her. “Got ’em from Blum’s Candy Store—you know it? Over on the corner of Polk and Sutter? Before they blew it up for the firebreak, this cop said, ‘Go ahead, boys, help yourselves, but be quick!’ Can you believe it?” His eyes were wide as he told his story. His words tumbled out in a frantic jumble. “Some fellows were loading a whole cable-car caboose full of gumdrops and all-day suckers! I just got a coupla boxes of jujubes and chocolate drops. But better than nothing, hey?”

  “Sure,” said Clara, looking more closely at him. The wide eyes weren’t due just to amazement over getting so much free candy, she realized now. And the rapid-fire words weren’t just the result of excitement. She recognized the symptoms from the time right after the shipwreck when she’d heard the news about Gideon—and couldn’t stop talking. Shock, the doctor had diagnosed.

  This boy was in shock. He was wearing only a thin shirt and knee pants, and he was shivering badly. “Here,” Clara said suddenly, pulling off her shawl and handing it to him. “Wrap this around you. You’re shaking like a—”

  “Like an earthquake?” giggled the boy. He shook his head. “I can’t take your shawl.”

  “Just till you warm up,” Clara urged him, putting it around his shoulders. “And let’s get you some real food. Save the candy for dessert.”

  He allowed her to tow him toward the food line. They stood there, two out of two thousand, all waiting for breakfast.

  Despite the crowds, the park was hushed. People seemed dazed. Some looked heavy-eyed from not having slept at all. They gratefully received bowls of oatmeal and slices of bread. The boy wolfed down his portion in seconds. Clara accepted a bowl from a young soldier, although she was not hungry. She and the boy walked over to a stand of cypress trees and sat down on the grass. She gave him her bowl and the bread; she knew there would be food waiting for her when she returned home.

  The boy devoured the second bowl nearly as fast
as the first. Then, warmed by Clara’s shawl and the hot oatmeal, he lay back in the grass with a sigh. “That is better,” he said. “Thank you very much.” He sat up again and held out his dirty hand. “My name is Edgar Green.”

  “I’m Clara Curfman,” she responded, shaking his hand. “Are you with your family?”

  He lay back again and closed his eyes briefly. “Nope,” he said softly. “I’ve got no family, not anymore. Earthquake took care of that. Bedroom ceiling came down right on top of Uncle James. Killed him without even waking him up. I tried to dig him out, but it took four men from next door. He was stone cold.”

  “Oh! I’m so sorry!” Clara didn’t know what else to say.

  “Well, I guess maybe it’s a blessing, dying quick like that—if you’ve got to go anyway …” Edgar’s voice drifted off and he stared into the distance. “Uncle James was my guardian. My parents died of influenza last winter. So now I guess I’m more of an orphan than ever.”

  “I’m really so very sorry,” Clara repeated helplessly.

  “I keep thinking I see Uncle James,” Edgar confided in a low voice. “I keep feeling he’s right behind me. In fact—I have that feeling now. That he’s watching over me—over us. Right now.”

  Clara often had felt the same about Gideon, and it had comforted her. But she glanced uneasily over her shoulder now. Were unseen eyes watching from the bushes? Whose eyes?

  “What will you do now?” she asked the boy hurriedly. “Are you living here in the park?”

  “I’ve only just arrived. The people next door were going to take me with them after our houses collapsed … but I heard them talking about finding me a place in an orphanage somewhere, so I ran off. I’m not going to no orphanage, no matter what!” He stood up. “Which tent is your family tucked up in?”

  “Oh, they’re at home.” She saw his look of surprise and explained further. “Our house is still standing. It’s just—I’m here trying to find somebody.”

  “Who?” He sounded interested and, Clara noticed, looked much better now after eating. His face had more color, and he wasn’t shaking anymore.

  She threaded her way through the crowd to return their thick crockery bowls to the soup kitchen. One of the Chinese men working there thanked her with a stately bow so low that his long pigtail swung down to the ground. Then he dunked their bowls into a tub of murky dishwater. Clara headed back to the signboards with Edgar at her heels.

  “Who have you lost?” he asked again, handing back Clara’s shawl.

  She picked a thick black crayon out of the basket and slid a piece of paper from the stack, replacing the rock that held the papers securely so they would not blow away. “Well, my friend Emmeline and her family seem to be missing,” she said. “And then there was this baby left in a basket on our doorstep!”

  “Poor thing, probably orphaned like me.”

  “Well, that’s what we thought at first, but it’s stranger than that.” And Clara told him about the shaven head, the sailor suit, the silver rattle, and the message on the slip of paper.

  “Cliff House!” Edgar looked intrigued. “My uncle is a chef there for the big restaurant—that is, he was. He took me with him sometimes.” He stared down at the ground for a moment. “Anyway what’s Cliff House got to do with your baby, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Clara. “The whole thing is very strange.” She scanned the people’s faces as they stepped up to write messages. “But someone must know who she is. Someone must know where she really belongs.”

  There were so many missing people. Dozens of little messages were tacked up on the boards.

  Byron J. Maxim, if you are living, come home…. Bring May, Bessie, and boys. Mother will shelter them.

  Mrs. Kate Maxim

  Lost—Victor and Bernard Hickman, age 10 and 7 years; dark gray suits, blue corduroy hats. Return North Beach Powerhouse. —Mr. Whaley

  Susie and Charlie O’Day! Janey is safe. Come to our tent next to Stowe Lake and we’ll all be together!

  Grandma Perkins

  Clara hunched over and used one of the big crates of jujubes in Edgar’s wagon as her desk while she carefully printed her own message:

  PARENTS of BABY H—Approx. 6-month-old girl found safe and sound. Please post a message here telling where to find you.

  “Why not just write down your address and have them come collect the baby?” asked Edgar. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  “I don’t want anyone else trying to take her,” said Clara grimly. Then, in a low voice, she told Edgar about the woman who had come to the house, and the looters last night who had not really been looters.

  “You think she’s here, then, the woman in red?” Edgar asked when she’d finished. “Here in the park?”

  “I do.” Clara tacked up her message. “There. I’d better be heading home because my mother gets in a state—” Clara broke off with a gasp as a poster attached to a large oak tree near the message board caught her eye.

  “Edgar—look!”

  “What?”

  Clara pointed, then ran over to the poster. She read it with growing excitement.

  LOST in the QUAKE!

  Who has Seen our Baby Girl,

  Helen Forrest, only 6 months old,

  and her Nursemaid, Hattie Pitt, age 19 yrs???

  Last seen boarding San Francisco—bound

  Ferry in Oakland, Tuesday afternoon.

  Please contact desperate Parents

  Mr. and Mrs. Lucas Forrest

  17 Claremont Ridge Road in Oakland

  or leave message here.

  “That’s them! That must be Baby H’s parents!” Clara felt a surge of joy. “The woman in red called the baby Helen. And she said she was her nanny. It all fits … except—”

  “Except the baby was in disguise,” Edgar finished. “And the note said she was an orphan.”

  “Oh, dear, those poor parents,” said Clara. “They’re over in Oakland and don’t know where their baby is!”

  “But if they’re in Oakland, then who put up this fancy poster?” Edgar inquired.

  Clara frowned. She reached out a finger and stroked the poster. Unlike the thin scraps of paper all the other notes were written upon, the poster on the tree was printed on heavy white cardboard. The lettering was bold and deliberate—not at all like the hasty scrawls on the other notes.

  Clara hesitated a moment, rereading the poster, then unpinned it from the tree. “I don’t know who put up the notice, but I’m quite sure this is our baby.” She rolled the poster into a tight tube. “My parents need to see this.”

  Clara went back to the message board. She had one more message to write. She used the black crayon to print neatly on another slip of paper:

  Emmeline and family, where are you?? Curfmans’

  Boardinghouse has room for all! Please come to us!

  Love, Clara

  “Curfmans’ Boardinghouse?” read Edgar over her shoulder. “Room for all?”

  “We run a boardinghouse,” said Clara. She hesitated. “I suppose you could come home with me, if you like. Seeing as you haven’t anywhere else to go. We’ve got people in bedrolls all over the place now as it is.”

  “Yes, please, I’ll come,” said Edgar eagerly. “I don’t have any money, but I could help out if your mother would find some chores for me—” He broke off and turned around swiftly. “There—I—oh, I have the feeling again! Of someone watching me. Uncle James—?”

  Clara whirled around and glimpsed a flash of red disappearing into the crowd. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Then she gave herself a mental shake. Lots of people wore red. And now that she knew who the baby most probably was, there was no need to find the woman who had claimed to be the nursemaid. She would search for the parents themselves.

  “Come on, then, Edgar,” Clara said heartily. “Come with me and let Mother put you to work.” She gave him a sudden grin. “Mother is extraordinarily good at finding chores for people to do. It’s one of he
r particular talents.”

  They laughed together and the sound rang in Clara’s ears as if it were a foreign language. It was the first laughter she’d heard in days.

  And then, somehow, everything was funny. As the two of them headed back to Clara’s house, they giggled at the sight of the man coming toward them carrying two parrots, one on either shoulder, and pushing a third in a cage in a wheelbarrow. They tossed clods of dirt into the fissure splitting the street and shouted, “Helloooo down there!” They made jokes about the fog, the rubble, even the deafening explosion a few blocks away that shook the ground as yet another home fell to make the firebreak. The smoke in the distance was hilarious, and they ran, shrieking, for half a block without stopping, Edgar’s wagon jolting along behind them. It felt so good to laugh.

  They stopped only when Edgar’s crates and brown suitcase bounced off and thudded across the ground. His suitcase popped open, spilling clothing and books into the road, and a large photograph in a glass frame cracked on the rubble. “Oh, no,” Edgar said, and there wasn’t a trace of laughter in his voice anymore. He picked up the photograph, and Clara saw that the photo was of an elderly man with a quiet smile. “Uncle James,” Edgar murmured, and ducked his head.

  He stood quietly, and Clara wondered uncomfortably if he might be praying for his uncle. She felt guilty about their silliness. How could they act as if tragedy hadn’t happened—as if tragedies weren’t still happening all around them?

  Clara squeezed the rolled-up poster tightly in one hand while she watched Edgar trying to compose himself. She stuck her other hand into her pocket and closed her fingers around the silver rattle. She felt the little crumpled piece of paper—the mysterious message—and smoothed it against her palm.

  We’ll have you home soon, Baby Helen! she vowed to herself.

  She turned back and helped Edgar repack his belongings into the wagon. Then the two of them set off again, side by side, and neither of them felt like laughing anymore.