by Janet Fox
And David. Where was David? I would not picture him buried in this. My mind could not comprehend it.
Jameson clambered over the piles of bricks and broken timbers. After a moment he called out, “Kula, here!” I gathered myself up and ran to him, to the girl he found.
She lay pocketed beneath a timber that had collapsed over her and sheltered her from the crush. Jameson and I had to work at the rubble to dig her out. She was conscious, with scrapes along her thin arms and legs that the scrap of clothing she wore barely covered. She was so small. Her hand fit fully in mine.
We found two more girls buried in this way; we helped them to the curb while we kept on searching. I thought of all who were lost beneath the weight of all those bricks and timbers. I set my teeth and hoped that Wilkie lay buried deep somewhere in this city’s pile of death.
I’d seen dead people before. Once in Yellowstone a soldier’d been thrown from his unruly horse, right in the Mammoth parade ground, and he’d landed just so, and there he died. I was carrying a load of my clean washing between buildings. I dropped it all in the mud to run to the boy’s side—for he wasn’t but a boy—and I saw his blind eyes and his unnaturally kinked neck. I’d been sick, then, right there next to him.
I’d scrubbed that linen for hours after.
Here, a hand, a cold stiff hand, sticking up through the rubble. There, a girl, her hair covered in dust; when I turned her over, her eyelids were creased with black. There, alone, a shoe: tiny, black, like the shoe in Miss Everts’s automobile. And there, a flower made of folded crimson tissue paper, someone’s only treasure, still perfect, an unblemished paper poppy lying in the rubble.
I couldn’t afford to be sick here. We had to save those we could.
We’d just pulled the third girl out when a policeman found us, told us we had to move out.
“But there are people here . . .” I couldn’t finish; my throat closed. David. Where was David?
“Miss, we’re moving everyone. They’re going to blow up buildings to try and stop the fires.”
“Blow up the buildings—you can’t! There are people trapped here.”
“It’s the only way to stop the spread of the fires, getting rid of buildings that will burn. You have to leave.” Then I understood; in the forests during a fire they cleared swathes of trees to create a firebreak so there would be no fuel for the fire to spread.
Jameson and I continued to search as the policeman moved on to round up others, but there were no more signs of life in this ruin.
We helped the three girls we’d found away from the ruin and made our way toward Nob Hill. I picked up the smallest and carried her, as she clung to my braid as if to a rope. Jameson carried another and tucked his arm around the shoulders of the third. We made for home. My stomach heaved, but I swallowed it.
“Move along!” The militia was out, men on horseback with rifles. “Looters will be shot!” Fire trucks raced by, their bells clanging, heading for the area south of Market. “Make for Union Square,” the police ordered. We tried to hurry, bucking up the hill, carried along in the tide of people who dragged their few belongings bumping behind them. The thud and scrape of trunks on the pavement filled the air, making up for the silence of conversation.
No one seemed able to carry on anything more than a polite, “Pardon me.” Or, “May I help?” I made note of people’s courtesy, so striking in the circumstances. Or perhaps they could say nothing else because so much of their lives had changed in an instant.
We reached the house with the girls as Miss Everts was setting up a small wood-burning cookstove on the front lawn.
“A policeman came by with orders not to cook inside,” she said. “The gas lines are broken and leaking. Mei Lien and I wrestled this old thing out of the smokehouse.” She looked us all over, noting that David was not with us. “Let’s get these unfortunates inside.”
Mei Lien and Yue and I took the girls up to the bedrooms, where we helped them clean up as best we could with so little water, and we gave them fresh clothes. By now, detonations rocked the air every few minutes or so, causing the girls to whimper. I went to my window.
Smoke rose over the city in ever-growing spires. Every minute some new thread rose up to join the cloud.
I went outside, plucked at Miss Everts’s sleeve. “Miss Everts, have you heard from David?”
She shook her head. “It was early. He might not have been in the building . . .”
“The telephone—”
“Is not working.”
I turned to Jameson, who brought wood round for Miss Everts. “Is there any way—”
An aftershock shook the ground. The girls all cried out, stricken and terrified, and ran out of the house. They huddled on the curb after that, draped in blankets and throws, refusing to go back inside.
Jameson had just cleared the rubble enough to bring out the horseless when a small troop of soldiers made their way to the house. “We need that automobile,” their commander said to Miss Everts.
“We do, too,” she countered.
“Sorry. We got orders and need automobiles. For the good of the city.”
Jameson stood his ground at the door of the vehicle, and the soldier leveled his gun, pointing it at Jameson’s chest.
“Roddy,” said Miss Everts, laying a hand on Jameson’s arm.
I watched them take away the automobile, my fists clenched at my sides. “Miss Everts, I’ve got to go back and find David.”
“No, Kula. It’s becoming too dangerous. These men roaming around . . .”
The stream of people escaping the burning lower city became a river. The fires were spread by the broken gas mains. The biggest fire was a black plume over the lower city, filling the sky, drifting up the hill to cover us.
I tugged at Miss Everts’s sleeve. “Please.”
She turned away.
As did I—I could not wait for her approval. I would find David, so help me. I started off.
“Kula!”
Miss Everts moved toward me. Jameson, bringing another load of wood, placed it on the ground and rested his hand on Miss Everts’s shoulder, stopping her. “Let her go.”
I went out into the street, moving against the stream of people, pushing against the current, through the faces all hollow and lost, people pulling trunks and pushing wheelbarrows, people with clocks and chairs and books and fine china. I thrust myself through the torrent that became a flood that yanked me back, but I would not be stopped.
Chapter THIRTY-TWO
April 18, 1906
“Downtown everything is ruin.
Not a business house stands. Theaters are
crumbled into heaps. Factories and commission
houses lie smouldering on their former sites.”
—Combined San Francisco Call/Chronicle/Examiner,
published on the presses of The Oakland Herald, April 19, 1906
THE MILITIA HERDED THE SWARM OF HUMANITY AWAY from the city center. I couldn’t follow the main streets; I had to keep ducking behind abandoned wagons and into side alleyways to keep from being herded away from the city myself.
I made my way down those infernal steep hills—even having grown up in the mountains as I did, these San Francisco hills wore me out—trying to make for Chinatown. It was the only place David would be, other than buried with the girls in the Barbary. Knowing him, he was trying to rescue the entire brotherhood of Chinese people.
I remembered the street along which he and I had walked in Chinatown when I arrived here, but when I reached the bottom of Nob Hill, I recognized nothing. So many buildings had been demolished by the quake, I could hardly get my bearings. Only remnants stood: single walls, one fluted cornice, piles of brick.
A fine white ash had begun to rain down, and the smoke from the fires rose into the sky, dimming the sun. I slipped behind an overturned cart still attached to its dead horse, trying to avoid another troop of soldiers, who by the look and sound of them had been drinking as they patrolled the now nearl
y empty streets. They laughed and cursed as they passed my hiding place. I saw small valuables tucked into their belts or slung from their bayonets, and half-empty bottles hung from their hands. I barely breathed until they were away out of sight.
I followed the signs as they changed from English to Chinese to find my way into the ruins of Chinatown.
Here the streets were empty but for scurrying rats and the cats that skulked after them. Smoke from fires rose not far off now. I had no idea where I was. I stood in the middle of the street and called David’s name.
My voice echoed among the buildings; from the near distance came the thunder of an explosion.
“David! David Wong!” I shouted again.
From an alley some hundred yards away a figure dressed all in black shouted something at me, gesturing.
“David Wong!” I shouted back.
He threw his hands in the air and turned away and disappeared.
I felt drained, as if all life had slipped out of me. I was lost. Without David, I realized, I was lost. I sank to the ground, careless of my once fine skirt, placing my palms on the earth that was now dust and rubble and ash.
My pa’s death loomed ever closer; Will had betrayed me; David was gone, perhaps buried in the ruin that lay around me.
Another explosion rocked the ground under my fingers, closer still, and a tower of flame rose into the air, and I threw my arms over my head as bits of wreckage dropped around me. It was no use; it would do no good for me to die here. I stood and made my way back toward the north, back toward Nob.
The stream of people moving up the hills was reduced to a steady trickle, and the sky was gray and black with smoke. The sidewalk was riddled with cracks, like the glaze on an old pot, as I put one foot in front of the other, climbing that hill, my heart heavy, my legs trembling.
“Kula?”
He stood in the street. I’d reconciled myself to the notion he was dead, so at first I thought perhaps it was his ghost, his hair and face and clothes so gray with ash and dust. “David?”
And then he opened his arms, and I found myself wrapped in them, and I didn’t care who saw us or what they’d think. I wept into his shoulder as he stroked my hair and whispered, “Shh, shh.”
I pulled away so I could look into his eyes. “I was lost.”
He put his hands on my cheeks. “And now you’re not.” He kissed me on the lips, soft, our first kiss, and sweet. He pulled back and used his thumbs to brush away my tears. We didn’t speak for a long time. We were together. I was whole. Whole and forgiven.
Then David’s face grew serious. “Kula, I found Min. She’s dead.”
“The earthquake?”
David’s face grew dark. “Her throat was cut.”
“Oh!” I covered my mouth, thinking I might be ill. “Wilkie . . . ?”
“Who else? He is a true demon.”
“Hey!” A soldier came up, two others behind him. “Get along.” He glared at David, and then at me. His rifle sat in the crook of his arm. “Clear the street. There’s a curfew on, and looters will be shot. Sabe, Chinaboy?”
“Sabe,” David said, his voice tight.
I didn’t tell the soldier that the only looters I’d seen were wearing uniforms.
David pulled me against him as we climbed the hill to Miss Everts’s house.
“I talked to some of the firefighters. There’s no water,” David said. “The mains are all broken and leaking. They can’t stop the fires. We have to hope they can keep the fires contained. All the area south of Market is in flames. One of our people who worked with dynamite on the railroads said that those manning the dynamite don’t know what they’re doing. They’re using far too much. And black powder, of all things! They can’t control it. They’re blowing up too much and hitting gas lines and throwing sparks everywhere and making things worse.” His arm drew tighter around me. “This city will never recover.”
Miss Everts saw us coming up the street and sent Jameson to greet us. It was a sweet reunion, even though few words were spoken.
We all turned to stare over the lower city, a city in flames.
“Perhaps they can stop the fires before they reach us.” It was the most I’d ever heard from Jameson.
Miss Everts cooked everything left in the house, and we handed out what we could to those still passing us by on their migration up the hill—even water, as long as we could spare it. My shoulders ached; my shirtwaist was dirty and torn; my skirt hem was frayed. I rolled the waistband of my skirt to hike it up so I could work without tripping.
But each time I caught a glimpse of David, my heart pulsed with happiness.
The detonations continued through the night. The flames burned like glowing coals below us; the city buildings crumbled and fell, one after another. More families marched by, struggling with their few belongings. No one slept. Jameson and David alternately patrolled, but there was little need; the militia was everywhere, and order was maintained.
The occasional rifle shot in the distance attested to that; David felt sure they were shooting looters.
We all stayed outside in the night. In the cooler night air the fires ebbed somewhat; but I knew wildfires and how they could trick you that way, getting quiet at night only to explode with the sunrise.
The smallest of the girls lay with her head in my lap and her thin arms around my waist as I sat on the porch steps staring down the hill. I stroked the poor girl’s face. She shifted and began to suck her thumb, clutching the tail of my braid in her other fist.
So young to be so ill used. I’d thought myself a slave to my life; I hadn’t understood. I’d never suffered like that.
Thursday dawned red and gray and sunless, and ash continued to fall around us like delicate snow. Thursday. It had been only a week since the Henderson ball. How was it possible for the entire world to shift its moorings in only a week?
About noon, the militia came again. Their captain dismounted and approached Miss Everts. “Ma’am, you’ll all have to leave. The fires will be here within hours.”
Miss Everts clutched her skirts, then dropped them, several times in succession. “Girls,” she said, “each of you take a piece of artwork, something you can carry. Jameson, you know what to do. David, come with me.” She turned to the captain. “We will leave shortly.”
He bowed and stepped to the side, but he did not leave until we did some hours later, our arms full. Miss Everts hauled one laden trunk on wheels and David a second. Jameson pushed an old twowheeled cart stacked high.
For my part, I carried several things, but the largest was my Blue Boy. As we marched up the hill, herded by our soldiers, I turned and looked back. The conflagration had reached the lower part of the street. I could see now that Miss Everts’s house would burn in the night.
It seemed that all San Francisco would burn, and it wasn’t over yet.
Chapter THIRTY-THREE
April 19–22, 1906
“Light shocks all night and every half hour explosions from
the city, where they are blowing up all the buildings.
All San Francisco is gone now out to 20th Street on one
side and Dayton and Union on the North Beach side . . .
the Earthquake broke all the water mains . . .”
—Letter from Maria Cochrane Praetzel
to her cousin, April 18, 1906
FIRE PURIFIES, SO THEY SAY. ASHES TO ASHES.
I’d seen fires in Yellowstone, mostly in the late summer and fall, when things got dry. Flames would jump from treetop to treetop with the slightest spark, and burst like exploding candles. I’d seen the pillars of smoke that rose into the air, towered into the air like thunderclouds lit beneath by a hellish red. There’s no stopping a wildfire when it gets going. Only nature can bring a change that will turn the tide.
My pa, he’d pack us up and out of the forest before a wildfire. “There’s no safe place here until the snow falls, boys.”
With the mains broken, there was no water to fight t
he fires here in San Francisco. The weather was hot and dry and unseasonable, and the fires made their own grim weather.
There’d be no stopping these fires, not without a miracle.
We left Miss Everts’s and kept walking, until, footsore and exhausted, we arrived at the marina at the north end of Van Ness. There we set down a makeshift camp in the park adjacent. Miss Everts had brought blankets and quilts, and by scrounging for rope, the men were able to rig a tent of sorts. Every one of the refugees there with us was kind, no matter their station. It seemed that ahead of the conflagration swept an epidemic of kindness.
We all waited and watched as San Francisco lifted in flames, like a brilliant phoenix, into the night sky.
The fires crawled up Nob Hill and consumed the home of Phillipa Everts. They consumed the home and all the artwork and papers and sketches of Sebastian Gable; I didn’t know where he was, but I hoped he was somewhere safe. The fires consumed mansions and tenements, brothels and castles. They consumed the palatial homes on Russian Hill and the side-by-sides of Telegraph Hill. We watched them all burn.
When the fire reached Miss Everts’s house, or thereabouts, as we could gather, I went and held her hand. We stood together staring out over the hellish scene.
She didn’t cry or fuss.
“Well,” she said, when it seemed the whole of her neighborhood was in flames. “Well, that’s that.”
All day and into the night Thursday, the east side of San Francisco burned. It burned hot through the vile, mean streets of the Barbary Coast, sending hundreds of miserable alleys to the heavens as a pillar of smoke.
The fires burned through Market and destroyed the Grand Opera House, where I had seen Caruso sing just two nights ago, and the Palace Hotel, where he slept; though Miss Everts heard from one of the police in the camp that he escaped with his life, all his costumes were lost. Not even the rich and famous were immune to the flames.