Forgiven

by Janet Fox

  I stood next to David, our fingers entwined.

  We watched the billowing smoke in the afternoon as it approached Van Ness Avenue, that broad street that lay like a river between us refugees and the flames. Soldiers came through to tell us to be ready to move again, to the west, ahead of the flames.

  We stayed ready, waiting.

  We all huddled together—orphan slave girls from China, Jameson, Miss Everts, David, and me—through the night Thursday while firefighters fought with blankets and shovels and single buckets drawn from the sea to keep the flames from crossing Van Ness.

  On Friday morning, we were warned again. Buildings along the east side of the avenue were dynamited. The fire crested Russian Hill, taking the largest of mansions in its ceaseless hunger. It drove for us with a vengeance.

  Midday Friday they came calling for volunteers. David and Jameson leaped up. We’d all readied for another evacuation and were waiting for directions.

  I would not leave David’s side. “Miss Everts . . .”

  “Go.” She shooed me away. “And please, Kula. My name is Phillipa.”

  David, Jameson, and I ran together toward the avenue, me with my skirts hoisted right up. The firefighters needed men to haul hoses up from tugboats moored at the docks, to pump seawater. Jameson took off with a crowd to grab a section of hose.

  David and I found ourselves with a pile of rugs and linens—Oriental carpets, finely woven; silk quilts—taken from some mansion, I was sure—and now we used them to beat out the embers that flew at us from the climbing columns of smoke and ash. For several hours we worked side by side, along with so many others. I smacked my small carpet of red-and-blue geometrics against the ground over and over until my shoulders screamed and the carpet was fraying and singed black and my lungs stung from the searing smoke.

  It was sometime just past noon when the wind shifted. I could smell it. I stopped beating and stood, my eyes closed, and I turned my face west amid the beating and the shouting and I lifted up my face and smelled the sea, the cool sea breeze, pushing against us from the west. My spirits lifted as the temperature dropped.

  “Look!” David grabbed my arm.

  I turned. The fire was backdrafting—roaring back over itself, over the areas already scorched. A cheer went up from those around us. The fire was stopped at Van Ness by our sheer will and the gift of the shifting wind.

  Great sections of the city were gone. All of the area south of Market: the entire evil Barbary Coast, Chinatown, Nob Hill, Russian Hill. The stinking alleyways of abuse and desperation were gone. The business district was gone. The palatial homes built by the nabobs of the 1849 Gold Rush were gone.

  Miss Everts’s house was gone, too, and everything left in it.

  Many, many thousands were gone, though we didn’t know it then. And we never knew how many, exactly, buried alive, burned to ash, souls who had no voice. Slave girls and lost sailors, desperate men and sorry women. Gone, forgotten, ash and smoke.

  We stood in line for water and food, side by side with rich and poor, all patient, all kindly, all those who had lost everything. The woman in line in front of me was dressed in fine linen. Yesterday she’d owned a towering mansion on Russian Hill; today she was stripped clean of everything save the clothes on her back. Yet she shrugged, laughed. The cheerful moods of each and every one were infectious.

  Inside our little tent enclosure I was able to sponge off some of the grime and soot coating my hands and face and neck. Mei Lien plaited my hair again into my one long braid, and I stepped outside for air.

  I sat on an upturned bucket in front of our little lean-to tent enclosure and listened to the whispers of the girls with us who spoke in their native tongue, realizing that I was hearing some of their voices for the first time. David came and sat next to me.

  “It’s not over,” I said. “Not for me. I still have to find a way to help my father. He’s going to hang in a few days. If that box survived, it’s my only chance.” A heaviness drifted over me, an exhaustion more of the spirit than of the body, though my body was worn out. “Wilkie said Will had it. What if it’s gone? What will I do?”

  “We need to find Will Henderson.”

  My blood boiled. “Will Henderson.” I spat; I didn’t care how unbecoming it was. I was already a filthy, tattered mess. “He stole it. He stole the one thing that could save my father’s life, when he knew what it meant to me. When he knew it was killing my pa.”

  David rested a hand on my arm. “Kula, I don’t think Will’s evil; he’s just rich and ignorant. We don’t know his side yet. There may be more to it.”

  “How can you—” I bit my tongue. David was right. How often had I assumed one thing and been shown that there was another side? My father’s life still hung in the balance, but I knew Will was no Wilkie, no cold-blooded devil. “Fine. I’ll pretend he took it for some good purpose.”

  David smiled, and I leaned my weary head on his shoulder. “Kula.” I heard him whisper my name, felt his breath as it stirred my hair, felt his arm lift over my shoulders and wrap me up.

  I turned to him and kissed him then. It was a full kiss, given with my full heart.

  He said, “We’ll have to wait for the morning. They’ve told us there’s a strict curfew. They’ll shoot to kill. The police chief has deputized new men all over the city, and some of them shouldn’t be carrying guns, much less making life-and-death decisions, so it won’t be safe at all now.”

  I chafed, but there was no help for it. In point of fact, we were all so exhausted by the emotion and labor and the day’s doings that after a short supper of the potatoes and meats and stewed vegetables that had been given to us in the food line, we all fell to a dead sleep. Sometime in the night I awoke in our makeshift tent. After the hot days of the fires this night was chilly, and I was grateful for the warm blanket, but something had woken me.

  Mei Lien, Yue, the three rescued girls, Phillipa, and I shared the tent; David and Jameson slept just outside the door, wrapped in blankets. The tent gaped, and I could see out into the night. Jameson sat up awake beside a small fire he’d set in the brazier over which we warmed our food.

  He stared away from me, toward the smoldering, smoking city. Every so often he glanced toward the tent, then away again. Then he lifted his hand and opened a small portrait box, stared at it, shut it again.

  Jameson looked at someone’s portrait, a portrait he treasured enough to save from the flames. A realization dawned. One that should have been obvious to me long before this.

  The thoughts that flitted through my mind made me sad. I thought about my pa and what he’d lost when they took my mother away from him. About what it meant to love someone when the world thought that love improper.

  The next day dawned bright, and although the fires to our east still smoldered, men were already busy clearing the streets. It seemed there was no hesitation about what must be done to bring the city back; there was no question of it. It was all anyone talked about in the camp: bring the city back. The other refugees around us were not weeping and moaning. In fact, sharing our misfortune brought us to sharing all our goods. We gave out our bread; we were given coffee. Even our girls and David were given their due.

  But we still couldn’t venture into the city. Only a week remained before my father was due to hang. I needed to find Will—to find that box, if it still existed. I tried to keep busy, but my mind was never far from Pa, whose days were truly numbered.

  Finally, on Sunday morning David and I were allowed to make our way back into the heart of the disaster, to see if we could find Will.

  I fingered the key still hanging around my neck. So much had been destroyed in the quake, I was hoping beyond hope that the box had survived. The earthquake had opened a great gaping crevasse between my pa and me, and I had to make a leap over it now or lose him forever.

  Chapter THIRTY- FOUR

  April 22, 1906

  “They [Californians] seem to be people without any

  remembered Past
save as it may sometimes come to them

  in a confused sense of having been born in some other place

  at some vaguely remote period.”

  —Ada Clare, in one of her essays for

  The Golden Era, San Francisco, mid-1800s

  DAVID AND I WALKED DOWN VAN NESS IN THE DIRECTION of Market to the Henderson mansion. It was odd how open and visible the streets were now that we could see across the landscape bereft of trees and buildings. The sad naked exposure tugged at my heart.

  It had rained in the night—too late to save much of the city—and what fires remained were now largely quenched.

  The Henderson mansion itself, so recently the site of my awkward debut into society, was nothing but a set of four stone walls, all of it burned out from within, its windows now like gaping eyes framing shifting, ghosting gray ash.

  We stared at the ruin in silence. I thought about the artworks that had perished, the three stories of furnishings collected from all over the world, the personal treasures, the mementoes. The Hendersons had lost so much, like everyone else. I thought about Will, and that smile.

  I touched David’s hand, as if to remind myself that not every man would betray me.

  As if thinking brought him to life, Will came from over the hill. He walked quickly toward us, with purpose, already lifting his hand as if to surrender or explain.

  It should have been me who flew at him, but it was David. David lashed out at Will with both fists raised, facing him down with barely contained anger. “Why?”

  Will spread his hands. His face was pale, his clothes tattered. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and his hands shook. His eyes met mine, and all I saw there was grief. Nothing remained of the cocky, self-sure, rich young man I’d known.

  I didn’t care how much he’d suffered. “You stole my father’s only hope!”

  Will gestured, a fluttering movement. “Kula, I already told you. My father had been looking for that box for years. He said he needed it. He told me it was life or death. I had to.”

  “My father’s life depends on that box, not yours! Did you even open it? Did you see what it was that was worth Pa’s life?” If the box had been in this house, it was gone, and my father was doomed. I kicked at a rock, sending it skittering into the remains.

  “I didn’t open it. And it might have survived,” Will said softly.

  Somehow I managed to speak past the lump in my throat. “How? How could it have survived this?”

  “I took it to the bank. Before the fire. It’s at the bank.” Will lowered his head, raised his hands to grip his head as if to contain everything inside.

  “But didn’t the bank . . .” David began.

  “It burned,” Will said. He lifted his head. “But I put the box in our family’s private vault. The vault’s made of steel—it was supposed to be able to survive anything. It could have survived the fire.”

  “Then let’s go,” David said through gritted teeth. He shook Will’s shoulder roughly. “Let’s see if you’re right.”

  We walked down to where the bank had been on Market. Rubble littered the streets although already men gathered to clear the way. If I hadn’t been with Will and David, they would have been commandeered into brick-heaving duty more than once, but as my escorts they could pass. The farther we went into the city, the more terrible the devastation appeared, with entire blocks of buildings gone, reduced to smoldering ash. So many buildings had been gutted with fire or reduced to rubble, and yet every so often we came upon a structure that for no obvious reason remained nearly intact.

  As we drew close to where the bank stood we could see that the stone framework remained but the interior had been burned out.

  David approached the outer wall. The bank had been one of the lower buildings on Market, no more than two stories high. “It appears solid, but Kula, you should stay here.”

  “No.”

  David shook his head but didn’t argue with me. “Will, where was the vault?”

  “In my father’s office at the back.” Will led us down the alleyway between two remaining outer brick walls. We picked our way through the ruin of fallen bricks and charred lumber, some still smoldering. I lifted my skirts nearly to my knees to avoid catching an ember.

  “There, the vault’s still there. See, it’s still there!” Will pointed to the interior, where a vault stood half buried but sound in the shadows of the ruined bank.

  David helped me over a mound of rubble and through a window and then lifted me into what remained of the interior.

  It was sad, standing in the middle of this ruin. On the walls were the charred remnants of ornate carved-oak moldings. Here was a rolltop desk, incongruously spared; a window with no glass framed the ruined city. Above us the sky, a soft blue with pale clouds, formed the ceiling.

  Will and David made their way through the ruin to the vault; they heaved off the ceiling timbers that rested against it. Will knelt and twisted the dial on the lock.

  “Will?” Mr. Henderson stood with one hand on the window frame.

  Only days ago William Henderson had seemed to me a titan. He’d been reduced to a slump-shouldered wreck whose eyes were glassy and unfocused. His three-piece suit was torn and filthy, his hair uncombed, his beard untended. “Will?” Henderson’s voice quavered.

  “Father! It survived. Our vault survived the fire.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I have to return Kula’s box to her.” Will straightened and faced his father, the door to the vault still shut. “Kula says her father will die without it.”

  Henderson slid down the ramp of rubble onto the floor, his feet faltering, his arms flailing. He came to a stop and breathed hard.

  “Why do you want it?” I asked. “Why are you keeping it from me? It’s not yours.”

  “There’s no money in it, you know.” He moved past me, toward Will. “There’s no money here at all.”

  “No money?” Will sounded puzzled. “But I thought that’s what it was. If it’s not money, then . . . what is it?”

  “That box is all I have,” Henderson said to the floor. He looked almost like a child, slumped down.

  “Mr. Henderson,” I said. “What is in my pa’s box that you don’t want me to see?”

  He placed his hand on the vault to steady himself. “It’s nothing. It’s only important to me. Just a bit of ancient history.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I stepped forward. “My father sent me here to get it—it’s the only thing that can save him. Will, open the vault.”

  Will shifted his glance from his father to me and back. “I’m sorry, Father. She’s right. I can’t keep on like before. Everything’s different now. What could possibly be in this box that’s so important to you that it’s worth a man’s life?” He shook his head. “I have to give it back.”

  Henderson didn’t argue. He backed away until he could rest against the wall. “Your father and I were friends, Miss Baker,” Henderson said. “There were three of us. We were as close as our own fathers had been, and our grandfathers before them. Baker and Henderson and Everts.”

  Will’s eyes followed his father. He twisted his hands, knotting his fingers together. Watching him, all at once I understood the lies, the betrayal. Will had been doing the same thing I was—trying to save his father. Trying to win his father’s love. His actions were clumsy and foolish and hurtful, but I understood. His desires were not unlike my own.

  Will bowed his head again, and then bent to the task, and the vault door popped open. Will straightened, my father’s box in his hands. But now we all—Will and David and I—waited on William Henderson’s words.

  “Three boys, each an orphan, on a ship from England bound for America in 1840. Three boys whose lives were linked by fortune, or misfortune. They pledged to remain friends forever, pledged for themselves and their unborn sons.”

  William Henderson studied his hands, spread his palms open. “They found their way west together and set up a business. They bought land. In
a few short years Baker and Henderson and Everts had settled in California territory. Then one of them struck north. Why? Curiosity, hunger for the unknown, or just the desires of a young man.” Henderson shrugged. “It doesn’t matter why. What matters is Henry Baker went to Alaska and returned two years later to the port town of San Francisco with a native bride, Kula. I have a fondness for names, you know. I rarely forget a name.”

  Kula. My great-grandmother. I steadied myself.

  “She was beautiful, so they say. Proud and dignified. Gave birth to her only child the same year that gold was discovered on the land owned by Baker and Henderson and Everts.” Henderson gave a little nod. “Gold. Men lust after many things, but none so much as gold.”

  Will stared at the box in his hands; it seemed to grow suddenly heavy, or hot; he put it down on the bed of ashes at his feet.

  His father pointed at it. “It’s all in there, what I’m telling you. All those secrets. I tried to keep them from you, Kula.”

  “What happened?” I said it soft.

  “John, Theo, and James—they were the three boys of the next generation, born into gold wealth. Kula, she died giving birth to John. Henry died not long after. So young John went to live with Charles Henderson, raised up with Charles’s son James as if they were twins. John Baker and James Henderson were nearly inseparable from their friend Theo Everts. That is until Theo met Hannah Porter. Then Theo wanted his share, out from their partnership. He and Hannah had plans.

  “Now, John and James, they’d married, too. John Baker had a son, Nathaniel. James Henderson had a son, William—me,” Henderson said, and he pointed at himself. “Nat and I were best friends.”

  My pa: Nat Baker. Best friends with William Henderson, one of the richest men in San Francisco. The man who’d stolen Pa’s only chance at freedom.