The Strange Case of Baby H (16 page)

Clara felt as if a choking noose around her neck had been cut free. She took a deep breath and tried to feel compassion for Sid's death and Herman's capture, but all she really felt was gladness. They deserved whatever they got, she believed. And now they would not be able to hurt anyone else, ever again.

She reached over and lifted Helen from Mother's arms. “Little one,” she whispered. “Now we are truly safe.”

“Our Helen is alive because of you, Clara.” Mrs. Forrest's voice trembled. “We have no words to thank you enough. You have our eternal gratitude.”

Clara pressed her face against Helen's fuzzy head and could not answer. Father and Mother were beaming across the table at each other.

“We know there's nothing we can do to thank Clara adequately—but we'd like to try,” Mr. Forrest added, looking down the table at Father. “My wife attended Mills College, the women's college over in Oakland, where her own father is a professor. And it would be our greatest honor to see Clara continue her education there someday. Her full tuition would be taken care of, of course.”

“Oh, my, we couldn't accept such a gift!” exclaimed Father.

“Please, Mr. Curfman, you must let us do this,” said Mrs. Forrest gently. “Without Clara, our Helen would be dead. Can you imagine the pain of losing a child?” She shuddered.

Several of the lodgers cleared their throats uncomfortably.

Mother closed her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, we can.”

Mrs. Forrest glanced around the table, then hurriedly continued. “Anyway, we think of Clara now as one of our own family, and all the young ladies in our family go to Mills College!”

“Unless, of course, Clara would prefer to go to college elsewhere—” amended Mr. Forrest.

“Oh no,” said Clara. “Mills College would be lovely. Oh, thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Forrest! Going to college has been one of my fondest dreams!”

Emmeline spoke up. “It's true—Clara loves school—she wants to be a teacher. I daresay she's the only one in our class who is sad that the school has burned down.”

Everyone joined in the laughter. Then the back door slammed and Edgar came in at last, carrying the cake. “It's finally ready!” he cried, then stopped and looked at the Forrests in surprise. “Oh! I surely hope there will be enough to go around!”

Mother smiled at Edgar. “I'm sure there will be. But first, you need some supper yourself.” She ladled out a bowl of soup, and then hesitated a moment, looking around the table, before she passed the bowl down to Father at the other end. Clara held her breath as Father set the bowl at the only free place: Gideon's place. Clara looked up in time to see Father and Mother exchange a long look, the sort of wordless conversation they used to have before the accident. Clara smiled to see it. Then Father touched the back of Gideon's chair.

“Go on, Edgar,” Clara said quickly before Mother could change her mind. “Hurry, before your soup is cold. Sit down!”

Edgar, taking his place at the table, flashed a smile. “Don't mind if I do,” he said. “
Old Sock
.”

Old Sock?

Had Edgar really spoken—or had she imagined those words?

Maybe it doesn't matter
, Clara thought, kissing the top of Helen's head. Here she was, sitting in a room full of people—some whom she'd known before the quake, some whom she'd met only because of the disaster. It was easy to imagine that Gideon was here with them, too. He would always be with her, she felt sure. The city lay in ruins, yet her own family felt less damaged now, after the quake. She wasn't quite sure how it had happened, but she looked over at Mother, then at Father, and was certain it had. And now there was Edgar. And the promise of college. Clara hugged Baby Helen. Who would have thought in a million years that so much could change in such a very short time?

“Clara,” Mother said briskly, interrupting Clara's reverie. “Will you please clear the table, dear? And bring in plates for cake?”

Some
things, of course, would never change. Not in a million years.

1906

G
OING
B
ACK IN
T
IME

L
OOKING
B
ACK:
1906

Clara's story is fiction, but the massive earthquake that rocked San Francisco on April 18, 1906, really happened. The quake—caused by shifts in the earth miles below the surface—struck at 5:12 A.M. and created one of the worst disasters in United States history. Hundreds of buildings collapsed, gas mains broke, and fires spread swiftly, engulfing the city center. More than six square miles were reduced to rubble and ash, and over 3,000 people were killed. Many towns and villages were damaged in the earthquake, but only San Francisco was ravaged by fire.

Fires raged for three days and three nights. Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan died after his house collapsed, leaving no one in charge of the fire-fighting effort. Mansions burned as well as slums, and many people were separated from their families. Notices were tacked up all over town, and especially at the tent cities in Golden Gate Park, to help people reunite with loved ones.

The tent cities were organized by the army, following orders from President Theodore Roosevelt. Over 250,000 people were homeless, and more than 100,000 of them lived for months in the park, standing in long lines at relief stations for free food, water, and clothing and sleeping in temporary shelters. Across the bay, residents of Oakland welcomed the refugees escaping San Francisco by ferry. Mills College sheltered many former students, as well as professors and their families. People all over America sent help by train and boat. They sent clothes and food, medical supplies, tents, and blankets—all desperately needed by suffering San Franciscans.

Out of the chaos came accounts of brave rescue and lucky escape. There was the baby, born at home just as the earthquake caused the house to sink below street level, sealing off the doors. The newborn and her mother were rescued by two boys who climbed through a window as the fire swept toward them. Another girl was carried to safety by her father—straight out of their attic window, which had dropped to street level!

After the fires were out, the fear of fire remained. For months after the quake, even families like the Curfmans, whose homes were still standing, had to cook outdoors. No one was allowed to light a stove until the gas mains and electric lines had been repaired and an inspector had declared that cooking indoors would be safe again. In many cases, this permission did not come for nine months after the quake! At first, people made do with campfires, but as time passed, they moved their cookstoves outside or built outdoor ovens. Some people even built rustic kitchen shacks around their ovens.

Although travel in the city was difficult because of the piles of rubble from collapsed buildings, some enterprising restaurant owners hung signboards advertising their fare and set up tables and chairs in the street for customers. The business district had been totally demolished, but grocers, bakers, and seamstresses opened temporary shops on street corners.

It was months before schools were rebuilt, and although some teachers tried to hold classes outdoors, most children did not return to school until September because they stayed home to help their families. People shared space for worship services until their synagogues and churches could be rebuilt. Almost every bank had burned, but some businessmen set up makeshift counters and loaned people money to rebuild their houses.

Enrico Caruso, the great opera singer who fled San Francisco after the quake, really did sing on his ferry passage to Oakland. He vowed he would never return to San Francisco, and he never did. But even if he had, concert halls, museums, art galleries, and hotels were not rebuilt for several years. People had more pressing matters to worry about.

As San Francisco pulled itself out of the wreckage, however, families started to enjoy whatever leisure activities were still available in their desolate, charred city. The Sutro Baths and Cliff House were popular destinations both before and after the earthquake. Neither was badly damaged in the quake, although an early newspaper account that Clara might have read reported that Cliff House had toppled into the sea.

Cliff House was first built in 1856, of lumber salvaged from a ship wrecked on the cliffs below. Cliff House burned and was rebuilt several times, and in 1896 a man named Adolph Sutro bought the property. He had made his fortune mining silver and gold and later became mayor of San Francisco. He erected a huge, eight-story Cliff House that resembled a French chateau and opened it to the public. People enjoyed the fine food and dancing, the art galleries and musical events—and also, of course, the stunning views of the ocean, Seal Rocks, and the towering cliffs. Today, there are busy roads running through bustling neighborhoods straight from Golden Gate Park down to the ocean, but in 1906 Clara would have driven across sand dunes and scrub brush to reach Cliff House. Sutro's beautiful Cliff House burned completely in 1907, a year after the earthquake.

The nearby swimming baths also were built by Adolph Sutro. The sprawling pavilion resembled a crystal palace, and people came from all around to rent suits and swim, play on the slides and trapezes, and leap from springboards into water tanks filled by the tides. In 1906, up to 25,000 people came daily, for a fee of 25 cents. The building was demolished in 1966, and today only ruins remain on the site, right at the edge of Ocean Beach.

Ocean Beach is not a place for swimmers because of the deadly riptide and unpredictable currents that still, all too often, sweep people to their deaths. Clara's father's steamship met its end on the treacherous rocks, which were the scene of more than 50 shipwrecks between 1850 and 1936. In the days before foghorns, ship captains listened for the loud barks of sea lions on Seal Rocks to guide them between the dangerous headlands of the Golden Gate channel.

People who lived through the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 never forgot the suffering, fires, and destruction it caused—nor the extraordinary lengths some San Franciscans went to to help one another. The survivors learned that disaster can bring people together even as the world seems to be in chaos. Then, as now, it is in such times of trouble that ordinary people like Clara often find the strength to take matters into their own hands and emerge as heroes.

A
UTHOR'S
N
OTE

In researching this story, I read many moving and fascinating accounts of the 1906 earthquake and fire. As I wrote Clara's fictional adventure, I included historical details, events, and people I found especially interesting. For instance:

The notices Clara reads in Golden Gate Park were real ones posted by desperate family members in search of lost loved ones after the quake.

The jujubes that Edgar offers Clara came from Blum's Candy Store, a real shop that was dynamited as part of the firebreak. Before the shop was destroyed, police officers really did offer children the chance to run in and take as many sweets as they could carry.

The singer Enrico Caruso really did sing songs from
Carmen
as the ferry carried him away from the burning city. General Funston and Fire Chief Sullivan were real people, too.

And although the Borden brothers are fictional, criminals did try get-rich-quick schemes to take advantage of people during the chaotic aftermath of the earthquake.

Today San Francisco is a shining city built on hills and edged by ocean and bay. It is home to nearly a million people who wouldn't want to live anywhere else. But occasional earth movements are uncomfortable reminders of the region's past—and motivation to build carefully on this unsettled edge of earth.

Readers who want to learn more about the 1906 earthquake and fire will enjoy reading
If You Lived at the Time of the Great San Francisco Earthquake
by Ellen Levine,
Earthquake at Dawn
by Kristiana Gregory,
The Earth Shook, The Sky Burned
by William Bronson, and
Disaster
by Dan Curzman.

About the Author

Kathryn Reiss lives in a rambling nineteenth-century house in Northern California, where she is always hoping to discover a secret room or time portal to the past. She is the author of many award-winning novels of suspense for children and teens, among them
Time Windows
,
Dreadful Sorry
,
Paint by Magic
,
PaperQuake
, and
Sweet Miss Honeywell's Revenge
. When not working on a new book, she teaches English and creative writing at Mills College and enjoys spending time with her husband, seven children, and many cats and dogs.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text Copyright © 2001, 2010 by Kathryn Reiss

Map Illustration by Paul Bachem

Line Art by Laszlo Kubinyi

Cover design by Amanda DeRosa

ISBN: 978-1-4976-4648-3

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com