Into the Firestorm (9 page)

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.

U
NION
S
QUARE

“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 faster.”

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.

“Let’s go,” Nick urged. “We’ve got to keep going.”

“It’s too crowded,” Annie said crossly as they stood on the edge of Union Square. “Where can we sit?”

“I don’t know, but let’s find a place soon,” her mother said, breathing heavily. “My side is throbbing.”

Nick scanned the wide square, searching for an empty spot. “Let’s go near the statue in the center. We’ll have a good view of downtown from there.”

Slowly they picked their way through the crowd. Some people had already spread blankets on the grass, as if they meant to stay the night. Others stood quietly beside toy wagons filled with pots and pans or baby buggies piled with household goods. Almost everyone, Nick noticed, faced downtown, toward Market Street, watching the fire’s slow, steady progress.

Annie’s mother sank onto an abandoned trunk with a heavy sigh. “Let’s hope we’ll be safe for the night here. I don’t believe I can take another step.”

Annie nestled beside her and patted her hand. Shakespeare planted himself on Annie’s feet and put his head in her lap.

Nick offered Mrs. Sheridan a drink of water from the jug. Annie pointed upward. “Nick, did you know that the lady on top of that tall marble column is called Victoria?”

Mrs. Sheridan smiled, almost for the first time. “Actually, Little Big Eyes, the statue is called Victory, not Victoria. It commemorates a victorious battle in the Spanish-American War.”

“Oh, I remember you told me about that war,” Annie said. “It began in 1898, the year I was born. I don’t much like that I was born in the same year as a war, but at least it was a very short war. Isn’t that right, Mama?”

“Yes, only a few months. But don’t go on so, Annie. I expect Nicholas doesn’t care about the Spanish-American War at this moment,” Mrs. Sheridan said. “Except we hope this statue will bring good luck—and victory over the fire.”

Nick turned away and scanned the crowd. All at once, a feeling of panic swept over him. He was just a kid from the fields. He didn’t know as much as an eight-year-old. And he especially didn’t know what to do next.

Mrs. Sheridan shouldn’t count on him. He wasn’t the right one to lead them out of danger. He turned to face her. “I…I don’t know….”

“Don’t worry, Nicholas, Annie and I will be fine right here,” Mrs. Sheridan interrupted him softly. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone to help us.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nick pulled his cap down low and set off.

Nick decided to see what he could find out just by listening. Ahead, a small group was gathered around one tall man. As Nick moved closer, he could see that the man’s face was streaked with soot. A cut above his left eye oozed blood.

“What happened?” Nick asked the man beside him.

“He’s just come from the Palace Hotel.”

“All the clerks and bellboys were out on the fire escapes with hoses,” Nick heard the man say. “Fires were coming our way from two directions, west and south, so we tried to soak those sides of the hotel. The heat was something awful.”

Someone handed the man a jug of water. He paused and threw his head back to gulp it.

Nick pushed closer. “Did you save it?”

The man drew his hand across his eyes. “For a while I thought we could. But then the city fire department tapped the hydrant in front of the hotel—for another fire. That took our last hope. And when another building nearby on Jessie Street went up in flames…”

“The whole downtown will be gone by tomorrow,” another man said. “The Hearst Building at Third and Market started blazing at noon. The Call Building’s on fire now, too.”

Nick turned away. At this rate, how long would it take the fire to reach Union Square?

Nick made for a man who stood on the corner with a horse and small cart. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m trying to get a sick woman and her child to safety. Could you take them?”

“Got a hundred bucks?” the man asked, pushing back the cap on his head.

“A hundred dollars?” Nick glanced to where Annie and her mother sat. Mr. Pat’s inkwells in the bag at Annie’s feet were surely worth more than that. Maybe this man would take them in exchange for a ride. But no. Nick couldn’t do that. The inkwells belonged to Mr. Pat. And Nick had promised to keep his treasures safe.

“Don’t have a cent, do you, kid? I’m sorry to hear it. Disaster like this, it’s the poor who suffer the most. Just like this morning at the Valencia Street Hotel.” The man turned away, spat, and then shook his head. “Crushed or burned, that’s how they’ll write this one in the history books.”

Nick tried again. “But if you give this lady a ride, you’ll be helping someone to survive.”

“Wish I could, kid. But I gotta look out for myself, don’t I?” The man’s voice was flat, his face rigid and stern. “Otherwise it’ll be me and mine under the rubble or burned to ashes in one of those tenements south of the Slot.”

Nick walked quickly away. He clenched his fists and jammed them into his pockets. And then he felt the single coin still left there. He had carried it a long time. It seemed like so much and yet so little all at the same time.

Nick let out a long breath. He knew it was pointless to be angry at the man with the wagon. Nick had known folks just as hard. Mr. Hank. Even, sometimes, Pa.

There was that time when Nick was seven. He’d been pulling up cotton stalks when one hit his right eye. Nick remembered how he’d screamed in pain. His eye had filled with blood and he’d run back to the shack, crying.

“John, we should take this boy to the doctor,” Gran had said to Pa that night as they sat eating beans. She’d washed out Nick’s eye and bandaged it, but it still throbbed.

Pa finished chewing. “You doctored him fine, looks like.”

“It’s his eye,” Gran countered. “We can’t take a chance on the boy’s eye.”

Nick could remember sitting there, waiting for Pa’s answer. But it never came. His father had simply shrugged, picked up his coffee mug, and drained it dry.

Nick stood alone, unsure what to do next. Suddenly he spotted a face he recognized.

He crept closer to get a better view, making sure to keep out of plain sight. Yes, there was that great bear of a police officer, the one who’d chased him all the way to Chinatown. Bushy Brows was standing right in the middle of Union Square, talking to a family, his hands waving here and there.

Nick bit his lip. The man might be able to help. But could he take a chance and ask? The policeman wouldn’t remember him, not with all the chaos and confusion of the earthquake and fire. Or would he?

Nick glanced down at his clothes. Well, even with the soot and dirt, at least his shirt and pants were new. Not his hat, though. Gran had gotten it for him for his birthday last year, just before Mr. Greene had evicted them from their sharecropper’s shack.

Mr. Pat had offered to buy him a new one the day they went shopping, but Nick had hesitated. “This one is good enough.”

“Sentimental value, eh? I don’t suppose you want to tell me about it. Well, all in good time. By all means, keep your cap. Though I do believe with that mop of yours, you’ll need a cut soon.”

“A cut?”

“We’ll have to see how things go, but if all is well upon my return, I would certainly say a haircut is in order,” Mr. Pat had told him. “I myself go to a very good barber on the edge of Chinatown, whom I highly recommend.”

If all is well…
But there would be no haircuts in Chinatown for a long time. If it wasn’t already destroyed, Chinatown would soon be gone.

Nick felt a tug on his shirt.

“Nick, who are you hiding from?” Annie stood with her hands on her hips.

“I…I’m not…,” sputtered Nick.

Annie stood on tiptoes. “I know. I bet it’s that policeman! I had a feeling deep inside that you were a crook, Nicholas Dray,” she went on, sounding more like her old self. “Even though you were brave enough to fetch Daddy’s picture and my doll. Did you steal a silver spoon from the Palace Hotel?”

“No! I never even saw the inside of the Palace.” Nick stooped to tie his shoe.

“Well, then, what? I can tell you don’t want him to see you,” Annie said. She fingered the bump on her forehead gingerly. “Maybe Mama and I shouldn’t trust you.”

Trust. Well, Nick thought, why should she trust him? He certainly hadn’t been a good friend right after the earthquake. If Annie had been knocked unconscious for much longer, she and her mother might have been trapped in that building.

“Annie, I didn’t do anything,” Nick protested. “Bushy Brows over there thought I stole an orange and chased me. I had to run. I didn’t want to get sent back to an orphanage. I hated it there.”

Annie frowned. “And?”

“And what?”

“And did you take the orange?”

Nick hesitated. He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much, but he wanted her to believe him. “No, not that time. But…but getting here from Texas, when I was on my own…sometimes I did steal oranges or whatever I could get.”

Annie waved her hand as if the other oranges didn’t matter. “If you were innocent, you have nothing to fear. Ask him for help now.”

Nick hesitated. He took off his cap to scratch his head.

“You’re afraid,” Annie announced.

Before Nick could stick his cap back on, she’d grabbed his hand and, pulling hard, dragged him to stand before the policeman.

“Excuse me, Officer Bushy Brows,” she announced in a loud voice, “we came to ask for help.”

The officer’s giant red brows looked wilder than ever. His face was streaked with sweat. In one hand, he held the same black club he’d pointed at Nick.

“Bushy Brows, eh?” he repeated. He looked at Nick and narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute, I remember that head of hair. You’re that thief who got away from me the other day.” He paused for a moment and glanced out over the city. “The other day! Seems a lifetime ago.”

“Nick didn’t take that orange, sir. He has given me his word on it,” Annie declared. She stepped closer to the officer and fixed him with her large bright eyes. “Nick’s a hero, actually. He saved Mama and me this morning. So you have to help us.”

Bushy Brows stared back at Annie. He cocked his head, as if trying to figure out what was different about her eyes. “Help you? Little girl, even if I wanted to, I can’t help anyone right now.”

Nick cleared his throat. “Sir, Annie’s mother can’t walk very well. She…she’s expecting a baby, and she’s injured. We need a wagon or an ambulance.”

Bushy Brows shook his head. “I haven’t seen a horse-drawn ambulance for hours. Folks with carts are asking a hundred dollars or more to haul a load. Everyone’s walking.”