Mission of Hope (2 page)

T
he mail had always been mundane to Nora. A perfunctory business. Hardly the stuff of heroes and lifesaving deeds. Papa had told her stories of how they'd soaked mailbags in water and beaten back the fire to save the post office. And now, the mail had become just that—lifesaving. Thanks to Papa's promise to deliver all kinds of mail—postage or no postage—mail had become the one constant. The only thing that still worked the way it had worked before. It was amazing how people clung to that.

No one, however, could have foreseen what “all kinds of mail” would be: sticks, wood, shirt cuffs and collars, tiles and margins of salvaged books or newspaper had been pressed into service as writing paper. Each morning Papa would take her to the edge of an “official” refugee camp—for several questionable “unofficial” camps had sprung up—and they would take in the mail. Standing on an older mail cart now pressed into heavy service, Nora took in heart-wrenching messages such as “We're alive” or “Eddie is gone” or “Send anything” and piled them into bags headed back to the post office.

Nora—and any other female—could only
accept
mail, for mail delivery had become a dangerous task. Arriving mail consisted of packages of food or clothes or whatever supplies could be sent quickly, and that made it highly desirable. The massive logistics of distributing such things had necessitated army escorts in order to keep the peace. Even after months of relief, so much was still missing, so much was still needed, and San Francisco was discovering just how impossible it was to sprout a city from scratch. The nearly three months of continual scrounging, loss and pain turned civil people angry, and there had even been a few close scrapes for Nora in the simple act of accepting mail. Those incidents usually made her father nervous, but today they made Nora all the more determined to help. Someone had delivered something precious to her, and she would do the same. It was not her fault the postmaster had not been blessed with a son who could better face the danger. If God had given Postmaster Longstreet a daughter, then God would have to work through a daughter. Father had always said, “We do what we can with what we have.” What better time or place to put that belief into practice?

“Please,” a young boy pleaded as he pressed a strip of cloth into Nora's hand. Its author had scrawled a message and rolled up a shirtsleeve like a scroll, tied with what looked like the remnants of a shoelace. “Martin Lovejoy, Applewood, Wisconsin” was printed on the outside. “All we got is the clothes we're wearing,” the lad said, “but Uncle Martin can send more.”

“Is your tent number on the scroll? Your uncle Martin needs to know where to send the clothes.”

“Don't know,” the boy said, turning the scroll over
in his hands. He held it up to Nora again. “I don't read. Is it?”

The scroll held none of its sender's information. “What's your tent number?”

The tiny lip trembled. “It's over there.”

The boy pointed across the street to the very large “unofficial” encampment that had taken over Dolores Park. Nora bent down and took the boy's hand. “Which…” she hesitated to even use the word in front of him, “…shack is yours?”

He pointed to a line of slapped-together shelters just across the street. “There.”

The shack stood near the edge of the camp, but still, he was so small to be here by himself. Nora looked around for someone to send back with him—the unofficial camp was not a safe place to go—but everyone was engrossed in their own tasks. The little boy looked completely helpless and more than a little desperate. It was by the edge, not forty feet away, and perhaps it wasn't as dangerous as Papa made it out to be. Taking a deep breath, Nora made a decision and hopped down off the wagon. Five minutes to help one little boy couldn't possibly put her in any danger, and her father looked too busy to even notice her absence. Nora held out her hand. “Let's walk back together and we'll sort it out. We can ask your mama to help us.”

The little boy looked away and swiped his eye bravely with the back of his other hand. “Mama's gone,” he said in an unsteady voice. “My daddy wrote it.”

Nora gripped the little hand tighter. “All the more reason that note should get through. We'll do what it takes to reach your uncle. It'll be all right, I promise. What's your name?”

“Sam.” The boy headed into a small alleyway of sorts between two of the shelters.

The official refugee camps were surprisingly orderly. Straight rows of identical tents, laid out with military precision in specific parts of the city. Pairs of white muslin boxes faced each other like tiny grassy streets.

The sights and sounds of another world rose up, though, as Nora crossed the street into the unofficial camp. An older man to her left coughed violently into a scrap of bandage he held to his mouth in place of a handkerchief. The thin material was already red-brown with blood. He looked up at her clean clothes with a weary glare. Even though the blouse she wore was three days old and the hem of her skirt was caked with dirt, she looked nothing like the people she passed. The scents—so full of smoke and char everywhere else—were also different here. Intensely, almost violently human smells: food, filth, sweat. A hundred other odors came at her with such force that she wondered how she had not smelled them from the other side of the street. She realized, with a clarity that was almost a physical shock, that her concept of how bad things were paled in comparison to
how bad things actually were.
Nora felt a powerful urge to run. To retreat back to the official, orderly camp and its neat rows of tents before the depth of the unofficial squalor overtook her like the beast in her nightmares. This felt too close to the awful hours of that first morning.

It wasn't as if Nora didn't understand the scope of the catastrophe before. She did. But she'd somehow never grasped the sheer quantity of lives destroyed. Walking down this “alley,” the real-life details pushed her into
awareness. The air seemed to choke her. Her clothes felt hot and tight.

The lad pointed to what passed for his front door, saying, “It's just there.”

Nora's brain shook itself to attention just enough to notice a small crowd had gathered at her appearance. It was not a friendly-feeling crowd—it had an air that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end—and she understood all too clearly why her father had not allowed her to venture off the cart before.

A young man to her right fitted scraps of cardboard into the holed soles of his shoes. Sam rattled off a list as he pointed to the surrounding shelters. “Elliot went for bread, Mrs. Watkins for bandages, Papa for water and me for mail.” It seemed an awful lot to manage at his young age, but he spoke the list with such an everyday dryness that Nora's heart twisted to hear it.

“Papa!” Sam ducked into the shack, calling for his father. It left Nora standing in the aisle alone, listening to the shuffle of feet come to a stop behind her. “Papa!” Sam cried again from inside the shack, but no one answered.

A man came out from the next shelter. “He went back for more water, Sam.” He eyed Nora, his expression confirming how out of place she already felt. His eyes fell to the scroll in her hand.

“I need Sam's tent number so I can add it to his father's letter.”

“Who're you? The postmaster?” It was more a hollow joke than any kind of inquiry. The man took a step closer while two more even shadier characters came out from between two battered structures on the other side of the alley.

“My father's office is doing everything they can.” She had to work to keep a calm voice.

“He is, is he? And how about
you?
” A skinny, greasy-looking young man smiled as he wandered closer. “You doin' all you can?”

“Of course,” Nora answered, until the glint in his eyes turned the question into something she didn't want to answer. The wind picked up and made a shiver chase down her neck.

The man twisted a piece of string around his fingers in a fidgety gesture. “Really?” He stretched out the word in a most unsavory way. “You sure?”

“I am,” came a deep voice from behind Nora. She spun around to see Quinn Freeman step solidly between her and the leering man. He hoisted a large piece of steel in one hand with a defensive air. “I'm really sure, Ollie. Want to find out how sure I am?”

“Charity's a virtue, Freeman.” Ollie grinned, but it was more of a sneer.

“Just make sure it's virtue you got in mind. Miss Longstreet was just helping out, I imagine, and I'll make sure she gets back to the mail wagon safe and sound, don't you worry.” Quinn nodded at Nora, taking the scroll from her as if to personally see to its security.

“You do that.” Ollie kicked a stone in his path and started walking back down the alley. “You just go ahead and do that.”

With Ollie's retreat, Nora felt the rest of the gathered crowd sink back to wherever they had come from. She let out the breath she had been holding. “It seems I owe you yet another debt, Mr. Freeman.”

He put down the piece of steel and handed her back Sam's scroll. “I'm not so sure it was a smart idea for
you to wander over here like that. Even to help Sam. Things can get a little…rough around here if you're not careful.”

“My father would agree heartily. He'll probably be rather sore at me for trying. I hadn't realized…thank you again. First the locket, and now this. Surely there's some way to thank you.”

He smiled the engaging grin he'd shown her back at the rally. His eyes were a light brown, an almost golden color that picked up the straw shades of his hair. He had a strong, square jaw that framed his easy grin—the sort of face at home with a frequent smile. “Like I said, Miss Longstreet, I was happy to see
something
find its way home.” The sadness in the edge of his voice—the sadness that caught the edge of so many voices all around her—undercut the cheer of his words. “But there is something I'd like to show you. Something you ought to see before you leave with Ollie's version of how things are in here.”

“Do you live nearby?” She realized what a ludicrous question that was, as if he had a house just up the street instead of a shack somewhere in this makeshift camp.

He tucked his hands into his pockets and nodded over his left shoulder. “Two rows down. The charming cottage on the left.” When Nora blushed, feeling like an insensitive clod for asking such a useless question, he merely chuckled. “It's okay, really. I've seen worse. My uncle Mike says we might get back into a house next month. Just come see this and I'll walk you back across the street before your papa begins to worry.”

He led Nora through one more row of shacks to where a cluster of children gathered. The gaggle of tots surged toward Quinn when they saw him, parting the crowd
to reveal a rough-hewn teeter-totter pieced together out of scrap and an old barrel. She knew, instantly, that the makeshift toy had been Quinn's doing.

“Mister Kin, Mister Kin!” a chubby blond-haired girl greeted. Nora guessed it to be her approximation of Mr. Freeman's given name. “It works!”

Quinn hunched down and tenderly touched the tot's nose. “Told you it would.” Nora smiled. How long had it been since she had heard children's laughter?

The girl giggled. “You're smart.”

“Only just. Go ahead and take another turn, then. It'll be time to get on back to your ma soon, anyway.”

Nora stood awed for a moment. Quinn Freeman had handed her the smallest patch of happiness, but it did the trick. “Thank you.” She looked up at him, for he was a good foot taller than she if only a few years older, and thought that he was indeed clever to recognize a slapped-together toy would do so much good. “I did need to see this—you were right.”

“Most people are afraid to really build anything here, thinking it'll make it feel like we'll be here forever, but even I know lads with nothing to do usually find something bad to fill their time.”

“You'll be here another month?” Many families were talking of pulling up stakes and starting over somewhere else just as soon as circumstances would allow. Others refused to even think past their next meal.

“That's my guess. Don't pay much to peer too far into the future these days. God's got His hands full in the present, I'd say.”

“He does.” And he talks about God. In a
calm
way. Many people—her own family pastor Reverend Mansfield included—were shouting about the awful judgment
God had “sent down” upon the sinful city of San Francisco. It wasn't so hard a thought to hold. With dust and destruction everywhere, it was easy to wonder if the Lord Almighty hadn't indeed turned His head away.

By this time they'd reached the mail wagon, and Papa was standing with a sour and alarmed look on his face. “Thank heavens you're all right. Just what do you think…?”

“I've seen her back safely, Mr. Longstreet, and told her not to venture over here like that again,” Quinn cut in.

“Papa, this is Mr. Freeman. The man who returned Annette's locket. Now you can thank him in person.”

The announcement took the wind out of Papa's scorn. Her father stepped down off the mail wagon and extended a hand to Quinn. “Seems I owe you.”

The two men shook hands. “You don't owe me a thing. I was glad to help.”

Papa looked at Nora. “Don't you go needing help again. I'll not let you come back if you wander off like that again. It's only by God's grace that Mr. Freeman was here to keep you from any trouble.”

“Grace indeed,” Quinn said, shooting a sideways smile at Nora as he tipped his hat at Papa. “Don't let it happen again, Miss Longstreet.” As he turned, he added quietly over Nora's shoulder, “At least not until tomorrow around two.”

Nora climbed back on the wagon to join her father. Perhaps the mail would not be so perfunctory from now on.