A City Tossed and Broken (13 page)

Yet she saw my trouble in my eyes and took me aside to say that if I ever needed help, she could be someone to call on.

Now I know what my father means about “honest eyes.” I think of Mrs. Flynn, and I think of Jake, and all I want to do is confess and make things right.

As we drove through the city, we saw from the comfort of an automobile the wreckage and destruction. There were streets we passed without a house standing. Sometimes there would be a flight of stone steps leading nowhere. The ruins still smoked despite the rain. There was a sweetish smoky smell to the air, unpleasant and sick-making.

Hundreds, thousands, have lost their homes and now live in tents. Who can count how many lives have been lost?

No one in this city has escaped. Even if they still have a roof over their heads.

Even though the smell of death and fire was everywhere, I didn’t see despair. I saw families camping outside on their lawns. Stoves set up on sidewalks. Children running through the streets. A man playing a cheerful tune on a piano dragged onto a blackened lawn.

I am sure that we also passed those who will try to profit by this calamity, who looted, who were cowards, who did not help their neighbor but only themselves.

Do I want to be among their number?

The hours I spent fighting the fire were the hardest I’ve ever worked. The exhaustion was overwhelming and yet we kept going, bringing water, slapping out sparks with carpets and brooms and sometimes even our hands. I have the burns to prove it.

I wish I could get back to how I felt that day. That I had a purpose that was real and fine.

When we crossed Van Ness, one side remained with its grand houses and the other side was just dirt and crumbling walls and charred wood. We drove past and here on the east side we saw just bare hills. The houses that remained stood out like broken teeth. Mr. Crandall just stopped the car for a moment while we took it in. Then we climbed the hill and around us was just . . . nothing, collapsed walls and a pile of bricks here or there. The great emptiness we saw was inside each of us. Even Mrs. Crandall stopped talking.

Every house was gone on Sacramento Street. The only thing left of the Sump mansion was the blackened and twisted gate. On the crown of Nob Hill, only the Flood mansion survived on California, and that because it was built of stone. The interior was burned out. The gleaming white marble of the new Fairmont Hotel was blackened with soot.

It is all gone. The buildings downtown that survived are black with smoke and mere shells.

We knew this had happened, but seeing it took the breath from us.

Mr. Crandall slowly drove up Russian Hill to Green Street. When he pulled up in front of the house Mrs. Crandall burst into tears.

The house inside is full of broken pottery and overturned chairs and the walls are blackened, but the Crandalls are better off than most and I hope they know it.

April 24, 1906

Tuesday

At lunch I was pushing around my food on my plate when Mr. Crandall came in late and took his seat at the table, apologizing to us and shaking his head.

“This is an extraordinary disaster, I must say,” he said, picking up his fork. “I can’t get cash from my bank or milk delivered or cook a meal inside my house, and yet somehow I find a deliveryman has located me and is delivering a large crate to our front yard.”

Mrs. Crandall hurried to the window. I craned my neck and could see from my seat the enormous wooden crate lying on the lawn.

“Apparently the man is one of those souls who knows his duty and is determined to fulfill it no matter if the world has crashed down upon his ears. He drove the crate over from Alameda, where it has been sitting since the earthquake. I wonder he doesn’t have anything better to do, but I expect he came so that I would pay him.”

Mrs. Crandall asked what was in the crate.

“It was sent from Philadelphia — a painting that was going to hang in the study of the mansion. I’m sure you know it, Lily.”

Mrs. Crandall patted my hand and said something about how lovely it was that at least I will have familiar things around me.

“Much too large for our house, I’m afraid. I don’t know quite what to do with it, but we do want to get it indoors. We’ll have to uncrate it soon.”

“This just proves that we need a bigger house,” Mrs. Crandall said. “Lily should live in the style she is accustomed to.”

“I find it unseemly to speak of building a larger house when so many have none,” Mr. Crandall said. But his gaze turned thoughtful. “Still, you are right, my dear. It is never too soon to start planning. There will be those needing cash for parcels they own and will be willing to sell. . . .”

“I do not think it wrong to plan for the future,” Mrs. Crandall said. “San Francisco must be rebuilt, and quickly. Why shouldn’t we plan? I’m only thinking of Lily. We need to provide her with what dear Mr. and Mrs. Sump would want. We could rebuild on the same site. Lily would have her home back. Something more to our taste, of course.”

A glance traveled between them. Mr. Crandall smoothed his mustache and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “We must think of Lily.”

I stand now at my bedroom window, looking down.

The painting Mrs. Sump spoke of back in Philadelphia. The painting she had posed for. With Lily.

When Mr. Crandall uncrates it, he will see an image of a girl of my size and shape. But she will not be me.

I am close to panic now, but I can also feel something pulsing underneath my fear: relief.

I don’t know what will happen to me or where I should go or how I should get there, but I think I must run away. The question is, where to?

April 25, 1906

Wednesday

Diary, you are not going to believe what happened. It seemed a miracle.

This morning we were out of food and there is no more in the stores, which are all burned out anyway. There are plenty of provisions in the parks and squares, so I offered to wait in the line for whatever they are giving away. Mrs. Crandall gratefully accepted. Her cook and maid still have not returned, and she hates doing the housework and waiting in the lines for food and water.

It is a long way to carry provisions from Golden Gate Park but there is a provision line set up in Jefferson Square, which is closer. I waited in the line for two hours. I didn’t mind. It was a fine day and there is so much to look at. I was able to think about my own dilemma but also see other people in worse shape than I was.

My plan was to try to get to Golden Gate Park before dark, where I could lose myself among the refugees. Until then I must act as normal as possible. When Mr. Crandall unpacks the painting he will know why I left. He will be gone most of the day, in meetings with the committees being set up for the rebuilding of the city, and he told Mrs. Crandall that he will not be home for supper. Still, he could uncrate the painting tonight or tomorrow.

As I turned away with my basket I saw a tall man standing still in the middle of the square, scanning the crowd. My heart stopped.

He must have sensed me more than saw me, standing stock-still while people swirled around me, because he swiveled and his gaze met mine.

Papa.

“Minnie!”

I heard my name on his lips, my very own name, and it was like sweet honey to hear it.

We ran to each other and he swept me up in his arms. He smelled like smoke and his hands were grimy and I could see soot in the lines around his eyes. He was the best sight I have ever seen.

He held me against him, murmuring over and over, “My girl, my girl.” When I pulled away his eyes were full of tears. “I thought you were . . . I heard . . .”

And then I had to wait while he composed himself. I saw the great love he had for me. I’ll never doubt it again.

“I heard the maid had been killed,” he said. A sob escaped him. “I didn’t believe it, I
couldn’t
—”

“But why are you here?” I asked him. It seemed such a miracle. I thought I had run out of surprises.

We sat on the grass and he told me everything. He had been one day behind me — he arrived the day after the quake. Back in Philadelphia he tried to find me and Mama, but she left no forwarding address. Finally he got the address of her rooming house from friends. She gave him Andrew Jewell’s card — actually, she threw it at him.

How many times,
he said to me,
can one woman forgive?
She said she was out of forgiveness.

So he tracked down Andrew Jewell and discovered that he’d departed for California, leaving a substantial hotel bill. Associates were also looking for him. They called him “Slippery Andy.” This supposedly wealthy young businessman was a gambler, a cardsharp.
A common criminal!
Papa said, shaking his head.

“I should have known,” he said. “I’ve seen enough of his type in my time.”

He knew then that he’d been cheated in that game. “Maybe I deserved it for playing at all, Min,” he said. “So I decided to use my last monies to buy a railroad ticket. I figured I could get a job out here, keep an eye on you, and try to find Jewell. Instead I arrived the day after the quake and had quite a time trying to get into San Francisco to find you. I was able to send your mother a telegram from Oakland, telling her I was looking.”

He has been looking for me for almost a week. When he saw the Sump mansion burned and heard a maid died, he almost lost hope. But he didn’t stop looking.

“Thank the Lord I didn’t tell your mother what I learned,” he said. “We must get a letter to her first thing. I heard they have the mail running now, and you don’t even need a stamp. She must be frantic with worry for you. And we’ll find a way to get you a train ticket. . . .”

I started to cry and could not stop. I sobbed and sobbed until the ash on his coat mixed with my tears and we were covered in a gray film.

“I can’t go back. . . . I can’t face her. . . .”

“But why not,
ma petite
?”

“Because I can’t face her eyes.”

And then I told him everything.

He dropped his head in his hands during the telling, and I couldn’t see his expression. I was afraid of what he would say. He didn’t speak for a long time. He kept his hand over his eyes, his mouth a line.

I thought he was angry at me, but I saw tears slip through his fingers.

“Look what I have done to you,” he said. “Forgive me.”

Diary, I love my father. I forgive him. But I do not trust him.

I told him about the ledger, and the cash, and the bonds. What if it’s too much temptation for him?

Did I get myself in a worse hole?

I have to fix this.

I think I have a plan. But first, here is what happened next.

We left the food and water with a family my father had come to trust, who were staying in Jefferson Square. Then we set out for Golden Gate Park. I knew Andrew Jewell was staying there.

The tents are set up in rows that stretch as far as the eye can see. It is all very orderly. Thousands of people here, so how can we find him?

My father stood, scanning the tents. “Not a problem,
chérie
. Where there are this many men, there will be a game. We just need to ask a few likely suspects.”

We found him near the Japanese gardens, in the middle of a poker game at a table drawn up near a cypress tree. Some of the men looked as though they had been playing all night. Papa just stood and waited until Mr. Jewell looked up and saw him. He looked surprised but covered it up quickly.

“Well, if it isn’t the Frenchman. Can I deal you in, Jock? Fellas, this is Jock from Philly, a good man and an able player.”

“No more playing for me, Slippery Andy,” Papa said.

The men at the table eyed Jewell a little nervously now that they heard his nickname.

“I think I’ll fold,” Jewell said.

He rose from the table and followed my father a few paces away.

“What are you doing here, Jock?” he asked.

“Came looking for my daughter.”

“Lucky you found her. Lots of people missing.”

“Found her, yes, and in better circumstances than I left her.”

“So . . . you know.”

“I know there’s an attorney who thinks she’s Lily Sump. It’s a good scheme, and I hear you’re looking for a piece of it.”

“Well, I thought I’d step in. Little girl like that can’t work a con this big by herself.”

My father clapped him on the back. “Ah, you’re a good man, Jewell, to look out for my little girl.” He squeezed his shoulder.

Something heavy passed between them, some kind of exchange that had menace in it.

“What are you thinking, then?” Jewell asked my father.

“I’m thinking a two-thirds split. Seeing that you owe me a tavern.”

I could see the calculation in Jewell’s eyes as he looked from Papa to me.

“I don’t owe you anything, Bonner, but I guess you’ve a right to see to your own interests, and your daughter’s. Plenty to go around.”

“Good, because there’s a change in plans. Crandall is on the verge of discovering that she’s not Lily Sump after all. It appears that a painting has been delivered and he’s planning on uncrating it tonight or tomorrow. So we haven’t much time.”

“There’s a ledger —”

“If you think he’ll give in because of some book full of numbers, you’re not as sharp as I thought you were, Andy,” my father said. “Sure, there could be an investigation, but how far will it get when the mayor himself is corrupt? Crandall will whistle up a chorus of ‘I Don’t Care’ right in your face. But if you’re smart and come with me, we can all share in the bounty, thanks to my little girl here.”

“I’m listening.”

“She buried a strongbox outside the mansion. She told me what’s in it. Cash. Lots of it. And she described what sounded to me like bearer bonds. Who cares about the ledger when there’s a possible million in that box? You know men like Sump always have walking-away money. Well, this is it.”

Jewell’s eyes gleamed. “You sure?”

“I’m sure. You in?”

“I’m in.”

So we made a plan. We meet at the site of the burned Sump house at 4 a.m. That’s the empty hour, Papa said — when the early risers are still in bed, and those who stay out late are already home.