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Authors: Deborah Hopkinson

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BOOK: Into the Firestorm
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It was funny. Up to now, everything—what he ate, how much food they had, even whether he went to school or not—was tied to cotton. But here in the city, most folks probably didn’t even know what a cotton plant looked like or what it felt like in your hands. Why, most likely they bought their clothes ready-made from a store without even thinking where the cloth came from.

I could go back,
Nick thought.
If I can’t find a job here after all, if Bushy Brows or some other policeman catches me, I could go to an orphanage or some poor farm. Or I could go back to the fields on my own.

He was good at picking cotton. He could earn his own living. Living in tents with other migrant workers, maybe working his way back up to a sharecrop…

Nick looked down at his hands, callused from field work. Hours and hours, days and days. Hot, flat fields.

No. Nick shook his head. No matter what, he didn’t want to look up into the same empty wide sky again.

Here the sky wasn’t empty. It was broken by tall buildings that rose high into the air. The newspaper building—the Call Building, people called it—must be two or three hundred feet high, Nick thought. You glimpsed the sky and the sun between the buildings, but the sun didn’t press down on you. People had made this city. It was lively and noisy and full.

Whatever happened, he didn’t want to go back to the fields.

P
ARIS OF THE
P
ACIFIC

Just when Nick was ready to give up waiting in front of the stationery store, a man turned the corner. He strode jauntily down the street, wearing a sharp gray suit, a round derby hat, and shiny black shoes. He was whistling merrily, tipping his hat at people he passed. By his side trotted the most beautiful golden dog Nick had ever seen.

As the pair strode by, Nick couldn’t help smiling. The man threw a quick, quizzical glance at him, raising his eyebrows into little sideways question marks. Then, still whistling, he stopped in front of the stationery store. He drew out a key from his pocket with a flourish and put it in the lock in one quick motion.

Nick didn’t move. He kept smiling. He could feel his palms getting sweaty.

The man stopped whistling and turned around. “Hullo. Scat, kid! I’m sorry, but I’ve nothing to eat. This isn’t a grocery or a charity kitchen, you know. We sell paper and pens, not pumpkins and porridge.”

Nick flushed. At that moment the golden dog trotted over and planted himself on Nick’s shoes. His feathery tail whisked back and forth on the sidewalk with a soft, swishing sound. The dog stared up at Nick with friendly brown eyes. He whined a little, deep in his throat. Then he opened his mouth and smiled right at Nick.

Nick grinned and scratched the dog’s head. “I think he likes me.”

“Humph,” said the dog’s owner.

Nick looked more closely at the man. He had dark brown eyes, set wide apart. They gave him a surprised look even when his eyebrows weren’t raised.
Maybe that’s why he whistles,
Nick thought.
He looks like someone who has a hard time being serious.

The man swung the door open. “Nice try, but I’m not impressed. This dog likes everyone, don’t you, Shake? And why not? You’re the friendliest dog in San Francisco. I believe you’d trot home with every customer if I let you. Come on.”

Nick moved forward.

“Not you. I was speaking to Shake here. As I explained just seconds ago, I don’t have any food for beggars.”

Nick took a breath. “Don’t give me food. Give me a job.”

“A job? Good heavens. What kind of a job? I don’t need a helper!” The man seemed genuinely startled.

Nick could feel his heart beating hard. “But you do.”

The man’s mouth fell open. His eyes grew wider than ever. “I do?”

“Yes, sir. You do. You need me, sir. I’ve been standing here for at least fifteen minutes, waiting.” Nick spoke quickly, the words tumbling out. “Why, suppose I was a rich gentleman in need of a new pen or a journal for my business. Or a clerk from that big building down over on Sansome Street. Or what if I was a lady who wanted a beautiful inkwell? What then?”

“What then?” the man repeated, striding across the floor to the counter.

“Well, you’d have lost a customer then, wouldn’t you?” Nick said, stepping through the doorway. He took off his hat and felt his hair spill out onto his forehead. “Please, sir. Why don’t you try me out for just a few days? I’m a hard worker. I can sweep and clean up. I can do the deliveries while you make important sales.”

Nick crumpled his cap in his hands. He wasn’t sure if the man was even listening, but at least he hadn’t thrown him out—yet.

“I like drawing and paper and writing. My penmanship is good. Real good. Even Miss Reedy said so, back in Texas. She had an inkwell, too, like those shiny ones in your window. Maybe I could help demonstrate your pens and your ink.” Nick searched his mind for something, anything, to say. “Why, I’d even like to learn how to write fancy. What is it called? Oh, calli…calli…”

“Calligraphy?” suggested the man, a slight grin turning the corner of one side of his mouth.

“Yes, that’s it. Calli…calligraphy.” Nick stumbled over the unfamiliar word. “It’s that beautiful, fancy writing, like art, like what the Chinese people do with their…designs.”

At last, Nick ran out of breath. The man walked over and stared down at him. Nick couldn’t read the expression on his face.

“Characters.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“They are called characters, not designs. Chinese characters.”

The man went to a table in the corner, took out a journal, and began to make some notes. Nick stood quietly, waiting, trying not to breathe too loudly.

“Quite a salesman, aren’t you?” the man said after a moment. “What are you, kid, about ten years old?”

Nick drew himself up taller. “I’ll be twelve this month—April twenty-third.”

“Hmmm…Today’s Monday, the sixteenth. That’s next week. I’d say you don’t have a very pleasant birthday coming up. No, it’s not my idea of how to spend a birthday at all, sleeping in an alley and so forth. Which, I gather from the look and smell of you, is what you have been doing.”

The man put down his pen, turned around, and folded his arms. He leaned back against the table, crossing his shiny shoes, and considered Nick. “Run away from home? South of the Slot somewhere?”

“I didn’t run away from home, exactly. I…I came from the fields,” Nick sputtered. He supposed a county poor farm was the fields.

“You came from the fields?” Mr. Pat Patterson turned toward his dog. “Did you hear that, boy? He came from the fields!”

Nick tried again. “From a county poor farm in Texas. An orphanage, really. I was sent there after I lost my gran. But I’ve wanted to come here for a long time. So I ran away.”

“Why here?” Mr. Pat Patterson spread his hands wide.

“I just…I had a feeling about it. Like the city was a bright light that I needed to get to…Like I belong here.”

When he tried to put it into words, it sounded silly. But Nick went on anyway. “I want to live in San Francisco because it’s the Paris of the Pacific.”

The man threw his head back and laughed out loud, a bright sharp guffaw, his brown eyes twinkling. Shake barked along with him, a wide grin lighting his face. “So, you came from the fields to live here, in the Paris of the Pacific. Let me ask you, then: how
do
we know where we belong?”

Nick stared at the floor, his mind a blank. No one had ever asked him such a question. At first he couldn’t imagine that the man actually expected an answer. But when he looked up, Mr. Pat Patterson was still staring at him, eyebrows raised.

“Well, sir. I think maybe people are like plants, at least a little.” Nick struggled to find the words. “Different plants need different places. Like cotton. Cotton needs warm weather. It wouldn’t grow in a chilly, foggy place like San Francisco. Today, this morning, anyway, it’s been nice. But there’ve been some days when a cold, chill mist seems to settle over everything.”

Nick shivered a little, thinking about how hard it had been to get warm on those mornings. “Cotton wouldn’t like that kind of weather at all. It wouldn’t grow. So, maybe…maybe people are like that, too. Some places just fit us better than others.”

Mr. Pat Patterson didn’t laugh this time. He looked Nick up and down. “At this moment, it doesn’t appear that this glittering city where you think you belong is treating you so well. We’re right near Gold Street, you know,” he went on. “Lots of people have come here looking for gold. But they haven’t always found it.”

Nick shifted his feet and looked down at his hands. They were dirty, with dark ridges under his fingernails. He should have tried to clean himself up better. This wasn’t going to work. Mr. Pat Patterson was toying with him, like a cat with a field mouse. Nick twisted his hat hard.

“Have you ever worked, young fellow?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve worked.” Nick looked up then. He squared his shoulders and looked straight into the man’s eyes. His voice was firm. “I’ve worked since I could walk. Once—once I even picked a hundred and seven pounds of cotton in a single day.”

A H
UNDRED
P
OUNDS

That bag of cotton had been the heaviest one Nick had ever dragged behind him. By sundown on that last day, when folks started weighing up, Nick felt sure he’d have good news to bring to Gran.

Mr. Hank, the boss, had been waiting by the wagon where the weigher was hooked up. Mr. Hank was a thin rail of a man with a sharp voice. His eyes were small and close together. Sometimes Mr. Hank stared at Nick so hard he felt guilty, even if he hadn’t done anything wrong.

Nick had hung back, wanting to pick the last row clean.
This bag is so heavy it’s just got to be a hundred pounds,
he thought.

“Come on, kid. I ain’t got all night,” Mr. Hank bellowed.

Nick made his way awkwardly to the wagon, his breath coming in short pants. Usually a few people slumped nearby or sat on the ground, hoping Mr. Hank would give them a ride back to camp.

That night the crowd seemed larger than usual. Ten or twelve people stood solemnly together. They stared at Nick, almost as if they’d been waiting for him to finish.

Nick wondered how they knew this was an important weighing for him.

He imagined folks bursting into applause.
See that skinny boy with the curly hair?
they’d say.
You’d never know it to look at him, but he sure can pick!

Nick spotted Rebecca, leaning against her mother. Elsie Turner was a bony, rough-faced woman in a faded blue dress. Her look was hard, but she’d been real kind to Gran. Rebecca pointed at Nick, tugged at her mother’s skirt, and whispered something her mother bent to hear.

“You sure took your time. You been slacking off today, kid?” Mr. Hank grumbled, reaching out for Nick’s sack.

Mr. Hank, Nick thought, was the kind who could watch you pick from morning till night and still suspect you of weighing down your sack with stones or wet cotton to make it heavier.

“No, sir,” said Nick, slipping the strap of the bag off his right shoulder. “Picked steady. I want to show my grandmother I can pick a hundred pounds.”

“You’re the Dray kid,” Mr. Hank said then, lifting Nick’s bag onto the weighing hook.

“Yes, sir. Nick Dray.”

Mr. Hank nodded to a stocky, red-faced man Nick hadn’t noticed before. The man stepped forward, a wan smile pasted on his lips.

Nick wondered what the man was doing there. He seemed out of place. He wasn’t dressed for field work, for one thing. He wore dark pants and suspenders, with his belly bulging through the buttons of his shirt. Sweat poured down the sides of his brown hat. The man pulled out a white handkerchief, shook it, and then wiped his forehead.

Mr. Hank nodded again to the stranger. “This is the one, Jim. I ain’t going to be responsible. You go with Mr. Kelly here, Nick. He’ll bring you to the county poor farm where you belong. They can take orphans there.”

Nick stared blankly at the man. County poor farm! Orphans!

Mr. Kelly put his handkerchief in his pocket. He grabbed Nick’s elbow. “Come along, son. You’re done here.”

At first Nick didn’t take it in—and then he didn’t want to.
Something awful has happened to Gran. Mr. Kelly is here for me.

Nick pulled his arm away hard and turned to the boss. “The cotton. How much? How much cotton did I pick?” It was hard to get the words out. “Gran said she’d give me two bits if I picked a hundred pounds.”

Mr. Hank stepped back and squinted at the numbers on the scale. “Hmmm…hundred and seven pounds. I’ll deduct your pay from what your grandmother owed me. I lost money on you folks, I hope you know.”

Nick’s head felt light. He took a step back from the men.

Mr. Kelly cleared his throat and reached out a puffy hand to grab Nick’s elbow. Nick shook him off and looked at Rebecca’s mother. “Gran had a fever, that’s all. She’s strong.”

I should have done more. It’s my fault. I should have known.
Suddenly Nick felt like he couldn’t breathe. He’d made a terrible mistake. So terrible he couldn’t bear it. He’d thought all he had to do was pick a hundred pounds of cotton to make Gran feel better, to cheer her up. But that wasn’t any help at all. It wasn’t what she had needed.

“She
was
strong, boy,” said Mrs. Turner, moving her hand wearily to push a wisp of thin hair from her eyes. “But this afternoon, her heart just gave out. It was her time. You couldn’t have known. She’s earned her rest.”

Nick shook his head. He wanted to protest, to scream:
I shoulda done more, tried to get a doctor, get her help, get her away.

Mrs. Turner put something in Rebecca’s hand. “Go on, honey.”

Rebecca walked slowly across the open space. She stuck out her arm. It was sunburned and scratched. “Here’s fifty cents. Two quarters. One’s from your gran. She gave it to Ma this afternoon before she passed and said it was for you. The other is from us.”

Rebecca panted a little. It was probably the longest speech of her life.

Nick held out his hand, and Rebecca dropped the two coins into it. She stared at them for a minute and sighed. It was a lot of money to her. Rebecca turned to look back at her mother, who nodded her on. “Go on, honey, say the rest of it to the boy.”

“Ma says to say you were a good grandson. And we’re very, very sorry for your loss,” Rebecca blurted. She ran back and hid her face in her mother’s dress.

Nick closed his fist tight around the coins. He turned to Mr. Hank, who was busy adding up numbers. Adding his profits for the day. Gran’s death meant nothing to him. The boss hadn’t called Nick out of the field. Didn’t want to lose a day of picking, most likely.

“Last row!” Nick spat. “That’s the last row of cotton I’ll ever pick, mister.”

Mr. Hank snorted, then laughed. “Last row? I don’t think so. What else you gonna do? Can’t start a fire with wet kindling, kid. Once a picker, always a picker.”

BOOK: Into the Firestorm
8.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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