Calico Palace (80 page)

The plaza itself was speedily filling up with a variety of things as men dragged their possessions out of buildings on fire or in danger of it, and piled them in the open square—bales and barrels and trunks, beds, tables, mirrors, paintings, safes, account books, anything they could grab and move. Through her own confusion Marny found herself wondering how anybody was going to find his own stuff tomorrow, even if the looters had not carried it off and hidden it somewhere else.

On the south side of the plaza, to their left, they heard a crash as the walls of the old City Hotel tumbled in. The other buildings on Clay Street were blazing wrecks. But to their right, they saw that the fire had not reached Washington Street. The firemen were sending streams of water from the plaza reservoir toward the
Alta
office and Pocket’s library and Blossom’s flower garden and the other buildings on that side. Hiram and Kendra and Marny pushed along Kearny Street toward Washington, bumping into people and being bumped, but somehow fighting their way.

The air was hot like a blast from a desert. Sparks and fragments of burning stuff were blowing wildly in the wind, but the El Dorado, at the corner of Washington and Kearny, had not caught fire. Neither had the Verandah, on the opposite corner. Roofs of both buildings were astir with men fighting to keep them safe. In Washington Street, all the way up the hill, other men were hitching mules to wagons and throwing in their valuables, yelling with rage when the fire engines got in their way. The wind turned their words into senseless tumult.

The wind was still blowing the fire eastward. Hiram and Kendra and Marny pushed their way into Washington Street and began to struggle up the hill, westward toward Dupont. The wind blew violently against them. Behind them the wind was sending the fire through the block on Montgomery Street where stood Hiram’s bank.

They were not talking; their fight to get up the hill left them no strength for it. A man howling in panic rushed out of Blossom’s house, gave a blank look at the glare, and then, as though out of his senses, he dashed down into the fire instead of away from it. At the same time they heard a fireman exclaim, “Hiram! Thank God you’re here to help us.” He thrust a length of hose toward Hiram’s hand.

Hiram stopped. Up to this minute his only thought had been to get Kendra to a place of refuge. But he too belonged to a fire company. If other men could ignore their own concerns in the common peril, so could he. He said, “Marny, take the cats.”

As she grasped the carrying handle Hiram took the hose and went to work. Shouting to be heard above the uproar he ordered, “Go on up the hill! Don’t stop for anything—keep going—go
into
the wind!”

Through the screams and crashes the girls said “Yes,” but he probably did not hear. They fought their way upward. As they struggled along they caught sight of Pocket, busy with a hose. He saw them, and like Hiram he called, “Keep going, girls! Up the hill—into the wind!” They went on. The hut bumped against Marny’s knee with every step she took. Panting, sweating, stumbling, she and Kendra pushed on up the hill.

The whole street was a jumble—people, mules, wagons, wheelbarrows. A few other women were climbing the hill, some of them carrying babies; and many men, bent nearly double under the loads they carried on their backs. Nobody seemed to notice other people except to shove them out of the way.

Around them roared the wind.

In San Francisco they were used to the wind, this exasperating wind that blew off men’s hats and whirled women’s skirts around their knees, raised the dust clouds and spattered sand against the windowpanes, and at night woke sleepers with its rattling of doors and shutters. They were used to the wind. Many of them even liked it, and laughed at the tricks it played.

But tonight the wind was not teasing them or playing tricks on them. The wind was ravaging their city like a maniac army. The wind had no mercy. Borne by the wind, the fire roared in triumph. Its thunder was so loud that it made all other sounds indistinct. The fire was louder than the shouts of the fireman and the hissing of the hose, louder than the crash of bricks and timber, louder than the screams of panic in the street. It even blurred the death shrieks of men and women who were caught in burning buildings and could not get out. Tomorrow, when the facts began to be told, people who had lived through the fire were going to hear about “fireproof” iron doors that had not been properly fitted. The doors had warped in the heat, so that they could not be opened, and the victims trapped behind them had been cooked as though in iron ovens.

Marny and Kendra slogged up Washington Street. Slowly, they made their way across Dupont, across Stockton, across Powell, up and up the hill. They were gasping, coughing, fighting the mob around them and fighting the wind. The wind met them fiercely. But they were thankful, for as long as it blew into their faces it was driving the fire away from them. Behind them they heard the fire and the hideous confusion of the other sounds under its roaring. They dared not stop and look back.

At last, when the street had faded to a weed-grown track, they came to the high ridge that overlooked the city. Gasping with weariness, they paused. Marny set Geraldine’s hut on the ground, and she and Kendra sank, almost fell, among the weeds beside it. They half sat, half lay there, huddled together, panting.

Here on this bleak height the only signs of habitation were a few scattered shanties, creaking and groaning in the wind. Milling about among the shanties were other people who like themselves had fled the fire. Some sat on the ground, not speaking or moving, staring ahead of them with blank faces and glassy eyes as though made idiotic by shock. Some were running around in panic, sobbing and wailing in broken words. Men stood by their carts or piles of goods, guns in their hands, on the watch for looters, while the would-be looters hopefully prowled around.

Marny and Kendra were only half aware of the crowd around them. What they really saw, downhill in front of them, was San Francisco on fire. They saw it, and heard it, like the ruin of a nightmare city. This fire was so vast that, as they learned later, it lit the sky in Monterey, ninety miles down the coast. By that tremendous light they could see everything as clearly as though by the sun of noon.

For the first few minutes it all seemed a formless pandemonium of flame and smoke and crashing walls and the rolling thunder of the fire itself. Then gradually they began to see what the terrible light was showing them. They saw walls like shells around flames that burned inside and streamed out through the windows. They saw other walls crack like glass, and totter, and fall to pieces, breaking the bones of anyone who might be in the way. For long stretches on the streets everything had already been wrecked, and the streets now showed nothing but piles of fiery embers.

Marny sat with one arm across Geraldine’s hut, protectively, the other arm around her knees. Shivering with dread, she watched the spreading horror. Dwight had promised her the Calico Palace would be fireproof. But could any structure on earth stand unscathed in the midst of such havoc as this?

She had thought she was too tired to move. But she had to see more than she was seeing now. She struggled to her feet and looked across the roofs that went like steps down the hill. She turned her head, her eyes searching. The roofs hid part of the plaza area, but she could see Kearny Street.

Kearny Street was blazing. But among the flames were some walls that had not fallen, and one of these was the front wall of the Calico Palace. How much was left behind that front wall Marny could not tell.

The walls of the El Dorado were still standing, and so were those of its rival the Verandah. For all she knew the insides of the buildings might be gutted; still, the solid look of the walls gave her hope. But the Parker House was a smoking wreck. Next door to the Parker House was the magnificent Union Hotel where Hiram lived, five stories high and long believed safe. As Marny looked, the front wall of the Union Hotel cracked slantwise from corner to corner. In another moment the wall crashed forward into the street, scattering thousands of red-hot bricks and sending up a sheet of flame that seemed almost to split the sky.

It occurred to Marny that now Hiram was in the same state as herself on the night of the Christmas fire: he had nothing to wear. The compulsive line began again. —I’ve been through it all before.

And the Calico Palace was only two doors away from the Union Hotel.

Marny dropped her head till her chin met her chest. “Please, God!” she whispered. “Don’t make me go through that again!”

But after a moment or two she looked up; she could not help looking. The fire had ravaged everything on the Clay Street side of the plaza, but Marny gave a sigh of joy as she saw that the firemen were still keeping it way from Washington Street. This meant that Pocket’s library was still there, and the office of the
Alta California,
and Blossom’s flower garden. Marny wondered how the plaza preacher was going to explain why the Lord had let the fire destroy so many places of respectable business while it spared the fanciest brothel in town. She saw men hurrying in and out of the
Alta
office, risking their lives to bring the facts of the fire so the paper could give a true account in the morning. —Brave men, she thought.

All through the burning district she could see a great many men, their movements clear in the great light. She saw men in frenzy tearing about like puppets pulled by crazy hands; and other men, brave men, fighting to save as much of the city as they could. They were holding hose that shot jets of water upon blazing walls; they were rescuing injured people who could not help themselves; in the streets ahead of the fire’s progress they were sending off blasts of gunpowder, trying to make gaps too wide for the flames to cross. Those brave men were offering all they had. When the fire had burnt itself out some of them would no longer be alive.

As she thought of this, Marny thought of Hiram. She turned and looked at Kendra, curled up among the weeds. Kendra had put a hand over her eyes as though to shut out the view in front of her. Marny saw the fire reflected in the gleam of tears on her cheeks. Kendra too was thinking of Hiram.

Marny sat down on the grass and put her arm around Kendra’s shoulders. She said nothing, but Kendra sensed her sympathy. After a moment, without looking up, Kendra spoke.

“Marny.”

“Yes, dear,” Marny answered gently.

“Marny,” said Kendra, “if Hiram doesn’t live through this, I don’t want to live through it either.”

—What can I say to her? wondered Marny. A nice hollow platitude like, ‘Oh now, you mustn’t feel that way’? If I said any such thing she’d slap me and she ought to.

Marny said, “Kendra dear, I can’t answer.”

“I don’t want you to answer,” said Kendra. “I just want to say it. I’ve lost everything else I ever had. I’ve tried to be brave. Marny, you know I’ve tried.”

“You’ve not only tried, Kendra. You’ve been brave. The bravest person I ever knew.”

“I’m not going to try any longer,” said Kendra. “Marny, I can’t take any more.”

Marny raised her hand from Kendra’s shoulder and stroked her hair. There was nothing for her to say. She let Kendra go on talking.

“I’ve just found him, Marny. And if I lose him now, I can’t stand it.” Kendra raised her head and looked down at the blazing city. “Marny, when we came in tonight from the theater, I’ve never been so happy. A whole new world was opening in front of me. And now that I’ve had a glimpse of it—” She shuddered. “Marny, maybe I’m a coward. But if I lose Hiram, I don’t want to look for anything else. I’m not going to try any more.”

There was a silence between them. On the other side of Marny, in the hut, Geraldine and the kittens had fallen asleep, worn out by too much excitement. Marny wished it were as easy as this for Kendra. But it was not. People were more complex than cats.

At length she spoke. “Kendra, I can’t offer you any help. But I’m your friend and whatever happens I’ll stand by you. That’s all I can say.”

“I know,” answered Kendra. “Thank you for saying it. And thank you for listening to me.”

Again they lapsed into silence. Around them were the voices of all those other people, below them the roar and tumult of the fire, and the city falling to pieces.

T
HE FIRE BURNED ON
and on and on. It burned for hours. Neither Kendra nor Marny could have told how many hours. Their sense of time was as confused as everything else tonight.

They shivered in the screaming wind. In front of them, down the hill, the city was crashing. At every crash Kendra thought of death under the falling timbers. At every crash she sent up a prayer. —Oh God, not Hiram. Please God, not Hiram.

She remembered how willingly Hiram had stayed to fight the fire. He could not honorably have done otherwise. —But oh, she cried to herself, I wish he could have been a coward just this once!

Even as the thought came into her mind she knew she did not wish any such thing. Hiram was not a halfway person. She could not have loved him if he had been. She had had one experience with that sort of man. Kendra heard another crash and saw a million sparks shoot into the sky.

—Please God, not Hiram.

Hunched among the weeds at Kendra’s side, Marny was nearly numb with weariness. As Norman had reminded her, that encounter with Pollock had tensed her nerves before the fire began. Now the reaction had set in, as Norman had known it would. She thought if she tried to stand up again she might fall down.

Through her weariness she began to notice that there was a light around her different from the glare of the fire. Daylight. —Good heavens, she thought, it’s morning. Tomorrow morning. We’ve been here all night.

Looking over the bay, she could see the sun shimmering through the smoke clouds. She saw too that the blaze was no longer as fierce as it had been. Tongues of flame were still shooting up through the smoke, but the fire was burning itself out. Maybe, she thought despairingly, because there was not much left to burn.

Her arms and legs felt cramped. She stretched, and leaned over to look again into Geraldine’s hut. Geraldine was still asleep, with the tiny kittens cuddled against her. Marny sat up again, laying her arm across the hut as before. She curled her fingers around the carrying handle. Happy little cats. They had no idea of what an evil world they lived in. Still holding the handle, she looked down again at the ruins, wondering how much longer it would take for the fire to finish its work.