Into the Firestorm (2 page)

T
OMMY

“You’re one of those road kids, ain’t you?” The thick-browed policeman kept hold of one of Nick’s sleeves and poked at him with his club as if he were checking the tenderness of a piece of meat.

Nick opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He was caught. And then Gran’s words came back to him.
I believe I can just see you on the streets of that bright city.

Nick bent to snatch his cap off the ground. Then he squirmed—hard—wrenching his sleeve out of the policeman’s grip.

“Why, you…”

Nick willed himself to
move,
feet flying, dodging and ducking through the crowd. He could hear Bushy Brows pounding behind him, panting and wheezing. He sounded madder than a wasp, and he sure didn’t seem ready to give up.

“Stop that boy!”

Up ahead, Nick saw two men unloading a large crate from a wagon. They were blocking the sidewalk and seemed to be having trouble getting the crate through a doorway. Nick could hear the men arguing. A small circle had gathered to watch and give advice.

“Turn the crate the other way.”

“Put it down first and measure the opening.”

The workers backed away from the doorway, calculating their next move. Nick grabbed his chance. Slipping into the circle, he darted between the men and the doorway. He crawled through the legs of the bystanders. And he came out the other side.

Bushy Brows wouldn’t catch him now.

Nick slowed to a trot, his breath coming in short gasps. He should duck in somewhere and hide. He couldn’t be sure Bushy Brows would give up the chase.

Nick hurried along, head down, not meeting people’s eyes. And so at first he didn’t notice he’d entered a different neighborhood. It was full of small, busy shops, with bright wooden signs and barrels of food crowding the sidewalks. Even the air had changed, and his nose caught the scent of smoke, fish, and spices.

The streets now were filled mostly with men in simple blue cotton clothes. He walked behind a man who wore a small round hat. His hair was pulled into a long dark braid that hung down his back.

Chinatown.
He was in Chinatown. Since he’d arrived in San Francisco a few days ago, Nick had heard people on the street talk about Chinatown, but this was the first time he’d come here.

Nick ducked into a doorway. Next to him, bins displayed fruits and vegetables. Above his head was a large sign with flowing, inky black symbols on it. That, he figured, must be Chinese writing. Nick felt a thrill of excitement. He’d come to the city from Texas. But these people had traveled from the other side of the world.

The world really is big, just like Miss Reedy was always telling us,
Nick thought.

The writing reminded Nick of Miss Reedy’s penmanship lessons—his favorite part of school. Mostly Nick and everyone else in the run-down one-room schoolhouse did lessons in chalk or pencil. Once a week, though, Miss Reedy brought in several real Waterman pens for them to try, along with her prize possession, an old-fashioned glass inkwell decorated with flowing silver leaves. She placed it on the center of her desk, almost like a vase of flowers on a table.

If he closed his eyes, Nick could still see the glass sparkle as that inkwell caught the rays of the morning sun streaming in the window. He’d sure never seen anything like it at home—or anywhere else, for that matter. It was just an ordinary object, a container for ink. But he couldn’t help wondering where it had come from. Someone, far away, must have worked hard to make it so beautiful.

All at once the door behind him opened. A Chinese man emerged and nodded. Without thinking, Nick slipped inside. Bushy Brows wouldn’t think of looking for him here.

Nick took a few steps and stopped uncertainly. It seemed safe—no one was in sight. He tiptoed behind a shelf toward the back of the store. Maybe he could hide here a little while and then slip out the back into the alley.

Suddenly Nick heard a noise. Sprinting quickly across the wooden floor, he entered a small storeroom in the back. He crouched behind some barrels full of peanuts and held his breath. He didn’t think he’d been spotted.

Nick heard voices—a customer must have come in. But Nick couldn’t understand a word of the language that was spoken.

Maybe I should run for it,
Nick thought. On the other hand, what was the chance of Bushy Brows finding him? Better to stay put.

From his hiding place, Nick peered out at the tiny storeroom, packed with bulky, strange-shaped packages. It was odd—here he was in something that must be a sort of grocery store, yet he had no idea what most of the foods were. Back home they’d always eaten what Gran called the “three M’s”—meat, molasses, and meal (short for cornmeal) along with beans and rice. But Nick had no way of knowing what was inside these packages—or how to cook whatever it was.

The sounds stopped. The store grew quiet. Nick rested his head against a barrel. If he hadn’t been so nervous, he could almost have fallen asleep.

Crack!

“Ouch. Ow!” Nick yelled, holding his hands over his head. “Stop. Stop hitting me!”

“What are you doing here? Thief!” spat a tall, slim boy.

Nick looked up at a teenage boy, maybe four or five years older than he was. The boy wore a blue, loose-fitting top and pants. Like the men on the street, he had coal black hair gathered tightly into a long braid. With a stern, hard look, he raised the broom handle again.

“Get up.” He spat at Nick. “Thief!”

“I…I didn’t take anything,” sputtered Nick, stumbling to his feet. He raised his hands into the air to show they were empty and then quickly put them back to keep the boy from hitting him on the head again.

“Why are you hiding in my store, then?” asked the boy in a cold voice. “You were planning to hit me and rob me. I know your kind.”

“No, no, I wasn’t,” Nick protested.
Think of something to say,
he told himself.
Defend yourself.
But he couldn’t. He glanced beyond the boy, measuring the distance to the back door. Maybe he could run for it.

The boy saw his look. He stepped closer, holding the broom against Nick’s chest. “You’re not running away. I’m going to turn you in to the police.”

Nick drew a sharp breath. “No, please. I’ll do anything—sweep the store, stock your shelves. The policeman thought I stole something. But I didn’t, I swear.”

The older boy said nothing. His dark eyes seemed angry.

“I can prove it.” Nick reached into his pocket. “If I wanted to buy something, I could. See, I have fifty cents.”

Nick held his quarters. They were shiny. And no wonder. Nick polished them on his shirt every night. Nick thought about offering the coins to the boy in exchange for safety. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t give them up. They were almost all he had to remind him of Gran.

“Just let me stay a little while,” Nick added, quickly slipping the coins back into his pocket.

Suddenly Nick wanted to sit down more than anything. His knees felt weak. He licked his dry lips. “Please.”

The boy was silent for a long moment, his eyes flicking over Nick’s face. Then, to Nick’s surprise, he lowered the broom.

“You are new here,” he said flatly. “I can tell. The way you talk…”

“I come from Texas. I really would work for you. I’m looking for a job,” Nick said quickly, hoping the boy wouldn’t change his mind and yell for the police. “I…I’d take food for pay.”

To Nick’s surprise, the boy laughed and stood the broom in the corner. “You
are
new. American white boys don’t work in Chinatown. They’re too busy teasing and tormenting Chinese people.”

“Oh.” Nick’s voice fell. No job, no food.

“I’ve been teased,” Nick offered, trying to think of something to say. “On the county poor farm—an orphanage, really, where I lived this winter. Whenever they took us into town, the kids laughed at us.”

The boy shrugged. “Here, even poor kids tease the Chinese. Last week some boys threw stones at me when I was delivering vegetables.”

“Are you from China?” Nick was curious. “You, uh, speak good English.”

“My parents are from China, but I was born here. I am an American. Though people here don’t treat me like one,” the boy said in a voice laced with bitterness.

The boy fell silent, as though he thought he had revealed too much. Nick bit his lip, unsure what to say. He looked around at the packages and boxes, all with such strange and beautiful symbols on them. Not like the alphabet at all.

“Can you really understand these squiggly signs?”

“You ask very strange questions for a white boy,” the boy answered, raising his eyebrows. “How could I do business otherwise?”

Nick couldn’t imagine being able to read something so different, so extraordinary-looking. He thought again of the crystal-and-silver inkwell on Miss Reedy’s desk, which had come from some distant, far-off world.
Chinatown is like a different world, too,
Nick thought.
A different world inside San Francisco itself.

The tall boy cleared his throat. He seemed to have come to some sort of decision. “Business is slow. It is time for my noon meal of rice and dried fish. Will you join me?”

Nick hesitated.

“No need to pay. I hope you won’t mind sitting back here on the floor,” the boy added. “I only have one stool. That way you won’t be in the way if any customers come in.”

Or policemen,
thought Nick. For the first time, he looked the boy straight in the eyes and smiled. “Thanks. I’m Nick. Nicholas Dray.”

“I have a Chinese name, which you could not pronounce or understand,” the boy told him. “But my American name is Tommy. Tommy Liang.”

A B
OWL OF
R
ICE

Nick tried to use the two sticks Tommy gave him—chopsticks, they were called. But in the end he gave up and ate with his fingers.

“You’re very hungry.” For the first time, a slight smile crossed Tommy’s face as he watched Nick eat.

Nick nodded. The rice was fluffy, white, and hot. Tommy served it in a small, shiny black bowl that felt just right in Nick’s hand. “It sure tastes good. You cooked this yourself?”

“I learned to cook after my mother left.” Tommy paused with his chopsticks in the air. He spoke matter-of-factly. “She took my younger brothers and sisters back to China. She didn’t like America.”

“So she just left?” Nick pushed the thought of Pa away.

“It…it was too hard for her. I stayed with my father to help with the store. But then, after he died of pneumonia, my older cousin took over.” Tommy looked down at his rice bowl, his face closed. “He is in charge. He goes out with his friends a lot. I do the cooking and look after the store.”

Nick wondered if Tommy’s cousin was anything like Mr. Hank. “It’s a nice store. I’d love to have a shop as fine as this.”

Tommy shrugged. “It was my father’s dream. But working in a grocery store is not what I hope to do.”

Nick was surprised again. “What
do
you want to do?”

Tommy hesitated. “I…I love to sing. But becoming a singer is a foolish dream.”

Nick looked down at his bowl. He couldn’t help thinking of that morning he’d told Gran about
his
dream. They ate in silence until the rice was gone. Tommy filled a small cup with scented, steaming liquid.

“You ate so much. Are you a runaway?” Tommy asked.

Nick nodded. “A few weeks ago, I ran away from the orphanage in Texas.”

“Did you live there long?”

“Only a few months. My gran died last fall, in October. My pa is still alive somewhere, I guess.” Nick’s teacup had no handles. He picked it up gingerly, with two hands, and sipped at the hot liquid. He hoped he wouldn’t drop it.

“Up until last summer, Gran, Pa, and I were sharecroppers,” he went on. “We worked another man’s cotton for a share of the crop. Then, last year, around the end of May, Pa left.”

Nick bent his head and felt the warm steam of the tea on his cheek. It had happened just a few weeks after his eleventh birthday. Pa hadn’t even tried to explain, Nick remembered. He’d just stuffed a few clothes in a sack and walked out.

“A man can’t get ahead sharecropping. Don’t blame him. Sharecropping just whittled away at your pa’s spirit,” Gran had said. “It ain’t that he don’t love you. He just can’t feel one way or another anymore.”

“But…how could he just leave us here, with…this?” Nick had spread out his arms helplessly toward the rows of cotton crowding close to their shack.

Nick couldn’t understand how Gran could be so calm, accepting even. True, Gran was Pa’s mother-in-law, not his own blood relative. But Pa had walked out on both of them. How could Pa leave his son?

“I’m grateful you’re a strong, hardworking boy, Nick,” was Gran’s only answer.
She’s not surprised,
Nick had realized. It was almost as if, all these years, she’d been expecting Pa to leave.

Nick had stared out at the rows of cotton and made himself a promise. “I won’t do that. I won’t ever walk away.”

Nick put down his empty teacup and stared at the tiny shreds of tea leaves left at the bottom of the cup. He swallowed hard. He hadn’t thought about Pa lately.

“Where did your father go?” Tommy asked. “Is he in San Francisco, too?”

“Pa? Here?” Nick was startled. He tried to imagine what it would be like to see his father’s face on a crowded San Francisco street. “Naw. Pa would never leave Texas. I expect when he took off, he hopped a train to Dallas or Austin.”

“What happened then?” Tommy asked.

“Not long after Pa left, Mr. Greene ran Gran and me off his farm. Said it was too much for an old woman and kid to run,” Nick told him. “After that we got work on a big cotton farm, but I didn’t much like Mr. Hank, the boss man there. When Gran passed, he sent me off to an orphanage. The Lincoln Poor Farm for Indigents and Orphans. And then I came here.”

Nick rubbed his hands on his pants. It sounded so simple. The whole last year of his life wrapped in a cardboard box of words, he thought. But that’s the way he wanted it. He didn’t need to open that box and look inside.

Tommy poured Nick more tea. “But why did you choose San Francisco? It is far away from where you lived, isn’t it?”

Nick liked how the small teacup fit so nicely in the palm of his hand. “Gran and I…we didn’t like cotton anymore. We always planned to come to the city.”

Well, that wasn’t quite true. But Nick had been telling himself the very same thing every night when he lay on his cot at Lincoln.
Gran wanted to go—she’d want me to take a chance.

“My parents had a dream of coming here,” Tommy said. “But dreams do not always turn out as we hope.” Tommy paused and pointed at Nick. “It’s easy to see you’re a runaway. Your clothes are torn and dirty. How long have you been here?”

Nick counted. “Five nights already.”

“And you’ve been sleeping in alleys and wandering all this time?”

Nick nodded. “It’s sure cooler than I thought. And foggy! But I’ve never seen anything like this place. I love all the tall buildings and that grand hotel—the Palace Hotel. I’d give anything to see the inside of that!

“Market Street is as wide as three roads,” Nick went on, his words tumbling out. This boy was the first person he’d really talked to here. “Yesterday I tried to cross it, and all those wagons, cable cars, and shiny black automobiles bumping along the cobblestones like a parade made my head spin.”

Tommy shrugged. The city did not impress him.

“You can’t wander around like this much longer,” Tommy said in a flat voice, placing his cup on a small black tray. “Any policeman who sees you will chase you—and next time you will be caught for sure. They’ll put you back in an orphan asylum. I wish I could help, but I can’t.”

Tommy looked up at the door. Nick scrambled to his feet, his hopes sinking. He hadn’t really expected Tommy to help him, but…

Tommy let Nick out through the back. “Try to find work in the Produce District or near the piers. And you should sleep south of the Slot.”

“The Slot?”

“That’s what we call Market Street. Because of the slot in the street for the cable cars. The neighborhoods south of Market are full of immigrants and poor people, so you won’t stand out so much.”

Nick stopped in front of a sign on the wall. Like the one he’d seen on the street, it was covered with large, flowing symbols. “Those symbols there—they’re so strange.”

“Not to me,” said Tommy. “Those Chinese characters make words and sentences, just like English. And you know, some people are masters at calligraphy, writing characters.”

“And…and they mean something, right? You said you can understand them?”

“Yes, of course.”

Nick waited. “So what does that sign say?”

“That one?” When Tommy smiled, his dark eyes sparkled. “That sign reads: ‘Liang’s Grocery.’”