Time of Fog and Fire: A Molly Murphy Mystery (Molly Murphy Mysteries) (22 page)

I tried to sit up.

“What were you doing in Chinatown anyway so early in the morning?” He was looking at me suspiciously. “Why didn’t you get out after the first quake?”

“I was…” I paused. What was I doing? Chinatown? I toyed with the word. Wasn’t that where Chinese people lived? How could I live there then?

“Where do you live, my dear?” the male voice sounded kinder now.

“I live…” I tried to think but my head hurt. “I forget.”

“What’s your name?”

My name was … I wrestled with that one and then it came to me. Molly. That was my name. I tried harder, screwing up my eyes. Molly … Murphy. “Molly Murphy from Ballykilleen,” I said.

“Ballykilleen, where’s that?”

“Ireland.”

“From Ireland, are you?” He looked at me with sympathy. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Yes,” I said, realizing this to be true. “I’m a long way from home and I’d like to go back there.”

“You just rest on that cot for a while and then we’ll see about getting you out of here.” He patted my shoulder gently. “So where were you staying? Which hotel?”

“Hotel?” I shook my head. I couldn’t picture a hotel. Frankly I couldn’t picture anything except a schoolroom. A nun was standing at the front of the class and she had a pointer in her hand. “Molly Murphy!” she said in her sharp voice. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your catechism?”

“I must go home,” I said, struggling to sit up. “I forgot my catechism. Sister will be angry.”

The man was looking at me with concern now. “You just rest. You’ve had a nasty bump on your head.”

Another man came up, this one in a white coat. “Has this one recovered enough to send her out?” he asked. “We’ve just had another wagonload brought in and we need the bed.”

“She’s from Ireland,” the mustache man said. “Talking about her sister.”

“Who was she staying with here?” He looked down at me. “Whom were you staying with, ma’am? With friends or in a hotel?”

For some reason I found the word “ma’am” funny and wanted to giggle. “I can’t remember,” I said.

“Were you with your family?”

There was a flash of memory. A baby. “My baby brother was with me,” I said.

“Anyone else?”

I thought but no images would come.

The man in the white coat nodded. “The blow to the head has caused some amnesia. We’d better leave her here and give her time. We can’t turn her out like this. Bring her a drink of water.”

“I can’t do that, Doctor,” the mustache man said. “There’s no more water. The main must have ruptured. You turn on the faucet and nothing comes out.”

“Dear God.” The doctor sighed. “If water mains are ruptured, how the devil are they going to stop the fires?”

They walked away. I heard them say, “This one’s gone, poor devil.” And a body was lifted from the cot beside me. I lay still. My head was throbbing and I felt violently sick. Even the dim indoor light hurt my eyes. When I opened them I could make out that I was in some kind of auditorium. It reminded me of a concert hall I had been in with a glass-domed ceiling high above and tiers of balconies running around the walls. So what was I doing in a concert hall and what had happened there? From what I could see the place was now full of makeshift cots and beds and every one was occupied by someone who lay still, or groaning.

I closed my eyes and tried to think. Molly Murphy from Ballykilleen. That’s who I was. But how did I know about concert halls? Surely there was nothing bigger than the church hall in Ballykilleen? A school trip to Westport? Was there anything as big as this building in Westport? It hurt to think. Clearly something catastrophic had happened. A war. A plague. Something terrible. But try as I might, I couldn’t remember what it was.

I must have drifted off to sleep again because I was being shaken awake. “You need to try and stand up,” a male voice said. “We have to get out of here. The fires are coming closer. Here, let me help you.”

I was hoisted unceremoniously to my feet.

“She seems okay,” the voice said. “No broken bones that I can see.”

“Can you walk by yourself to the cart, my dear? We’ve still a lot of patients to move and we’re racing against time now.”

“Where are we going?” I asked. The room swam around as I stood and I felt violently nauseous. All I wanted to do was lie back on that bed again.

“Golden Gate Park. They’re going to be setting up tents there. It should be far enough away to be safe.”

Golden Gate Park. That name meant nothing to me either. But tents? Why did we need tents?

I allowed myself to be led past the rows of cots. Because wherever we were, something catastrophic had happened and I was in some kind of infirmary. I looked down at myself. My arms and legs seemed to be there just fine but I was finding it hard to walk straight. Whoever was with me held my arm firmly as I staggered.

“You’ll be quite safe out there,” the man said kindly.

I blinked as I was led into the open air. The light hurt my eyes and I closed them. Ahead of me was some kind of open cart. It was already full of poor souls with bloody bandages around their heads, arms in slings. I put my hand up to my own head and touched the unfamiliar fabric of a bandage there too. So I had been hurt. Wounded. But how? Where?

“Got room for one more?” a voice called. “Just a little one this time.”

Hands reached down to hoist me up and I was squeezed onto a few inches of wooden bench. The driver shouted a command to the horse and the cart lurched forward. I was being taken away to a park I had never heard of to live in a tent. It all felt too absurd to be real.

“Are you okay, miss?” The woman sitting next to me touched my arm gently. “You look as white as a sheet. You hang on to me if you feel you’re going to pass out. We’ll be much better when they get us to the park. If only the streets are clear enough for us to make it that far. What a terrible business. I’ve no idea where my husband is. I was bleeding so bad that they took me to the hospital and he said he’d find me again. He was going to try and save some of our possessions. I brought my mother’s good china all the way out here from Ohio and somehow it hadn’t fallen off the shelf. Was your own house badly damaged?”

I looked at her. She had a round face, now half-covered in white bandages with only one eye showing. A flash of memory returned. “Things were falling,” I said. “The grandfather clock.”

“They certainly were. But your family got out okay?”

I tried to think about this. “I’m not sure,” I said. My parents—were they all right? I could picture our cottage with its scrubbed pine table in the center of the one living room, but did we have a grandfather clock? I could picture it toppling over with a horrible crash onto a marble floor. We had never had a marble floor. That was for palaces and fine churches. Obviously not in my own home. The man I had spoken to when I was lying on the cot had asked if I was staying at a hotel. All of these elements seemed too luxurious to be real.

The only thing that was real was that I was in a place of terrible destruction. We set off along a street littered with bricks and glass. Pillars had fallen from the front of a bank and now lay in chunks across the sidewalk. I thought I saw a dead hand protruding from a pile of rubble. Ahead of us was an enormous building with a dome that rose up into the sky. At least it had been a dome; now only the top part was intact, gilded and shining while beneath it was a skeleton of the tower that supported it. The ribs of the building with no bricks or stone attached to them.

“Would you look at our poor City Hall,” the woman said. “And only just completed too. The most expensive in the land, they said, and all that money wasted. What a terrible shame. I don’t know how the city will ever hope to rebuild after this.”

She broke off as a fire engine came toward us, its bell ringing furiously. There was no room among the debris for two vehicles to pass but bystanders rushed out to move away enough pieces of brick and stone so that the fire engine could squeeze by.

“Not that it will do any good,” one of the firemen called out to us. “We can’t find a danged water main that isn’t ruptured. If we don’t do something soon the whole city will be up in flames by nightfall.”

We turned onto a broad boulevard. Here there were fine houses, relatively unscathed.

“We may be in luck,” the carter said. “It doesn’t seem to be quite as bad out to the west. And the dampness of the fog by the ocean will make things harder to burn.”

Our cart joined a steady procession of people, laden with what they could carry in bedsheets or blankets slung over their shoulders. The able-bodied helping the injured, the young, and the elderly. And all of them heading in the same direction as us.

I shut my eyes as the horse picked up his pace on the broader boulevard and the cart lurched back and forth. The kind woman with the bandaged face put an arm around me. “Won’t be too much longer now,” she said. “If Geary is clear, we should be fine and soon at the park.”

As we moved toward the ocean we left the dust and smoke behind. The air became clear. Ahead of us was a clear sky with the sun shining into our faces. And in this part of the city there was less sign of damage—a fallen chimney lying in a pile of bricks beside a house. A wooden framed house leaning precariously as it had slipped from its foundation. People were coming out of their houses, bringing pieces of broken furniture or crockery to dump on the sidewalk. Others were loading up possessions onto carts. But most of them were setting up home on the sidewalk. Pots were balanced over small cooking fires while people sat around on packing cases and children played, climbing over the rubble. I still hadn’t quite worked out the meaning of all this utter destruction. The only thing I was quite sure of was that I wanted to go home, as quickly as possible.

“I have to get back to Ireland,” I said. “They will be looking for me.”

Even as I said it I realized that it sounded strange to me. Something wasn’t quite right but I couldn’t put my finger on it. My mother would be worried about me, I thought. And then like a flash of lightning through my brain came the conclusive knowledge that my mother was dead. I remembered her funeral. It had rained hard and the newly dug earth had turned to slippery mud and my father had nearly slid into the grave with her, which the women with us had taken as a bad omen.

So it couldn’t be my mother who was worried about me. Then who? I could feel a sense of urgency cutting through the layers of fog in my head. Somebody important. Something I had to do.

“Why are they taking us away?” I asked.

“Because of the fires. They are spreading out of control downtown and in the Mission,” the woman said. “They say that Union Square is already gone, and Market Street.” She shook her head as if this was a tragedy too hard to bear. “They reckon we’ll be far enough away in the park. I hope they’re right. I told William to take the ferry to Oakland, if ferries are still running. He’ll be safer on the other side of the Bay.”

“William?” I asked.

“My husband. William Clancy. I’m Mary Clancy.”

William. I toyed with the name. I could hear a voice saying, “I baptize thee William Joseph Sullivan.”

Suddenly a small boy darted out into the street. His mother gave a cry of alarm and rushed to grab him as a fast-moving vehicle went past. She swept him up into her arms and carried him to safety. “Don’t you do that again, young man. You stay close to me, you hear? Your mama doesn’t want to lose you.” Her voice floated up to us as we clip-clopped past.

I baptize thee William Joseph Sullivan. Your mama doesn’t want to lose you.
It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck me. Clarity seared through my brain. I struggled to my feet. “Liam!” I shouted. “Let me down. I have to find my boy!”

Twenty-three

I stood up, almost falling over as the cart swayed. Hands grabbed at me.

“Careful, ma’am. Sit down,” someone said, trying to pull me back into my seat.

“I’ve got to find my boy,” I pleaded. “My Liam. Please let me down.”

“You can’t get out here,” my kindly neighbor said. “You’ve had a nasty head wound, my dear. Let them take you to the park and rest a little.”

“But you don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I have to find my son. The nursemaid ran off with him. I was trying to catch them when the wall fell on me. I’ve no idea where they are now but I have to find him.”

“You’re in no condition to go running around, ma’am,” said the man who had tried to pull me back down to my seat. “I’m sure his nursemaid will be taking good care of him and you’ll all meet up in the park.”

I was conscious that the sun was now tinged with red and was sinking into a band of white mist. It must be late in the day. How many hours had it been since I’d lost Liam and been hit on the head? How long had I lain unconscious? And where could Li Na have taken him?

“I have to go back,” I shouted. “Please let me down.”

“Go back where?”

“Chinatown.”

They were looking at me as if I had lost my mind.

“The poor thing, she’s had a nasty blow to the head,” the kind woman said.

I shook myself free of a hand that was holding on to me. “No, you don’t understand. We were staying at a big house—” I broke off as my memory failed me again. What was that place called? A clear image of those mansions swam into my mind. “On Nob Hill,” I continued. “And then the nursemaid ran with Liam to Chinatown.” I could hear from my voice that I was on the edge of tears. “I tried to follow them. That must have been when the wall came down on me.”

“You can’t go back to Chinatown now,” someone said. “It’s too far. And in your condition you’d never make it. Much smarter to go to the park and then try to find your son. If the nursemaid is sensible she’ll have taken him to safety with the rest of us.”

I was horribly conscious that with every second I was being taken further and further away from the city. It was no use. If Li Na really had taken my son to Golden Gate Park, then he was safe for now. But if she hadn’t … if for some reason she was keeping him in Chinatown, then I had to get to him somehow before the fires caught up with them. The cart came to a lurching stop as an automobile cut across in front of us, driving fast. It careened away, weaving and bouncing over rubble, its horn blaring out.