by Tom Murphy
Lily thought of everything, in fact, but the one thought that underlay all of the others, so big and so frightful that it must be more tightly caged than the wildest jungle beast.
It was only when Mary timidly asked her about luncheon that Lily realized nearly seven hours had passed since the first shock of the earthquake had jolted them out of bed.
There was no way to climb over the tumbled limestone facade of the Denver and St. Louis Trust Company building, so Brooks had to detour a whole block out of his way. The business district near Market Street was a dream to him now, a nightmare no more real and no less terrifying than the eighth circle of hell. Dense, sooty smoke enveloped everything, and the stench was terrible, a harsh, scorched, burned-toast smell mixed with unlikely minor-key odors: a chemical kind of stench here, the smell of roasted meat there, rotten eggs somewhere else, all building into an olfactory dirge for fallen greatness.
There were fewer civilians on the streets now, and more police, firemen, and some soldiers. Brooks was stopped once by an armed corporal, asked his business, identified himself, and was allowed to proceed.
“Begging your pardon Mr. Chaffee, it’s the looters, see?”
“I see.” But he didn’t. In all of his walk down Nob Hill, Brooks had seen every kind of disorder but nary a looter. Still and all, the dockside and South of the Slot population being what it surely was, looting must be a possibility. Then why do you resent that soldier?
Brooks walked on, to face he knew not what.
He walked over scattered bricks, past an abandoned church from inside of whose Gothic-arched and paneless windows curls of smoke were still escaping, past a motorcar speeding, swerving, darting in and out of the cluttered street on some mad errand, five silent men clinging to the vehicle with the grim resolve of sea captains sworn to go down with their ship. It was at the same time comical and sad.
Thinking of the soldier suddenly rocked Brooks’s mind to the core. Antietam. That was what this all reminded him of, Antietam. The noise, the stench, the chaos, the being caught unaware, unprepared, the underlying sense that this was all the prank of some mad god.
Brooks stopped in his tracks and thought about that. Thinking about Antietam made him think about Neddy, and then about everyone else in this insane world whom he loved. The other Neddy, his son. Jon and Katie. And Lily, Lily, Lily, without whose love his entire life might have become a landscape as bleak and burnt-out as the one he walked in now.
He would keep his promise, and get back to her soon.
Just as soon as he found out the status of Chaffee Produce, and its records, and its office building on the docks.
Lily sat in her bedroom with a bit of lunch on a tray. She sipped the tea and ate nothing. Damn the phones for being out! Damn the earthquake, for that matter, or anything else that took him away. She looked out the window.
No longer could she tell one fire from another.
At one o’clock, which had just chimed on the little French clock he had given her at Christmas, the city seemed engulfed in a dark and sinister fog. A wall of smoke shrouded the lower part of the town. The part where the Chaffee Building was. The part where Brooks must have been for hours now. If he got there at all. If, and if, and if. The floodgates opened now, and all of the doubts and fears that Lily had so resolutely kept locked in the strictest repression all the morning now came tumbling out, armed and well-practiced in tormenting her.
Brooks stood at the end of Market Street looking up at the smoldering shell that had once been the Chaffee Produce office building.
It had been gutted by fire, the windows blown out, the roof caved in. His walk downtown had been for nothing, then.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, forgetting to hold the handkerchief over his face, forgetting everything but his dumb, blind rage at the waste and futility of it all.
God’s mad jest held no mirth for Brooks Chaffee. He thought of the records lost, the contracts gone, the enormously detailed lists of prices and promises that must, still, somehow be kept.
Immediately his quick mind began rebuilding the structure itself brick by brick, the records, the business.
Of course, the business wasn’t really destroyed at all. The office building might be the nerve center of Chaffee Produce and his real-estate ventures and investment trusts, but the actual brawn and muscle of his fortune lay elsewhere, in the safety of Marin County, across the bay, in the ten thousand fertile acres that had been the nucleus of the empire when his ranch had joined with Lily’s ranch so long ago. There were other ranches now, stretching as far to the north and east as Sacramento, as far to the south as Los Angeles, with a branch flourishing in Hawaii, as if in Fergy’s memory. No, the quake would barely touch the surface of Chaffee Produce. It was the small manufacturer in his loft, deep in debt for new machinery, underinsured, who would be destroyed.
Brooks stared into the ruined building, then walked closer, picked his way through the rubble and up the stoop to the front door, whose cinders lay under his boots where they’d burned.
The first explosion took him by surprise. The ground trembled under him, and then he heard the noise, a roar like distant cannonfire, then another roar, closer, and another, closer still. He stopped in his tracks. I’m losing my sanity, for certain, I’m imagining Antietam again, haven’t done that for years, not this vividly, not with such an ear-bursting rumble of sound.
Another explosion followed quick on the heels of the first three, then another. Brooks imagined Antietam, pushed that image out of his mind, and tried to guess what it might be for real.
Of course. They were dynamiting. With the water mains gone, they were trying to create firebreaks to stop the invading flames. Brooks looked up, choked at the smoke, thought of the freshening wind from the sea, and wished them luck with it.
They’d need luck, and maybe miracles on this black day.
He stood in the doorway of his building feeling like an uninvited guest at a funeral. Inside, everything was black and broken. Almost everything. For there, just a few feet from where he stood, was a dull gleam of Chinese red. The tin box! Somehow the tin records box from his own office three floors up had survived. It was a square box, eighteen inches by eighteen, and about six inches deep, and in it—if they’d survived—were all of the most important contracts of the last six months.
Brooks edged his way across the blackened floorboards toward the box. Easy, now, the floor might be burned nearly through; there, slowly, that’s the way, now!
He bent his knees slowly, fearing that any sudden move might set off an avalanche of rubble or cave in the floor. Brooks grabbed the box, tugged it gently, firmly out from its robe of charred wood—his desk! Finally, quivering, he held the thing in his hands. Dented, charred, but solid, its brass handle gleaming as it had gleamed the last time he’d seen it, just a few days ago. Damn! He didn’t have the key. Well, he’d pry it open at home. Brooks turned where he stood, just a few feet from the door.
Then he froze, trembling. He could feel the floorboards slowly, slowly sagging underneath him. Quick now! The floor creaked, groaned, and shuddered as Brooks lurched forward.
It fell in with a roar as he jumped with the last ounce of energy in him, and attained the marble door stoop at the last second. He stood there in shock, clutching the red tin box, his mind a merciful blank.
Behind him the floor fell into the gutted cellar. In that moment Brooks heard her voice just as clear as if they were in bed together: “Promise me you’ll come back soon…”
He shook his head as if to clear it, paused for an instant longer, and then, clutching the tin box like a football, he began running up Market Street in the direction of Nob Hill.
It was a run through the obstacle course of all his worst dreams.
The blackened buildings loomed over him and the air itself was nearly black, laden with soot and ashes, and the stench was everywhere. The proud towers of commerce, sickened by their helplessness in the face of the blaze, had vomited bricks and
glass and timbers into the wide street, pride of San Francisco. The steel bones of buildings under construction vied in their naked horror with the fresh ruins beside them. He could hear distant shouting, a church bell clanging in alarm, the clatter of frantic hooves. Brooks kept his head down and ran, and ran. Past Drum Street and Davis and Front he ran, feeling the breathwork of it now, gasping at the smoke, holding the tin box as though his very soul depended on it, his mind empty but for one engulfing thought: Lily! Lily! Lily!
The two soldiers stood in the shadow of a gutted, smoldering bank. The flask of bourbon was half empty now. They’d found it in the wreckage of a law office on a side street. How long ago? The tall soldier drank deep. Then he wiped his unshaven chin with the back of his hand and passed the flask to his companion.
“Thanky,” said the other. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
He drank, and licked his lips. There was a pleasant low-tuned humming in his head. He didn’t mind the smoke so much now, or the distant rumble of dynamiting. They stood for a moment in companionable silence, leaning on their rifles like shepherds with no flocks in sight.
Market Street was deserted.
“Look there.” The short one pointed.
A man was running up the broken street, running hard, a good runner he was, too. Hatless, in countryman’s clothes, carrying something with as much care as if it were a tender baby. A red tin box.
“’S got himself someone’s cashbox, looks like to me.”
“Can’t let ’im just run away with it.”
“Nope.”
The tall soldier shifted his weight. He picked up his rifle and slowly, almost casually raised it into position. He squeezed the trigger, saw the result of his first round, grunted, squeezed again. And again.
Brooks winced.
The pain in his chest was sudden and sharp, but still he kept on running, dodging the heaps of rubble, the burnt-out wagons, a woman’s incongruously beplumed hat, a child’s toy. Four blocks he’d run, nearly five. His chest hurt. Another searing pain.
Then he felt the wetness and looked down, hearing nothing, still clutching the tin box. There was another shade of red mingling with the red of the tin box.
It was blood.
Brooks Chaffee stopped, astonished, and looked about him and saw nothing.
The third bullet took half his head off.
Brooks sank to the sooty pavement slowly, slowly, turning as he fell. He forgot where he was or what he was doing and what had been done to him.
He was riding the black stallion, galloping up the driveway of the ranch, the sun clear and hot on his face, a smile coming just as it always came when he rounded that last curve and could see the big house, white and gleaming in the pure light of noon, and the big door open and Lily there, waiting.
He slid off the great rampaging horse.
She opened her arms and lifted her head for the kiss.
Brooks went to her, smiling a welcome.
One of the soldiers was fat, the other so tall and thin that together they looked like a comic drawing. They were both drunk now, but the thin one was the drunker. He squinted as he reloaded the carbine.
The fat one looked at his friend with new respect. “For a man with half a snootful, you aim right good, Charlie.”
Charlie fumbled with the bullet, slid it in, cocked the rifle. “Nothin’ to it, soldier, jest followin’ old Funston’s orders, you heered him plain as day, ‘Shoot them looters,’ says he, ‘and shoot to kill, gotta teach them a lesson, that’s what we got.’”
They stood side by side and looked down at the body.
“Why’s he smilin’?”
“Beats me.”
“Looks like he knows a right good joke, that ’un.”
“Yep. Joke. I’ll drink to that.”
The fat soldier clapped the thin one on the back and they ambled up Market Street, laughing.
50
By three in the afternoon Lily could stand it no longer. She knew in her heart that something must be wrong, that Brooks would never delay this long without so much as a message, and the thought of him down there somewhere, injured maybe, needing her, and with no way of getting in touch, was sure to drive her mad.
Well she knew how slight her chances were of finding him in the confusion that must be rampant in the city. However unreliable the servants’ rumors might be, there was some grain of fact buried in them, and even discounting for hysteria and ignorance, the picture of San Francisco besieged by fire was a terrifying one.
Still, she would never rest easy again if she did not try.
Lily paced her bedroom, turned to a closet, and found an old gingham dress, something she had worn in from the ranch one morning in the rain.
It would not do to look too much like Mrs. Brooks Chaffee, nor Lily Cigar, either, if half of what Mary said was true.
Lily found an old shawl, an inconspicuous purse, and bound her head with a dark blue silk scarf. For even mixed as it was with silver now, the gold of her hair was too well-known to leave uncovered. What, precisely, was she afraid of? Lily would not take the time to answer her own question, for some mocking voice inside her suggested that the answer might be a long time coming.
She found some money, debated on how much to take, and finally took quite a lot: more than one hundred dollars was tucked in the bottom of her purse. There might be cabs to hire, or people to bribe.
Lily had no necessity to go out into the city alone, but she knew that alone was how she’d be going. Mary protested, but Mary would drive her mistress even crazier, by her side. Gloria, bent with rheumatism but still bright and clever and willing, also offered, as did the butler and both coachmen.
She thanked them all and gave detailed instructions on how to run the house in her absence.
Then Lily walked down the stairs and out into the storm of fire.
She knew the route Brooks must have taken in the morning, and she followed it now as best she could: across Mason and down California to Market.
Her eyes squinting against the smoke, her desperate heart pounding, Lily walked through a landscape of devastation. All the north side of Market Street was burning now, the south side having long since been consumed. The lower quarter of the city was one vast blackened ruin, what could be seen of it when the smoke temporarily shifted a little. Smoke was everywhere. Hell itself could have no more smoke than this, nor flames either. It was a retribution. Sodom and Gomorrah punished, San Francisco, bawd of the Pafific, brought low for its sins.
And my own sins, too, let us not forget them.
Lily walked through the smoke and ruins, a condemned woman going to the gallows and not counting the steps or the minutes or the reasons why, but concentrating the entire force of her mind on one single purpose: Find him for me please, God in heaven, just find him, find him!
She saw a little girl timidly making her way up Mulberry Street in New York fifty-some years ago, on her futile way to St. Paddy’s, to light a candle to Saint Jude.
There isn’t even a church left standing, if I wanted to do that now.
The walking was slow, partly because the streets were filled with refugees where they weren’t filled with rubble. No one seemed to notice Lily, and she saw no one she knew.
Lily saw sights that were bizarre, and almost comical, and unbearably sad. People who had obviously lost everything but the clothes on their backs milled about, silent, disoriented, not knowing where to go or what to do. And there was no one to tell them what to do.
An occasional soldier was visible, but the soldiers seemed to be wandering as aimlessly as the people they had been called in to protect.
The sky rained soot, the air was hot, and the first time Lily looked at her hands, she didn’t recognize them: they were that blackened. Two blocks farther, and I can sign up for the minstrel show, she thought grimly, imagining coming on Brooks and him passing her by thinking she was a freed black slave woman.
She walked down the hill, past men and women and children
of all ages and conditions, most of them pulling and hauling household goods to some unspecified destination. An old lady and someone who might have been her grandson struggled valiantly with a big upright piano. A girl of perhaps six staggered under the weight of a bird cage bigger than she was. A very dignified man in full evening dress carried a potted palm tree stiffly before him like a bride’s bouquet. A pair of young lovers strolled hand in hand through the throng, oblivious of everything but each other.
The crowd thinned out as Lily approached the Chinatown district.
Suddenly there came a snorting, a stamping of hooves, and the high-pitched but unmistakably angry screams of a Chinese mob.
For the first time that day Lily felt a real, personal, physical fear. She backed into a burnt-out doorway as the noises came closer and closer.
What she saw sickened her profoundly. A huge dark brown bull came staggering around the corner, his eyes bulging with terror, kicking up his heels, rearing and arching his back against his tormentors.
They were many. A mob of coolies pursued the beast with knives and garden tools, with anything that could wound the bull, no matter how slightly, no matter at what risk. Lily looked away, then found her gaze drawn back to the macabre scene against her will. As she looked, a small wiry boy of perhaps ten darted up to the bull’s flank and plunged in a long kitchen knife. It stuck there, despite the spurting blood, despite the animal’s frantic motions. Now Lily saw that there were other weapons sticking out of the bull: knives of several sizes, and two long steel objects that might have been gigantic hat pins or skewers. Still the poor beast charged away, and still the mob pursued him. Then a soldier appeared and mercifully shot the creature through the head. It fell, twitching, and the Chinese just stood there silently watching it die.
A voice at her elbow startled Lily nearly as much as the gruesome spectacle she had just witnessed. It was a man’s voice, and gentle. “The bull, don’t you know, caused the earthquake.”
