1906: A Novel

by Dalessandro, James

  The kitchen faucet did the same. The sound of the inferno a half mile away on Russian Hill built into an endless, rolling thunderclap that shook Hunter's house, rattling the doors and shaking loose slivers of glass from the broken windows.

  He covered his ears and put his head down. Think, dammit, think. He sipped from the canteen. Then it hit him.

  He ran back to the basement, retrieved an ax and chopped through the wall to the steep yard alongside the house. He found a block-and-tackle, squeezed through the hole and tossed the pulley rope through an upstairs window.

  In minutes, he was hoisting pails of Byron's wine to the second floor.

  At the Powell Street pier, Kaitlin clung to Caruso as the frightened crowd surged around them. "Passengers only," a young seaman yelled in his high-pitched voice. "No luggage, no nothing. Bodies only."

  Caruso noticed Dolly Cameron shouting orders to a group of terrified Chinese girls, not a word of which they understood. Caruso waved to a young sailor on board the ship and then pointed to the Chinese girls. The young man was about to turn away when he noticed the pleading in Caruso's face. He signaled for the girls to be handed up.

  Caruso seized the smallest of the Chinese girls and tried to lift her to the ship but could not reach. Kaitlin climbed atop an abandoned steamer trunk, grabbed the girl, and thrust her into the sailor's arms. Caruso and Kaitlin boosted the girls aboard until their arms ached.

  Dolly, Kaitlin, and Caruso were pulled aboard.

  On deck, Kaitlin slumped against the cabin wall next to Caruso, leaning her head against his shoulder.

  The sailors cast their lines, trying to ignore the pleas of the terrified people they left behind. The boat maneuvered out into San Francisco Bay, gingerly weaving through hundreds of bobbing vessels laden with refugees.

  "'Ell of a place. I never sing here again," Caruso muttered.

  On Van Ness Avenue, firefighters came alive as Marines and sailors spliced hoses to the barren pumpers.

  A sailor at the crest of California Street waved his semaphores. A mile away, sailors aboard the Slocum turned the giant wheels. Water rushed uphill, puffing and straightening the feeder line. One by one, the hoses splaying from the fire engines jerked to life, their precious streams lashing at the mounting fire.

  Soldiers seized the hoses and rallied the firemen. Neighbors, hopeless and defeated minutes earlier, charged from their homes to join the fight. On the side streets west of Van Ness, ladders appeared and people climbed on roofs to slap at the sparks and flames with wet towels and pillow cases.

  At St. Mary's Cathedral on Van Ness, young Father Charles Ramm rose from prayer to fulfill a promise made hours earlier. He filled a knapsack full of wet towels and began to scale the outside of the church tower, digging his toes and fingers into gaps and cracks. Soldiers ran to his aid with a twenty-foot ladder. By the time they raised it, he was already out of reach.

  The heat and effort caused Father Ramm to stall just below the spire; the worried crowd shouted for him to retreat. He wrapped a wet towel around his neck and climbed the final twenty feet to the steeple.

  Near the top, he clung precariously with one hand, slapping at the flare-ups with a towel held in the other. When he extinguished those sparks, he moved horizontally around the steeple, battling others.

  Atop Telegraph Hill, Hunter finished stripping the living room of things flammable, throwing the last of the furniture out of the windows. His efforts were met by a hail of sparks pouring in, scorching his face and arms.

  The sparks danced across the oak floor like fireflies. Hunter grabbed a wine-soaked towel and slapped at them. When the towel ignited, he tossed it in a metal pail and seized another, lashing furiously as flames started climbing up the walls.

  He recoiled as a shadowy figure appeared in the doorway.

  "At least you didn't try to shoot me this time."

  "Annalisa, what the hell are you doing here?"

  "I jumped ship to a small schooner heading in to pick up refugees. I figured you needed me more than Francis did."

  I cupped my hand and scooped liquid from the pail and had a sip. It burned like acid.

  Hunter quickly uncorked a canteen and passed it to me. "Sorry, I thought you had noticed. That was my father's best Zinfandel in years."

  I caught my breath. The wind shifted and the sparks subsided. I hugged him and gingerly kissed his tender, dirty face.

  We gazed from the window, our eyes so dry and bloodshot it hurt to open them wide.

  The side of Russian Hill that faced us had yet to catch fire. Unburned, as well, was the Montgomery Street corridor below and Telegraph Hill where we stood.

  The venomous smell of blistering paint and varnish told us that was about to change. Soldiers ran from house to house and shop to shop, ordering everyone out.

  People poured into the streets and alleyways, running north down Stockton and Powell and Montgomery toward the waterfront, the heated air began to pulsate, like giant hands clapping against everyone's ears. Small flames, like a thousand tiny candles, suddenly began to glow on the rooftops.

  "Here it comes," Hunter said, pulling me down so that our eyes were barely above the sill.

  A giant tongue of flame suddenly shot down Russian Hill. It danced across the rooftops, tumbled through the air in great swirling balls, ripping through the wooden corridors of Union and Filbert Streets, igniting everything it touched.

  When the flame reached the bottom of the hill, a crosswind sent it rushing down Montgomery toward the waterfront, incinerating all before it like toy figures tossed into a blast furnace.

  We watched in abject horror as the flame tore across Washington Square, igniting trees, bushes, and human beings.

  The firestorm disappeared down Montgomery, leaving Russian Hill and Montgomery Street ablaze, the odor of flaming buildings and burning bodies drifting up Telegraph Hill.

  The fire clap blocked the moans and screams from the poor souls below. We thought to run to their aid but knew the effort would be in vain. "Telegraph is next," Hunter said. "We have to move."

  He soaked a towel in the wine as sparks again poured through the window. "You hit the rooms," he shouted. "I'm going up to the roof. Remind me never to install wood shingles."

  I ran to the small dining room and slapped at sparks. They pitted the floor wherever they landed, crackling like Chinese fireworks when the towel struck them. I tried to cool my face in a wine-soaked towel, crying out as the alcohol hit my skin.

  Hunter shinnied up a porch column and pulled up several pails. He ran across the shingled roof, slapping at a shower of embers.

  Along the waterfront, sailors and Marines, soldiers and firefighters stood with their backs to the piers as several fires rushed toward them. Fueled by a wind behind it, the inferno gained strength, growing taller and more ferocious as it advanced.

  The Chicago, Marblehead, Boston, Paul Jones, and Princeton opened their pumps. Along the three-mile stretch of waterfront, the air filled with towering plumes of water that vaporized before they reached their targets. Admiral Goodrich and Commander Badger ran along the lines, shouting through megaphones to spur their men forward.

  Anxious evacuees lining the docks turned to watch as the young sailors advanced.

  From the middle of the bay, Enrico Caruso watched the blaze reach crescendo, an undulating kaleidoscope of molten gold and pale rose with streaks of purple and splotches of darkest crimson. The fires' colorful reflections quivered on the water as the ceaseless roar echoed off Alcatraz and Angel Island.

  "A thousand feet high, the flames," the young sailor told Caruso. "Navigator just measured it."

  Kaitlin stirred. She and Caruso could see Telegraph Hill, like a stone mountain refusing to yield to the flames.

  In the dining room of the Fallon house, flames trickled across the floor, backing me into a corner. I lashed out with a wine-soaked towel until it caught fire, then flung it into an empty pail and seized another. I was dismayed to find it was the last one. I f
ought back, sick with exhaustion, and still the flames advanced, so close they threatened to ignite my clothes. My eyes closed against my will and I could feel myself teetering. The hiss and smell of burning wine forced my eyes to open, to the sight of Hunter pouring pails of it across the floor, dousing the flames surrounding me.

  His face was suddenly next to mine, hands clapping at my blouse to extinguish tiny sparks, his voice so hoarse that every word sounded like a whisper.

  "We've got to get to the roof. Can you make it? Annalisa! I need you on the roof! Annalisa!"

  I nodded and stumbled forward, the boiled wine scalding my bleeding knees. The pain jolted me awake. I screamed. Hunter jerked me to my feet.

  "Stand up! Stand up, Annalisa, or we'll die."

  He pressed a towel to my swollen face, hoping the pain inflicted by the alcohol would revive me. I groaned and pushed him away, the shock helping to steady my woozy head.

  "I need you on the roof. Can you do it?"

  I nodded and followed him outside, where Hunter pushed me onto the roof. Using a wooden door as a shield, its varnished surface smoking and blistering, we climbed to the peak of the gable roof.

  "Annalisa! Annalisa, I need you to soak the towels and drop them to me. ',

  We were in the eye of a maelstrom. Below us to the east, fire advanced on the central waterfront. To the west, flames raged along Russian Hill and North Beach; to the south the Barbary Coast burned unchallenged. If we could hold off the sparks and firebrands, we had a chance.

  Hunter soaked a towel and handed it to me, motioning over the side. I nodded, my eyes swollen so that I had to tilt my head back to see through narrow slits. The closest fire was still a quarter-mile away, advancing from Washington Square to begin its ascent up Telegraph Hill.

  I crawled down the roof to the edge, where Hunter propped the door up, one end in the gutter, the other against a broken rake handle. He took the rope on the block and tackle and tied it around his waist. With a wine-soaked towel over his head and neck, he lowered himself down the side, swinging in a giant arch while slapping at the flames.

  After a dozen awkward swipes, the towel dried up and blistered paint stuck to it, burning his hands. He threw it back to the roof and tried to scream, but the fire clap drowned him out. I crawled from behind the makeshift shield and doused the burning towel in a pail, trying to avoid looking at the forty-foot drop.

  I chucked the towel back over the edge and he barely caught it in his outstretched hand. A rainbow of sparks fell on the roof behind me. I crawled up the hot shingles, grunting as I walloped away.

  Along the waterfront sailors and Marines tore strips from their shirts, wrapping their hands to protect them from the heat of brass nozzles and couplings. Flaming debris drifted over their heads and onto the deck of the Paul Jones. Teams of sailors trained their hoses on the ship. Up and down the line, men fainted while others advanced to take their places, pulling the fallen ones to safety. The hissing of steam grew incessantly as the blaze fought back, hungry to jump the wide Embarcadero and devour the hundreds of wooden docks and warehouses.

  But the young men refused to yield.

  On Van Ness, Dougherty's men saw their maniacal leader everywhere as the battle line of fire and firefighters wavered back and forth. Giant clouds of steam and vapor billowed along the inferno's edge, the product of massive streams of salt water.

  The fire leapt the west side of the boulevard and surged two blocks. The Assistant Chief roused an army of soldiers and volunteers to counterattack, beating at the flames with their shirts, tearing at bits of burning wood with bloody hands.

  At the Fallon house, the situation had shifted. The fire in North Beach and Russian Hill had slackened, victim of its own avarice, moving toward the northern waterfront. The main fires had passed us by. All that remained a threat were the flames climbing steadily up Telegraph Hill, devouring the houses several blocks below us.

  Something mechanical inhabited us, a practiced response that kept us moving. I climbed back down from the roof and filled pail after pail with wine and attached them to the pulley line for Hunter to hoist.

  I battled the sparks and flames inside the house while he did the same above. We soaked rags in what little water we had left, wrapping them around our faces and necks, leaving only our eyes exposed.

  I watched everything, even my own movements, as though I was outside of my own body, an apparition watching someone who barely resembled me engaged in an absurdist task. The pain kept me rooted: my skin crawled, my shoulders ached, and my lungs cried for relief.

  Then a miracle arrived. Mercifully, the wind shifted, blowing the fire back on itself before it reached us.

  The fire began to die.

  I sagged to my knees and sobbed, though not a tear was left in me. I could not tell how much time had passed, what day it was, if the sun had risen or set or if any of those things still occurred. Perhaps I was already dead and this was Hell and the whole thing was about to begin anew.

  Hunter scrambled back along the roof as the last halo of sparks drifted down on him. He stamped them out and retreated behind the peak of the roof. He rolled to his side and for an instant, drifted to a dark, dizzy place where he could hear his mother's voice.

  I limped out on the porch, barely able to see, and drained the last drop of water from my canteen, the warm liquid burning all the way to my stomach.

  Hunter jolted awake and crawled, sick and spent, back to the peak of the roof, where he stared toward Montgomery. The fire was almost gone: several houses, including ours, had been spared.

  He lowered himself to the ground and entered the house, returning with a canteen he had hidden in the basement to keep cool. He doused my face and forced me to drink. I gagged and placed my hand over my swollen lips, forcing the water down again.

  We collapsed beside each other on the porch. In seconds, we were asleep. The nightmares came instantly, more hideous than any I could ever imagine: crushed children and burning women, rats with gleaming eyes, and devils laughing at people being tortured. I saw my parents racked by plague, Byron drowning, Christian bleeding in the street, and Hunter being burned alive.

  Only exhaustion kept me from awakening.

  Chapter 64

  TELEGRAPH HILL

  APRIL 21, 1906. SUNRISE

  When Hunter and I awoke hours later it was from the sting of fresh water on our faces. I coughed and rose up halfway, afraid to touch my face. I heard Hunter gag and cough. I tried to open my eyes but my eyelids would not budge.

  "Hold still," a soothing voice said. "Open slowly."

  I felt cool water running over my face again, seeping into my eyes and freeing my eyelids. I could hear Hunter cough again as water was poured over his face and neck.

  Hunter struggled to a sitting position, gasping for breath and reaching out for something to help anchor the spinning in his head. Somehow, my fingers wrapped themselves in his. It helped steady and comfort me.

  "Hunter. It's Doctor Genovese, Hunter. Do you understand me? Hunter!"

  The best Hunter could do was grunt.

  A cup was placed against my lips and, despite the burning, I forced a swallow.

  "Take it easy, both of you. Real easy." It was a male voice that I did not recognize at first.

  Flashes of light shot through my head and a wave of pain wracked my body as I was pulled to my feet. My skin was on fire, every bone and muscle ached, every movement stabbed with bolts of electricity.

  "Annalisa, it's me, Francis. Take another sip."

  He pressed the cup to my lips again. I gagged, coughing soot through my nose and mouth into the cup.

  "I'm Dr. Genovese, a neighbor of the Fallons," the other man said as he dabbed an ointment on my face.

  Hunter managed to look at me, scarcely recognizing the puffy face and soot-encrusted hair of the woman he had asked to marry him. I looked back in shock. Blisters and soot covered his cracked face. His eyes were almost shut, his lips and tongue so swollen he could barely mumbl
e. My mind began to steady and my vision cleared. The wind had freshened and the sun carved long shafts through the gray, swirling dust. The smell of ruin was everywhere.

  I recognized Francis' face—though ragged and sweat-stained, he appeared unharmed. After the Navy had commandeered the boat he was using to take Adam Rolf to authorities in Oakland—Rolf had been freed yet again—Francis attempted to come to our aid, only to be driven back by flames. He had gone to the Mission District and joined three thousand residents who used a single working fire hydrant to save their neighborhood.

  There were other, no less astonishing tales I would learn.

  At Rincon Post Office, employees had used mail sacks to beat out flames in a struggle that lasted twenty-four hours. The Mint was saved by its superintendent, Frank Leach, Army Lieutenant Armstrong, Fire Captain Brady, and a few dozen courageous men.

  The fire line along the western side of Van Ness Avenue had wavered numerous times, but held. Young sailors and Marines had made the difference; with residents and firefighters, they had refused to yield the Western Addition.

  Hunter and I fought to gain our bearings. Francis and Dr. Genovese spooned some sort of canned vegetables into our mouths, the first food we had consumed in days.

  "I want to show you something, Hunter," Francis said. "Can you walk?"

  We could barely hear, the fire still pounding in our ears. Francis and Dr. Genovese took us by the arms and got us moving forward.

  We descended the porch of the Fallon house and walked across the cobblestones, still hot beneath our feet. Our clothes were so crusted with wine, sweat, and soot that we crackled with each step.

  We stumbled to the edge of Telegraph Hill and forced our eyes to open wide enough to gaze at the waterfront below. The entire stretch of the Embarcadero was covered with a blanket of murky soot and ash. As the wind stiffened and the air continued to clear, we could see the soot shift and undulate as something stirred beneath its surface.

  Slowly, shapes began to form. First heads, then torsos, then arms, and knees, all black with soot. Soon entire figures emerged, as though the dead were rising from their graves. We strained to keep our eyes open, stunned and disbelieving, as hundreds of civilians, firefighters, sailors, and Marines rose from the places where they had collapsed from exhaustion. Many had their hands still tied by rags to their fire hoses. Some crossed themselves; some crawled onto their knees and prayed.