A City Tossed and Broken

by Judy Blundell

  He turned to me, rising on his toes and back down again, as if to make himself taller as he delivered his pronouncement.

  “Lily — if I may call you that — I am your guardian now. You are my ward. I drew up your father’s will myself. You are the only heir, and my responsibility. The money will all go into a trust, which I will administer until you are twenty-one. Forgive me for speaking of this now, but . . .” He ran his hand through his hair and it came back streaked with gray. He stared at it.

  “Circumstances demand it. I barely got the records out in time. But your father . . . he removed something from the office safe. I don’t know where it is. But your future may depend on it. There is a ledger — a record of our business. Perfectly legitimate, I assure you.” He smoothed his mustache. “It will help me to continue as he would have wished in the next few weeks. See to all his business. Did you ever see him with it?”

  I hesitated, but he barely waited for my response. He turned around and examined the room, his gaze roaming while he spoke.

  “Do you know where he would keep important papers? There were also bonds — almost a million dollars in bonds, Lily. I can’t find them. Do you know if he has a safe?”

  I don’t think he even expected an answer. He began to go through the bookshelves, looking behind the books and opening them, then returning them to the shelves.

  He started calmly enough. But he quickly grew frenzied, pulling books from the shelves and tossing them to the floor. Soon the shelves were empty.

  This was the moment I should have confessed, diary. I admit it!

  But I remained silent. There was something so wild in his eyes. There could be only one explanation for his frenzy — he knew about those columns of bribes in the ledger. He was a crook, too.

  The lie was so enormous I couldn’t believe I could tell it. Every time he had said Lily it was like a hammer against my breastbone.

  But if there was a chance to save my family, I had to take it.

  He ran upstairs to Mr. Sump’s bedroom and I heard things crashing up there as well. But when he came downstairs he was calmer.

  “I will just have to search again,” he said. “If I cannot find them, it is unlikely that a looter will. Don’t worry.” He smoothed his mustache and smiled. “I only have your best interests at heart. You are well protected.”

  That’s when I realized: the smoothing of the mustache, the false smile. That was his tell. That’s what he did when he lied.

  Which meant he didn’t have Lily’s best interests at heart. . . .

  Suddenly a loud blast split the air, and I jumped. He told me that the Army under the direction of General Funston was starting to dynamite buildings to create a firebreak. If the fire couldn’t feed on something, it would die.

  “That’s good, then,” I said.

  “Unless as the buildings go up the wind takes the embers and the next building catches fire.”

  I looked out and saw the trees moving, the wind fluttering the branches. It was an ominous sight.

  “We are safe up here,” he said. “There is plenty of space between there and here.”

  “Mr. Crandall,” I said. “I was wondering . . . I know that this is a perilous time, and decisions will no doubt have to made later, but . . . I keep thinking of poor Minnie. The maid,” I added, because he looked blank. “Minette Bonner. In light of what happened, I would like to give something to the family. When this is over. I’d like them to have their business back.”

  “How do you know about this? Did the maid tell you?”

  “She did mention it to me.”

  “Well. I don’t want you to worry about such things. We can’t just forgive debts.” He chuckled. “This is why you need a guardian, Lily. A young girl has sentimental ideas and the next thing you know, you’re in the poorhouse. No,” he said soothingly, “let me take care of the business. You needn’t concern yourself.”

  I tried to argue, but he wasn’t listening to me at all.

  “You need company and protection right now. So you’ll have to come to my house on Green Street and stay with Mrs. Crandall. We should take your mother’s jewels, at least. You don’t have to enter that room again. Can you direct me?”

  “The diamonds she wore last night are still on her dresser,” I said. “The rest she keeps in a small red case. It is in the drawer of her dressing table.” After the words left my mouth I wondered if it would seem suspicious. I answered as a maid would answer, not a daughter.

  He didn’t notice. “Mrs. Crandall will be worried. I’ll take you over to Russian Hill. The car has been commandeered by the Army. We have to walk.”

  He went up the stairs while I waited below, and then we walked out with our pockets stuffed with jewels. The air was thick and smoky. Ash and cinders drifted down on us, a dark, silent snow.

  April 18, 1906

  Wednesday

  Midnight

  I am at the Crandall residence on Green Street. I am awake, we are all awake. Because of the smoke and the fires it was dark early — six o’clock. No one feels comfortable indoors. We sit outside on the living room furniture Mr. Crandall has dragged from the house with the help of the neighbors. We’ll spend the night outside here on this small patch of lawn. There is too much danger that cinders and sparks could land on the roof and the house will go up. All the neighbors are out and some have dragged furniture to sit on the lawn with us. We are all keeping watch.

  When we arrived Mrs. Crandall pounced on her husband, demanding to know why he was gone so long. She is his height, but round and puffy-looking, and she hung on his arm while she talked. You could tell he wanted to shake her off and just sit down. He explained that the streets are sometimes impassable and he was almost caught in the fire when he went to check on Mr. Sump’s properties on Mission Street. He had tried to help rescue people from a collapsed building but the fire came too close.

  Mrs. Crandall said she was out of her mind with worry and then finally noticed me. When Mr. Crandall introduced me she instantly swiveled, pushed at her hair, and offered me tea that, it turned out, she could not provide.

  Then I saw what it was like to be not only rich, but the source of somebody’s income. As the heir, Lily Sump held this family’s fortune in her hands.

  I would be untruthful, diary, if I said I did not enjoy this a bit.

  She found me a chair and a glass of water (how precious water is to us now! I shared it with a neighbor who came by) and has been so solicitous of my comfort, even while not being able to offer me any comfort at all.

  The sky is orange with the flames, and they have been dynamiting to create firebreaks. We are almost used to the blasts now.

  As the night wore on Mrs. Crandall directed Mr. Crandall to fetch this or that from the house, just in case we have to evacuate. I don’t understand how she thinks we can transport all these trunks, clothes, and bedding without a car or a horse and carriage. I realized that she looked puffy because she is wearing two dresses and a shirtwaist and I don’t know how many petticoats. She doesn’t want to leave her best gowns behind.

  We are several blocks east from Van Ness Avenue. West of Van Ness, they say, is not on fire. Mr. Crandall said they will try to use Van Ness as a firebreak since it is a wide avenue. So if we have to walk away, we don’t have far to go. The Army will tell us when to leave.

  It seems as though the entire city is walking. The people carry all kinds of things, chairs and phonographs and pets, or walk by pushing baby carriages and children’s wagons piled with clothing and groceries and footstools and paintings. I saw one person who had attached wheels to a stove and was pushing it with difficulty down the street.

  Even with my eyes closed I hear the scrape, scrape of trunks being dragged. It is the most mournful sound I have ever heard.

  Many are heading all the way to Golden Gate Park or the Presidio. There are supplies there, and nurses. Some head to the open squares.

  No one in San Francisco is allowed to light a stove. The soldiers cam
e by with the order. We heard that the fire in Hayes Valley, the one that caused City Hall to burn, was caused by someone cooking breakfast in a stove with a broken chimney. Mr. Crandall’s neighbor brought us some apples and hard-boiled eggs for our supper, and Mrs. Crandall shared the corned beef her cook had made for supper the night before. Her cook went to check on her family in the Mission District and has not returned. The driver went to look in on his sister. Mrs. Crandall has done nothing but complain about how disloyal both servants are. It seems to me she would have gotten along with Mrs. Sump. When I told her this she took it as a compliment.

  Earlier in the afternoon Mr. Crandall walked to a meeting called by the mayor of some of the important men in San Francisco and was gone for hours. While he was gone the air got hotter and we began to hear the flames, a dull steady roar. Mrs. Crandall moaned over and over that he was surely dead, until I thought I would scream. She spoke to a neighbor who said “the Italians” cleared the store of everything they could load in a wagon and left. Mrs. Crandall said they should be arrested and that’s what the city gets for taking in so many immigrants. It took me a while to understand that they were talking about the Jennardi family grocery. Mrs. Crandall said, “Oh, that family! Running all over that store . . . all those children, I can’t tell one from another.”

  I had forgotten about Jake.

  What if I am here and he comes by and identifies me as Minnie? Apparently the family has taken off to safety, but once the fires are gone they will return. He could expose me.

  Whatever I am going to do, I must do it before he returns.

  His map is still tucked into the pages of the diary. I take it out and study it — the bold quick lines of Van Ness, the X where the Sump mansion is, the X where the Jennardi grocery is, downtown, City Hall, the long rectangle of Golden Gate Park. I can see now where the fire is and why Mr. Crandall is concerned. We will be surrounded by fire on three sides and our backs will be to the bay.

  Now that I understand the geography, I have a little more respect for Mrs. Crandall’s panic.

  When Mr. Crandall returned, the neighbors gathered to hear his news. He told of the buildings that were gone and with each name came a gasp and a moan from the crowd. City Hall, he said, was just a shell. The Call Building had burned, and the Palace Hotel.

  “Not the Palace!” Mrs. Crandall cried. “It is fireproof!”

  Mr. Crandall said that if he’s learned anything today it is that nothing is fireproof. There is a dedicated group trying to save the Mint, he said, and the postal workers are staying to fight the fire at the Post Office. But the fire has spread in a new direction. Chinatown is almost burned out.

  The fire had jumped past Stockton Street now and they were making a stand at Powell. Everyone gasped and I realized I had been at Powell Street that morning — it ran alongside Union Square, where we had all felt so safe. I asked him about the St. Francis Hotel and he shook his head.

  “If they don’t halt it at Powell and Sutter, it could go up Nob Hill,” he said.

  At that the faces got that set look that means people are scared. That meant that the fire could come at Russian Hill from two directions.

  Mr. Crandall took me aside and told me in a solemn voice that he had arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Sump and Lily (only he called her “the maid”) to be taken to the temporary morgue in the Presidio. I feel so much better now that I don’t have to think of them still lying in that house.

  Mrs. Crandall wants us to evacuate — she says Mr. Crandall should find a cart, and we should go to her sister’s house in Eureka Valley, which is south and west of us. It is still in the city but safe from the fires, so far. Mr. Crandall said aside from the difficulty of securing a conveyance — for the Army and police have confiscated everything they can get to help the wounded and to fight the fires — she hasn’t spoken to her sister in five years, ever since she married an Irishman. What makes her think her sister will take them in?

  Diary, between the Irish and the Italians and the Chinese and the Japanese, Mrs. Crandall is running out of groups to look down on.

  What would she say if she knew I was the daughter of a tavern owner, my mother with Irish blood and my father an immigrant? I am nothing but a mongrel.

  Mrs. Crandall says that family is family and blood is blood. Mr. Crandall said she once said she would never forgive her sister.

  Mrs. Crandall said that was before she was sitting in the middle of the devil’s cauldron.

  April 19, 1906

  Thursday

  2 A.M.

  I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes, all I see is fire.

  The smoke is shot through with an orange glow. The fires have joined and there is one fire now, miles long, they say. The city is destroying itself around us. We hear the dynamite and then the thunderous roar of collapse. Wood and stone become dust, which rises in the air and mingles with the smoke.

  Mr. Crandall has gone again, this time to see if the perimeter of the fire has moved, and where it is. He will walk to Van Ness and see if he can learn whether we must walk to Eureka Valley tonight or if we can wait until morning.

  The lawn is now even more crowded with neighbors who have dragged chairs and blankets here. The men are talking of staying, of fighting the fire that is coming, of not letting their houses be dynamited. You can see that Mrs. Crandall doesn’t like all this company but I would think she’d be glad.

  How will they fight? There is no water. Somebody spoke of looking for cisterns that have been forgotten. Someone else suggested gathering all the vinegar from their homes, and blankets to snuff out sparks.

  They say things like, I won’t abandon my home or, I can’t leave Mother’s dining table, but yet, what will they do when the fire comes? It is now an inferno. It is so powerful that it makes its own wind, a wind that seems to suck out what we need to live and give us only heat, only ash.

  Later

  Just now a family walked by who said they were coming down from Nob Hill. Nob Hill will go within the hour, they said.

  Mrs. Crandall is asleep. Mr. Crandall is talking to a group of men in the street.

  I should have buried the strongbox. That’s what the people here are doing, burying their valuables in case the fire comes.

  It’s my only hope to have a life if I survive this.

  Diary, I am afraid. I have to go back to the Sump house one more time.

  Later

  6 A.M.

  The grass is scorched. When I run my finger along it, it comes up black.

  In the early hours of the morning I left the Crandall home and started up Jones Street. It was a long walk, and fatigue had settled in my bones. I trudged up the hill against the stream of people coming down. Some of them warned me that Nob Hill was not safe any longer. I kept going.

  When I got to Sacramento Street I stopped to look around me. What had sometimes seemed like a dream over the past hours was suddenly too real. The sky was lit with fire. It was beautiful and terrible, like something outside of the world I’d always known. The wildness and fierceness of the fire drove the wind, and it shimmered with heat. The pavement was hot beneath the soles of my boots.

  I ran to the Sump house. We hadn’t bothered to lock the door since anyone could get in through the shattered bay window. Inside the house I ran through rooms illuminated by the flames. I reached the study and fell to my knees in front of the sofa. When I found the strongbox I sobbed in relief.

  There was a small carpet in front of the fireplace. I staggered over with the box and placed it there. I knew I would only be able to carry the box a few feet. I dragged the carpet through the study, down the long hallway, and pulled my burden out the front door.

  I was suddenly seized with fear that the shovel would be gone — stolen by a passerby. But there it was, lying on the ground next to the overturned barrel and the slate tiles from the roof.

  I started to dig. It was hard, hot work. My sore shoulder ached terribly, and it felt as though I was breathing smoke and fire. When I
heard soldiers I dived down behind the stone wall until they passed.

  I felt something burn my arm and I swatted away a spark. When I looked up I saw licks of flame on the roof of the Sump mansion. Smoke trailed from an attic window.

  Fear drove me then. I dug frantically, as if my life depended on it. I heard a roar at my back but I didn’t turn, I just kept digging until the hole was deep enough to hold the strongbox. When I judged the strongbox could fit in the hole with a few inches of dirt over it, I dragged it and pushed it inside. I quickly patted the earth down over it and then found a few bricks to place over the dirt to mark the spot.

  I heard the sound of popping, and suddenly glass rained down. The windows of the house were exploding from the heat. I felt glass in my hair.

  I ran to the street, but when I reached it I turned back for one last look at the house. The wind must have picked up then, for the smoke clouds, a mile high in the sky, shifted and scudded away for a moment and the pale moonlight shone down. I saw flickering shadows in an attic window, and caught sight of a line of fire on a curtain. The fire seemed almost lazy, taking its time with licks and feints, but I knew that when it unleashed, the mansion would go quickly. There was so much to burn.

  I turned to look up at the crown of the hill. I saw sparks on the roof of the fireproof Fairmont Hotel. It would burn. It would all burn. The millionaires couldn’t escape the fire after all.

  A group of firemen suddenly appeared, walking down Jones Street. They gave me a start. Covered in gray ash, they looked like ghosts. When they saw me, one of them gestured. I could see the urgency in his expression even though I could also see that he was too exhausted to lift his arm all the way.

  “What are you doing up here?” one of them bellowed at me as I came closer. “Nob Hill is going!”

  “I’m on my way to Russian Hill to stay with my guardian,” I answered.

  “You’d better walk with us, miss,” one of them said. “They’ve been giving out badges and guns too freely. Men happy to shoot at what they think is a looter and no questions asked.”