The Strange Case of Baby H

by Kathryn Reiss

  “We could build a fireplace from fallen bricks,” Clara suggested. “A sort of outdoor grill.” She hobbled over and picked up a heavy brick from the pile on the ground.

  “Capital idea,” said Mr. Stokes, coming to assist her.

  “We’ll all help,” said Geoffrey Midgard, the other middle-aged bank clerk. “In times of trouble, folks pull together.”

  Miss Chandler and Miss DuBois came forward and started helping Clara carry bricks from the collapsed chimneys onto the patch of grass in the side yard. Mr. Granger, a quilt clutched tightly around his thin shoulders, directed. Mother hurried indoors again to search for breakfast offerings. Father rolled his chair to the side of the house, where he could see their tree-lined street. He stared at the neighbors’ brightly painted houses, now with broken steps and chimneys. In the distance, smoke billowed above the rooftops.

  Clara was surprised how quickly all of them working together were able to fashion a stove. Two bank clerks, two music teachers, one retired brick mason, and Clara all made a square of brick, several feet high, to hold wood or coal. Father, watching from his chair, directed them to take some of the iron fencing stored in the shed to serve as the grate. It was a crude outdoor grill, but it would work, Clara decided. And Mr. Granger said there might be a way to build an oven, too, if they could find some sort of mortar to hold the brick together …

  Another boom like cannon fire split the air.

  What if Emmeline’s family didn’t know not to light their stove or lamps? “Mother?” asked Clara. “May I please go check on Emmeline?”

  “Not yet, child. We need to get things in order here.”

  Mother handed out bread and cheese for a hasty breakfast, and they ate beneath the canopy of the oak tree. The sun rose higher in the sky, but the day was unnaturally dark. Frequent explosions in the distance meant new fires were erupting every hour. Mr. Stokes and Mr. Midgard set up boards across two sawhorses to create a table in the side yard. Clara, her mother, and the lodgers all made quick runs into the house to get dressed and to carry foodstuffs and furniture outdoors. Mother brought out a big pot of broth and beans that she had started yesterday and placed it on the makeshift stove, and Miss Chandler and Miss DuBois set themselves the task of chopping cabbage and celery to add to the pot.

  Clara didn’t feel safe inside the house. She moved quickly, helping to bring out bedding, kerosene lamps, and chairs—things they might need to set up housekeeping in the yard until the house was deemed safe. She worried every time she set foot indoors that another quake would send the walls tumbling down around her.

  Clara and Gideon had been born in this house. Clara had played in every room and knew each space intimately. She and her brother had spent years playing out in the small backyard or two blocks away in Golden Gate Park. Mother had trusted Gideon to keep Clara safe and had allowed them the freedom to get new books at the library, to see moving pictures at the cinedrome, and later to take the streetcars all the way across the dunes to the Sutro Baths at Ocean Beach.

  Then one day Father had decided to take Gideon with him on a steamship run down the coast, and the accident that changed everything left the steamship wrecked on the rocks, Father badly injured—and Gideon dead.

  With Father unable to work anymore, Mother had thrown herself into running a boardinghouse. She and Father moved out of their big bedroom upstairs to sleep instead in the study off the dining room. Now Mr. Midgard and Mr. Stokes shared the master bedroom. Clara moved to the sleeping porch so that the two music teachers could have her sunny bedroom. Old Mr. Granger settled into the guest room. The only bedroom that had no lodger was Gideon’s. His room remained just as it had been the day he’d died two years ago—Mother’s shrine to her lost boy.

  The first weeks after the accident were hazy in Clara’s memory. She remembered only the numbness she’d felt, as if she’d lain too long in the saltwater tank at the Sutro Baths. The water, straight from the Pacific Ocean, was icy cold. A brief plunge could be refreshing—any more and her bones would ache. After Gideon died, Clara ached all over—as if she, not he, had been the one to smash on the rocks where Father’s steamship foundered. She had missed Gideon with a sharp intensity at first, but now, two years later, the ache had dulled. She sometimes forgot he was gone; when she heard an amusing story at school or learned a new joke, she’d think, Wait till I tell Gideon!—and then remember that she could not tell him anything anymore. Now she met him only in dreams, dreams where he did not drown because she swam out after him and pulled him to safety on the rocks.

  “Beds now,” Mother was saying as Clara stepped outside again with several lanterns in her hands. “We’ll set up pallets under the tree—” She broke off with a gasp as another volley of explosions boomed in the distance and a whole crowd of people burst through the gate into their backyard.

  “Heavens above, is no place safe?” cried a woman with two toddlers clutching her skirt.

  “Do you have rooms?” demanded the man at her side. “We were told you run a boardinghouse.”

  Another family pressed close behind them. “We’ve nowhere to go!” they told Mother.

  “No rooms, but lots of space here in the yard,” said Mother, and Clara marveled at the calm in her voice. “We are happy to help as we can.”

  The new arrivals introduced themselves as the Hansen and Grissinger families whose homes on Market Street had collapsed. “Mercifully none of us perished!” cried Mrs. Hansen to Mother. “But all we could save fits into these two wheelbarrows and one pram!”

  They had set off with scores of other suddenly homeless people, all looking for shelter and bearing news of the devastation. Chinatown was rubble! The wharf was on fire! Ferries full of newly homeless families were escaping across the bay; tugs and fishing trawlers were being pressed into service to help evacuate the city. Flames were erupting from burst gas mains all through San Francisco’s center.

  Not one piece of news that Clara heard was good. This is the good news, she told herself firmly, looking around. All the houses on our street are standing. She and her family could have been killed, but here they were. The cut on her foot was throbbing under Mother’s tight bandage, but that was nothing compared to the suffering of the Grissinger and Hansen families. Rumor had it, they said, that Fire Chief Sullivan had been injured in the quake and nobody knew who was in charge now. Rumor had it that the army was taking over the city. Rumor had it that all the banks were burning—and that Charles Crocker himself, head of one of the largest banks, was seen helping his workers toss money into sacks, hoping to hire a boat to take all the money out into the bay until the fires were out.

  The Hansen and Grissinger parents relayed the news, but their small children stood silent. Their eyes were wide with shock. They were wrapped in sooty blankets and still wore their nightclothes.

  Mother rose to the occasion. She sent Clara into the house for vinegar to wash wounds. Then she sent her back to find skirts and sweaters from their own wardrobes, and Father’s old trousers for the men.

  “Gideon’s wardrobe is full of clothes,” Clara reminded her mother boldly as she handed her an armload of dresses.

  “Just stay out of there,” Mother ordered, frowning. She helped Clara gather the sheets and blankets off the beds. “We haven’t water to wash these,” Mother said, “but you can at least shake off all the plaster.”

  Clara hung the sheets on the washing line strung along the back fence. Clouds of plaster dust sifted down onto the ground below.

  Mother heated yesterday’s coffee for the new arrivals. A pair of elderly sisters appeared—Amelia and Ottilie Wheeler—shaken and dazed. They, too, were given hot coffee. The six Hansen and Grissinger children whined and fretted while Mother and Clara bandaged cuts and scrapes as best they could. Miss Chandler and Miss DuBois doled out the last of the bread and cheese. Soon the fathers of the two families, along with Mr. Stokes and Mr. Midgard, set off through the streets to see how they could be of help. Father sat in his wheelchair at th
e curb, watching them go. If things were different, Clara knew, Father would be leading them.

  In fact, if the accident had never happened, Clara reflected, Father would be out on the water with his steamboat, ferrying people to safety. Father would never sit home while there was work to be done. Gideon, at sixteen, would be helping, too …

  Wish you were here, Old Sock, she thought, ripping the last clean tea towel into strips for bandages. She blinked her eyes against the clouds of wind-borne ash. The whole world felt upside down.

  CHAPTER 3

  BLESSING IN DISGUISE

  Late in the afternoon, Clara slipped inside the house and darted upstairs to the sleeping porch. In the doorway, she stopped and stared in dismay at the wreckage. Her clothes, books, and school satchel were on the floor, covered with plaster dust and glass from the broken windows. Her doll, Delilah, had lost her porcelain head. It lay, shattered, by the dresser. Clara’s stomach clenched.

  Don’t be silly, she told herself. Delilah is only a doll. But she picked up Delilah’s headless body and laid it gently on the dresser top. She found Emmeline’s birthday present on the floor, covered with plaster. At least it wasn’t breakable, Clara thought, dusting off the velvet pouch.

  She’d decided to check on Emmeline even without Mother’s permission. She would go quickly so no one would miss her. She hurried the three blocks to Emmeline’s house, skirting piles of brick and stone. The smell of smoke was everywhere. Along the way, Clara saw families tending small campfires in their yards and sheltering under tents of sheets and tablecloths.

  But Emmeline’s house stood silent. Clara climbed the steep steps to the front door and knocked. While she waited for someone to respond, she leaned to the right to try to look inside the broken bay window.

  No one answered her knock. Could they be hurt? Or had they gone away?

  Clara ran around to the alley behind Emmeline’s house. The gate to Emmeline’s backyard hung off its hinges. No one was there. She hesitated, fingering the soft pouch in her skirt pocket. She would save it for Emmeline, for surely Emmeline would return—unhurt! She could not imagine a world without Emmeline in it—though that, of course, had once been true about Gideon, too. Clara and Emmeline had been best friends since they were eight years old. At Emmeline’s house they played with their paper dolls. At Clara’s house they played school, with Clara as the teacher. Clara, who hoped to go to college and become a real teacher when she grew up, enjoyed practicing on Emmeline.

  Clara bit her lip in worry as she headed home from Emmeline’s. Mother was waiting in front of their house, ready to scold, but shouts and alarm bells and the crash of falling masonry interrupted her tirade. Then—most frightening of all—came the sound of gunshots. As Mother and Clara hurried into the boardinghouse’s backyard, Hiram Stokes and Geoffrey Midgard returned with stories of soldiers shooting looters, and of the army ordering whole rows of homes that had survived the quake to be evacuated and dynamited to create firebreaks.

  Mother turned pale when she heard about the dynamiting. “Are homes in danger here?” she asked Mr. Stokes.

  “Wind’s blowing the other way,” he said. “I think we’re safe enough.”

  “We have to watch out for looters,” Father said. “Disaster brings out the best in people—and the worst. Some people will always take advantage of others’ misfortunes.” He crossed his arms. “I’ll stand guard.”

  He’ll sit guard, Clara thought. But she knew Father would be vigilant, and he would raise a huge cry if anyone tried to loot homes along their street. She felt safer knowing that Father would be watching.

  Mother was stirring up more porridge to supplement the cabbage and bean soup for their dinners. “There’s no running water in the house,” she announced to the lodgers. “But we do have our two rain barrels.”

  “Water mains are broken all over the city, ma’am,” Mr. Midgard informed her. “Here we are—a city fairly surrounded by water, but not a drop to drink.”

  “Well, then, we shall have to make the water in the rain barrels last,” Mother replied. “That will mean no baths.” Then she leaned over and murmured something to Father, and Father glanced at the rain barrels standing under the gutters by the back porch. He nodded and looked around at all the lodgers. Clara understood suddenly that Father would be guarding the water barrels as well.

  Mother told Clara to take down the sheets and blankets that had been airing all day and fold them to make pallets for their family and guests. Sighing, Clara looked around for the large wicker basket she had left at the side of the house. But it was gone. And, she realized, so was one of the quilts that had been hanging on the line with the sheets. Mother and Father’s large green-and-white diamond quilt was there, but her own soft blue one wasn’t.

  Looters—already? With the yard full of people? Clara looked around at all the lodgers. The Grissingers and the Hansens were talking quietly among themselves. Miss DuBois was urging the children to eat. Miss Chandler was helping Mother refill the bowls of porridge and soup. Old Mr. Granger and the Wheeler sisters sat in the corner by the back fence, on chairs brought from the dining room. From the wild way Mr. Granger was gesturing, Clara knew he was telling a story about his days as a gold miner, long years ago. He told these tales to anyone who would listen, and Clara had listened many times. She was glad he had a new audience.

  But no one had her blue quilt.

  Clara frowned. There was a wind—it had been whipping up the fires all over the city all day—so perhaps the basket had blown out toward the street. But the quilt? She had pegged it firmly onto the washing line before she’d set off for Emmeline’s.

  Clara rounded the house, looking in the bushes for the laundry basket. She walked out to the street, with its broken paving stones. She saw the glow of her neighbors’ small cookfires.

  But no sign of basket or quilt.

  Clara shrugged and headed back to the yard. Then she heard a mewling cry. She stopped and listened. There—it came again—from the steep steps leading to their front door.

  A lost kitten?

  Clara headed for the steps, then stopped. No sign of a kitten—but there, a flash of blue. And—yes—there, set just outside the front door, was the wicker basket with the quilt folded inside.

  How odd! Clara thought.

  There was the mewling cry again, louder this time. Clara sucked in her breath. She leaped up the steps two at a time.

  It wasn’t a kitten, not at all! There in the basket, wrapped snugly in the missing blue quilt, was a red-faced, wide-eyed, soot-smudged little baby.

  “Oh, gracious!” Clara bent over the basket to read the note pinned to the quilt.

  Please take care of me for I am a poor orffin

  She looked left and right and across the street to see who could have brought the baby. But no one was there.

  Clara lifted the baby into her arms, blue quilt and all. “You’re a fine fellow!” she murmured, turning back one corner of the blanket to reveal the baby’s grimy blue sailor suit topped by a too-large, torn flannel shirt.

  He stared at her. His eyes were dark under his sooty eyebrows and long lashes. He opened his mouth and let out a long, sad wail.

  “Oh, dear.” She laid him back into the wicker basket, hefted baby and basket together by the wicker handles, and fairly ran into the backyard. “Mother! Father!” she called. “We have another lodger tonight!”

  Father was slicing pieces of day-old cake for Mother to distribute as dessert. They turned to Clara as she hurried up to them.

  “Oh, good,” said Mother. “You’ve got the laundry down—” Her eyes widened.

  “I found him on our doorstep,” Clara explained. “Mother, someone just left him there!” She handed her mother the note. “Left him all alone!”

  The two young mothers held out their hands, but Mother lifted the baby out of the basket and cradled him against her shoulder. “What a precious little lad. About five or six months old, I should guess. Wouldn’t you agree, ladies?” />
  The other women nodded. The men looked bemused.

  “I do declare,” Mother exclaimed. “He is the very image of our Gideon at the same age, don’t you think so, Frederick? No hair to speak of—and look at those dark eyebrows!” She handed him down to Father in his wheelchair. Father frowned at the bundle in his lap and patted it awkwardly.

  The baby let out a shrill cry.

  “Noisy little fellow, and grimy as all get-out,” Father remarked. “Been out in the soot and rubble.”

  “Perhaps his parents were victims of the fire,” murmured Miss DuBois. “Poor darling.”

  “No doubt someone who knows what a fine boarding establishment Mrs. Curfman runs left him for you to find,” said Geoffrey Midgard gallantly.

  “But why not just bring him to us in person?” Clara asked, frowning. “It seems strange.”

  “I don’t think it’s strange at all,” Mother replied, lifting the baby back into her arms and cuddling him close. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways, my girl. Here we are, lacking a son. And here is this lad, lacking parents. And him with such a look of Gideon about him! It’s fair amazing, that’s what it is. Frederick, don’t you agree?” She appealed again to Father. “It’s Providence, that’s what it is.”

  Father grunted. He reached out and took a slice of cake.

  Mother reached out a finger and traced the baby’s cheek. “We will take care of him, of course. People have to help each other out in times of trouble.”

  “You’re a good woman, Mrs. Curfman,” said Miss Chandler.

  Mother handed the baby over to Clara with a sigh. “Take him indoors and clean him up, best you can, Clara. Find him something clean to wear. But don’t stay indoors long. It’ll be getting dark soon, and we mustn’t light lamps in the house.”

  Clara climbed the ramp with the baby in her arms. She carried him up to her sunporch and laid him on her bed.