I pretended not to hear him. I deeply hoped he would go away.
“Hell-o!” he called again, marching through his garden, lifting his knees high to avoid the thorny rosebushes.
His hair was a web of white, his moustache the black of his youth. Thin wire glasses covered only part of his round, beseeching eyes. Scrawny legs, a paunch. He was wearing a fine suit and vest—much finer than the men on Francisco Street wore. In the confusion of the day, he’d neglected to put on a tie; his pant legs were stuffed into galoshes.
He introduced himself as Dr. David Sugarman and offered his hand. “And you are?”
I said my name—I said it plain.
“Ah, Vera Johnson, glad to meet you.” He smiled as if he were truly glad, his accent foreign, vaguely European. “Are you a guest of Miss Rose’s?”
I nodded.
“Pearl, my wife, we’ve been worried. We didn’t see her after the first shaker. She’s all right, I trust?”
“We’re not… sure,” I confessed. “We—my sister and I—haven’t located her just yet.”
He sighed at this news. “I see. And you are… a relation of hers?”
I couldn’t help it, I smiled. Pie had gotten it just right. “Yes, on my mother’s side.” I felt the flush of a half lie burning my cheeks.
“I didn’t know Miss Rose had family,” he admitted as he surveyed the back of Rose’s house. “ ’Course there’s much we don’t know—she’s a… bit of a mystery. Keeps to herself.” Sugarman frowned at the damaged roof. “But here we are, all topsy-turvy, eh, Vera Johnson? Now, as to Rose, she didn’t spend the night downtown… oh, I hope not. The fire—”
“I think maybe so.” I swallowed hard, fighting a rush of tears.
“Oh, my dear. You must keep hope. Were you and your sister in the house during the quake?”
“We just arrived. Our house, on Francisco Street, is in ruins. We came here—there was no other place to go.”
“I see.” What had been friendly curiosity seemed to shift on his face, as if two distinct plates had aligned. Sugarman pulled his watch from his vest. “Look at that. Not yet eight. Three hours of living in another dimension.” He looked toward the chaos in the street, and at his redheaded sons, who were struggling to carry a heavy trunk down their steps into the dusty street.
“Ack, I told them not to bother with that,” Sugarman exclaimed. “Vera, would you mind saying hello to my wife?” Sugarman peered at me, this curious, intense man. “I know Pearl would be glad to meet you.”
I didn’t see how I could refuse him, now that we were neighbors. We trooped back the way he’d come, through a split in the hedge that divided the two gardens, and up the side alley of his house. As we were walking, an aftershock, this one smallish, came on and we halted in our tracks.
Sugarman put his hand on my shoulder. As we waited to see if the tremor would build, he studied my face and I had the feeling he was seeing into my soul.
How quickly we’d adapted to a shaking world, as if it had always been this way: when it was coming on—like a stomach flu, the roiling that wouldn’t stop until you were sick, sick and tired—you braced with your knees and grabbed on to something solid while glancing overhead to see what might fall. Then you cocked your head, listening, listening to the earth’s core. Was this the next big one, or merely an afterthought? The walls and doors wondered same as you, and being like you made of jelly, loose at the center. You had seen for yourself that the street can dance and ripple like water; you’d heard two houses in a single morning weep. And it was only eight o’clock.
“Oh, dear girl,” called Sugarman’s wife as she held tight to a knob in their iron fence, her feet wide and braced. “I hope you weren’t alone this morning, not in that big house?”
She talked as if she knew me, as if we were continuing a long conversation that had no beginning or end—proving she was just as sympathetic as her husband.
Before I could answer, Pearl Sugarman looked over my head to Rose’s house. “Ah, good. Tan put the horse back in the stable where he belongs.”
While I’d been in the garden, chatting with Sugarman, Tan had spread fresh hay in the stall and brushed General, transforming him into a well-tended horse. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I had left the horse where I believed he would be safe, where the likes of Tan and a quake couldn’t hurt him.
I ran, and when I reached the stable, I pushed Tan aside and led General into the alley, and once again tethered him, this time in haste, to the post. I tied the leather lead with a double knot, to be sure. And all the while I cursed Tan. My witnesses were the bricks on the stable roof, and the fire, and the strangers passing in the street. I seethed in a language I didn’t recognize—it wasn’t English or Swedish; it was the roar of terror and grief, and it surprised me and I didn’t seem able to stop.
Tan spat in the dirt at my feet. Then turning on his heel, he disappeared into the crush of refugees crowding the street.
“You’re scaring me,” Pie declared when I returned to the kitchen. She was holding a jar of tomatoes she’d found in the larder.
“I’m scaring you?” I bellowed. “I’m scaring you?”
I left her then, and was halfway up the stairs, when the next rumbling started. Oh, come on, I thought. Enough!
The earth answered by coming on. Every nail, bolt, and board of the grand house protested—a chorus of old people clearing their clotted throats. Louder and louder. Rogue braced himself at the bottom of the stairs, paws set wide, and barked.
When the witch’s cap gave way, it whistled as it fell four
