“Monster is a one-passenger horse,” Bobby said, but I could tell he was working on changing his mind. “Ten dollars.”
“Ten dollars! Are you a robber, or just a bum?”
“Bum,” he said, laughing. “My friend William here is the robber.” He glanced at the boy, who was staring at the dirt.
I lowered my voice. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Nothing,” Bobby said sharply, as if he’d beat anyone who suggested otherwise. “You got the money or not?”
“I got the money,” I said, “but I’m not stupid enough to give it to the likes of you.”
Now he was just flat-out mocking me. “Then you’ll be a-walkin’, Anyway.”
I left it there, certain I’d never see Bobby again. Certain and so very uncertain.
With Ricky riding on my shoulder, I returned to the gold house. Since the bird’s disappearance, Tan had nailed a couple of boards across the bottom half of the broken parlor window but the top portion remained open.
Pie was waiting for me in the parlor. She’d wrapped herself in the fur blanket on Rose’s divan. I handed her the tonic and announced that if Ricky wanted to leave again, we shouldn’t try to stop him. To prove it, I put Ricky on top of his cage and left the door open.
“He’ll disappear again,” Pie warned, wheezing as she twisted the cork and swigged straight from the bottle.
“Good,” I said. “Let him come and go.”
Pie licked her lips, her cough already subsiding, the relief palpable. “V, did something happen? You look… odd.”
“What do you mean?”
“Agitated… beyond your usual.” Pie’s voice thickened. Dill’s cough medicine was a mix of chloroform and heroin; its effect was instantaneous.
“I’m off to look for Rose, if that’s what you mean,” I said.
“Careful,” she murmured, eyes fluttering closed. “They’re… shooting people.”
The soldiers, she meant. It was all the women in the relief lines buzzed about: the roving packs of desperate men, the looters, murderers, and thieves. In Pie’s mind, the quake and fire had cleared the city of good people, leaving only the criminals to rove the streets. Soldiers from the navy had orders to shoot anyone doing anything suspicious, but there were only so many soldiers.
“Would you come with me, and be my protection?” I challenged my sister, who was already asleep. “I didn’t think so.”
Rogue was waiting for me by the front door. I longed to take him with me. Pulling my rim low, I told him, “Stay, boy. Hope I don’t get shot.”
Searching for Rose
Rose’s street was a hive of activity, but as soon as I crossed Van Ness Avenue, the world changed. How to describe what it looked like, smelled like—the acid burned my throat. Now that the fires were out, folks were eager to see what remained of our city. Women dressed in their finest—or what remained of their finest—with parasols and hats, their men in suits, sidestepped the fissures and piles of bricks and wood and charred bodies of animals lying in the road. I flowed with them—with the tide of tourists out for a Sunday stroll to witness the apocalypse.
On the corner of California Street and Hyde, a grocer, his apron coated with soot, was handing out stale rolls. “One per customer,” the grocer barked. When he noticed that I was alone among the adults, he wagged his finger, added a slice of cheese to my roll, and handed it to me on wax paper.
Was I too proud to devour my bread in front of strangers? I was.
I waited till I reached the top of Nob Hill, where I sat on the rubble steps of the burned Huntington mansion, the former grand house of a railroad baron. With all of Nob Hill a ruin, folks were poking among the smoldering piles with their sticks and umbrellas, scavenging for a stray piece of silver or a burned trinket. Minding my business, I devoured that delicious cheese sandwich, which I can still taste.
Nearby, a pair of dogs were nosing a pile, fighting over a bit of charred cake beside a teacup. I let them get their eats, then shooed them. It was the cup I wanted. Forged in the fire, it looked to be made of iron. I put that cup in my bag and went on my way.
It was now almost noon and slow going. First one road was blocked, then another. Bricks and mortar and deep fissures at every step. My body trudged on, my old boots were soon wrecked, the bottoms of my feet blistered and raw.
I didn’t make it to The Rose that first day. Or the next. Each time the soldiers turned me back from the streets leading to downtown, where the fire and looting were the worst. I saw soldiers marshaling groups of thieves tied to one another by a rope around their necks, women and children among them. Each thief wore a sign: “I Were Cawt Looting” or “I Stole”—written in a crude hand and flapping on their chests. They were being marched to the temporary Hall of Justice.
Pie was right, it wasn’t safe. I had been so determined, I’d forgotten my fear. But the fear was real and more than once I had to pretend to be with other folks, so that I wasn’t accosted or worse. At the burned site of Shreve’s jewelers, a thief had just been shot. A policeman stood over the body. I thought: That’s all right, I’ve seen it, and now I’m pushing on. I talked to myself a lot in those days.
The world had returned to its prehistoric state, before the Ohlone Indians and Spanish conquistadors, before the sandy hills and craggy reaches were carpeted by redwoods and grass—before Adam, before sin—from born to unborn. Witnessing it so, I wasn’t as miserable as I might have been.
Everything I saw felt peculiar and holy, the only holiness I have ever known. And if I say
