The one thing I couldn’t stand to be—a hittebarn, a foundling—no longer mattered. The burden I had been carrying from birth was widespread. Everyone had lost her, I mean our city. The highest of society and the lowest had the same soot on their faces and dust in their teeth.
When at last I reached downtown, heading toward the hospital by the Ferry Building, I realized I was just a couple of blocks from The Rose. I suppose I had to see it: the pile of burned beams, the skeletons of iron beds. The chalked X in the road and beside it the number 7 for bodies recovered. My throat clotted at the thought of Hank, with his buttons and cap. Good ol’ Hank.
There was a ring of burned chips and glass lying in the dirt—what remained of the vase of flowers I’d seen by the front door. When I touched the chips with my boot, they dissolved to ash. If Rose was alive, she wasn’t there.
I moved on quickly, heading for the water, and was passing a row of abandoned houses that had escaped the fire but been tipped from their foundations by the quake. As I walked by on the opposite side of the street, a man and a boy approached one of the houses and tried the knob on its busted front door. Curious, I stopped to see what they were doing. The man whispered something to the kid, then lifted him through the opening where glass should have been in the double doors.
“Quick now,” he barked, and the boy was indeed quick. He returned with two large silver candelabras that he passed through the broken window, gripping them by their necks with his little fists. The man caught them with a bend of his knee and stowed them in a large burlap sack.
The boy raised his arms to be lifted out. “Up,” he begged.
The man gave the top of the boy’s head a cuffing. “Get back in there,” he barked.
I thought I should call for help—someone, a policeman—but the street was deserted. I thought of shouting, Get outta there! But I wasn’t a fool.
I ran to the corner, turned, and kept on going to the far end of the block, where I spotted a couple of soldiers. It seemed in those days there were soldiers everywhere. These particular fellas were waiting on a trio of navy sailors, just off their ship and still toting their duffels. They all converged and there among them was Alma de Bretteville, laughing.
“Hey-ho, look who’s here,” she called, ever friendly, as if we’d planned to run into each other.
I must have looked frightened. “Burglars,” I sputtered, pointing in the direction of the house.
“Boys,” Alma said, “quick, go see.”
The soldiers ran down the center of the street with Alma and me following close behind. We reached the corner in time to see the boy pass a heavy silver urn through the busted door to the man.
“Hey there,” shouted one of the soldiers. “Hey there, you!”
The man turned slowly and offered the soldier a greasy smirk.
“What’s your name, fella?”
“Bailey,” the man said. “Me and my boy are just securing a few bits from our house. There be thieves all round, don’t you know.”
“Yeah? Where’s your key, Bailey?”
The man fiddled in his pockets. “Ah, must have dropped it. Willy,” he called, “Willy-boy. Son, where have you gone with my keys?”
“Hey, Bailey, without turning round, tell us the number of your house,” said one of the soldiers. Letting the strap of his rifle slide down his arm, he took the gun in his hands and aimed.
The number was painted in gold above the door: 172.
Bailey grinned, showing a gap where a couple of teeth were missing. “Ah, the number.” He scratched his head. “Let me think. Since the quake, I’m shook up, fellas.”
As he said this, the boy returned, this time with a fistful of silver forks and knives; in his exuberance, he passed the whole kit up and through, assuming his father was there to catch them. They clattered to the floor of the porch.
The soldier lifted his rifle and aimed. “Tell you what, Bailey, you got two seconds to tell me the number on your house.”
That’s when Bailey took it in his head to run. He was shot in the street.
Alma seized my hand. “Come, duck, this way.” She tugged me and didn’t let go till we reached the rocks that bordered the bay.
“Here.” Alma handed me a handkerchief; I noticed the monogram A.B.S. sewn on one of the corners. “Go on,” she said, “wipe.”
Like a child I blew my nose and dried my tears. I had no idea I’d been crying. Alma, giving me privacy, studied the view of the water.
“The boy,” I said, “I bet he’s still crouching behind that door. What’s going to happen to him?”
“Don’t worry about the boy,” Alma said, and she led me to a flat rock and made me sit beside her. “Those fellas, they’ll see he’s all right.”
“But how?”
Alma got very still—a practice, now that I think on it, she must have developed during hours of posing as an artist’s model at the Art Institute. It was a commanding stillness.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I don’t see much point in worrying about what you can’t fix.” Alma reached into the bag between her feet, popped open the top, and handed me a beer. Then she took another for herself.
“That’s it,” she said. “Drink.”
And I did drink. I drank the whole bottle, then proceeded to burp.
“Look at you, sailor.” She laughed. “Good, huh?” She held the bottle up to the light. “I bought these to bribe those boys in case my charms weren’t enough.” She shrugged. “Here,” she said,
