Calico Palace (54 page)

“Look!” burst out Hiram. “The El Dorado—look!”

They looked along the street, past the wreckage of nearly everything that had been here yesterday. Next door to the El Dorado the wooden Parker House had crashed in, but the tall brick El Dorado was still standing. Except for the whirls of smoke their view was unbroken. The walls were there, but columns of smoke and fire were rolling out of every window of the four stories. And they saw what Hiram had seen first—a sheet of fire rising from a building behind the El Dorado. The flame rose higher than the roof and towered above it, curving over the El Dorado like a great grasping hand. For an instant, the whole mob in the plaza seemed transfixed. Hiram and Pocket, Marny and Loren, stood where they were, staring in fascinated horror. The brick walls of the El Dorado would not burn. But inside the walls, the heat had risen to a terrible force. As they looked, the El Dorado exploded.

The four walls broke with a boom. Sparks burst out like a magnificent display of fireworks. Bricks, lumber, flaming scraps of every kind of debris, shot up and out in all directions.

From the crowd came screams and howls as fiery pieces of the El Dorado fell and struck. Instinctively, Marny put her arm over her eyes. At the same instant she heard a wordless sound beside her. She moved her arm and looked, just in time to see Loren falling at her feet, close by the packing case where Lolo was clutching little Zack to her bosom. Marny dropped on her knees, thinking she might grab one of these wet blankets to restore him. But Loren was not unconscious. Already he was passing his hand over his forehead with the bewilderment of shock. She heard Pocket exclaim,

“Don’t try to move yet, Loren—how are you?”

“All right—I think,” Loren answered with a half stunned attempt to take it lightly. “Something hit me—a piece of brick, I guess—help me stand up—”

“Not yet,” Hiram was saying sternly. “Here, we’ll make a cushion.”

He was setting Marny’s bundle on the ground, raising Loren so that the shawl with the money-bag inside would make a pillow for his head and shoulders. A trickle of blood was oozing out of the wound on Loren’s temple. They could see burnt flesh around the cut, for the brick that had struck him had been as hot as a blazing coal.

Pocket had already pulled a bandana out of some pocket or other and was holding it over the cut to check the blood. But just then, Marny saw with alarm that the cut in his head was not Loren’s only wound. He had fallen against the packing case where Lolo sat, and as he fell, the nail sticking out of the edge had torn a gash in his side. She saw a bloodstain spreading around the rent in his shirt.

“Hiram, look!” she exclaimed. He gave a start and she hurried on. “This is worse than the other. Can we stop the blood?”

“We can sure try,” said Hiram. “Damn you, Loren, lie
still
!” he ordered as Loren tried again to stand up. Hiram was pulling off his own shirt to make a dressing.

“Do you need mine?” Pocket asked. “Here it is.”

He took off his shirt and tossed it to Marny, saying, “Tear this up.” Loren mumbled some apology for giving them so much trouble, and while she tore one shirt to make bandages Pocket and Hiram used the other to stanch the blood. Watching them shirtless, Marny noticed what splendid muscles they both had. Gold digging and rocker making, while not parlor employments, did build handsome men.

She remembered that neither Pocket nor Hiram had ever made an amorous gesture toward her. The thought brought her a touch of surprise, because there were so few men hereabouts who had not. Much as she liked men, it was refreshing to have a few of them treat her as a human being and not merely as a desirable body. What an absurd time to be thinking about such things, she thought as she held out the strips she had torn from Pocket’s shirt so he and Hiram could finish bandaging Loren’s wound.

“There,” said Hiram, having tended Loren as well as he could. “Now if we can get him back to Chase and Fenway’s—”

“I can walk,” said Loren. He sat up, almost angrily, protesting that he was grateful for their help but his wounds were not serious and he was not a baby. “I can walk,” he said again.

Pocket grinned ruefully. “Looks like you’ll have to,” he said. “I don’t think even Hiram could carry a grown man through this mud, and certainly not down that sidewalk.”

The sidewalk, like others in town, was narrow and shaky. The planks were uneven, with gaps here and there where boards had come off. Hiram and Pocket helped Loren to his feet. Though he said he did not need any more help they could see that he did, and they took his elbows and walked on either side of him. Lugging her bundle, now muddy and bloodstained, Marny trudged beside them.

With Hiram and Pocket supporting him, Loren did manage to slog through the mud, but his steps were slow and painful. He stumbled, he tried not to groan, he did the best he could, but after a little while Hiram and Pocket were not supporting him so much as they were dragging him. It seemed a long, long way. Marny thought of how often she had walked briskly from the Calico Palace to Chase and Fenway’s. How easy the walk had been, how agreeable, with Blackbeard proudly holding her elbow, men stepping aside to make way for her, taking off their hats, exclaiming, “Howdy, Marny!”

How short the walk had been then. Now it seemed as if she would never get there. The mud clutched at her shoes, the heat of the fire scorched her face, the smoke was nearly choking her. Men bumped into her and went on without seeming to notice.

But there could be no pause for rest. They had to get Loren to Chase and Fenway’s, they had to, they could not let him fall down here and be trampled on.

By this time daybreak was clear in the sky over the bay. Marny saw the masts of the stranded vessels sharp against the dawn. She wondered what Captain Pollock was doing. It had been a long time since she had thought of Pollock at all. There had been so many pleasanter things to think about. She dragged herself along.

With ironic humor, she recalled that Loren was not the only one of them who had to get to Chase and Fenway’s. She had to get there herself. She had to go inside, and whether or not Mr. Chase approved she would have to stay there a while, sheltered until she could get some clothes. How often she had said, “I’ve nothing to wear.” Now this statement was not a girlish lament, it was a fact. Her robe was torn and filthy, and scorched in places where sparks had struck it. Under the robe she had on nothing but a wisp of a nightgown, ragged from being stepped on in her flight. She could feel her thin party shoes, broken to pieces under the mud that covered them. And she had the dirty shawl that held her bag of money. Nothing else. Every other garment she had possessed was gone in the ashes of the Calico Palace. She did not own a dress nor a suit of underwear nor a pair of stockings.

As they turned into Montgomery Street they met more desolation. The fire had swept down the hill, and had been moving toward the waterfront when the fire-fighters had destroyed a row of buildings near the corner of Washington Street and Montgomery, blowing up some and tearing down others, to clear a space too broad for the flames to cross. They had halted the fire before it reached Montgomery Street, but the road was strewn with the wreckage they had made. Along the street men stood with guns in their hands. Other men prowled about, looking for anything that might have been left unguarded, while others, as in the plaza, were running about to no purpose except to get in the way.

Marny heard Hiram say to Pocket, “I don’t think Loren can walk any farther. If we could make a basket seat out of our hands—”

“Try it,” said Marny. “I’ll hold Loren on his feet.”

Loren murmured again that he was sorry to be such a bother. He leaned on Marny while Pocket and Hiram, gripping each other’s wrists, made a carrying seat between them. With Marny’s help, Loren managed to sit there. He put his arms around them to keep himself in place.

“Hold your gun, Marny,” Hiram ordered, now that his own hands were occupied. “And use it if we need help.”

“I’ll use it,” she answered. She did not add that she had seen blood spreading again around the tear in Loren’s shirt. Hiram and Pocket were doing all they could. No use frightening them any more. Keep going.

They kept going. They clumped through the mud, in constant danger of being knocked over by some man running away with stolen goods. Marny held her bundle under her left arm and her gun in her right hand. The bundle felt as if it weighed half a ton. Her arm ached, her legs felt almost numb. —One step at a time, she told herself as she put each foot into the mud and pulled it out again. The longest journey has an end. One—step—at—a—time.

They plodded through the area piled with the fragments of buildings destroyed. At last, they came to the store of Chase and Fenway, windows lighted, plank walk intact. Marny thought she had never seen anything so welcome. Mr. Chase and Mr. Fenway were both standing guard at the main door, and at an upper window she saw the bucktoothed visage of Foxy, on lookout for would-be thieves.

Messrs. Chase and Fenway came forward, full of concern. Loren was not only their most valued employee but a man they liked for his own sake, and they needed no words to let them know he had been badly hurt. Moving with unaccustomed speed, Mr. Fenway unlocked the door. They helped Loren inside, through the front salesroom and into a stockroom behind, while Mr. Chase bellowed to Ralph Watson, guarding a side door, to fix a mattress or something back here so Loren could lie down.

In the front room, Marny leaned against a counter. She let her bundle slide to the floor. She was so tired that she nearly slid down with it. Ralph was saying they had better send one of the boys to find a doctor, and tell Mrs. Shields what had happened. A pity it was, said Ralph, for Mrs. Shields to have her husband get hurt, and her with a baby hardly a month old.

—Maybe I ought to go and tell her, thought Marny. But I can’t. I simply can’t fight my way up that hill.

“Well, Marny,” said a dolorous voice at her side.

Marny looked up and saw Mr. Fenway. He wore a nightshirt and trousers, the tail of the nightshirt stuffed into the top of the trousers, and he looked as doleful as if he had lost everything instead of nothing.

“This is a grievous occasion,” murmured Mr. Fenway. “Grievous.”

“Yes,” said Marny. —For once, she thought, there’s so much trouble around that even old Gloom-face must be satisfied.

“I guess your place is gone,” Mr. Fenway said sadly.

“All gone,” said Marny. She was so tired that it took an effort for her to say even as much as this.

Mr. Fenway regarded her sorrowfully. “You look tuckered out,” he said. He dragged out the words as if they were heavy in his throat.

“I feel tuckered out,” she agreed.

Mr. Fenway droned, “I guess you’d better come with me.”

“Yes,” said Marny. She did not know where he was going to take her and in her present state she did not much care.

As she bent to retrieve her bundle he picked it up for her.

“Heavy,” he said. “Gold dust inside?”

“Coins,” said Marny.

“Better put ’em in the safe,” Mr. Fenway advised in his slow monotone. “You never know what may happen in times like these. People.” He spoke the last word with a shrug, as if people were a species he did not admire.

She followed him and waited while he unlocked the door of the room where the private safes were kept. Here she unrolled the shawl, took out the leather poke, and stowed it away. The click of the safe’s closing brought her a sense of relief, almost of rest. At least this much was done. She did not have to carry that weight any longer. She picked up the shawl and noticed with surprise how light it felt. Mr. Fenway drearily said again,

“You’d better come with me.”

He led her through the stockroom. Loren lay on a mattress. Beside the mattress was a basin of water and a bolt of clean cloth, and Mr. Chase was helping Hiram and Pocket dress Loren’s injuries. So Loren would be taken care of, she reflected; they did not need her and she could sit down somewhere and rest. She followed Mr. Fenway.

Marny had never been into this part of the new building, and even in her weariness she observed how much better it was than the old one—larger, with more windows and a wide easy staircase. In somber silence Mr. Fenway led her up the stairs. At the top he paused beside a door. He took out his keys again, took one key off the bunch, unlocked the door, and handed the key to her.

“This is where I stay,” he said, “when it’s too rainy for me to go home. Bad climate we live in. Not healthy. All this fog and damp. You better stay here a few days. Till you pull yourself together.”

Marny felt a glow all over. A place to sleep. A decent place. “Mr. Fenway,” she said to him, “this is the second time you’ve given me shelter when I needed it. After I’ve had some rest, and untwisted my thoughts, I hope I can tell you how grateful I am.”

“Bad times these,” said Mr. Fenway. “Bad times. Now down by the foot of the stairs is a back door and just outside is the well. You can draw all the water you want, private-like.” He took another key from the bunch. “This unlocks the back door. Be sure to lock it every time you come in, and slip the bolt. Can’t trust anybody these days.” He heaved a sigh. “Well, I better get back on guard before some of those hellcats from Sydney start busting in.”

Marny thanked him again. Mr. Fenway did not trouble to reply. With a woebegone look he turned and dawdled his way down the stairs. Marny went into his room and locked the door behind her.

It was a small bedroom with table and washstand and looking glass, all plain and neat in the light of the grim December morning. Marny went to the window and looked out.

The fire was not raging as it had been an hour ago, but it was still burning. Clouds of smoke hung above Kearny Street, and here and there a glow in the smoke showed her where flames had not yet been put out. One of these smoke clouds was lowering above the spot where, this time yesterday, had stood the Calico Palace.

Marny went and sat on the bed, a narrow bug-proof iron cot like her own. She saw her hands, blackened with soot. In the glass on the wall she saw black streaks on her face, ashes scattered in her hair, and the hair itself wild as a jungle vine on her head. She felt loathsomely dirty, and so tired and so beaten that she had no strength to wash.