A-Splendid-Ruin(73)
Every saloon had been closed. The selling of liquor was forbidden. Broadsheets bearing proclamations by Mayor Schmitz were posted everywhere, promising no risk of famine and asking citizens to comply with regulations. There was to be no lighting of fires in houses or fireplaces. Water was scarce; what there was must be boiled and should not be used for anything but cooking and drinking. Looters would be shot, as would anyone caught entering a deserted building.
The city had become as dangerous as the asylum. Men crawled through the wreckage, looking for valuables. I slept with my hand curled around the gold button. As many soldiers as there were, they could not be everywhere, and at night there was little keeping the denizens of Barbary Coast to their usual haunts, nothing preventing anyone from taking what they wanted. I found a twisted bit of metal about as long as a dagger amid the debris and tucked it into my coat pocket for a weapon. The next thing to do was to find different clothes. Many San Franciscans had left their homes with only what they wore, and so when Relief began handing out clothing and shoes, I wasn’t the only one standing in line.
When I reached the front, the woman glanced me over and picked up a skirt from a rapidly dwindling pile. “You’re so tall. This will be short on you, but—”
“What about those?” I asked, pointing to the trousers, the men’s clothes.
She didn’t argue. There was so little to choose from, and the supply of men’s clothing was greater. She handed me a pair of trousers, a shirt, a pair of boots and some thick socks, as well as a woman’s combination, and I was grateful for all of it, especially because the clothes were the perfect disguise, and more comfortable than anything I’d ever before worn.
I threw out the ruined boots with the melted soles. I transferred my uncle’s vest button—my good luck charm, my talisman—into my trouser pocket. I kept the coat. Someday I might find the water to wash out the bloodstains, and it was well made and thick. But the nightgown and underwear I took to a man standing over a fire in a half-destroyed, blackened ash can and asked him to burn them for me.
I chose a man because I knew he would not question why I would destroy perfectly good clothing, and I was right; he didn’t. I walked away before he could catch a whiff of the stink that would undoubtedly rise from the burning rags.
I felt safer dressed as a man, though no one mistook me for one, at least not after an initial glance. My walk, perhaps, or maybe my face was too feminine to hide. I wished otherwise; it might have been easier if they had, because joining a cleanup crew could buy a man a pass, and without a pass, it was impossible to move about the city.
During the day, I scouted the location of the soldiers, then, when twilight came, with its smoky greenish light, I set out. It was easy enough to hide behind the twisted ruins, to take advantage of the lack of streetlamps. At night, I managed to travel farther; I avoided soldiers and police and took on what I imagined was a confident walk, quite different than what I felt, because I was well aware of how many in the shadows had bad intentions, and as a woman alone, I was vulnerable. In the dark it was easier to be mistaken for a man. I kept my hand on my twisted bit of metal. But most only glanced at me without interest, their faces ghoulishly illuminated from the glow of ash can fires or street-improvised cookstoves.
I’d grown used to the hot, smoky, sickly stink of the city, a smell that had not belonged to it before. I’d grown used to the bodies laid out in makeshift morgues set up in vacant lots. In certain places, the sounds of gravediggers’ shoveling was constant, impossible to distinguish from the digging of those shoveling wreckage, which often contained human remains.
I turned a corner to see a horse waiting while a man knelt over the body of a woman lying in the street. Another scavenger. It was too common a sight now to raise any distress. But a horse . . . a way to get quickly to the relief camp at Hunters Point, and hopefully to Shin. A horse.
The old May would never have risked it. But I was no longer the old May, and I no longer cared for anything except what I needed. Just now, it was that horse. The woman on the ground was dead and beyond helping anyway. I didn’t know if the man had been the one to kill her. He worked over her quickly, yanking rings from her fingers, bracelets from her wrists. When he reached for her hatpin, I pulled the metal rod from my pocket and hoped that he could not see clearly in the dark. Then I cleared my throat, lowered my voice, and said, “Looting’s against the law. Did you kill her too?”
The man jerked and swung around to face me. “Who are you?”
My mouth was dry from nerves, and it roughened my words perfectly. “Get away from her. Go on. Give me the horse, and I won’t call the militia.”
He was on his feet.
“They’ll shoot without asking questions. Don’t think those rings will help you then.” I waved the metal at him and hoped he wouldn’t call my bluff, because I wouldn’t call for a soldier or a policeman even to save my life. I could not risk being found. “I’ll tell him you killed her too. Go on. Get out of here.”
He raced off. The rings and the bracelets were undoubtedly worth more than the horse. I stepped over to the woman. She was indeed dead, but someone else would come upon her soon, and the last thing I wanted was anything to do with the authorities.
The horse was half-starved and swaybacked and too weary to give me any trouble when I mounted it, which was good, because my experience was limited to a neighbor’s cart horse that I’d played upon, surreptitiously, as a girl. At a nudge, it plodded on down the street. I might get to the Chinese relief camp before morning with the horse, and my healing feet were grateful for the respite. But I’d only been on the animal’s back for a quarter hour, maybe less, when someone called out, “Halt!”