The first two miles we walk in silence, as if in preparation for what we will see when we cross Van Ness. Our throats and eyes burn with the acrid smell of smoke and fluttering ash, but there is no damage from the fires here. Not yet. The dynamiting of all the houses and buildings on the east side of Van Ness stopped the fire’s westward progress, and we are only seeing damage here and there from the earthquake. Toppled chimneys, leaning walls, cracks in the street. We pass people whose houses are still standing and who ask if we have any food. They don’t want to leave their homes unguarded and go to the overcrowded refugee camps at the park and Presidio, where relief supplies are available. We have no food to give them.
Belinda, Kat, and I take our time and reach Van Ness an hour and a half after setting out. Up and down the street on its eastern side is a long vista of ruin and rubble, black and gray and smoking. We cross Van Ness into what had been the fire’s domain and make our way to Market Street, passing Polk first, which is a black ribbon of devastation as far as I can see. For one blink of a moment I see in my mind the image of Martin wrapped in flames as he sits slumped and broken and bleeding in the kitchen. I seehim with his eyes open and I can’t tell if he is dead or alive as the damnation he deserves overtakes him. I don’t want to know which it is. I don’t. Perhaps he got out. Perhaps. At some point I’ll have to return to what’s left of the house if I want to know for sure. But I can’t think about that. Not right now. Not today.
We walk past the wreckage of the once massive city hall. What the earthquake did not dismantle the fire consumed. The dome still stands, but it is purposeless and naked against the low gray sky. The Mechanics’ Pavilion, where Sarah was born only three days earlier, is completely gone. It was made of wood, and there is nothing left to mark its former existence but ash and soot. We walk past piles of still-hot bricks and twisted iron and the skeletal, blackened shells of buildings that were constructed of heartier materials than wood. Automobiles flying the Red Cross flag and with soldiers in the front seat bearing rifles pass us. Chinatown off in the distance to our left is gone. All of it. Swept off the face of San Francisco as if it had never been there.
The tall ferry building at the foot of Market Street begins to come into view blocks before we reach it, and I’m amazed that it still stands. The waterfront was saved by the navy, which means the docks can be used not only for our exodus but for relief supplies to be delivered as well. It is the first sign of life I have seen since we crossed Van Ness. The sight of the ferry building’s clock tower reaches up into the smoky haze as if to beckon us toward freedom.
I hang on to this thought as we make our way to the ferries, and as we wait and wait and wait for our turn to board one.
When we are finally standing on the deck of a ship just like the one that brought me to Martin a year ago, I turn to face the city as we steam away from it. I see the vast open fields of ashbeyond the stubborn brick and stone skeletons. There was life in all those empty spaces, and now there isn’t. What was there is gone. Erased. Something else can take its place, though. Something else will.
Something new.
Something different than what was there before.
Better maybe, stronger. But certainly not the exact same thing.
This is how we make ourselves over when calamity strikes, isn’t it? I should know.
The ground cools; we sweep away the ash and envision the new life. And then wait for it to take its first breath.
Martin was wrong about me. I wasn’t running when I married him. I was making something new. Starting over.
Beginning again.
18
INTERVIEW WITH MRS. SOPHIE HOCKING
CONDUCTED BY AMBROSE LOGAN, U.S. MARSHAL
CASE NUMBER 069308
Official transcript
San Francisco, CA
November 6, 1906
QUESTION:Can you clarify for me what you mean when you say using a false identity is not the worst thing Mr. Hocking has done?
ANSWER:I... I don’t have any proof of what I think he did. I just have... a notion about it.
QUESTION:I’d still like to hear about it.
ANSWER:I don’t think that’s a good idea. I told you. I don’t have any proof.
QUESTION:I am not asking you to provide any proof. I want to know what you think he may have done.
ANSWER:I found some papers in his desk the day before the earthquake. And a photograph. He had been married before, under another name, to a woman in Colorado. This woman had inherited her father’s ranch. I think Martin married her to get that inheritance. She died, and I don’t think her death was an accident.
QUESTION:Why is that?
ANSWER:Because she was the daughter of a cattle rancher and she died in a riding accident.
QUESTION:And that seems suspicious to you?
ANSWER:Yes, it does. She had surely grown up around horses.
