The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner

Author:Susan Meissner [Meissner, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

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We wake on Saturday morning to the blessed news that the fires have been put out at last and that only a few hot spots to the north are giving the weary firemen trouble. Those who can get to the ferries via ruined Market Street will be given free passage across the bay to Oakland, and from there, the Southern Pacific Railroad will grant a free one-way ticket to wherever any refugee wants to go. We only have to somehow get ourselves to the Embarcadero—a four-and-a-half-mile trek from the park to the ferry landing, and half of it through the smoldering wreck of downtown. The closest railway station to Belinda’s home in San Rafaela is south of us at Townsend Street, but no one can tell me if that train station has survived the horrible fires in the Mission District. I do not want to walk all the way to Townsend to find out the station is a heap of ashes. Somehow I have to get the four of us to the ferry nearly five miles away.

“I can walk it,” Belinda says when I worry aloud that walking such a long distance with her having just given birth seems unthinkable.

“You’ve just had a baby!” I reply. “We need a horse and buggy.”

But there is no getting a horse. I know this. The ones still alive are all being used for more important purposes than transporting women and children to ferries. Some autos are being used for hire, but only the rich can afford the prices opportunistic people are charging for such services. One vehicle parked outside the park bears a sign saying the driver will take anyone out of the city for the exorbitant fee of fifty dollars. I’ve heard it’s not just transportation that has soared in price. Bread is apparently going for a dollar a loaf outside the refugee camp.

“I can do it,” Belinda says. “We can go slow. I can do it. Please, Sophie! I want to go home.”

She says the word home in that way we do when home is more than just an address. Belinda has been on an odyssey; we both have been, and not for just the last five days. We’ve been on it since Martin Hocking came into our lives and changed them. And now she just wants to go back home.

I am happy for her that she has a home to go to after this soul-crushing journey. I am envious she does.

And so we ask for passes—the only way you are legally allowed to be out among the ruins of the city—and begin the walk along with thousands of others east to the bay. Tens of thousands remain at the park as we leave it. We have somewhere to go; countless others do not.

I carry the travel case containing Kat’s clothes, the strongbox—which I still have not found a way to open—and all the documents that prove who Martin Hocking is, or was. Kat carries the pillowcase bag with the diapers and baby blankets.

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