Read Online Black Fire by Robert Graysmith - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert Graysmith
Ads: Link
would offer a little financial assistance, but not before granting themselves hefty raises. The intangible rewards for the firefighters, though, were tremendous: lavish events, fashionable balls, and magnificent parades in full-dress uniform. Membership in the volunteers made a man someone in San Francisco, exempt by statute from jury duty and after five years in the unit exempt for life. Fire service was a badge of distinction equal to a gold medal. In the East, Pittsburgh’s Valiant Engine Company wasso popular they charged volunteers to join. Politics and firefighting had been linked from the nation’s earliest days. Benjamin Franklin, father of the fire service, started the Union Fire Company in Philadelphia, the first volunteer group in America. George Washington was an enthusiastic firefighter and James Buchanan was a volunteer. Any politician who aspired to public office required the backing of at least one firehouse. Broderick realized Broderick One might pave his way to the State Senate. Kohler had his doubts. His partner was a work in progress.
San Francisco was not a city, but a ship crewed by adventurers, opportunists, and thieves. In a city teeming with blown-in-the-bottle scoundrels, a “bad man” was only slightly a scoundrel. Among the forty-niners, frontier men, and fortune hunters, there had finally arrived real heroes—the volunteers. But these heroes needed torch boys. Broderick felt a sense of urgency. Even now, the arsonist was plotting their destruction. The chief asked among the fleetest, most agile children living in the city and on the outskirts if they were interested in becoming torch boys. One such boy headed downhill to meet with him. A few leafless trees stood quivering in the morning mist. The grass was wet—where there was grass—and the hard mud around tufts incised with the tracks of rats. The boy exhaled a puff of white and gazed out over the sand hills of Contra Costa across the bay. It was like looking at the same mountainous, monotonous dunes of downtown San Francisco. A few cozy homes had tucked themselves into live oak thickets across the bay. Sturdy boats and barges glided off Yerba Buena Island, trailing white wakes in the black water. White gulls circled over Alcatraz Island. The boy counted line upon line of wharves under construction stretching from the shallows into deeper water where bigger ships could safely unload. The cove, a mile across, covered 336 acres, but near shore it was shallow as a teacup. The winter storm had washed gold down from the mountains into the streams, but there were more valuable things than gold. Lumber, brushwood, and tree limbs were more precious than any commodity except freshwater. The only uncontaminated, drinkable water in San Francisco was a single well on the western slope. Thirsty San Franciscans had to import drinking water in bottles from Sausalito or buy from water-cart men who sold barrels on the street or door-to-door for three dollars.
The boy saw Broderick in the big plate window of the Occidental Restaurant on Washington Street, where he was eating a steak butchered from a thousand-pound bear. In a town where cabbages mightsell for $3 a head, tea and coffee for $400 a barrel, and a butcher knife for $30, grizzly meat was a bargain—$1 a pound. Fat on a bear’s back stood three inches deep, but the meat was red, nutritious, juicy, and as sweet as a grilled pork chop. The boy and Broderick talked as they ate. When they finished, Broderick pushed back his chair and they went out onto the street. No vestige of the Christmas Eve blaze remained now. The city had swiftly rebuilt itself. Builders had thrown together any covering to make a house: wood, leather, canvas, frame, Chinese (paper), zinc, and iron. The same cursory construction went into the roads. Chests of tea, bags of coffee, and boxes of rice and beans were strewn in the mud. Stones, bricks, wood, lime, sand, bottles and boots, crockery and rags, dead dogs and cats, and
San Francisco was not a city, but a ship crewed by adventurers, opportunists, and thieves. In a city teeming with blown-in-the-bottle scoundrels, a “bad man” was only slightly a scoundrel. Among the forty-niners, frontier men, and fortune hunters, there had finally arrived real heroes—the volunteers. But these heroes needed torch boys. Broderick felt a sense of urgency. Even now, the arsonist was plotting their destruction. The chief asked among the fleetest, most agile children living in the city and on the outskirts if they were interested in becoming torch boys. One such boy headed downhill to meet with him. A few leafless trees stood quivering in the morning mist. The grass was wet—where there was grass—and the hard mud around tufts incised with the tracks of rats. The boy exhaled a puff of white and gazed out over the sand hills of Contra Costa across the bay. It was like looking at the same mountainous, monotonous dunes of downtown San Francisco. A few cozy homes had tucked themselves into live oak thickets across the bay. Sturdy boats and barges glided off Yerba Buena Island, trailing white wakes in the black water. White gulls circled over Alcatraz Island. The boy counted line upon line of wharves under construction stretching from the shallows into deeper water where bigger ships could safely unload. The cove, a mile across, covered 336 acres, but near shore it was shallow as a teacup. The winter storm had washed gold down from the mountains into the streams, but there were more valuable things than gold. Lumber, brushwood, and tree limbs were more precious than any commodity except freshwater. The only uncontaminated, drinkable water in San Francisco was a single well on the western slope. Thirsty San Franciscans had to import drinking water in bottles from Sausalito or buy from water-cart men who sold barrels on the street or door-to-door for three dollars.
The boy saw Broderick in the big plate window of the Occidental Restaurant on Washington Street, where he was eating a steak butchered from a thousand-pound bear. In a town where cabbages mightsell for $3 a head, tea and coffee for $400 a barrel, and a butcher knife for $30, grizzly meat was a bargain—$1 a pound. Fat on a bear’s back stood three inches deep, but the meat was red, nutritious, juicy, and as sweet as a grilled pork chop. The boy and Broderick talked as they ate. When they finished, Broderick pushed back his chair and they went out onto the street. No vestige of the Christmas Eve blaze remained now. The city had swiftly rebuilt itself. Builders had thrown together any covering to make a house: wood, leather, canvas, frame, Chinese (paper), zinc, and iron. The same cursory construction went into the roads. Chests of tea, bags of coffee, and boxes of rice and beans were strewn in the mud. Stones, bricks, wood, lime, sand, bottles and boots, crockery and rags, dead dogs and cats, and
Similar Books
