The Last Nightingale by Anthony Flacco Read Free Book Online

away, saying that every vessel had already been conscripted to help float soldiers in from nearby Fort Baker on Horseshoe Bay.
    The crowd had no choice but to cooperate—the soldiers raised their rifles and announced that Mayor Schmitz and Commanding General Funston had declared the city under full martial law. Any citizen who disobeyed a soldier's orders was to be shot. No prisoners would be taken because there was no place to put them.
    Nobody made any strong objections. Everyone moved on. They kept up their slow pace until sometime around four A.M., when they came to the flats of Ocean Beach. Predictably, everything resembling a boat had already disappeared from there, too. People began circulating the same rumor that Shane had heard before: something about an intact telegraph cable in the area. Some of them wanted to send messages out, but Shane couldn't picture sending a message to anybody. He wondered what could possibly be said about any of this, even if there was someone to hear it.
    A small group peeled off to search for the rumored telegraph station while Shane and the others walked away. This place had been their last hope of finding a boat, a ferry, even a raft to get them away from fires that appeared poised to burn all the way out to both horizons. Now there was nothing else to do but begin a walk of many miles, all of the way off the San Francisco peninsula. Most of the group were poised to go.
    Just when Shane had decided to make the long hike with them, half a dozen mounted soldiers rode up at full speed. They reined in long enough to call out for able-bodied help. One of them spotted Shane, who found himself yanked up onto the horse and plopped down behind the saddle before he could object. The soldiers all wheeled their mounts and headed directly back toward the center of the city.
    He was drafted onto a cleanup crew in the Mission District, the oldest part of the city. His particular group was sent off to the famous old Mission Dolores to do brick and stonework. At that mo-ment, the prospect of labor seemed like good news to him—he had no idea of where to go anyway. As long as he worked hard, nobody seemed to care that he didn't want to talk, so it seemed that the Mission Dolores work crew could be a good place to lose himself for a while. He knew a little about the Mission, having learned from the friars back at the orphanage. It was the oldest Christian church in the city, dating back to the 1700s. He had even seen pictures of the Mission in a history book at the Nightingale house. As soon as his crew arrived, he recognized the famous lines of the Mission walls. It felt good to be in a place that seemed familiar, even if the feeling only came from someone else's photographs.
    One of the soldiers told Shane that there was a list of sites inside the city that were to be restored right away. The list was written by a so-called "Committee of Fifty," made up of the town's most prominent citizens. This Mission Dolores was right near the top ofthat list.
    The news got better. The "Committee" apparently realized that good labor depended upon a good food supply, and so a bread and soup line was in full swing outside the Mission doorway. The aromas reminded Shane that he hadn't eaten since the night before the earthquake. Suddenly it was all he could do to stay on his feet long enough to get through the line. He ate until he became sick out on the street, then he went back through and ate a second time.
    By the time the sun was all the way up, Shane was full and the food was staying down. The hours began melting by while he worked in a hand-to-hand brick line, helping to carry away fallen bits of the newer church that had been built next to the old Mission. He tried to give the appearance of confidence by doing an impression of a man who knows how to work. Even when he smashed his fingers, he didn't allow himself any more reaction than to gasp at the pain. The second time it happened, when he couldn't keep the