Of course, he realized, I can’t get to West Marin by car; none of these cars are moving or are ever going to move again. The congestion is too great. And the Richardson Bridge is certainly gone. I will have to walk; it will take days, but eventually I will make it there. I will go up to the Black Point Road, up toward Yallejo, and follow the route across the sloughs. The land is flat; I can cut directly across the fields if necessary.
In any case it’s a penance for what I’ve done. This will be a voluntary pilgrimage, a way of healing the soul.
He walked, and as he did so he concentrated on the damage about him; he viewed it with the idea of healing it, of restoring the city, if at all possible, to its pure state. When he came to a building that had collapsed he paused and said, Let this building be restored. When he saw injured people he said, Let these people be adjudged innocent and so forgiven. Each time, he made a motion with his hand which he had devised; it indicated his determination to see that things such as this did not reoccur. Perhaps they have learned a permanent lesson, he thought. They may leave me alone, now.
But, it occurred to him, perhaps they would go in the opposite direction; they would, after they had dragged themselves from the ruins of their houses, develop an even greater determination to destroy him. This might in the long run increase, rather than dispel, their animosity.
He felt frightened, thinking about their vengeance. Maybe I should go into hiding, he thought. Keep the name “Mr. Tree,” or use some other fictive name for purposes of concealment. Right now they are wary of me … but I’m afraid it will not last.
And yet, even knowing that, he still continued to make his special sign to them as he walked along. He still bent his efforts to achieving a restoration for them. His own emotions contained no hostility; he was free of that. It was only they who harbored any hate.
At the edge of the Bay, Doctor Bluthgeld emerged from the traffic to see the white, shattered, glass-like city of San Francisco lying everywhere on the far side of the water. Nothing stood. Overhead, smoke and yellow fire manifested themselves in a way that he could not believe. It was as if the city had become a stick of stove wood, incinerated without leaving a trace. And yet there were people coming out of it. He saw, on the water, bobbing chunks; the people had floated every kind of object out, and were clinging to them, trying to push across to Marin County.
Doctor Bluthgeld stood there, unable to go on, his pilgrimage forgotten. First he had to cure them, and then if possible cure the city itself. He forgot his own needs. He concentrated on the city, using both hands. making new’ gestures which he had never hit on before; he tried everything, and after a long time he saw the smoke begin to clear. That gave him hope. But the people bobbing across, escaping, began to diminish in number; he saw fewer and fewer until the bay was empty of them, and only naked debris remained.
So he concentrated then on saving the people themselves; he thought of the escape routes north, where the people should go and what they would need to find. Water, first of all, and then rations. He thought of ‘the Army bringing in supplies, and the Red Cross; he thought of small towns in the country making their possessions available. Finally, what he willed began reluctantly to come to pass, and he remained where he was a long time, getting it to be. Things improved. The people found treatment for bums; he saw to that. He saw, too, to the healing of their great fear; that was important. He saw to the first glimmerings of their getting themselves established once more, in at least a rudimentary way.
But curiously, at the same time that he devoted himself to improving their condition, he noticed to his surprise and shock that his own had deteriorated. He had lost everything in the service of the general welfare, because now his clothes were in rags, like sacks. His toes poked through his shoes. On his face a ragged beard hung down; a mustache had grown over his mouth, and his hair fell all the way over his ears and brushed his torn collar, and his teeth—even his teeth—were gone. He felt old and sick and empty, but nonetheless it was worth it. How long had he stood here, doing this job? The streams of cars had long since ceased. Only damaged, abandoned wrecks of autos lay along the freeway to his right. Had it been weeks? Possibly months. He felt hungry, and his legs trembled with the cold. So once more he began to walk.
I gave them everything I had, he told himself, and thinking that he felt a little resentment, more than a trace of anger. What did I get back? I need a haircut and a meal and medical attention; I need a few things myself. Where can I get them? Now, be thought, I’m too tired to walk to Marin County; I’ll have to stay here, on this side of the Bay, for a while, until I can rest up and get my strength back. His resentment grew as he walked slowly along.
But anyhow he had done his job. He saw, not far ahead, a first aid station with rows of dingy tents; he saw women with armbands and knew they were nurses. He saw men with metal helmets carrying guns. Law and order, he realized. Because of my efforts it’s being reestablished, here and there. They owe me a lot, but of course they don’t acknowledge it. I’ll let it pass, he decided.
When he reached the first dingy tent, one of the men with guns stopped him. Another man, carrying a clipboard, approached. Where are you from?” the man with the clipboard asked.
“From Berkeley,” he answered.
“Name.”
“Mr. Jack Tree.”
They wrote that down, then tore off a card and handed it to him. It had a number on it, and the two men explained that he should keep the number because without it he could not obtain food rations. Then he was told that if he tried—or had tried—to collect rations at another relief station he would be shot. The two men then walked off, leaving him standing there with his numbered card in his hand.
Should I tell them that I did all this? he wondered. That I’m solely responsible, and eternally damned for my dreadful sin in bringing this about? No, he decided, because if I do they’ll take my card back; I won’t get any food ration. And he was terribly, terribly hungry.
Now one of the nurses approached him and in a matter of fact voice said, “Any vomiting, dizziness, change of color of the stool?”
“No,” he said.
“Any superficial burns which have failed to heal?”
He shook his head no.
“Go over there,” the nurse said, pointing, “and get rid of your clothing. They’ll delouse you and shave your head, and you can get your shots there. We’re out of the typhoid serum so don’t ask for that.”
To his bewilderment he saw a man with an electric razor powered by a gasoline generator shaving the heads of men and women both; the people waited patiently in line. A sanitary measure? he wondered.
I thought I had fixed that, he thought. Or did I forget about disease. Evidently I did. He began to walk in that direction, bewildered by his failure to have taken everything into account. I must have left out a variety of vital things, he realized as he joined the line of people waiting to have their heads shaved.
In the ruins of a cement basement of a house on Cedar Street in the Berkeley hills, Stuart McConchie spied something fat and gray that hopped from one split block and behind the next. He picked up his broom handle—one end came to a cracked, elongated point—and wriggled forward.
The man with him in the basement, a sallow, lean man named Ken, who was dying of radiation exposure, said, “You’re not going to eat that.”
“Sure I am,” Stuart said, wriggling through the dust which had settled into the open, exposed basement until he lay against the split block of cement. The rat, aware of him, squeaked with fear. It had come up from the Berkeley sewer and now it wanted to get back. But he was between it and the sewer; or rather, he thought, between her and the sewer. It was no doubt a big female. The males were skinnier.
The rat scurried in fright, and Stuart drove the sharp end of the stick into it. Again it squeaked, long and sufferingly. On the end of the stick it was still alive; it kept on squeaking. So he held it against it against the ground, held the stick down, and crushed its head with his foot.