I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906 Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  MY SAN FRANCISCO STORY

  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT EARTHQUAKES

  OTHER EARTHQUAKE FACTS

  PREVIEW

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  The sky was still dark when the ground began to shake.

  Most people in San Francisco were still sleeping. Just a few were awake. Shopkeepers arranged their stores, getting ready for the day. Carriage drivers fed their horses. Newsboys ran down the sidewalk to pick up their newspapers to sell.

  And eleven-year-old Leo Ross was in a broken-down building, high on Rincon Hill.

  When the rumbling started, Leo thought it might be thunder. He had no idea that deep below the city, two gigantic pieces of earth were pushing past each other. Powerful shocks exploded up through the underground layers of dirt and rock. All across the city, streets ripped open. Buildings swayed. Walls crumbled and houses came crashing down. Broken glass, hunks of wood, and piles of bricks tumbled into the streets.

  Leo stood in shock as the floor beneath him rose and fell like ocean waves. Hunks of plaster hit him on the head. Windows shattered, spraying glass all around.

  He tried to scream, but his throat was coated with dust.

  He wanted to run, but he couldn’t even stand. The shaking was too hard.

  And then there was a sound like an explosion. The ceiling above his head burst open.

  A brick hit him, smack, on the back.

  And then another, thud, hit him in the shoulder.

  Crash!

  Dozens of bricks poured down.

  Leo fell to the floor and curled into a ball.

  The bricks kept coming, raining down.

  He couldn’t see.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Soon he would be buried alive.

  “President Roosevelt is coming to town!” Leo shouted. “Read all about it!”

  Leo was standing on his corner, selling that morning’s newspaper. The sidewalk was crowded with men rushing to work. They barely slowed down as they handed Leo their nickels and grabbed the newspapers from his hands.

  It was barely 7:00 in the morning, and Leo had sold almost all of his papers. He jingled his pockets, which were heavy with coins. He thought about the fresh roll he’d buy for breakfast. And maybe even some cold milk to wash it down with.

  He smiled to himself.

  Papa would have been proud of him.

  Leo patted his right-hand trouser pocket and felt the gold nugget that he always kept with him. It didn’t look like much — kind of like a chewed-up yellow rock. But it was worth a fortune, Leo knew. Probably he could get more money for it than he earned in months of selling papers.

  But he’d rather sell his heart than this gold nugget.

  Leo’s grandfather had found it in a riverbed east of here, during the gold rush.

  He’d handed it down to Papa, who had carried it with him everywhere. Grandpop got sick and died before Leo was born. But Papa kept him alive through the stories he’d tell to Leo. Each night, when Papa was putting Leo to bed, he’d take out the gold nugget. Leo would hold it tight in his hand as Papa told tales of Grandpop’s adventures — crossing America all alone in a creaky old wagon, almost getting eaten by a giant grizzly in the Rocky Mountains, surviving a forest fire in the Sierras, living in San Francisco when it was just a bunch of rickety houses in the mud.

  “You’re just like your grandpop,” Papa always said. “I see it in your eyes. You’ve got his good luck. You’ve got his guts. Something remarkable is going to happen to you. I can feel it, can’t you?”

  And the way Papa would look at him, with shining eyes, Leo did feel it.

  These past few months since the fever took Papa away, there had been days when sadness would surround Leo, a feeling as cold and gray as the San Francisco fog. He’d feel scared, and very alone. He’d miss Papa so bad, his whole body would hurt.

  But then he would think of Grandpop, who made his way from New Hampshire to California all by himself, when he was just sixteen years old. And he’d hear Papa’s voice in his mind, bright and clear, telling him that he was lucky, and brave, and that something remarkable was going to happen to him.

  Papa’s voice was loud and clear on this sunny day.

  Or it was, until Leo finished selling papers.

  He was walking down an alley, cutting through to Market Street.

  Somehow he didn’t notice the two boys who had crept up behind him.

  Next thing Leo knew, he’d been smashed against a brick wall, and blood was gushing out of his nose.

  “Hand it over,” said a raspy voice.

  Leo didn’t have to see the face to know who was talking.

  It was Fletch Sikes, the most brutal thief in the neighborhood. The other kid had to be Wilkie Barnes, a giant of a boy who went everywhere Fletch did.

  When Fletch was just five years old, the story went, he’d been attacked by a pack of stray dogs. He’d survived, but one of the dogs had bitten his throat. The bite ruined his voice. And turned Fletch vicious.

  Fletch and Wilkie didn’t just steal food and pick pockets.

  Sometimes they beat kids up just for fun.

  A few months ago, they’d been caught by the police, and sent to a work farm up north.

  Leo had heard a rumor that they had escaped. He’d heard that they were hiding out in an old, abandoned saloon on Rincon Hill.

  And now here they were, back to their old vicious tricks.

  “You can take my money,” Leo said, trying not to sound as terrified as he felt.

  “We don’t want your money,” Wilkie said. The kid was a monster. He had to weigh almost three hundred pounds, with smooth chubby cheeks like a baby.

  A baby with a steel fist.

  “What do you want?” Leo asked, his knees shaking.

  “You know,” Fletch growled.

  Leo’s heart stopped. Of course he knew.

  Somehow Fletch had found out about Leo’s gold nugget.

  But how?

  Leo hadn’t told a soul about it.

  Except …

  Morris. That little pest of a kid, who buzzed around Leo like a fly.

  Leo had showed him the gold a few weeks ago. He must have blabbed about it to kids on the street. And the story had gotten back to Fletch and Wilkie.

  Fletch pushed Leo’s face harder into the wall. The bones of Leo’s cheek felt like they would crack, like the shell of an egg.

  “Take my money,” Leo said again. “I have more than a dollar. Take it all.”

  “We will,” Fletch said, with a rasping laugh. “But we want the gold, too.”

  Hand it over.

  It was Papa’s voice, in Leo’s head.

  Leo knew there was no way he could fight these guys, no way to outrun them. Wilkie was the fastest kid in the neighborhood.

  But that gold had been Papa’s prized possession. Leo couldn’t just give it up.

  “No,” Leo said, summoning up all of his strength. He whirled around and broke free from Fletch’s grip.

  He made it about three steps before Wilkie caught him by the back of the shirt, and threw him onto the ground.

  Slam!

  Leo
landed hard, biting his tongue.

  “Hand it over!” Fletch shouted in his creepy, strangled voice.

  “No!” Leo yelled again.

  What happened next took only a minute. Wilkie picked Leo up by his shirt, holding him in the air as Fletch emptied Leo’s pockets. Then Wilkie threw him into a pile of garbage. The two goons walked away, laughing.

  Blood dribbled from Leo’s mouth.

  His head throbbed.

  But the worst was the searing pain from somewhere deep inside, like something had been ripped out of him.

  His gold was gone.

  Leo had no idea how much time passed.

  And then a voice calling his name woke him from his daze.

  Papa?

  “Leo! Leo Ross! Where are you?”

  Leo groaned to himself.

  Morris.

  Why did that kid constantly pester him? From the first day they’d met, Morris had acted like they were long lost brothers. They both lived in the same boardinghouse, Leo by himself in a tiny basement room, Morris upstairs with his uncle, a sweaty man with a huge stomach who yelled at the little girls when they played dolls on the boardinghouse steps. Every day when Leo got home, Morris was waiting for him at the front door. The kid worked at a grocery, but he spent every spare second at the public library. He always had some new fact to share with Leo.

  “Leo, you know that rat that lives under the front steps? Did you know its Latin name is Rattus rattus?”

  “Leo, did you know that this neighborhood used to be a swamp? They filled it in with garbage and old wood and then built these buildings.”

  “Leo, did you know that the San Francisco library has a million books?”

  In Leo’s heart, he knew that Morris just wanted to be pals. But Leo didn’t need any friends. He especially didn’t need a friend like Morris, a skinny twerp who didn’t know when to shut up. A kid like that wouldn’t do Leo any good.

  What had Leo been thinking when he showed Morris his gold?

  He thought back to that night a few weeks ago, when Leo had seen Morris sitting alone on the steps of the cigar store near their boardinghouse. At first Leo figured he could sneak by and escape Morris for one day. But something was wrong with the kid. And Leo just couldn’t walk by without seeing what it was.

  It took Leo some time to get Morris to spit out what was wrong — that his uncle was hardly ever home, that he gambled all of his money away, including the few dimes a day Morris earned at the market.

  “I have to get out of here,” Morris said. “My ma has cousins in New York City. I met them once. You’d love them, Leo! They’re both teachers. They said I could go to their school. They always said I was welcome there anytime.”

  “Why don’t you just go?” Leo said.

  Then finally Leo could live in peace!

  “How?” Morris said. “I don’t have the money to get on a train. My uncle just laughs when I mention it. I’m trapped here.”

  There was no cheering Morris up — until Leo reached into his pocket and took out his gold. He handed it to Morris, like Papa used to hand it to him.

  Morris’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

  Leo told him about Grandpop, and how people laughed when he used to talk about one day crossing the wild country by himself. Of course Leo knew that Morris was nothing like Grandpop. But the story worked like a charm.

  What was Morris doing out on the streets looking for him now? Couldn’t he mind his own business for one day? Morris was the reason he’d just lost his gold to Fletch and Wilkie, the reason he was lying bleeding in the alley. Morris was the last person Leo wanted to see.

  Leo kept quiet, hoping that Morris would move along.

  But no, Morris kept at it. And suddenly there he was, crouched down next to Leo.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said. “I knew something must have happened!”

  Morris took out a handkerchief and started wiping the caked blood from Leo’s face.

  “Whoever did this to you,” Morris fumed, “I swear I’ll get them!”

  Leo would have laughed, but his jaw was too sore.

  “It was Fletch Sikes and Wilkie Barnes,” Leo mumbled. “They stole my gold.”

  Morris gasped.

  “You were the only person who knew about it,” Leo added.

  “I didn’t tell Fletch Sikes about your gold!” Morris said.

  “But you told someone, right?” Leo said.

  Morris’s shoulders slumped.

  “I might have mentioned it to some kids at the market,” he said. “It was such a great story, and I … well, it really got their attention.”

  Leo shook his head. The kid was so desperate for friends he’d spilled Leo’s most important secret. He should clobber him.

  But no person could look sorrier than Morris looked now.

  Leo sighed. Being mad at Morris wasn’t going to get his gold back.

  He let Morris help him stand up. Together they made their way back to the boardinghouse.

  Morris jabbered the entire way.

  “I’m going to help you get that gold back,” he said, as they stepped through the front door.

  “It will be sold by tomorrow,” Leo said.

  Morris frowned. “I know,” Morris said. “That’s why we need to get it back tonight.”

  “We?” Leo said. Now he had to laugh. Morris really thought he stood a chance next to Fletch and Wilkie?

  “Of course they won’t just give it back,” Morris said, ignoring Leo’s question. “We have to trick them somehow.”

  Leo looked at Morris. And right then Morris didn’t look like such a skinny little twerp. There was a look on his face — a thoughtful and stubborn kind of look — that reminded Leo of the way President Roosevelt appeared on the front page of today’s paper. The only thing missing was the bushy mustache.

  But what did Morris really know about the world? There were no books in the library about kids like Fletch and Wilkie.

  Leo thanked Morris. And before Morris could say another word, Leo hurried down to his tiny basement room, slamming the door behind him.

  Leo sat down on the flea-bitten horse blanket that he used as a bed.

  He rubbed his sore jaw. His stomach grumbled.

  The best thing, he realized, would be to close his eyes, get to sleep, and forget about this day.

  He closed his eyes.

  But kept thinking about what Morris had said.

  We could trick them.

  The words had wormed their way into his mind.

  Finally Leo sat up and lit a candle.

  Maybe Morris was onto something. Of course Leo couldn’t make those two goons hand over the gold. But maybe there was a way to trick them.

  Like the way Grandpop had tricked the grizzly bear.

  Leo could hear Papa’s voice now in his mind, telling the story.

  It was 1849, and Grandpop was only sixteen years old.

  Gold had been discovered in a streambed in northern California, and Grandpop was heading west to make his fortune. It had been a tough journey. He’d been held up by bandits near St. Louis. He came this close to getting bitten by a four-foot-long rattlesnake in the Indian Territory. Finally he’d made it high into the Rocky Mountains. It was rough country, but beautiful too, with streams as blue as the sky and fields of wildflowers that stretched out like rainbows.

  The sun was setting, and Grandpop had made his camp and built his fire. He got up to fetch some wood for the night. He was coming back over a hill when he saw an enormous bear. “Three times the size of a man,” Papa would say, stretching his arms up to the ceiling.

  The bear rose up and roared at Grandpop, baring enormous teeth.

  Grandpop knew about the Rocky Mountain grizzlies. They ran faster than mountain lions. They could climb trees. They could rip a person to shreds with a swipe of a paw. Grandpop could see the bear’s claws, ten black daggers glistening in the setting sun.

  The bear stood there, ready to attack.r />
  All Grandpop wanted to do was run. But no one can outrun a grizzly. They’re too fast.

  All travelers are told this. And yet most men can’t help themselves. The urge to run is just too strong to resist.

  But Grandpop wasn’t like other men.

  Every muscle in his body was ready to run.

  But he planted his feet into the ground.

  Think, he told himself. Think.

  He couldn’t escape from that grizzly bear. He couldn’t kill the grizzly. His gun was in his tent.

  His only hope was to scare that grizzly away.

  But how?

  And then Grandpop remembered:

  The rattle.

  The rattle of that monster rattlesnake he’d killed in Pawnee Indian land.

  The snake was as thick as Grandpop’s leg. Its rattle was five inches long.

  That snake could have killed him. He’d almost stepped on it when he was walking through the tall plains grass, hunting for rabbits. By the time Grandpop heard the rattling noise, the snake was coiled and ready to strike.

  Shkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshk,

  shkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshk,

  shkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshkshk.

  Without a thought, Grandpop had grabbed his knife from his belt and threw it. By some stroke of luck, the blade landed in the center of the snake’s head.

  The snake didn’t die right away. It thrashed wildly, its body coiling around Grandpop’s legs. Grandpop had to hit it with the handle of his rifle.

  And then, when the snake was dead, Grandpop cut off the rattle for good luck.