Into the Firestorm Read Free Page B

left.”
    Nick bent his head and felt the warm steam of the tea on his cheek. It had happened just a few weeks after his eleventh birthday. Pa hadn’t even tried to explain, Nick remembered. He’d just stuffed a few clothes in a sack and walked out.
    “A man can’t get ahead sharecropping. Don’t blame him. Sharecropping just whittled away at your pa’s spirit,” Gran had said. “It ain’t that he don’t love you. He just can’t feel one way or another anymore.”
    “But…how could he just leave us here, with…this?” Nick had spread out his arms helplessly toward the rows of cotton crowding close to their shack.
    Nick couldn’t understand how Gran could be so calm, accepting even. True, Gran was Pa’s mother-in-law, not his own blood relative. But Pa had walked out on both of them. How could Pa leave his son?
    “I’m grateful you’re a strong, hardworking boy, Nick,” was Gran’s only answer.
She’s not surprised,
Nick had realized. It was almost as if, all these years, she’d been expecting Pa to leave.
    Nick had stared out at the rows of cotton and made himself a promise. “I won’t do that. I won’t ever walk away.”

    Nick put down his empty teacup and stared at the tiny shreds of tea leaves left at the bottom of the cup. He swallowed hard. He hadn’t thought about Pa lately.
    “Where did your father go?” Tommy asked. “Is he in San Francisco, too?”
    “Pa? Here?” Nick was startled. He tried to imagine what it would be like to see his father’s face on a crowded San Francisco street. “Naw. Pa would never leave Texas. I expect when he took off, he hopped a train to Dallas or Austin.”
    “What happened then?” Tommy asked.
    “Not long after Pa left, Mr. Greene ran Gran and me off his farm. Said it was too much for an old woman and kid to run,” Nick told him. “After that we got work on a big cotton farm, but I didn’t much like Mr. Hank, the boss man there. When Gran passed, he sent me off to an orphanage. The Lincoln Poor Farm for Indigents and Orphans. And then I came here.”
    Nick rubbed his hands on his pants. It sounded so simple. The whole last year of his life wrapped in a cardboard box of words, he thought. But that’s the way he wanted it. He didn’t need to open that box and look inside.
    Tommy poured Nick more tea. “But why did you choose San Francisco? It is far away from where you lived, isn’t it?”
    Nick liked how the small teacup fit so nicely in the palm of his hand. “Gran and I…we didn’t like cotton anymore. We always planned to come to the city.”
    Well, that wasn’t quite true. But Nick had been telling himself the very same thing every night when he lay on his cot at Lincoln.
Gran wanted to go—she’d want me to take a chance.
    “My parents had a dream of coming here,” Tommy said. “But dreams do not always turn out as we hope.” Tommy paused and pointed at Nick. “It’s easy to see you’re a runaway. Your clothes are torn and dirty. How long have you been here?”
    Nick counted. “Five nights already.”
    “And you’ve been sleeping in alleys and wandering all this time?”
    Nick nodded. “It’s sure cooler than I thought. And foggy! But I’ve never seen anything like this place. I love all the tall buildings and that grand hotel—the Palace Hotel. I’d give anything to see the inside of that!
    “Market Street is as wide as three roads,” Nick went on, his words tumbling out. This boy was the first person he’d really talked to here. “Yesterday I tried to cross it, and all those wagons, cable cars, and shiny black automobiles bumping along the cobblestones like a parade made my head spin.”
    Tommy shrugged. The city did not impress him.
    “You can’t wander around like this much longer,” Tommy said in a flat voice, placing his cup on a small black tray. “Any policeman who sees you will chase you—and next time you will be caught for sure. They’ll put you back in an orphan asylum. I wish I could help, but I