Mission of Hope. Allie Pleiter
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one, however, could have foreseen what “all kinds of mail” would be: sticks, wood, shirt cuffs and collars, tiles and margins of salvaged books or newspaper had been pressed into service as writing paper. Each morning Papa would take her to the edge of an “official” refugee camp—for several questionable “unofficial” camps had sprung up—and they would take in the mail. Standing on an older mail cart now pressed into heavy service, Nora took in heart-wrenching messages such as “We’re alive” or “Eddie is gone” or “Send anything” and piled them into bags headed back to the post office.
Nora—and any other female—could only accept mail, for mail delivery had become a dangerous task. Arriving mail consisted of packages of food or clothes or whatever supplies could be sent quickly, and that made it highly desirable. The massive logistics of distributing such things had necessitated army escorts in order to keep the peace. Even after months of relief, so much was still missing, so much was still needed, and San Francisco was discovering just how impossible it was to sprout a city from scratch. The nearly three months of continual scrounging, loss and pain turned civil people angry, and there had even been a few close scrapes for Nora in the simple act of accepting mail. Those incidents usually made her father nervous, but today they made Nora all the more determined to help. Someone had delivered something precious to her, and she would do the same. It was not her fault the postmaster had not been blessed with a son who could better face the danger. If God had given Postmaster Longstreet a daughter, then God would have to work through a daughter. Father had always said, “We do what we can with what we have.” What better time or place to put that belief into practice?
“Please,” a young boy pleaded as he pressed a strip of cloth into Nora’s hand. Its author had scrawled a message and rolled up a shirtsleeve like a scroll, tied with what looked like the remnants of a shoelace. “Martin Lovejoy, Applewood, Wisconsin” was printed on the outside. “All we got is the clothes we’re wearing,” the lad said, “but Uncle Martin can send more.”
“Is your tent number on the scroll? Your uncle Martin needs to know where to send the clothes.”
“Don’t know,” the boy said, turning the scroll over in his hands. He held it up to Nora again. “I don’t read. Is it?”
The scroll held none of its sender’s information. “What’s your tent number?”
The tiny lip trembled. “It’s over there.”
The boy pointed across the street to the very large “unofficial” encampment that had taken over Dolores Park. Nora bent down and took the boy’s hand. “Which…” she hesitated to even use the word in front of him, “…shack is yours?”
He pointed to a line of slapped-together shelters just across the street. “There.”
The shack stood near the edge of the camp, but still, he was so small to be here by himself. Nora looked around for someone to send back with him—the unofficial camp was not a safe place to go—but everyone was engrossed in their own tasks. The little boy looked completely helpless and more than a little desperate. It was by the edge, not forty feet away, and perhaps it wasn’t as dangerous as Papa made it out to be. Taking a deep breath, Nora made a decision and hopped down off the wagon. Five minutes to help one little boy couldn’t possibly put her in any danger, and her father looked too busy to even notice her absence. Nora held out her hand. “Let’s walk back together and we’ll sort it out. We can ask your mama to help us.”
The little boy looked away and swiped his eye bravely with the back of his other hand. “Mama’s gone,” he said in an unsteady voice. “My daddy wrote it.”
Nora gripped the little hand tighter. “All the more reason that note should get through. We’ll do what it takes to reach your uncle. It’ll be all right, I promise. What’s your name?”
“Sam.” The boy headed into a small alleyway of sorts between two of the shelters.
The official refugee camps were surprisingly orderly. Straight rows of identical tents, laid out with military precision in specific parts of the city. Pairs of white muslin boxes faced each other like tiny grassy streets.
The sights and sounds of another world rose up, though, as Nora crossed the street into the unofficial camp. An older man to her left coughed violently into a scrap of bandage he held to his mouth in place of a handkerchief. The thin material was already red-brown with blood. He looked up at her clean clothes with a weary glare. Even though the blouse she wore was three days old and the hem of her skirt was caked with dirt, she looked nothing like the people she passed. The scents—so full of smoke and char everywhere else—were also different here. Intensely, almost violently human smells: food, filth, sweat. A hundred other odors came at her with such force that she wondered how she had not smelled them from the other side of the street. She realized, with a clarity that was almost a physical shock, that her concept of how bad things were paled in comparison to how bad things actually were. Nora felt a powerful urge to run. To retreat back to the official, orderly camp and its neat rows of tents before the depth of the unofficial squalor overtook her like the beast in her nightmares. This felt too close to the awful hours of that first morning.
It wasn’t as if Nora didn’t understand the scope of the catastrophe before. She did. But she’d somehow never grasped the sheer quantity of lives destroyed. Walking down this “alley,” the real-life details pushed her into awareness. The air seemed to choke her. Her clothes felt hot and tight.
The lad pointed to what passed for his front door, saying, “It’s just there.”
Nora’s brain shook itself to attention just enough to notice a small crowd had gathered at her appearance. It was not a friendly-feeling crowd—it had an air that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end—and she understood all too clearly why her father had not allowed her to venture off the cart before.
A young man to her right fitted scraps of cardboard into the holed soles of his shoes. Sam rattled off a list as he pointed to the surrounding shelters. “Elliot went for bread, Mrs. Watkins for bandages, Papa for water and me for mail.” It seemed an awful lot to manage at his young age, but he spoke the list with such an everyday dryness that Nora’s heart twisted to hear it.
“Papa!” Sam ducked into the shack, calling for his father. It left Nora standing in the aisle alone, listening to the shuffle of feet come to a stop behind her. “Papa!” Sam cried again from inside the shack, but no one answered.
A man came out from the next shelter. “He went back for more water, Sam.” He eyed Nora, his expression confirming how out of place she already felt. His eyes fell to the scroll in her hand.
“I need Sam’s tent number so I can add it to his father’s letter.”
“Who’re you? The postmaster?” It was more a hollow joke than any kind of inquiry. The man took a step closer while two more even shadier characters came out from between two battered structures on the other side of the alley.
“My father’s office is doing everything they can.” She had to work to keep a calm voice.
“He is, is he? And how about you?” A skinny, greasy-looking young man smiled as he wandered closer. “You doin’ all you can?”
“Of course,” Nora answered, until the glint in his eyes turned the question into something she didn’t want to answer. The wind picked up and made a shiver chase down her neck.
The man twisted a piece of string around his fingers in a fidgety gesture. “Really?” He stretched out the word in a most unsavory way. “You sure?”
“I am,” came a deep voice from behind Nora. She spun around to see Quinn Freeman step solidly between her and the leering man. He hoisted a large piece of steel in one hand with a defensive air. “I’m really sure, Ollie. Want to find out how sure I am?”
“Charity’s a virtue, Freeman.” Ollie grinned, but it was more of a sneer.
“Just make sure it’s virtue you got in mind. Miss Longstreet was just helping out, I imagine,