Warday

The Daylight reached Oakland at 8:36 in the evening. As soon as we got off the train I went to a phone booth and called my one contact in the area, a writer named Quinn Yarbro, whom I had known before the war.

Quinn wrote historical novels back when such things were popular. I haven’t seen her name on anything in the Doubleday bookstore in Dallas in years, so I had no idea what had happened to her.

There seemed to me a risk in using long distance in California, so I had delayed trying to call her until we were actually here. I dialed the last number I had for her.

After five rings an older woman answered. “Yarbro Locators,” she said.

“May I speak to Quinn, please?”

“This is she. May I help you?”

“Quinn? This is Whitley.”

“Oh God, where are you calling from?”

“Oakland. I just came up from L.A. I have a friend with me.

We’re doing a book on America together. We’re here to see San Francisco.”

“Whitley, this is—I mean, I’m in the locating business, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised—but—”

“I lived, Quinn.”

“Oh God, Whitley, I assumed—with you in New York and all.”

“We’ve been living in Dallas. Anne and Andrew too.”

She told us to take the BART to Market and Powell in San Francisco. “I—well, I’ll wear something recognizable. If I must, a blue fedora.”

“Quinn, we’re dressed like priests.”

“Ah. Okay. Shall I expect to pray?”

“Just look for two middle-aged priests with backpacks.”

“I’m sure I won’t have any trouble. And you can forget the darned fedora. I’ll find you.”

We traveled on BART for fifteen cents. The highest fare is a quarter, the lowest a penny. The trains are jammed and not particularly frequent, but they work. Like so many things in California, much EMP-related damage sustained by BART has been repaired.

There are ticket clerks, however, instead of computerized machines, and my impression was that the trains were directly controlled by their motormen rather than by a central computer. I noticed signal lights along the tracks much like those in the old New York subway system.

Even past nine at night, the Powell Street station resounded with the footsteps of a swarming crowd. Like Los Angeles, the San Francisco area has sustained a massive population influx in the past few years—despite the efforts of the immigration police.

“Hello, Father Whitley.”

She was older, very much older. “Quinn.” There were tears at the corners of her eyes. Finding old friends alive hurts. It is a pain one at once seeks and fears. I embraced Quinn. I touched her hair, which was still red but struck with gray. Her eyes, looking at me, were wide. Jim stood nearby, silent, not intruding, waiting.

“Quinn, this is Jim Kunetka.”

“Father Jim?”

“Simply Jim. This is a disguise.”

“I’m glad. You both look too thin to be priests. I’d peg you as robbers.”

“Is there much crime in California?” Jim asked, ever the newsman.

“More than before the war. People are so desperate. We have rich and poor and not much in between.”

“It looks so good.”

“It’s still got the best weather in the world, anyway.”

“Quinn, we’re fugitives.”

She laughed. “I gathered that. You want to get off the street?”

“Exactly.”

She offered to put us up at her apartment on Russian Hill. We rode the Powell-Hyde cable car for two cents each. There was an “I Stop at the St. Francis” sign on the front of the car, and the familiar yellow destination sign: Powell & Market, Hyde & Beach. We had to hang on all the way. The gripman was a master with his bell, and he needed to be—the streets were jammed with pedestrians. On the way, Quinn asked if we’d eaten dinner. We had not.

Lunch on the train had seemed sufficient for a month. I can remember very long periods of my life without so much food. And the freshness of it was unforgettable, as was the menu: lima beans cooked in real butter, a thick lamb chop with the juice running in the plate, mashed potatoes with pan gravy, an endive salad, two different wines, and, for dessert, frozen pecan balls.

It is no wonder that people are willing to risk prison to come to California.

Despite the danger of the streets, we could not resist seeing if we could tuck in a dinner in Chinatown. I thought at once of a certain restaurant. “Dare I ask if Kan’s is still there?”

“Kan’s is still there.”

We hopped off the cable car and went looking. Kan’s had not changed at all. The restaurant had opened in 1936, and it retains the comfortable spaciousness of former times. If I was impressed by lunch on the train, I was delighted by dinner here, even though I couldn’t eat much. A stomach used to a simpler diet cannot adjust quickly to the richness of California food.

In a way, being at Kan’s made me sad. Anne and I had taken five days in San Francisco in the summer of ’87. Andrew was at camp and we flew out for the chance to be alone together, to see a few good friends, to enjoy the city. It was our last vacation, and we had our last meal in San Francisco at Kan’s.