Sunday morning, January 2, 1881
San Francisco
Jamie quietly closed the door to the boardinghouse kitchen and knelt in the back yard to tighten the laces of his right shoe. Dandy, his small black and white Boston Terrier, took advantage of his face being in close proximity to give it a thorough sniff. The short whiskers around the dog’s short muzzle tickled his face.
“Stop it, Dandy! And no, don’t put your nose in my pocket. You’re not going to get the goodies Kathleen packed for Ian.”
Jamie stood up quickly and checked the right pocket of his wool jacket to make sure the dog hadn’t ripped the wrapping around the thick ham sandwich he had crammed into it. In his left pocket, he had an equally large slice of sugar-dusted pound cake, one of Mrs. O’Rourke’s most scrumptious desserts. He hoped his friend Ian would appreciate that he’d saved the last piece for him. Hard to believe that there were so few leftovers from the fancy New Year’s spread from yesterday.
While the day was cloudless, the oblique rays of a winter sun did little to warm the air, so Jamie pulled his cap firmly down over his ears and buttoned his jacket, saying, “Let’s go, Dandy, before Mother changes her mind.”
He headed for the gate in the back fence that led to the alley behind the boardinghouse. Dandy trotted in front of him, tugging at the leash in joyous anticipation of whatever adventures his master had in store for them today.
Jamie Hewitt, a sturdy ten year old with light caramel-colored hair and toffee-brown eyes, had been living in the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse with his mother for over two years. In many ways, it was the first place he could remember calling home. He didn’t remember Kansas, where he’d been born, and between the ages of four and eight he’d moved with his mother at least every six months, with the various rooms they’d lived in blurring together.
He sure was glad that after all their travels they’d ended up in San Francisco living in Mrs. Annie Fuller’s boardinghouse (actually, Mrs. Dawson’s boardinghouse now she was married to the lawyer, Mr. Nate Dawson). Compared to the dingy rooms and awful food in most of the places they had lived, the old three-story house on O’Farrell Street that Mrs. Dawson inherited from her aunt was pretty great. The other boarders were as kind as could be, never giving him a hard time when Dandy got too excited and barked. And Mrs. O’Rourke, the housekeeper and cook, served first-rate grub, and, even better, Kathleen, the boardinghouse maid, was always ready to slip him a bite of food between those excellent meals. She said he was growing like a weed in springtime and needed to keep up his strength.
He and his mother lived in a big airy room in the attic, although his bed was stuck in a sort of alcove off the rest of the room, which wasn’t always convenient when he wanted to stay up and read for a while after his mother said lights out. She was an English teacher at Girls High, so she was always on him about getting a good night’s sleep so he’d be sharp the next day in school. That was one of the reasons she’d been slow to agree to let him help Ian sell newspapers today. School started back up tomorrow, after one glorious week of Christmas vacation, and she said she wanted him home by six so he’d have time to review his lessons for the next day and be ready for bed by eight.
But he’d promised Ian, who was his best pal, that he’d meet him up at the Chronicle offices at ten-thirty this morning and spend the day with him. All he had to do was run up Bush and then over to Kearny, so if the sidewalks weren’t too crowded with the going-to-church crowd, he should be able to get there in ten minutes and only be a little late.
He’d never had a best friend before. Moved around too much. Plus, it didn’t help when other boys learned your mother was a teacher and treated you like you were some sort of spy among the troops. But Ian was different. He was Kathleen’s youngest brother, living with an uncle south of Market, and he thought Jamie was plum lucky to have a mother at all, much less one who could help him out with his schoolwork.
And Ian liked school…was especially good at math. But this fall, he’d started working as a newsboy in the afternoons and weekends so he’d been having trouble finding the time to study the way he should. Even though Ian was a year older and a grade ahead of Jamie, they’d discovered that the teacher in Ian’s seventh-grade class had his students working out of some old sixth-grade textbooks that were the same as the texts that Jamie used at his school. As a result, Jamie was able to help when his friend got stumped.
Jamie’s mother was scandalized when she found out about the textbooks. Said boys like Ian who lived south of Market deserved as good an education as boys like Jamie who lived in a better part of town. But Ian only shrugged and said most of the boys he knew had already left school, and the few who remained were mostly going because their mothers wanted them to watch over their little brothers and sisters.
Jamie knew it was important to Kathleen that her brother stay in school, so he was more than glad to help his friend keep up with his homework…and help him sell newspapers. Seemed the least he could do for Kathleen, who didn’t just slip him snacks but also took care of Dandy when Jamie was at school. She sure didn’t need to do that, not when she worked so hard, helping Mrs. O’Rourke in the kitchen, serving dinner, washing and ironing, and keeping the big boardinghouse spotless.
Despite all the work she did, she always had a cheery smile on her face, and one of the reasons he liked to spend so much time in the kitchen was to listen to the funny stories she told while she worked. Somehow, between the tradesmen who came to the back door and the other servants she met when she was out running errands, she pretty much knew what was going on in the neighborhood for at least four blocks in every direction.
Thinking about Kathleen, and how her neighborliness had helped her catch a killer on New Year’s Eve, Jamie quickened his steps, urging Dandy to keep up. He knew Ian would want to know how his sister was doing, but the boy couldn’t wait all day for Jamie to show up. Once he had his copies of the Chronicle Sunday, he’d have to take off to deliver them, and it could take hours for Jamie to track him down.
Jamie picked Dandy up, saying, “I’m going to give you a ride today. Hear the church bells sounding the quarter hour? We’ve got to get going. ‘Sides, you need to save your energy to help Ian sell his papers today…make him heaps of money.”
“I thought you weren’t coming. What’ya do? Oversleep?” Ian dragged Jamie into the crowd waiting for the elevator to bring the stacks of newly printed papers up from the Chronicle’s basement where the gigantic presses rumbled away. “Hey Dandy, how’s it going? No, don’t lick my nose.”
Ian was a thin, wiry boy, with coal black hair and merry blue eyes that made his relationship to his sister Kathleen unmistakable. Today, however, Jamie could see dark smudges under his friend’s eyes. He wondered how late his friend had been out trying to sell the special New Year’s Eve edition of the Evening Bulletin last night or if he’d gotten any breakfast this morning. Ian was pretty closed-mouthed about what it was like living at his uncle’s. Jamie did know that there were five other kids still living at home and that his aunt wasn’t that good of a housekeeper.
Afraid to let the dog down in this crowd, he clutched Dandy tightly and said, “Your sister gave me some lunch for you, if you want to eat while we’re waiting.”
“Not on your life. These guys catch a whiff of Mrs. O’Rourke’s cooking and they’ll rip it right out of my hands. I’ll wait. The wagon’s already gone out with the mail edition, so the carriers and the rest of us should be getting our papers any minute.”
Jamie nodded. It was common knowledge that the Chronicle presses could put out over thirty thousand pages an hour, but the first copies printed were the ones destined for subscribers who lived outside the city…most through the post office. Next came the copies the regular carriers grabbed to deliver to local subscribers. These lucky fellows not only got uniforms and room and board, but a real wage. And they didn’t have to worry about the edition running out before they got their full stack of copies. Not so for the newsboys who waited around him, who were all jockeying to try and get further up front.
This was the one part of helping Ian that he didn’t like, waiting for the papers to be distributed. The newsboys and the few tough-looking girls in the crowd flat out scared him. Wasn’t only their loud voices and rough language, but they always seemed ready to get into a scrap if you so much as looked at them the wrong way. And some of them were more like men than boys, with hard faces, cigarettes hanging from the sides of their mouths, and the smell of stale alcohol clinging to clothes that had never seen a wash tub or a mother’s darning.
Ian said most of them were all “sound and fury,” just the kind of comment that had gotten him the nickname of Professor from the other newsboys. Ian didn’t seem to mind. He said having a nickname meant he was considered one of them.
His friend gave him one of his cheeky grins and said, “Since you’re here to help, I’m going to ask for an extra fifty papers. Figure this edition should sell like hotcakes.”
Ian usually only got one hundred copies of any particular paper to sell at a time. The Chronicle charged newsboys $3 for a hundred of the larger Sunday papers, which sold for five cents on the street. If Ian sold all hundred papers, he made $5. He would need $2 of that to buy up the one hundred copies of the Evening Bulletin he would be selling tomorrow after school. The rest he was supposed to hand over to his uncle at the end of the week. However, Jamie knew that any papers Ian didn’t sell on any given day meant that either he had less to turn over to his uncle…or less money to buy the next day’s papers. So taking an extra fifty papers today was a risk.
If he sold all fifty extra copies, he would make an extra dollar for the day, which could cover any shortfalls during the week and maybe even give him a little money of his own. But if he didn’t sell enough, he would be starting the week behind. And it was Jamie’s impression that Ian’s Uncle Frank wouldn’t react too kindly if this meant Ian had less to turn over by the end of the week.
Kathleen, who gave that uncle most of her wages for Ian’s support, didn’t know her younger brother was also giving what he made selling papers to their uncle as well. Ian had told her he was selling papers in order to make some spending money for himself. Said it was for after school treats, new shoes, little presents for his cousins. She’d reluctantly agreed…as long as it didn’t hurt his schoolwork.
Ian made Jamie promise not to tell her that his uncle only let him keep twenty-five cents from his weekly earnings. He didn’t like keeping secrets from Kathleen, but you didn’t snitch on a friend.
So maybe Ian was right to risk the extra papers today. Yesterday, Jamie and Dandy had helped Ian sell the New Year’s Eve edition of the Chronicle that listed all of the fancy society ladies who were opening up their homes for visiting the next day. They had no trouble selling a hundred copies of that edition, and it made sense that today people would want to read about what all those grand ladies had worn, how many bottles of expensive champagne they’d served, and which highfalutin’ tunes the local fiddlers had performed as entertainment.
The pounding of the steam presses that had been a steady beat under their feet suddenly grew louder, and the doors to the elevator opened, setting off a round of curses and sharp pokes with elbows as the largest boys surged to the front. They would be the ones who would be the first to make it to the prime selling spots, like the ferry landing down Market Street or the entrance to the Palace Hotel, and they were shouldering a hundred or a hundred and fifty copies of the extra thick Sunday edition on each shoulder, confident they’d be able to sell them all.
Ian had learned to push up front with the next wave of younger boys and girls, finding out the hard way that if he stayed at the back of the crowd, he might not get even his full hundred copies. Jamie wished he didn’t have Dandy in his arms because it made it hard to protect himself from the pushing and shoving that was going on.
But they’d discovered this week that Dandy really helped sell papers. People would stop to comment on the dog, specially his black and white coloring, which made him look like he was a small gentleman all dressed up to go to a party. Ian would then thrust a paper under their noses and ask if they’d heard the latest news, and nine times out of ten, the person would buy the paper.
Jamie found himself a safe corner and watched for Ian, who after about ten minutes struggled back out of the crowd and said, “Let’s get going.”
Jamie put Dandy down and hurriedly reached out to grab a stack of the papers that were beginning to slip off the top of Ian’s skinny shoulders, saying, “I see you got the extra fifty.”
“Yep. Clerk said they printed up extra copies today. Once we get to Mason Street, we can head north, see how many papers we can sell at the car stops past Broadway.”
Jamie tucked the papers firmly under his arm and tightened Dandy’s leash so the dog would keep up to the fast pace Ian was setting. Heading west on Bush, they passed a couple of newsboys on the corners of Dupont who gave them dirty looks, warning them off their patches. When Ian first started selling papers in September, he told Jamie he’d gotten into a couple of scuffles with other newsboys determined to hold on to corners they’d found lucrative. But he said he’d discovered that a lot of the boys were too lazy to take streets like Mason that went up over the sharp incline of Nob Hill, so he’d developed his own set of regular tobacconists and grocers who were happy to buy papers off of him north of California and Sacramento Streets.
Bush Street was already pretty hard going, particularly at the pace Ian set, so Jamie used Dandy as an excuse to ask if they could stop for a moment once they got to Mason Street. He said, “If we can sell some of the papers around here, then it will be easier for me to carry Dandy up the next part. See how he’s panting?”
Ian immediately put his papers down, keeping one to look through for some headlines to shout out. Jamie took off his cap and wiped his forehead, feeling hot despite the chill breeze coming down Mason Street from the Bay. He remembered the sandwich and pulled it out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and handed it to Ian, who grunted and started wolfing it down as he continued to rifle through the pages of the paper.
“Got it,” he said as he gave Jamie a big smile and leaned over to offer a bit of the ham from the sandwich to Dandy. “There was a carriage accident last night; some rich swell and his girlfriend ended up all topsy-turvy when a sewer collapsed under their horse. That ought to sell some papers!”
“Look Dandy, we’re here. Now sit while I tie up this paper.”
Jamie and his dog were standing at the corner of Stockton and Vallejo, waiting for people to come out of the noon service at St. Francis of Assisi. The church had two tall bell towers on either side of an imposing entrance on Vallejo, and it was one of the oldest Catholic churches in the city.
Ian and he both had done pretty well selling papers to people who were waiting for the horsecars on the North Beach and Mission line. But they still had over a hundred papers to sell when they got to Vallejo. Ian decided it would be better if they split up. He would continue on Mason as it swooped down into North Beach, selling to the local shops that were open on Sunday. Jamie would go the couple of blocks over to St. Francis, where they’d sold quite a few papers last Sunday.
While he waited for the service to be over, Jamie decided to work on some of the tricks he was teaching Dandy. First, he’d run through the regular list, asking Dandy to sit, then to offer his paw for a shake, and finally to lie down and play dead. He’d brought some old crumbs of jerky to offer as a reward, and Dandy had performed beautifully, even prompting an old gentleman who was passing by to give Jamie a dime for a paper and telling him to keep the change.
Now he was going to try something new. He took one of the Sunday editions and rolled it tightly, then bound it with the bits of string that had been securing the wrapping around the slice of cake he’d brought Ian. Dandy, his black and white coat gleaming in the afternoon sun, sat with his skinny rump firmly on the sidewalk, his white chest thrust forward, and his ears erect on either side of his rounded forehead, staring at Jamie. The whiskers on his minuscule muzzle quivered in anticipation. He did like his jerky.
Jamie hoped that if he could teach Dandy to sit with one of the rolled-up newspapers in his mouth that this would get more people to stop…and buy a paper. He held the paper in the air and shook it a little. Dandy cocked his head quizzically, wrinkled his forehead, and gave a puzzled woof.
“It’s like a stick, Dandy. Here, grab it.” Jamie leaned over and offered the paper to Dandy, who backed up in surprise, pulling at his leash.
Jamie laughed and said, “Don’t be afraid of it. It’s just paper. It won’t hurt you. Now sit.”
He waved the rolled-up paper again, wondering if he threw it if Dandy would run to pick it up the way he would if it really was a stick. Before testing this theory, it was his turn to back up in surprise as the pup leapt in the air, trying to snatch the paper from him.
Jamie tried to sound stern as he told Dandy to sit, but it was hard to not laugh out loud at the pink tongue that now stuck out to the side of the terrier’s wide mouth. He said, “All right, if you want it, here it is.” He knelt down and put the paper right in front of Dandy, who snatched it from him and proceeded to shake it viciously, as if it was a dangerous snake he was trying to kill.
Just then, the doors to the church opened and the crowd of people who left kept Jamie busy selling newspapers, while Dandy systematically chewed the paper he’d snatched from Jamie into shreds.
“You go on home. I’m sure I can sell these last twenty-five copies if I keep at it the next hour or so,” Ian said, hugging the remaining stack to his chest.
The lamplighters had already passed along Vallejo, and the gaslights glimmered up Russian Hill in the twilight. They were standing at the corner of Mason and Vallejo, a stiff breeze coming up from the Bay.
Jamie picked up Dandy and pulled his jacket around the small dog to shield him from the chilly night air. He said, “You should come home with me now. Mother gave me two nickels, so we could ride the cars back home together.”
“Don’t need your nickel.” Ian picked up a small stone lodged in the wooden planks of the sidewalk and tossed it, watching as it skipped noisily downhill.
Jamie knew Ian didn’t like taking money from him. But it wasn’t like him to be so snappish about it. He hugged Dandy tighter and said, “Don’t be silly. Besides, I owe you a nickel for the paper Dandy destroyed. Don’t you want to see Kathleen? I know she was hoping you would stop by the boardinghouse on your way home tonight.”
Ian shrugged.
“I don’t get it, Ian. What’s so important about selling these last papers? You’re only twenty-five cents in the hole at this point, and maybe you can at sell at least five papers on the horse car on the way home…break even.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. And neither will Kathleen.”
“Tell her I had to go straight home. Get ready for school.”
“Lie to her?”
Jamie felt Dandy tremble against his chest and realized he’d raised his voice in his shock. He’d noticed before that the pup reacted this way when he knew Jamie was unhappy. Trying not to sound so upset, he went on, saying, “Look, Ian, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to lie for you.”
“You promised.” Ian glared at him.
“Not to lie. I said I wouldn’t volunteer that you were turning the money you’re making over to your uncle. But looks to me like something more’s going on.”
Ian shrugged again and said, “Nothing’s going on. No need to make a big deal of everything. Just thought you’d understand why I didn’t want to get Kathleen all in a bother. But suit yourself. Look, the car’s here. You better get going or it’ll be your mother who’s all in a fuss.”