Johnny was up at seven. Wagons rumbled and men shouted on the docks outside. Instead of trying to find the team’s hotel, we’d walked from the Broadway wharf and come upon the Blue Anchor, a seamen’s rooming house, at the foot of Washington. It wasn’t too bad if you ignored the fleas.
“Sam, I’m out of laudanum. Hand’s paining me again.” He pulled away the bandage. The wound was messy but seemed to be healing. “Someplace’ll likely be open this early in Chinadom. Where is it?”
“Up to Grant, make a right, should put you—” I stopped, wondering if Chinatown was in the same place. “Tell you what, I’ll show you.”
“Why’re you looking around so?” he asked me on the street.
“Lot of changes here.” I tried to hide my bewilderment at not recognizing anything.
We walked up Washington to Montgomery. The plank sidewalks were thronged with fashionably dressed people. Brass plaques identified the Merchants’ Exchange, Customs House, Post Office, Bank of California, Montgomery Block—all sandstone and marble and brick. Most of the city, I would find, was dull brown and fashioned of wood.
Farther up Washington we passed Maguire’s Opera House; it bore no resemblance to the opera house I had known, and was in the wrong location. We entered Portsmouth Square, in my memory the peaceful refuge of elderly Chinese, pigeons, and winos. Now it was lined with city offices and saloons, and jammed with hacks. Omnibuses rolled through on a line between North Beach and South Park. Behind a high iron fence stood city hall; some of its windows were boarded and in places the masonry had crumbled badly. At the top of the square a gang of workmen sprayed the street to prepare for paving; others were replacing redwood sewers with brick. Smelly work. I detoured around them and turned at the corner.
“You said Grant!” Johnny called, pointing at the street sign, which read Dupont.
I could see Chinese signs ahead and a painted temple roof. We’d come the right way. “It’s up there. You go ahead. I’ll walk around a bit and get my bearings.”
“You okay?”
“Sure.”
“I’m gonna look for work,” he said. “If something turns up, I’m thinking to stay on here. I’ll be at the Blue Anchor at least a couple more nights. And I’ll know how to find the nine.”
I nodded, realizing there was no longer a reason for us to stay together. He had offered a graceful transition. I felt reluctant to say good-bye.
“Don’t get shanghaied,” I told him. “Stay out of the Barbary Coast.”
He laughed. “That’s where I’m headed.”
I watched him walk up the street, a gutsy little man going against the odds.
I headed toward Telegraph Hill, surprised at the amount of open space. Irish shanties dotted only small portions of the hill. I made my way up slowly, my feet slipping on long grass. Coit Tower wasn’t there, of course, but at the top I did find Sweeny and Baugh’s signal station, a small wooden tower with a telescope and refreshment stand—not open this early—and thousands of initials carved on it.
I gazed at the bay. It looked larger than I remembered. Over the blue surface moved everything from tiny fishing craft to majestic windjammers. I checked familiar landmarks. The Golden Gate looked naked without the bridge. A small fort stood in the prison’s spot on Alcatraz. Directly below, a line of three-masted schooners swayed at their docks along a section of completed seawall—the Embarcadero was evidently just being built. Hearing the faint sounds of voices and ships’ bells and creaking masts and whistling lines, I felt a sudden exhilaration. The earthquake and terrible fires lay thirty-seven years in the future. This was how the city had been!
BOOM! I jumped as a blast of black smoke rose from the hillside below, where Montgomery met Broadway. I’d seen them quarrying there; they were carving Telegraph Hill into craggy terraces, using the soil blasted loose to fill the bayfront and build the seawall.
Trying to absorb everything, talking to people, I explored the waterfront, where lateen-rigged Italian feluccas and painted Chinese junks were moored, fishing nets spread to dry on railings, circular crab nets stacked on docks. Scow sloops were laden with cargo. Oceangoing vessels, their masts dense thickets overhead, discharged silks, teas, and rice from China, furs from Alaska, sugar from the Sandwich Islands, machinery and furniture from eastern factories.
In stretches where the seawall wasn’t begun, flimsy wharves perched on rotting piles over tarlike mud. During BART’s excavations I’d done a story on the discovery of skeletons and even an entire ship buried along the old seafront. At the time I’d wondered how they could have simply vanished beneath the wharves. Now I understood.
Ferries to Oakland, San Quentin, and “Saucelito” operated from separate wharves. I missed the old Ferry Building. As with the Golden Gate Bridge, the city would be improved by it. Which I couldn’t say for most of San Francisco’s future skyline.
In midmorning I walked up California, where men milled in front of brokerage houses advertising low commissions and high prices for silver and gold. The establishments were so crowded that I couldn’t see inside.
“What’s going on?” I asked a man on the outskirts.
“A bull run,” he said. “Gold’s shooting sky high!”
“Grant’s thrown in with ’em,” another said. “Greenbacks’re worthless.”
“What’s gold at now?” I asked.
“One fifty-five—and climbing.”
Jesus, I’d made 150 dollars on an investment of only 1,400. More than a month’s pay in scarcely two days.
“The bottom 11 drop out,” a third said. “Mark me.”
The first man laughed, “Sour asses like you’ll stand by and watch the rest of us get rich!”
A Wells Fargo office stood on the next corner. It too was jammed. I pushed inside far enough to verify the price—now up another dollar to 156 dollars.
“What’s the latest I can buy today?” I asked, and was informed that New York’s Gold Room closed at one o’clock local time.
“Better get in now, it’ll be over two hundred by then,” somebody said behind me.
I started to reach for my letter of credit, then stopped. It was only ten-thirty. I’d give it a while longer.
Over coffee I scanned my all-time favorite paper. The Stockings’ arrival was the Morning Chronicle’s page-one feature. The previous night a crowd of two thousand had met them at the Broadway wharf and escorted them to the Cosmopolitan Hotel. In the players’ bios I was amused to see that Mac had tacked two years to his age, making him twenty-one. Probably Champion’s idea. Hiring nineteen-year-old professionals might not look good. Tomorrow’s contest with the Eagles, the city’s top club, was expected to be a thriller.
The Chronicle also reported that an Arizona Indian chief was being held hostage on Angel Island against the good behavior of his entire tribe. I wondered if it were true. Already the paper showed a flair for the bizarre.
I walked down to Market, where New Montgomery was being extended to Howard. Hackmen there claimed this would soon become the city’s poshest district.
“What about Nob Hill?” I said.
“Too steep for horsecars.”
I realized then that I hadn’t seen any cable cars.
Across the street stood a partially finished, enormous iron-and brick-structure—the $400,000 Grand Hotel, scheduled to open early next year; it was secured by anchors, the hackmen said, to make it earthquakeproof.
“Hear about the big one this time last year?” one asked me. “Damn near knocked down Marine Hospital. Damaged the mint and city hall. Then there was the big ’un in ’sixty-five, same month. In heat just like this, too.” He grinned maliciously. “Earthquake weather.”
“Guess I'm just in time for it,” I said, amused at being baited as a tourist.
I knew it was silly, but I walked along Mission to Fifth, passing gashouses and factories and weather-beaten frame shacks. The street was paved with wooden blocks that had been dipped in tar. Wagons made a swooshing sound as they passed. I shut my eyes and told myself that when I opened them again I would see the Chronicle building’s familiar gray clock tower. For an instant I did feel something strange pass over me, but when I opened my eyes the plank sidewalk still lay beneath my feet and a horsecar moved on rails in the center of the broad street. I felt a pinch of disappointment.
A whiskey grocery stood on the Chronicle’s corner. I looked at it for a while. Smells of stew meat and boiling potatoes were heavy in the air. Across the street was a large excavation. I wandered over and was pleased to see the beginnings of a longtime friend—the Old Mint. I’d looked down on it thousands of times. Workmen on break said that its cornerstone would be laid sometime next year.
I walked back along Market, passing the five-story business place of H. H. Bancroft, book dealer. From the basement of St. Patrick’s, between Second and Third, boys in school uniforms boiled up and spilled into an adjoining lot. They had a baseball bat and a tape-covered ball.
“Dibs on George Wright!” A stocky boy waved the bat ferociously.
“Brainard!” another shouted.
“Andy Leonard!”
The kid imitating Brainard went into a contorted windup remarkably unlike the Stocking pitcher’s. I realized again that without TV or movies or stop-action photography, the only images these kids could get came from seeing their heroes firsthand.
On Montgomery I passed the Occidental Hotel, where Twain loved the oysters, and in the five hundred block came on the current Chronicle office. Maybe I should go in and apply for a job. Check out old De Young—or had he already died in the famous duel? But I didn’t stop until the next block, where I saw a sign above the sidewalk:
SAN FRANCISCO ADVERTISER
F. MARRIOTT
623 MONTGOMERY
A second-story window contained the same information in gold leaf. What the hell. Why not drop in and see about his airplane?
Tacked above the landing was an enormous advertisement: AVITOR NEXT IN POINT OF SPEED TO THE TELEGRAPH. The reader was urged to purchase stock immediately in this new wonder that would “bear men and messages through the air, while the railroad drags heavy burdens of freight.” Entranced, I read every word that followed, enjoying Marriott’s blowsy prose.
Lovely, I thought, simply lovely.
There was also an announcement that daily flights of the Avitor could be witnessed at the Mechanics Pavilion in Union Square.
Just as I finished working through it all, quick footsteps and a rustling of skirts sounded on the stairway. I turned as a small figure yanked Marriott’s door open and propelled herself inside. Before it slammed, I glimpsed blond ringlets and a thrust-forward chin. Interesting.
It grew more so by the second. Voices inside built in volume, one female and accusing, several male and placating. The female’s built to a shriek. The males’ grew urgent. I couldn’t make out any words until a sharp crack resounded, followed by a shouted “No!”
It wasn’t a gunshot—I knew that sound—but more like leather slapping a resonant surface. I stepped cautiously through the doorway. The sound came again. The outer office was empty.
“‘Indecent and nasty,’ is it?” the female voice shouted from a cubicle to my left. The door stood ajar, FREDERICK MERRIOTT stenciled neatly on it. “Those who attend are a low ‘lot’?”
The last was a combination of question and grunt. The cracking sounded again. There was a yell. I moved to the doorway and saw a shirtsleeved clerk cowering behind a desk. He looked at me imploringly. On top of the desk stood a middle-aged man. His eyes were riveted on the woman. She stood with her back to me, her right hand brandishing a riding whip, her left clutching a newspaper.
Crack! The whip snapped on the polished toes of his boots. He sprang with remarkable agility upward from the desktop.
“I didn’t write it! You’re demented!”
“‘No figure whatever’?” She waved the paper in circles, apparently quoting it from memory. “‘A pair of thin arms, huge hips, utterly out of shape. . . .’ You bloody bastard!” The whip slashed down again.
“It wasn’t me! Bierce wro—”
He jumped too late. The whip caught his ankles. He toppled to the desktop, more alarmed than hurt.
“You’ll respect a lady, you guttersnipe!” She drew back the whip.
He raised his hands. “Wait!”
I grabbed her arm, gave it a twist, and yanked the whip away as she spun to face me.
I was staring into the furious eyes of Elise Holt.
She didn’t recognize me. Or maybe she did. Without hesitation she launched a most unladylike kick at my groin. It had impressive extension, a dancer’s, high and flamboyant. I stepped back barely in time, caught her foot on its way down, held it, and moved backward. She followed, hopping, her blue eyes blazing.
“Sam Fowler, remember?”
Tossing her head angrily, she twisted toward the man on the desk and hiked her skirts over the leg I held, revealing pale pink tights to her upper thigh. “Is this the ‘wretched material exhibited’?” she demanded.
I regarded it critically, seeing nothing wretched; in fact, it was curvy and provocative. The tights and black boots could have graced Police Gazette.
She flounced her skirt down and shoved her hands under her breasts, swelling the blouse and short jacket. “Is this ‘no figure at all’?”
A wave of pink washed Marriott’s face. His gray-streaked hair hung in his eyes; his suit was rumpled. Though he looked mortified by present circumstances, it didn’t keep him from staring at Holt’s up-thrust breasts.
“May I descend?” he said finally, in British accents.
“And you’re English!” she shrilled, struggling to free herself. “That’s too bleedin’ much for any—”
She lost her balance and started to fall. I released her foot and wrapped my arms around her corseted waist. Her bustle squirmed provocatively against me. I smelled her perfume.
“As I tried to inform you,” Marriott said, climbing down warily. “I do not write the Town Crier column which so upset you, Miss Holt. Nor do I edit the Advertiser. I am merely its publisher.”
I nearly laughed at that, but Holt seemed to be calming. Or at least accepting restraint.
Marriott regarded me. “Who are you, sir? I’m grateful for your assistance.”
Elise’s old friend,” I said, drawing a painful pinch on my arm. Actually, I dropped by to see how Avitor stock was doing.”
Oh, you mustn’t draw conclusions from what has just transpired,” he said quickly. “You’re an interested investor?”
“Interested,” I said. “Probably not an investor. I’m with the Cincinnati Enquirer”
Alarm tightened his features. Holt looked up at me. “You are? How grand!”
She seemed tame enough. I let her go.
“The Aerial Steam Navigation Company is being capitalized quickly,” Marriott said. “I expect Bill Ralston—Bank of California, you know—to become a primary backer. You’ve seen the Avitor, haven’t you?
“Not yet,” I said, turning to the door. “By the way, Twain sends his greetings.”
“Is he behind this? Was this Clemens’s prank?”
“No prank here,” I said, glancing at Holt. “This was entirely serious.”
In the corridor outside she gave me a long look. “How’d you happen in there? You follow me?”
“Just coincidence, but you should be thankful. If not for me you might be headed for jail.”
“Speaking of thanks,” she said tartly.
“Yes, thanks for getting your note to me. I hope it didn’t cause you problems with Morrissey.”
“None I couldn’t settle.”
“I’ll bet.”
She squeezed my arm and pressed her breast against me. I glanced down and caught her smile. She knew exactly what she was doing.
“Let’s find this bloody flying machine,” she said.
The Mechanics’ Institute Pavilion covered ninety thousand square feet and was topped by a dome illuminated at night by thirteen hundred gas jets. A sign at the entrance told us that the Seventh Mechanics Fair was in its tenth day. People stared at Elise as we entered.
We passed a number of displays until we came to a long hall containing a roped-off oval track. At the far end the Avitor was in flight. Two men dogtrotted along the track below, holding guy ropes fixed to it.
I scrutinized it as it passed overhead. Basically it was a forty-foot cigar-shaped balloon encased in a cagework of cane. On either side a five-foot wing extended, and whirring on each wing was a two-bladed propellor driven by a small steam furnace heated by an alcohol lamp. Toward the rear was a steering rudder with four planes, like the feathered end of a dart, to direct the craft up or down or to either side. The rudder was tied in place now to keep the Avitor in an orbit corresponding to the track.
Well, it was flying, I had to admit. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Impressed. Disappointed. The craft was by necessity so light that I couldn’t figure how it would handle any wind whatever.
“How fast is it going?” I asked an observer.
“Six miles an hour.”
“That its top speed?”
“The valves are entirely open, yes.”
When the Avitor set down a few minutes later another drawback became evident: it held enough fuel to stay aloft only about fifteen minutes. To lift larger boilers and fuel tanks—not to mention passengers—would require an enormous balloon. And there just couldn’t be enough thrust generated to keep it from being at the mercy of winds. A for effort, I thought. Materials and technology aren’t here yet.
“Gonna invest?” I asked the man.
He shook his head. “In my view the pneumatic tube will supplant railcars as high-velocity transport.”
“Really?” I remembered reading somewhere about a twentieth-century Japanese “bullet train” which shot cars through enclosed tubes at hundreds of miles per hour. Amazing that it was already conceptualized.
“Cheaper and more realizable than aerial carriages,” he said firmly. “Wait and see.”
We headed back to the pavilion entrance. Elise drew stares and whisperings. Mostly her skirts, I supposed, although to me they weren’t particularly racy—they reached the bottoms of her calves. And of course there was her makeup—a “painted woman,” no question. Quite a package.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly.
“You,” I admitted, which caused her to laugh and press against me.
Outside, she pecked my cheek. “I’m off to prepare for my show. Come see it . . . wait!” She gave me an accusing glare. “I read that the ballists are attending Maguire’s Opera House tonight.”
“So?”
“Oh, Sam, they’d like my show ever so much more!” She clutched my arm. “Won’t you come as my guests? Tomorrow night?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll put you in the dress circle—you must wear your lovely uniforms!—and I’ll advertise in the papers too!” Oblivious to passers-by, she leaned close to kiss me again, flicking my ear with her tongue. “Then I might see you afterward.”
I’d been thinking along those lines myself, but having trouble with it. Each time I imagined myself with Elise, an image of Cait filled my mind.
“I’m taken, sort of.”
“Oh, well,” she said brightly, “then we’ll be chums.”
She could at least have sounded disappointed, I thought sourly. “Listen, there’s someone on the team I’d like you to make a little fuss over, all right? He thinks you’re the greatest thing since popsicles.”
“Since what?”
“His name’s Andy Leonard.”
“Wasn’t he beside you on the field at Troy?”
“Good grief, you know the name of every man who stares at you?”
“When one looks at me like that, yes! He’s a darling pup, isn’t he?”
Her tone triggered a faint alarm in me. “You go easy on him.”
She laughed and turned away, boots thumping on the planks, bustle swaying. When she vanished around the corner I felt a certain relief. But also that things abruptly had grown duller.
Gold was up to 164 dollars. That settled it. I forced my way up to the counter and showed my letter of credit.
“You have three thousand four hundred and forty-four dollars, sir,” said the clerk. “How much are you putting into gold?”
“All of it.”
“Very well.” He filled out forms.
“Wait,” I told him. “Keep forty dollars out.”
“Certainly.”
I instructed that a gold double eagle be placed in each of two new Wells Fargo accounts. In the names of Susanne and Hope Fowler. Maybe they would somehow, someday get them—plus interest compounded over 120 years.
I tucked the receipt for twenty-one more ounces of gold into my wallet. I was in up to the hilt now. So was Twain. I’d sell well before the price hit two hundred dollars, I told myself. And pocket my fortune.
As I walked I couldn’t stop trying to remember where buildings would be in the future. It was dislocating to know that directly opposite Marriott’s office, on the site of the four-story Montgomery Block, the Transamerica pyramid would rise. At California and Du-pont I finally found an old acquaintance—Saint Mary’s Cathedral, its bricks fresh and red, its stained-glass windows fewer and smaller than I remembered, its resonant bell booming over the neighborhood. I gazed at it for a long time, feeling absolutely lost. I felt an urge to seal myself between the bricks, a human time capsule.
“Sam! Where the devil you been!”
Andy was striding toward me. Behind him came the Stockings in their uniforms, looking for all the world like tourists. My mood brightened as I hugged Andy.
“Figured this time you got plugged for good,” Brainard said dryly.
“He wanted to wager with us on it,” Andy said.
They had just finished touring Chinatown. Allison and Gould did bad Chinese imitations for me. Harry asked if I wanted to suit up and play in my hometown, in front of my friends.
“They’ve mostly moved away,” I told him. “But I’ll stand in if you need me.”
“Can you show us the main sights?” said Waterman.
“The ones you’d probably like most,” I said, “we can see in Elise Holt’s show tomorrow night.”
Andy’s face lit up. His whoop sounded over the others’ wolf whistles.
Harry had worked them diligently all the way out from Omaha, Andy told me as we walked to the hotel. At every water stop they’d limbered their arms beside depots and sidings. To their considerable surprise, several times Indians had shown some facility for the game and even a knowledge of the rules. One group had wanted to play a match.
“How’d they learn?” I said. “Soldiers?”
“That’s what we figured, but an old Injun who knew some English said a man with whiskers taught ’em when he passed through in a wagon, a generation or so back. Harry finally guessed that it must’ve been Cartwright himself, the old Knickerbocker who invented the game and later settled in the Sandwich Islands.”
“Sounds pretty farfetched,” I said.
“How else’d them Injuns know the New York rules from fifteen years ago?” Andy demanded.
“You got me there.”
The Cosmopolitan stood at Bush and Sansome. It was five years old, with four floors and an elegant saloon. It was expensive, but Hatton was picking up the tab. Andy roomed with Sweasy, so I had to share quarters with Millar. I found him bent over a writing table in our room.
“I had to file several pieces for you,” he said sourly. “I doubt the Enquirer is pleased, since naturally I didn’t put in all the quality that went into my own.”
“Naturally,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll have to get back on it right away.”
“You most certainly will.”
I lay down to rest a moment. I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until the door opened with a bang and Millar came in bearing a stack of the latest editions.
“Big fuss up on Montgomery,” he said.
“What, a fire?”
He shook his head. “Folks are running around like an earthquake hit. I guess that’s how it feels to the banks and brokerage houses.”
“I know,” I said smugly. “It’ll go on for a while, too.”
“Yes,” he said, “it certainly will.”
“What’s the price up to now?”
“We are talking about the gold market?”
“Of course, what’s the price?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “Nobody quite knows.”
I sat up. “Why not?”
“The bottom just fell out.”