They called it Black Friday. Two unscrupulous New York speculators, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, had cornered the private market, possessing orders to buy every ounce of gold in circulation. As prices soared, their profits—and mine—would have been almost limitless had not Grant, reacting to charges of complicity, ordered the Treasury to sell five million in gold. As Gould and a few others sold short, dumping millions of shares, prices plummeted twenty-five dollars in less than fifteen minutes. Brokerage houses went under. Fortunes vanished. By the evening of that beautiful, golden day, I had lost thousands.
I walked numbly up and down Montgomery with hundreds of others trying to understand what had happened. Rumors abounded: Gould had raked in ten million; Fisk had been murdered by a ruined speculator; Grant had impoverished members of his own family. Nothing was certain—except that New York’s swamped Gold Room had announced it would be closed on Monday. It would take days to sort it all out. I just prayed that enough would be left to salvage Twain’s share.
Probably as a consequence of realizing I’d soon have to work for a living, I rose early on Saturday and knocked out some Enquirer pieces, mostly scenic highlights of the trip and chatty stuff about “our boys” in the Golden City. I mailed it early at the main post office at Washington and Battery, along with a long letter to Cait and Timmy.
At the Blue Anchor I rousted Johnny from bed. He’d been up nearly till dawn and looked it.
“Found a job,” he said. “I’ll be able to buy a new wheel in no time. There’s racin’ here.”
“Where you working?”
“Pretty-waiter-girl place called the Bull Run.”
“Maybe I’ll come down with Andy and some of the others,” I said, wondering what he did there.
“Champion’d have a cat fit,” he said uneasily. “It’s no church.”
“In that case I’ll come alone.”
He frowned. “I wouldn’t, Sam.”
“Look, Johnny, if you had to take a job that bad, let me loan—” I stopped. I couldn’t loan him anything.
“You’ve done enough,” he said. “Time to stand on my own.”
We talked a while longer. I told him I’d drop by in future days. Johnny said he’d get out to some of the games, if he weren’t too tired from working.
The Recreation Grounds’ carriage gate on Twenty-sixth was hopelessly clogged. As we climbed down and walked to the main entrance on Folsom, we could see why. Wagons and carts lined against the fences offered vantage points for hundreds who refused to move. Adding to the growing area of gridlock were the aggressive yellow cars of the Omnibus Railway Company; they arrived every five minutes from the downtown Metropolitan Hotel, disgorging passengers who’d paid their gold dollar for the shuttle and admission package entitling them to be packed into the bull pens.
Police made a path for us. Hatton turned and grinned happily at Champion. If this turnout signaled what would follow in the week, it looked as if he would meet the high costs of bringing us here. Thousands were jammed into the ladies’ pavilion alone, where seats cost two dollars in gold, two seventy-five in paper.
I sat at the press table. Again Harry had offered me the chance to play, but to do so would have been weirdly superfluous. I’d proven myself here already, playing before my grandparents and friends at Mission High, not more than ten blocks away.
The Eagles took the field in white flannel shirts and blue pants. They were the city’s oldest club and victors in a recent championship series. I shared the Stockings’ curiosity as to how good they could be, isolated as they were from the rest of the baseball scene.
Hearing that I was from San Francisco, one of the Eagles gave me some embarrassing moments by asking where I’d lived and did I know this person and that. After some fumbling, I said I’d actually grown up in Santa Rosa, fifty miles north, but said I was from this city because it was widely known. That was greeted with silent skepticism. I’d obviously been born before the gold rush, when few whites lived anywhere in California. Andy saved the situation with a good-natured taunt that no matter where I grew up, I knew my way around a diamond—which meant I must have learned to play at an eastern college; it provoked a good deal of intersectional needling.
Millar, beside me at the press table, said, “Do gamblers here truly shoot off guns to distract fielders?”
The Stockings had been told that it used to happen.
“Distract?” I replied. “Hell, usually they just shoot the fielders.”
He seemed to realize I was kidding. With Millar you could never be sure.
George, Waterman, Andy, and Sweasy emerged from the clubhouse and went into their sleight-of-hand routine, getting the usual oohs and ahhs. I noticed that men and women in the stands wore bulkier clothing than in Cincinnati, and many carried heavy coats. The reason became evident soon after the game started. A wind rose abruptly, stinging us with sand particles. Papers blew in swirling gusts, and I was suddenly chilled. Shades’ of Candlestick!
Brainard was wild, but it didn’t matter. The first Eagle went down on three swinging strikes. The second tomahawked a single on a pitch over his head. The next two fouled out.
When the Eagles took the field we saw how far behind the times, baseballwise, they were. Their hurler, working in what Harry called the “old style,” stood flat-footed instead of striding forward with his release. George, leading off, was so surprised that he popped the first pitch straight back to the catcher, who dropped it. George whacked the next pitch on a line to the center fielder, who muffed the catch. Because the Eagles had no backup system—one defender moved while eight watched—George sprinted clear around the bases. It was a sign of things to come. At the end of the first inning we led 12-0. The contest ended 35-4. For us, a solid afternoon’s work. For the Eagles and the watching thousands, a humbling revelation.
Money changed hands, but losers didn’t seem chagrined. I heard several predict that local clubs would fare better now that they’d seen our style of play. Good luck, I thought, knowing that we hadn’t played with much intensity after the first inning. Moreover, we weren’t used to the Recreation Grounds’ stiff winds. And we’d scarcely dipped into Harry’s tactical bag. Playing their best, the Eagles would not improve much, if any, on their margin of defeat. I considered putting money down on us in Monday’s rematch to recoup my losses—and had an immediate, near-sickening reaction. For a moment I actually thought I was going to throw up. My body was telling me, I supposed, that in the wake of the gold collapse it simply couldn’t take any more gambling.
That night at the Alhambra Theater I felt something else, considerably more unpleasant. As the curtain rose I was suddenly sweaty and faint, my fingers shaking. The calcium stage lights seemed to pulsate, a strobe effect in my brain. I shut my eyes tightly. What the hell was going on? After long moments the sensations subsided. I thought the milkiness had been about to come on during the worst of it. I didn’t like that one bit.
Around me, the Eagles and Stockings were resplendent in their colors. This era’s ball clubs regularly wore their uniforms on public occasions. Here it helped Hatton boost game attendance. And it wouldn’t hurt Elise either. With much pomp we had been seated in a dress-circle section set off by red bunting.
Elise’s extravaganza was called Military Billy Taylor, or Life in the Cariboos. She played the title role of a Scotchman wooing the same woman as one General Jenks. Her antics got her into varying degrees of undress. The production numbers were filled with blondes in tights—particularly one called the “humbrageous humbrella tree,” a gilded prop that spread itself each time the temperature reached 180 degrees, a phenomenon produced by Elise’s dancing.
As she took her final bows she was presented a bouquet of roses. She glanced at the card, then waved grandly at us in the dress circle.
“I think she wants to meet you,” I said to Andy.
He stared at me. “Oh, no, Sam, you didn’t. . . .”
I took him backstage, where it didn’t take Elise long to figure out that the flowers, from “A. J. Leonard, Cincinnati,” were my doing. Since Andy was hopelessly tongue-tied, she did the talking, even to the point of asking about baseball. I could feel her assessing him, finding him attractive. He was lithe and muscular in his uniform, much more her size than I. His nervousness did not obscure his athlete’s physical-ity.
“Would you buy a lady a glass of champagne?”
She wasn’t looking at me.
“Why . . . uh . . . surely,” said Andy.
“Guess I’ll be leaving,” I said. Her blue eyes flicked at me in amusement. Andy, I suspected, was in for a hell of a time. With tomorrow Sunday, and no game to be played, Champion was unlikely to run a bed check. Some guys got every break.
As I passed the Mercantile Library on my way back to the Cosmopolitan, my vision suddenly did its half-light trick again, and my pulse seemed to flutter. Something caused me to glance up at a passing carriage. I saw a moon countenance framed in its window, a dumpling face fringed with long girlish ringlets. I couldn’t tell if the eyes were pale, but I would have sworn I was looking at Clara Antonia. The carriage turned up Montgomery and disappeared. The whole sequence took no longer than a few seconds, but I couldn’t put it out of my mind.
Hatton arrived with coaches at noon. It was eighty-five degrees downtown. The Stockings grumbled that in any single day here they’d see every gradation of Cincinnati’s weather from April to November.
“Where’s Andy?” I asked Sweasy.
“Not feelin’ tip-top.” He flashed me a look. “Said he’d rest up today.”
We moved away from the others.
“He didn’t come in last night,” Sweasy said worriedly. “Just sent a note saying to cover up for him. You think he got shanghaied?”
“Not in the usual sense,” I said.
The Cliff House was a long, low, pyramid-roofed building bearing a huge American flag and standing exactly on the site of the larger establishment I’d known. Hundreds of rigs and teams were hitched at the racks in front. On a deck built on the ocean side Sunday couples sipped sherry and peered through binoculars. We walked to the edge of the bluff and watched combers surge against the shore. Below on the guano-encrusted crags of Seal Rocks, a family of sea lions, glistening like gray slugs, loosed occasional coughing barks.
“We’ve stood on both coasts,” Harry said. “By the time we’re home we’ll have gone ten thousand miles.”
Captain Junius Foster, owner of the Cliff House, greeted us warmly. We sat down to a meal of breast of guinea, terrapin, and hangtown fries. I eyed the elegantly dressed clientele drinking cocktails. The Cliff House was doing great business for a place so far outside the city, no bus or horsecar lines remotely near.
“The social set all patronize it,” Hatton told me. “And young blades who like to race their flyers along the road.” He nudged me. “Not to mention a certain fast breed of women who take pleasure in champagne lunching.”
No sooner had he said it than heads began to turn. A lavish hansom, its brass and lacquered surfaces gleaming in the sunlight, pulled in beside ours. A uniformed groom hitched the horses. We watched in astonishment as Andy emerged. He offered his hand, and Elise Holt took it and stepped gracefully down. Arms linked, they walked toward us.
“Oh my,” breathed Brainard, next to me. “Oh my!”
A low hum came from the others, then somebody clapped. Then we were all on our feet, applauding and cheering. Elise smiled winningly. Andy’s face was strawberry red.
“Thank you,” Elise purred. “I wanted to thank all you gentlemen for your patronage last night. And for your kindness in allowing Mr. Leonard to escort me here.”
“Mr. Leonard,” Brainard echoed in wonderment.
Elise marched up to Champion. “I wish you to know, sir, that Mr. Leonard speaks with utmost praise of your presidency of the Cincinnati club.”
“I . . . thank you,” Champion managed, twisting his napkin.
She complimented Harry in similar terms. He bowed in response. Beneath the straight face and courtly manners, I suspected that Harry was amused. Then Elise moved along the line of players, flirting with George, admiring Gould’s and Mac’s muscles, asking Brainard how he hurled the ball so fast.
“Thank you especially, Sam,” she said when she reached me, and winked, prompting another mutter from Brainard.
Taking Andy’s arm, she allowed herself to be escorted to the carriage.
“Jesus Q. Christ,” said Brainard.
“Looks like the boy’s gone and gotten himself involved,” I said.
“Seems like she knows you pretty good, too,” he said suspiciously. “You’re some at stirring things up.”
“From you, that’s high praise.”
Harry stood up as Andy returned. “My boy . . .” he began.
“I fancy her,” Andy said. “And that’s all I’m saying.”
Harry regarded him intently. Brainard and I exchanged sidelong glances. At length Harry said, “Welcome to dinner, lad.”
At that point Gould stepped close to Millar, pushed his chin up with one thick, gnarled finger, and said, “If this shows up in the papers, I’ll break your bones.”
“Me too,” said Sweasy.
“Me too,” said Waterman.
Millar reached up and carefully moved Gould’s finger aside. “I saw nothing of note here,” he said.
Even Champion smiled.
We spent the balmy hours climbing rocks and walking the beaches. Being on the western edge of the continent was exciting for the others. For me it was bittersweet, laden with memories that seemed as evanescent as the ocean spray rising in the afternoon sun. I watched two little girls playing with a puppy in the distance, dancing in and out of the waves. If only my girls were with me. I’d take them back to Cincinnati to make a life with Cait, or bring her and Timmy here. I wished that I could find a pathway from one family to another, one time to another.
Andy stayed close to me, talking excitedly of Elise. He would see her in the off-season, save money so he could travel to wherever she was playing. She was grand, wasn’t she? Did I think she cared for him the same way he cared for her? Wasn’t love the most awful and beautiful condition, all at once?
Finally he broke off and looked at me. “Sam, what’s wrong? You got the blue devils?”
My fingers were shaking again. “Sort of.”
“Seems like you’re workin’ awful hard at something,” he said. “Is it something you can fix?”
I watched a squadron of pelicans skim the crests of rolling waves. “I’m not sure.”
In the distance a snowy sail bobbed up regularly and was eclipsed by the combers; it moved toward the Golden Gate, gradually rounding the headland. Something seemed to speak to me from the ocean, some note in the rhythmic surf, a muted song in the wind that blew with increasing strength and chill in the waning afternoon. If it held any particular message, I didn’t know what it might be.