As we walked the halls of the hotel the whores were abuzz with the news of Mayfield’s head-wounded departure, and the disappearance of the trappers. I spied Charlie’s whore, looking only slightly less green than before, and took her to the side, asking where the bookkeeper was.
‘They ran her up to the doc’s.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘I imagine. They’re always running her up there.’
I pressed a hundred dollars into her hand. ‘I want you to give this to her when she comes back.’
She stared at the money. ‘Jesus Christ on a cloud.’
‘I will return in two weeks’ time. If I find she has not received it, there will be a price to pay, do you understand me?’
‘Mister, I was just standing in the hall, here.’
I held up a double eagle. ‘This is for you.’
She dropped the coin into her pocket. Peering down the hall in the direction Charlie had gone she asked, ‘I don’t suppose your brother’ll be leaving me a hundred.’
‘No, I don’t suppose he will.’
‘You got all the romantic blood, is that it?’
‘Our blood is the same, we just use it differently.’
I turned and walked away. A half-dozen steps, and she asked. ‘You want to tell me what she did for this?’
I stopped and thought. I told her, ‘She was pretty, and kind to me.’
And the poor whore’s face, she just did not know what to think about that. She went back into her room, slammed the door shut, and shrieked two times.
Chapter 35
We rode out of town and followed the shallows of the river. We were days late for our meeting with Morris but neither of us was much concerned about this. I was reliving and cataloging the events of the previous thirty-six hours when Charlie began to chuckle. Tub and I were in the lead; without turning I called out, asking him what was so amusing.
‘I was thinking of the day Father died.’
‘What about it?’
‘You and I were sitting in the field behind the house, eating our lunch when I heard he and Mother arguing. Do you remember what we were eating?’
‘What are you telling me?’ I asked.
‘We were eating apples. Mother had wrapped them in a strip of cloth and sent us outside. She had known they would argue, I believe.’
‘The cloth was faded red,’ I said.
‘That’s right. And the apples were green, and underripe. I remember you making a face about it, though you were so young I’m surprised you cared.’
‘I can remember the apples being sour.’ The vividness of the memory brought a pucker to my mouth, and saliva washed over my tongue.
Charlie said, ‘It was the hottest day of a bona fide heat wave, and we were sitting there in the long grass, eating and listening to Mother and Father’s screaming. Or I was listening to it. I don’t know if you noticed.’
As he told the story, though, it was as if the scenario was coming into view. ‘I think I noticed,’ I said. Then I was sure I had. ‘Did something break?’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You really do remember.’
‘Something broke, and she screamed.’ My throat began to swell, and I found myself holding back tears.
‘Father broke out the window with his fist and then hit her on the arm with an ax handle. He had gone crazy, I think. Before that he’d edged up next to craziness but when I entered the house to help Mother, I felt he had given over his whole being to it. He didn’t recognize me when I came in with my rifle.’
‘How is it that people go crazy?’
‘It’s just a thing that sometimes happens.’
‘Can you go truly crazy and then come back?’
‘Not truly crazy. No, I don’t think so.’
‘I’ve heard a father hands it down to the next.’
‘I have never thought of it. Why, do you ever feel crazy?’
‘Sometimes I feel a helplessness.’
‘I don’t think that is the same thing.’
‘Let’s hope.’
He said, ‘Do you remember the first rifle of mine? The gun that Father called my pea shooter? He made no jokes about it when I began pulling that trigger.’ Charlie paused. ‘I shot him twice, one in the arm and another in the chest, and the chest shot brought him down. And he lay there, spitting at me, over and over—spitting and cursing and hating me. I have never seen hatred like that, never before or since. Our father, lying there, coughing up thick blood and spitting it at me. Mother was knocked out. Her arm was badly broken, and the pain made her faint. That’s some kind of blessing, I guess, that she didn’t have to see her son kill her husband. Well, Father laid his head down and died, and I dragged him out of the house and into the stable and by the time I came back, Mother’d woken up and was in a trance of pain or fright. She kept saying, “Whose blood’s that? Whose blood’s that on the floor?” I told her it was mine. I didn’t know what else to say. I helped her up and out, walked her to the wagon. It was a long ride into town, with her screaming every time I hit a bump in the road. Her forearm was bent like a chevron. Like a shotgun opened for loading.’
‘What happened next?’ I asked, for this I could not recall.
‘By the time I got some medicine in her, got her splinted up, it was late afternoon. And it wasn’t until I was halfway back that I remembered about you at all.’ He coughed. ‘I hope that doesn’t make you feel hurt, brother.’
‘That does not hurt me.’
‘I had been distracted. And you were always off in your private world of thoughts, quiet in the corners. But as I said, it was powerfully hot that day. And of course just as soon as I left you, you pulled your bonnet off. And there you sat, for four or five hours, with your fair hair and skin. Mother was sleeping in the wagon, drugged, and I left her there to rush out and see about you. I had not thought of you getting burned—my concern was that a coyote might have come along and picked you apart, or that you had walked down to the river and drowned. So I was very relieved to see you sitting there in one piece, and I ran down the hill to collect you. And you were just as red and burned as could be. The whites of your eyes turned red as blood. You were blind for two weeks and your skin peeled away in swaths like the skin of an onion. And that, Eli, is how you got your freckles.’
Part Three
HERMANN
KERMIT
WARM
Chapter 36
The harbor, at first sight, I did not understand it. There were so many ships at anchor that their masts looked to be tangled impossibly; hundreds of them packed together so densely as to give the appearance of a vast, limbless forest rolling on the tides. Charlie and I threaded our way up the shoreline, and all around us was chaos: Men of every race and age rushing, shouting, pushing, fighting; cows and sheep were directed this way and that; horse-led wagons carried lumber and bricks up the mud-slick hill, and the sound of hammering and building echoed from the city out to sea. There was laughter in the air, though it did not give me the impression of gaiety, but something more maniacal and evil wishing. Tub was nervous, and so was I. I had not seen anything remotely like it and I wondered how we might possibly find one man in these labyrinthine streets and alleyways, where all was queer and dark and hidden.
‘Let us search out Morris,’ I said.
‘He has already waited weeks for us,’ said Charlie. ‘Another hour won’t change anything.’ Of course my brother liked the atmosphere, and was not the least bit uneasy.
I saw that many of the ships seemed to have been at anchor a long while, despite their still being loaded down with cargo, and I asked a man walking past about this. He was barefoot and held a chicken under his arm, which throughout our conversation he stroked lovingly on the head.
‘Abandoned by their crews,’ he told us. ‘When the fever to dig is upon you, there is not a second to spare. Certainly one cannot be expected to unload crates of flour for a dollar a day with the rivers singing their song so nearby.’ Blinking at the
horizon, he said, ‘I often look out at these boats and imagine their baffled investors, impotently raging in New York and Boston, and this pleases me. Can I ask, are you men just arriving in San Francisco? How are you finding it?’
‘I can only say I am eager to know it better,’ said Charlie.
The man said, ‘My feelings about San Francisco rise and fall with my moods. Or is it that the town alters my moods, thus informing my opinions? Either way, one day it is my true friend, a few days after, my bitterest enemy.’
‘What is your feeling this morning?’ I asked.
‘I am halfway between, just now. Altogether I am doing decently, thank you.’
Charlie said, ‘How is it that these vessels have not been looted?’
‘Oh, many have been. The ones that remain untouched are either guarded by their stubborn captains or else are filled with nonvaluable cargo. No one has any concerns for free wheat or cotton, just now. Or should I say, almost no one.’ He pointed to a lone man rowing a small boat in the bay, making his way between the tall ships. His skiff was ridiculously loaded down, and he dipped his oars with great caution so as to avoid tipping. ‘That there is a fellow called Smith. I know him well enough. What will he do when he gets to shore? He will strap those heavy boxes to his sickly mule’s neck and drag them up to Miller’s General Store. Miller will skin Smith on the price and the money Smith receives for his backbreaking work will be lost in a single round of cards, or it will scarcely buy him a meal. I wonder if you two have had the pleasure of dining in our fair city? But no, I would know if you had, for your faces would be bloodless, and you would be muttering ceaseless insults to God in heaven.’
Charlie said, ‘I paid twenty-five dollars for a whore in Mayfield.’
The man said, ‘You will pay that same amount to simply sit at the bar with them in San Francisco. To lie down with one, expect to put up a minimum of a hundred dollars.’
‘What man would pay that?’ I asked.
‘They are lining up to pay it. The whores are working fifteen-hour shifts and are said to make thousands of dollars per day. You must understand, gentlemen, that the tradition of thrift and sensible spending has vanished here. It simply does not exist anymore. For example, when I arrived this last time from working my claim I had a sizable sack of gold dust, and though I knew it was lunacy I decided to sit down and have a large dinner in the most expensive restaurant I could find. I had been living on the cold ground for three straight months, surviving on trout and pork fat and more trout. My spine was twisted from labor and I was utterly desperate for some type of warmth and pomp, a touch of velvet, and damn the cost. So it was that I ate a decent-sized, not particularly tasty meal of meat and spuds and ale and ice cream, and for this repast, which would have put me back perhaps half a dollar in my hometown, I paid the sum of thirty dollars in cash.’
Charlie was disgusted. ‘Only a moron would pay that.’
‘I agree,’ said the man. ‘One hundred percent I agree. And I am happy to welcome you to a town peopled in morons exclusively. Furthermore, I hope that your transformation to moron is not an unpleasant experience.’
Down the beach a half mile I noticed an enormous pulley system made of tall timbers and thick rope set back from the waterline; this was being used to run a steam-sailer ship aground. A man in a broad-brimmed black hat and tailored black suit was whipping a team of horses to turn the winch. I asked the chicken man about the purpose of this operation and he said, ‘Here is someone with the same ambition as Smith, but with brains as well. That man in the hat has claimed the abandoned boat as his own, and is having it dragged to a sliver of land he had the foresight to buy some time ago. He will shore the boat upright and lease out its quarters to boarders or shopkeepers and make himself a speedy fortune. A lesson for you men: Perhaps the money is not to be made in the rivers themselves, but from the men working them. There are too many variables in removing gold from the earth. You need courage, and luck, and the work ethic of a pack mule. Why bother, with so many others already at it, piling into town one on top of the other and in a great hurry to spend every last granule?’
‘Why do you not open a shop yourself?’ I asked.
The question surprised him, and he took a moment to consider what the answer might be. When it came to him, a sadness appeared in his eyes and he shook his head. ‘I’m afraid my role in all this is settled,’ he said.
I was going to ask which role he was referring to when I heard a noise on the wind, a muffled crunching or cracking in the distance, followed by a whistling sound cutting through the thick ocean air. One of the pulley ropes had snapped, and I saw the man in the black suit standing over a horse lying on its side in the sand. That he was not whipping the horse informed me it was dying or dead.
‘It is a wild time here, is it not?’ I said to the man.
‘It is wild. I fear it has ruined my character. It has certainly ruined the characters of others.’ He nodded, as though answering himself. ‘Yes, it has ruined me.’
‘How are you ruined?’ I asked.
‘How am I not?’ he wondered.
‘Couldn’t you return to your home to start over?’
He shook his head. ‘Yesterday I saw a man leap from the roof of the Orient Hotel, laughing all the way to the ground, upon which he fairly exploded. He was drunk they say, but I had seen him sober shortly before this. There is a feeling here, which if it gets you, will envenom your very center. It is a madness of possibilities. That leaping man’s final act was the embodiment of the collective mind of San Francisco. I understood it completely. I had a strong desire to applaud, if you want to know the truth.’
‘I don’t understand the purpose of this story,’ I said.
‘I could leave here and return to my hometown, but I would not return as the person I was when I left,’ he explained. ‘I would not recognize anyone. And no one would recognize me.’ Turning to watch the town, he petted his fowl and chuckled. A single pistol shot was heard in the distance; hoofbeats; a woman’s scream, which turned to cackling laughter. ‘A great, greedy heart!’ he said, and then walked toward it, disappearing into it. Down the beach, the man with the whip stood away from the dead horse, staring out at the bay and the numberless masts. He had removed his hat. He was unsure, and I did not envy him.
Chapter 37
We knocked on Morris’s door at the hotel but he did not answer. Charlie picked the lock and we entered, finding his many toilet items, his perfumes and waxes, stacked on the floor next to the entrance. But besides this there was no sign of the man, no clothing or baggage, and the bed was made, the windows all shut tight; I had the feeling Morris had been away several days. His absence struck Charlie and I as conspicuous bordering on unnerving, for while it was true we were tardy in arriving, Morris’s instruction was to wait for us no matter the length of time, and it was out of character for him to stray from any prearrangement. When I suggested we might check to see if he had left word for us with the hotel proprietors, Charlie encouraged me to investigate. I was stepping toward the door when I noticed a large black horn emerging from the wall beside the bed. Hanging within was a polished brass bell. Below the horn there hung a sign that read: RING BELL TONGUE. SPEAK FOR SERVICE. I followed the instruction and the bell tone filled the room. This startled Charlie; he craned his neck to watch. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I have heard of this system in eastern hotels.’
‘Heard of what system?’
‘Just wait.’ A moment passed and a woman’s voice, shrunken and distant, emanated from the stomach of the building.
‘Hello? Mr. Morris?’
Charlie turned all the way around. ‘She is in the wall? Where is it coming from?’
‘Hello?’ the voice repeated. ‘Did you ring for service?’
‘Say something,’ Charlie told me. But I felt inexplicably bashful, and motioned for him to speak. He called over, ‘Can you hear me in there?’
‘I can hear you faintly. Please speak into the horn
directly.’
Charlie was enjoying this, and he stood up from the bed and approached the device, putting his face fully into the horn. ‘How is that? Better?’
‘That’s better,’ said the voice. ‘What can I do for you today, Mr. Morris? I am relieved to have you back. We were worried when you went away with that strange little bearded man.’ Charlie and I shared a look at this. Readdressing the horn, he said, ‘This is not Morris, ma’am. I have come from the Oregon Territory to visit with him. He and I are employed by the same firm there.’
The voice paused. ‘And where is Mr. Morris?’