by John Jakes
She wasn’t reassured. She could only think of remarks she’d heard earlier in the day: That’s four and a half billion gallons… . Four hundred feet higher than the town. … It’s an earth dam. Leaky as a sieve—
By now the sound of the rain had become nerve-racking. She felt herself losing control and dug her nails into her palms until a measure of calm returned.
The clerk added, “No matter how hard it rains, you’ll be snug and dry in any of the rooms upstairs.”
The old porter tried to do his part to soothe her. “And don’t get all scairt if you hear some fool yelling that the South Fork dam’s busted. That’s an old joke around this town.”
“How comforting!” she said.
The porter and the clerk exchanged eloquent looks and walked away. Pemberton studied his hands. How infantile to snarl at two men who were only trying to help, she thought. She turned to apologize but both men were already back at work.
She covered her eyes a moment, then said to the manager, “Regis, I’ve got to make a decision. The doctor said that if Leo wants to perform tomorrow evening, he should stay flat on his back with his leg elevated for at least twelve hours. Otherwise the injury may take much longer to heal. When are we scheduled to leave?”
Pemberton pulled the limp timetable from his pocket. He peeled the pages apart until he located the one he wanted. “Here it is”—he showed her—“the Chicago-New York Limited. Departs at seven-fifteen in the morning.”
“I was afraid of something like that.” She pondered. “We’ll be on board if I have to carry him to the station.”
“But I thought the doctor said—”
“He did. Leo’s supposed to stay in bed. I want to get out of here. If Leo can’t go on tomorrow night, his understudy can do the role.”
Pemberton chewed his lower lip. “Whatever you say. Tomorrow night’s Altoona. A very big house. We’re completely sold out. I’d rather have Leo onstage than sitting in the wings. And you know how he hates to miss a performance—”
Eleanor couldn’t deny that. But the manager’s tone produced a flare of anger. “I refuse to stay in this wretched town one moment longer than necessary.”
He shrugged. “As you said—it’s entirely your choice.”
“You act as if I made the wrong one!”
“No, Eleanor. He’s your husband. But maybe there’s a way to resolve the problem. Here, look.”
Again he showed her the timetable. “This eastbound train leaves at eight minutes past three in the afternoon. It arrives in Altoona in plenty of time for you and Leo to reach the theater and do your makeup. Taking the later train would give Leo the rest he needs, and he could still get there in time to perform tomorrow night.”
Eleanor uttered a tired laugh. “Stranded in Johnstown. Sometimes I can’t get over the thrills of a life in the theater.”
“Stranded? No one’s stranded!” Pemberton exclaimed, bending to clasp her chilly hand. “It’s just a delay of a few hours. I’ll stay too, if you like.”
“Oh, come, Regis—you’re embarrassing me.” She sat up straight, wiping her cheeks with her palms. “I’m behaving like a child. I’m tired and upset, I guess. I apologize. You go in the morning and we’ll catch the later train. Then Leo can do the show and everyone will be happy. Unless, of course, the rain doesn’t stop, and the bridges wash out, and the three-oh-eight fails to arrive in Johnstown.”
The night clerk had obviously been listening as he wrapped twine around the rolled carpet. “She’ll be here, all right,” he called. “Nothing can hurt the old bridge your train comes in on. It’s seven arches of solid stone. We’ll get you and the mister to the depot even if we have to paddle a canoe.”
The clerk ambled toward them, so anxious to be helpful, Eleanor couldn’t possibly take offense at his eavesdropping. The young man went on. “The storm’ll probably pass by morning. Even if it doesn’t, Johnstown’s been through a downpour like this nearly every year that I can recollect, and I was born right here in Cambria County.” The clerk smiled again, shy, yet eager to persuade the visiting actress to think better of his hometown.
She couldn’t be unkind to him. She put on a smile she didn’t feel and said, “Well, if we can’t trust a local resident, there’s no one we can trust. What’s your name, young man?”
“Hack, ma’am. Homer Hack.”
“Well, Homer, I’m very sorry I spoke sharply to you and the other gentleman a while ago. I’m Mrs. Leo Goldman, by the way.”
“Yes, ma’am. I signed you in, remember?”
“That’s right, you did. Lord, that seems eighty years ago.”
The young man blushed at her mention of the Deity. She tried to forget how weary she was as she rose from her chair. “All right, Homer, it’s a bargain. You and I will both paddle the canoe if necessary.” She turned to the manager. “Leo and I will be on the three-oh-eight to Altoona.”
“I’ll have a cab waiting at the depot. Shall I look in on you a few minutes before we board the Limited in the morning?”
“Not necessary. Thank you for worrying about us.”
“It’s my job, Eleanor. I’ve been a bachelor all my life but I always wanted a flock of children. When I started managing road companies, I got my wish.”
She laughed. “You’re terrible.”
“No, I just understand actors. Along with liking them, of course.”
She laughed again, and kissed his cheek. The familiarity brought another amazed look to young Hack’s face. He nearly dropped the end of the rolled carpet he and the old porter were carrying toward the stairs.
Pemberton waved as he turned to leave. “Good night, then. See you in Altoona.” His boots splattered and spread the muddy water that had widened until it measured eight or ten inches across. The forward point had reached the center of the lobby.
Pemberton opened the front door. The wind tore it from his hands. Homer Hack had to drop his end of the carpet, run, and force the door shut with his shoulder. But the wind had sprung it, and ripped the screws in the lowest hinge halfway out of the wood.
Instantly, Eleanor felt she’d made a dreadful mistake solely out of loyalty to the company. She thought about running after Pemberton to tell him she’d changed her mind. Somehow she couldn’t.
She trudged upstairs. In the room she wrapped a blanket around her legs and tried to sleep sitting in the chair beside Leo’s bed. But the constant sound of the rain began to grate on her nerves again. The sound seemed to develop a terrifying resonance, like the roar of a waterfall. Pictures filled her mind. Frightening pictures of an earth dam high in the mountain darkness. It began to spout water from a few holes, then from a dozen—
She shook her head, rubbed her eyes. She was an adult. She mustn’t give in to childish fright. She and Leo would be perfectly safe overnight in Johnstown, and would take the afternoon train for an uneventful trip to Altoona—
But if all that was true, why did the sound of the rain and of her husband’s drugged breathing continue to depress her spirits? Why did those sounds make her feel—to use the word she’d used with Pemberton—stranded in a lonesome, even dangerous place?
“The dam’s busted.’ That’s an old joke around this town.
Suddenly she thought of the psalm Leo had quoted: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Though the earth be removed—
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled—
She wasn’t on familiar terms with the Almighty. She believed in God, but she didn’t practice religion in the formal sense. She’d always considered her religion to be the way she lived her life, especially the way she treated others. Tonight that philosophy seemed trivial and of little use. She wanted a strength greater than her own to touch her and relieve the unreasonable fear mounting within her.
She wanted that relief and couldn’t find it. She huddled deeper into the blanket, exhausted yet sleepless. Outside, the rain continued to fall.
CHAPTER VI
ADRIFT
i
THAT SAME NIGHT, FAR across the continent from rain-soaked Johnstown, a footsore Carter Kent limped into the Southern Pacific ferry terminal in Oakland.
Mellow California sunshine had bathed the dirt road he’d followed into town, but now the sun was down. Cold fog was billowing in from the Pacific. It was seven o’clock on a spring evening but it might have been midnight. And he might have been seventy. He felt that old.
He paid the fare at a booth, then went on board. Just beyond the gate at the stern of the ferryboat, he stopped to count his money. Less than three dollars left. He trudged to the large midships cabin, pushed through a swinging door, and sank down on one of the lacquered benches. Across the bay, the lighted hillsides of San Francisco had disappeared in the fog.
He shivered and clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. His old corduroy trousers, cracked boots, and castoff gentleman’s jacket provided little warmth. The jacket’s plaid was faded by weather and hidden by dirt. The stiff bill of his large cap was broken in the middle.
Carter was heading for San Francisco at long last, though he didn’t know precisely why. Maybe it was because the city had been his original destination, and some inner sense told him nothing would go right for him until he finally got there.
He knew Willie Hearst was in San Francisco, managing his father’s newspaper. Willie had taken over the Examiner two years earlier, when the California legislature had at last been persuaded that it should send George Hearst to the U.S. Senate. That made his son Willie a publisher at twenty-six. Willie could be proud of that. Carter had no intention of looking up his friend right away, however. He couldn’t stand to have Willie see how low he’d fallen.
He couldn’t stand to have his mother or stepbrother know, either. In the past six months he’d written only two letters to Julia. Both of them, extremely short, had consisted entirely of lies.
ii
When Carter had stepped off the train in North Platte five years earlier, he’d been convinced he was taking his future back into his own hands. He was further convinced that it would be a fine future since he personally controlled it. Both judgments had been wrong. When he added up those five years, the sum of them was exactly nothing.
He’d traveled from the Nebraska prairie to the parched plains of Texas, then further south to Galveston, where he’d learned how foolhardy it was to give anyone your trust until they proved worthy of it. From Galveston he’d drifted to Colorado and, eventually, on to the Pacific Northwest.
In all that territory, he’d never been able to find a town or a job in which his glibness and his infectious smile could be put to good use—or were even wanted. When he took a job, it was almost always some backbreaking menial task an African ape could have done nearly as well. Carter still hated to obey orders. It was a supreme irony of his life that since leaving the train in North Platte, he’d done virtually nothing else.
He’d learned some harsh lessons in five years. Life was much more hazardous if you were poor and far from friends and family. Earlier this spring, he’d lain ill under a pier on the Seattle waterfront for two days, only rats and mongrel dogs paying him notice. One old yellow hound had pissed all over his pants. Wouldn’t that be a fine story to tell his stepbrother, to whom he’d given so much advice?
He hoped Will hadn’t taken the advice too seriously. Some of it could damn well ruin him, and one squandered life was enough for the current generation of Kents.
It was after his illness that he’d finally started south down the timbered coast to California, making the long, slow journey by foot and by boxcar. Several times he’d run into some rough-looking tramps. When it wasn’t possible to avoid them completely, he always assumed they were planning to rob or kill him. He credited that wariness as the reason he hadn’t been molested once.
Now the journey was over, at least for a while. The ferry whistle shrilled. Men closed and latched the wicker gates at the stern. Lines were uncleated, tossed aboard, and secured. The engines chugged as the vessel nosed into the fog, its bow wake faintly phosphorescent.
In the distance a bell buoy clanged. By the time the ferry reached open water, the fog was even thicker. The whistle sounded a signal every fifteen seconds. Carter, feeling queasy, weaved to his feet and headed up the aisle toward the doors leading out to the bow.
There were only four other passengers in the cabin. One, an elderly Chinaman, sat on a bench which faced the aisle. The Chinaman was dressed all in black. A derby covered the root of his long pigtail. Carter smiled feebly and touched two fingers to the broken bill of his cap.
The gesture of friendliness terrified the Chinaman, somehow. He huddled down on the bench with his hands in his lap, trying to look inconspicuous. A ferryman appeared outside, glaring at Carter through a window. By greeting the Oriental, Carter had evidently done something wrong.
Carter pushed through the swinging door. The ferryman’s truculent stare infuriated him. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the Chinaman. “Just saying hello to an old friend. He used to cook for my mother at our ranch in the valley.”
Then, almost jauntily, he walked on across the wet deck. The ferryman scowled. The sallow young man in the cap didn’t look as if his family could afford a servant, let alone a ranch. The ferryman walked off shaking his head.
At the bow Carter turned and leaned back, his elbows resting on the rail as he tried to control a growing dizziness. His teeth started to chatter. He asked himself why he was standing out here as casually as some dandy on a Sunday excursion trip. The fresh air wasn’t doing him a bit of good.
The thick fog closed around him. He felt rootless, lost, adrift in a world in which he had no place. The feeling had become very familiar. Practically thirty years old, he had mishandled his past and left himself without a future.
But the defeated feeling passed. He willed it to pass. He was a man, and he was a Kent, and the Kents were survivors. Part of his inheritance from the family was the streak of optimism no amount of failure could destroy. He was not lost. The city of San Francisco was out there somewhere. It was just temporarily hidden, that was all. Hidden like the success he knew could be his if he only had a touch of luck. Besides, he’d learned too many painful lessons not to put them to use somehow. He’d do that in San Francisco. He’d make a new beginning. That was what America was all about, wasn’t it? New beginnings. Hell, over the past few years he’d made dozens.
But this one, now. This one would be different. This one would count. This one would put him on the right road at last—
A moment after he made the vow, he saw faint lights flickering ahead. The whistle blasted three times.
The wind felt stronger suddenly. It blew against his face and tore the fog away. He gripped the wet rail and watched the lights loom up on the hillsides of San Francisco. More and more lights appeared every second, and all of them grew steadily brighter. He had a destination after all.
He stayed on deck in the wind and damp as the ferry lumbered on to the terminal at the foot of Market Street. And although there was no reason for it except the hope or brass or whatever it was that kept him going, he had a smile on his face.
CHAPTER VII
DANGER ON A DARK STREET
i
CARTER LEFT THE FERRY with the few other passengers who had made the crossing. In the terminal he spied a newspaper in a trash barrel. He fished it out. Luck was with him; it was the morning Examiner.
He paused under a lantern just inside glass doors leading to Market Street. He peered out at the fog, which was thick again. He must have looked lost, because one of the other passengers walked up to him.
“Need directions, mister?”
He turned to see a sturdy boy of twelve or thirteen with curly brown hair, large blue eyes, and a soft, almost delicate mouth. There was nothing delicate about the boy’s hands. They were red and callused. In each of them, the boy held several books.
Carter nodded. “Matter of fact, I
do.”
The boy eyed Carter’s shabby clothing. “Need a job too, I’ll bet.”
Carter was amused. The boy was as poorly clothed as he was.
“Eventually,” Carter told him.
“Well, you’ve come to a good place. There’s plenty of work to be had all around the Bay. I know. I’ve had four jobs since I turned eleven.”
“Why’d you change so often?”
The boy looked insulted. “Four at one time! I carry papers in the morning and evening, on Saturday I apprentice at an ice house, and Sunday I set pins at a bowling alley.”
“But it looks like you have time for reading.”
The boy’s blue eyes grew hard. “I find time. I make time. The first day I walked into the Oakland Public Library, it was like discovering a palace full of treasure.” He held up the books in both hands. “These can help you be something besides a drudge all your life. I learned that from Miss Coolbrith.”
The special emphasis on the name failed to draw a response from Carter.
“Ina Coolbrith,” the boy said.
Again nothing.
Condescendingly he explained, “I thought they’d heard of Miss Coolbrith everyplace. She’s the head of the whole free library system. I’m returning these to her right now. They’re books from her own collection. She runs what she calls a literary salon at her flat on Russian Hill. Mark Twain’s been there, and Bret Harte—all the big writers. If you want to see famous people, you’re in the right place. You can see just about everything else, too. Out in the estuary, there are ships from all over the world. Pacific whalers. Chinese junks. South Sea schooners—”
Carter broke in. “Right now I’d like to see the offices of the Examiner.”
The boy pointed to Market Street and gave directions. “You can’t miss it, mister—”
“Kent.”
“Sounds familiar—wait a minute. I’ve read books from a publisher named Kent.”