Black Drop

by S. L. Stoner

  The tone McAllister used was calculated to reassure the boy. “Seeing as how the Cap’n is dead, there isn’t any danger to them from his direction. And those two clowns of the Cap’n’s are going to prison for attempted arson. There’s a new man in charge at the BCS. Folks will watch him closely. Besides, my temperance ladies intend to make sure those boys get the best of care. Once weaned off the opium, they will have the chance to go to school or learn a trade. They’ve also obtained a guarantee from the BCS board of directors that women will have access to the entire building. Still, it won’t be easy. Every one of those boys is addicted to the s. That opium is a vicious mistress. So, it will take time for them to get their feet back under them.”

  “I can see how somebody would like to drink that stuff,” Matthew mused, the dreamy quality in his words riveting their attention on him. He raised both hands to stop any admonition,

  “Don’t you worry,” he said, his blush so deep that it overwhelmed his freckles. “One little go around with those s was enough for me. If I ever want to see things that ain’t there and have the whole world turn swoopy, I’ll dive head first off’n a roof.”

  The room rang with laughter that mixed relief at his earnest declaration and amusement over the comical expression on his face.

  It was Mae’s turn to contribute. “You’ll all be happy to know that Mrs. Wiggit has a place at the BCS for the rest of her life. I went to the chairman of the board and explained how she’d saved our lives, at risk of her own and Andy’s. I made him promise.” She said the last four words with that determined upward tilt of her chin Sage knew so well.

  “And, what exactly did you threaten him with?” Sage asked teasingly.

  She didn’t look the least embarrassed as she said, “I told him I was friends with the publisher of the Daily Journal and, if he didn’t want to see the whole story of the Cap’n’s doings at the BCS in that newspaper, he’d better sign a paper giving Mrs. Wiggit a job for life or for as long as she wants to stay there. Plus, a raise to make up for all her suffering since the Cap’n was put in charge.” She smiled as she looked around the room and said, “E.J. here, helped me write out the promises. He says it is ‘air tight.’” Satisfaction surrounded her like a warm cloak as she sat back, arms crossed and chin raised. Eich patted her shoulder and, when she turned to look at him, her smile flashed extra bright.

  “Hmm, I wonder what happened in that room when those two thought they were about to die?” Sage thought.

  Meachum shifted on his chair, grimacing at the movement. It would be awhile before he’d ride the boxcars again as a hobo. In fact, he’d be riding the cushions back to Denver where his understanding wife would surely nurse him back to full health. “I feel kind of bad for the unemployed printer. He had no idea that was a real bomb he was fixing o throw.”

  Hanke turned toward the union man. “Mr. Meachum, what you told the prosecutor was real helpful to Obediah Perkins’s situation,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll be doing very much jail time. It would be different if you hadn’t heard them talking to him and telling him lies about it being a smoke bomb. I heard Roosevelt isn’t even mad at him. We’re hoping his testimony will help us convict the real culprits–if we ever catch them.”

  For a moment, silence fell on the eight people crammed into that little lean-to. Sage looked at the faces of his companions, each one different, each one having reached this moment together after traveling a different path. And yet, they were all here. For a moment a powerful, thankful awe overwhelmed him. The ragpicker and Chinese man exchanged a glance and

  Fong nodded. Eich stood and said to all of them, “Sometimes, people need a ritual to recognize how their life has changed or made a difference. You probably wondered why I asked that we meet here, rather than at Mozart’s where we would have drunk our tea in much greater comfort. The reason is that Fong and I have devised a little ritual. We’re hoping that each of you will honor us with your participation.”

  Fong stood. As Meachum struggled to his feet, Matthew leapt to his side to help. Again, Sage felt grateful that they’d come to know such a fine young man. It would be one of life’s great pleasures to watch Matthew grow into manhood. “That is, if he doesn’t get killed getting there,” came the cautionary thought.

  When Eich opened the door, they filed out into the yard. Eich picked up the pail holding the twig tree. Fong grabbed up a shovel and the mason jar holding the flowers. With a small bow, he offered the jar to Mae to carry. She looked pleased and carefully took it into her work-worn hands. Eich then led the way along the path that ran beside the ravine, heading toward the bridge. Eich and Fong were in front. Mae and McAllister behind, followed by Hanke and then, Meachum and Matthew, the latter keeping a strong grip on the injured man’s arm. Sage walked alone, the last in the parade.

  Sage hesitated momentarily when they reached the bridge, remembering how it had swayed and dipped the last time they’d braved its buckled and broken timbers. But, today, it seemed sturdy. And, indeed, it was. As a carriage rattled across its wooden planks toward them, its passage causing only a slight vibration in the structure.

  He looked toward the other end and suddenly realized the intended site of Eich and Fong’s ritual. The remains of the house where Daniel’s wife and baby daughter had died were gone. Only a square of charred earth remained, springtime grasses beginning to blur the blackness.

  They reached the place where Daniel’s shrieks of despair had soared heavenward as his home turned into a blazing inferno, one impossible to enter. Sage had not seen the fire but Eich had vividly described the horror of that night.

  They stepped off the bridge and stood before the vacant lot. Just steps from the road, someone had dug a foot-deep hole in the ground and ringed it with the smooth spheres of river rock. To one side was a small mound of soil. Far beyond, to the east, the snowy pristine peak of Mt. Hood rose into a pale blue sky, the fading sunlight washing gold up its flanks.

  Eich set the pail down and straightened. He turned to them. “I spoke to the property owner and he agreed that we could plant and tend this small tree in honor of those people who died because of this place. And, Fong and I, we wanted a place to honor Chou Ji, a good person who also died too young, never to fulfill the promise of his life.” He gestured toward the twig in the pail. “You are looking at a redwood tree in the making. It is the most majestic of trees and a fitting symbol for the enduring beauty of the human spirit. In one hundred years, deeply grooved bark will clad its soaring trunk and many small creatures will call it home.”

  They gathered around, silent as Eich carefully took the tree from its pail and placed it in the hole. Once it stood straight, he used the shovel to drop dirt into the hole, then kneeled and used his hands to spread and pat the dirt around the tree. Standing again, he motioned that they should do the same. Each, in turn, shoveled, knelt and used their hands to scoop dirt around and over its tiny roots. Each patted the earth firm before standing.

  Fong stepped forward, a slight breeze catching the pale blue ribbon around his arm, lifting its ends in the air. He carefully withdrew the chrysanthemums from the mason jar and gravely, handed each of them a flower, keeping the last one for himself. Turning toward the tree, he knelt and poured the water from the mason jar around the tree. As he did so, he intoned words that none of them understood but all of them felt. Standing again, he looked down at the tree before gently tossing his flower at its base. After a moment’s hesitation they all followed suit, each one in turn, with Matthew the last.

  Eich’s spoke softly saying, “As a boy, I grew up in a house surrounded by ancient English chestnut trees. Those trees were my playground, my shelter from the rain. Their roots knew my tears of sorrow and joy. Those who planted them were gone long before my birth. They probably never saw those trees in full growth. I will never see this tree in full growth. It does not matter. Actions shape one’s life. And, it is really only a man’s or woman’s deeds that live on. Good or bad, the deeds are their only lasting
legacies to the future. The planters of those trees around my boyhood home could not foresee how the twigs they planted would comfort and teach a lonely Jewish boy. They only knew that planting those trees was a deed that would continue to live on beyond their time.”

  The ragpicker paused and looked at each of them carefully, “We, each of us and all of us together did the best we could. Roosevelt lives and will continue to exercise his presidential powers–however he chooses. Because of our efforts, those BCS boys, as well as future boys, will have a different life, hopefully free of degradation and offering them some degree of choice. We don’t know if, in the end, the eventual outcome of our deeds will be good or bad. What we do know is that we did what we believed to be the best thing to do and that our actions came from the heart of human compassion.”

  Those words first landed like a blow to Sage’s stomach. But, that sensation passed quickly. Replacing it was a growing flicker of joy. He was a part of something good and right. It was a feeling that he’d lost when Flammang had spoken his final words and smiled that sneering smile. “Flammang was wrong,” a voice within Sage seemed to sing. A name is nothing more than letters on paper–a flat thin. It does not contain the essence of the human being. Like a whisper in the wind, old man Compton’s challenge echoed in his mind. Did that wizened old man know Sage hadn’t walked away? Did Mr. Compton know how instrumental his words had been in bringing about those boys’ salvation? Sage wanted to think so. And, in his heart of hearts, he believed so.

  He reached out for his mother’s hand to find it already seeking his. Like a wave, that reaching out continued until they were all linked, one to another, hand in hand. A spring breeze, laden with scents of early rose and lavender, washed across their circle. At their feet, the newly planted twig jittered and the strewn flower petals lifted.

  FORTY

  Late Summer, 1903, Washington D. C.:

  Pursuant to Act No. 800, President Theodore Roosevelt appoints the Surgeon General, Major Edward C. Carter, to the chairmanship of the newly-formed Opium Committee.

  The committee is to visit Japan, Formosa, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Java, upper and lower Burma.

  The committee is charged with informing itself “concerning the law governing the importation, sale, and use of opium in force in those countries and cities, the operation and effect of the laws in restraining or encouraging the use of the drug, the estimated number of users of the drug, the total population, the amount of opium consumed, the price at which it is sold, the value of the monopoly concession, if there is such a concession, and its increase or decrease year by year and the causes therefore, the amount of opium smuggled into the country or city, the method of its use, whether by smoking, eating, drinking or hypodermic injection, the effect of the use of the drug on the different races, and, in general, all the facts shown by the experience of the government of the counties and the cities named above, a knowledge of which is likely to aid the commission in determining the best kind of law to be passed in these islands for reducing and restraining the use of opium by its inhabitants. The widest latitude is given to the committee in making such investigation as may seem best to the committee. The result of the investigation will be embodied in a report, together with the evidence . . .” William H. Taft, Governor General of the Philippine Islands, Manila, August 8, 1903.

  THE END

  Historical Notes

  1. The quotations at the beginning of each preceding chapters were not selected to provide a balanced view of Theodore Roosevelt’s stances on the issues of his day. He held a number of beliefs and positions that current progressives would find repugnant. That said, when viewed in the context of his time, he was an enlightened progressive in many ways. Those are the quotes that were selected. Some of the quotes were in the speeches he made during his extensive 1903 train junket. Most are not because, by the time he’d given a number of such speeches, he’d honed them down to a single speech that he thought was the most effective for the tour.

  2. Roosevelt wrote, after the severe backlash against Booker T. Washington’s dinner at the White House, “The only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man.” Contrast that sentiment with the one expressed by South Carolina’s senator, Ben Tillman, who said of the Roosevelt dinner invitation to Mr. Washington, “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.”

  3. Despite his open-mindedness toward Afro-Americans, Roosevelt was deeply prejudiced against the Chinese. This may have come from his close association with Jacob Riis. An immigrant from Denmark, Riis helped shape social history in a positive way by publishing a book of photographs depicting the poor of New York City entitled How the Other Half Lives. While his sympathy for the downtrodden was evident, the captions beneath the photographs made it clear that his compassion for the poor did not extend to the destitute Chinese.

  4. President Theodore Roosevelt feared that the unrestrained greed and thirst for power among the day’s most successful capitalists was resulting in too much social and economic injustice. He feared a revolution. To save the capitalist system he advocated increased government regulation and the adoption of certain aspects of the progressive and radical agendas. The more short-sighted of the capitalists and their congressional supporters resisted his efforts.

  5. With the intent of building up overwhelming public support for his goals, Roosevelt took his message to the people in a cross-country train tour. He visited Portland, Oregon, on May 21, 1903. Thousands lined the streets to greet him and watch as he inserted a time capsule into a hole in the platform that would support the Lewis and Clark obelisk. That monument still stands at the entrance to Portland’s Washington Park. The descriptions of the measures taken to protect the president came directly from newspaper accounts of that day. After this book was drafted, it was discovered that a mildly deranged man did lunge toward Roosevelt on the dedication platform. He was wrestled to the ground and taken off to jail. It was later determined that the strange object he carried contained only spectacles.

  6. The description of Theodore Roosevelt’s arrival in Portland on dedication day faithfully tracks contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the event. The only exception is that the reception committee meeting the president’s train did not include Abbott Mills.

  7. Fenton’s tactical blocking of legislation aimed at protecting injured railway workers is an accurate depiction of his legislative lobbying on the issue. Accurate too, was the railroad company’s false enticements to Easterners seeking more opportunities out West. Finally, another accurate report is that setting forth the facts about Abbot Mills’ appointment to the city’s franchise commission and the “honest graft” tactics he used to steer city-related business to his bank.

  8. Police Chief Charles Hunt was in charge when Theodore Roosevelt came to Portland in 1903. It was Hunt’s second stint as Portland’s top police official He lost the office initially because of his efforts to root out corruption within the ranks. Nine years later, he was reappointed and once again he attempted to clean up the police force. This proved nearly impossible because of the monied elite’s successful campaign to shrink the city’s tax base. Thus, although the city’s population doubled in eight years, the city’s entire budget had been cut by $23,000 to $75,000. As a result, police officers were grossly underpaid, overworked and thereby highly susceptible to bribery.

  9. The medicinal properties of the opium poppy have been known and used for millennia. It was the activities of the Europeans, however, that ushered in the problems of widespread, worldwide addiction. Their cornering of the shipping trade and insistence, at the point of a sword, that Asian countries accept importation of India’s opium, meant that by 1900, there were 13.5 million addicts in China consuming 39,000 tons of opium annually–with fully 27% of China’s men smoking the drug.

  10. Worldwid
e opiate use has declined significantly since 1903 when it was ten times higher than it is in the present day. Citizen reformers and Theodore Roosevelt were key to this reduction. Following the Spanish American war, the United States took control of the Philippines. With that control came 190 legally-sanctioned and taxed opium dens that collectively sold 130 tons of opium each year to their addicted customers.

  11. The deliberate addiction of the Europeans and their European-American cousins was more insidious. European pharmaceutical companies manufactured laudanum, or “black drop.” This liquid opium preparation was odorless, easy to procure and easy to hide. Local apothecaries carried the substance. Over time, laudanum became a key ingredient in over-the-counter patent medicines used to break tobacco addiction, suppress coughs, stop diarrhea, reduce chest congestion and relieve various aches and pains. It also offered the pleasures of opiate intoxication without the social censure.

  12. The 1900 census reported that eighty million Americans spent a total of $59 million each year on patent medicines. These tonics, elixirs and syrups contained up to eighty percent alcohol and often had morphine, cocaine or the heart stimulant, digitalis, as a basic ingredient. Naturally they sold well. Paine’s Celery Compound, Burdock’s Blood Bitters, Doctor Pierce’s Favorite Prescription, and Colden’s Liquid Beef Tonic promised to cure maladies ranging from a baby’s fussiness to cancer. Many people considered these nostrums to be an inexpensive alternative to visiting doctors. Even church publications carried their advertisements.