by Jack London
not going to live in Oakland the rest of my life, not by a long
shot. I'm goin' to get away . . . away. . . ."
Again, as words failed to express the vastness of his desire, the
wave of his arm swept the circle of the world.
Saxon thrilled with him. She too, save for her earlier childhood,
had lived in Oakland all her life. And it had been a good place
in which to live . . . until now. And now, in all its nightmare
horror, it was a place to get away from, as with her people the
East had been a place to get away from. And why not? The world
tugged at her, and she felt in touch with the lad's desire. Now
that she thought of it, her race had never been given to staying
long in one place. Always it had been on the move. She remembered
back to her mother's tales, and to the wood engraving in her
scrapbook where her half-clad forebears, sword in hand, leaped
from their lean beaked boats to do battle on the blood-drenched
sands of England.
"Did you ever hear about the Anglo-Saxons?" she asked the boy.
"You bet!" His eyes glistened, and he looked at her with new
interest. "I'm an Anglo-Saxon, every inch of me. Look at the
color of my eyes, my skin. I'm awful white where I ain't
sunburned. An' my hair was yellow when I was a baby. My mother
says it'll be dark brown by the time I'm grown up, worse luck.
Just the same, I'm Anglo-Saxon. I am of a fighting race. We ain't
afraid of nothin'. This bay--think I'm afraid of it!" He looked
out over the water with flashing eye of scorn. "Why, I've crossed
it when it was howlin' an' when the scow schooner sailors said I
lied an' that I didn't. Huh! They were only squareheads. Why, we
licked their kind thousands of years ago. We lick everything we
go up against. We've wandered all over the world, licking the
world. On the sea, on the land, it's all the same. Look at Ivory
Nelson, look at Davy Crockett, look at Paul Jones, look at Clive,
an' Kitchener, an' Fremont, an' Kit Carson, an' all of 'em."
Saxon nodded, while he continued, her own eyes shining, and it
came to her what a glory it would be to be the mother of a
man-child like this. Her body ached with the fancied quickening
of unborn life. A good stock, a good stock, she thought to
herself. Then she thought of herself and Billy, healthy shoots of
that same stock, yet condemned to childlessness because of the
trap of the manmade world and the curse of being herded with the
stupid ones.
She came back to the boy.
"My father was a soldier in the Civil War," he was telling her,
"a scout an' a spy. The rebels were going to hang him twice for a
spy. At the battle of Wilson's Creek he ran half a mile with his
captain wounded on his back. He's got a bullet in his leg right
now, just above the knee. It's been there all these years. He let
me feel it once. He was a buffalo hunter and a trapper before the
war. He was sheriff of his county when he was twenty years old.
An' after the war, when he was marshal of Silver City, he cleaned
out the bad men an' gun-fighters. He's been in almost every state
in the Union. He could wrestle any man at the railings in his
day, an' he was bully of the raftsmen of the Susquehanna when he
was only a youngster. His father killed a man in a standup fight
with a blow of his fist when he was sixty years old. An' when he
was seventy-four, his second wife had twins, an' he died when he
was plowing in the field with oxen when he was ninety-nine years
old. He just unyoked the oxen, an' sat down under a tree, an'
died there sitting up. An' my father's just like him. He's pretty
old now, but he ain't afraid of nothing. He's a regular
Anglo-Saxon, you see. He's a special policeman, an' he didn't do
a thing to the strikers in some of the fightin'. He had his face
all cut up with a rock, but he broke his club short off over some
hoodlum's head."
He paused breathlessly and looked at her.
"Gee!" he said. "I'd hate to a-ben that hoodlum."
"My name is Saxon," she said.
"Your name?"
"My first name."
"Gee!" he cried. "You're lucky. Now if mine had been only
Erling--you know, Erling the Bold--or Wolf, or Swen, or Jarl!"
"What is it?" she asked.
"Only John," he admitted sadly. "But I don't let 'em call one
John. Everybody's got to call me Jack. I've scrapped with a dozen
fellows that tried to call me John, or Johnnie--wouldn't that
make you sick?--Johnnie!"
They were now off the coal bunkers of Long Wharf, and the boy put
the skiff about, heading toward San Francisco. They were well out
in the open bay. The west wind had strengthened and was
whitecapping the strong ebb tide. The boat drove merrily along.
When splashes of spray flew aboard, wetting them, Saxon laughed,
and the boy surveyed her with approval. They passed a ferryboat,
and the passengers on the upper deck crowded to one side to watch
them. In the swell of the steamer's wake, the skiff shipped
quarter-full of water. Saxon picked up an empty can and looked at
the boy.
"That's right," he said. "Go ahead an' bale out." And, when she
had finished: "We'll fetch Goat Island next tack. Right there off
the Torpedo Station is where we fish, in fifty feet of water an'
the tide runnin' to beat the band. You're wringing wet, ain't
you? Gee! You're like your name. You're a Saxon, all right. Are
you married?"
Saxon nodded, and the boy frowned.
"What'd you want to do that for. Now you can't wander over the
world like I'm going to. You're tied down. You're anchored for
keeps."
"It's pretty good to be married, though," she smiled.
"Sure, everybody gets married. But that's no reason to be in a
rush about it. Why couldn't you wait a while, like me, I'm goin'
to get married, too, but not until I'm an old man an' have been
everywheres."
Under the lee of Goat Island, Saxon obediently sitting still, he
took in the sail, and, when the boat had drifted to a position to
suit him, he dropped a tiny anchor. He got out the fish lines and
showed Saxon how to bait her hooks with salted minnows. Then they
dropped the lines to bottom, where they vibrated in the swift
tide, and waited for bites.
"They'll bite pretty soon," he encouraged. "I've never failed but
twice to catch a mess here. What d'ye say we eat while we're
waiting?"
Vainly she protested she was not hungry. He shared his lunch with
her with a boy's rigid equity, even to the half of a hard-boiled
egg and the half of a big red apple.
Still the rockcod did not bite. From under the stern-sheets he
drew out a cloth-bound book.
"Free Library," he vouchsafed, as he began to read, with one hand
holding the place while with the other he waited for the tug on
the fishline that would announce rockcod.
Saxon read the title. It was "Afloat in the Forest."
"Listen to this," he said after a few minutes, and he read
several pages descriptive of a great
flooded tropical forest
being navigated by boys on a raft.
"Think of that!" he concluded. "That's the Amazon river in flood
time in South America. And the world's full of places like
that--everywhere, most likely, except Oakland. Oakland's just a
place to start from, I guess. Now that's adventure, I want to
tell you. Just think of the luck of them boys! All the same, some
day I'm going to go over the Andes to the headwaters of the
Amazon, all through the rubber country, an' canoe down the Amazon
thousands of miles to its mouth where it's that wide you can't
see one bank from the other an' where you can scoop up perfectly
fresh water out of the ocean a hundred miles from land."
But Saxon was not listening. One pregnant sentence had caught her
fancy. Oakland just a place to start from. She had never viewed
the city in that light. She had accepted it as a place to live
in, as an end in itself. But a place to start from! Why not! Why
not like any railroad station or ferry depot! Certainly, as
things were going, Oakland was not a place to stop in. The boy
was right. It was a place to start from. But to go where? Here
she was halted, and she was driven from the train of thought by a
strong pull and a series of jerks on the line. She began to haul
in, hand under hand, rapidly and deftly, the boy encouraging her,
until hooks, sinker, and a big gasping rockcod tumbled into the
bottom of the boat. The fish was free of the hook, and she baited
afresh and dropped the line over. The boy marked his place and
closed the book.
"They'll be biting soon as fast as we can haul 'em in," he said.
But the rush of fish did not come immediately.
"Did you ever read Captain Mayne Reid?" he asked. "Or Captain
Marryatt? Or Ballantyne?"
She shook her head.
"And you an Anglo-Saxon!" he cried derisively. "Why, there's
stacks of 'em in the Free Library. I have two cards, my mother's
an' mine, an' I draw 'em out all the time, after school, before I
have to carry my papers. I stick the books inside my shirt, in
front, under the suspenders. That holds 'em. One time, deliverin'
papers at Second an' Market--there's an awful tough gang of kids
hang out there--I got into a fight with the leader. He hauled off
to knock my wind out, an' he landed square on a book. You ought
to seen his face. An' then I landed on him. An' then his whole
gang was goin' to jump on me, only a couple of iron-molders
stepped in an' saw fair play. I gave 'em the books to hold."
"Who won?" Saxon asked.
"Nobody," the boy confessed reluctantly. "I think I was lickin'
him, but the molders called it a draw because the policeman on
the beat stopped us when we'd only teen fightin' half an hour.
But you ought to seen the crowd. I bet there was five hundred--"
He broke off abruptly and began hauling in his line. Saxon, too,
was hauling in. And in the next couple of hours they caught
twenty pounds of fish between them.
That night, long after dark, the little, half-decked skiff sailed
up the Oakland Estuary. The wind was fair but light, and the boat
moved slowly, towing a long pile which the boy had picked up
adrift and announced as worth three dollars anywhere for the wood
that was in it. The tide flooded smoothly under the full moon,
and Saxon recognized the points they passed--the Transit slip,
Sandy Beach, the shipyards, the nail works, Market street wharf.
The boy took the skiff in to a dilapidated boat-wharf at the foot
of Castro street, where the scow schooners, laden with sand and
gravel, lay hauled to the shore in a long row. He insisted upon
an equal division of the fish, because Saxon had helped catch
them, though he explained at length the ethics of flotsam to show
her that the pile was wholly his.
At Seventh and Poplar they separated, Saxon walking on alone to
Pine street with her load of fish. Tired though she was from the
long day, she had a strange feeling of well-being, and, after
cleaning the fish, she fell asleep wondering, when good times
came again, if she could persuade Billy to get a boat and go out
with her on Sundays as she had gone out that day.
CHAPTER VII
She slept all night, without stirring, without dreaming, and
awoke naturally and, for the first time in weeks, refreshed. She
felt her old self, as if some depressing weight had been lifted,
or a shadow had been swept away from between her and the sun. Her
head was clear. The seeming iron band that had pressed it so hard
was gone. She was cheerful. She even caught herself humming aloud
as she divided the fish into messes for Mrs. Olsen, Maggie
Donahue, and herself. She enjoyed her gossip with each of them,
and, returning home, plunged joyfully into the task of putting
the neglected house in order. She sang as she worked, and ever as
she sang the magic words of the boy danced and sparkled among the
notes: OAKLAND IS JUST A PLACE TO START FROM.
Everything was clear as print. Her and Billy's problem was as
simple as an arithmetic problem at school: to carpet a room so
many feet long, so many feet wide, to paper a room so many feet
high, so many feet around. She had been sick in her head, she
had had strange lapses, she had been irresponsible. Very well.
All this had been because of her troubles--troubles in which she
had had no hand in the making. Billy's case was hers precisely.
He had behaved strangely because he had been irresponsible. And
all their troubles were the troubles of the trap. Oakland was the
trap. Oakland was a good place to start from.
She reviewed the events of her married life. The strikes and the
hard times had caused everything. If it had not been for the
strike of the shopmen and the fight in her front yard, she would
not have lost her baby. If Billy had not been made desperate by
the idleness and the hopeless fight of the teamsters, he would
not have taken to drinking. If they had not been hard up, they
would not have taken a lodger, and Billy would not be in jail.
Her mind was made up. The city was no place for her and Billy, no
place for love nor for babies. The way out was simple. They would
leave Oakland. It was the stupid that remained and bowed their
heads to fate. But she and Billy were not stupid. They would not
bow their heads. They would go forth and face fate.--Where, she
did not know. But that would come. The world was large. Beyond
the encircling hills, out through the Golden Gate, somewhere they
would find what they desired. The boy had been wrong in one
thing. She was not tied to Oakland, even if she was married. The
world was free to her and Billy as it had been free to the
wandering generations before them. It was only the stupid who had
been left behind everywhere in the race's wandering. The strong
had gone on. Well, she and Billy were strong. They would go on,
over the brown Contra Costa hills or out through the Golden Gate.
The day before Billy's release Saxon completed her meager
preparations to receive him. She was without money, and, except
for her resolve not to offend Billy in that way again, she would
have borrowed ferry fare from Maggie Donahue and journeyed to San
Francisco to sell some of her personal pretties. As it was, with
bread and potatoes and salted sardines in the house, she went out
at the afternoon low tide and dug clams for a chowder. Also, she
gathered a load of driftwood, and it was nine in the evening when
she emerged from the marsh, on her shoulder a bundle of wood and
a short-handled spade, in her free hand the pail of clams. She
sought the darker side of the street at the corner and hurried
across the zone of electric light to avoid detection by the
neighbors. But a woman came toward her, looked sharply and
stopped in front of her. It was Mary.
"My God, Saxon!" she exclaimed. "Is it as bad as this?"
Saxon looked at her old friend curiously, with a swift glance
that sketched all the tragedy. Mary was thinner, though there was
more color in her cheeks--color of which Saxon had her doubts.
Mary's bright eyes were handsomer, larger--too large, too
feverish bright, too restless. She was well dressed--too well
dressed; and she was suffering from nerves. She turned her head
apprehensively to glance into the darkness behind her.
"My God!" Saxon breathed. "And you. .." She shut her lips, then
began anew. "Come along to the house," she said.
"If you're ashamed to be seen with me--" Mary blurted, with one
of her old quick angers.
"No, no," Saxon disclaimed. "It's the driftwood and the clams. I
don't want the neighbors to know. Come along."
"No; I can't, Saxon. I'd like to, but I can't. I've got to catch
the next train to F'risco. I've ben waitin' around. I knocked at
your back door. But the house was dark. Billy's still in, ain't
he?"
"Yes, he gets out to-morrow."
"I read about it in the papers," Mary went on hurriedly, looking
behind her. "I was in Stockton when it happened." She turned upon
Saxon almost savagely. "You don't blame me, do you? I just
couldn't go back to work after bein' married. I was sick of work.
Played out, I guess, an' no good anyway. But if you only knew how
I hated the laundry even before I got married. It's a dirty
world. You don't dream. Saxon, honest to God, you could never
guess a hundredth part of its dirtiness. Oh, I wish I was dead, I
wish I was dead an' out of it all. Listen--no, I can't now.
There's the down train puffin' at Adeline. I'll have to run for
it. Can I come--"
"Aw, get a move on, can't you?" a man's voice interrupted.
Behind her the speaker had partly emerged from the darkness. No
workingman, Saxon could see that--lower in the world scale,
despite his good clothes, than any workingman.
"I'm comin', if you'll only wait a second," Mary placated.
And by her answer and its accents Saxon knew that Mary was afraid
of this man who prowled on the rim of light.
Mary turned to her.
"I got to beat it; good bye," she said, fumbling in the palm of
her glove.
She caught Saxon's free hand, and Saxon felt a small hot coin
pressed into it. She tried to resist, to force it back.
"No, no," Mary pleaded. "For old times. You can do as much for me
some day. I'll see you again. Good bye."
Suddenly, sobbing, she threw her arms around Saxon's waist,
crushing the feathers of her hat against the load of wood as she
pressed her face against Saxon's breast. Then she tore herself
away to arm's length, passionate, queering, and stood gazing at
Saxon.
"Aw, get a hustle, get a hustle," came from the darkness the
peremptory voice of the man.
"Oh, Saxon!" Mary sobbed; and was gone.
In the house, the lamp lighted, Saxon looked at the coin. It was
a five-dollar piece--to her, a fortune. Then she thought of Mary,
and of the man of whom she was afraid. Saxon registered another