If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  “We did it” somebody said. “Crossed the whole blessed country.”

  A woman started singing “America.”

  I have to admit it gave me a rush, goose bumps and all, as the rest joined in. Johnny and I sang too.

  “Hurrah for the Union!” came the shout.

  Simply by making the trip I felt I had achieved something powerful. I think we all felt it.

  We rolled along Front Street toward the CP terminal, boggling at the sight of thousands of blooms. The guidebooks called Sacramento “Flower City” and “Queen City of the Plain.” I’d forgotten the lushness of California’s river valleys. In a single mile we passed orchards and fields teeming with apricots, cherries, apples, blackberries, strawberries, oranges, and peaches.

  The dome of the state capitol reflected tracers of sunlight in the distance. Carpenters and gilders swarmed over it like so many ants. Somebody said it was nearly ready for occupancy.

  “Who’s governor?” I asked.

  Nobody knew.

  We moved along the oak-bordered river, where Central Pacific yards were heaped with rails and ties, and idled into a huge new twenty-nine-stall brick roundhouse. It was landscaped with eucalyptus saplings recently introduced from Australia. Funny to see for myself that the trees of my youth hadn’t always been here.

  We came to a halt.

  And that was it. For many, this was the limit of their trip. They would visit Sutter’s Mill, perhaps journey to Yosemite, and return home to recount their adventures.

  Those of us pushing on to San Francisco still had 120 miles before us. With no direct rail link, we had three choices: ride the Western Pacific, opened just two weeks ago, to Stockton, then connect with Alameda and take a ferry across the bay; train to Vallejo and board a steamer; or journey by water all the way down the Sacramento.

  From the ticket agent I learned that the Stockings had passed through earlier that afternoon.

  “What a fuss!” he exclaimed. “Hundreds jostling to see, all the bigwigs on hand. Them with their little red stockings on their coats, fit and handsome. Why, that Harry’s Wright’s the very picture of a man!”

  I agreed that Harry was and asked which route they’d taken.

  “Steamed on the riverboat Capitol, their flag trailing out behind ’em in the breeze. A grand sight!”

  “Can I catch them tonight?”

  “Not ’till way after dark. Trip takes nine hours. Last boat leaves in a few minutes.”

  I started to turn away. “Oh, you hear anything about gold today?”

  “Heard a whole lot,” he said, grinning. “Got shares myself. Price jumped two dollars, up to one forty-five.”

  I grinned back. Today’s increase on my modest holdings would more than cover the steamer tickets. I wished I’d bought more shares. Gold was a long way from two hundred an ounce, but things were moving fast.

  Johnny and I stood on the deck of the stern-wheeler Yosemite beneath a black plume of coal smoke, watching the bank pass by lazily. A rust-red sunset tinted the river.

  “You’re quiet, Sam,” said Johnny. “You got feelings about coming home?”

  I didn’t have an answer. I was definitely feeling something: a ball in my stomach seemed to combine expectancy and apprehension. Maybe dread. It was one thing to go off in time and geographical distance. It was another to come back to face the reality that “home” did not exist.

  We slid past Benicia, its boatworks and fort barely visible in the darkness. We churned the dark waters of the Carquinez Strait between low treeless banks, and moved into San Pablo Bay. Finally we rounded San Rafael Point and were in San Francisco Bay. My chest tightened as I peered into the blackness.

  Tiny lights glowed on a cluster of distant hills. I was confused by darkness to their right, where I was used to seeing the Golden Gate Bridge, but then I recognized the black humps of Angel and Alcatraz islands, and I knew where I was. I watched silently as the city’s night-draped hills drew gradually closer. Sensing something wrong, Johnny stepped close and for a moment gripped my arm with his good hand.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt lonelier in my life.

  Chapter 27

  Johnny was up at seven. Wagons rumbled and men shouted on the docks outside. Instead of trying to find the team’s hotel, we’d walked from the Broadway wharf and come upon the Blue Anchor, a seamen’s rooming house, at the foot of Washington. It wasn’t too bad if you ignored the fleas.

  “Sam, I’m out of laudanum. Hand’s paining me again.” He pulled away the bandage. The wound was messy but seemed to be healing. “Someplace’ll likely be open this early in Chinadom. Where is it?”

  “Up to Grant, make a right, should put you—” I stopped, wondering if Chinatown was in the same place. “Tell you what, I’ll show you.”

  “Why’re you looking around so?” he asked me on the street.

  “Lot of changes here.” I tried to hide my bewilderment at not recognizing anything.

  We walked up Washington to Montgomery. The plank sidewalks were thronged with fashionably dressed people. Brass plaques identified the Merchants’ Exchange, Customs House, Post Office, Bank of California, Montgomery Block—all sandstone and marble and brick. Most of the city, I would find, was dull brown and fashioned of wood.

  Farther up Washington we passed Maguire’s Opera House; it bore no resemblance to the opera house I had known, and was in the wrong location. We entered Portsmouth Square, in my memory the peaceful refuge of elderly Chinese, pigeons, and winos. Now it was lined with city offices and saloons, and jammed with hacks. Omnibuses rolled through on a line between North Beach and South Park. Behind a high iron fence stood city hall; some of its windows were boarded and in places the masonry had crumbled badly. At the top of the square a gang of workmen sprayed the street to prepare for paving; others were replacing redwood sewers with brick. Smelly work. I detoured around them and turned at the corner.

  “You said Grant!” Johnny called, pointing at the street sign, which read Dupont.

  I could see Chinese signs ahead and a painted temple roof. We’d come the right way. “It’s up there. You go ahead. I’ll walk around a bit and get my bearings.”

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m gonna look for work,” he said. “If something turns up, I’m thinking to stay on here. I’ll be at the Blue Anchor at least a couple more nights. And I’ll know how to find the nine.”

  I nodded, realizing there was no longer a reason for us to stay together. He had offered a graceful transition. I felt reluctant to say good-bye.

  “Don’t get shanghaied,” I told him. “Stay out of the Barbary Coast.”

  He laughed. “That’s where I’m headed.”

  I watched him walk up the street, a gutsy little man going against the odds.

  I headed toward Telegraph Hill, surprised at the amount of open space. Irish shanties dotted only small portions of the hill. I made my way up slowly, my feet slipping on long grass. Coit Tower wasn’t there, of course, but at the top I did find Sweeny and Baugh’s signal station, a small wooden tower with a telescope and refreshment stand—not open this early—and thousands of initials carved on it.

  I gazed at the bay. It looked larger than I remembered. Over the blue surface moved everything from tiny fishing craft to majestic windjammers. I checked familiar landmarks. The Golden Gate looked naked without the bridge. A small fort stood in the prison’s spot on Alcatraz. Directly below, a line of three-masted schooners swayed at their docks along a section of completed seawall—the Embarcadero was evidently just being built. Hearing the faint sounds of voices and ships’ bells and creaking masts and whistling lines, I felt a sudden exhilaration. The earthquake and terrible fires lay thirty-seven years in the future. This was how the city had been!

  BOOM! I jumped as a blast of black smoke rose from the hillside below, where Montgomery met Broadway. I’d seen them quarrying there; they were carving Telegraph Hill into craggy terraces, using the soil blasted loose to
fill the bayfront and build the seawall.

  Trying to absorb everything, talking to people, I explored the waterfront, where lateen-rigged Italian feluccas and painted Chinese junks were moored, fishing nets spread to dry on railings, circular crab nets stacked on docks. Scow sloops were laden with cargo. Oceangoing vessels, their masts dense thickets overhead, discharged silks, teas, and rice from China, furs from Alaska, sugar from the Sandwich Islands, machinery and furniture from eastern factories.

  In stretches where the seawall wasn’t begun, flimsy wharves perched on rotting piles over tarlike mud. During BART’s excavations I’d done a story on the discovery of skeletons and even an entire ship buried along the old seafront. At the time I’d wondered how they could have simply vanished beneath the wharves. Now I understood.

  Ferries to Oakland, San Quentin, and “Saucelito” operated from separate wharves. I missed the old Ferry Building. As with the Golden Gate Bridge, the city would be improved by it. Which I couldn’t say for most of San Francisco’s future skyline.

  In midmorning I walked up California, where men milled in front of brokerage houses advertising low commissions and high prices for silver and gold. The establishments were so crowded that I couldn’t see inside.

  “What’s going on?” I asked a man on the outskirts.

  “A bull run,” he said. “Gold’s shooting sky high!”

  “Grant’s thrown in with ’em,” another said. “Greenbacks’re worthless.”

  “What’s gold at now?” I asked.

  “One fifty-five—and climbing.”

  Jesus, I’d made 150 dollars on an investment of only 1,400. More than a month’s pay in scarcely two days.

  “The bottom 11 drop out,” a third said. “Mark me.”

  The first man laughed, “Sour asses like you’ll stand by and watch the rest of us get rich!”

  A Wells Fargo office stood on the next corner. It too was jammed. I pushed inside far enough to verify the price—now up another dollar to 156 dollars.

  “What’s the latest I can buy today?” I asked, and was informed that New York’s Gold Room closed at one o’clock local time.

  “Better get in now, it’ll be over two hundred by then,” somebody said behind me.

  I started to reach for my letter of credit, then stopped. It was only ten-thirty. I’d give it a while longer.

  Over coffee I scanned my all-time favorite paper. The Stockings’ arrival was the Morning Chronicle’s page-one feature. The previous night a crowd of two thousand had met them at the Broadway wharf and escorted them to the Cosmopolitan Hotel. In the players’ bios I was amused to see that Mac had tacked two years to his age, making him twenty-one. Probably Champion’s idea. Hiring nineteen-year-old professionals might not look good. Tomorrow’s contest with the Eagles, the city’s top club, was expected to be a thriller.

  The Chronicle also reported that an Arizona Indian chief was being held hostage on Angel Island against the good behavior of his entire tribe. I wondered if it were true. Already the paper showed a flair for the bizarre.

  I walked down to Market, where New Montgomery was being extended to Howard. Hackmen there claimed this would soon become the city’s poshest district.

  “What about Nob Hill?” I said.

  “Too steep for horsecars.”

  I realized then that I hadn’t seen any cable cars.

  Across the street stood a partially finished, enormous iron-and brick-structure—the $400,000 Grand Hotel, scheduled to open early next year; it was secured by anchors, the hackmen said, to make it earthquakeproof.

  “Hear about the big one this time last year?” one asked me. “Damn near knocked down Marine Hospital. Damaged the mint and city hall. Then there was the big ’un in ’sixty-five, same month. In heat just like this, too.” He grinned maliciously. “Earthquake weather.”

  “Guess I'm just in time for it,” I said, amused at being baited as a tourist.

  I knew it was silly, but I walked along Mission to Fifth, passing gashouses and factories and weather-beaten frame shacks. The street was paved with wooden blocks that had been dipped in tar. Wagons made a swooshing sound as they passed. I shut my eyes and told myself that when I opened them again I would see the Chronicle building’s familiar gray clock tower. For an instant I did feel something strange pass over me, but when I opened my eyes the plank sidewalk still lay beneath my feet and a horsecar moved on rails in the center of the broad street. I felt a pinch of disappointment.

  A whiskey grocery stood on the Chronicle’s corner. I looked at it for a while. Smells of stew meat and boiling potatoes were heavy in the air. Across the street was a large excavation. I wandered over and was pleased to see the beginnings of a longtime friend—the Old Mint. I’d looked down on it thousands of times. Workmen on break said that its cornerstone would be laid sometime next year.

  I walked back along Market, passing the five-story business place of H. H. Bancroft, book dealer. From the basement of St. Patrick’s, between Second and Third, boys in school uniforms boiled up and spilled into an adjoining lot. They had a baseball bat and a tape-covered ball.

  “Dibs on George Wright!” A stocky boy waved the bat ferociously.

  “Brainard!” another shouted.

  “Andy Leonard!”

  The kid imitating Brainard went into a contorted windup remarkably unlike the Stocking pitcher’s. I realized again that without TV or movies or stop-action photography, the only images these kids could get came from seeing their heroes firsthand.

  On Montgomery I passed the Occidental Hotel, where Twain loved the oysters, and in the five hundred block came on the current Chronicle office. Maybe I should go in and apply for a job. Check out old De Young—or had he already died in the famous duel? But I didn’t stop until the next block, where I saw a sign above the sidewalk:

  SAN FRANCISCO ADVERTISER

  F. MARRIOTT

  623 MONTGOMERY

  A second-story window contained the same information in gold leaf. What the hell. Why not drop in and see about his airplane?

  Tacked above the landing was an enormous advertisement: AVITOR NEXT IN POINT OF SPEED TO THE TELEGRAPH. The reader was urged to purchase stock immediately in this new wonder that would “bear men and messages through the air, while the railroad drags heavy burdens of freight.” Entranced, I read every word that followed, enjoying Marriott’s blowsy prose.

  No savages in war paint shall interrupt its passage over and across our continent. No malaria or hostile tribes nor desert sands shall prevent the exploration of Africa, no want of water the examination of central Australia, nor ice floes the search for the Northwest Passage. No underground railways will be needed to accommodate the crowded thoroughfares of Broadway, no curcuitous passage to find a narrow isthmus between continents, no waiting for trade winds; no necessity of lying becalmed under tropical suns; no extortions for huge corporations who monopolize the great routes of travel. No tax for crossing New Jersey; no states under tribute to railway companies. Man rises superior to his accidents when for his inventive genius he ceases to crawl upon the earth and masters the realms of the upper air.

  Lovely, I thought, simply lovely.

  There was also an announcement that daily flights of the Avitor could be witnessed at the Mechanics Pavilion in Union Square.

  Just as I finished working through it all, quick footsteps and a rustling of skirts sounded on the stairway. I turned as a small figure yanked Marriott’s door open and propelled herself inside. Before it slammed, I glimpsed blond ringlets and a thrust-forward chin. Interesting.

  It grew more so by the second. Voices inside built in volume, one female and accusing, several male and placating. The female’s built to a shriek. The males’ grew urgent. I couldn’t make out any words until a sharp crack resounded, followed by a shouted “No!”

  It wasn’t a gunshot—I knew that sound—but more like leather slapping a resonant surface. I stepped cautiously through the doorway. The sound came again. The outer office
was empty.

  “‘Indecent and nasty,’ is it?” the female voice shouted from a cubicle to my left. The door stood ajar, FREDERICK MERRIOTT stenciled neatly on it. “Those who attend are a low ‘lot’?”

  The last was a combination of question and grunt. The cracking sounded again. There was a yell. I moved to the doorway and saw a shirtsleeved clerk cowering behind a desk. He looked at me imploringly. On top of the desk stood a middle-aged man. His eyes were riveted on the woman. She stood with her back to me, her right hand brandishing a riding whip, her left clutching a newspaper.

  Crack! The whip snapped on the polished toes of his boots. He sprang with remarkable agility upward from the desktop.

  “I didn’t write it! You’re demented!”

  “‘No figure whatever’?” She waved the paper in circles, apparently quoting it from memory. “‘A pair of thin arms, huge hips, utterly out of shape. . . .’ You bloody bastard!” The whip slashed down again.

  “It wasn’t me! Bierce wro—”

  He jumped too late. The whip caught his ankles. He toppled to the desktop, more alarmed than hurt.

  “You’ll respect a lady, you guttersnipe!” She drew back the whip.

  He raised his hands. “Wait!”

  I grabbed her arm, gave it a twist, and yanked the whip away as she spun to face me.

  I was staring into the furious eyes of Elise Holt.

  She didn’t recognize me. Or maybe she did. Without hesitation she launched a most unladylike kick at my groin. It had impressive extension, a dancer’s, high and flamboyant. I stepped back barely in time, caught her foot on its way down, held it, and moved backward. She followed, hopping, her blue eyes blazing.

  “Sam Fowler, remember?”

  Tossing her head angrily, she twisted toward the man on the desk and hiked her skirts over the leg I held, revealing pale pink tights to her upper thigh. “Is this the ‘wretched material exhibited’?” she demanded.