If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  I regarded it critically, seeing nothing wretched; in fact, it was curvy and provocative. The tights and black boots could have graced Police Gazette.

  She flounced her skirt down and shoved her hands under her breasts, swelling the blouse and short jacket. “Is this ‘no figure at all’?”

  A wave of pink washed Marriott’s face. His gray-streaked hair hung in his eyes; his suit was rumpled. Though he looked mortified by present circumstances, it didn’t keep him from staring at Holt’s up-thrust breasts.

  “May I descend?” he said finally, in British accents.

  “And you’re English!” she shrilled, struggling to free herself. “That’s too bleedin’ much for any—”

  She lost her balance and started to fall. I released her foot and wrapped my arms around her corseted waist. Her bustle squirmed provocatively against me. I smelled her perfume.

  “As I tried to inform you,” Marriott said, climbing down warily. “I do not write the Town Crier column which so upset you, Miss Holt. Nor do I edit the Advertiser. I am merely its publisher.”

  I nearly laughed at that, but Holt seemed to be calming. Or at least accepting restraint.

  Marriott regarded me. “Who are you, sir? I’m grateful for your assistance.”

  Elise’s old friend,” I said, drawing a painful pinch on my arm. Actually, I dropped by to see how Avitor stock was doing.”

  Oh, you mustn’t draw conclusions from what has just transpired,” he said quickly. “You’re an interested investor?”

  “Interested,” I said. “Probably not an investor. I’m with the Cincinnati Enquirer”

  Alarm tightened his features. Holt looked up at me. “You are? How grand!”

  She seemed tame enough. I let her go.

  “The Aerial Steam Navigation Company is being capitalized quickly,” Marriott said. “I expect Bill Ralston—Bank of California, you know—to become a primary backer. You’ve seen the Avitor, haven’t you?

  “Not yet,” I said, turning to the door. “By the way, Twain sends his greetings.”

  “Is he behind this? Was this Clemens’s prank?”

  “No prank here,” I said, glancing at Holt. “This was entirely serious.”

  In the corridor outside she gave me a long look. “How’d you happen in there? You follow me?”

  “Just coincidence, but you should be thankful. If not for me you might be headed for jail.”

  “Speaking of thanks,” she said tartly.

  “Yes, thanks for getting your note to me. I hope it didn’t cause you problems with Morrissey.”

  “None I couldn’t settle.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She squeezed my arm and pressed her breast against me. I glanced down and caught her smile. She knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Let’s find this bloody flying machine,” she said.

  The Mechanics’ Institute Pavilion covered ninety thousand square feet and was topped by a dome illuminated at night by thirteen hundred gas jets. A sign at the entrance told us that the Seventh Mechanics Fair was in its tenth day. People stared at Elise as we entered.

  We passed a number of displays until we came to a long hall containing a roped-off oval track. At the far end the Avitor was in flight. Two men dogtrotted along the track below, holding guy ropes fixed to it.

  I scrutinized it as it passed overhead. Basically it was a forty-foot cigar-shaped balloon encased in a cagework of cane. On either side a five-foot wing extended, and whirring on each wing was a two-bladed propellor driven by a small steam furnace heated by an alcohol lamp. Toward the rear was a steering rudder with four planes, like the feathered end of a dart, to direct the craft up or down or to either side. The rudder was tied in place now to keep the Avitor in an orbit corresponding to the track.

  Well, it was flying, I had to admit. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Impressed. Disappointed. The craft was by necessity so light that I couldn’t figure how it would handle any wind whatever.

  “How fast is it going?” I asked an observer.

  “Six miles an hour.”

  “That its top speed?”

  “The valves are entirely open, yes.”

  When the Avitor set down a few minutes later another drawback became evident: it held enough fuel to stay aloft only about fifteen minutes. To lift larger boilers and fuel tanks—not to mention passengers—would require an enormous balloon. And there just couldn’t be enough thrust generated to keep it from being at the mercy of winds. A for effort, I thought. Materials and technology aren’t here yet.

  “Gonna invest?” I asked the man.

  He shook his head. “In my view the pneumatic tube will supplant railcars as high-velocity transport.”

  “Really?” I remembered reading somewhere about a twentieth-century Japanese “bullet train” which shot cars through enclosed tubes at hundreds of miles per hour. Amazing that it was already conceptualized.

  “Cheaper and more realizable than aerial carriages,” he said firmly. “Wait and see.”

  We headed back to the pavilion entrance. Elise drew stares and whisperings. Mostly her skirts, I supposed, although to me they weren’t particularly racy—they reached the bottoms of her calves. And of course there was her makeup—a “painted woman,” no question. Quite a package.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly.

  “You,” I admitted, which caused her to laugh and press against me.

  Outside, she pecked my cheek. “I’m off to prepare for my show. Come see it . . . wait!” She gave me an accusing glare. “I read that the ballists are attending Maguire’s Opera House tonight.”

  “So?”

  “Oh, Sam, they’d like my show ever so much more!” She clutched my arm. “Won’t you come as my guests? Tomorrow night?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll put you in the dress circle—you must wear your lovely uniforms!—and I’ll advertise in the papers too!” Oblivious to passers-by, she leaned close to kiss me again, flicking my ear with her tongue. “Then I might see you afterward.”

  I’d been thinking along those lines myself, but having trouble with it. Each time I imagined myself with Elise, an image of Cait filled my mind.

  “I’m taken, sort of.”

  “Oh, well,” she said brightly, “then we’ll be chums.”

  She could at least have sounded disappointed, I thought sourly. “Listen, there’s someone on the team I’d like you to make a little fuss over, all right? He thinks you’re the greatest thing since popsicles.”

  “Since what?”

  “His name’s Andy Leonard.”

  “Wasn’t he beside you on the field at Troy?”

  “Good grief, you know the name of every man who stares at you?”

  “When one looks at me like that, yes! He’s a darling pup, isn’t he?”

  Her tone triggered a faint alarm in me. “You go easy on him.”

  She laughed and turned away, boots thumping on the planks, bustle swaying. When she vanished around the corner I felt a certain relief. But also that things abruptly had grown duller.

  Gold was up to 164 dollars. That settled it. I forced my way up to the counter and showed my letter of credit.

  “You have three thousand four hundred and forty-four dollars, sir,” said the clerk. “How much are you putting into gold?”

  “All of it.”

  “Very well.” He filled out forms.

  “Wait,” I told him. “Keep forty dollars out.”

  “Certainly.”

  I instructed that a gold double eagle be placed in each of two new Wells Fargo accounts. In the names of Susanne and Hope Fowler. Maybe they would somehow, someday get them—plus interest compounded over 120 years.

  I tucked the receipt for twenty-one more ounces of gold into my wallet. I was in up to the hilt now. So was Twain. I’d sell well before the price hit two hundred dollars, I told myself. And pocket my fortune.

  As I walked I couldn’t sto
p trying to remember where buildings would be in the future. It was dislocating to know that directly opposite Marriott’s office, on the site of the four-story Montgomery Block, the Transamerica pyramid would rise. At California and Du-pont I finally found an old acquaintance—Saint Mary’s Cathedral, its bricks fresh and red, its stained-glass windows fewer and smaller than I remembered, its resonant bell booming over the neighborhood. I gazed at it for a long time, feeling absolutely lost. I felt an urge to seal myself between the bricks, a human time capsule.

  “Sam! Where the devil you been!”

  Andy was striding toward me. Behind him came the Stockings in their uniforms, looking for all the world like tourists. My mood brightened as I hugged Andy.

  “Figured this time you got plugged for good,” Brainard said dryly.

  “He wanted to wager with us on it,” Andy said.

  They had just finished touring Chinatown. Allison and Gould did bad Chinese imitations for me. Harry asked if I wanted to suit up and play in my hometown, in front of my friends.

  “They’ve mostly moved away,” I told him. “But I’ll stand in if you need me.”

  “Can you show us the main sights?” said Waterman.

  “The ones you’d probably like most,” I said, “we can see in Elise Holt’s show tomorrow night.”

  Andy’s face lit up. His whoop sounded over the others’ wolf whistles.

  Harry had worked them diligently all the way out from Omaha, Andy told me as we walked to the hotel. At every water stop they’d limbered their arms beside depots and sidings. To their considerable surprise, several times Indians had shown some facility for the game and even a knowledge of the rules. One group had wanted to play a match.

  “How’d they learn?” I said. “Soldiers?”

  “That’s what we figured, but an old Injun who knew some English said a man with whiskers taught ’em when he passed through in a wagon, a generation or so back. Harry finally guessed that it must’ve been Cartwright himself, the old Knickerbocker who invented the game and later settled in the Sandwich Islands.”

  “Sounds pretty farfetched,” I said.

  “How else’d them Injuns know the New York rules from fifteen years ago?” Andy demanded.

  “You got me there.”

  The Cosmopolitan stood at Bush and Sansome. It was five years old, with four floors and an elegant saloon. It was expensive, but Hatton was picking up the tab. Andy roomed with Sweasy, so I had to share quarters with Millar. I found him bent over a writing table in our room.

  “I had to file several pieces for you,” he said sourly. “I doubt the Enquirer is pleased, since naturally I didn’t put in all the quality that went into my own.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll have to get back on it right away.”

  “You most certainly will.”

  I lay down to rest a moment. I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until the door opened with a bang and Millar came in bearing a stack of the latest editions.

  “Big fuss up on Montgomery,” he said.

  “What, a fire?”

  He shook his head. “Folks are running around like an earthquake hit. I guess that’s how it feels to the banks and brokerage houses.”

  “I know,” I said smugly. “It’ll go on for a while, too.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it certainly will.”

  “What’s the price up to now?”

  “We are talking about the gold market?”

  “Of course, what’s the price?”

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “Nobody quite knows.”

  I sat up. “Why not?”

  “The bottom just fell out.”

  Chapter 28

  They called it Black Friday. Two unscrupulous New York speculators, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, had cornered the private market, possessing orders to buy every ounce of gold in circulation. As prices soared, their profits—and mine—would have been almost limitless had not Grant, reacting to charges of complicity, ordered the Treasury to sell five million in gold. As Gould and a few others sold short, dumping millions of shares, prices plummeted twenty-five dollars in less than fifteen minutes. Brokerage houses went under. Fortunes vanished. By the evening of that beautiful, golden day, I had lost thousands.

  I walked numbly up and down Montgomery with hundreds of others trying to understand what had happened. Rumors abounded: Gould had raked in ten million; Fisk had been murdered by a ruined speculator; Grant had impoverished members of his own family. Nothing was certain—except that New York’s swamped Gold Room had announced it would be closed on Monday. It would take days to sort it all out. I just prayed that enough would be left to salvage Twain’s share.

  Probably as a consequence of realizing I’d soon have to work for a living, I rose early on Saturday and knocked out some Enquirer pieces, mostly scenic highlights of the trip and chatty stuff about “our boys” in the Golden City. I mailed it early at the main post office at Washington and Battery, along with a long letter to Cait and Timmy.

  At the Blue Anchor I rousted Johnny from bed. He’d been up nearly till dawn and looked it.

  “Found a job,” he said. “I’ll be able to buy a new wheel in no time. There’s racin’ here.”

  “Where you working?”

  “Pretty-waiter-girl place called the Bull Run.”

  “Maybe I’ll come down with Andy and some of the others,” I said, wondering what he did there.

  “Champion’d have a cat fit,” he said uneasily. “It’s no church.”

  “In that case I’ll come alone.”

  He frowned. “I wouldn’t, Sam.”

  “Look, Johnny, if you had to take a job that bad, let me loan—” I stopped. I couldn’t loan him anything.

  “You’ve done enough,” he said. “Time to stand on my own.”

  We talked a while longer. I told him I’d drop by in future days. Johnny said he’d get out to some of the games, if he weren’t too tired from working.

  The Recreation Grounds’ carriage gate on Twenty-sixth was hopelessly clogged. As we climbed down and walked to the main entrance on Folsom, we could see why. Wagons and carts lined against the fences offered vantage points for hundreds who refused to move. Adding to the growing area of gridlock were the aggressive yellow cars of the Omnibus Railway Company; they arrived every five minutes from the downtown Metropolitan Hotel, disgorging passengers who’d paid their gold dollar for the shuttle and admission package entitling them to be packed into the bull pens.

  Police made a path for us. Hatton turned and grinned happily at Champion. If this turnout signaled what would follow in the week, it looked as if he would meet the high costs of bringing us here. Thousands were jammed into the ladies’ pavilion alone, where seats cost two dollars in gold, two seventy-five in paper.

  I sat at the press table. Again Harry had offered me the chance to play, but to do so would have been weirdly superfluous. I’d proven myself here already, playing before my grandparents and friends at Mission High, not more than ten blocks away.

  The Eagles took the field in white flannel shirts and blue pants. They were the city’s oldest club and victors in a recent championship series. I shared the Stockings’ curiosity as to how good they could be, isolated as they were from the rest of the baseball scene.

  Hearing that I was from San Francisco, one of the Eagles gave me some embarrassing moments by asking where I’d lived and did I know this person and that. After some fumbling, I said I’d actually grown up in Santa Rosa, fifty miles north, but said I was from this city because it was widely known. That was greeted with silent skepticism. I’d obviously been born before the gold rush, when few whites lived anywhere in California. Andy saved the situation with a good-natured taunt that no matter where I grew up, I knew my way around a diamond—which meant I must have learned to play at an eastern college; it provoked a good deal of intersectional needling.

  Millar, beside me at the press table, said, “Do gamblers here truly shoot off guns to distract fielders
?”

  The Stockings had been told that it used to happen.

  “Distract?” I replied. “Hell, usually they just shoot the fielders.”

  He seemed to realize I was kidding. With Millar you could never be sure.

  George, Waterman, Andy, and Sweasy emerged from the clubhouse and went into their sleight-of-hand routine, getting the usual oohs and ahhs. I noticed that men and women in the stands wore bulkier clothing than in Cincinnati, and many carried heavy coats. The reason became evident soon after the game started. A wind rose abruptly, stinging us with sand particles. Papers blew in swirling gusts, and I was suddenly chilled. Shades’ of Candlestick!

  Brainard was wild, but it didn’t matter. The first Eagle went down on three swinging strikes. The second tomahawked a single on a pitch over his head. The next two fouled out.

  When the Eagles took the field we saw how far behind the times, baseballwise, they were. Their hurler, working in what Harry called the “old style,” stood flat-footed instead of striding forward with his release. George, leading off, was so surprised that he popped the first pitch straight back to the catcher, who dropped it. George whacked the next pitch on a line to the center fielder, who muffed the catch. Because the Eagles had no backup system—one defender moved while eight watched—George sprinted clear around the bases. It was a sign of things to come. At the end of the first inning we led 12-0. The contest ended 35-4. For us, a solid afternoon’s work. For the Eagles and the watching thousands, a humbling revelation.

  Money changed hands, but losers didn’t seem chagrined. I heard several predict that local clubs would fare better now that they’d seen our style of play. Good luck, I thought, knowing that we hadn’t played with much intensity after the first inning. Moreover, we weren’t used to the Recreation Grounds’ stiff winds. And we’d scarcely dipped into Harry’s tactical bag. Playing their best, the Eagles would not improve much, if any, on their margin of defeat. I considered putting money down on us in Monday’s rematch to recoup my losses—and had an immediate, near-sickening reaction. For a moment I actually thought I was going to throw up. My body was telling me, I supposed, that in the wake of the gold collapse it simply couldn’t take any more gambling.