by Darryl Brock
I walked slowly, trying to fit my mind to the lazy afternoon. I was starting to feel disoriented again, as if the milkiness were about to come on.
The campus covered the blocks between Twelfth and Fourteenth, Harrison and Franklin. Over the largest of the white frame buildings hung a Bear flag; a sign on the portico identified it as the College of California and offered the information that university courses were now added. In the hallway I found a class schedule and faculty roster. Physics Professor John LeConte—I recognized his surname from a Berkeley street—was acting president.
The building was empty. Classes took place between ten and two. It was now almost three. I was on my way out when an apple-cheeked boy appeared carrying books in a leather strap. I stopped him.
He introduced himself as George Beaver—“Eager,” of course, to his classmates—and was a proud member of the freshman or “first” class, one of eight boys who had passed the grueling entrance exams. I asked what they involved.
“Oh, the customary,” he said airily—a young Millar in the making, I thought. “Higher arithmetic, including metrics, square and cube roots, algebra as far as quadratic equations, the first four books of Loomis’s Geometry. English grammar, U.S. history, and geography.”
“Is that all?” I said wryly, impressed.
“Those’re to enter the regular colleges,” he said disdainfully, explaining that to get into the elite Harvard-style curriculum, one had to pass additional tests.
“Such as?”
“Latin Grammar: four books of Caesar, six of Virgil’s Aeneid, six of Cicero’s orations. Greek grammar: Exenophon’s Anabasis, three books.”
He rattled them off like items on a shopping list and added that so far they’d spent class time debating such subjects as who was the greater general, Caesar or Napoleon. “Of course, in the common university technical colleges,” he finished, “standards are less exacting.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking that he seemed more like Stanford material. “How much is tuition?”
“Sixty dollars, plus admission fees—they said our yearly costs could reach five hundred.”
Clearly not for the masses. He said that no dorms existed yet; students roomed with Oakland families. Freshmen had to be at least sixteen—his own age—and provide testimonials of sound moral character.
“Any women enrolled?”
He looked at me as if I were from another planet.
“Tell you what, Eager,” I said. “Here’s what I think. You’ve got to get some coeds in here, move the campus to Berkeley where it belongs, and start calling yourselves the Golden Bears.”
“Golden Bears? Whatever for?”
“For when beanies and bonfire rallies come in.”
He gave me the outer-space look again.
I got back to the city—already San Francisco was called that—around five and decided to catch the end of the game. Waiting for a horsecar at the ferry station, I glanced at a bulletin board. In stunned surprise I saw a flyer headed: CAPTAIN F. J. O’DONOVAN. It advertised the speech I’d heard him make in Cincinnati. It was sponsored by the local Wolfe Tone Fenian Circle and was to be held the next night.
McDermott and Le Caron had failed.
So he had come himself.
I arrived in time to see Sweasy field a bouncer and flip to Gould for the final out to nail down a 54-5 victory. While the teams cheered each other I looked over Millar’s shoulder at the score book. “Is this right?” I said. “Eleven homers for us?”
“George alone had four.” Millar gave me his owlish look. “Enjoy your day?”
“Mostly.” I was trying to fight off thoughts of O’Donovan. “How about filling me in on the highlights?”
“Why me?”
“Hell, you know players can’t be trusted to give us hard-working press guys the straight stuff.”
“You know, Fowler, the Enquirer didn’t have the slightest inkling of what they were getting in you.”
“Aw, you’re just saying that.”
“No, I’m not.”
The next morning, Friday, October 1, New York’s Gold Room finally reopened. I cashed my certificates at Wells Fargo, barely able to cover Twain’s thousand. I sent him a draft with a note saying I didn’t think the Avitor was a good investment.
That afternoon we met the Atlantics, the third San Francisco club to test us. Only four hundred turned out—the result of cold driving winds and lack of excitement over the Atlantics’ chances. Among them was Elise Holt, who caused a stir in her lacquered carriage.
She left after Andy’s first time up. Which was just as well, for the game was truly awful. The Atlantics muffed everything. Their hurler issued eleven walks despite our desire to swing at anything in reach. With darkness falling and the contest only in its fourth inning, we went to ridiculous lengths. Allison batted with one hand and George leaped to swipe at pitches over his head. At last the requisite five innings were completed. The score was 76—5. Our record was a neat 50-0.
Next day we faced the California Nine, made up of the best players from local clubs. This was the contest many had awaited, and over three thousand turned out. Betting was heavy on whether we’d win by as much as a two-to-one margin.
The Stockings were ravenous for some genuine competition. All but Andy, that is, who was red-eyed and irritable. He told me that Elise’s show would leave town that night.
“You know,” I said tentatively, “there are lots of—”
“Don’t start, Sam. I fancy her.” He eyed me defiantly. “She fancies me, too.”
“I’m sure she does, Andy.”
He trudged off. I felt bad for him, guessing that he’d never before mixed love with sex. I wondered what Elise actually felt for him.
The all-stars came on as though they meant business, warming up with dispatch, winning the coin toss, sending us to bat, and sprinting to their positions. Unfortunately for them, George’s lead-off double was the first of a string of solid hits, and the California Nine trailed 10-0 before even coming to bat—a deficit they could not overcome, although they played well. The final was 46-14. George slammed three homers and Andy, clubbing the ball angrily, added two more. Despite the offensive barrage, the contest moved quickly. For once we were out of the ballpark before sundown.
I carried the derringer. I scanned faces at the ballpark and around the Cosmopolitan. I didn’t anticipate an attack as open as Le Caron’s and McDermott’s, assuming, that O’Donovan wanted the money more than he wanted me. But I couldn’t be sure. He had definitely arrived—the papers carried accounts of his speeches—and he could find me easily. What was he waiting for?
I busied myself working up a piece that compared George’s individual stats for the six San Francisco games against all opposing players’. George came out ahead in every offensive category: 48 hits to their 45 (his in only 62 at bats, for a gaudy .774 average); 45 runs to 36; 106 total bases to 55; 13 homers to 0. His slugging percentage for the series was an incredible 1.710. Several Stockings, including Andy with six homers himself, were not far behind. I concluded that the message was as clear here as it had been around the country all summer: to contend with pros, teams would have to find outstanding players, skilled managers—and money enough to hold them.
Millar read it and scowled. He said it rubbed our courteous hosts’ noses in their defeats. And what on earth was a slugging percentage?
Johnny’s face was a mess. He’d been worked over, he mumbled, several nights earlier by a sailor.
“You gotta get out of that dive,” I said.
“Pay’s too good.”
“What do you do for it?”
“Clean up, different things.”
I parted the curtains. Sunlight poured in. Sunday morning. I’d come to see if he wanted to catch the velocipede races that afternoon. But he’d made it clear he didn’t intend to get out of bed.
“You’ll get yourself killed in the Barbary Coast.”
He shrugged fatalistically.
“I’m coming down there tonight.”
“You won’t fancy it, Sam.”
No smoking. No spitting. No standing. Strict limit of sixteen passengers. Well worth a dime—double the usual fare—to travel like that. The streetcar was normally reserved for ladies, gents riding only as escorts. And it existed strictly to carry patrons to Samuel Woodward’s amusement park. Twentieth-century Americans take for granted padded seats, dirt- and spit-free surroundings—not to mention body soaps and deodorants. Back here I’d learned that anything reserved for women meant superior conditions. Even in horsecars.
Woodward’s Gardens was a Victorian Disneyland; more aptly, a Xanadu. Picnickers thronged the sunlit lawns, flowered terraces, palm-shaded nooks. Children rode ponies and camels, were pulled in carriages by goats, petted tiger cubs, and threw peanuts to caged bears. The Second Artillery Band played on a platform decorated with streamers and baskets of roses.
In a different mood I would have enjoyed the picture-book world. Andy and I walked in silence past stuffed reindeer and grizzlies and watched giggling children leap to touch the end of the Chinese Giant’s braided cue. With the other Stockings we sat in a pavilion and watched Major Burke’s rifle drill, Japanese acrobats, and Jaguarine the Swordswoman.
“Let’s get out,” Andy said as Herman the Great was about to explode from a cannon.
At the edge of the lake, where men readied a balloon ascension, we watched a couple drift by in a boat. The boy plucked water lilies from the surface. He handed them to the girl, who smiled. I remembered first kissing Cait in such a boat. God, I wanted to be with her. Andy sighed. I knew Elise was on his mind. What a couple of lovesick wimps, I thought.
“Hey,” I said abruptly, “I’ve made up my mind to stay out here a little while.”
He looked at me. “Why?”
“Some business to settle.”
“Does Cait know?”
“Not yet.”
He stopped walking and faced me. “Are you coming back to Cincinnati, Sam?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Season ends in only six weeks. I’ll be heading for Newark. You’ll be back before?”
“I imagine so,” I said. “I’m sending Cait a telegram tonight.”
“What is it you need to take care of here?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, it’s still developing.”
“There’s a hell of a lot you’re not sayin’, Sam.”
“If I understood it and could tell anybody, it’d be you and Cait.”
He looked worried. “Are you wanted for not being on the straight?”
I was about to make a wisecrack, but he was in no mood. “No, nothing like that. I just need to sort out a few things, tie up some loose ends.”
“Is it connected, your life out here . . . before?”
For a second I was stunned, thinking he meant my twentieth-century life. Then I realized he meant my amnesia.
“I’m not sure, but I think O’Donovan’s involved.”
He pondered that. “Over Cait?”
“Partly,” I said. “Maybe mostly.”
He waited for more, then sighed noisily. “O’Donovan’s mean, Sam. More than mean . . .” He hunted for a word. “He’s twisted inside. Cait’s been wise not to fancy him.”
I said nothing.
“Okay, I’ll let it drop,” he said; then, a few seconds later, “Sam, you know how you have a way of disappearing? Don’t ever forget to pop up again, you hear?”
“I won’t, Andy,” I said, moved by his earnestness. “I promise.”
Even then I wondered if it was a promise I could keep.
Chapter 30
The Barbary Coast, a maze of dingy alleys, lay between Broadway, Stockton, Kearney, and Dupont. As the area went into full swing around eleven, I set out down Kearney past noisy Mexican fandango joints where guitars twanged and boots stomped. More than once hands brushed my pockets as I was jostled on the crowded sidewalks. I gripped the derringer, glad I’d tucked my money inside my belt.
Stenches rose from pools and rivulets of slime. Rats scurried across the dimly lit boards. I stepped over a dead cat—and into a heap of garbage. A drunk lurched suddenly from a doorway; I pushed him aside. Saloons lined the street: cellar “melodeons” where reed organs and pianos added their notes to a din of shrill singing and guttural shouts; dance halls and concert saloons where heavy feet thudded. Whores on the sidewalk blocked my path, calling me darling and offering delights: a teaspoon of opium for ten cents; exposure of their intimate selves for fifty cents; various-off street services for a range of prices. Good luck, I thought, to anybody venturing with them into those dark alleys.
I turned at an intersection cluttered with cheap-john stores and made my way up Pacific, which ran through the heart of the Coast. Things grew even seamier, with rows of groggeries and deadfalls—dives selling the cheapest rotgut alcohol. The denizens here could have crawled out of A Rake’s Progress. I asked several grizzled sailors how to get to the Bull Run Saloon. One spat and said, “Don’t go there, mate.”
“Why not?”
He looked me over. “You like fights with eyeballs rolling on the deck?”
“Not my favorite,” I said. “Where is it?”
“Got a quarter?”
I flipped him one.
“Portside on Dupont, then again to Sullivan Alley. Big three-story joint.”
“Thanks.”
“Your funeral, mate.”
One sign on the door said ALLEN'S BULL RUN, another, HELL'S KITCHEN & DANCE HALL. Even from the outside it reeked of stale beer. Inside, the sawdust was drenched, the humanity unwashed, and there were unmasked odors of urine and vomit. Dance stages were crowded in the cellar and on the main floor. Women headed upstairs frequently with customers.
At the bar on the street floor a sign proclaimed, anything goes here. I tried to get a beer and was informed by a burly bartender that I’d have to order from a waiter girl.
So I moved to a small table and was accosted by an ill-smelling woman in her fifties who, calling herself Lydia, smoothed my lapels and draped a fleshy arm around my neck.
“Champagne?” It came out like a rasp.“How much?”
“Five dollars.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t be stingy, a smash gent like you,” she said, pouting. “A bottle of claret, then?”
“No.” The bartender was watching us. “Just a beer.”
Her fingers stroked my thigh. “At least a whiskey, honey? Maybe a little game of cards?”
“Lydia, how about me just sitting here, okay?”
Something ugly flitted across her face; I didn’t like the glance she exchanged with the bartender. It occurred to me suddenly that leaving Sullivan’s Alley might be a good deal more problematic than entering.
“While I’m waiting to see my friend,” I told her, “maybe I could make it worthwhile for you to sit with me.”
“How worthwhile?”
“What do you make here?”
She gazed at me for a long moment. “Beer for two!” she shouted, then, “Fifteen a week plus a quarter every turn upstairs.” Her mouth turned down. “Used to get a damn sight more when I had my looks.”
“I’ll slip you twenty right now—you personally, not the house—if you’ll just sit here and be a . . . companion.”
She whooped and jumped to her feet. Raising a booted foot to my chair, she pulled up her skirts and exposed a flabby leg. Men around us hooted. I saw something resembling a diaper wrapped around her upper thighs.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” she said huskily.
“Sit, then.”
She sat down slowly. “You a cop?”
Again the bartender was watching. “No, I just want to get out of here in one piece.”
“Gimme the money, don’t let it show.”
I surreptitiously extracted a gold coin from my belt. It disappeared into her clothing.
“You gotta be more interested.” Lydia replaced her arm a
round my neck. Her breath stank. “Else they’ll know I’m not doin’ my job. It’d go hard on me. On you, too.”
“How so?”
“A flush gent’s got to spend. Else he takes a club to the noggin when he leaves.” She rested her head on my shoulder. “You’re lucky I’m squarer’n most or I’d keep your twenty and set you for rollin’ anyhow.”
The beers arrived, a dollar each.
“Sniff it,” Lydia whispered.
I tipped it to my mouth, pretended to drink, caught a faint tobacco odor.
“They put snuff in beer, plug juice in whiskey, morphine sulphate in mixed drinks, an’ that ain’t the half. Here, you gotta be interested!” She cupped my hand over her right breast, and then, giggling and snorting and writhing, made a show of pushing it away as if I’d gotten fresh. I glanced down at her. The caked makeup didn’t hide pock-marks on her face. “Sure you won’t go upstairs with ol’ Lydia?” she cooed.
I shook my head. Old Lydia smelled like a stable.
“They throw in Spanish fly, too,” she said. “My beer’s got it, and surely yours.”
“Spanish fly?” I recalled high-school tales. “Are you joking?”
“Cantharides,” she said. “Makes folks jumpier’n goats. Thank the stars it don’t affect me like some. But there’s enough times they carried me upstairs drunk, to be screwed by fifty or sixty, one after t’other—and me not paid for even the first half dozen!”
She looked indignant. I took a deep breath. Rough trade here.
“All part of their damn hog show,” she went on. “Get us out of our senses so we’ll carry on like animals. Make us drink all night, don’t even let us go to the joe.”
Which explained the diaper, I thought. We watched dancing couples topple to the floor. Part of the sport. Men ringing the dance floor groped the women, yanking their skirts high.
“Things’re heatin’ up,” Lydia said offhandedly. “Here, empty your beer in that spittoon on the sly and I’ll order more. Then you tell me about your friend.”
I managed it without the bartender seeing and began to describe Johnny.