California Gold

by John Jakes

  “We’re camping in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park.”

  “Fine. Good day,” Mulvihill said, not looking up. On his way out Mack slammed the door. It made him feel no better. Leaving the station, a new thought struck him. Considering Mulvihill’s age, he was undoubtedly a colleague of Lon Coglan. Maybe even a friend. God; what a situation.

  Among the forty thousand camped in the park, Mack and the others from the mansion had set up their own little community in a double row of white tents. They took turns standing in the food and water lines. For the first few days all the water came across from Oakland, transferred from barges to tank wagons that traveled through the ruined city under heavy guard.

  Their tent community grew quickly. Rhett Haversack found them, with his wife and five children. Margaret found them, along with two of her waiters and a shy black whore, Gisella. Maison Napoleon was completely gone. She had operated it with a few girls, without dining-room service, in the months since her release from the hospital. Though she’d confessed to Mack that she didn’t have much heart for the business anymore, she’d have to reopen eventually because it was the only trade she knew.

  Margaret’s waiters brought an upright piano with them. No one asked them where they got it. In the evening, everyone would gather around to enjoy it. Gisella played and sang; she had a lovely soprano voice. Their favorite was the song people had adopted after the quake and fire, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” Gisella performed it with a hard rocking beat. Sometimes, though, she sang it slowly, like an elegy. Then all the women wept.

  He went downtown on Sunday after the fires went out, describing Jim to strangers, showing Carla’s photo. Hundreds were roaming in the sunshine, sightseeing. There wasn’t much to do yet but that. Steam rose from the rain-soaked ruins. Young men in khaki, with rifles, guarded every block, watching for looters. Matterhorns and Shastas of abandoned goods loomed at the street corners, piled there as part of the cleanup. Touring cars painted with red crosses chugged by with food, blankets, clothing. Walls of burned buildings cast long shadows, like cemetery monuments. Row houses spared by the fire leaned over sidewalks at crazy angles, thrown out of plumb but not thrown down.

  Perceptions were distorted. Landmarks had vanished, and the skyline was lower, or seemed lower. The City appeared smaller, and downtown intersections revealed vistas of a wasteland. You walked what appeared to be three blocks and found it to be a mile.

  While Mack was standing outside the gutted Hearst building, a sad expression on his face, a small round Chinese gentleman came up to him. He gave Mack a smile and a pat on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry—by and by, we build all new.”

  Mack showed him the photograph from the Oakland Tribune, to no avail.

  On another corner, a rumpled man on a soapbox waved a Bible at half a dozen mildly curious listeners. “Babylon is fallen—Babylon the sinful is fallen! God struck at her painted whores and her prancing deviates. God leveled her dramshops and her play shops. God scourged her thousands of complacent sinners for tolerating such evil …” Mack shook his head; many a zealous preacher was blaming all the devastation on the City’s tradition of easy morality. The preachers never mentioned an inadequate water system.

  Near the Ferry Building, Mack ran into Jack London. London’s reputation as a writer and lecturer was solid now, but tainted by sex scandals and his socialist politics. The author wore a baggy blue suit and a Baden-Powell hat. He told Mack that he’d come down from his ranch at Glen Ellen and was writing up his impressions.

  Mack went through the ritual of describing his son. London shook his head. Then he said, “I tell you, I’ve never seen San Franciscans so kind and courteous. In this kind of catastrophe, I thought the social classes would turn on each other. I thought we’d have war.”

  “You sound a little disappointed.”

  London gave him a level stare. “No. Touched. But mark this, my friend. The old Frisco—the city of the nabobs—is gone. The new San Francisco will belong to the people south of the Slot. Factory people, poor people. Look, nothing personal. I hope you find your son.” Touching the brim of his big hat, London moved on.

  Bitter about the near-insult, Mack wondered why, if London was so touched and moved by City poverty, he had promptly moved to the country when he made some money.

  In conversation later, Professor Love said he thought London’s social theories were balmy, but his stories were original and thrilling, and he was right about the disaster bringing out the best. “Animus tamen omnia vincit. ‘Courage conquers all things’—Ovid.”

  Money bought nothing; there was nothing to buy. Mack stood in the long food lines with lawyers, bankers, society matrons, maids, bricklayers, hod carriers, reporters, milliners, pickpockets.

  He swung a shovel with the rest of the men in their encampment, digging their latrines, then emptying them. He soon got used to the stench. It was, after all, a stench of life.

  People communicated by scrawled notes or chalked signs on special outdoor bulletin boards: MRS. J. FOX IS SAFE IN OAKLAND; ANGELO FANUCCI, FIND YOUR FAMILY IN CAMP NUMBER 2; RELATIVES OF BABY BOY SEELIGSON CONTACT CITY MORGUE; MALCOLM, MEET HERE FRIDAY NOON IF YOU SEE THIS, NORA.

  Mack almost wrote one of his own. JIM—WHERE ARE YOU? PA.

  Some were quick to take advantage of San Francisco’s misfortune. One day Mack accompanied Rhett Haverstick to the post-office substation in the park. The post office had established tent substations almost as soon as the fires went out.

  Mack had no mail, but the attorney got an outrageous postcard from a cousin in Los Angeles, who was a realtor. In a huge bold hand, for all to read, he’d written: OUR REGION WAS TOTALLY UNAFFECTED BY THE EARTHQUAKES. IN THE FUTURE WHY DON’T YOU CONSIDER LOS ANGELES—OR RECOMMEND IT TO FRIENDS? MANY EXCELLENT BUYS ARE AVAILABLE. REGARDS, PHIL.

  James Phelan addressed members of the Committee of Safety at an open-air meeting. “We were right about the water supply. The critical shortage, and the state of the system during the fire, proves the urgent need for the Hetch Hetchy dam and aqueduct. We must keep pressure on the federal government to approve the project. We must not be further deterred by the sentimentalists in the nature societies.”

  At an outdoor Catholic mass, Alex Muller met Sophia Carminelli, a frail, plain, but intelligent girl. She introduced the young Swiss to her parents and eight brothers. Two weeks later, Alex looked for Mack during one of the evening song sessions. As usual, Mack was seated on a crate by his tent. He never sang with the others, just sat listening with a dead look in his eyes.

  Alex told his employer that he’d proposed and Sophia Carminelli had accepted and they would be married as soon as conditions were normal again.

  On a bright sunny Saturday, a distinguished silver-haired businessman addressed a crowd in the refugee camp.

  “My fellow citizens, you all know who I am, Patrick Calhoun, president of United Railroads, your trolley company. I am carrying word from camp to camp that I have pledged to earthquake relief, personally and on behalf of my firm, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars.”

  There was long, loud applause. Standing at the back, under a great shady cypress, Fremont Older said to Mack, “And don’t you suppose the city fathers will be moved by Patrick’s humanitarianism and let him put up his wires?”

  On May 14, Boss Ruef’s captive supervisors approved the overhead trolley ordinance.

  Mack spent hours with the newly incorporated Relief Committee, which handled distribution of the carloads of food, bedding, clothing, and horse fodder pouring into Oakland from all over the United States.

  To everyone who asked, needing encouragement, Mack would say, “Of course we’ll rebuild San Francisco.” It sounded like his first priority. But his first priority was really the one he seldom discussed: Jim.

  He went back to police headquarters six times in the first three weeks after the fires went out, but each visit was more discouraging than the last. It was always the same answer: nothing ne
w; no one had seen his son. Mulvihill was off the case, hospitalized with a stroke brought on by overwork, and the new man, a detective with a flip manner, young, seemed even less interested than Mulvihill.

  Indoor cooking was banned indefinitely in all structures still standing. When the residents of Mack’s tent community could obtain some beef by standing in line, they liked to cook it outdoors, on a large square of salvaged sheet iron propped on bricks. Haverstick, an excellent cook, called the outdoor stove a “barbeque.” He said barbequing was catching on all over town, and predicted other Californians would take to it.

  Street and sidewalk kitchens sprang up everywhere. Some were established with relief funds, and these served meals in the open air at long trestle tables, often right in the middle of enormous ruins. For breakfast the relief kitchens served mush, milk, and bread. For dinner, hash, vegetables, and bread. For supper, soup, stew, and bread. No one complained. Those with money paid 15 cents. Those who couldn’t pay got the meal free with a ticket from the Red Cross.

  Individual entrepreneurs set up shop too, offering a more varied fare. One afternoon Mack returned from a relief meeting across the Bay and went to his warehouse. Water pumped from the Bay had saved the Chance Produce Company. A block from it he was surprised to see a new corner kitchen—a boom and a barbeque—with ROSS CAFÉ chalked on the booth.

  “Nellie.”

  She looked up from a pot of stew simmering on the sheet metal. Two bearded men waited patiently. She had good color again. After serving the customers, she wiped her hands on her apron and led him around to the other side of the booth. There she’d chalked the menu for the day, and a slogan: EAT DRINK & BE MERRY, FOR TOMORROW WE MAY HAVE TO GO TO OAKLAND.

  “I couldn’t sit in Carmel and do nothing.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Five days. It’s broken the logjam in my brain. Night before last, I started writing a story.”

  “Did your flat on Russian Hill survive?”

  “Yes, the fire missed it. How are you?”

  When he told her about Jim, she cried. He found himself struggling to be unemotional, if only to restore her calm. Then he told her something almost as unpleasant.

  “I changed my mind again. If no acceptable alternative can be found, I’ll back the Hetch Hetchy dam.”

  Nellie’s novella The Fire Zone was bought later in the year by The Saturday Evening Post, the editor declaring that she had never done better work. William Randolph Hearst heard of it and wrote a personal note from New York to congratulate her.

  Growing desperate about Jim, Mack hired one of the first job printers who reopened after the fire to print up a flyer he had drafted; the headline was LARGE REWARD FOR INFORMATION. In a long block of text, he drew the best word-picture of Jim that he could. Fremont Older helped him change and refine it, and suggested insertion of a line meant to trick opportunists into revealing themselves. The reward itself, boldfaced at the bottom, was $25,000 cash, but Mack was prepared to double or quadruple that if necessary. The address for forwarding information was the post box Haverstick was using for his law office. Mack ordered twenty thousand copies of the flyer and had them shipped in batches to his various managers, with orders that they be distributed to newspapers and police and sheriff’s departments, and posted on public notice boards and even telegraph poles in the most populous regions of the state. He told his managers in a letter that distribution of the flyer was their first priority in the coming weeks, and he wanted no slacking. Poor execution of the job would be cause for dismissal.

  On a balmy night toward the end of May, Mack and Margaret ate together, sitting some distance from the others. Mack had cooked the dry stringy roast beef and green beans; those in their little community took turns.

  “The meat’s tasty,” Margaret said.

  “I scorched the beans.”

  “I watched you at the barbeque, scowling, muttering—you don’t enjoy cooking under these conditions, do you?”

  “I don’t enjoy anything under these conditions.”

  After a minute she said, “I’ve decided to rebuild the restaurant.”

  “Oh. I wondered if you would. I’ll loan you whatever you need.”

  “You’re very generous. Did your banks move their cash and records in time?”

  “Some did. For instance I had forty thousand dollars in Pete Giannini’s Bank of Italy. Pete put his cash and ledgers in a wagon and personally drove them to San Mateo. The banks whose cash burned up are handing out certified chits. You take a chit to the mint for the equivalent in gold coin; the gold in the mint got through all right.”

  Margaret took another bite. Mack was sitting and staring at his plate on his knee.

  “Mack, you don’t look well. Is it Jim?”

  “Yes, I suppose. I don’t know.” He let down. “I sleep for eight, nine, ten hours and wake up exhausted. I get pains in my head, pains so bad I can barely see, just here—” He rubbed his forehead close to his brows. “They start, they stop—no pattern, no reason. I spend a lot of time wondering why the hell I bother to take another breath.”

  She thought a moment. “You feel sad much of the time? Despondent?”

  He nodded. “It has to be Jim.”

  “Perhaps not altogether. I’ve heard the same complaints from other people in the camps. One of them said her preacher told her it’s remorse.”

  “What?”

  “Remorse. Because we came through but so many others didn’t.”

  “We’re guilty about that?”

  “I think so. You sleep for hours, but I have trouble sleeping at all. And I only lost some property, not a son.”

  Mack’s face twisted. “Do any of these acquaintances of yours say how long the feelings will last?”

  “No, I haven’t heard that.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you how long I expect mine to last. Forever.”

  She wanted to reprove him for the gush of self-pity, but his eyes were so vacant, his face so white and saggy that she didn’t have the heart. He put his plate aside. He’d eaten only two or three bites of the stringy beef.

  Touching his sleeve, she spoke hesitantly.

  “Mack, you shouldn’t feel—”

  “Yes, I should. My son ran away. I’m responsible. I’m tired, Margaret. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  He went into the tent he shared with Alex and Professor Love, but he couldn’t sleep. The pain came at the bridge of his nose, and spread to either side in a moment. Old litanies chanted in his head.

  Never be poor again.

  Never be cold again…

  He remembered coming down out of the Sierras into the California spring, full of hope. Where was the hope now in this accursed place?

  Firelight glowed on the tent canvas. He flung a forearm over his eyes to try to ease the red pain in his head. He despised his weakness. He’d always been strong and confident before, able to overcome setbacks and sorrows.

  Not this time.

  In the first ten days after distribution of the flyer began, Haverstick received nine letters and two telegraph messages, all from claimants “certain” they knew Jim’s whereabouts.

  “Six of these are obvious frauds,” he declared when he and Mack discussed the matter. He waved one of the letters. “All six people identified the boy by his limp, and by the small birthmark on his right cheek, shaped like a butterfly.”

  Mack gave him a bleak nod; the birthmark was the item inserted to trap cheats. “I guess the flier was a bad idea.”

  “Not necessarily, but even the promising replies must be checked into. You can’t do it all yourself—”

  “The police sure as hell won’t do it,” Mack said. “They’re sitting on their hands.”

  “Perhaps you should hire a private detective bureau. Why don’t you talk to Bill Burns?”

  Mack’s head snapped up, his expression animated. “I will.”

  Burns recommended a Los Angeles detective, a Pinkerton and former bull on the Great Northern
Line, Wild Bill Flyshack.

  “I think he gave himself the name because he’s anything but,” Burns said. “Wild Bill’s a plodder. Reliable, but a plodder. Also, his real name is Selwyn. I’d call myself something else if my folks named me Selwyn Flyshack.”

  Mack wired Flyshack, who promised to come north for an interview as soon as he finished his present case.

  May blurred into June. Between them, Mack and Haverstick looked into the apparently honest replies to the reward flyer. By a combination of short trips and telegraph messages, they satisfied themselves that all of the replies identified the wrong boy. One reply, from Santa Barbara, was a lucid letter from a woman who guaranteed that Mack’s son was living next door. The crippled “boy” turned out to be thirty-seven years old; the woman had been in and out of asylums for years. “We’re getting too much of that,” Haverstick sighed as he finally disposed of the letter. “Problem is, I don’t know how to stop it.” Mack was too despondent to comment.

  He attended more meetings than he liked, but they were necessary. He joined the new Committee of Forty for the Reconstruction of San Francisco. When he had a free hour, he still roamed the camps, asking his questions, though by now they were hollow in his mouth. Too much time had passed, and no one seemed to give his inquiry more than a moment’s thought. There had been too much loss, too great a drain of emotion in the weeks since the quake and fire. And everyone had a life to rebuild in some fashion. Still, in the face of all of it, Mack kept on.

  Walking down the lane of tents in Golden Gate Park one evening, he encountered Alex with a set of plans rolled up under his arm. Alex knew his employer’s state of mind, and he struggled to hide or at least mute his own happy state. It was hard, given his love for Sophia.