by John Jakes
“Don’t you say that, don’t you give up on me, you yell your throat raw, you yell till you pass out from yelling, or we won’t get out of here.”
Jim yelled.
Finally, ready to weep with exhaustion, he heard the tall man exclaim, “Somebody’s out there.” And then he heard a second, more distant voice:
“No, Harry, back here, under that bedstead in the alley. I distinctly heard a voice.”
Two dusty, sweaty San Francisco policemen dug them out with the help of another man. Jocker said his back was sprained, but he straightened up readily enough when the police asked his name. “Arthur Jones. We’re grateful to you, officers,” he said, dragging Jim away.
They emerged into the nightmare of Market Street with the great fire burning immediately to the south, and other fires over by the Bay. But they were alive, and Jim was too frightened and grateful to disobey the tall man with the long locks when he whispered, “You take my hand, boy. Jocker’s got you now, and he’ll look after you. Don’t you question me, or so much as look cross-eyed, because I’ve got to pick some pockets so we can get enough money for two ferry passages to Oakland. I hope to God the ferry’s running, because this side of the Bay looks like an inferno. Doomed.”
On Market Street, in the milling crowds, Jim thought he saw his father at one point. He almost called out, but the crowd shifted so fast that he couldn’t be sure it was Mack, and he wasn’t certain whether he wanted to be back with him now that he was alive, albeit bruised and gashed from his stay under the rubble. Besides, Jocker had one fingerless glove wrapped around his hand tight as a vise, to be sure they wouldn’t be separated in the confusion.
On Market Street that morning, Jim was introduced to one of the hobo’s unusual skills. Jocker successfully filched $5—from the purse of a sightseeing woman, no less—without detection, and they escaped to Oakland on a noon ferry.
It was on the ferry ride that Jocker asked his name, and he invented Jim David. He told Jocker that his folks were dead.
“If you say so,” Jocker replied with a snaggly smile; his teeth were white—later Jim learned he brushed them once a day, even if he had to use a twig and water—but he was missing a couple in front. “If you were a street boy, your face’d be weathered and your hands’d be callused. Which they aren’t. All right with me, though, if you ran away. We won’t go into it. I did the same thing when I was just a mite older than you. Oil and water don’t mix, and I determined at a pretty early age that Sprue and responsibility of any sort would never mix either.”
He leaned on the rail among the horrified crowds and watched the smoke and flame above the receding city.
“I’ve ridden the rods with a couple of boys, but neither was as quick and sturdy as you seem to be. So here’s the arrangement. You try to run off, I’ll catch you and whip you. You stick by me, I’ll take good care of you. I’ve never seriously hurt one of my boys, or harmed ’em in a nasty bodily way. Never touched one, in fact, unless it was to give a little discipline—or maybe a little necessary affection,” he added, slipping the arm of his queer patchwork coat around Jim’s shoulder. “Sort of like a father, don’t you know.” He said that so softly, Jim almost didn’t hear it above the slap of the waves and the churn of the engines.
“I think we’ll get along fine,” Jocker decided then. “You’ll have to fetch and carry for me—I’m not getting any younger, and this blasted arthritis is cruel—but you’ll eat more or less regularly, and you’ll sleep safe, out of the weather most of the time, and you’ll be safe from some of the less savory brethren we’ll bump into in the hobo jungles. Old Jocker, he’ll see to it, Jim David.”
He squeezed the boy again. His sleeve was coated with dust from the Valencia Street wreckage, and it left a white mark all across Jim’s shoulders, like a brand. But Jim didn’t see it, and he was not at all unhappy to have fallen into the company of the peculiar, untidy, but oddly likable old tramp.
They lived for two weeks in the vicinity of the Oakland rail yards, and for five nights actually had a splendid warm residence inside an empty boxcar that bore a painted legend on its sides.
TO THE CALIFORNIA SUFFERERS FROM THE PEOPLES OF IOWA
Finally, though, Jocker declared that they must move on. “Thought we’d find some nice pickings after the quake, but there’s too many soldier boys all over the place. Time we went where it’s warmer. My arthritis craves the sunshine.”
And so they began to move eastward. It was exciting to travel the way Jocker did, but it was dangerous too. The old tramp taught Jim how to swing aboard a freight when it was moving slowly—not as easy as it looked; the first time Jim tried it, it wrenched his arm sockets so badly, he almost fell beneath the wheels of the boxcar. Hanging in the door, Jocker pulled him up one-handed.
Jocker taught him how to ride the rods, down between the bottom of a locked car and the track speeding beneath, and do it without falling to your death. He taught Jim how to pluck a stolen chicken, cook hobo stew, and dodge the railroad bulls who always wanted to roust you, and sometimes beat you half to death, in the yards. Jim learned fast—it was that or perish—and he tried doubly hard to master the old tramp’s lessons because he fancied himself a drag on their progress; his crippled foot naturally made him slower and more awkward than Jocker. Jocker never complained, though, only encouraged and occasionally corrected him.
They went all the way down to the Gulf near the Mexican border, then east again through the Texas cattle ranges and cotton fields, and on across Louisiana and the rural South, into Florida. They roamed the pristine Atlantic beaches for a while, swimming and rollicking in the surf and catching and picking big Atlantic blue crabs for supper. Wherever they went, they lived off the land, stealing when they had to— “Man should only resort to stealing out of necessity, Jim, never for the sport of it”—and Jocker was good as his word, protecting Jim from the occasional advances of some unsavory love-starved hobo in the camps along the railway lines.
Jocker was an entertaining companion, Jim found, and a smart one too, despite his lack of formal education. He read any old newspaper he could find, every word—“the poor man’s university, don’t you forget it”—and he knew a little about every part of America, it seemed. At least he always had a comment when some hobo spun a story by a flickering fire about some town he’d visited. “Buffalo, you say? I was there with a couple of gents called Captain Silverheels and the Gray Spats Kid. Wouldn’t give you a plug nickel for Buffalo—too cold. They don’t like us knights of the road there either. That famous writer Jack London, he was in jail in Buffalo a whole month. He was a road boy like Jim here. He saw how bad the jail cons were treated in Buffalo and it turned on a light in his head, they say. Ever after, he championed poor folks.”
Finally they grew tired of road life, and decided between themselves that they should settle down again. They chose California, and specifically Los Angeles, because of the climate. By now Jim was growing taller, and there was very little of master and slave left in their relationship. They were friends, partners, surrogate father and son.
In Los Angeles, Jim found this or that job to help pay rent and buy food. He was industrious and smart, and he seldom lacked for work. Jocker worked when he could, but his arthritis was beginning to cripple him badly, so Jim worked that much harder. He was hugely fond of Jocker now; except for the fact that Jocker wasn’t his real father, Jim loved the old tramp almost as much as he’d loved Mack before Mack turned on him. Of his mother, Jim thought very little; he had seen newspaper photographs of her, he knew she was beautiful, a society lady, and was still living somewhere in California. But Mack had made clear that Jim’s mother had abandoned them for her own pursuits, and her own reasons, and to Jim, she was a remote, cold being, almost like a marble statue in a museum. That was mostly imagination, of course, because he’d never been inside a museum, only read of them; Jocker preferred pool parlors.
Occasionally too, in the papers, Jim spied his father’s name. The sight of it fil
led him with much more sadness and anger than did any photo of his mother. Why had his father hated him? Because of failings in himself? He felt that was true, though he was still too young to puzzle out the nature of those failings and try to change them. But it hardly mattered. He had a new life, a free life. He had long ago decided he’d never go back to the old one.
Now, on the day the P.E. special bore them to the aviation fair, Jim and Jocker both had good jobs in suburban Pasadena. Jim loved being out in the sunshine, learning about and working with the exotic trees and shrubs and flowers of Southern California. Finally, he felt, life was going in the right direction for him. He’d be twelve in the autumn, but he looked two or three years older because of his height and the maturity of his features, and he was starting to get interested stares from young girls. He wasn’t quite old enough to like girls, but he was surprised and vaguely flattered by their new reaction. When he discussed it with Jocker, the old tramp chuckled and said, “Yes, I know you aren’t altogether keen for it now, but wait a while—you’ll be crazy about it. Trust old Jocker.”
“You know I do,” Jim grinned, squeezing his gnarled hand.
The P.E. interurban slid into the two-hundred-foot platform specially built for the air show. Jim took Jocker’s hand and helped him off, elbowing and pushing when necessary. The crowd was boisterous and impatient, and there was a lot of buffeting. Jim felt obliged to protect Jocker, because any rough contact made his joints hurt.
It was a cool, windy morning. Jim shielded his eyes, then pointed toward the hilltop. “Look, Jocker, some of the balloons are up. Don’t you think it’s grand?”
“I think I want to get this over with,” the old tramp said. Jim had trimmed Jocker’s hair for the outing, and Jocker had donned his only suit. But it was shiny at the knees and elbows, and he still looked seedy. “God didn’t mean for Jocker Sprue to leave the ground in a basket dangling from a gas bag. Nor in anything similar. Got me?”
Laughing, Jim clasped his hand tightly and pulled him away from the platform. With whistles and bells, a special train was chugging into a siding, a locomotive and six flatcars carrying shiny autos chained down. Smartly dressed men and women sat in the autos. A banner on one flatcar said SAN DIEGO AERO-SHOW TRAIN. The gentlemen who owned the autos began to loosen the chains before the train stopped, excited about the air show.
Well, so was he. So was all of Los Angeles. Flying fever, people called it. In the comics that Jim read faithfully, his favorite, Little Nemo, was zooming through the sky in his own dirigible. On their way to change interurbans they’d passed a saloon advertising Aviation Highballs: TRY ONE—HAVE A MENTAL ASCENSION.
Strung tight with anticipation, young James Ohio Chance II—now Jim David—pulled the old man along the muddy road to the hilltop, ignoring his complaints.
It was hard going on the road. For one thing, recent winter rains had muddied it. For another, autos in a long line were attempting the ascent and having difficulty because of the mud. Three men with teams of mules worked the roadside, selling their services.
People on foot and on bicycles added to the congestion. Along both shoulders, hawkers shouted and beckoned from canvas booths. You could buy coffee and doughnuts, cheap field glasses, sunglasses, auto radiator caps shaped like airplanes. Jim wasn’t tempted. He’d carefully saved money from his wages to pay their admissions—$1 would take them both into the grandstand—and buy a 10-cent program.
“Take heed,” cried a man temporarily established on a soapbox. “The coming of the airplane will drive the birds from the skies. All species will become extinct because of this mechanical plague.”
“Are the Wrights here?” a man in a mired auto asked. His companion said no, they had refused to attend.
Jim pulled Jocker faster than he wanted to go. A gluey brown mud covered their shoes. At the sound of distant staccato explosions, Jim jumped up and down and squeezed Jocker’s misshapen hand.
“Those are engines, they’re starting engines—we’ve got to hurry.”
“I was happier riding the rods,” Jocker said. But he labored to keep up with the boy.
Tons of sawdust had been thrown on the mud of the exhibit area. Tents sheltered the aircraft on display, and special policemen stood guard to prevent vandalism.
Glenn Curtiss had brought four of his biplanes, and there were three Bleriot monoplanes from France, as well as two Farman biplanes. One tent housed a balloon-gas plant, a mysterious and intricate tangle of tanks, pumps, and pipes. On open ground nearby, an eager young man lectured about his ornithopter, which resembled a unicycle with ribbed wings attached. The young man cleared the crowd away, slipped his arms into straps on the wings, and mounted the cycle seat. He started to flap the wings, and the ornithopter rolled forward perhaps two feet, then crashed sideways.
“See, Jim? Man was never meant to fly. Trains are perfectly good enough.”
“Oh, come on,” the boy said, grinning. “Let’s pay and find a seat. I don’t want to miss Curtiss.”
Mack fought the Packard up the muddy auto road and paid $1 to park. You could watch the air demonstrations from your car but he’d bought a front-row grandstand box for $2. About half past twelve, he ushered Margaret into the box and opened a hamper in which the servants had packed a luncheon and two pair of German field glasses.
The speed course was hexagonal. One straightaway lay close and parallel to the wire fence, the other on the opposite side of the field. Ten-foot towers topped with snapping flags marked the course, and at the foot of each, a deputy with pistol and rifle sat on horseback. A youngster ran onto the field, and one of the deputies galloped to intercept him. The boy darted beneath the deputy’s horse, thumbed his nose, and dug his way under the fence to safety before the deputy could dismount. Margaret laughed and the crowd applauded and whistled.
A lumbering three-hundred-pound man approached the fence and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Mr. Horton of Long Beach,” Mack said. “They call him the Human Megaphone.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Human Megaphone boomed, “I direct your attention to the flying field. In the replica of his famous Golden Flyer air racer, Mr. Glenn H. Curtiss will attempt a new speed record around the course.”
The stands roared. A biplane sheathed in khaki cloth taxied onto the field, its sixty-horse engine chattering and stuttering. The plane, little more than a skeleton of wings and ribs and struts, had a box tail, tricycle gear, and a control wheel. There was no protection for the aviator, merely a small seat attached to the biplane’s lower wing, behind a control wheel. Curtiss sat in the open, his feet braced against pedals. Swathed in a leather coat, scarf, and goggles, he controlled the biplane’s elevator and rudder with the wheel, the brakes and oil pump with the pedals, the wingtip ailerons by means of a shoulder harness worn over his coat.
Mack adjusted his motoring cap to keep the winter sun out of his eyes. Curtiss waved to the crowd, then revved the engine; the biplane bumped and bounced over the ground, and lurched into the air.
Pandemonium. A woman in a nearby box fainted, and Mack’s arms prickled with goose bumps. It was a thrilling sight. He pictured Southern California as he’d first seen it: rural, dusty, a frontier. Now autos and electric interurbans and flying machines were thrusting California, and the world, farther and farther from that lost past of memory.
Curtiss’s biplane climbed above the towers and began to fly the course. When the biplane swooped over the closer straightaway, even sturdy men ducked. The motor roared and the great shadow flickered over upturned faces, the harbinger of the new world coming.
Curtiss failed to set a record that afternoon but he received a standing ovation anyway. When he landed, Mack stood and clapped till his palms ached.
Louis Paulhan took off next. Paulhan was a former circus tightrope walker and mechanic at the Voison airplane works in Paris. A year ago, he’d set a stunning distance and endurance mark, flying eighty-four miles in two hours, forty-four minutes.
Paulhan’s Farman biplane was even more ungainly man Curtiss’s, its wings and tail resembling gray-white box kites, its undercarriage consisting of wheels plus skids. A fifty-horsepower air-cooled Gnome engine powered it. And today, Paulhan carried a passenger. The Human Megaphone stepped forward.
“Riding with Mr. Paulhan is Lieutenant Finger of the United States Army. They will present a demonstration of the potential of airplane warfare.”
The crowd quieted. A man in khaki strapped himself to the wing next to the aviator, his legs dangling over the leading edge.
“I wonder if Paulhan would take me up,” Mack said.
“Would you really want to risk it?”
“Sure. Airplanes aren’t a fad; they’re here for good. We’ll all go up regularly one day.”
He could tell from Margaret’s expression that she doubted it—and feared it if it were true.
The Farman rumbled out and took off, climbing over the field and then circling back on a course between and parallel to the straightaways. Lieutenant Finger leaned over and dropped a paper bag. It hit the ground and burst, shooting out a great cloud of white chalk dust.
“A simulation of dropping high explosives,” explained the Human Megaphone. “Mr. Paulhan confirms that his aircraft can carry up to three hundred pounds of explosives.” The crowd gasped.
The Farman banked and returned. Finger threw out three more paper bags, and they hit one after another, laying down overlapping circles of white. The crowd hushed again. Wind blew some of the dust, which covered an enormous area. Mack realized that if the plane had dropped bombs instead of chalk, there would be little left of anything at the point of impact.