There was hope! “Where is it located?”
“Just down the street. You can’t miss it.”
She thanked the room clerk. He wasn’t so bad after all. She left the hotel and hastened to the Western Union Telegraph Office only a block away, as the clerk had said. She walked to the counter and spoke to a young man in his twenties who wore an eyeshade and rubber bands on his rolled-up sleeves. “I understand I can have money sent to me by telegram?”
He smiled. “You certainly can, ma’am. It’s a new service we’re offering. Whoever sends the money must go to their Western Union Office and pay the amount requested. The clerk sends us a telegram, and we pay you. Simple, huh? That’s progress for you.”
“Indeed, that’s wonderful.” Suddenly buoyant, she set her handbag on the counter. “So I must send a telegram first, of course.”
“Of course. Where to?”
“Savannah, Georgia.”
The clerk did a quick calculation. “That’ll be four dollars and seventy cents for ten words.”
“What!” She couldn’t have heard correctly.
“Four dollars and seventy cents for ten words, ma’am.”
“Oh, dear.” She looked in her handbag, took out her coin purse, and plucked out the few remaining coins: seven dimes, five nickels, three pennies. Altogether, counting the pennies, she had exactly ninety-eight cents to her name. “I’ll send two words then. That should be enough.” Actually two words would really be enough: send money.
The young man regretfully shook his head. “Sorry, the minimum is ten words.”
“You mean even if I send two words I have to pay for ten?”
“Sorry.”
“Could I go ahead and send it, and they could pay at the other end?”
“Sorry.”
“I see.” She picked up her handbag and valise. “Thank you anyway.” She walked out the door with her head held high. Night had fallen. The light mist had turned into a fog that seemed to be getting heavier. In a daze of disbelief, she started up the street, not knowing or caring which way she was going. A chill in the air caused her to shiver, and she pulled the shawl closer around her. Thank you, Rosa. She had walked she didn’t know how many blocks before she realized how hungry she was. At least ninety-eight cents would buy her a meal.
She searched for a cheap restaurant and found one with a tattered awning and a faded menu posted in the window. The food was good: roast beef, bread, and vegetables. It cost only forty-five cents, so she splurged and bought a glass of milk for ten cents and piece of apple pie for fifteen cents. The rest she left as a tip for the waiter, so when she stepped onto the street again, her stomach was full, but her coin purse was empty. So now what? She must try to think clearly, decide what to do. She looked around. The street sign said Market Street, but that didn’t mean a thing. A steady stream of people passed by. She envied how they all walked with a determined step, secure in the knowledge they had a destination, knew where they were going. Except me. For the first time in her life, she had no place to go. Even worse, nobody would miss her. Nobody would start searching for her, concerned she was gone. For a terrible moment, a panic like she’d never known swept through her. Her knees went weak, and she wasn’t sure she could go on. People started staring at her as they passed by. What was she going to do, collapse on the sidewalk? Make a spectacle of herself? She must keep going, but where?
One direction was as good as another, she supposed. She started walking, taking determined steps like the rest of the crowd, so no one would notice her. Such an awful thing as this had never happened to her before. All her life, she’d been loved and cared for. Even during the darkest days of the war, she’d had a roof over her head and food on the table, although at times it wasn’t much. There must be something or someone who could help her. Whom did she know in San Francisco? Allegra lived here now, but where? Belle hadn’t bothered to remember her address. What about Mrs. Hollister? When they parted, her seatmate had described where she lived: “…on the corner of Powell and California. That’s on Nob Hill, not far from Leland Stanford’s mansion. It’s a Queen Ann Victorian -tyle house with lots of gingerbread.”
But even if Belle could find it, she wanted nothing to do with that cranky old woman, despite her more friendly attitude in the end. And besides, where was Nob Hill and how was she supposed to get there?
The same with Yancy. He’d given her Ronald’s card, so she had his address. But even if she had the means to get there, she couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than standing at his door all bedraggled, begging for shelter, having to admit her horrible mistake. So here she was, alone in a strange city, penniless, and no one to turn to. She trudged on. What else could she do? After a while, her legs began to ache and her breath was coming short. She needed to sit down, but where? The nature of the street had begun to change. Market Street had been a respectable area with tall business buildings and reputable stores, but now she was passing vacant lots filled with weeds and a scattering of dilapidated-looking buildings that housed saloons with music booming out the door and hotels that looked on the sleazy side. Not that she wouldn’t have rented a room from any one of them, but without a penny she didn’t dare try. Some buildings were vacant, with shadowy doorways she hated to pass. The people looked different. Instead of the respectably dressed shoppers she’d seen on Market Street, now she was encountering men in seaman’s clothes, some of them staggering, and once she passed a group of women dressed in bold, gaudy dresses who didn’t seem to be going anyplace, simply standing around. The women stared at her as if she’d invaded their territory. Some of the seamen whistled and made comments as she passed by. “Hello there, sweetheart, want some fun?” She shrank away and kept on walking.
She was passing a lonely stretch along a vacant lot covered with weeds when a big man with hulking shoulders appeared out of nowhere and leaped in front of her. “Where are you going?” he asked.
He was blocking her way, and she had to stop. “Let me pass.” She tried to step around him.
He blocked her again and grabbed her arm. At his touch, she jerked away, but he grabbed her again, his foul, whiskey-laden breath nearly causing her to gag. “Let me go,” she cried, but he tightened his grip and started to drag her off the sidewalk. She dropped her valise and tried to claw at his face, but he grabbed her other arm, and she was helpless. Dear God, something horrible was going to happen to her, that unspeakable thing that every woman dreaded. She twisted and turned, using every bit of strength she had, but his grip was so powerful she had no chance of breaking away.
He dragged her clear off the sidewalk into the weeds, and was still dragging her when she felt a jolt and a young voice was yelling, “You let her loose!”
It was all a blur, but she had the impression that someone had jumped on the man’s back. The powerful arms suddenly let go. She fell to the ground amidst tall, rough weeds that scratched her face. “Run, run!” The urgency of the voice spurred her to scramble to her feet, sprint to the sidewalk, and keep on running. Her lungs were about to burst, but not until she reached a saloon that had music blasting out the door did she stop in a circle of light cast by a streetlamp. One arm braced on the lamppost, she bent over, gasping for breath, heart pounding in her chest. Dear Lord, now she’d lost her valise. What was the use? Her knees grew weak. Despairing and hopeless, she was about to crumble to the ground when a boy of fifteen or so emerged from the darkness. “Are you all right?” he called. He was carrying her valise.
She pulled herself straight. “I think so.” In the dim light she couldn’t see much of him except he was taller than she, thin and gangly, with long, sandy hair, and a concerned look on his face. He might have reached full height, but his shoulders and chest hadn’t filled out yet, so he had a scrawny look about him. “You’re not the one who saved me, are you?”
The boy shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I jumped on his back and he lost his balan
ce. He was pretty drunk, so that helped.” He handed her the valise. “This is yours.”
She took the valise. “How can I ever thank you?”
The boy frowned back at her. “Ma’am, what are you doing here?”
How could she possibly explain? “It’s a long story.”
“You shouldn’t be here. Don’t you know where you are?”
“I have no idea.”
“I didn’t think so. You’re on Pacific Street. If you go one block more, you’ll find yourself square in the middle of the Barbary Coast.”
Tony’s words about the Barbary Coast came back to her: Nice ladies wouldn’t be caught dead there. What had she done? “I didn’t intend—”
“I’m sure you didn’t, ma’am, but all the same, you’re headed for what some call the wickedest place in the world. If you go any farther, you’re going to find block after block of gambling houses and opium dens, and men and women doing stuff I can’t even tell you about. I can see you’re a nice lady, and I hope you’ll go back where you came from.”
The gravity of her plight struck her full force. She held back tears, embarrassed to think she might actually break down in front of a teenage boy. “I can’t go back. I don’t have any money, and I don’t know where to go.” The second her words left her mouth, she was sorry she’d said them. All she had left was her pride. This boy had done enough for her, and she didn’t want him to think she was asking for more. “I shouldn’t be bothering you with this. I’ll start back where I came from. I’m sure I’ll find”—she gulped and her voice trembled—“something.”
The boy didn’t hesitate. “You’re not going back. You need a place to spend the night, and I’ll find it. The name’s Luther, by the way, Luther Allen.”
“I’m Belle Ainsworth from Savannah. How can you find me a place? I have no money for a hotel.”
“Not a hotel. I meant a place off the street where you can be warm and safe. That is, as safe as you can be on the Barbary Coast. Let’s see…” He thought a moment. “There’s a tunnel where I sleep sometimes. You might not like it, though. It’s damp and it’s got rats.”
She hadn’t entirely lost her sense of humor and laughed in reply. “I would rather collapse and die on the street than sleep where there’s one single rat.”
He bit his lip, deep in thought. “Come with me. It’s a place that’s close.”
They started walking along Pacific Street, past more saloons than she could count, past small theaters and dance halls. The Midway, the Bella Union Dance Hall, the Hippodrome theater where life-size figures of naked women shamelessly pranced about. Who is this boy? she wondered. He spoke well and had good manners. Why was he living on the streets? “Don’t you have a home, Luther?”
“I used to. I lived with my parents and two little sisters back in Nebraska. Then Pa decided to come west. He thought he could get a better job out here, but all he could find was a job on the docks. We got by, though. Then he and my mother got the cholera and died. The neighbors took us in. They didn’t treat us very well. The father used to beat me all the time, so I finally up and left. We turn here.”
Luther led her about half a block off Pacific on a small side street and stopped in front of a dark, two-story building. A sign hung over the entrance, but the letters were Chinese, and she couldn’t read them. “We’re here,” Luther said. “You have to be quiet.”
The first thing Belle noticed when they entered was how sultry and oppressive the air seemed to be. They were in a large room, lit only by feeble yellow lights coming from small lamps. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see people lying about, some on beds, others on couches. They weren’t lying down as if sleeping. Instead, most were in various stages of recline. They all looked as if they were asleep, though, but were they? How very strange they looked, some of them just staring off into space. “What is this place?” she whispered to Luther as they crept through.
“You’re in an opium den,” he whispered back. “Keep moving. They don’t mind. They don’t even know you’re here.”
Opium den? Despite her desperate plight, what popped into her head was, she’d like to see the faces of the Georgia Ladies of the Confederacy if they could see her now. “Where are we going?” she asked. Surely Luther didn’t expect her to join these strange people who stared into space and uttered not a sound.
“Upstairs. There’s rooms up there they don’t use.” He found a candle and lit it. “Just keep going. You’ll see the stairs.”
They climbed the stairs and found a room bare of furniture that was small, warm, and mercifully empty. Although the candle didn’t shed much light, she could see the walls were almost black. “It’s from all the smoke,” Luther explained. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”
She was warm again, and she had a roof over her head. After a day like today, that was all that mattered. “I don’t mind.”
“Wait here and I’ll find us some blankets.”
When Luther returned, he handed her a blanket. She hoped it was clean, but if it wasn’t, she didn’t want to know. Her muscles ached from exhaustion. Her eyes kept wanting to close. How wonderful to lie down, even if it was on a wooden floor. She wadded up her shawl and used it for a pillow. Grateful for the blanket wrapped around her, she instantly fell asleep.
* * * *
“Good morning, ma’am, I brought you some breakfast.”
Belle opened her eyes, wondering why she had such a heaviness in her chest, as if something dreadful had happened. It all came back. She had no money, no place to go, and she’d spent the night in an opium den. She struggled to sit up. “Good morning, Luther.”
He sat cross-legged beside her, fresh faced and smiling. He had clear, sky-blue eyes she hadn’t noticed before. “Look what I found us.” He pointed toward a newspaper he’d spread on the floor. Two apples sat upon it, along with a bottle of Old Crow whiskey that looked full, a pile of crab legs that looked untouched, and a loaf of bread with a small portion torn from the end.
“Where did you get all this?” she asked.
“The garbage. That’s how we eat, my friends and I. First thing in the morning, we find all kinds of good stuff behind the restaurants like the Midway and the Hippodrome. That’s water in the whiskey bottle. I just filled it myself.”
“So there are more of you?”
“Oh, yes, there’s lots of homeless people around here. Mostly men, but women, too. And there’s children, lots of them younger than I. They’ve lost their parents, like I did. Some have no place to go, or like me, whoever takes them in is only looking for servants to do the work. It’s usually the father who beats on ’em, so they run away. I was twelve when I couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave home. I get along all right, but I wish…” A muscle quivered in his jaw. “I worry about my sisters. Susan, she’s six now, and Helen, she’d be eight. When I ran off, I hated to leave them for fear the family wasn’t treating them right. I can get a job on the docks soon as they’ll have me. Then I’ll go after them.”
She hated the thought of cruelty to a child. What a shame those children had no decent place to go. “I hope you’ll find something soon.”
“Do you want to wash up?” he asked. “There’s a bathroom downstairs. Be careful, in case one of ’em wakes up.”
Holding her breath, she crept down the stairs. No one in sight, thank God. The bathroom was disgusting—she’d expected nothing less—but at least she was able to wash up and smooth her hair. When she returned, she sat on the floor again and gladly shared Luther’s breakfast offering. “This is sourdough bread, and it’s delicious,” she remarked after her first bite. She cracked open a crab leg. “Crab, sourdough bread, and an apple—who could ask for a nicer feast?”
They both laughed. He frowned and asked, “If you don’t mind, I’m curious. How did a nice lady like you end up here?”
“I don’t mind at
all.” She told him all of it: the train ride; Yancy and the bandit; how she decided she didn’t want to be a mail-order bride and took flight; her shock at discovering a terrible boy name Bruno stole her money.
When she finished, Luther shook his head. “I don’t blame you one bit for running away. I’d have done the same.”
When they’d done eating, she picked up the Old Crow whiskey bottle and held it high. “A toast to you, Luther Allen. You saved me last night, and I’ll not soon forget it.”
He smiled and said thank you, but his smile soon disappeared. “What do you plan to do now?”
She sighed and didn’t answer for a while. “Well, it’s plain to see I’ve got to do something.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I can’t stay forever on the second floor of an opium den.”
“No, ma’am.”
“There was a lady on the train, Mrs. Hollister, who gave me her address. She said it’s on Nob Hill.”
“That’s not far, but it would be a steep walk.”
She didn’t think she could face a steep walk this morning, and besides, she really didn’t want to go to Mrs. Hollister. “There’s someone else. I told you about the man who saved me from the train robber. I have his address.”
“You do? Then let’s go find him.”
“No, I can’t. I would hate standing on his doorstep, begging for help. It’s a matter of pride, but I just couldn’t do it.”
“That’s all very well and good, ma’am, but pride won’t fill your stomach or put a roof over your head. And besides, you’re not safe on the streets here.”
Bay City Belle Page 13