Calico Palace

by Gwen Bristow

  Marny told herself to be patient. As she looked up at him from where she sat on the ground, it occurred to her that she had never seen Pocket’s pockets so un-stuffed. Some of them looked actually empty. The library kept earlier hours than the Calico Palace. Marny guessed that he had been in bed asleep when he heard the midnight alarm, and had sprung up and thrown on his clothes, and rushed out without pausing to gather his usual baggage.

  Pocket was saying, “It’s time you ladies had some peace and quiet.”

  He gave Marny a particular look of concern. Pocket had not heard about Marny’s meeting with Captain Pollock, but his quick eyes and his warmth of heart had told him that she was close to the limit of what she could bear. He went on,

  “And it’s time I got back on patrol. Kendra, will you carry the cats?”

  Marny dragged herself up. Pocket resumed patrol, this time heading downhill, looking for troublemakers and now and then finding one and sternly sending him on his way. The girls walked behind him, down the weedy track to where it widened and met the plank sidewalk, and on toward the plaza. While this part of the street was not on fire, it was as chaotic as it had been when they climbed. Still, the walk was easier going down.

  They came at last to the library. Here Pocket’s partner, Mr. Gilmore, stood on guard with several of their clerks. Pocket told Mr. Gilmore that Marny and Kendra were to have his bedroom. They followed Pocket inside, through the reading rooms, to the back of the building where his bedroom was. When they tried to thank him Pocket said he had no time to listen. He hurried out to go back on duty.

  Pocket did not live in such luxury as Hiram had enjoyed in the Union Hotel. The room was small and plainly furnished. The bed covers had been hastily thrown back, and over the chairs and wash-stand and chest of drawers were scattered the possessions that Pocket had not had time to put into his pockets. But to Marny and Kendra the untidy little room was a blessed haven. Marny dropped across the bed. Kendra set Geraldine’s hut on the floor and stretched out by Marny.

  They did not talk, but they were still too tense to sleep. The night behind them had been an ordeal, the day ahead was an agonizing uncertainty. —How is it with Hiram? How is it with the Calico Palace? How will it be with me, after this?

  In the hut Geraldine cried bitterly. “I am bruised and hungry and miserable,” she moaned in cat language. “Why do you treat me like this? Don’t you love me any more?”

  After a while they heard loud thumping footsteps, the bedroom door burst open, and a big voice exclaimed, “Hi, Pocket! Anybody home?”

  They sat up, and Kendra sprang off the bed with a scream of delight.

  “Hiram!”

  He grabbed her in his arms. Together they demanded of each other, “Are you all right?”

  They were both all right. Kendra’s blue silk dress and theater cloak were torn and ruined; Hiram’s fine broadcloth suit was in tatters, he had blisters on his hands and many bruises all over, but who cared? He had no important hurts and neither had she, and they were together again.

  Across Kendra’s shoulder Hiram asked, “And you, Marny?”

  “How is the Calico Palace?” she returned breathlessly.

  On Hiram’s smudgy face she saw a big broad smile. “Marny, the Calico Palace is still there.”

  “Then I’m all right,” said Marny.

  Her voice cracked. She crumpled up on the bed and hid her face in Pocket’s pillow and pushed her fingers up through her windblown hair and sobbed. The Calico Palace was still there.

  Hiram waited until her sobs quieted. Then, sitting on the bed between her and Kendra, he told them more about the fire. He said Dwight Carson had built as well as he had promised he would. Not only was the Calico Palace intact, but so was Hiram’s bank. On the block where the bank stood, every other building had gone down. But the bank, with its roof tank and its perfectly adjusted iron doors and shutters, had withstood the fire.

  Chase and Fenway’s store was a total loss and so was their warehouse. However, they were luckier than some men, for they both still had their dwellings. The fire had not reached the home of Mr. Chase on Washington Street, and it had not gone as far south as Happy Valley where lived Mr. Fenway and Rosabel. “And they have coins and gold dust,” Hiram added proudly, “safe in our vault. So they can start rebuilding right away.”

  Marny dried her eyes on Pocket’s pillowcase. “Hiram, is it safe for me to walk down to Kearny Street? I’d like to go to sleep in my own bed.”

  Kendra said she too would like to go back to the Calico Palace. Hiram considered. Kearny Street was piled with smoking debris, and timbers were still falling. However, he had come here by walking diagonally across the plaza, scrambling among the barrels and boxes and other things piled there. They could do the same.

  “If you can stand a lot of ugly sights,” he warned them.

  “We’ll have to stand that sometime,” said Marny. “Why not now?”

  “All right,” said Hiram. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You’re already worn out!” Kendra protested.

  Hiram chuckled. Of course he was tired, he said. But he was also hungry. The Union Hotel was gone, and so were most of the other hotels and restaurants. Hiram was hoping, if he saw Marny and Kendra safely to the Calico Palace, Kendra would give him some breakfast.

  While he was speaking Pocket came in. Kendra said she would give breakfast to them both, and they whistled joyfully. “Then Hiram and I will come back here,” said Pocket, “and catch up on our sleep so we’ll be ready for more guard duty tonight. I don’t think there’ll be much looting this morning. Nobody slept last night, and even the greediest thieves can’t stay awake forever.” He reached for Geraldine’s hut. “Let’s go.”

  Hiram stood up, but he paused, suddenly grave. “Wait a minute, Pocket. I’ve just remembered, there’s something I want to tell Marny.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Marny, early this morning our squad found Captain Pollock. Dead.”

  She gave a start. “Oh Hiram! You mean burned up?”

  “No. There wasn’t a mark on him. He was in the street, near the hotel he lived in. Smothered by the smoke. He got out somehow, but he couldn’t get away. With a wound in the leg below the knee, a man can’t walk.”

  “Then I killed him, didn’t I?” Marny said slowly. “Hiram, I didn’t mean to kill him.” She caught her voice. “Or—maybe I did. I don’t know. It happened so fast, and I was so scared, I honestly don’t know if I meant to kill him or not.”

  “What’s this,” exclaimed Pocket, “about somebody killing Captain Pollock?”

  “You tell him, Marny,” said Hiram.

  Marny told him. “I don’t know,” she repeated at the end of her narrative, “whether or not I meant to kill him. But this makes me feel guilty, somehow.”

  Pocket had listened without comment, standing at the foot of the bed. Now he smiled at her, and his smile was reassuring and serene.

  “You didn’t mean to kill him, Marny.”

  She asked eagerly, “How do you know?”

  “If you shot him below the knee,” Pocket said calmly, “you did some pretty accurate aiming. That’s exactly the right place to hit a man when you have to protect yourself but you don’t want to kill him. He falls down but he hasn’t got a fatal wound. And you knew that, whether or not you had it in the top side of your mind just then. You aimed right and you didn’t mean to kill him.”

  Marny gave a sigh of relief. Kendra squeezed her hand.

  Hiram vigorously agreed with Pocket. “And you didn’t kill him, Marny. It was the hoodlums who set this fire that killed him.”

  Pocket shook his head. He spoke with thoughtful slowness. “You know, Hiram, I think it’s closer to the truth to say Pollock killed himself. If he hadn’t tried to rob Marny he wouldn’t have been hurt. And if he hadn’t been hurt, he would have had a good chance to get away from the fire.” Pocket smiled an odd little smile. “Evil people,” he added, “have a way of killing themselves.”

  There
was a pause. Pocket spoke to Marny again.

  “And now that I think of it, Marny, Pollock might have been bankrupt yesterday but if he’d been an honest man he would have been rich today.”

  “What do you mean?” the other three exclaimed.

  “He told Marny,” Pocket answered with tranquil assurance, “he had a right to steal from her because he couldn’t sell his bricks and lumber. Well, they were a drug on the market last night, but they sure aren’t today. Three-quarters of San Francisco has been burned up and folks have got to rebuild. They’ll be buying all the bricks and lumber they can get. Pollock’s brickyard and lumber yard are down at the south end of town below Happy Valley. That area wasn’t touched by the fire.” Pocket picked up Geraldine’s hut. “Well, folks, I’m famished. Let’s go to the Calico Palace and get that breakfast.”

  Yesterday they could have walked from the library to the Calico Palace in about ten minutes. This morning they had to pick their way among the piles of rescued stuff in the plaza, and the fallen bricks and timbers in Kearny Street, and they had to go around piles of rubble that only half covered the bodies beneath. They had to pause and listen to the frantic words of men who had lost everything they owned, and to other men who pled, “Have you seen So-and-So?—I can’t find him—I’m afraid he—” and could not finish the sentence. Today the walk took a long time and it seemed longer.

  They spoke little. They were too tired, and too sickened by the tragedies around them. But later that day Marny remembered Pocket’s saying through his teeth, almost mumbling, more as if talking to himself than to her, “Human creatures did this. Did it on purpose.”

  “Some of those human creatures,” Marny reminded him grimly, “got killed in it.”

  Pocket returned, “Not enough.”

  His voice was low but savage. Mild as his temper was, right now if Pocket had recognized one of the men who had set this fire, she did not doubt that Pocket would have shot him.

  The Calico Palace was safe. The windowpanes were slivered; the brick walls were splotched with soot and water; at the street-floor windows Bruno Gregg’s handsome transparencies had burned to shreds; the tall gilt letters that had spelled CALICO PALACE across the second-floor front had curled and cracked like autumn leaves; but the building itself stood firm amid the wreckage around it. Troy Blackbeard, on guard at the main door, told them Lulu and Lolo and Zack had gone to bed and to sleep. Norman and Hortensia sat on the staircase reviving their strength with bread and cheese and a bottle of wine. Norman said Hortensia had been great last night, just great. Didn’t lose her head for a minute. Packed a bag for each of them so they would have clothes and coins if they had to run. “Now what,” he demanded of Pocket, “are you doing with those damn cats?”

  “Bringing them home,” said Pocket.

  Norman shrugged in wonder.

  While Kendra was setting out a meal, Marny filled pans with food and water and carried them up to Geraldine’s room, Pocket following her with the hut. Marny shuddered as she saw the bloodstain on the rug, and the damaged spot where Pollock’s bullet had struck the floor when his gun went off. Only last night. So much had happened since then, it seemed long ago.

  Pocket unlatched the door of the hut, and now they found they had a small tragedy of their own. One of the kittens was dead, the one they had named Empy.

  “I suppose,” Marny said sorrowfully, “Empy got hurt when that slug dropped the hut. Damn his thieving fingers. I wish Kendra had shot his hand off.”

  Pocket glanced at Geraldine, who was eating her breakfast with gusto. He said consolingly, “I don’t think cats can count. If Geraldine had lost all her kittens she would miss them, but with three left I don’t believe she will know the fourth is gone.” He went to the door that led into the hall. “I’ll dispose of this one.”

  “At least,” Marny said, “I’m glad it’s not the kitten we named Calico for the Calico Palace. That would have worried me. A bad sign for the future.” She added abruptly, “All right, laugh at me if you want to. Kendra thinks I’m silly to be this way, but this is the way I am.”

  “I’m not laughing at you,” Pocket answered with a touch of surprise. “I don’t laugh at people. If they’re different from me, maybe they’re right.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re a smart fellow, Pocket.”

  “Thank you ma’am,” said Pocket. He opened the door. “I’ll see you in the kitchen.”

  In the kitchen they gobbled a meal of cold leftovers (the idea of making a fire in the stove was too horrifying to be considered). The men went back to the library, while Marny and Kendra went to their own rooms and speedily fell asleep.

  When Marny woke up that afternoon she felt surprisingly well. She got out of bed and stretched, put on her slippers, and went to the mirror.

  “You are a mess,” she said to her reflection. “Well, you’ve cleaned yourself up before and you can do it again. And this time you have something to wear.”

  She walked over to the window and looked down at what used to be the city, still smoking in the sunset. The sight was heartbreaking, blocks and blocks of rubble, and walls standing here and there like black tombstones.

  The desolation was not complete. Not only was the Calico Palace standing, but so were the El Dorado and the Verandah. The north side of the plaza was not burned, and the fire had nowhere gone west of Dupont Street. And even in the blackest area Hiram’s bank was not the only building that had shown itself to be fireproof. Marny could see several others, and there might be more beyond her range of vision. Already she could see men walking about, making notes, planning to start over. The sight of them was cheering. They had rebuilt before, they would do it again.

  This was Sunday afternoon. Marny and Norman and their helpers spent Monday cleaning up. At three o’clock Tuesday afternoon the Calico Palace opened for business, and it stayed open until two o’clock the next morning. Through the whole eleven hours the bars and gambling rooms were thronged. Men’s nerves were taut, their tempers on edge. It was some consolation to gather with other men and talk about their losses. There were more arguments than usual, and more men than usual who had to be carried out instead of walking. But as there were also more profits than usual, Marny and Norman bore the disorders without complaint.

  In the days following the fire the Alta published long lists of buildings destroyed and names of persons who had lost their lives in the fire or died later of injuries. But the paper also had notes of cheer. Eustis and Boyd announced that all coins and gold dust deposited in their vault were safe and available on demand. Chase and Fenway inserted a card of thanks to the firemen who had made their way into the burning store and brought out a strongbox holding important papers. Mr. Reginald Norrington informed the public that he was now doing business in an office on Dupont Street, where he would receive the rents owed to his clients. If any firemen had given help to Mr. Norrington when his own office burned he did not say so, at least not in print. Words of thanks would have required extra lines and added to the price of his announcement.

  But other men were not so thrifty. Day after day the Alta carried columns of notices thanking the firemen for their heroism. The paper also published a list of the buildings in the burnt area that survived the fire. There were not many. But the fire had proved that Dwight Carson had done what he had said he could do. There were seven buildings in San Francisco that had been put up under Dwight’s direction. Six of the seven—all but Pocket’s library—had stood in the district devastated by the fire. All six—the Calico Palace, Hiram’s bank, and four others—were still standing. All were open for business.

  And now Dwight was putting up buildings in New York. As Marny thought of this, she had an idea. She sent for Bruno Gregg and told him that when he had finished the new transparencies she would have another job for him.

  65

  ON THE SECOND MORNING after the fire, Kendra told Marny she and Hiram were going to be married in nine days.

  They had not planned to be marrie
d so soon. But that night of dread had shown them how little security they had. “We are not going to trust the future,” Kendra said to Marny. “We are going to grab some happiness right now.”

  They rented a lot in Happy Valley, bought one of the readymade cottages from China, and hired Chinese carpenters to put the pieces together. They bought furniture—and Hiram bought clothes—from the auctioneers who spent their days shouting in the plaza. The furniture was tawdry and Hiram’s new suits did not fit him very well, but these matters were not important. He and Kendra wanted to be married, and that was important.

  Between the fire and the wedding Hiram stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Eustis. They invited him to have the ceremony in their home.

  Marny smilingly declined Kendra’s invitation to attend. “I know you and Hiram want me, darling,” she said, “but I seriously doubt that Mrs. Eustis does. I’ll come to see you in your own house after you’ve moved in.”

  Kendra had to yield.

  Meanwhile, San Francisco lay in ruins but life went on. Pocket and Mr. Gilmore cleared out a storeroom and turned it into living quarters for their clerks. Norman put cots into several of the private card rooms, so the dealers and bartenders would have somewhere to sleep. They were not comfortable, but any roof was better than none.

  Few citizens were comfortable, but many of them were devising ways to get rich among the ashes. Some men set up tents, where they rented sleeping space. Others contrived outdoor cookshops—stoves blackening the air with smoke, and beside each stove a trestle where the customers stood up to eat their meals. Three days after the fire a group of enterprising tradesmen opened a market on the Clay Street hill. While the cottage was being set up Kendra continued to prepare meals at the Calico Palace, and Hiram came in every day for lunch. She shopped at the market, escorted by one of the bartenders.