by Herbert Ashe
It wasn’t like Jack had committed a serious crime: he’d only been exercising his constitutional right to free speech. In fact, that was what his speech had been about.
But try explaining irony to a billyclub.
Captain Shepard was no socialist, but he admired the strength and fire of Jack’s convictions, and loved to debate and speculate with him. He stood up from his leather-upholstered reading chair.
“Ha! Will you have a drink with me?”
Jack could feel Eliza’s worried eyes upon him. “Sure,” he said. “Just one though.”
“That’s my boy,” Captain Shepard said, walking stiffly over to the mahogany table in the corner where he kept several bottles of bourbon. He poured out two generous glasses. He handed Jack one, then took a large gulp of his own, swishing it around in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. “What’s it like down at the docks?”
“Sheer madness. There are hundreds trying anything to get their passage North, and hundreds more just standing around gawking at the spectacle. Meanwhile, the pickpockets and cutthroats have the run of the place.”
Captain Shepard nodded thoughtfully. “I want to show you something,” he said. He led Jack over to his desk and pulled out a map titled North America showing all routes to Alaska and Klondike country. He unfolded it carefully.
Jack couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement as the three of them stared down at the mysterious expanse of Alaska for a moment.
“I was reading about that Seattle bookseller, William Stanley, in the papers this morning,” Captain Shepard said. “He says the Klondike is without doubt the best place in the world for a man to strike it rich.”
Jack had read the same story. “I guess he is probably right—”
Eliza frowned and shook her head, interrupting them. “Of course he would say that, wouldn’t he? Because it happened to him.” She caught Jack’s gaze. “Don’t you see? That doesn’t make it any more likely to happen to you. If anything, it makes it less.”
“El Dorado is the richest placer creek in the world,” Jack said steadily, taking a small sip of bourbon. It burned pleasantly on his tongue. “And Bonanza is almost as rich.”
Jack knew Eliza thought this Klondike craze was just a pipe dream, just another version of snake oil for the quacks to hock through the daily papers. According to her, the steamship companies had hatched the whole plot in a bid to raise ticket prices.
Jack met her gaze boldly. “Do you know how many creeks there are in Alaska?”
She glanced down at the map for a moment and sighed. Then she shook her head.
“That’s the thing,” he said, finishing his bourbon. “No one does.”
But Eliza was not going to give up that easily. She shared Jack’s stubborn streak. “Do you really think everyone can come back rich?”
Jack frowned, and opened his mouth to respond, but found that he couldn’t.
Her question troubled him. Of course, Jack wasn’t everyone. He felt certain that he would succeed where other men would fail, because of his boundless ambition and frightening work ethic. But the question bothered him on an intellectual level, as a socialist: if every man became rich, who would do the work that needed to get done? After all, rich people were only rich because their money could compel others to work for them…
“So what’s your plan?” Captain Shepard asked Jack, trying to change the subject. There was a glint in his steely-coloured eyes. “Come on boy, if I was your age, I would’ve left already. I would’ve found a way.”
Jack thought quickly. He knew he couldn’t ask Eliza for a loan now, not when she was all worked up like this. It would be better for him to show his absolute determination to make his way to Alaska, regardless of what happened.
“I’ll go to the offices of the Morning Call first thing tomorrow,” Jack said with a shrug, “and convince them to hire me as a reporter. I have no trouble living rough, and I can write, too…”
“So you are a newsman now,” Eliza said, her voice turning brittle with emotion. “I thought you wanted to dig for gold.”
“Pan for gold, dearest,” Captain Shepard said calmly, trying to soothe her. “They use pans…”
Eliza ignored her husband, staring darkly at Jack now. He grew equally stubborn under her gaze.
He wished he could explain how badly he needed to go. “I can’t go back to the laundry in the fall,” he said to her at last. “It’ll kill me.”
“Jack…” Eliza sighed. She wanted him to apply with the postal service.
“Look,” Jack began, trying to keep from sounding angry. But they could all hear the strain in his voice. “You know I’ve been sending my writing out… And the Morning Call published me before… so I thought…”
“That was almost four years ago.”
“I just need a chance,” Jack said quietly.
“And we need you here. Who will earn the money when father goes? Do you want to see Mother out on the streets? You know she can’t afford that house.” Eliza shook her head sadly. “She always thinks some big lottery win is just around the corner… So do you, Jack, in your own way, and it is a bunch of damned foolishness.”
Captain Shepard was getting agitated. He hated it when his wife got sharp, especially with Jack. Cannons and rifles set him at ease, but domestic quarrels made him nervous. He began pacing back and forth beside his desk.
“This is not one of her Chinese lotteries,” Jack said hotly, his face turning red as he worked himself up into a stubborn fury. “I will succeed at this. I know it.”
“And what if you don’t? What if something happens to you out there?”
At that moment Captain Shepard exhaled sharply and dropped his bourbon, which shattered, sending shards of glass across the floor.
Alarmed, Jack and Eliza looked over at him. At first, Jack thought he might be choking on something. The Captain’s face had contorted, turning purple, as he clutched at his chest with his hands. His eyes began watering.
But it quickly became clear from the way he was clutching at his chest that it was his heart.
They helped him over to his armchair and sat him down. In a moment or two, Captain Shepard said: “Just need… to catch my breath…” His face had turned a little purple, and there was spittle on his grayish lips.
After a few minutes, the chest pains subsided and Captain Shepard lay back in his armchair, closed his eyes, and began to breathe normally. Eliza took Jack into the hall to talk for a moment, leaving the door to the library open a crack so she could closely monitor her husband’s condition.
“I’m so sorry,” Jack whispered. “I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up. It’s just—”
“Shhh. It’s not your fault.” Her eyes looked more tired than worried. “All this Klondike talk excites him terribly.” She peered at her husband. “He misses the thrill of his cavalry days.”
Jack nodded. “Do you want me to stay here tonight? Flora won’t miss me, I hardly see her these days… I have my bicycle, so if we need to send for a doctor…”
“Don’t worry about us. Just promise you will tell me what happens with the Morning Call tomorrow.” She touched Jack’s cheek. “They’d be lucky to have you.”
He smiled and gave her a quick hug.
“I promise,” he said.
He turned to go, but then remembered something. “Listen, I need to take an early ferry across tomorrow morning…”
Eliza nodded. Then she reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a dollar for him.
* * * * *
The next morning Jack took his bicycle across to San Francisco aboard a small skiff running tobacco from Alameda island. His passage cost him ten cents, which was quite a bargain considering the fact that ferry traffic and fares had more than quadrupled since the Rush had begun.
After he disembarked near the Ferry Terminal building, he cycled up Market street from the waterfront, heading towards Third street.
Jack could see the Call building towering up ahead.
It wasn’t the first skyscraper to be built in San Francisco, but at twenty-one floors it was now the tallest. Although the top third of the building was still covered in scaffolding, and wasn’t due to be finished until the following year, the bottom floors were now operational, and housed the working offices of the newspaper.
As Jack cycled closer he stared up at the skyscraper in wonder. The architects Reid & Reid were crowning the building with an ornate dome, three hundred feet above street-level. It looked to Jack—an avid reader of travel books down at the library—a lot like a smaller version of St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome.
Then Jack saw a group of about a hundred men packed in tight around the building’s large brass doors.
He spotted an old man dressed in an immaculate white suit, standing near the back of the group, and cycled towards him. For a moment Jack thought it was Mark Twain. It wasn’t, of course. From the old man’s dignified manner and bearing, Jack figured he must be a retired professor of some sort.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked the old man, as he swung his legs off his bike.
The old man peered through gold-rim spectacles at Jack with disdain, as if affronted by his direct manner. “They told us about an hour ago that an editor might be willing to have interviews with some of us. Later in the afternoon, maybe.”
Jack frowned, feeling like a fool. Of course! Of course a hundred other men had the same idea as him: to “volunteer” as a correspondent in the North. What did he expect? That he was the only man to dream of escape?
He knew his plan of becoming a reporter for the Morning Call was now hopeless. Even if he somehow managed to get through this mob and get his foot in the door, what could he possibly say to attract the editors’ attention? Why should they take a chance on him?
Even if they really were planning on conducting interviews later in the afternoon—and he seriously doubted they were—Jack would be lost in the crowd, just another face among faces.
“Dangle a promise in front of your eyes,” he muttered. “Meanwhile they’re sneaking out the back door.”
The old man peered curiously at Jack, as if seeing him for the first time. “They are just seeing who really wants the job. Trust me, my boy.” He straightened up proudly. “It’s a test of character.”
“The hell it is.” Jack spat in frustration. “They’re probably going North themselves, and just want to tie us up here. Get the jump on us.”
“Young man…” the old man began sternly. Jack immediately recognized the tone. He prepared himself for a lecture on the virtues of hard work and self-responsibility.
But the old man was interrupted by a sudden commotion over by the large brass doors.
“Ah, come on!” someone cried out. “Open the door, will ya?”
“Are you just going to leave us out here like a bunch of animals?” someone else shouted. The mood of the men was quickly turning ugly. About a dozen or so of the men standing nearest to the doors began pounding their hands against them. They boomed like giant drums. The sounds echoed through the building ominously.
“Calm yourselves!” the old man called out to them. When the men did not seem to hear, he pushed his way into the crowd. “Dignity, gentlemen, please!”
“Shut y’er trap granny!” a dark-haired man yelled back at him.
Another man from the crowd called out angrily, accusing the dark-haired man of being Italian, and a coward.
Within seconds a general brawl had broken out. Desperate, frustrated men began lashing out all around them, transforming the line of individuals into a sea of flailing bodies that shifted and pulsed according to its own strange logic.
Jack quickly laid his bicycle on its side by the curb and rushed into the fray. A half-dozen blows and sucker punches rained down on him, but—truth be told—his blood was up, and he didn’t feel a thing. He managed to pluck the old man from the thick of the melee, and pull him to safety.
Someone had slugged the old man in the face: his nose was bleeding.
“Overrun by barbarians,” he spluttered, when Jack got him out onto the sidewalk. His wrinkled cheeks shook. “This is what happened to Rome, in the final days…” He stared down at a couple of dark red drops of blood that had fallen on the sleeve of his white suit jacket. “I’ve lost my spectacles,” he said.
Jack watched him stumble off, down the street. The dreaming part of Jack’s mind began to race, sketching the scene, as if storing the old man for later use in a short story or novel. One couldn’t assume anything about anybody these days. Times were tough: it felt like everyone was at the end of their rope.
Maybe the old man had called in his last favour to borrow that fancy suit, Jack thought. Maybe he’d go home now and blow his brains out.
Jack looked back at the brawl—which showed no signs of abating—and wondered when the police would arrive to break it up.
The thought worried him, and he scanned the intersection fearfully. The last thing he needed was to be picked up at the scene of a public disturbance. The police already knew he was a socialist: what more did they need to throw him in jail?
So he jumped on his bicycle and pedalled away quickly, heading back towards the Ferry Terminal. San Francisco seemed strangely deserted. As he flew along, it struck him as more than a little odd that he did not see signs of the police anywhere.
Perhaps they were all needed to enforce the Chinatown quarantine?
* * * * *
About halfway down Market street, Jack saw a family of five—father, mother, and three blonde daughters—all wearing identical face-masks, of the sort that doctors wore at surgeries. They were carrying suitcases as they hurried towards the Ferry Terminal.
As he whizzed past he noticed that the girls were all crying. He didn’t really have time to ponder the scene: he had his own worries to contemplate.
Things were now looking very bad for him. He couldn’t even get his foot in the door at the paper, and Eliza would be more money-conscious than ever now that Captain Shepard’s heart troubles were acting up again. His chances of making it onto one of the first boats bound for the Klondike were quickly slipping away.
As Jack coasted down the hill towards the waterfront, picking up speed, he looked North, in the direction of Chinatown. He could see a plume of black smoke rising into the air.
His curiosity got the better of him. He cycled several blocks up Stockton street towards Grant Avenue. He didn’t make it far: as he got closer the smoke grew thicker. Before long it became hard to see, and his eyes began to water and sting.
At last Jack stopped, putting his foot down on the curb for balance, and peered ahead into the gloom.
Through the smoke he caught a glimpse of a line of fifty policemen blocking the entire width of the street. Thankfully they were facing towards Chinatown, and didn’t see him watching them.
He didn’t stay long.
* * * * *
Jack managed to find a small fishing boat headed back across to Oakland that was willing to take him, and paid fifteen cents for his passage. Once ashore again, he quickly ducked into Heinhold’s for a quick bowl of soup and a couple of pieces of bread before heading off on his bicycle again, this time heading up towards Joaquin Miller’s house in the sierras to the east of Oakland.
Miller was a famous poet, known by many as the “Byron of the Rockies.” He’d come of age during the California Gold Rush half a century earlier, and had even spent a year living in an Indian village, which he later wrote about in his book, Life Amongst the Modocs. In his wild youth, Miller had been a jack-of-all-trades: mining-camp cook, newsman, lawyer, judge. He’d ridden for the Pony Express, and was a self-confessed horse thief.
What Jack wanted was Miller’s advice. He respected Miller as an author and man of experience, and knew the older man loved playing the part of local sage, and always made time for young would-be authors who arrived on his doorstep.
Surely he would know what Jack should do.
As Jack rode up into the dry hills, a series of in
creasingly elaborate fantasies played out in his mind: Miller would be so impressed with Jack’s singular strength of purpose, and the fact that Jack was an award-winning author, that he would put in a good word with an editor for the Morning Call, and would guarantee Jack an interview, or better yet, a job.
Or perhaps Miller was going North himself, and would consider taking Jack along as his personal assistant. Either way, Jack would get to go. By the time he was halfway to Miller’s house, he’d convinced himself his odds were actually quite good.
As the warm afternoon air filled his lungs, and he worked up a sweat, his mood lifted. There was something glorious in the workings of his muscles, the racing of his heart. All at once, Jack felt optimistic again.
Things would work out for him. Why not? They had before, in their own strange way. After all, his teenage years hadn’t been completely wasted in drudgery. For a few glorious seasons, he’d managed to escape, and, during that time, to see much of the world.
Perhaps it would happen again. All he had to do was keep trying.
After cycling up the dusty road for almost an hour, Jack arrived at Miller’s small white house. It almost looked like a miniature church, of the sort pioneers might build on the frontier.
Jack leaned his bicycle against a nearby tree and walked up to the front door. He knocked. “Hello?” he called out. “Anyone home?”
A young Asian gardener wearing frayed denim overalls came around from behind the house, and bowed curtly. His hands were caked with moist black topsoil. “Mr. Miller is out,” he said in slow and measured English, and Jack identified his accent immediately as Japanese.
Jack had spent a number of drunken days in Yokohama, when the Sophie Sutherland docked there, and though he hadn’t seen much more of the country than half-a-dozen drinking halls and brothels, he was intrigued by Japanese culture and aesthetics.
“Do you know when will he be back? I will wait.”
“He went to Alaska.”