Belle Cora: A Novel

by Margulies, Phillip

  A GENTLEMAN SITS ON A SOFA in my parlor. His left hand strokes the leaves of a potted palm. His right hand stroke’s Pauline’s cheek. He has made his fortune, never mind how, and will leave by steamer tomorrow, and have no further part in my story. I mention him solely because of the information he is about to impart.

  Give him wide-apart eyes and a wide mouth: a frog face. Not old, maybe twenty-five. He’s smart. He likes people to know it. He talks about the war that is coming to San Francisco. “You girls are going to be in the middle of it,” he declares, and he offers Pauline his wineglass and watches her sip.

  I recline on a sofa that faces theirs, and though he talks to Pauline, he often glances at me. I’m the one he wants to impress, or help—I’m not sure which. “On one side, it’s State Senator David Broderick and his friends—immigrant laborers who cast their votes for the Democratic Party. On the other side, it’s Sam Brannan and his people—Know-Nothings.”

  Pauline licks her lips. “Know Nothings,” she says in a careful way that draws attention to her mouth. “Am I one of those?”

  He taps the end of her nose. “Soon, my pet, we’ll go upstairs and discover what you know.” He looks at me. “The Know-Nothings are simply men who hate immigrants and the children of immigrants. They especially despise Irish Catholics.

  “Now, you know that in San Francisco many of our laboring men are Irish Catholics and members of the Democratic Party, and they all worship David Broderick, because he used to be one of them. They think he walks on water. They made him a senator. They’ll vote for an old shoe if he tells them to. Against Broderick, and hating him like poison, are the bankers and merchants and auctioneers and newspapermen, who are mostly Protestants and Know-Nothings. Their leader is Sam Brannan, the richest man in San Francisco—he comes to this house sometimes, doesn’t he?” (So he did; special requests; money no object.) “Have you ever had Sam Brannan?”

  “I?” says Pauline deliciously. “I told you, I’m a virgin.” She does this very well, and as a result, we both realize, the frog-eyed gentleman is ready to take her upstairs.

  But I want to hear the rest, and to her annoyance, I say, “So it is Brannan, and the rich natives, against Senator Broderick and laboring immigrants.”

  He blinks, nods, and says distractedly, “With, in between, a lot of native, Protestant laborers who, at election time, might go either way.”

  “And who is the bad one?” Pauline asks, squinting at me: Is this really what you want? Are we in a lecture hall? Time is money, no?

  His fingertip toys with a corkscrew curl beside her brow. “The honorable Senator Broderick does lots of dishonest things. He’s from New York—so, you know, New York politics. Uses his boys, tough fellows, to keep his opponents away from the polls at election time. When he wins, he rewards his cronies with city jobs and he plunders the treasury.”

  “So David Broderick is a thief,” I say, “and Sam Brannan is a hero.”

  He smiles slyly; he knows I’ve made a joke. “Sam Brannan is a slippery fellow. You know how he made his fortune—what he did to poor Mr. Sutter.” I do; it is the founding legend of our city and everyone here knows it, the way everyone in ancient Rome knew the story of Romulus and Remus. But he repeats the tale anyway. “Brannan used to be a Mormon elder …” he reminds us. In 1846, he came to San Francisco (then a small village with another name), leading fifty bigamous families who shared his dream of turning the West Coast of North America into a Mormon republic. In 1848, several of the families found work in what is now Sacramento City, building a sawmill for a man named John Sutter—building Sutter’s Mill, later to be inscribed in numberless schoolchildren’s composition books as the place where gold was first discovered in California. Brannan, who was always starting small business ventures, opened up a general store near the mill. One day, his people showed him some gold nuggets they had found while at their work. They told him of Sutter’s predicament: gold was a fine thing, but his claim to the land was uncertain; he must keep the discovery quiet until he was firmly in possession. Brannan urged his people to keep the secret, telling them that that way they could look for other gold deposits around here without having the whole world pour in to elbow them aside. Very quietly, Brannan purchased every pick and shovel in the West, and choice waterfront property in San Francisco. Then he ran down the street with a horn full of gold dust, screaming, “Gold! Gold from the American River!” The gold seekers came like locusts. Sutter was ruined. The Mormon laborers stayed broke. There was no Mormon empire, since the hordes that came to California from all over the world were not Mormons. But Sam Brannan became the prototype of the rascal who gets rich by mining the gold in the pockets of the miners.

  “Now Sam Brannan and his friends have all the money in the city, but David Broderick controls the government. Brannan means to change that. And I know how. I—who was privileged to be present when Mr. Brannan was even drunker than usual—I know his plan. With the excuse of all the crime that you have in any city this size, and the fires that keep destroying the town because it is made of kindling, Mr. Brannan and his friends will form a Vigilance Committee like the ones in the mining camps. They’ll say they’re going to clean up the city. They’ll lynch a few robbers to show they can do it, and then they will run Mr. Broderick and his men out of town. Only Mr. Broderick is not the sort to go without a fight; the bloodier it gets, the more he likes it.”

  He stands up and takes Pauline by the hand. He looks back at me. “I don’t have a dog in the fight, not anymore. But you do, Belle. Because you have to be friends with whoever comes out on top, and you don’t know who that’s going to be, do you.”

  He bows to Pauline—After you—and they retire to her room on the second floor.

  L

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I HEARD a tremendous clamor in Portsmouth Square, one block west of my house. I went up to the roof and observed a great mass of people packing the streets and the field near City Hall and looking upward, as if someone was giving an address from the balcony. I went out to the plaza to see what was going on, but by the time I arrived the crowd was dispersing. As the men walked off in various directions, I noticed the handbills scattered all around me. Some of these pages, caught in a breeze, quivered like live creatures on the wooden streets and sidewalks. Others momentarily took flight, or floated in puddles, or were firmly trodden into the mud. “What’s happened?” I asked a young man in a miner’s outfit, who, coming closer, emitted a yeasty reek of whiskey, bobbed forward and back on his feet, and stared at me as if I might be a product of his delirium. Another man, in a long black coat, having overheard my question, said, “They called off the hanging; maybe they’ll have it later,” in the same tone as one might mention the postponement of a boxing match. He removed his tall black hat and knelt; with his free hand he picked up a page that bore a boot print, and held it open before me. The handbill invited “all those who wish to rid our city of thieves and murderers” to come to Portsmouth Square today.

  I heard my name shouted. I saw a familiar misshapen slouch hat (now with patches) and a black silk hat, and a moment later, as a clutch of men between us happened to move away, I saw Charley and Pete. I walked toward them. Charley kissed me and took my arm, and the two of them told me what had happened.

  Three days earlier, a store owner had been knocked on the head and robbed of two thousand dollars. The police had caught the man suspected of the crime: the notorious English Jim, from London by way of the vast British prison that was Australia. Somehow or other, Sam Brannan and his friends had gotten English Jim away from the police and had sent out these handbills calling for a rally in Portsmouth Square, where, just now, from the balcony of City Hall, Brannan had given a speech in favor of hanging the thief immediately (“No courts! No lawyer’s tricks!”). The mayor had then spoken out on behalf of constituted authority—don’t be hasty, let the law take its course—and at last a man with the heroic appellation of William Tell Coleman had suggested the compromise of a small trial, a people’
s trial, free of legal technicalities and guaranteed to be over by sundown. The crowd had not been told where the trial would take place, but Big Pete had a tip that Brannan had commandeered the recorder’s office on the second floor of City Hall, and curiosity led us to the office.

  The recorder’s office, ordinarily a place where deeds were registered, smelled so strongly of stale sweat, unwashed feet, whiskey, and rotting teeth that one greeted the lighting of cigars with relief. Men tipped their hats and offered me their seats, and I sat near the front, close to the windows; Charley and Pete stood along the back of the room, near the door. There were many silk hats and black frock coats, but also many flannel shirts and bandannas, not because any laboring men were here but because San Francisco’s rich thought of themselves as frontiersmen and took their tone from the miners. In the front row, turning to speak to some men behind him, sat Sam Brannan, looking moderately drunk, as he always was by this time of day. He was tall and angular, with a narrow, goatlike face, shaggy sideburns like two big brown brushes down to his chin, a long skinny nose, and sleepy eyes that never participated in the rest of his expression; they had the same fatigued look whether he was saying that tonight he would take three of my gals to bed with him at once and use them in ways I had never imagined—how much would that cost?—he had the money!—or screaming that gold had been discovered at Sutter’s Mill; or that a man should be hung right away, without any lawyer’s tricks. Fantastic overnight success, success such as no man could achieve by his merits, had gone to his head; only his complete destruction could teach him anything now. Brannan was talking in a friendly way to a long-haired, clean-shaven fellow, uncommonly handsome, who I later found out was William Tell Coleman, the man who had suggested giving English Jim the courtesy of a mock trial before they hanged him. (The prisoner kept on insisting that he was not English Jim and had never even heard of English Jim, and furthermore that he had not robbed any store, but no one believed him.)

  I searched the room for habitués of my house. With an impact as palpable as a stone striking my chest, I saw Jeptha seated beside Herbert Owen on the side of the room farthest from the windows: I watched them until Jeptha looked up. He returned my glance calmly. I thought perhaps he had seen me first and had time to collect himself. Certainly I hoped that’s what it was. To demonstrate my indifference, I gave him a tepid smile. He turned away from me. With a dry mouth, I asked the man beside me, “Who’s the preacher?” for Jeptha was wearing a white clerical collar, and another man said, “Reverend Talbot, he’s the new minister at the Unitarian church on Clay Street.”

  My heart beat against my ribs as if to say I could stay here if I wanted, but it was getting out of this terrible place. I had seen him last almost exactly a year ago, when he was about to go to the mines with Herbert Owen. I knew from advertisements in the newspapers that Herbert Owen had returned to San Francisco and opened up an auction house. I had wondered what had happened to Jeptha of course.

  At two o’clock, the trial began. Despite its location in a government office, it was an illegal trial, circumventing regular judicial processes so that a man might be hanged that very evening by the men now playing the roles of prosecutor, defense, judge, and jury.

  I kept trying to see it through Jeptha’s eyes, but that was hard, because I did not know what his opinions were now. Was he a Brannan man or a Broderick man? Unless he was changed beyond recognition, he would think that the prisoner was innocent until proved guilty. But Jeptha had not spoken. Perhaps he was planning to speak up if it actually came to the rope. Jesus had been lynched—he would make that point. And I would stand up and shout out: Gentlemen, don’t let this man confuse you. I know him. He’s a killer. He killed a child on the Juniper, and another, our child, on the Flavius. Do you admire me, gentlemen? Give me justice; enjoy my gratitude. And the cry would go up: Hang him! You heard the lady! No lawyers! Hang him!

  WITH ALL THE DULL PARTS LEFT OUT, the trial went quickly. There was an intermission while the jury went to question the injured store owner in his home a few blocks away. Spectators shared flasks of whiskey. I got up to talk to Charley and Big Pete.

  “You’ll never guess who’s in the room,” I murmured as coolly as I could. “My former husband. The preacher,” I said, and I pointed toward Jeptha, and just as I was pointing, a young woman who had come in by way of the door behind us walked to his chair; I had not yet seen her face, but I knew who she was without quite believing it. When she reached the row where Jeptha and Herbert Owen were sitting, she took out a jug and some sandwiches. I wanted to sit down or lean on something, but there was nowhere to sit, and nothing to lean on except Charley, while he watched me with his tranquil brown eyes that missed nothing and revealed nothing. “That’s my cousin Agnes.”

  Agnes sat with Jeptha for a while, talking with him and watching him eat and drink. She offered him her cheek and he kissed it; he rose to escort her out, but she shook her head and left. Her clothes were simple and becoming. She looked cleaner than soap. The men’s eyes were on her, and if for me men had removed their hats, for her they laid their hats solemnly across their chests, as if she were the American flag. They did make a distinction between her kind of woman and mine, after all.

  There was a wedding ring on her hand. I felt the bile rising in my throat.

  THE JURY RETURNED, HAVING SPOKEN to the wounded shopkeeper in his home and given him an opportunity to identify the prisoner. Witnesses came forward to say that English Jim had also committed a murder in a mining camp, so the jury need not feel uneasy about hanging the man merely for theft. The jury retired. When they filed back into the room an hour later, the foreman said they had not been able to reach a unanimous decision.

  “Hang ’im! Majority rules!” yelled Brannan, and some like-minded men cried, “Who bribed the jury?” and “Hang the jury!” The jurors drew their guns. I rejoined Charley and Big Pete, and we left.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I WENT TO Herbert Owen’s auction house. Though I had furnished my house from auctions, until now I had avoided Herbert Owen’s establishment, because I did not think it would be good for my peace of mind to hear of his adventures with Jeptha in the gold fields. But now my peace of mind was gone, and I was trying to restore it.

  Herbert’s place was located half a block from the edge of the fourth great fire. The neighborhood still smelled of ashes, and I passed the misshapen remnants of the prefabricated iron buildings that had been put up after the third fire, the insides of which had been intolerable in warm weather. Their owners had been willing to work in buildings that were as hot as stoves in exchange for the confidence that they would never burn. Instead of burning, these iron buildings had melted.

  Owen stood at a high desk, running an auction, when I came in. I sat in the back row. He wore a black frock coat, a black satin waistcoat, and a silk hat. When he noticed me, he gave me a big smile. A year in California was like ten years back east, and to him I counted as an old friend from his pioneer days.

  When I had been there about twenty minutes, he announced “Lot Seventeen” and lovingly put a handsome wood-and-leather case on the desk. With a stage magician’s sign language—with the salesmanlike dexterity that makes objects look justifiably proud—he snapped open the brass catches, turned the case, and raised its lid to afford us a forbidden peek at two solid-gold-handled derringers on a green baize lining: virgins both, fired just once, at the factory, to make sure that they could do their duty when the fatal hour arrived. A few bids later, they were mine. Some of the men in the room knew who I was, and I heard this well-informed group telling the others that the pistols had been bought by a parlor-house madam, no doubt as a gift for her lover, an Italian gambler.

  When the day’s business had been done, Herbert Owen invited me to a quiet room full of curious objects and uncorked a bottle of champagne that came from the cellar of a man who had briefly flourished as a waterfront developer. Owen had found success here; he seemed much more confident than the man I had known aboard the Juniper.r />
  I drained my glass. “Tell me about Jeptha and Agnes,” I said, unable to wait any longer. “How in the world could such a thing occur? Did he ever tell you what she did?”

  “I think …” he began carefully. “I believe, yes, that I know what you refer to.”

  “Are we still friends, Herbert? Did he poison your mind against me?”

  “No, I like you both. I always have.”

  “Then be candid with me. Don’t spare my feelings. Tell me everything.”

  “I guess you deserve to know,” he said, rubbing his chin, and he began: “Last year, when we were getting ready to go to the mines, he started drinking a great deal.”

  “We’re talking about Jeptha.”

  “Yes. We walked into a saloon one day, and … he said something peculiar. He said he hadn’t had strong drink since he was a boy.”

  I shut my eyes for a while, remembering 1837.

  “After that, every evening he’d drink. He’d toss four or five drinks down his throat, and then he’d pick a fight with a stranger, which would come to fists. Once, while he was drunk, he posted a letter. I asked who it was to; he said, ‘The girl I left behind.’

  “This all happened over about a week. By then we were outfitted and we left town. There’d been so much rain, the roads were like porridge. We started prospecting one place and another. At a few places we made enough to meet expenses, and about six months after we left San Francisco, we found a placer that we were experienced enough to know was going to be very good. We started working it. In the camp, he was sober all day; he saved his drinking for the evening. By then people had gotten wind of our strike, and we had lots of neighbors, and we couldn’t stop them—the rule is, we’re only entitled to twenty feet apiece. In the camp, in the evenings, after he drank, he would quarrel until punches were thrown, and it was dangerous now, because there were serious things to fight over, like water rights and boundaries, and every other man had a Colt in his belt. I tried to be his friend, but it was difficult: he was dirty, he stank, he let his beard grow. His ribs showed, and he had a festering ulcer on his shin. One day we heard a loud noise up and down the river. Men were shouting and whooping. But it wasn’t gold they were shouting about. It was a woman. It was Agnes. She found Jeptha, and he was dumbfounded. She took his hand, and looked him over, and started sobbing, and …” Owen stopped, his head down, looking across his brows for permission to go on.