Hightower pulled Janiva’s chair out and invited her to sit again. He told Jonas to get a damp towel and sop up the splatters. He invited Hodges to enjoy another bottle of champagne “compliments of the club secretary.”
“Never mind the champagne.” Hodges dropped his butter knife on his plate with a rattle. “I want that Mick out. Out today. He was listening to our conversation.”
The Irish waiter stopped at the kitchen door, his back to us but his ear cocked.
Hightower was saying, “He claimed he was a Scot, sir. We hired him to wash dishes, but today we needed—”
The Irishman turned on his heels, as if he had come to a decision, and announced, “I ain’t a Scot. I ain’t a Brit. And I ain’t the sultan of Turkey.” He stalked back. “Michael Flynn’s the name, and as Irish as Paddy’s pig I am, a poor refugee—”
“Be quiet,” said Hodges.
“—from the rocky fields of Galway, where the potatoes turn to black mush and the people die from starvation.” He pushed past Hightower and grabbed the ladle from Jonas. “And I can see that I’ve been called by the Good Lord himself to save all you fine folks from the same sad fate. So I’m needed right here. Not in the fuckin’ kitchen!”
“In the what kitchen?” said Hallie Batchelder.
“Cover your ears, dear,” said her husband.
“So I’ll finish chowderin’ up the lot of ye’s, or you’ll all think less of me and me race!”
“We could not think less of you than we do,” said Hodges.
“Then let me change your mind.” Michael dunked the ladle and splashed chowder into Hodges’s cup. “Eat that. It’ll take the edge off your temper.”
Then he splashed another measure into Hallie Batchelder’s cup. “You, too, darlin’, but get it down quick before your fat-guts husband steals it all.”
My brother jumped to his feet, “We don’t want your chowder. We don’t want you in our club. We don’t want you or your kind in our city.”
“And I don’t want to be here,” said Michael Flynn, “but life don’t always work out, now, does it? I’m payin’ the debts me sister owes for makin’ the mistake of dyin’ in a miserable room in a miserable hovel called Hightower House, in a miserable Boston slum called Fort Hill. Until I work off them debts, Hightower’s weasel of a brother is holdin’ all her property, includin’ the only thing dear to me in the world.”
“Be quiet,” whispered Hightower.
The Irishman looked at my mother. “’Tis a fine daguerreotype of me and me sister and our own dear mother, taken a month before she died.”
My mother pursed her lips and looked away, as if she could not care in the least.
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” said Michael Flynn, “we Irish have mothers, too.”
“Dams is a better word,” said Samuel Hodges.
“Dams? Dams, is it? A dam is a female breed horse, sir. Not a human person.”
Hodges leaned back and folded his arms, as if to say that was exactly his point.
“If you’re callin’ me sainted Irish mother a dumb animal, I’ll be askin’ you to step outside. And we won’t be fightin’ with butter knives. Bare knuckles it’ll be, to the count of ten.”
Hodges pushed back his chair to stand.
But the Irishman grinned. He seemed well-skilled at starting fires, then throwing water on them. “Of course, if you’re callin’ her a fine thoroughbred, which is usually what it means when you put a sire to a dam in the sport of kings, I accept the compliment. So take your seat and eat up. You’ll need your strength for your long trip.”
Flynn splattered chowder into the remaining cups and called out as Hightower slipped away, “No need to be sendin’ for the constable, there, Mr. Club Secretary. I’m done. Let these fine folks get back to plannin’ the conquest of California.” He dropped the ladle into the tureen. “I just might head out there meself. So you can keep the family picture. That way you’ll recognize me when I come back a rich man.”
He had seized the moment and made it his own. I was impressed and secretly entertained.
Then his eye fell on Janiva. “And may I say, miss, if your handsome beau won’t marry you and take you along, I’d be charmed to offer you protection on the voyage. You’ll get no sneaky-fingers or bloomer pullin’ from me—”
Hallie Batchelder gasped. She knew what that meant.
“—for I’m as honorable as any man in this room. And there’s no reason why ladies shouldn’t see the world and have a bit of adventure, too, is there?”
I was shocked. This waiter had just said to Janiva what Janiva had said to me when I told her I was leaving. I stiffened my spine and said, “You’re done, mister. Best hurry for the next ship.” Then I prepared to defend myself.
But Michael Flynn answered with a courteous bow. “I apologize, sir, if I’ve offended you or your lady. You seem a right gentleman, despite your upbringin’.”
Yes, he could start a fire and put it out, all in a sentence or two. Then he turned smoldering ash into a conflagration by reaching his arms around Hallie Batchelder, and before anyone could react, grabbing the table and flipping it at Hodges. Amidst screams and shouts and gasps of shock, the tureen, chowder, glasses, silverware, dishes, centerpiece, and my ninny of a sister-in-law went flying.
Flynn snatched the bottle of champagne before it toppled, took a swallow, pivoted on his heels, and stalked toward the cloakroom, shouting, “May the lot of ye’s rot under the gaze of all the dead Boston bastards on these walls.”
Though the table was gone from in front of her, my mother remained motionless in her chair, pursing her lips. Hallie Batchelder seemed to be having a fit of hyperventilation as her husband fanned her with his napkin. My sister stared at the dinner plates now spinning on the floor with eyes almost as wide as the plates.
But Hodges took action. He flung the table off himself and sent it flying at me. Then he scrambled to his feet and hurried toward the cloakroom. A moment later, all two hundred pounds of him staggered back into the dining room, turned once, and collapsed onto an unoccupied table, setting off another explosion of glass, cutlery, and club-monogrammed china.
The Irishman, wearing someone’s fine winter cape and a familiar brown hat with a leather visor, poked his head through the door and shouted at the unconscious Hodges, “One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten. Out!” Then he pivoted and strutted down the hallway.
I hurried after him, reaching the foyer just as the front door slammed. Then, from the outside, Michael Flynn’s gloved fist smashed through one of the sidelights.
“Good God!” shouted Hightower. “Somebody should shoot that man!”
“Let him go,” I said.
“But sir, he just stole your hat.”
The Irishman was singing as he bounded down the steps. Something about a “wild colonial boy.”
“My hat?” I said. “He can keep it. Wherever he’s going, he’ll need it.” Then I picked up the card that had flown into the foyer with the broken glass. Neatly lettered upon it were the words No Irish Need Apply.
January 12, 1849
Farewelling
The air smelled of snow on the morning that I gazed for the first time upon the vessel that would take us to California. The William Winter loomed over Long Wharf, a wall-sided Atlantic packet with raised decks fore and aft, false gun ports painted into a white strip along her side, and three mighty masts piercing the clouds.
I stepped from our coach directly under the gaze of Reverend Winter himself, a North Shore minister so beloved of his parishioners that they had named a ship for him. He appeared seven feet tall, exquisitely carved in black robes, with his Bible clutched to his chest and his god-like mane of white hair blown back in the imaginary breeze, a fitting figurehead for a boatload of high-minded Christian adventurers like us.
But this wooden minister paid no mind to the Sagamores farewelling with friends and families, or to the bustle on the nearby wharves, where other crowds were gathering and other ships readyin
g for California. And he did not cock his ear to the band playing light airs by the gangway. His gaze reached beyond all of us, beyond the harbor islands, out to the gray sea that would soon be our highway to wealth and fame.
Let others have the wealth, I thought. I would take the fame of writing it all down.
Then my mother interrupted my reverie. “You’re not going to California in that little chamber pot, are you?”
“It’s as seaworthy as the Constitution, Mother, and almost as big.”
My sister leaned out the carriage window. “Has it ever gone around that thing at the bottom of South America?”
“The Horn,” I said. “It’s called Cape Horn. And this ship has crossed the Atlantic a hundred times. She can weather whatever comes at Cape Horn.”
“I wouldn’t sail to Cape Cod in it.” My sister climbed out after me. “And why do they call it a ‘she’ if it’s named for a man?”
“Let’s ask the captain.” I helped her down, then reached up to help my mother. “I’ll introduce you both.”
“Where is he?” asked my mother.
“He’s standing by the taffrail, that man in the black sea cape and the top hat that looks like an upturned plant pot.”
“Taffrail?” said Diana.
“The stern rail,” I said, “at the very back of the ship.”
My mother looked at him. “Stern rail and stern face.”
“Like you, Mother.” And I noticed two men sniggering at our conversation.
One was Christopher Harding. He was an old Harvard chum. He had even squired my sister to a cotillion in college. He could be forgiven.
The other was Deering Sloate, whom I had disliked from the day that the alphabet made us neighbors in a classroom at the Boston Latin School twelve years before.
Was it any wonder that I had asked my mother and sister not to attend our departure? I had no desire to see this voyage turned into a floating boys’ school, complete with the cliques, grudges, and the needling insults so common in such places. And no one had more skill at sophomoric needling than Sloate, especially where mothers and sisters were concerned. So I decided to needle first.
I said, “Hello, lads. Ready for me to write about how brave you think you are?”
“Jamie, old boy! I was hoping you’d be with us.” Christopher’s skinny frame fairly quivered with excitement. “There are half a dozen of us from the Class of Forty-five.”
“We can start a Harvard Club, then,” I said.
“What fun!” said Christopher, who had a naïve innocence and absolutely no ear for sarcasm.
“Fun.” Sloate laughed, though it was unclear if he was laughing with Christopher or at him. “He thinks it’s going to be fun, Spencer.”
I gestured to the big Walker Colt that Sloate wore in a holster at his hip, like a badge of manhood. “That gun won’t help against twenty-foot seas.”
“You’re not bringing pistols?” Sloate rested his hand on the gun. “Just your pen?”
“I can do more damage with my pen. Be careful, or I might turn it on you.” Then I turned my back on Sloate.
I had packed a brace of Colt Dragoons, a gift from my brother, but as my mother’s first glimpse of them in our parlor had caused her emotions to overflow, I was not wearing them on the wharf. I did not want another scene. I also wanted to board quickly, so I ordered our footman to fetch my sea bag from the boot.
The bylaws of the company, acceded to by all members when they signed articles of incorporation, stated, “Each man shall be allowed one sea bag, not to exceed seventy-five pounds weight, the contents being the equivalent in bulk of a single sea chest, dimensions 36 × 48 × 24. For reasons of space, no chests shall be allowed, except those belonging to the company physician and assayer.”
I had weighed, measured, and packed my bag, based on this list:
1 oilskin for rain
2 hats—1 broad-brimmed black felt (which I was then wearing), 1 straw
2 pairs of boots (1 new, 1 broken in)
3 each of flannel shirts, heavy twill trousers, suits of small clothes
1 blanket, 1 sheet of India rubber for ground-sleeping
10 reams of foolscap, 7 notebooks, 100 pencils, 5 pens, 20 nibs, 20 bottles of ink
5 books—Shakespeare, Virgil, Dickens, Fielding, the Holy Bible
2 Colt Dragoons, with powder horn and lead mold
In addition, I was wearing my winter cape over my tweed suit. It was a rig that could stand up to Boston’s weather, so I was certain that it could handle the worst that the ocean might hurl at us.
When the footman handed me my sea bag, my mother’s eyes filled with tears. She pretended to shiver and said, “Oh … I hate a raw winter day.”
And I was glad that Janiva and I had already bidden our farewells.…
* * *
I HAD RIDDEN THE day before to her home on Blackstone Square, to take tea under the watchful—and baleful—gaze of her parents.
Mrs. Toler was a sweet and perceptive woman. Mr. Toler was better known for bluntness. He owned the Roxbury Cordage Company and boasted that there was no more important industry in Massachusetts, as his ropes formed the shrouds and fashioned the lines that held Boston masts in place and kept Yankee sails aloft in the heaviest gales in the farthest reaches of the watery world. I had never disputed this statement, as Mr. Toler did not invite disputation.
While the mother had made lively small talk, the patriarch had said little, and by his scowl had reminded me—if I did not already know—that he disapproved of my continued presence in both his parlor and his daughter’s affections. A spurned father, it is said, can be even less understanding than a spurned daughter.
At length, Mrs. Toler had made an excuse to draw her husband from the room, thus providing her daughter and me with a moment of privacy.
Once alone, I had taken Janiva’s hand and assured her, “If I could bring you, I would.”
“Then why don’t you? Women deserve a chance to look beyond the horizon, too, just as that Irish waiter said.”
“I wouldn’t take my life’s philosophy from Irish waiters.”
“Even when you know it to be true?” She had slipped her hand from mine.
“When I return, I’ll take you to Italy. We’ll visit the antiquities.”
“Is that meant to be the proposal my father has been expecting?” This had burst from her so angrily that I was glad to see Mr. Toler reappearing with my cape and hat, a wordless invitation for me to be on my way.
Janiva had then escorted me to the foyer, where she pulled from her sleeve a red neckerchief with a yellow paisley pattern. She said it was silk and so would warm me in winter and cool me in summer and dry quickly when I washed it, which she hoped I would do often.
After a glance into the parlor to make sure that her father was not watching, I had embraced her. And even through the heavy layers of wool that I wore and the lighter cotton and petticoats that encased her, I had felt enough to make more than my heart leap up. She had then shocked me by taking my face in her hands and giving me a kiss longer and more profound than any I had ever enjoyed.
“My parting gift,” she had said with a mixture of loving ferocity and cold anger. “I won’t be there tomorrow. I won’t play the heartsick lover for all of Boston to see.”
“Nor would I ask you to. We sail on the morning tide. It ebbs at eight thirty.”
“Far too early for my delicate constitution.” She had added bitterness to her tone.
And her father’s voice had echoed from the parlor: “Good-bye, Mr. Spencer.”
* * *
NOW THE SHIP’S BELL was ringing—eight times for eight in the morning.
The first mate spoke through a brass trumpet while the captain stood, arms folded at his back, projecting an air of imperturbable calm. “All Sagamores to board immediately. Those not registered in twenty minutes will be left behind.”
This brought a wordless moan from the crowd and a burst of movement on the wharf. Mothers held
their sons. Fathers hid their tears. Lovers kissed. And a group of young men—full of life, energy, and optimism—gathered their gear and pressed for the gangways, all to the band’s accompaniment of a jaunty “Yankee Doodle”.
I embraced my mother and sister and turned for the ship before either of them started weeping.
I tipped my hat to a group of tradesmen who were passing a bottle in the cold air: the Brighton Bulls, six former butchers from the abattoir on the Charles River. Their leader introduced himself as Fat Jack Sawyer, whose fat looked more like muscle to me.
I dodged a Negro rolling a water cask to the forward gangway.
Then I fell in behind Jason Willis, whose wife could not bring herself to leave her husband’s side. Willis was a classmate of my brother’s and generally a decent fellow, but not one who believed that the rules ever applied to him. As if to prove that point, his servant was carrying his sea chest while Willis carried his bag and his wife clung to his arm.
At the top of the gangway, the second mate was checking each name and weighing each bag, so Willis and I had time to talk.
He said, “Looks like we’ll be sailing with darkies, James.”
“If the crew doesn’t mind, why should we?” I asked.
“Indeed. Why should we mind darkies if we’re asked to tolerate Micks? From all the brogues and blarney I’ve heard, there’s a few of them in the fo’c’sle, too.”
I had never considered Jace Willis worth the energy it took to argue with him. So I smiled and turned to the man behind me.
He was a burly fellow, with a sullen brow and dark eyes. He wore the clothes of a tradesman, which may have explained his discomfort, considering that so many of us were dressed like dandies out for an afternoon of pistol-shooting fun. He carried a sea bag in one hand and a large canvas sack in the other. I offered my hand.
He dropped the sack, which clanked, pulled off his glove, and enveloped my hand with his own. “Name’s Dooling. Matt Dooling.”
“Well, Mr. Dooling, I hope you’re ready for adventure.”
“Ain’t expectin’ adventure. That’s a word with a ring of fun to it. Ain’t expectin’ nothin’ but a hard voyage and hard labor in California.”
Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush Page 5