Son of Fortune

by Victoria McKernan

  “Our bears?”

  “What others?”

  “How do they know?”

  “Have you never heard of a telegraph?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The telegraph had changed the world, connecting both sides of the country, so that messages that used to take months to travel by ship and horse now flew through the air in minutes.

  “Ship news is important in San Francisco,” Fish explained as his brother steered them through the channel markers. “There are stations along the coast that watch for the ships and wire the news ahead. Every cargo means something to buy and sell, and the merchants want to know what’s on the way. I suspect Mr. Worthington’s bears have been talk for some weeks now, as there’s precious little novelty this time of year,” he said as he readied the mooring lines.

  Captain Neils turned to Aiden. “Can you get the cubs out of the cage?”

  “I thought we were going to winch the whole cage up through the hatch.”

  “Look at all the people!” Captain Neils tipped his bristly chin toward the crowd. “It’s plenty of money Mr. Worthington has paid. I suspect he’d appreciate a bit of a show. Maybe you could walk them out on the leash, show them off. There’s a bucket of fish,” he said casually, as if the bucket had just appeared out of thin air. “You can make them dance, eh?”

  “Shall I tie bows around their necks too?” Aiden asked.

  “Do you have some?” The captain’s face twitched and cracked briefly in what passed for a smile.

  “You should have seen when the kangaroos arrived!” Fish whispered. The crew began tossing mooring lines to the dock, and Aiden went below to arrange the show. In the four days he had cared for her, the mother bear had become somewhat used to him and no longer charged the bars when he approached. A full belly also helped her disposition, so it was relatively easy to coax the docile cubs out. Aiden slipped a bit of rope around each fuzzy neck, slid the door open just a foot and snuck them quickly out of the cage. There were of course no ribbons or bows to be found. He thought about borrowing a couple of the captain’s bright red kneesocks—that would serve him right!

  Bear cubs were not built for ship ladders. They were fat and wiggly, like sacks of wet grain that had come alive. Aiden was sweating by the time he got them up on deck. He led them to the opening at the top of the gangplank, and there was a swell of oohs and aahs from the excited crowd.

  Aiden picked a fish out of the bucket and held it up. The cubs twitched their noses eagerly. The boy cub stood up and pawed the air, but his sister promptly swatted him away and took the treat. The crowd laughed. Many of them were rich, Aiden thought, dressed in fine shoes and clothing. His mother had been an expert seamstress, and he knew she would have needed twenty hours to produce the ruffles and trims on some of these dresses. And people certainly wouldn’t be wearing their finest clothes to the docks in daytime, so these would be their second-best or even ordinary clothes—yet each outfit probably cost a month’s pay for a lumberjack. For a farmer, they might as well be woven of moonbeams. But even the poor people didn’t look so bad off. They all had coats and they all wore shoes. What kind of place was this, he thought with amazement, where the poor could turn out to look at bears in the middle of the day? Wouldn’t they be beaten for missing work? Wouldn’t their children go hungry for the lost pay?

  The girl cub flounced impatiently and clawed gently at Aiden’s leg. Her brother just sat on his haunches and surveyed the crowd with the calm aloofness of a raja who accepted adulation as his natural right. Aiden hated having so many people looking at him. He took a deep breath, ducked his head and led his charges down the gangplank.

  Children pushed to the front of the crowd and squealed, but even the top-hatted men didn’t conceal their excitement. When Aiden got the cubs down to the dock, the crowd erupted in applause. Both cubs cowered at the noise. They yelped and darted about, tangling their leashes as they tried to hide behind his legs. Aiden squatted down and scooped an arm around each one and held them close, trying to mimic the reassuring noises he had heard their mother make. They calmed down and began to lick his face. A few women squealed in delight, and Aiden wished he could slip through the cracks in the dock.

  Then the crowd parted and a young man appeared. He looked fair enough to be fifteen, yet he walked with the command of a judge. People fluttered out of the way as he passed, then fell in a wake behind him, like blossoms in a current of air. Even the cubs noticed him. Aiden had no idea what clothes were in fashion, but somehow he knew these were perfect. His coat flowed around him, and the trousers appeared to change shape to accommodate his stride. The leather boots were closely cut and supple as butter.

  The man-boy was beautiful, Aiden thought—not like a girl was beautiful, but just because there wasn’t a better word for what he was. It wasn’t a feminine beauty, but like an ancient Greek or Roman statue’s. His features were strong and even, his eyes wide and alert, his hair a thick, lustrous dark blond, perfectly cut and never touched in nervousness. Just behind him, like a royal court, were four little girls—sisters, Aiden guessed, for their similar beauty—plus assorted servants, coachmen and porters and two wagon drivers steering a flatbed cart pulled by a team of draft horses. The young man stopped well out of clawing range and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “What lovely bears!” he said. “My father will be very pleased. He regrets he could not be here to welcome them personally, but I thank you, sir, for their excellent care!” He nodded slightly in what was neither a bow nor a dismissal but a graceful acknowledgment of a special effort by an obvious inferior. Aiden couldn’t think of what to say, so he simply held out the leashes. The young man stepped back.

  “Oh no, the keeper will take them,” he said, gesturing with one hand. A tall, long-faced man in plain canvas trousers shuffled out of the retinue and glowered at his new charges. Before he got near, however, one of the little sisters, maybe five years old, scampered up excitedly. Aiden pulled the cubs back and stepped between them and the girl, but the young man, moving with a quick, catlike grace, scooped the child up.

  “They bite, Daisy,” he said. “They will bite off all your fingers and you won’t be able to hold a cookie or pet the cat or pick your nose ever again!” The little girl stared at him in wide-eyed terror for about three seconds, then burst out in giggles and butted her head into his shoulder. He petted her neck affectionately and set her down as an embarrassed nanny dashed up to retrieve her.

  The keeper took the leashes from Aiden. The girl cub darted eagerly to sniff his boots, but the startled man kicked her back so she tumbled head over heels with a squeal. Aiden was shocked at the rough response, but before he could do anything, a sudden chorus of frightened gasps and shouts erupted from the crowd. Fish and the crew were hoisting the mother bear over the rail. The cage was halfway down, but the mother bear, closed in the dark hold for a month, terrified already to be swinging in midair, had just seen her missing cubs. She was frantic. She thrashed back and forth, slamming her body against the bars and swinging the cage wildly. She reared up, hitting the top of the cage, sending it spinning. On the dock, the nervous cubs began to cry and strain against their leashes to reach her.

  The winch rumbled with awful slowness. There were guide ropes hanging from the corners of the cage, but the longshoremen, who would have had no problem steering an ordinary crate into place, were not about to get anywhere near an angry polar bear. Aiden ran over and grabbed one rope. By hanging with his entire weight, he eased the swinging for a moment, but then the bear lunged again, the cage tilted and Aiden was dragged off his feet. Cutting down trees had made him strong, but strength wasn’t much use when he had only his dangling body weight to work with. He hung there awkwardly for what seemed like an hour but was probably only ten seconds. Then Jonas and Gustav reached the dock and grabbed the other ropes. Together they managed to slow the crazy spin. One longshoreman finally took the last rope, and the four men guided the cage safely to the ground.


  The crowd cheered. Aiden shook his strained arms and rolled his shoulders with relief. The excited cubs dragged the zookeeper over, their leashes now completely tangled. The man offered little help as Aiden got the cubs back into the cage. The reunited family cuddled together, the mother still trembling and panting with panic.

  “She doesn’t look very good,” the keeper grumbled.

  “She’ll do all right if you tend her,” Aiden said, still catching his breath.

  “Awful skinny.” The man spat on the ground.

  “She just needs feeding and a place to be.”

  “Mr. Worthington paid for a good bear.”

  Aiden felt a surge of anger boiling up. He grabbed the man’s hand, as if in a handshake, but dug his thumb into the wrist and twisted it sharply. “This is a good bear!” he said, dropping his voice so no one else would hear. “She’s come a long way through bad times! She will live fine if you keep her well.”

  “Let go of me!” the man yelped, and tried to pull away.

  “So you keep her well or I will come kill you in your sleep.” The man cowered, and Aiden was glad to see real fear in his eyes. “I swear I will,” Aiden added. “Knife stabbed through your eyeball straight into your brain. Or just a stick.” He twisted the man’s wrist harder and leaned into his face. “Most sticks go into brains easy enough.”

  “You mistook my meaning.”

  “Good. Because I wasn’t liking the meaning that I was mistaking.” Aiden released his torturous grip and smiled. The crowd had seen nothing but a handshake. “She needs to eat two or three fresh seals a week, I think. And some fish. Maybe you can get her used to other meat too.”

  “We have plenty of meat at Mr. Worthington’s zoo,” the keeper said defensively.

  Aiden choked back the bile in his throat. “That’s fine, then.” He had a quick temper and had learned violence, but he never got to like the taste of it. And he actually had no idea how easy it was to stab a stick into a brain through an eyeball. It seemed like it should be easy—everything between eye and skull was just mush.

  He helped Jonas and Gustav get the cage onto the cart and watched with relief as the whole show finally began to roll away. The beautiful man, the flock of little sisters, the nannies and the coachmen all climbed into their carriages and drove off. The crowd drifted apart.

  “Ja, good, no more bears!” Jonas hitched up his pants. He and Gustav turned and hurried back up the gangplank to the ship. Aiden knew they were eager to start off-loading the lumber so they could get home to see their families. There were no extra minutes in a city like San Francisco. They would have only two nights ashore before sailing north once again for another load. “An idle ship is like a hole in the ocean, and into this hole you throw money,” Captain Neils had said.

  Aiden went back on board to collect his things. They made a very small bundle. It was strange not to have his bow and arrows. Of course there would be no use for them now; they would in fact be an encumbrance in the big city. The big city—the reality of it was just now hitting him, and his stomach felt queasy with nerves. He had no idea what he would do here. In his sixteen years, he had worked in fields, quarried stone, mined coal and cut down trees. He had read seventeen books, not counting the Atlas of the World, Shakespeare or the Bible, but he doubted there were jobs as book readers. He pulled the drawstrings tight on the little canvas bag. It was especially hard to know what he would do when he had no idea who he even was anymore. At least he knew where he would stay.

  “Here is the address of our mother’s boardinghouse.” Fish handed him a scrap of paper as he came back up on deck. “There are six boardinghouses on that street—it’s called Swedish Town—but anyone will know where to send you once you’re there. The place next door sometimes has a parrot in a cage hanging outside. And a black dog. But ask anyone and they’ll know. Tell my mother we should be done off-loading by five, so we will be there soon after. There will be a big dinner.” He grinned in anticipation. “After dinner, we will go out. Music halls, dancing girls—just wait!”

  “Listen to me, Fish,” Captain Neils interrupted. “You can drink in our own places.”

  “Yeah,” Fish scoffed. “With the same twenty old Swedish seamen I’ve known all my life, in the same three saloons where the barmaids are all the grannies of my friends!”

  “The Barbary Coast is dangerous,” Neils said, not as a captain this time, but as Magnus, the big brother. “There is a body every night.”

  “Well, there are a hundred saloons and two thousand men—I don’t mind those odds.”

  “We have only two nights ashore—you should see Ingrid.”

  “Ingrid should see herself,” Fish muttered under his breath.

  “What do you say?”

  “I said, I can’t wait to see Ingrid!” Fish rolled his eyes at Aiden, then contorted his face in a schoolboy gesture for a homely girl.

  Magnus swore at him in Swedish, a language that Aiden thought sounded too pretty to be much good for swearing.

  “Rest up!” Fish winked at Aiden and leaped to the stack of lumber.

  “I do not joke!” Magnus shouted after him. “Don’t listen to him,” he said to Aiden. “You are too young and it is all danger out there!”

  “I’ll be careful,” Aiden said. “Can I help off-load?”

  “You would just be in the way.” Magnus blinked a few times as if to clear spiderwebs from his face. “You are a good boy. If I had a job for you on this ship, I would keep you. But you see I have the big family already. But if you like to work on a ship, I will ask around.”

  “Thank you,” Aiden said. “But I think I’ll see what the land might hold for me right now.” The wash of doubt he had felt moments ago was vanishing out here on this bright sunny day with this whole glorious city before him. Everything felt suddenly possible. San Francisco was the city of fortune. Maybe it was time for some fortune to come his way.

  iden walked through the bustling dockyard, dodging carts and winding through mazes of piled-up crates. The rare sunshine made the day so warm that many men worked in shirtsleeves. With block and tackle, it took only two or three men to swing the most massive cargo. One of the crates he saw was only slightly smaller than the covered wagons that carried entire families and all their possessions across the country on the Oregon Trail. What could it possibly contain? Two elephants? Six pianos?

  Aiden saw a man doing nothing, which meant he was probably in charge of something, and walked up to him.

  “Excuse me,” Aiden said. “Who would I see about working here?”

  “Your grandfather,” the man said, barely even glancing at him.

  “My grandfather’s long dead,” Aiden said.

  “Pity, that.”

  Aiden sensed there was an acre of complicated understanding that he was missing here.

  “I can rig and swing cargo. I’ve been working as a logger.”

  “Well, good for you.” The man tapped his pipe and took out a little pouch of tobacco. “Far too many trees cluttering up the country.”

  “I’m looking for a job,” Aiden said, trying to be clear. “I could do this sort of work.”

  “So could a little girl if a boss man said she could,” the man spat.

  “Ah, I see,” Aiden said, suddenly understanding. It was good work, so it was closed work. It was who-do-you-know kind of work. “Well, if I come across any little girls looking for work, I’ll surely send them your way.” He smiled and touched his cap, then went on his way before the man could decide if that was an insult or not.

  Aiden followed the street up from the wharf until he came out onto a broader street. There were grand buildings as far as he could see. Half the people walking by looked like they were dressed for dinner with the president. In the street were wagons and carts and carriages of every size and shape. There were peddlers selling brooms, toys, ribbons, old clothing and blocks of soap. Shopwindows displayed everything in the world: fancy shoes, silver platters, French lace, silk cloth, wheels of
cheese, jars of shiny candy. Everything was abundant and everything was for sale. Aiden had never seen so much of everything.

  He walked on, mesmerized, for a good fifteen minutes before he remembered that Fish had told him to turn left at the fifth street he came to. Aiden turned and went back to where he had started, and counted. Some of the streets had signposts and some did not. Fish didn’t know the name of the street, just said there was a grand house on the corner. Like most people who were familiar with a certain area, Fish took little notice of actual markers or signs; he was used to going home through backstreet shortcuts. The instructions were further complicated for Aiden since he wasn’t really sure what was a proper street and what was an alley. As for a grand house on the corner, everything looked grand to him. He had been so entranced, wandering from one street to another, that he was now lost in a maze. He tried to pick out landmarks, but the buildings all looked so foreign, with their many windows and lacy trim, that he could not rely on any one to guide him. He decided to just go back to the dock, but he soon realized he wasn’t even sure which direction the main road was. Besides that, fog was rolling in fast and thick. This was nothing like the morning mist on the prairies, or even the damp gray of the northwest forests. This was like a bowl of porridge. He could not see ten feet ahead, let alone tell north from south.

  The streets were suddenly narrower and lined with saloons instead of shops. Garish signs advertised dancing girls and penny whiskey. Crude, plunking piano music echoed from half-open doors, and in front of every door was a man in a bright waistcoat and bowler hat, calling to him as he passed, the voices scratchy and creepily the same. Some of the places had lamps outside, but these were few and far between. Shadowy men passed. A few women flitted in and out of sight, darting across from door to door like bright birds, their skirts clutched up out of the dirt. He almost collided with one. Her cheeks were freshly rouged, her curls still tight from the curling iron. A heavy scent of dismal flowers hung around her.

  “Excuse me, miss,” Aiden said.