“It’s the damn Chinese!” a man muttered to Aiden after they had both been turned away from yet another laborer’s job. “Chinese take all the Irish work here, you know! There’s not a hole been dug by a white man in ten years! Women’s work too! My wife used to get fifty cents a dozen for buttonholes in the shirt factory. Chinese do it for seven. Seven cents! No one can sew more than twenty buttonholes an hour—and that’s only if the thread is good! My children used to shuck oysters—Chinese took over that too! One dollar a day for a good white child—Chinese do it for fifty cents!” He slammed the beer glass down on the bar. “And the children had decent hours!”
“What’s good hours for shucking?” Aiden asked.
“Ten to noon for the lunchtime, then three to eight for the suppers, right? For the older ones, that is. The little ones, five or six, can’t shuck more than three or four hours a day—their little hands, you know? But they still could get ten cents for shoveling away the shells. And always Sundays off. So that’s all right, I say—let the Chinese work Sundays, but don’t take work from my children!”
Aiden said nothing. Seven hours was an easy day for a child, and three hours off between shifts was extraordinary. Shucking oysters would probably be hard on their hands, but they had clean air, which was far more than mill children and coal children had.
As for himself, not working was very strange. For all his life before this, not working had meant starving. But now he had only himself to worry about. And not working in San Francisco was vastly different from not working in Kansas or the coal mine. A beggar eating out of garbage bins in this city would still fare better than he and Maddy had their last month on the burned-out homestead, when they ate nothing but clay and grasshoppers. Just a mile outside the city were farms and lush orchards where the gleanings—the bruised and discarded produce left behind after the harvest—could feed a hundred families.
But Aiden quickly learned that he did not have to forage in bins or fields. There were saloons throughout the city that offered free lunches. Food was spread out on a long table called a buffet. There was bread and butter, ham, roasted onions, plates of gorgeous oily sardines and pots of creamy oyster stew. There were whole apples! It was the craziest thing Aiden had ever seen, and every day he still could not believe it was true, but he soon saw the strategy behind it. Most men paid three times the cost of the food to buy liquor to go with the free meals. The usual price was twenty-five cents for a glass of wine or spirits, but some places charged as little as ten cents for a glass of beer. He could make his few remaining dollars go a long way.
He was fortunate to have a place to stay at Mrs. Neils’s boardinghouse. Forever, no cost, Mrs. Neils had tearfully promised once she heard, as Fish knew she would, about how Aiden had rescued her youngest son.
On his third day of searching, he got a half day’s work unloading a coal barge. Then one of the wagon drivers from that job, impressed by how hard Aiden had worked, hired him for a big furniture-moving job the next day. It was heavy work, but it was interesting to see all the things that rich people owned. It took four strong men to carry one cabinet, and one entire cart just for the carpets. There was one man who did nothing but wrap the paintings. He shouted at the movers if they came anywhere near his wrapping table. Aiden didn’t see what the fuss was, since the pictures were all dull, dark portraits of grim old-fashioned people—or dogs. Why would anyone want a picture of a dog? Everyone knew what dogs looked like. If he could have pictures on a wall, if he ever had a wall of his own, they would be of beautiful things, flowers or the ocean or the pyramids of Egypt or any exotic land, really. He liked dogs well enough, but he could go outside and see one whenever he wanted—why have a painting of one? He wiped the sweat from his forehead and kept on lifting things. The moving job was good, but Aiden knew there were already enough relatives to handle the usual daily work.
As soon as he got paid from the furniture job, he gave Mrs. Neils money for rent and board, despite her protestations.
“I’m taking up a paying bed,” he said. “If you want me for free, I’ll have to sleep on the kitchen floor, and that won’t do since I’m used to luxury now.”
The thin mattress in the sailors’ bunk room and the suppers of pickled fish and boiled potatoes were hardly luxurious, but he was grateful to have the security of a home, no matter how simple. Mrs. Neils had mended his pants and given him the very good jacket of a very old distant cousin who, she had assured him, had died peacefully in his sleep. It was a bit too small all around, but was a soft wool and had nice deep pockets. Even after he paid the rent, he still had enough money to buy two pairs of new socks, two shirts and a pair of sturdy blue pants called denims, which almost all the laborers wore here. The fabric was thick and stiff, but the shopkeeper said it would soften up with wear.
Though he was unnerved in one way to not have a job, in another way it was nice. Aiden enjoyed walking the streets of the city, looking at people and buildings and shopwindows. At first everything was so foreign it felt like he had landed on the moon. But by the end of the week, he was beginning to make sense of the rhythms and patterns of city life. The best and most amazing part of it all was having so much to read. Magazines and newspapers came infrequently to Kansas. News a month old was considered fresh. But now, with the telegraph running all the way across the country, news from Washington or New York could be in the San Francisco papers the next day. Soon, it was reported, there would be a permanent underwater cable across the whole Atlantic Ocean, linking America to Europe.
Books were even more scarce and expensive on the prairie. His family had often gone an extra year patching over patches to buy a book. A trader with a copy of A Tale of Two Cities once rode off with six live chickens, half their flock. But Aiden still remembered those wonderful sixteen days of winter when, for one hour each night, the whole family was transported to another world and lost in the story—except for interruptions of stomach gurgles and farts, since they were eating nothing but corn mush and beans.
Aiden had also put aside a few coins for Blind Sally. Though his daily exploration of the city had brought him back to the Barbary Coast, he hadn’t found the old woman in the daytime, and he wasn’t about to go back alone at night. But two weeks later, when Fish returned from the logging run eager for a night of adventure, Aiden was willing. Fish washed, changed clothes and bolted down his supper, and they were out the door before Magnus could begin his usual warnings.
“You would think he’s sixty-one instead of thirty-one,” Fish ranted as they walked. “Sometimes I’m ready to push him overboard! Push them all overboard! The same men, the same stories, the same route, the same everything day after day after day. My sextant might as well be a toy.”
“Couldn’t you just get a place on another ship? Aren’t they always wanting sailors?”
“Sailors, sure. But I don’t want to be a sailor. I want to be a navigator, though I’d be happy to start as boatswain and work my way up. But I’ve only sailed the coast, no blue water. They want experience.”
“Well, experience is nothing more than living through your mistakes.”
“So I need to make more mistakes?” Fish said with a laugh.
“Exactly.” Aiden slapped him on the back. “I can probably help you with that!”
The streets of the Barbary Coast felt different now that Aiden was a two-week veteran of the city, walking with a friend and here on purpose, not just lost. The bouncers in their bright waistcoats seemed far less sinister, more like bored men at a tiresome job. Gaslights flickered at this later hour, and there were lots more people walking about. There was still a desperate taint in the air, an overwhelming stink of piss and the weight of danger everywhere, but it didn’t feel like murder was standing square in front of you either. Still, Aiden knew, it was true about there being a body a night. One of the newspapers had a column called “Despicable Crimes of the Barbary Coast” that filled several inches a day.
“It’s great, isn’t it!” Fish almost out
paced Aiden with his exuberant stride. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“Great” wasn’t exactly the word Aiden would have used, but there was a certain tawdry excitement to it all. Most of the places were narrow and dark. Some of the bars offered little more than a few rough planks set on top of boxes, and served vile liquor out of a jug to the shabbiest men. But many places had brightly painted signs advertising shows and dancing girls. A few even had women standing outside to lure men in, women dressed in satin corsets and ostrich feathers and little else. Aiden was relieved when they turned a corner and Fish stopped in front of a large, brightly lit building.
“Here’s the place.” Fish tugged him into a garishly painted doorway. “The top place! The Elysium!”
A bouncer in a blue velvet coat with shiny gold buttons stepped up to open the door. It seemed a little pretentious to Aiden, until he noticed the two hundred pounds of pure muscle inside the silly coat. The man had fists the size of ducks. He probably didn’t need to use them much, since his evil-eye glance was enough to make most men cower just at the sight of him. Aiden followed Fish inside, then stopped, awestruck.
Fish grinned. “Look at all this—it’s like a place in France!”
The room was grand as a cathedral, only where an altar might be there was an acre-long bar with a marble top and gleaming brass footrail. Instead of organ pipes there were tiers of liquor bottles, all reflected in gilt-framed mirrors that hung behind them. There were marble statues, though not of saints or angels. The walls on either side of the bar were painted with pastoral scenes in which beautiful girls tended fluffy lambs on gentle hillsides covered in buttercups. The artist had clearly never spent any time with any real sheep on any real hillsides, Aiden thought, for he had dressed the girls in floaty white gowns as flimsy as cobwebs, not at all practical for tending livestock.
“Come on, let’s have a drink.” Fish expertly muscled his way through the crowd to the bar. Aiden had never seen so many people in one place. There were probably two hundred men. At one end of the room, there was a band with a piano, two fiddles and an accordion, a little stage and a small space in front of it for dancing.
Fish nodded at the bartender. “Two whiskey sodas.” The bartender poured the liquor into the glasses, then added water from a bottle with tiny bubbles fizzing up from the bottom. Aiden had never seen anything like it, but Fish treated it as ordinary, so he was embarrassed to ask. He watched the stream of bubbles boil up in his glass.
“Skoal!” Fish raised his glass in a toast. Aiden took a big swallow. The bubbles buzzed at the back of his throat and foamed through his head, making him cough and choke. Just as bubbles fizzed out his nose and dripped all over his shirt, two beautiful girls slid up next to them, sparkly as diamonds, silky as cats.
“Need a hankie, sweetheart?” One of them plucked a bit of frilled lace from the very low neckline of her very tight dress and dangled it before him. He smelled a wave of sour perfume. Aiden struggled to squelch the coughs but felt his face turning red.
“He’s more of a straight whiskey fellow,” Fish explained, clapping Aiden hard on the back.
“Stick with us, boys, and you can have it any way you like,” the other girl said, fluffing her blond curls over her shoulders. “My little sister and I have a special tonight for handsome young gentlemen such as yourselves.”
“I’m sure you do,” Fish said, looking them up and down.
“Then why don’t you buy us a drink?” The dark-haired “little sister” trailed a finger down Fish’s arm and batted her eyes.
“Thanks anyway,” Fish said, reluctantly pulling his gaze up to her face.
“We don’t look good to you?” she persisted with an exaggerated pout.
“I’ve been at sea over a month,” Fish laughed. “Your grandmother would look good to me. But I’m afraid my pockets aren’t full enough to take care of ladies as fine as yourselves.”
“Oh, I’m sure we can find something in those pockets to make everybody happy,” the blond girl cooed, and rubbed her hand lasciviously down Fish’s leg. He sidestepped her advances and gently peeled her practiced hand away.
“How about you, honey?” The other girl pressed herself on Aiden. “Special price for juniors.” Her experienced eye had quickly discerned his youth.
Aiden took a deep breath. He wasn’t used to seeing that much bare flesh on a woman, let alone having it pressed against him, however briefly. It felt very hot in here all of a sudden.
“He’s a preacher,” Fish said, by way of rescue. Aiden glared at him. Fish just shrugged and grinned.
“Is that so?” the blond girl purred. “Well, you know, a preacher ought to have a good working knowledge of sin.”
“The Bible says sin is an ugly thing,” Aiden said. “So I don’t see how you girls can be of any help to me.”
The girls were silent, trying to decide if that was insult or compliment, then gave up and flounced away in search of better prospects.
“Damn, that was a good line,” Fish laughed. “How’d you think of that?”
“You can always say something is from the Bible,” Aiden said. “Anything you want to say for or against, you can find something in the Bible to back it up.”
“They’re called pretty waiter girls,” Fish explained as he watched the bright dresses swish away into the crowd. “And talking is the only thing they do for free. Even then, they’ll ask for a tip if they think you’re looking too long. Don’t ever say you’ll buy them a drink. They’ll order some expensive French champagne, and you have to pay. Or they’ll slip something in your drink, and next thing you know, you’re out cold and robbed in the alley. Some of these places have a special room just for robbery, with a chute to slide the bodies out the back. Anyway, they’re two dollars to go upstairs here. The girls next door are half that, and just as pretty and clean.”
Aiden knew about prostitutes and the business did not shock him, but he didn’t want to “go upstairs” with these or any others. It was not a question of beauty or cleanliness, of morality or even expense; it was just impossible to put aside thinking about them as real people and who they might otherwise be. He had become close friends with a woman named Bandy who led a group of women on a circuit through the far northern lumber camps. Her own fate had been cruelly decided by smallpox, which had left her scarred and robbed of any chance at normal life. Society may have reviled her, but she was also his dearest friend and one of the kindest people he had ever met.
He reached for his drink and took another, more cautious sip, but he still couldn’t get the hang of drinking bubbles. He pushed the rest of the hornet fizz to Fish.
“Soda water is all the fashion, you know,” Fish said.
“Well, I’ve never been so good with fashions.”
Fish met some other sailors he knew, and they caught up on ship talk. Aiden mostly just looked around and listened to snatches of conversation and watched for glimpses of the pretty waiter girls as they flitted in and out of the crowd like bright tropical birds in a drab forest of men. At the other end of the room, men crowded around gambling tables in a thick blue cloud of cigar smoke, shooting dice or spinning the roulette wheel. There were at least a dozen card games under way, and Fish was eager to join one called faro, but Aiden didn’t know the game.
“It isn’t hard,” Fish said. “Do you play poker?”
“Not well,” Aiden confessed. Fish joined a game and Aiden stayed at the bar. Just one year ago, on the bare plains of Kansas, the possibility of ever being in a fancy saloon in San Francisco with music and dancing girls was about the same as being crowned king of England. But now here he was, and it was oddly disappointing. He wasn’t sure why. He slowly sipped his drink. He was careful with alcohol now. In the logging camp, he had started relying on it a bit too much, especially after a fight. It was plentiful and soothing and softened the harsh world for a while. But he had also seen it make men stupid and mean and ruined. He wanted his wits sharp, especially in a place like this.
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��Oh my God, you’re the shark killer! I was sure it was you!” The tall, handsome, fair-haired young man was suddenly walking toward Aiden. Other men slipped out of the way to make room for him, not in deference but automatically, the way people turn to the sun on a winter day. “Boys, come on—I told you it was him!” Christopher Worthington called back to his friends. Four other young men slipped up through the crowd and pressed close around. They were all dressed in shabby coats and worn old work pants, but the crisp collars of their tailor-made shirts and their fine boots immediately marked them as impostors. They were all seventeen or eighteen years old, Aiden suspected, except for one who looked around fourteen, and they were all, except for that young one, very tipsy.
“This is the fellow I told you about,” Christopher went on. “Fought off a man-eating shark with his bare hands! Cracked its head open with a hatchet, then dove in the water to save his shipmate!” He focused, as much as he could, on Aiden. “We’ve only heard it roundabout, so you must tell us the whole story! They say you kicked out a tooth and you wear it now in a pouch around your neck. Can we see it?” Christopher smacked a hand on the bar. “Sir!” he shouted at the bartender. “Another round, and one for our friend here!”
“I don’t know where you heard all that—” Aiden said, embarrassed at the attention.
“Oh, it’s all the talk in the sailor bars,” Christopher interrupted.
“Since when do you go to sailor bars?” One of his friends laughed.
“Oh no, not me! This is the deepest into rough I ever wish to visit!” He waved a dismissive hand around the gilded room as if it were a cowshed. “My father sent his clerk back around to the dock that evening to tip the crew. One always tips for special services,” Christopher explained. “It got overlooked that morning, with all the snarling and fangs and such. But our clerk learned this fellow here”—he grabbed Aiden’s arm with drunken familiarity—“saved our bears! He shot a seal with a genuine Indian bow. That he got from real Indians—in—in—well—Indian lands! Right?”
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