Son of Fortune

by Victoria McKernan

  iden left the house by the front door. He didn’t want to have to talk to Christopher and Elizabeth in the garden or the servants in the kitchen. All he wanted was to walk and think—or not think. He had no idea what he was feeling, only that he hated this new life, with its constant traps and riddles and slippery ideas, where everything was really something else and then something else behind that, like the shifting scenery and illusion in the theater. But what life would he choose instead? What life was there to go back to? Bribing his way to a job on the docks? Slicing up dead horses in the knacker’s yard? Back in Kansas, stuck for life behind the plow? The lumber camp seemed very attractive right now—that dark green world where the work was hard but the rules were simple: cut down trees, eat, sleep, fight. Was it really only a year since he had left? It felt like a lifetime. But he could not go back there without risking jail or worse.

  It was early evening and the streets were busy. Carriages carried businessmen home. The day maids walked home in laughing groups, gathering up their friends from other grand houses as they went. The winter dark came early, and the lamplighter was already working his way along the street, leaving a string of little glows behind him as he passed. There was a good job, Aiden thought. How did one get to be a lamplighter?

  What he really wanted right now was a good fight. Sometimes he just felt his insides build up like a storm and there was no other way to let it go. Even the pain from a fight was comforting in a weird way. Pain from a fight was clear. You hurt because someone punched you. It wasn’t like this inside pain, this unending twist of doubt and confusion.

  The Barbary Coast was not at all scary now—it seemed more like a silly charade of badness. The same touts and thugs still lurked in the shadows, but they were like actors on a stage. Aiden knew the tangled streets by now, even after months away, and felt at ease walking through them. He went into one of the basement saloons and drank a shot of bad whiskey. Almost immediately a woman came up beside him. Her eyes were cloudy, and the red powder on her cheeks was caked into the wrinkles of her skin. She had thin, raised scars across her forehead, nose and chin. She wasn’t old, but plenty had gone wrong for her.

  “Are you looking for company?” she said.

  “No,” Aiden said, sliding off the rough stool. “Thank you.”

  “Come on—I’m gifted.”

  “What would you do for a hundred dollars?” Aiden asked.

  “I’m not a hundred-dollar whore,” she said, scraping some blackened ooze from the corner of her eye. “But if you’re daft enough to pay that much, I can do whatever you want.”

  “What if I told you a man had to die for that hundred dollars?”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “All the more reason to spend it on me, as he won’t be needing it.”

  “Ah, well, that’s true.” Aiden had to smile. He gave her a dollar and went back out into the muddy street. He wasn’t likely to find any fight in that place. Or anywhere this early. Neither liquor nor passion would be high enough for hours. A thin fog had settled in, condensing on the wool of his coat in tiny droplets that the ducklings called ladybug tears. The mud sucked at his boots.

  He saw Blind Sally in a dark corner across the street. She was dressed the same as when he had last seen her, in the military coat, but with a bright red-and-blue-striped scarf added to thwart the cold wind. She was leaning against a wall, one palm pressed on the stone as if feeling the vibration of the city. Somehow she looked both frail and mighty at the same time, like she was holding up the building but quivering under the exertion of it. The Moon, as always, sat attentively by her side. The dog stiffened as Aiden approached, and gave out a low woof of warning.

  “It’s a friend, Blind Sally,” he said. “Aiden Madison—if you remember me.”

  “Of course I remember you,” she said. “New lad jumped and robbed, turned a fancy lad with the rich boy, turned a sea captain and went to sea. Now you’re back alive. So I’ll take my fee!” She held out her small, crooked palm, steady as the equator.

  “And what am I paying a fee for?” he asked, fishing for coins in his pocket.

  “For the ship I sent you, for that’s what! The black bird ship.”

  His heart skidded sideways. “The Raven?”

  “Aye. That one.” She curled her fingers. “Give on, then.”

  “What do you mean, you sent me the ship? I won it in a card game.”

  “Yes, you did—ha! So you did. And that happens every day about the place, does it? ‘I’ll see your jacks and here’s a ship’—easy as that.”

  Aiden pressed some coins into her tissuey palm.

  “What story are you telling?” he asked.

  Blind Sally felt the coins and deemed them adequate, then gave an exaggerated shrug and pulled her scarf tighter around her shoulders. “Too cold to be standing around outside telling stories. Especially as being thirsty.”

  “All right, then, come have a drink with me,” Aiden offered, as he knew she expected.

  “Not in your fancy place. They won’t let The Moon in, or me either.”

  “Anywhere you like.”

  “Come down the way, then. Where they like The Moon and pour a good level. Come down to Paradise.”

  Aiden followed her down the darkening street. Paradise was slightly better than a cellar with planks, but not much. It had tables and chairs, a few lamps and a stuffed bear’s head with peeling strips of fur on the wall. It actually seemed like a cozy place, friendly even. The kind of place where murder was infrequent—though more from lack of initiative than virtue. The Moon led them to a table in the far corner and sat attentively. The waiter girl appeared almost immediately. The Moon looked at her adoringly. She was a very pretty girl, part Mexican maybe, not young, but with a young girl’s eyes.

  “Good evening, Miss Sally,” she said. “And hello, dear The Moon.” She held out a crust of bread. The big dog took it delicately from her fingers, then curled up on the floor in a surprisingly small bundle. Blind Sally ordered three whiskeys. Aiden, unsure how many of those were meant to be his, looked blankly at the waiter girl and shrugged. She beamed him a far better smile than ought to be found in a place like this and pivoted away with a flip of her skirt. She returned a minute later and set down three small glasses in front of Blind Sally and one in front of Aiden. He took a small sip and waited for Blind Sally to talk. She tipped back one of her whiskeys, then another.

  “I will say, and you must believe, I did not mean for such bad to come for you in it,” she said, looking away. “I do swear that on The Moon.”

  “Why would you think it turned out badly for me?”

  The old woman curled her fingers around the third glass.

  “I’m not so blind as all that. You’re down the Coast now here of a bad night, but hardly two days home and all alone with yourself when you have a fancy house instead, and the fancy place to drink. What says that but trouble?” She took a smaller sip from the third glass and scrunched her veiny knuckles around the dog’s ears. “Talk says it’s a murder ship now.”

  “A murder ship?”

  “Man was killed on it, yes?”

  Aiden nodded. However did she know that? “Yes. A Chinaman.” He wasn’t sure how that tipped the scales.

  “I might have seen it for the devil’s dealing.”

  “Why—what do you mean?”

  She fanned her crumpled fingers across the stained tablecloth. “The man comes to me on a night—asks can I find him men would burn a ship. I say will take a few days. He says no, must be done that night. So do the job yourself I say. Isn’t hard to burn a ship. But then I say why burn the ship at all? A burn may not cure the haunting—may even make it worse for turning loose the spirits and having them adrift. Go lose it in a gamble I say, not advising it, but just I’m tired of him. He says yes, then he will do that, so I send him to you at that place.”

  “At the Elysium? You told him to lose the ship to me?”

  “I told him your face and form. But there onward is
off my hands.” She finished her last whiskey and pushed the three little glasses into a triangle.

  “Why me?”

  He pushed his own glass toward her.

  “I knew you were about.”

  “Lots of men were about. Why me?”

  “Why not you? Things have to happen to someone.”

  iden walked off alone into the night streets. His anger was spent, his frustration had collapsed, leaving only tiredness to carry his body home. Blind Sally’s queer tale was likely just the imagining of a nutty old woman. But what if there was some hand of destiny twisting the threads of his life? Would that absolve him now? What if there really had been no other choice for him to make?

  He did not fall asleep until nearly dawn, and woke just after ten to rare sunshine streaming in through his window. Breakfast was long past, but the coffee was still warm on the back of the stove. The house was quiet. He found the ducklings in the conservatory. They lay in a row on the floor, each one in her own patch of sun, reading or drawing pictures. Peter’s wheelchair was parked nearby. The boy slid his hands back and forth through the light, fascinated by the shadows crossing his fingers.

  “Good morning.” Aiden walked over and patted his shoulder. Peter looked up briefly, screeched a greeting and turned back to his light play. Aiden knew he could not distract the boy for lessons until the sun vanished.

  “What are you drawing?” Aiden looked down at Annalise’s paper, which was covered in colorful blobs like burst flowers.

  “Molecules,” Annalise said somberly. “Professor Tobler taught them yesterday in science class.”

  “They are the smallest parts of things,” Annabelle said. “They make up everything, like bricks make up a house—but you can’t see them, even with our microscope. You just have to believe in them.”

  “Like God,” Annalise offered.

  “But molecules are real,” Daisy said.

  “Molecules are proven by science,” Charlotte broke in, with the imperious tone of the oldest. Her molecules were lacy constructions of green and yellow swirls. Some had faces, arms and legs. Daisy’s were simply circles, squares and triangles connected in long, wiggling chains—more geometry than chemistry.

  “If you change only one molecule,” Daisy said gravely, holding up one small finger, “just one molecule, that can change a thing completely!”

  “So if I change a molecule of you, would you be different?” Aiden asked playfully.

  “Would I be?” she asked seriously. “Would that make me a boy? Or an animal?” She frowned. All four ducklings looked at each other in consultation.

  “Well, one molecule different will make water not be water,” Annalise said tentatively. “That’s what Professor Tobler said.”

  Daisy stroked her hands across her cheeks as if trying to smooth all her molecules into place.

  “It probably isn’t really easy to change molecules around,” Aiden tried to reassure them. He didn’t really know much more about molecules than they did. “Or else things would be changing all the time, wouldn’t they? I mean, you can’t just change bricks around once they’re in a house, right? Let’s not worry about it now.”

  But what if one molecule could really change everything? he thought. One thing done differently, one decision. “We’ll just ask Professor Tobler when he comes again.” Aiden sat down on the floor with them, sharing Daisy’s patch of sun. “In the meantime, let’s draw—tigers.”

  “Have you stopped being sad?” Daisy asked, laying her small hand on his.

  “No one can be sad with four beautiful girls around,” he said lightly.

  “Christopher said you were sad about the Chinamen,” Daisy pressed. “Because they had to work so hard.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell them you were sorry?”

  “The Chinamen? No. I suppose not.”

  “You should. When you apologize, you feel better. And also make, um…” She hesitated.

  “Amends,” Charlotte said, in a tone that sounded like deeds requiring amends had recently occurred.

  “Like if you borrow a ribbon and then lose it, you have to give one of your own ribbons,” Daisy said. “You can’t just say sorry. Even when it wasn’t your fault. Even if it just fell out when you were running in the wind.”

  he Atlas of the World had eleven pages about China, four maps, two photographs and five illustrations. Though Aiden remembered every detail from his countless readings of that holy book during the endless prairie evenings, he knew almost nothing about the real Chinese living in San Francisco. They did not go to the same shops, saloons, theaters, music halls or dining houses as the whites. Like most white people, Aiden had never even talked with one.

  The only Chinese who ventured outside Chinatown were the silent men washing dishes in the backs of restaurants, picking up trash, digging ditches or wheeling carts of laundry through the streets. The man who collected the laundry from the Worthington house twice a week did not even talk to the servants. The sacks of dirty laundry were left in a bin outside the kitchen door. When he returned four days later, he put the clean bundles, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, in the bin and jangled his bells for the maids to come collect it. They always peeked through the kitchen curtain to see that he was gone before they came out.

  The only thing most people in San Francisco knew about the Chinese was that they were filthy, sneaky, idol-worshiping criminals. A few of them were smart—or at least cunning and clever enough to run a business—but most were simple brutes. They were all addicted to opium and kept prostitutes in every basement. Half the newspapers would go out of business without daily stories of Chinese villainy. Except for the opium dens, Aiden had heard and read pretty much the same things about Negroes, Mexicans, Indians and the Irish all his life.

  He had visited Chinatown a few times with Christopher and his friends. It was popular as an exotic adventure in the same way that their visits to the Barbary Coast were, but they had stayed mostly on the main streets of Stockton and Kearny. On these border streets, where the two worlds came together, there were shops full of bright souvenirs for tourists: painted fans and carved ivory pagodas, silk purses and painted scrolls. There were restaurants and teahouses catering to the white patrons.

  “Genuine Chinese dinner!” touts called, beckoning the tourists in. “Chop suey restaurant here. Very clean! Come see—very clean, very good chop suey.…”

  But today he was wandering deeper into the heart of the place. The cries soon fell away, replaced by a constant low din, the background clatter of thousands of people living on top of each other. The buildings were constructed to crooked heights, like toy blocks stacked up perilously high, with facing balconies so close together that neighbors could almost hand things across the street from one balcony to another. Every inch of space was precious, and so every inch was used. Most of the shops were barely big enough for a single person to sit behind a counter the size of a child’s school desk. The merchandise was stacked to the roof on three sides and spilled out onto the stoop in front. Out on the street, spindly ladders leaned against walls, with more merchandise hanging from every rung: cloth, kettles, slippers, shirts and hats; live chickens and ducks in cages; wooden tubs of live fish; pig heads hanging from hooks outside the butcher shop. At the base of each building, a stone stairway, narrow enough that even a small man would have to turn sideways to pass through, led to dark underground rooms. It was reported that half of Chinatown was actually underground, where the poorest and most unlucky lived in the tiny dank rooms.

  The streets themselves were so narrow that little sunlight ever reached the ground, and it was perpetually damp. So many people trod the streets that the mud was packed to a firm surface. It was like walking on moss. The Chinese mostly ignored Aiden, though some cast suspicious glances. A few, probably deciding that he looked too young to be a policeman, beckoned to him, pointing to some dungeon entrance with a whispered offer of one sin or another.

  How in the world was he e
ver going to find Jian’s sister in this place? Except for some older women in the shops and restaurants, there were no Chinese women out at all. A common laboring man could not afford to bring a wife from China, or support her if he did. No Chinese woman came on her own, for there was no work for her here. Wives and daughters of the wealthy would be kept safely in their homes.

  His idea had been to go to the Chinese Merchants Association and try to find out where Silamu Xie lived, but then what? He had no pretense for seeking the man out, and certainly couldn’t simply go knock on his door and ask to speak to his wife. No matter how bad Lijia’s life might be, Aiden knew, he could make it worse with the wrong questions. What did she know about her brother’s fate? And what could she do if she did know? It was difficult enough for a white woman to leave her husband, even when he beat her, even if she had family to take her in. Where would a Chinese woman go to escape? He had messed enough things up by now, Aiden thought. He should think this through a little more. He turned and found his way back through the streets to the outside world.

  The kitchen and dining room were bustling as the servants cooked and set the table. Aiden found Christopher in his room, dressing for dinner. They exchanged glances in the mirror. There was a distance between them now, a kind of wariness. Like little boys who had, for no reason, started throwing rocks at a stray cat one day and wound up killing it.

  “Come in,” Christopher said, winding his necktie around his stiff shirt collar. “I said you’d be here for supper. You weren’t around to ask.”

  “That’s fine,” Aiden said. “I can dress quickly.”

  “And there’s this for you,” Christopher said, picking up a leather folder from his desk. “The papers from the lawyer. The cargo has sold—your bank statement is there too. Like it or not, you’ve made a good bit of money.”