Awake Unto Me

In turn of the century San Francisco, two young women fight for love in a world where women are often invisible and passion is the privilege of the powerful.

Kerry O’Shea always handled what life threw at her. Growing up on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, schooled in the streets by her con-man father, she fights to make a place for herself as a cook in the Palace Hotel. Escaping her roots made her plenty tough, but when she meets Beth Hammond, none of her street smarts matters. It's love at first sight, but how can such a love ever be possible?

Beth Hammond is every bit as strong as Kerry and proves it when she talks her domineering father into allowing her to study nursing. Drawn to Kerry in ways she doesn't understand, Beth fears the terrible secret she hides could destroy their relationship before it can even begin.

Awake Unto Me

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Awake Unto Me

© 2012 By Kathleen Knowles. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-625-0

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: January 2012

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editors: Victoria Oldham and Shelley Thrasher

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

Amanda Williford, archivist, Golden Gate National Recreation Area Archives, for her patient assistance to me in digging up historical facts about the Presidio and the beginnings of the Army Nurse Corps.

Stuart Lustig, MD, Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California, San Francisco, for sharing his expertise on child and adolescent sexual trauma.

Mark Kucharski, for sharing his views on restaurants and their workplace politics.

My beta readers: Joanie, Yvette, Karin, and Carol.

My very patient editor, Victoria Oldham.

Thanks to my supportive family: my sister, Karin, and my spouse, Jeanette.

Special thanks to Joanie VDB who said to me a long time ago, “You know, you really can write.”

For Jeanette, whose love informs every word I write

The Barbary Coast

San Francisco, September 1888

“Kerry! Go dump that pot out and rinse it at the pump,” Rose shouted from the second floor of the Grey Dog Saloon.

Kerry knew better than to argue. If she kept quiet and did her chores, she could escape to the waterfront and no one would miss her. Rose called her a shadow as she came and went from the house on Jackson Street.

After her chores were done, Kerry scurried out the front door of the Grey Dog and raced to the waterfront a block away. The saloon was one of the oldest in the area and, like its neighbors, was home to a whorehouse upstairs. Kerry didn’t think living there was odd; she’d lived there her whole life. Rose and Sally and the other whores had raised her after her mother died when she was born.

She shaded her eyes from the bright sun reflecting off San Francisco Bay and highlighting rocky Alcatraz Island. Rose said the Spanish explorers had named the island
La Isla de los Alcatraces
, “the island of the pelicans.” Kerry couldn’t see any pelicans, only the grim-looking military fort that took up most of the island and cast dark shadows on the peaceful blue waters of the San Francisco Bay, where a few small fishing boats trawled under the crystal-clear sky. The ever-present westerly breeze ruffled Kerry’s hair.

Walking north past Jackson Street to Vallejo Street, she reached a weatherworn warehouse with several barrels in front and pulled some clothes from behind one. She’d traded Teddy Black, the son of the warehouseman, some underclothes she took from one of the whores for them, although she didn’t know, or care, what he wanted with women’s clothing. If Rose found the boys’ clothes in her bedroom at the Grey Dog, she would take them away. Minny, also the daughter of one of the whores and Kerry’s bunk mate, couldn’t be trusted, not to keep a secret.

Tucking them under her arm she headed for the farthest pier. The tide was out and the smell of seaweed, dead fish, and the waste from the ships made her eyes water. She ducked under the pier, pulled off her faded cotton dress, and put on the shirt and corduroy pants with suspenders. After pulling a cap down low on her face, she walked back to the warehouse and hid the dress. She went off in search of Lucky Jack who, when he was in the right mood, sometimes behaved as her father, which he was. Otherwise he tended to ignore her.

A few hundred yards out from the docks, the cutter
Defiant
lay at anchor, in the day before from Boston. Jack would be looking to steal some of her hands for the
Rosalind
,
since the captain of the
Rosalind
, Meeks, was always looking for men. He needed new crew every time he took
Rosalind
on runs up the coast, since most of his crew would either run away or jump ship. The attractions of the Barbary Coast were too hard to resist. Along with gambling, Jack had taken up crimping, the kidnapping of sailors, a couple years before because the money was good. There were so many gamblers on the coast, the competition was fierce, and Jack never seemed to get enough money from gambling alone. But there was never a shortage of ships in need of hands, nor of the unscrupulous captains who would pay for them, which was where the other part of his business came in. The big ships arriving in port would founder in the mud of the bay if they tried to make it to the docks, so the Whitehall boats, big rowboats, ferried their crews and goods back and forth. Lucky Jack was in cahoots with a couple of the boatmen from the Whitehall boats who made extra money by delivering the sailors into the hands of men like Jack, crimpers, who would get them drunk, take their money, then sell them for a good price to other ships. Other than drink and whores, it was the main industry of the Barbary Coast District of San Francisco and had greatly contributed to the area’s reputation for danger.

Everyone said Jack was the best crimper on the Barbary Coast. He could spot his marks and get them drinking and spending in the Grey Dog before sunset. Leo, the Grey Dog bartender, was his partner, and the hapless sailors would pass out from the opium-spiked booze and wake up in ropes onboard the
Rosalind
or one of a dozen other ships. The pretty waiter girls who served the booze were whores who entertained the sailors before they were given their doses and dumped into the cellar below. Most of them aren’t so pretty, Kerry thought, looking at the women wandering among the tables or leaning against the bar, but the sailors didn’t care. The captain Jack had a deal with that particular night would come in the early morning and haul them away. Kerry had heard Jack and Leo laughing about the poor sailors who not only didn’t get women, but woke up on a strange ship going somewhere they didn’t want to go.

Kerry found Jack passing the time with Leo and some of the Grey Dog regulars, the way he usually did when he was waiting for a ship to release her crew to the diversions of the Barbary Coast. Kerry boldly walked up to him and pulled his sleeve.

“What do you want, boy?” he said roughly, without turning around. “My shoes are shiny enough.”

Jack, they said, could see around corners and Kerry believed them. “The Whitehall’s going out to the
Defiant
.”

“What? Now?” Jack jumped off the bar stool and strode out the door with Kerry after him.

“Jack,” she said, “it’s me.”

He squinted in the sunlight. “Aw, Christ, girl. What are you about?” He looked closer. “Are you crazy? What if someone spots you?”

“No one knows but you and maybe Leo. I want to help you.”

“No. Never. You—”

“Let me, Jack. Please. I don’t want to spend all day inside with the girls. I’d rather spend it with you.”

“You want to learn the game, do you?” He smiled, seeing a little of her mother Molly in her and a lot of himself. She had a light dusting of freckles across her nose, dark brown eyes, and, like Molly, dark hair. She was slight but tough and quick. She had grown up a wharf rat and rarely smiled, so when she did it was extra special.

The take from gambling and crimping kept Jack well dressed, comfortably fed, and took care of young Kerry and whichever whore took his fancy at that moment. Jack wasn’t sure how much Kerry knew about his work, and he usually tried to ignore her even as he made sure Rose had money to support her. Jack didn’t know what he could do to keep her out of the whore’s life as he’d promised Molly. He would never leave the Barbary Coast, not even to find a better life for Kerry, since he reckoned his skills didn’t suit him for regular employment.

“I can’t stand being in the house all day helping Rose with chores. And there’s always some man who—”

“Stop, enough! I know the type.” Jack furrowed his brows. She was right. Some of Rose’s customers weren’t avid for any of the pretty waiter girls because eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds were too old. His promise to Molly came back to him as he stood there contemplating his daughter. Kerry was reaching the age to be noticed and to start whoring. He shuddered.

“Right, then. Here’s the drill. You bring me five boys off the
Defiant
and you’ll get your cut, but look sharp. Old Tom’s girl, Maggie, will be about and after the same marks. Don’t let on who you are.” Jack meant the owner of the boarding house down the street, a wily old drunk named Tom Harlin. He laughed. “She’d be better looking and more useful if she had any teeth.”