Bones of the Barbary Coast (31 page)

IV
THE STRANGER AMONG US

39

FRIDAY, JUNE 2 1 , 1889

M
OMENTS AGO, WHEN I crept into the pantry, I was startled to see a squirrel on the table, eagerly exploring among the jars and boxes of foodstuffs. It scrambled immediately for the window and vanished outside, and that brought a different kind of shock: The window was open. I shut it immediately and did not see marks of any tool on the sash or sill, and it is possible that I myself left it open, or more likely Cook, who can be absentminded. But instantly all my worst fears came rushing home again, that Percy or some hireling had come prowling and had pried the window and crept about our house last night. This possibility has left me trembling again, full of doubts and dire fears.

Perhaps it is the shock I needed, for my resolve has been fickle and fleeting. Last night, after my work at the mission was done, I asked Darby to take me to the linens warehouse, and I even dismounted and went through the door. But once I had entered the darkness, it did not seem a possible thing, to scurry fearfully through those shadows and smells to a sister who might have betrayed me, or who might again be entertaining her beau when I arrived. I hovered there only briefly before returning to Darby and the carriage. "Our business was mercifully short tonight, Darby," I told him. "Let's both go home."

But I am aware that each day I procrastinate I am in greater danger of exposure. Percy will certainly come, and unless I have pre-empted him the consequences can only be disastrous.

There is still no more word of the wolf-man, not even rumor. Perhaps he will never be seen again, and will vanish as mysteriously as he arrived among us, yet another person swallowed whole by the Barbary Coast and gone forever. If so, I fear we will have lost a great opportunity to learn from him, who must have a remarkable tale to tell.

TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 1889

Last night I did muster the courage to go to Margaret's. I was frustrated in this attempt, and in my journey through the streets I witnessed something terrible that has only sharpened my fears and yearnings for resolution.

The intervening time has put me out of practice for this covert race, and my trepidation at what I might discover of her had put me in a state of highest anxiety. Every small thing startled me, all out of proportion. At one point, as I paused in an alley to let a brawling group make its way past, I glanced up to see a face, only inches from my own. I recoiled as if Hell's demons had attacked me, hands up to ward them, but it was only an old woman, haggard and ghost-pale, peering from her lightless window. She pointed accusingly at me and made a round O with her toothless mouth, and I fled from her in horror. I am sure she could not see who or what I was, with my face shadowed in the hood of my cloak.

I came round the corner a block from Margaret's place but stopped when it appeared there was some commotion. There were men milling in the street, several with torches that put the others in flickering light and gave them long shadows. From their shouts and agitated movements, I understood that a confrontation of some sort was occurring. In a moment, I heard the sound of breaking glass and saw a large pane fall away from a storefront window and shatter on the pavement. Most of the men clambered quickly through the dark opening. Their torches lit the interior in a fitful and terrible way, and from inside came shouts and a woman's scream. In another moment the door burst open and the men emerged again, dragging two people, aiming kicks at them and striking them with sticks. In the wild gyre of torchlight it seemed truly a scene from Hell, and when I saw the figures on the ground feebly trying to protect themselves, heard the blows strike their flesh, I could not help but cry out. Involuntarily, I stepped into the street and found myself among a scattering of others who had gathered to observe. I stood for half a minute with these strangers, afraid to intervene, unable to leave.

Closer, I heard the foreign tones in the victims' pleas and knew that they were Celestials. The men in the street continued kicking and striking them, while inside others were running rampant, smashing furniture and ripping cloth, throwing household things through the window. From the curses and warnings of the men, I understood that these Celestials had recently rented the storefront to start some enterprise. It is only barely outside the accepted margins of Chinatown, yet they had unknowingly crossed an invisible, unwritten line and were now being shown that moving in among Whites was an intolerable transgression. The White landlord would be next, the men shouted.

It appeared to be a husband and wife who were being beaten, and I was certain they would be killed. Yet I could not decide what to do, for I know a mob in its frenzy will turn on anything that opposes it. The police, I thought, someone must go to the police! I turned to a large man standing not far from me to implore him to go find the authorities, and was stunned to see his cap and uniform and the billy at his belt! He stood at his ease, watching this outrage with a look of bland satisfaction.

"You must do something!" I told him stupidly. "They will be killed!"

The policeman looked at me as if I were a madwoman, then immediately grew angry. "You'd best go about your business, Ruby. Go back to your cow yard and do an honest night's work." With that, he turned me around and rudely pushed me so that I stumbled away. I was outraged that he would put his hand upon me, and I whirled to accost him, but his back was already to me. He idly twirled his billy as he watched the awful sport that entertained him so.

I slunk away to linger out of view for a short time, breathless, listening to the shouts and the sounds of blows and splintering glass and wood, then beat a retreat back to Darby.

So another day has passed and I have neither confronted my sister nor revealed my sordid truths to my husband, nor otherwise dealt with the enormity of the problem that faces me. Instead, it only seems to have compounded and grown, water building behind a dam.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 1889

Yesterday I could not help myself and crossed words with Rev. Wallace. It was an unwise thing to do, for he is not tolerant of dissenting views and my argumentativeness will likely be held against me should an accounting be taken of my behavior. Perhaps I made this mistake because I am so worn from worry, but I did in honesty disagree with him and for once would not bite my tongue. I cannot help but think he would now be a more tolerant person if, over the years, those who found themselves at variance with his opinion had expressed their own views with more conviction.

We do not see him every day, as other church business preoccupies him, so a visit is occasion for much solemnity and piety at the mission. Deacon Skinner stopped by as well, and I was most glad to see him, for though he is also solemn, he seems somehow a counterbalance to Rev. Wallace, quick and wiry where Wallace is slow and blocky, bright of eye where Wallace only grave and dignified. Deacon Skinner's wise, narrow, dry face cannot hide his humor, and his words often seem to reveal an ironical intent, so well woven into his phrasing that it requires some wit to perceive.

Neither of them witnessed much of interest; it was a slow afternoon at the mission, and the little bell over our front door jangled only seldom. It is our custom to have a prayer circle and then discussion of Scriptural principles as the dinner hour approaches, but today we had only one petitioner, an old man whom we know only as Billy, who is innocent of a single tooth in his head and infinitely accommodating of religious instruction if it is followed by a good meal. Without any other audience, we of the mission began an informal discussion of spiritual things.

Our topic had been forgiveness. We forgive because Jesus enjoined us to turn the other cheek, even to forgive those who persecute us; it is in this way, Deacon Skinner has explained, that we hope to forgo another cycle of hurting, to stall the great wheel that otherwise turns forever round with one injury begetting another and so drives the engines of war and cruelty.

Yet we also know that there is a Hell, and that God the Father judges all but forgives only some. Since all are sinners, and born that way, how does He determine who is forgiven, who is punished for eternity? (In my impious moments, I think that when he dies, Rev. Wallace will be employed to assist God with making these judgments, for he has had such long experience at it. Indeed, he resembles God so closely, with his full, gray beard, hawk's beak nose, thundercloud brows, that were God to wish a respite from the effort of judgment, Rev. Wallace could stand in for Him and no one would be the wiser.)

I asked Rev. Wallace for clarification of this point: How does God know which sinners to admit to Heaven, and which to banish to Hell? For it has long confused me, and I have struggled with it in my own conscience: Ought I to forgive Margaret? Can I forgive Percy, for example, or the men who beat that husband and wife in the street? I am not certain I can; but if I could, could not God? If I did, but God did not, would God consider me a sinner—for forgiving? Or is all forgiveness His instrument, put into our weak hands?

For Rev. Wallace, the answer to how God knows whom to bless and whom to banish was easily come by: "Why, those who have accepted Him into their hearts! Even a murderer, if he repents of his misdeeds, reads the Word, and accepts the Lord as his master, will be judged kindly. And even a lesser sinner, if he does not, must suffer damnation. That is why we are here, Sister Lydia, is it not? To preserve the multitudes from damnation by bringing them the Word that will save them?"

Sister Gertrude and Rev. Smith and the others watched me warily, as if they sensed I would debate this point, and I could not help doing so, not out of contrariety but in honest puzzlement or curiosity.

"But what of the Celestials?" I asked, for they were much on my mind; and I thought, too, of my sister, and of the wolf-man, who must be innocent of scripture but might be capable of kindness. "And other sorts of heathen, lacking good teaching? Would a Celestial who does not know of Christ, who has never read the Bible, yet has lived a virtuous and gentle life, be harshly judged? Through no fault except the land of his birth or the language of his parents—and those being God's own determinations?"

"The Lord will make Himself known to them in His time. It is not ours to understand the ways of His will or His judgments."

"Because," I went on urgently, heedless of the signals of danger, "would that not be a cruelty, to create a child with his destiny in Hell foreordained? We do know the Lord asks kindness of us, do we not? I cannot believe Jesus intended his injunction to kindness as . . . as merely bait on a hook, to draw people with our little mercies so that they will swallow the Bible! It seems to me that we are here as instruments of His mercy, in the here and now. If we are kind, isn't it simply the Lord being kind through our actions? Could not that be the sum of it—that He is using our hands to help render His intent on Earth, now, today?"

Another time, his glare would have melted me on the spot. But strangely, the trials of my last weeks must have fortified me in some way, for I endured his fierce gaze and barely flinched.

Still, I was glad that Deacon Skinner interceded for me. "Sister Lydia has raised an important point, I think. Whether in the end it is Virtue or Belief we should really strive for, and whether God might not already and continuously work His judgments and mercies through the little, daily works of our hands."

Rev. Wallace brought the hot blue bolt of his gaze to bear on Deacon Skinner then, which the deacon returned with neither defiance nor undue humility. After a moment, Rev. Wallace turned to the others and told them drily, "Sister Lydia is a gentle and inquiring spirit. But one might suggest she leave such complex questions to men of religious authority and content herself with those same little, daily works. Which would not tax her so and for which a woman is, after all, so much better suited."

I was suitably chastened, and remembered that at this juncture, of all times, I must not stand out or give anyone cause to doubt me. As if to drive the point home, the bell tinkled a moment later, and I looked up to see what I feared most, a dapper figure in a striped suit and bowler hat standing in the doorway. For an instant I did actually go into a faint, collapsing briefly against Sister Gertrude.

But it was not Percy. It was only a salesman, with a kit of kitchen wares he hoped the mission might want. We declined and sent him on his way, but afterward I was overcome with nausea and had to lie down for a time. I knew I could not wait any longer, but must go to Margaret again, whatever may happen and whatever I might learn.

THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1889

No, it is after midnight, so it is Friday morning. Once again I am sleepless and writing by lamplight. I have been to Margaret's at last. I have learned some dreadful facts. All the world is changed, yet I cannot name the nature of the change.

After my terrible fright at the mission, I was resolved to go to her. I could not bear to passively wait for Percy's machinations to come to me, but would learn what I could and act from whatever knowledge I gained. So tonight I had Darby drive me to the warehouse, then made my way to Margaret's brothel by the winding ways I know so well. In a little, I passed the scene of Monday's violence, and found that the broken storefront windows were now boarded over. A tidy sign hung against the boards, For Lease, and below it someone had crudely painted in large, dripping letters, WITE ONLY. I wondered what had become of those unfortunate people, and passed quickly over the street there as if it were haunted ground.

I came into the dim downstairs room to find only two women waiting: a busy night, I guessed from the noises of rhythmic exertion and drunken laughter from the rooms upstairs. I started toward the stairs, but the two whores roused at the sight of me and the older stopped me with a hiss and a shake of her big head. She was the hugely fat woman I had noted often before, with massive breasts and belly, each thigh big as the belly of a sow, arms like dimpled pillows, a great broad face like a kindly toad.