Calico Palace (3 page)

“Oh Loren,” she exclaimed, “you don’t believe any such thing, do you?”

Loren answered soberly. “Kendra, I’m talking about what
Captain Pollock
believes. I’ve known him to turn down a passenger and sail with an empty stateroom, because he didn’t think the passenger was the sort his
ship
would approve of. And now that he’s got the
Cynthia
he’s stricter than ever.”

As she was still perplexed, Loren tried to explain.

To Pollock, he said, a vessel was a living creation. Of course, like people, vessels differed in their worth. Many a dirty old whaler deserved nothing better than grease-buckets and sailors from the waterfront dives. But if a captain should treat a proud ship like some wastrel of the seas, this would be like forcing a fine woman into—into shame, Loren said modestly. She would never forgive you.

Pollock gave his ships the respect they deserved and they rewarded him. This was what he believed and he made no secret of it. If other seamen laughed at him he pointed to his record.

“And the odd part of it is,” said Loren, “he’s not a bit like that ashore. In port he likes to take a few drinks, drop a few dollars at a gambling spot, meet girls, have a good time. There’s a gambling parlor in Honolulu where he goes often. Folks say he admires the hostess.”

Kendra felt a twinge of amused astonishment. On shipboard Captain Pollock was so lordly and austere; she wished she could see how he acted around that girl in the gambling parlor. Loren was saying,

“But he wouldn’t have her on the
Cynthia.
He believes a girl like that would offend the ship, and the ship would punish him.”

Loren thought a moment and went on.

Though fond of women’s company ashore, Pollock was not married nor had he ever been known to have a serious love affair. “All his life,” said Loren, “he’s loved nothing but ships. All his life he’s been dreaming of the perfect ship. And now, I guess he’s got her.”

Kendra nodded gravely. But with a wise crinkle in his pink cheeks, Loren said,

“You still want to laugh, don’t you? Well, maybe you’re right. But I told you because I don’t want you to be scared about doubling the Horn. Captain Pollock knows he can do it, but having you on board makes him extra sure. That’s a real help, Kendra.”

Kendra looked at him straight. She said, “I’m not scared any more, Loren.”

This was true. Whether because of Loren’s talk or the captain’s assurance, she was no longer scared. Through the rest of the day she listened to the screech of ropes and crackle of sails and the men shouting above the wind. It all reminded her that these men were strong and skillful, and Captain Pollock, though he might have a few strange ideas, was a master who knew his business. For this, and not because he had a virgin on board, the
Cynthia
would reward him.

And she did. That evening, not long before midnight, Kendra heard a bang as of a hatch closing hard. Captain Pollock came into the cabin, bringing a gust of air and the smell of the sea. The captain’s nose was red as a strawberry, his coat dripped and his boots squashed as he walked. But his blue eyes were joyful and there was a warmth like a glow around him. He paused, giving himself a shake like a wet dog. Bunker Anderson called to him above the resounding sea.

“Well, captain, so we’re in the Pacific now?”

Pollock nodded. Half buried in his salt-crusted beard was a smile of triumph. He had done this before and his smile said he had no doubt he would do it again, but every time the battle was hard and the victory good. Without speaking, he glanced around at them all as if assuring them he was glad to have them on board. As his eyes came to Kendra they paused. The pause was a mere point of time, but it was a piercing point. She felt it all over.

Then Pollock turned and went to his own stateroom. The job was done. The captain could rest.

—It
is
true, Kendra thought. He does believe my being here was a help. Because I’m pure like the
Cynthia.

She remembered the ship’s figurehead, the goddess crowned with the crescent moon. For the first time she realized that the ship’s name, Cynthia, was an old Greek name for the moon goddess, ever young, ever virgin.

—Absurd, thought Kendra.

But somehow, it all made her feel uneasy.

The ship sailed up the west coast of South America. Every day the sun grew warmer as she drew nearer the port of Valparaiso, where she would stop for food and water. Two weeks above the Horn she came into harbor.

When you approached Valparaiso by sea the first thing you saw was a hill, so steep that the street was cut like a letter Z across the front of it. There on the Z you saw two houses, one on the lower arm of the zigzag and one on the upper. White houses with red tile roofs, they caught the sun and shone like two lights from the cliffside.

But they were houses where girls received sailors on shore leave, and no nice woman had ever noticed them. Bess Anderson had warned Eva; and Eva, tactful as ever, had warned Kendra. Kendra dutifully said, “Yes, mother.” She felt like saying “Rats!” In talk-fests at school she had heard of such places but she had never thought she would see any. But since the two houses were right there in front of her, why pretend she did not see them? She felt like a fool.

The waterfront was crowded with the native population, gay in their bright clothes and bangles. Also waiting on the wharf was a group of Yankee traders and their wives, many of them friends of Bess and Bunker Anderson. These traders lived here all the year round, and rushed to meet any vessel flying their flag. One couple asked the Andersons to be their guests, while another, Mr. and Mrs. Carlow, invited Eva and Kendra. With her usual grace Eva accepted.

It was a pleasant visit. They picked peaches and grapes in the courtyard, took carriage drives through the foreign streets, and met other Americans in town. And not once did anybody mention the two white houses on the hill.

They were in port four days. As the ship sailed out of the harbor Kendra stood by the rail and looked again at the two white houses. She wondered what sort of girls lived in those houses. Girls taught by mothers who were themselves in the trade? Or had they—any of them—been properly brought up?

Nice girls did get into trouble sometimes. More than once Kendra’s schoolmates had brought back scandalous stories from their vacations. “…and she belongs to a
good
family, my dear!”

Kendra had read novels about such “unfortunates.” In a book the girl would die—usually she pined away, though sometimes she jumped off a bridge. Kendra did not believe that in life they got out of the way so conveniently.

She wondered what became of them.

From here they sailed directly for San Francisco. Because of the way the winds blew, ships bound for San Francisco often went first to Honolulu, but the
Cynthia
would not, as she was bringing supplies for the California troops. She would go to Honolulu later, then on to trade in the ports of China.

New Year’s day, 1848, was fair. Before long they were in the tropics, and now they sailed under a sun so fierce that the boards of the deck were sometimes too hot to be touched. Early in February Loren told Kendra they were coming close to San Francisco Bay.

He said frankly that the settlement on the bay was nothing but a scraggly village. The native Californios had named the spot Yerba Buena—good herb—for a plant that grew there, from which they brewed a medicine. But most of the people in town were Yankees and they found this hard to pronounce, so generally they called the town by the same name as the bay, San Francisco.

Loren and Kendra were sitting at the table in the cabin. He went on,

“The town’s not much, but the bay is splendid. Look.”

He had laid his hands flat on the table, his fingers overlapping, his thumbs pointing at each other.

“Suppose my hands were the California coast,” he said. “My thumbs would be two peninsulas. The little space between the tips of my thumbs is the entrance to the bay. And on the inside of my right thumb, looking east across the bay to the mainland, there is San Francisco.”

Kendra was surprised to learn that San Francisco faced east. A Pacific port, she thought it ought to face the Pacific Ocean. Loren laughed and said this was what most folks thought, but it didn’t.

Two weeks later the
Cynthia
sailed into the bay and dropped anchor. Her voyage from New York had taken a hundred and thirty-two days.

This was remarkably fast. The average time for such a voyage was a hundred and sixty days. But no ship of Captain Pollock’s had ever been average, and his beautiful
Cynthia
had outdone all the rest. Kendra wondered if he really thought this was because the
Cynthia
had carried a pure young maiden.

Anyway, the voyage was done. On a murky day in February, 1848, Kendra had her first look at San Francisco.

L
OREN HAD SAID THE
bay was splendid, she did not know why. All she could see was a lot of restless gray water, and streaks of fog like an army of ghosts marching past.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning. Kendra was on deck waiting to go ashore—a long way, for the water in front of San Francisco was so shallow that no seagoing vessel could come within a mile of town. The air was damp, the wind blowing hard.

She was alone. Alex had come out earlier, in a boat bringing the army quartermaster to confer with Captain Pollock about the stores the ship had brought. On deck Alex had shaken hands with Kendra, and greeted Eva with an affectionate kiss as if she had been away for the weekend. He genuinely loved her, but he would have died before showing it in front of other people. Alex was forty-five years old, handsome in a dark romantic way, the sort of man who looks well in a uniform. Kendra took about ten minutes to classify him as a high-minded bore.

As soon as the tide turned, Alex and Eva went ashore in the army boat, leaving Kendra to come in on the ship’s boat with Bunker and Bess. Loren had gone below with Captain Pollock, but he had left his field-glass with Kendra so she could look around.

Kendra put the glass to her eyes. She saw two other seagoing vessels, a brig called the
Eagle,
which Loren had said came from China, and a smaller brig called the
Euphemia,
which she learned later was just in from Monterey. Close to shore were several little launches, which he had told her plied between the town and the ranch country. The fog was clearing, and a watery sun was pushing through, so she raised the glass to look at the land.

This was the strip that Loren had represented by his right thumb as his hands lay before him on the table. The whole strip looked like a jumble of hills, splotched with clumps of weed and a few trees bent and twisted by the merciless wind. On the shoreline she saw a spot where the water had scooped out a cove shaped like a half moon. Around this half moon stood three hills, enclosing it like the side of a broken cup, and across these three hills sprawled San Francisco.

Kendra thought she had never seen a town so
steep.
The houses were scattered from the waterfront to the top of the highest ridge. The largest buildings—warehouses and trading posts—were on the waterfront. She could see about a dozen big warehouses, for the main business of San Francisco was that of selling supplies to vessels in the Pacific trade. Also near the beach she counted six hovels with the word “Saloon” painted across the front. Men were going in and out, while other men loafed on barrels and boxes by the doors.

Farther up she saw a long squat building of brown bricks, on the roof of which a board said “City Hotel.” Near by were two false-fronted white frame buildings—not very white—with signs saying “Beds.” (From the look of them, all Kendra could think of was bedbugs.) A few men on horseback were jogging about.

She saw a few little wooden dwellings that looked solid enough to keep out rain. But except for these, the rest of the “buildings” were shacks and sheds, made of rough boards, flattened tin cans, sides of packing boxes, and anything else that men could nail together. Around them blew shreds of fog, like wet rags in the air.

With Bunker and Bess Anderson, Kendra went ashore in the ship’s boat. The sailors rowed them to the north side of the moon-shaped cove, where a man who owned a warehouse had laid stones in the water to make a landing. Here as in Valparaiso, Bunker and Bess were met by friendly traders, and Bunker introduced the two nearest, Mr. Chase and Mr. Fenway. Kendra said, “How do you do.” While the Andersons chatted with their friends she looked around, trying not to show her sick dismay.

In front of the stores and warehouses she saw a muddy strip where hoofprints and horse-droppings suggested a street. The “street” was littered with trash—cans and rags, papers trodden into the mud, a broken piece of harness, an old shoe somebody had thrown away. Kendra could hear flies buzzing over piles of empty bottles around the saloons. Her nose wrinkled at the stinks of privies, and dead fish rotting on the beach.

And here were the loafers she had seen, unwashed and uncombed and smelling of liquor. Leaving the barrels and boxes they had been sitting on, they came as close to her as they dared, and stood staring at her with greedy eyes.

Kendra felt a touch on her elbow. She started, but relaxed as she recognized a trader, the one Bunker had introduced as Mr. Chase. He was a short, thick man with a kindly smile.

Mr. Chase drew her aside. “I know how you feel, miss,” he said with sympathy. “My wife, now, she was mighty upset when we came here from Valparaiso. But it’s not as bad as you think.” With an embarrassed glance at the staring men, he cleared his throat and went on. “Now those fellows—let me explain.”

He told her a recent census had shown that about nine hundred people lived in San Francisco, and among them men outnumbered women three to one. And the census takers had counted only the men who
lived
here—not the soldiers of the garrison, nor the ranchers who came to town for business, nor sailors ashore.

So she could understand, couldn’t she?—men here were mighty lonesome.