Calico Palace (62 page)

The plaza had come to life again, full of mud and rats and vigor and gold, crude, bawdy, and splendid. Kendra felt braced by merely being in the midst of so much energy. She envied these folk of the plaza. They had no pretenses. They knew what they wanted and they meant to get it. She wished she could be as sure as they were.

But later, as she looked back, it seemed to Kendra that all this time she had known exactly what she wanted. —How strange it is, she thought, and yet how logical, that we get what we
really
want in this world. And oh, how we pay for it!

She had not wanted what Loren had given her. She had wanted the plaza and the Calico Palace.

So now, three months after the deaths of Loren and the baby, here she was. In the Calico Palace, in the racket of Kearny Street. And she had paid a dreadful price.

She tried not to inflict her pain on other people. They could not ease it. Nothing but time could help her, and even with the merciful blurring of time she knew her wound would never quite heal. Nobody could give her the promise Pocket had given her at Shiny Gulch, that after a while she would reach a point where she did not care. This was not that sort of wound. To the end of her life there would be moments when the scar would hurt. —If my son had lived he would be five years old now, ten years old, twenty. I wonder how he would look? What he would be doing?

This would never go away. This was the price she had paid to come down to the plaza.

Mr. and Mrs. Chase had offered her a home, but she had declined. She let them think this was because she was too proud to accept, and preferred to earn her own living; and while they did not approve of the Calico Palace they admired what they thought was her courage in accepting a harsh necessity. But this was not her real reason.

It was true that Loren had not left much money. He had spent all he earned to give her the safety and sheltering she had not wanted. It had not occurred to him that he ought to be provident. Young and vigorous, he had never had a serious illness in his life. He had earned a good income and he had had every prospect of increasing it. He had loved Kendra and his greatest pleasure had been to give her everything he thought she wanted. Loren had left no debts, but he had left little else.

Kendra found this out when a boy brought her a letter from Reginald Norrington, telling her the rent was overdue. Mr. Norrington’s letter was obsequious. He said he had not troubled her sooner because of his respect for her grief. But this was March, the third month since her husband’s demise. (“Demise” was the word used by Mr. Norrington.) He said if he had owned the property himself he would not be addressing her now. But she must realize he was not free, he had a duty to his client, the owner of the house she lived in. And so on, and on.

He sounded
greasy,
Kendra thought. She did owe the rent and she was ashamed that she had let it slip her mind; a reminder two lines long would have been enough. The day she received the letter she walked down the hill with Ralph. First she went to the store. Mr. Chase opened Loren’s safe and gave a start of dismay when he learned the smallness of its contents. He told her to go to the bank of Eustis and Boyd. Maybe Loren had kept his money there.

Loren had not. He had not kept his money at all. He had poured it out with loving extravagance on the expensive house and the fine furniture, the plank sidewalk, the summer’s water wagon and the winter’s loads of firewood, on the best food and clothes to be bought in town, on a salary to Ralph and Serena to give her protection and relieve her of work. There was not much left.

Mr. Chase at the store, Hiram at the bank, urged her to accept aid. Hiram offered her a loan for as long as she wanted it, at no interest. Kendra said no.

She did not add that today’s discovery had given her a sense of release. The neat little white house had never seemed to her like anything but a cage. Now she was free of it. She thought of the cheese rolls and cupcakes she had made when the Calico Palace was a tent in the mud. She could do this again and this was what she wanted to do.

She sent Ralph to Mr. Norrington’s office with rent to the end of the month and a note saying she could not afford to keep the house longer than this. When she told Ralph and Serena they said this was quite all right. Serena was expecting her long wanted baby, and wouldn’t have time to keep on working for Kendra anyway. They would find another place to live.

The very next day, Kendra received a second letter from Mr. Norrington. This one was even longer than the first, and more larded with apologies. Mr. Norrington had reported matters to the owner of the property. The owner had been indignant that Mr. Norrington had troubled her at all. He had said if she could not pay the rent, she was welcome to live in the house as long as she pleased, rent free. He would consider it an honor to be allowed to give a home to the gracious lady.

As she read this letter, Kendra wrinkled her nose and said “Phew,” as if there were a bad smell in the room. A whole house to herself, in swarming San Francisco—the man might as well have offered her a lump of gold as big as a pumpkin. And she had learned enough to know that you were not likely to get anything free in this world. This proposal was not like those she had received just after Loren died. Those strangers were at least offering her marriage. This one was simply offering her a high price for her favors.

She thought of Marny, and Marny’s nugget necklace, and Marny’s chain with the pendant of two pink pearls and a black one. Marny had her affairs, and Kendra did not care. She really did not. Marny’s affairs were her own business. But herself, no. Even if she had not wanted to go back to the Calico Palace she would not have wanted to stay here on these terms. Maybe she was not consistent, maybe she was foolish. But this was the way she was.

She sent Ralph down the hill with a note to Marny, asking, “Do you want me back?”

Ralph brought her a speedy answer. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hurry up. Marny.”

Kendra sent a cool note to Mr. Norrington, declining to accept the owner’s bounty. She sent most of her furniture to Chase and Fenway’s to be sold for whatever it would bring. In its place she bought an iron cot, six feet long and twenty-seven inches wide, and tin boxes to keep her soap and candles from the rats. But she kept her excellent kitchen equipment, and with this and her personal belongings she went to the Calico Palace.

Up on the top floor, the Blackbeards moved some cases of liquor out of a closet ten feet by six, and told her this would be her bedroom. They set up a kitchen behind Marny’s parlor on the second floor, next to a storeroom piled with firewood. Marny and Norman welcomed her with delight. Besides the cakes and rolls to be sold to the customers, Kendra promised to cook dinner for them, and for Dwight Carson when he was around. Lulu and Lolo would prepare meals for the Blackbeards in a kitchen of their own, downstairs on the first floor.

Dwight still retained his two rooms at the Gresham Hotel. But he spent much of his leisure at the Calico Palace, because Marny had to live here if she was to be at her table in all weathers. Every evening she wore the chain with the pendant of two pink pearls and a black one.

Kendra did not have the comfort of her days on Washington Street. But she had a sense of being free, of being herself. She remembered how frightened she had been when she had made her cakes before, the loneliness and terror that had pushed her into that mistaken marriage. She had learned a lot since those days. She did not know, any more than she had known then, what lay ahead of her, but she did know now that she could face it.

She continued to get letters proposing marriage. The writers told her how many town lots they owned, how much gold they had piled up. Several of them sent her gifts, to prove how well they could afford to keep her. Kendra tore up the letters and sent back the gifts. She was not interested in getting married. The house she had lived in was quickly and expensively rented to two families who divided it between them and were glad to have so much space. Kendra, living between her kitchen and her bedroom ten feet by six, did not envy them. She was content to be where she was.

She rarely went into Marny’s parlor. But she was part of the Calico Palace and she liked it. She liked the merriment around her, and she liked being in the middle of what was going on. San Francisco now had three newspapers and Kendra read them, but often she had heard the news before she read it. She heard it behind the scenes, from the bartenders, the croupiers, the dealers, from Marny and Norman and Dwight.

There was plenty of news. Now in the spring of 1850 San Francisco looked like a big city and was acting like one. Fantastic, Kendra and Marny said to each other, that this surging metropolis was the same sleepy village they had left when they went up to Shiny Gulch only two years ago.

It was the same place, but how different! People were pouring in from every nook and cranny of the earth. River steamers ran on schedule to carry these people between San Francisco and the mining camps. Those who stayed in town had dumped so many hills into the bay that there was no longer any such thing as the moon-shaped cove Kendra had seen from the deck of the
Cynthia.
Vessels that had been drawn close to shore for business were now grotesquely surrounded by land, with landsmen’s buildings beside them. Men newly arrived were startled when they heard that Montgomery Street had once lain along the edge of the sea.

But farther out, the clutter in the bay continued to spread. Most of the captains who brought their vessels through the Golden Gate still did not get them out.

While nobody knew how many people lived here, anybody could see that San Francisco had the ways of a big city. If you had letters to mail you no longer had to climb the Clay Street hill to the post office; you simply dropped your letters into corner mailboxes. If you wanted fresh milk you could buy it from a cart that made rounds every day. The markets offered you abundant fresh produce, brought down by the river boats. At the more elegant saloons the barmen gave you a free lunch with your drinks, and the saloonkeepers vied with each other in the dainties they spread. The town now had a real theater, where you could see performances every evening. Or if you had lustier tastes, you could go to the exhibit called Model Artists. Here you would see girls posed in “living pictures,” one of which was advertised as “Eve in the Garden of Eden.”

The stores had luxuries gathered from the whole world. If you were literary you could buy books in many languages; if you were musical you could have a piano or a violin or a flute, and take lessons from one of the French or German teachers whose cards appeared in the papers every day. If you had gold dust enough to pay for them you could wear clothes as excellent as any you could have worn in Paris or New York; you could buy watches and jewelry, fine wines and perfumes, and toilet soap brought around the Horn from France. The bath-houses did a flourishing business. A great proportion of San Francisco’s people came from backgrounds where they had been used to regular washing, and they kept up the custom here, though they knew they could not long stay clean.

For though San Francisco was a big city it was not like any other big city on earth. In the daytime you saw (and smelled) the endless rats fighting over the endless garbage in the street; if you walked in the street at night you felt the rats scampering around your ankles. Sometimes you stepped on one in the dark and heard him squeal. All the streets were dark; there were still no lights. If you were out after nightfall and had no lantern, you hired one of the boys called “street pilots.” These boys waited around the doors of saloons and gambling houses, and for a fee they would light you home.

If you borrowed money you still paid interest of ten to fifteen per cent a month. In the papers, among the advertisements of champagne and gorgeous raiment you saw just as many offers of Colt revolvers, without which few men cared to go out of doors.

But a grand town it was, dirty and dangerous and exciting and gloriously rich. On the first of May the steamer
Panama
puffed out by the Golden Gate, bound for the Isthmus. She carried a hundred and fifty passengers and ninety-three thousand ounces of gold. Kendra and Marny stood at an upper window and watched her go. When she was out of sight they went downstairs, each to her own department in the Calico Palace.

Three days later the Calico Palace was gone. On the fourth of May, 1850, Kearny Street burst into flames again, and all the blustering glory around the plaza turned again into a pile of ashes.

T
HIS NEW FIRE WAS
like the fire of Christmas Eve, but more destructive because this time there was vastly more to be destroyed. The firebells clanged over the plaza an hour before daybreak. Startled from sleep, Kendra saw the terrifying light as it flared beyond her window, and with a cry she sprang out of bed. Shaking with fright, she threw on the quilted Chinese satin robe Marny had given her, grabbed her shoes, and opened the door.

Before the safes she saw Marny and Norman and Rosabel, wearing whatever had been handiest to snatch up. Dwight, who had been spending the night with Marny, stood at her side, ready to rescue whatever he could carry. As Kendra came out of her room Marny was giving him a poke of coins. Dangling between her fingers was the chain with the pendant of three pearls. At the same moment Norman sprang to his feet and thrust a poke into Kendra’s hand. “Wrap this in something,” he said sharply, and to everybody in general he shouted, “Have you got your guns? Then get
out
!”

They got out. As Norman unlocked the front door, Dwight called to the three girls to come with him and take shelter in his rooms at the Gresham Hotel. Carrying their guns and gold, they fought their way past the roaring fury. The fragile buildings cracked and toppled. The Calico Palace, strongest building on the plaza, had no distinction tonight except that it made the loudest noise when it fell in.

Their clothes were scorched and their hair singed as the fiery flakes blew around them. With every step they quaked with fear lest the flames catch the hotel, but at least they were spared this. The fire-fighters, with axes and gunpowder, broke the fire before it went so far. When they reached his rooms, Dwight told the girls to lock themselves in and have their guns ready, while he went to help keep back the fire.