Calico Palace (82 page)

The Calico Palace was safe. The windowpanes were slivered; the brick walls were splotched with soot and water; at the street-floor windows Bruno Gregg’s handsome transparencies had burned to shreds; the tall gilt letters that had spelled CALICO PALACE across the second-floor front had curled and cracked like autumn leaves; but the building itself stood firm amid the wreckage around it. Troy Blackbeard, on guard at the main door, told them Lulu and Lolo and Zack had gone to bed and to sleep. Norman and Hortensia sat on the staircase reviving their strength with bread and cheese and a bottle of wine. Norman said Hortensia had been great last night, just great. Didn’t lose her head for a minute. Packed a bag for each of them so they would have clothes and coins if they had to run. “Now what,” he demanded of Pocket, “are you doing with those damn cats?”

“Bringing them home,” said Pocket.

Norman shrugged in wonder.

While Kendra was setting out a meal, Marny filled pans with food and water and carried them up to Geraldine’s room, Pocket following her with the hut. Marny shuddered as she saw the bloodstain on the rug, and the damaged spot where Pollock’s bullet had struck the floor when his gun went off. Only last night. So much had happened since then, it seemed long ago.

Pocket unlatched the door of the hut, and now they found they had a small tragedy of their own. One of the kittens was dead, the one they had named Empy.

“I suppose,” Marny said sorrowfully, “Empy got hurt when that slug dropped the hut. Damn his thieving fingers. I wish Kendra had shot his hand off.”

Pocket glanced at Geraldine, who was eating her breakfast with gusto. He said consolingly, “I don’t think cats can count. If Geraldine had lost all her kittens she would miss them, but with three left I don’t believe she will know the fourth is gone.” He went to the door that led into the hall. “I’ll dispose of this one.”

“At least,” Marny said, “I’m glad it’s not the kitten we named Calico for the Calico Palace. That would have worried me. A bad sign for the future.” She added abruptly, “All right, laugh at me if you want to. Kendra thinks I’m silly to be this way, but this is the way I am.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Pocket answered with a touch of surprise. “I don’t laugh at people. If they’re different from me, maybe they’re right.”

She smiled at him. “You’re a smart fellow, Pocket.”

“Thank you ma’am,” said Pocket. He opened the door. “I’ll see you in the kitchen.”

In the kitchen they gobbled a meal of cold leftovers (the idea of making a fire in the stove was too horrifying to be considered). The men went back to the library, while Marny and Kendra went to their own rooms and speedily fell asleep.

When Marny woke up that afternoon she felt surprisingly well. She got out of bed and stretched, put on her slippers, and went to the mirror.

“You
are
a mess,” she said to her reflection. “Well, you’ve cleaned yourself up before and you can do it again. And this time you have something to wear.”

She walked over to the window and looked down at what used to be the city, still smoking in the sunset. The sight was heartbreaking, blocks and blocks of rubble, and walls standing here and there like black tombstones.

The desolation was not complete. Not only was the Calico Palace standing, but so were the El Dorado and the Verandah. The north side of the plaza was not burned, and the fire had nowhere gone west of Dupont Street. And even in the blackest area Hiram’s bank was not the only building that had shown itself to be fireproof. Marny could see several others, and there might be more beyond her range of vision. Already she could see men walking about, making notes, planning to start over. The sight of them was cheering. They had rebuilt before, they would do it again.

This was Sunday afternoon. Marny and Norman and their helpers spent Monday cleaning up. At three o’clock Tuesday afternoon the Calico Palace opened for business, and it stayed open until two o’clock the next morning. Through the whole eleven hours the bars and gambling rooms were thronged. Men’s nerves were taut, their tempers on edge. It was some consolation to gather with other men and talk about their losses. There were more arguments than usual, and more men than usual who had to be carried out instead of walking. But as there were also more profits than usual, Marny and Norman bore the disorders without complaint.

In the days following the fire the
Alta
published long lists of buildings destroyed and names of persons who had lost their lives in the fire or died later of injuries. But the paper also had notes of cheer. Eustis and Boyd announced that all coins and gold dust deposited in their vault were safe and available on demand. Chase and Fenway inserted a card of thanks to the firemen who had made their way into the burning store and brought out a strongbox holding important papers. Mr. Reginald Norrington informed the public that he was now doing business in an office on Dupont Street, where he would receive the rents owed to his clients. If any firemen had given help to Mr. Norrington when his own office burned he did not say so, at least not in print. Words of thanks would have required extra lines and added to the price of his announcement.

But other men were not so thrifty. Day after day the
Alta
carried columns of notices thanking the firemen for their heroism. The paper also published a list of the buildings in the burnt area that survived the fire. There were not many. But the fire had proved that Dwight Carson had done what he had said he could do. There were seven buildings in San Francisco that had been put up under Dwight’s direction. Six of the seven—all but Pocket’s library—had stood in the district devastated by the fire. All six—the Calico Palace, Hiram’s bank, and four others—were still standing. All were open for business.

And now Dwight was putting up buildings in New York. As Marny thought of this, she had an idea. She sent for Bruno Gregg and told him that when he had finished the new transparencies she would have another job for him.

O
N THE SECOND MORNING
after the fire, Kendra told Marny she and Hiram were going to be married in nine days.

They had not planned to be married so soon. But that night of dread had shown them how little security they had. “We are not going to trust the future,” Kendra said to Marny. “We are going to grab some happiness right now.”

They rented a lot in Happy Valley, bought one of the readymade cottages from China, and hired Chinese carpenters to put the pieces together. They bought furniture—and Hiram bought clothes—from the auctioneers who spent their days shouting in the plaza. The furniture was tawdry and Hiram’s new suits did not fit him very well, but these matters were not important. He and Kendra wanted to be married, and that was important.

Between the fire and the wedding Hiram stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Eustis. They invited him to have the ceremony in their home.

Marny smilingly declined Kendra’s invitation to attend. “I know you and Hiram want me, darling,” she said, “but I seriously doubt that Mrs. Eustis does. I’ll come to see you in your own house after you’ve moved in.”

Kendra had to yield.

Meanwhile, San Francisco lay in ruins but life went on. Pocket and Mr. Gilmore cleared out a storeroom and turned it into living quarters for their clerks. Norman put cots into several of the private card rooms, so the dealers and bartenders would have somewhere to sleep. They were not comfortable, but any roof was better than none.

Few citizens were comfortable, but many of them were devising ways to get rich among the ashes. Some men set up tents, where they rented sleeping space. Others contrived outdoor cookshops—stoves blackening the air with smoke, and beside each stove a trestle where the customers stood up to eat their meals. Three days after the fire a group of enterprising tradesmen opened a market on the Clay Street hill. While the cottage was being set up Kendra continued to prepare meals at the Calico Palace, and Hiram came in every day for lunch. She shopped at the market, escorted by one of the bartenders.

It was not easy to get to the market, or anywhere else. The citizens were trying to clean up, but streets in the burned area were still almost impassable. When she went out Kendra wore her high boots and gathered up her skirts with both hands, while the barman carried the market basket in one hand and kept the other on his gun. They walked over pots and pans and kettles, broken dishes and charred pieces of furniture, liquor bottles melted into shapeless chunks, piles of foodstuffs that had roasted in the blaze and now lay rotting underfoot. It was not a pleasant journey.

But the market speedily became a meeting place where people came to look for their friends or get news of them. Kendra met Ralph and Serena there one day, Serena carrying the market basket while Ralph carried the baby, for they could not push a baby carriage through the jumble in the street. They were both in cheerful humor. They lived on Powell Street, where the fire had not reached them. They told Kendra two clerks from Chase and Fenway’s were using their parlor as a bedroom. Not convenient, but the poor fellows had nowhere else to stay and in times like these folks had to be neighborly.

The next morning Kendra met Rosabel at the market, accompanied by Mrs. Chase. Rosabel told Kendra she was going to have a baby and Mrs. Chase was helping her with everything and being a perfect dear. Of course they were both distressed about the loss of the store, she said. But they still had their homes, and their husbands would soon rebuild the store.

Kendra reported this to Marny when she came in. Marny, sitting at the table with a cup of chocolate before her and Bruno’s sketches in her hand, listened with puzzled amusement.

“I’m glad Rosabel is happy,” she said at length. “I was doubtful when she got married. Such a change. But maybe,” Marny added, with surprise that she did not try to conceal, “maybe this is what she wanted all the time.”

“It’s what a lot of women want, Marny,” Kendra reminded her. “Homes of their own, and children, and a peaceful life.”

“I suppose so. At least, it’s what a lot of them get.”

Kendra did not remind Marny that this was what she wanted herself. There were some things Marny simply did not understand.

Hiram and Kendra were married in a ceremony brief and simple, as they both wanted. Mr. and Mrs. Chase were there, and Mr. Fenway and Rosabel; Pocket and Mr. Gilmore, several employees of the bank, and of course Mr. and Mrs. Eustis. Nobody else but the minister. Marny stayed away, and Kendra knew Mr. and Mrs. Eustis were relieved that she did. After the ceremony Hiram and Kendra went to the readymade cottage with its patchy walls and shaky furniture, and as she looked around it Kendra had never felt so completely at home in any other spot.

At the Calico Palace, Marny was busy with her own affairs. Besides her regular hours of work she was directing the replacement of Bruno’s transparencies and the repairs that had to be made to other outside decorations. While this left her scant leisure, it was good to be rebuilding San Francisco.

But Marny knew, as the rest of the city knew, that not everybody wanted to rebuild. A few of the hoodlums had died in the fire, but more of them had not. The day after Hiram and Kendra were married some scoundrel tried to burn the Verandah.

Not long before daybreak, when the Verandah had been closed and locked for several hours, a watchman outside caught sight of a flame through the window of a storeroom behind the bar. He gave the alarm and the firemen promptly put out the fire. But they used a great deal of strong language when they saw how the villain had set it.

Marny heard the details from Pocket a few days later. Pocket had come into the parlor and bought a cup of coffee at the refreshment table. When Marny started out for coffee of her own, Pocket asked if he might follow her to the kitchen. “I want to tell you something,” he said.

She was glad to see him. Pocket was a member of the company that had put out the fire, and he could give her more details about it than the papers had printed.

In the kitchen, she brought her own cup to the table.

“How are you these days?” Pocket asked as they sat down.

She answered with a candid sigh. “Pocket, I’m scared.”

“Because of that fire?”

“Yes. We think the Calico Palace is well guarded. But so is the Verandah. Tell me how it was done.”

Pocket said the villain’s technique had been simple. While the Verandah was open and full of customers, he had moved away from the other men drinking at the bar and had slipped into the storeroom. Here he had laid down a “slow match”—a long hempen string soaked in a solution of saltpeter and lime. He had lit one end of the string, put some oil-soaked rags at the other end, and slipped back to the bar before anybody missed him. Since fire crept along a slow match at the rate of about one foot an hour, a man could light such a string three or four feet long and leave the building well before the flame reached the rags and blazed up.

Marny shivered as she listened. While the fire of May fourth had shown that the Calico Palace itself was fireproof, the costly furnishings inside it were not, and neither were the people who lived there. Pocket was saying,

“I suppose this ruffian felt cheated because the Verandah had stood through the big fire and he missed some loot he expected. So he tried again.”

“That’s the spirit of San Francisco,” Marny commented dryly. “Never give up.”

Pocket laid his hand over hers. He looked straight into her eyes.

“Our side isn’t giving up either,” he said, slowly and gravely. “That’s why I came here today, to tell you so. I knew you’d be worried.” He repeated with resolution, “We are not giving up, Marny.”

His manner had such significance that Marny was startled. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m on my way to a meeting,” Pocket returned. “Hiram will be there, and Mr. Chase and Mr. Fenway and Mr. Eustis, and a good many others. We’re going to clean up San Francisco.”

Marny answered with admiration. “Pocket, you really mean that, don’t you?”

“We really mean it,” said Pocket. He stood up. “Now it’s time for me to go.”

“All right, and thanks for coming in. You’ve cheered me up.”