California Gold (13 page)

His companions laughed. One said, “You know this chap, Walter?”

“I do, Tevis. I met him a few months ago at Hellman’s place in the Valley. He’s one of those newcomers who keep inflicting themselves on us.”

“Oh, is California your property?” Mack said.

Fairbanks’s gray eyes narrowed a little. “I’d say it’s much more mine than yours. We won’t debate the issue. I do have certain territorial rights in this hall, however,” He pointed to the kitchen. “That’s the door for tradesmen. Use it.”

“Walter, you needn’t be so rude,” Carla said. But she was breathing audibly; she couldn’t hide a certain excitement over the confrontation.

“I’m simply saying outsiders aren’t welcome to mingle with guests at cotillions. How can society be society if there are no rules?”

Mack stood there simmering. They were so stylish, superior, scornful. And they were all men rich enough to possess Hellman’s daughter. He felt his face growing hotter. “I’ll leave when I’m ready,” he said.

“Oh, dear, a ferocious grizzly bear,” one of the gentlemen said with a drunken lisp.

Another said, “Looks more like a young thug from the Barbary Coast to me.”

Carla linked her arm with Mack’s, goading Fairbanks with her glance. “I think you’re all behaving like boors.”

“Imagine,” the fellow with the lisp said, “the daughter of Mr. Swampy Hellman calling us boors.”

He and his two friends laughed, though Fairbanks held back. “You bastards shut up,” Mack said, stepping in front of Carla. He knew he’d made a mistake—he heard the sudden cavernous silence in the hall—but he was furious and wouldn’t retreat.

“I don’t like your language, fellow,” Fairbanks said.

“I don’t give a damn what you like. They should apologize to Miss Hellman.”

Fairbanks seized his sleeve. “Get out of here.”

And Mack swung.

Fairbanks danced back, and Mack’s looping punch missed completely.

Slowly, with relish, Fairbanks drew off one glove, then the other. “Please hold these, Haig.” He smiled at Mack. “You shouldn’t have tried that. I work out regularly in the boxing ring at my club. Defend yourself.”

Mack was just bringing his hands up when Fairbanks’s bullet of a fist struck him. He spun to one side. There was an audible gasp as people turned to look, and one woman screamed. Across the hall, Greenway whirled about, clutching his gold whistle. “What is that commotion—what?” A second punch, coming so fast Mack never saw it, crashed him into a buffet table. He overturned basins of lobster bisque and salvers of smoked sausage, landing among them with blood squirting from his nose.

Greenway pelted up and blew a ferocious blast on the whistle. “What is the reason for this outrageous behavior?”

“This man assaulted Mr. Fairbanks without cause,” one of the toadies exclaimed.

“My God, this is mortifying,” Greenway cried.

Mack was up now, hair in his eyes, blood on his shirt and apron. He lumbered at Fairbanks. The man was no lily; he danced lightly aside and landed another blow that snapped Mack’s chin. Pain lanced his neck and spine, but once more he shambled toward Fairbanks, glimpsing Carla’s perspiring face, her shining eyes urging him on. He struck. Fairbanks laughed, and the punch, though strong, glanced off the lawyer’s padded shoulder. Then he stepped forward and whipped Mack with a powerful right-left-right combination. Mack staggered back, choking on blood and struggling to stay up. His face resembled a raw piece of tenderloin.

“You’re discharged—never darken my door again,” Greenway shrieked at Mack. “Mr. Fairbanks, my profound apologies. Shall I summon the police? Will you prefer charges?”

Fairbanks smoothed his temples and flexed his fingers. “There’s no need.” Smiling, he let Mack see a message in his clear gray eyes: Mack was swept away, because dirt was always swept away.

“Come, my dear.” Fairbanks picked up Carla’s gloved hand and laid it on his sleeve. “A little champagne would be refreshing just now.”

She looked back once, but he couldn’t read her expression. Pity? He was furious that he’d lost, been humiliated in front of her.

“Get this vermin out of here,” Greenway hissed, dancing up and down in his patent-leather pumps. Three strong men from the kitchen manhandled Mack to the alley and slammed the door.

Mack stood on the corner of Fourth and Townsend. Fog was rolling in, chilling him, but he kept standing there, gazing at a four-story building that had all the charm of a fortress prison. San Franciscans like Mr. Bierce said that Fourth and Townsend, the general offices of the SP, represented more power than the statehouse in Sacramento. “Some say the SP
owns
the statehouse.” Mack glanced from window to window, gray rectangles stained with rain. Which belonged to Fairbanks? If the lawyer was his enemy, then so were those who chose to employ him.

“S
O NOW I NEED
ANOTHER JOB
,” Mack said. It was Sunday, late afternoon. He’d called at the
Examiner
in the hope that Nellie would be working on the next morning’s edition, and she was. When she finished, they rode a horsecar to the end of the line and walked near the crashing waves along the Presidio seawall. He talked for a long time with barely a pause, telling her about the fight and meeting Hellman for the second time. But he said nothing about encountering Carla at the cotillion, or earlier.

“Maybe what I really need is a boxing instructor,” he said at the end.

“I’m terribly sorry that happened to you, Mack.”

“I caused it—I swung at him. And I’m not sorry.”

“I can understand your reaction. I’ve met Fairbanks. Do you know much about him?” When he admitted he didn’t, she gave him some background.

The Fairbanks brothers were Argonauts from Georgia, some of the many from the cotton South who migrated to California during the Gold Rush. “To this day, members of the family claim to be plantation aristocrats, though if they were, I always wonder why they left.”

Shrewder than their counterparts who ran straight to the diggings, the brothers had established a service to handle the dust and money of the miners, the successful ones and the failures alike. “The Dixie Express Company was the forerunner of Fairbanks Trust. Very early, the brothers became active in the Chiv.”

“What?”

“The Chivalry. The pro-slavery wing of the Democratic party. It was at its peak before the War. Fairbanks’s father also helped form the Vigilance Committees of ’51 and ’56. Fairbanks himself campaigned hard in Sacramento for the Exclusion Act of ’82, to bar Chinese immigration. Now that smugglers have started bringing in more coolies, he’s promoting a new law to register all Chinese. No doubt he’d brand them like cattle—and slaughter the weak ones if he could. He’s the worst kind of Social Darwinist.”

Nellie went on to explain that the lawyer was also an enthusiastic member of the Native Sons of the Golden West, a private society of white males born in California after the seventh of July, 1846. “That was the day Captain Sloat raised the American flag in Monterey Bay. I consider the Native Sons a bunch of prigs and bigots. There may be some decent members, but Fairbanks certainly isn’t one of them. He’s a selfish, heartless man.”

“But not stupid.”

“No. That’s why he’s dangerous.”

“He isn’t a weakling either. He knocked me down like a piece of straw.”

She stepped close to him to dodge a plume of spray. As she took his arm, he felt her breast thrusting small and hard against him.

“If you’re serious about boxing, I know where you can find a good instructor.”

“Who is it?”

“His name is Jim Corbett. He’s an Irish boy whose father owns a livery stable. He’s barely twenty, but he’s already the middleweight champion of me Olympic Club. Mr. Watson, the Englishman who coaches boxing at the club, thinks he shows enormous promise.”

“Wait,” he said, laughing. “Women aren’t supposed to know about boxing and such things.”

“This woman does. I love sports, and the outdoors. You’ll soon feel the same way. It happens to almost every easterner who comes to California. There’s something about the climate that turns hothouse plants into sunflowers.”

“Tell me more about this boxer.”

“Originally, the club recruited him to play second base on its baseball team, but a hand injury kept him from it, and his interest shifted to boxing. He isn’t like the usual fighter you see at exhibitions in barrooms and barns. He’s clean-cut. Bright. A fastidious dresser. Some have laughed at him for that. Then they get a taste of his fists and stop laughing. He has a regular job, but he wants to turn professional. If he does, he could well raise the whole tone of the sport. He works out three times a week at the Olympic Club, and on weekends he gives exhibitions around the area. Billy Delaney’s saloon over in Oakland. Terrible dive. Or sometimes, on a barge out in the Bay—”

“Have you been to any of them?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said, piqued. “I get my information secondhand, from our sports writers. Females aren’t allowed in the hallowed male confines of the Olympic Club, or at the exhibitions. That’s another injustice we’ll remedy one of these days.”

He grinned and impulsively patted her hand. “You’re a fighter too, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. I’m a woman. It’s a necessity.”

He decided to look up the young prizefighter as soon as he had time and a little money in his pocket. After tramping the streets for a week, he found a job as an assistant cook in a brawling Barbary Coast establishment, the Royal Midway.

The chief cook, a tough, garrulous Filipino named Garcia, taught him a lot in a short time. Garcia occasionally filched a bottle of wine from the owners, and he cheerfully shared it.

“Chardonnay. Charles Krug, Saint Helena. He came over from Prussia, learned viticulture from Haraszthy, and set up his own operation. Krauts make some of the best wine in California. This was a good harvest.”

“I don’t know anything about wine, Garcia.” Mack tasted the dry, tangy, straw-colored wine, then smacked his lips.

Garcia beamed. “Now you know something about wine.”

“Yes, and I like it.”

He earned enough to put $3 into a deposit account at Wells, Fargo, where a friendly teller with sharply parted hair and keen blue eyes helped him with the paperwork.

He relished the strengthening pull on the back of his legs every time he toiled up a steep street. Never had he seen derelicts so numerous and dirty, women so clean and smart, sunlight so intense and pure. He loved the autumn vistas of cloud and sky, hill and shore, bay and ocean; he rounded a corner, or raised a window, and suddenly there was another, making the throat catch, the breath quicken, ravishing the heart…

O California!

Nellie loaned him a copy of
Ramona
, saying it would awaken him to the plight of the California Indians. The author, Helen Jackson, had campaigned for Indian causes before her recent death from cancer, and in her last years she had befriended Nellie. Mack thought of the priest Marquez, and of his own resentment of anyone trying to be his conscience. But he continued to be strongly attracted to Nellie without knowing much about her, so he overlooked his feelings and read the novel, which was all she’d said it would be.

He learned to swallow raw oysters and suck the foam off steam beer. He learned that a nearsighted politician named Buckley—the “Blind Boss”—ran the Democratic machine from his Snug Café next to City Hall, and an Oriental gangster nicknamed Little Pete ran the Chinese underworld. He learned to avoid at all costs the packs of ravenous wild dogs that ran at night. He learned to love Allsop’s Ale, and J. A. Folger’s coffee, and the candy of Domingo Ghirardelli, “Chocolate King of the West.” He learned that San Francisco followed the French eating style; one had “lunch” at noon and “dinner,” not supper, at night. He learned that a man could educate himself in the fine library of the Merchants Exchange on Battery Street. He learned not to be bothered by scurryings in the night, for even the best homes were plagued with the gray and black and white rats that had infested the City ever since they jumped ship right along with the Argonauts of ’49. He learned that the City’s fine gentlemen dined on venison steak and Dungeness crab; that the City’s fine ladies bought their gowns at Felix Verdier’s Ville de Paris department store; and that after they’d dressed and dined, all the fine people went by carriage to Tom Maguire’s Opera House for performances by the world’s leading singers and actors. He learned that Sherith Israel Synagogue was orthodox, while Temple Emanuel was a reform congregation, and he studiously tried to absorb the differences. He learned that Lotta’s Pump, the handsome cast-iron fountain and column on Market Street, was a gift of the famous actress Lotta Crabtree, who got her start in San Francisco. He learned that “Alcatraz” meant pelican, and that the fort in the harbor—“The Rock”—housed army prisoners. He learned to love the foghorns, the rattle of ivory counters in the Barbary Coast gaming halls, the sound of accordions in the German beer gardens, the whistles of the great iron steamers of the Pacific Mail Company outbound for China.

He learned to be a child of the City.

A disgruntled patron set a fire in the Royal Midway late one night, forcing it to close indefinitely. So, jobless again, Mack decided he’d neglected his training for revenge long enough. He parted with 15 cents for the hated SP ferry and looked up Bao Kee in Oakland. The following Sunday they went sailing in the Bay to find the young prizefighter.

They located the barge near Oakland’s Inner Harbor. Row-boats, small sailboats, and steam launches were tied up to all sides of it. A large crowd of men on the barge shouted and yelled, but there were so many of them Mack couldn’t see the fighters.

He stepped onto the barge and immediately found himself staring at the muzzle of a small nickeled pistol in the hand of an Oakland plug-ugly. “No fuckin’ Chinks.”

“He’s my friend.”

“I don’t care if he’s your fuckin’ brother, he ain’t OK.”

From the bobbing launch, Bao said, “It’s all right, I’ll wait.”

Mack nodded reluctantly, glared at the man, and worked his way into the crowd. A very mixed crowd it was, with hounds-tooth sleeve brushing ragged elbow, and scents of hair oil and mustache pomade mingling with sweat, onion, garlic. “Stand up, for Christ’s sake, Murphy,” a bulb-nosed man screamed, knocking Mack in the head with his brandished fist.