How Few Remain (31 page)

Sitting as it did at the corner of Larkin and McAllister in Yerba Buena Park, the San Francisco City Hall was only a few blocks from the offices of the
Morning Call
. Samuel Clemens looked up from the sentence he was writing—
level of bungling last seen when Lot’s wife was turned to a pillar of salt and not a single foolish soul thought to carry her along regardless, to sell for a shekel the half-pound
—and spoke to Clay Herndon: “Mayor Sutro’s giving a speech in half an hour. Why don’t you amble on over there and find out what the old whale’s spouting this time?”

“Do I have to, Sam?” Herndon asked in mournful tones. “I’ve covered him the last three times he’s shot off his mouth, and if four in a row isn’t cruel and unusual punishment, I don’t know what is. Besides, I’m about three-quarters of the way through this story you said you wanted today, and it’s going pretty well. I hate to waste a couple of hours listening to His Honor gab, and then come back and find I’ve forgotten half the good lines I figured on using.”

“Which story is that?” Clemens asked. “There were a couple of them, if I recall.”

“The one about the defenses of San Francisco Bay,” the reporter answered. “I finally talked Colonel Sherman into giving me an interview yesterday, and I went out to Alcatraz and talked with the garrison commander there, too, so I’ve got the straight dope, all right. ‘Muzzle-loading rifled cannon’—it’s almost as bad as ‘she sells seashells by the seashore,’ isn’t it?”

“And their shells may be even more dangerous than seashells, not that we’ve seen any proof of that,” Clemens said. “Well, you’re right—I do want that piece, as fast as you can turn it out, so I won’t inflict our magnificent mayor on you this morning.” He took another look at the editorial he was working on. It was,
by something approaching a miracle, for the day after tomorrow, not tomorrow. He got up from his desk. “I’ll cover the speech myself. By the way things are going, I’m bound to have more of our blunders to write about by the time I have to give this to the typesetters.”

“I didn’t want you to have to go and do that,” Clay Herndon exclaimed. “I just meant for you to send Leary or one of the other cubs.”

“Don’t fret yourself about it.” Sam threw on his houndstooth coat. As if he were a gentleman of fashion, he buttoned only the top button. As he set his straw hat at a jaunty angle on his head, he went on, “If I go to City Hall, I’m halfway home. You can’t tell me Sutro won’t talk till noon, or maybe one o’clock. Whenever he finally decides to shut up, I can walk over for dinner and surprise Alexandra.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Herndon said. “You’re a good boss to work for; you remember what it was like when you were just an ordinary working fellow yourself.”

“Get that story about the seashells on Alcatraz done.” Clemens patted his pockets to make sure he had an adequate supply of both pencils and cigars. Satisfied, he grabbed a notebook and headed out the door.

The weather was fine for wearing a mostly unbuttoned coat. The breeze ruffled the flags that, in a display of patriotic fervor, flew from what seemed like every other building and from every trolley and cable-car stop. Despite the admission of several territories as new states since the War of Secession, the flags sported fewer stars than they had before the war. President Tilden had finally ordered the stars representing states now Confederate removed from the banner, which was, Clemens remained convinced, one reason Blaine beat him.

Sam walked southwest down Market to McAllister, and then west along the latter street to the City Hall, a fine building of composite neoclassical style. He waved to a couple of other reporters who were also coming to hear Mayor Sutro’s latest pronouncement.

“Good God in the foothills, Sam, the
Call
must really have its claws out if you’re covering this in person,” said Monte Jesperson, who wrote for the
Alta Californian
. His paper was as staunchly pro-Sutro as the
Morning Call
was anti-

“Not quite so bad as that, Three-Card,” Clemens returned.
Regardless of editorial policy, newspapermen got on well with one another. “Only reason I’m here is that Clay’s in the middle of a story he needs to get done quick as he can.”

“Ah, I’ve got you.” When Jesperson nodded, his flabby jowls and several chins bobbed up and down. His sack suit had to have been cut from the bones of a great many herrings to fit round his bulk. He stood aside to let Sam go into City Hall ahead of him; the doors weren’t wide enough to let them go in side by side.

Noting the rich furnishings, the marble floors, the fancy paintings on the walls, the general profusion of velvet and gilt and elaborately carved walnut and mahogany, Sam said, “I wonder how much stuck to whose pockets when they were running up this place.”

Monte Jesperson’s sniff was like that of a bloodhound taking a scent. “Ah, that’d be worth knowing, wouldn’t it?” he said. “If there be any bodies buried, nobody’s ever dug ’em up.”

“That’s the truth.” Clemens cocked his head to one side, listening to Jesperson with a reporter’s attentive ear. “So you’re one of the ones who still say ‘if there be,’ are you, Three-Card? I know the fancy grammarians like it better, but ‘if there are’ has always been good enough for me.”

“I’m an old man.” Jesperson ran a pudgy finger along the gray walrus mustache he wore. “The things the modern generation does to the English language are a shame and a disgrace, nothing less. Not you, Sam—you’ve got some bite to you, under that cloak of foolishness you like to wear—but a lot of the pups nowadays wouldn’t know a subjunctive if it kicked ’em in the shins. Comes of not learning Latin, I expect.”

Sam’s own acquaintance with Latin was distinctly of the nodding variety. Not without relief, he let one of Mayor Sutro’s flunkies lead him to the hall where Sutro stood poised behind a podium, ready to give forth with deathless prose. It was, in Clemens’ opinion, deathless because it had never come to life.

He sometimes thought Sutro looked as if he’d never come to life, either. The mayor of San Francisco was pale and plump, with a brown mustache Jesperson’s could have swallowed whole. His eyes, dark lumps in a doughy face, resolutely refused to show any luster. That he wore a suit he might have stolen from an undertaker did not enliven his person.

Along with the reporters, clerks and lawyers helped fill the room. So did some of Adolph Sutro’s friends, most of them as
dreary as the mayor. Sutro said, “Thank you for coming here today, gentlemen.” He looked down at the podium, on which surely reposed his speech, nicely written out. Having grown up with politicians who memorized two-hour addresses and were venomously deadly in repartee, Clemens found that all the more dismaying.

“I have called and gathered you here together today,” Sutro droned, “for the purpose of delivering a warning pertaining to spies and to matters relating to espionage.” I
want to warn you about spies
, Sam translated mentally. He’d edited a lot of bad prose in his time, but little to compare to this. A cleaver wasn’t enough to cut the fat from the mayor’s speeches; a two-man ripsaw might possibly have done the job.

“In particular this morning, I address my remarks to the noble gentlemen belonging to the Fourth Estate, irregardless of whether or not they and I have previous to this time been in agreement with each other on the concerns concerning our city and our state and the United States,” Sutro continued. He doubtless thought of that
irregardless
as a polished touch, and either hadn’t noticed
concerns concerning
or labored under the delusion that it improved the product. With a distinct effort of will, Clemens lowered the flame under his critical boiler. Taking notes on Sutro’s speeches was easier because they were so padded and repetitious.

The mayor said, “It is up to you and your responsibility to disseminate to the many who depend on you the vital necessity of being as alert and aware as it is possible to be to the dangers posed by spying and the measures to be taken in order that those dangers are to be reduced to as small an extent as may be. Now, then, these dangers are—Yes, Mr. Clemens?”

Sam’s hand had shot into the air. He couldn’t help himself. In his most innocent voice, he asked, “Mayor, can you please tell me how a danger, which is abstract, can have an extent, which is physical?”

Sutro coughed. “This danger is not abstract. It is real Perhaps we can hold the rest of the questions until the completion of my address. Now, then, as I was saying—”

Invincible dunderhead
, Clemens scrawled in his notebook. He glanced over at Monte Jesperson, who would not meet his eye. No matter what Jesperson thought, though, the
Alta Californian
would make Mayor Sutro sound like a statesman when its next edition came out.

To Sam, he sounded like a lunatic. His speech went on for as long as the newspaperman had expected it would, but furnished only a couple of pages’ worth of notes. The gist of it was that Sutro had a bee in his bonnet about spies, because Confederates, Canadians, and Englishmen all spoke English—”in the same way and manner that we do ourselves,” the mayor said. Sam was confidently certain many of them spoke it better than Adolph Sutro did, not that that made any enormous compliment.

Still …
Mayor Sutro has a point
, Sam wrote. Then he added,
He was not wearing his hat, which let him show the world exactly where he has it
. The mayor’s idea was that, since enemy spies didn’t give themselves away by how they talked, everyone should report everything (that wasn’t quite how he phrased it, but it was what he meant) to the police and to the military authorities, so everybody who said anything could be locked up and the keys either thrown away or filed in the mayor’s office, which made them even more certain never to be seen again.

When the speech was finally over, Clemens asked, “Once the entire population of the city is incarcerated, Your Honor, from which states do you plan on importing loyal citizens to take its place?”

“I doubt it will come to that,” Sutro answered primly. “Next question, please.” Sam sighed. He should have known better. He had known better, in fact, but hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. If U.S. Navy ships were armored against shells as the mayor was against sarcasm, they’d prove unsinkable.

Sam did find one serious question to ask: “Have you reviewed this plan with the chief of police and with the military authorities?”

“Why, no,” the mayor said, “but I have the utmost confidence they will show themselves to be as zealous in the pursuit of the sneaking spies who have done so much damage to our cause”—another statement, Clemens thought, that would have been all the better for proof—”as I am myself, and will profit from the assistance of our fine and upstanding vigilant citizens.”

“I have the utmost confidence,” Sam said as the reporters headed out of City Hall, “that every low-down skunk with a grudge against his neighbor is going to call him a Rebel spy.”

“We’ll catch some real spies, thanks to this,” Monte Jesperson said: faint praise for the speech, but praise.

It made Clemens furious. “Oh, no doubt we will—but how the devil will we be able to tell which ones they are, when we’ve
arrested their bartenders and blacksmiths and druggists along with ’em? And what about the Constitution, where it says you can’t arrest a man on nothing better than somebody’s say-so?”

Jesperson’s shoulders moved up and down. “It’s wartime. You do what you have to do, then pick up the pieces afterwards.”

“Three-Card, the very first war this country ever fought was against people who said things like that,” Sam answered.

Jesperson only shrugged again. Instead of staying to make an argument out of it, he waddled off toward the
Alta Californian’s
office on California Street. If he wrote fast enough, the last couple of editions of his paper would have a no doubt carefully polished version of Mayor Sutro’s speech in them, along with an editorial giving half a dozen good reasons for treating San Franciscans like Confederate slaves or Russian peasants.

“Because some petty tyrants are tired of being petty,” Clemens muttered under his breath.

He went back to his house almost at a run, hoping Alexandra would be able to lift him out of his evil mood. Part of it lifted at the delighted reception his children gave him: he didn’t usually come home in the middle of the day. His own delight at seeing them was somewhat tempered when his wife told him Ophelia had broken a vase not fifteen minutes before.

“It wasn’t
my
fault,” Ophelia said in tones of virtue impugned. Sam, who had heard such tones before, raised an eyebrow and waited. His daughter went on, “I never would have done it if Orion hadn’t ducked when I threw the doll at him.”

“Is the world ready?” Sam asked Alexandra.

“I don’t know,” his wife answered. “If it’s not, though, it had better be.”

Along with boiled beef and horseradish, that sage comment helped persuade him the world was likely to be able to muddle on a bit longer in spite of Mayor Sutro’s aggressive idiocy. He was glad to discover Alexandra disliked Sutro’s plan as much as he did.

The dog, hearing everyone saying Sutro over and over, decided people were talking about him. He walked up to Sam and put his head and front paws on his lap. Clemens scratched his ears, which was what he’d had in mind. “Ah, you poor pup,” Sam said. “I thought I was insulting the mayor when I gave you your name, and here all the time I was insulting you.”

* * *

At the Rochester train station, Frederick Douglass embraced his wife and son. “Now don’t you worry about me for even a minute,” he said. “This will be how I always wanted to enter the Confederate States: with banners flying and guns blazing and a great army leading the way.”

“You make sure you let the army lead the way,” Anna Douglass said. “Don’t go any place where them Rebels can shoot at you.”

“Seeing that the invasion is not yet launched, that’s hardly a concern,” Douglass answered. “I am delighted that General Willcox recalled the plight of the colored man and wanted one of our race present to witness the U.S. return to Kentucky.”