The Gilded Age

2

A Toast to the First and Last Chance Saloon

Daniel J. Watkins lights another ciggie as the Overland train bound from Saint Louis speeds down the last miles to the Port of Oakland, California. He plays with a miniature Zoetrope, a little drum whirling on a spindle. He peers at slits cut in the drum’s cardboard sides all around its circumference through which he can view watercolor paintings rendered in a sequence. The sequence merges through the persistence of vision, producing the illusion of continuous motion. Typically a toy like this shows a parrot on the wing or a peasant in country dress capering about. The clever fellow who marketed this toy in Paris painted a whore drawing black stockings up her bare legs and down again. Up and down, up and down.

But even the Zoetrope—which usually fascinates him—cannot cheer him now. The jolt of nicotine does little to relieve the throbbing in his head. Bloody train. Well. The Overland was a very fine train till he ran out of whiskey early this morning. Now the train lurches and rolls from side to side like a ship in a restless sea, and his stomach rolls in sickening counterpoise.

Daniel drags the ciggie down in three great gulps, stubs it out. He tucks the Zoetrope in his ditty bag, finds and lights another, humming the waltz from Sleeping Beauty in a scratchy tenor. Poor Tchaikovsky kicked the bucket in Mexico in ‘93 from that vile pox called cholera, which they say is contracted by drinking filthy water. Tchaikovsky had not been an old man. Daniel has resolved to drink nothing but bottled fluids during his sojourn in the West. Wouldn’t you know that Father—the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins of Saint Louis, London, and Paris--calls the waltz the work of the Devil. An inspiration for lurid passions among the young and impressionable. How very true. He hums more vigorously. Daniel adores works of the Devil.

In the dawn sometime after he discovered his grievous shortfall of potables, the Overland had stopped in Sacramento to pick up passengers. But the stopover wasn’t long enough to scare up a little hair of the dog. By the time he’d roused himself to a functioning consciousness, they were on their way again. Daniel pulls frantically on the ciggie. Must he arrive in San Francisco on vital family business shucked out, half-crocked, and airing his paunch like some overindulgent schoolboy? He is nearly twenty-two, after all, heading for old age and senility by swift and sordid leaps and bounds.

This will not do, sir, indeed it will not. Daniel stands, groggy, and surveys the passenger car. He roams the narrow aisle, spies the old cowboy who’s ridden the Overland out from Saint Louis, same as Daniel. A grizzled coot in rustic togs that have never known soap and water. Nor has the old cowboy bothered to shave since their departure from that thankfully distant city. Skinny bowlegs sprawling, he hunkers down in his seat, talking to himself, cackling, conferring with an invisible companion now and then. And, oh yes, nipping at something under his greasy topcoat.

In a word, the old cowboy looks promising. Daniel slides onto the seat facing him, grinning like all get-out with what he knows is a manly mustachioed face that charms the ladies and the gentlemen. Oh, he charms them all. He gives the old cowboy a wink, taps out a ciggie, and offers it.

“A long haul, sir?” Daniel says, leaning forward on the leather seat, striking a match for the coot, then lighting up another for himself. “But I suppose you’ve knocked about this great continent of ours by harder means than the Overland train. In the good old days, eh?”

“Them was the days,” the old cowboy agrees, drawing down hard on the ciggie like a proper smoker.

“The glory, the wild glory, eh? Knocking about like that. I don’t suppose you’ve got a drop to spare of that libation you’ve been nipping at?” Daniel grins when the old cowboy squints at him with a bloodred eye, openmouthed that a stranger has discovered his closely guarded secret. “I’m dry as a bone, sir, and we’ve haven’t yet reached the coast.”

“’Tain’t somethin’ fit to drink fer a young gent like yerself,” the old cowboy grunts, eyeing Daniel’s gray gabardine suit and starched ivory collar, the blue checked silk vest and tasteful French blue necktie, his British bowler of brushed felt. “’Tain’t fit fer a bear, if truth be told.”

“Never fear, sir, I have imbibed the Green Fairy herself.”

The old cowboy peers at him more closely with that painful-looking eye. “What in damn hell is the Green Fairy?”

“Absinthe, sir.” Daniel sighs. What he would give now for a gold-green bottle of Pernod Fils, a sugar cube, a perforated spoon, a lovely bell-shaped glass. What he would give to be back with Rochelle and the gang at La Nouvelle-Athenes sipping rainbow cups, flirting with poetry, lust, and death. “La fee verte, the Green Fairy. The sacred herb. Holy water, sir. A finer, eviler brew has never been concocted. One hundred twenty proof, reeking of wormwood. Tremblement de terre. Earthquake, sir, that’s what we call absinthe.”

“Haw. Well, you’ll find some o’ that out in Californ’, young gent.” The old cowboy is unimpressed.

“Just a hair of the dog.” Daniel offers another ciggie, cajoling the coot. “That’s fine Virginia weed machine-rolled to perfection. Come now, what’ve you got?”

“Hunnert twenny proof is a cinch, young gent.” The old cowboy cackles. From beneath the topcoat, he produces a scummy bottle, a neat piece of glass with flat sides that fit against the chest and do not extrude indiscreetly. The fifth is down to four fingers, but that should last till they reach the Port of Oakland. “This here’s puma piss.”

“Puma piss?”

“Home-brewed rotgut, tobacco juice, an’ a dose o’ white lightinin’. What some call rat poison.”

“Dear sir, you cannot mean strychnine.”

“Yessir, I do, an’ a hunnert twenny proof is a cinch, but ye can’t prove it by me.” The old cowboy consults with his invisible companion, cackling and nodding.

Puma piss! Daniel will have to remember that! “Let’s have a taste, then. Just a drop, sir.” With sunlight gleaming off his teeth, he offers a third ciggie. Damn bloody coot! But Daniel can purchase more machine-rolled cigarettes in San Francisco. The American Tobacco Company is spread out all over the West. He can get anything he wants in San Francisco. Or so they say.

But right now, right now, what he needs is a drink.

“Ah, hell.” The old cowboy hands over the bottle.

“It’s a cinch.” Daniel winks, knocks back a swallow.

Vile cannot approach the taste of stagnant well water infused with putrefaction, but the sting of newly distilled grain alcohol mangles the inside of his mouth and his tongue. The taste swiftly becomes irrelevant. He knows the stuff is liquid, but the sensation in his throat is of scorching fire. Or fangs. Fangs of a ravening beast.

In less than an instant, his heart begins to pound like lunatic desperate to escape his chains. Pure vertigo seizes him, whirls him around. A black satin curtain drops over his eyes. Oh, no! Has he suddenly gone blind? Sometimes homebrew steals your sight along with your sanity. But no, the black satin curtain is abruptly whisked away.

And he stares out at the golden-brown hills of California, curving like the bodies of women. Golden-brown women lolling about like whores with their golden-brown breasts and hips and swooping waists. The ill-starred Sioux, perhaps, or the Apache. Or the fabled Celestials, the Chinese. Golden-brown women harried and driven by the brute forces of rape and slavery and murder till they have fled, disguised themselves, mysteriously reincarnated into the landscape itself. He sees their awful transmogrification, their anger parched and mute save for the testimony of the hills, the golden-brown hills in which a man could get lost and die. He hears them screaming now—by God!—feels them reaching for him. They mean to tear him limb from limb with their curved fingers of thorn. They mean to drive him mad with their anguish.

That high rending sound? It’s only the train whistle.

Daniel shuts his eyes, and the black satin curtain falls again. But the blackness is so dizzying, his lids pop open at once. Now the landscape changes as he speeds toward his destination. The hills grow greener, studded with shrubs and sturdy trees. Abundant palms that are the rage in fashionable houses back East grow wild by the track bed. Flowering bushes shamelessly offer up pink and purple thunderheads, and huge, twisted succulents are so vibrant and filled with a peculiar presence that they seem like living creatures in some cunning disguise, waiting in ambush for the unwary. Waiting to pounce like pumas do.

Daniel feels the hand of destiny spinning him round like a Zoetrope. Does he only go through the motions of his life like a pathetic painted little figure? The tracks clack below him. The lunatic again, he’s rattling his cage. A great fate awaits him—he feels this in his heart—unlike anything he’s confronted before. Not in Saint Louis, not in London or Paris. Perhaps he will live, perhaps he will die in San Francisco. What does it matter, what does anything matter? We’re all just painted figures spun round by the hand of God.

Now grief wells up inside him, squeezing the frantic beat of his heart. Well, Mama died. People die. He saw three grandparents meet their Maker before he was ten. It was not as though family had never passed on before. Mama died in the late spring, in the fecund heart of incipient summer. A time he always thought of as a sick time--disease in the air, poison in the water, rotting food.

He should not have been surprised. His mother had been dying for a long time. But why did she wait for him? Why did she have to wait? He did not want to see her face, pale and beautiful as always. Her eyes—what she called her deep sea eyes—beseeching him. Her question, always her question, even on her deathbed, “Danny, haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I always been good?” And his answer, always the same answer, “Yes, Mama. Of course, Mama. Of course you’ve always been good.”

He takes one more swallow of puma piss, swallowing his grief and rage. “Ish a shinch,” he says, handing the bottle back with as steady a hand as he can muster. A gentleman must observe the niceties of sharing a drink.

“Haw.” The old cowboy grins, showing broken brown teeth through his neglected whiskers. His invisible companion apparently adds a trenchant comment. Daniel himself can just about see the companion. Yes, there he is--a hand from the good old days, long dead and still lively in the old cowboy’s eyes.

“Thank you, shir. Mush oblished.” Daniel stands, the vertigo fading, his pulse slowing. A fine feeling of arousal courses through his veins. When his stomach settles down, his feelings turn to another part of his anatomy he has too often abused. By God, his heart.

There are ladies on the train. He vaguely recalls two fine ladies who boarded the Overland at dawn in Sacramento. How could he have ignored them for so long? What a cad! He should go pay his respects, find out if they’re bound for San Francisco, too, and, if so, what in heaven’s name is their address? The pilgrim seeks the comfort of fellow travelers, that is the natural way of the world, is it not? He staggers to the dining car, newly filled with the spirit of amorous adventure, tapping out a ciggie. Where are the ladies? Who are they?

Ah, there. They sit at a table set for tea. The small girl with a narrow mousy face, protruding eyes, and an overbite interests him not at all. She’s dressed in charcoal-gray leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a plain gored dress. She chatters and chirps in broad, ugly vowels. She is much too American for his taste and much too plain. No, her companion, an elegant lady—now she interests him. A high-cheeked face, rose-kissed skin, a lovely mouth with a full lower lip, huge soft eyes. Oh yes, she interests him. A startling streak of white accentuates her brown pompadour, but that doesn’t dissuade him. A lady getting on in her years? In her late twenties, perhaps? Yet still with the spark of her youthful passion, he can see it in her eyes. More passionate than her younger companion, either because she’s experienced more of the world or less than she’s longed for.

She is well-dressed, too, a quality in ladies for which Daniel has the highest admiration. The young companion wears proper travelling togs. But her. The elegant lady wears a full skirt the color of a good French burgundy. An ivory silk blouse with abundant lace spills over the chinchilla collar of a cashmere coat belted tightly around her waist. A gay hat, piled high with ribbons and flowers, perches upon the pompadour. A voluminous veil is drawn over her face and pinned at her throat with a glittering Art Nouveau brooch. And gloves. The elegant lady wears immaculate gloves that accentuate her long, fine fingers, the white cotton unsullied by any mundane contact with the world. Her fingers twitch in her lap as if longing to touch a man.

Indeed, sir, that is the only conclusion Daniel can draw.

“Good morning, ladies,” Daniel says, carelessly tossing himself on the chair beside her. She’s tall, he can see that. Tall with a long slim body beneath the coat, the skirts, the bodice, the corset. Rochelle was tall, too, and her long legs literally went up to her throat when she danced the cancan at La Nouvelle-Athenes. Of course, Rochelle was a whore. But this one, this one. He is smitten. What a marvelous land, this Californ’!

“Good morning, sir,” they murmur and recommence their conversation.

“But, Evie, darling,” says the elegant lady, “the Young Women’s Christian Association puts up dozens of these Chinese girls every month. Every month! And still dozens more are defiled in Chinatown. Defiled, imprisoned. They are literally sold into slavery! In the United States of America!” Her melodious voice quavers. “Can you imagine our dear Jesus Christ tolerating this abomination?”

“Well, they are heathens,” says the mousy girl.

“All the more reason, Evie! In San Francisco! Young girls! Oh, our Christ would surely die all over again to see such a thing!”

Uh oh, Daniel thinks, a Holy Roller.

“And here we are, celebrating the one hundred nineteenth anniversary of our great nation founded on freedom,” the elegant lady says. “The shame!”

Indeed it is the nation’s anniversary, why, it’s the Fourth of July. He’s lost track of the days during his trek west. The elegant lady glances at Daniel. Such eyes! With the depth of intelligence, the sheen of passion. Clearly, passion! Passion in a lady is a far different thing than the depraved opportunism of a whore. His heart assumes a more frantic pace.

“That is why our dear Christ has sent for you, Dolly,” the mousy girl says. She darts a disapproving look at Daniel and sniffs loudly.

“In point of fact, Miss Culbertson sent for me,” the elegant lady corrects her with refreshing logic. “When the directress of our mission at Nine Twenty Sacramento Street invites one, one goes. One goes gladly, to serve our Lord.”

“But I am so worried for you, Dolly. San Francisco is such a dreadful dirty city. So low class. And we’ve got so many parties planned for the season.”

“I shall stay at the mission only a little while, I promise. But perhaps we should not speak of such things in front of this gentleman.”

“You may speak of anything you like, dear ladies,” Daniel says. “The sound of your sweet voices is all I crave.”

“Dolly, he’s stinking,” the mousy girl whispers. “Perhaps we should find another table.”

“Yes, it’s true, I’m stinking,” Daniel says. “I confess all before Our Savior, you need not whisper.” Now there’s a fine line for a couple of Holy Rollers. He congratulates himself and reaches for the mousy girl’s paw. She snatches her hand away. He pantomimes having seized her hand anyway and kisses the air in his palm. “I confess I’m drunk on your presence, dear ladies, drunk with wonder at this marvelous land. I have been away too long. And now I have returned, your true native son.” He slides off the chair and kneels before the elegant lady, taking her hand between his two, boldly clasping the whole package on her knees, and breathing deeply of her fragrance. She’s a hummer, all right.

The mousy girl gasps at his impropriety, but the elegant lady smiles indulgently and neither reclaims her hand nor casts him off her knees. Smitten by him, too? Better and better!

“And who might you be, sir?”

“I might be the Devil but in fact I am Daniel J. Watkins of Saint Louis, London, and Paris. And you?”

The mousy girl gasps, perhaps appreciating him after all. London and Paris? She widens her eyes and blushes, adding a modicum of charm to her sallow face. “Why, I’m Miss Evie Brownstone, Mr. Watkins, and this here is Miss Donaldina Cameron. We all call her Dolly.”

Dolly! Yes, a Dolly! Very much a Dolly! Daniel eagerly leans forward, and her knees part a little.

“Or Donald,” the elegant Miss Cameron says, frowning at her friend’s familiarity.

“Donald?” Daniel shuffles back on his knees, lurches to his feet, regains the chair. Oh, no. She cannot be one of those peculiar women who cannot decide if they are female or male. He bows a little stiffly. “Miss Cameron.”

“Dolly is one of the MacKenzie Camerons,” Miss Brownstone rattles on, uncertain how she has offended her friend. “Of Scotland, New Zealand, San Francisco, Oakland, and the San Gabriel Valley!” she says with another doubtful look at Miss Cameron.

Daniel rouses himself. “Ah, then you know San Francisco, Miss Cameron? You know Oakland? Still the mud hut frontier, these towns, are they not?”

Oakland glimmers behind the windows of the Overland train. After the golden-brown hills and rustic flatlands, he has not expected this--a shimmering lake, a stylish city. Three-story Queen Anne mansions line the littoral shore, with astounding gardens and sprawling lawns, carriage houses and small private parks set with classical sculptures wrought in marble. Daniel spies fine carriages driven by liveried coachmen trotting down well-worn lanes bordered by more of the astonishing succulents and palms, broad swooping oaks with reddish-green leaves unlike any foliage he’s seen back East.

Miss Cameron coolly regards his surprise. “We call Oakland the Continental Side of the Bay, Mr. Watkins. Evie attended Snell’s Seminary here.”

“Snells?” Daniel thinks of escargot in garlic butter.

“The finishing school, of course.”

“Of course.” The sliver of a headache pokes behind Daniel’s eyes.

She gazes out the window, shifting into a pensive mood. “The good people live in Oakland, Mr. Watkins. People who love books and art and sculpture. Aesthetes, Mr. Watkins. Birders, scholars, astronomers, entomologists. Dr. Merritt lives here, and the Peraltas, and Joseph Knowland the publisher, and Judge Sam McKee. Mr. F. M. Smith, who discovered all that borax in Nevada. His ballroom accommodates hundreds and his gardens are legendary.”

“I’ve heard of his gardens.”

“And the houses in Oakland have telephones, Mr. Watkins. Do you know of the telephone?”

He laughs indignantly. “Why, of course. In London and Paris—“

“Oaklanders own more telephones than people in San Francisco,” Miss Cameron continues, growing animated. “They’ve got more electricity in their homes than anyone.”

“Mother’s got a system of electrical buzzers to summon the servants,” Miss Brownstone says breathlessly. “Like Mrs. Winchester, the rifle heiress.”

“And electrical lights,” Miss Cameron says. “Oaklanders employ Mr. Edison’s genius to good advantage, Mr. Watkins.”

“I never said you didn’t.”

“Mother’s got hot water for my bath,” Miss Brownstone yelps, getting into the spirit. “Pumped right into my rooms on the third floor!”

“You say you’ve seen London and Paris, Mr. Watkins,” Miss Cameron says imperiously. “Well, the McPhail mansion was designed by California architects, and do you know what those clever fellows did? They installed a chute in the wall that opens up in the boudoir of the lady of the house upstairs and goes all the way down to the washerwomen’s tubs in the basement. No one has ever seen anything like it.” Miss Cameron’s flowers and ribbons quake with civic pride. “Have you ever seen such a thing in London or Paris, Mr. Watkins?” Before he can respond properly or crack a joke, she snaps, “No, I thought not, sir! We are scarcely mud huts in California. We are quite modern and striding forth into the future. And don’t you forget it!”

The two ladies storm out of the dining car, leaving Daniel dazed.

* * *

The Overland pulls into the station at the Port of Oakland. Daniel collects his bags and his trunk, and disembarks. At midday, a languor has settled over the port. Sunlight filters through a high haze, a breeze whips in from the bay. Clang of ships’ bells, slap of waves, squeak of tightly drawn rope around wood. Ah, London, how he recalls those sounds, his night walks along the piers.

By God, his head aches. He lights a ciggie, inhales deeply. His stomach rolls over. Another shot of puma piss would put him right. But the old cowboy has vanished as surely as his invisible companion.

“Porter,” Daniel calls, extracting coins from his coat pocket. “Where’s the ferry bound for San Francisco?”

“You’ll be wantin’ the Chrysapolis, sir, and a lovely steamer she is, too,” says the porter, a stringy old man in a cap and a rumpled uniform. He flashes an abundance of gold teeth. A failed prospector? If the porter had been a youngster during the Gold Rush—and many Forty-niners were just kids—he could very well have scratched around in those golden-brown hills, panned the streams. Taking only a taste of fortune with him--a mouthful of gold teeth.

“Take me there.” Daniel scowls, his headache deepening. He can see it--the stringy porter’s years of searching, the frustration, his ultimate failure. Perhaps the porter wasn’t so stringy then. Perhaps he’d been a robust young man like Daniel. That is what failure does--wrings you out, plucks at your bones, sucks you dry. A failed man is a loathsome thing. And Father? Why, the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins, he is a failure, too.

“Sir, she don’t depart till half past three,” the porter says apologetically, unsure how he may have offended the young gentleman.

“Half past three! What in heaven’s name am I to do till then?”

“If you please, sir, the sights along the promenade is quite nice.” The porter points to where Miss Cameron and Miss Brownstone stroll arm-in-arm beside the rocks strewn along the steep grade of the beach.

“I think not.” Holy Rollers, indeed.

“Perhaps a gentleman like yourself would like to seek some refreshment?” The porter points in the opposite direction where sailors slouch about the docks and the murmur of distant merriment can be heard.

Refreshment. Exactly. Daniel hands more coins to the porter. “You shall watch my bags while I seek refreshment. And you shall come and fetch me when the Chrysapolis is ready to depart. Understand me?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Very good, sir. That way, sir.”

Daniel stalks along the waterfront, loosening his tie and collar. Get a hold of yourself, sir. Why should he be so disquieted by a porter? There is no such thing as equality, his friends in London say. You Americans are deluded if you believe in such nonsense. There are those who are superior, those who are inferior, and that is that. Yet the porter—if he truly is a failed prospector in more than Daniel’s imagination—is no different than Father. No different at all. In the whole scheme of things, they are truly equal.

Father fancied himself so clever. A friendship with a rich British lady during one of Mama’s many illnesses had enlightened him. Father realized that America’s rebellion could be turned to his advantage. This was the New World, replete with land and resources, cheap labor and huge ambitions. Funds were all the aspiring grubbers lacked. And funds, capital, gold could be secured from the old merchant families, royalty, continental capitalists hungry for higher returns, all eager to exploit the peasants and criminals and reprobates who were beating out a new life for themselves in this New World.

Consider the beauty of it. You loan the wretches money against their homes, their land, their businesses. Let them think they’ve won their freedom, then reinstate their servitude not by force, king, or country, but by debt.

This was part and parcel of Father’s insidious propaganda. If the strident communists and the clamoring workingmen infesting Europe are worrying you, then bring your gold to America where bold entrepreneurs are making a killing. Have you any notion, he would whisper in the ear of a French widow or a German dowager, how property values in San Francisco shot to the moon during the Gold Rush? Why, a little commercial front on Portsmouth Square with a bar slinging shots of rotgut and a rouge-et-noir game in the back was bought for six thousand dollars and sold but a few years later for one million. One million dollars, madame. El Dorado House, the first restaurant in the city serving hard-boiled eggs for five dollars apiece, leased its premises for twenty-five thousand dollars a month.

This, when men and women rolling cigars or shining shoes or stitching gentlemen’s collars earned fifty cents a day.

Oh, Father had them coming and going on both sides of the transaction. The dreaming settlers, the idealistic famers, the ambitious shopkeepers scraping out their survival in the cow towns, dead ends, tenderloins, and Chinatowns throughout the West. And the scheming capitalists, the jaded merchant dynasties, the indolent European royalty hungering for more profits, for greater cash flow.

The eminent Jonathan D. Watkins became a mortgage broker and from 1888 to 1892 extended twelve million dollars, mostly in European capital, in loans on real estate throughout the West. He put Daniel on H.M.S. May Queen on New Year’s Day, bound for London and Paris. This was a time when Father favorably regarded his son’s good looks, quick charm, and easy manners. Hobnob, those were Father’s orders. Ingratiate yourself to those grieving French widows, diamond-studded German dowagers, plump Dutch bluebloods.

Hobnob Daniel did. So what if he wound up in Paris, drinking absinthe with whores and poets at La Nouvelle-Athenes? He scratched up plenty of capital for Father’s schemes. Removed from Father’s stern ambit, he found he cared little for business, for money-grubbing. He kept his bohemian life to himself and dreamed of pictures on a strip of painted paper whirling in a Zoetrope.

Then the panic struck America in ’93. Banks failed, and capital dried up in a financial drought the like of which no one had see in a decade. Businesses collapsed. Angry gangs of unemployed men roamed towns and cities with sticks and knives and guns. Needless to say, property values plummeted, especially in the West where the economy was still so fragile.

By 1895, the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins found himself holding twelve million dollars of his own outstanding debt, debtors who could not or would not make payments, and property securing all that debt worth next to nothing.

What could he do? Father declared bankruptcy and recalled his son from Europe. How well Daniel remembered the telegram. What excitement to receive a telegram, quite the rage. Brand-new telegraph wires looped all over the streets of Paris.

DANIEL STOP WE’RE DONE STOP

COME HOME AT ONCE STOP FATHER

MOTHER NEEDS YOU STOP

Daniel hadn’t understood the full import of the message till he reluctantly returned home, dragging a bag filled with scandalously decadent paintings and four bottles of Pernod Fils. We’re done? What in hell did that mean? That Father had decided upon a new strategy? A more lucrative way to become a millionaire besides lending the money of strangers to other strangers?

No. Jonathan D. Watkins had become a failure, just as surely as the old cowboy or the porter with his gold teeth. Bankruptcy was, to Daniel, as evil as moral turpitude and as far-reaching as an extramarital indiscretion. Sins of the father? Oh, yes. Daniel was doomed.

He kneads his brow. Refreshment. Indeed, sir, refreshment is just the thing he needs.

He quickens his pace along the waterfront. Sailors stare at him, poke each other in the ribs, guffaw, or mutter half-heard obscenities. Daniel tips his bowler, keeping his spine ramrod straight. He’s got the accoutrements any gentlemen should possess when sojourning through the West--a Remington double-barreled derringer stuck in his waistband and a jumbo Congress knife with a two-inch blade. He’s strolled among dives and joints before. He can walk into any accursed place he cares to.

The sound of merriment loudens.

He spies a tiny crude building of unfinished wood with two plain windows and a strictly functional front door. A converted bunkhouse, perhaps, where oyster fishermen once slept. The odor of many a previous drunk teases his olfactory senses. Beneath the eaves, emblazoned in red letters across the weathered boards, he reads:

HEINOLD’S

FIRST AND LAST CHANCE SALOON

Daniel steps into the smoky caucus. A potbellied stove glows red-hot in one corner. An assortment of rickety chairs and tables, none of a matching set, are jammed onto the sawdusted floor, together with retired packing barrels and tumbledown stools. Men sit on these or stand at the bar, weaving on their feet. Ropes and buoys are slung on the planked walls, and brass lanterns thick with the patina of heavy salt air.

A wizened beerslinger stands behind the bar, sucking on a stogie. Deep lines crease his tanned forehead made high and wide by his receding hairline. Elephantine ears protrude from his head as if Nature had specially equipped him to better hear each customer’s request over the din of those previously served.

“Johnny, hey Johnny,” calls out one of the patrons. “Got a’ aspirin?”

“Back yerself up to the stove an’ you’ll get yerself an ass burn,” the beerslinger says.

“How much?” Daniel says.

“A nickel for the beer, a deener for the whiskey,” says the beerslinger. “an’ nothin’ for the ass burn.”

Beer is peasant’s fare, a heavy sour taste Daniel has never much cared for. But he finds this beer fruity and clean and thick with malt. The beer chases a shot of whiskey down his parched throat just fine and settles his stomach. The whiskey is smooth and mellow, and eases the ache in his head admirably.

Daniel throws coins on the bar and looks for a place to sit. A vacant stool set before a barrel looks satisfactory except for the table crowded with rowdies seated directly beside it. Two men and a tawdry lady barge in the front door. Daniel seizes his opportunity. The stool it must be.

“Say there, little brother, can you tell me what is a brick?” says a huge rowdy at the table. He sports an enormous mustache, a bush of a beard, and long, wild yellow hair beneath a Stetson hat. A cape of mangy fur that looks and stinks like bearskin is draped around the shoulders of his bright blue Prince Albert coat.

“What is a brick?” Daniel says, playing along.

“Why, there are gold bricks and silver bricks and bricks made without straw. There are bricks to be hurled at mad dogs. Ergo, bricks!” The rowdy slaps his suede chaps. One trouser leg is tucked into a fancy-stitched cowboy boot. The other leg isn’t. He toasts Daniel and triumphantly tosses a shot of whiskey down his throat, pleased at his own pronouncement.

“Joaquin, you are living proof that American poets have yet to master the English language,” says his gaunt companion. The companion smiles dreamily, sipping his beer. He wears a sea captain’s cap over his mop of dark curls, though from his pale aristocratic face, pale elegant hands, and foppish bowtie, he is clearly no sailor. “Sir, may I introduce you to the great Californian poet, Joaquin Miller. And a very fine poet he would be too, if only he could make a lick of sense.”

“Ergo, bricks,” Daniel says. “Actually, sir, I think I am drunk enough to understand Mr. Miller. Bricks made of stardust, bricks made of wormwood, bricks to be juggled by a beautiful lady. Ergo, bricks!”

“Bravo! Another boilermaker for the young gentleman,” roars Joaquin Miller. “And may I introduce George Sterling, who might one day amount to a great Californian writer if only he could give up carousing among the redwoods long enough to write something. Carousing, I might add, with fair maidens clad in togas! Do you comprehend what a toga is? A drapery in the Greek style, under which the maidens in question wear nothing but their. . . .”

“Gifts from God,” interjects George Sterling. His gaunt face remains expressionless, but his eyes twinkle at Daniel. “I myself have been known to wear a toga, sir.”

“To togas,” says Daniel, toasting Mr. Sterling with his boilermaker.

“Try an alligator pear, sir,” says the third member of their party. He offers Daniel a plate of thin slices of a pale green fruit sprinkled with salt and pepper. He’s a handsome blond fellow dressed like a dandy in the height of European fashion--a fitted burgundy topcoat, a canary yellow waistcoat, and spats. Spats! “The greasers call them avocados. You must try a dish called guacamole at Luna’s in North Beach.” He leans forward confidentially. “You’ve just come from the Continent, I take it?”

“Indeed, I have, sir,” Daniel says, trying the green fruit, which has a strange oily taste and is not sweet at all. “Is it so obvious?”

“Verily, Frank has been across the pond and back again himself, is that not so, Frank?” says Joaquin Miller.

“Name’s Frank Norris,” says the blond fellow and shakes Daniel’s hand. “Truthfully, I haven’t been to Paris since college. Haven’t the time. The novels must come first.”

“By God, sir, you write novels?”

“Oh, certainly. The first book is called Blix. A romance, with tequila. Got another in mind, going to call it McTeague. A tragic one, that. Nasty fellow beats his pretty wife to death.”

Everyone guffaws, and Daniel is enchanted. Marvelous Californ’! Old cowboys and failed prospectors and Holy Rollers; these he expected. But poets and novelists? Dreamers like himself? Oh, hand of destiny! That merciless hand does not oppress him now. Yes, a great fate awaits him, live or die. He raises his glass. “To the First and Last Chance Saloon!”

“To our dear, dear watering hole.” Joaquin Miller wipes a tear from his eye.

“To the Fourth of July!”

“To Johnny Heinold!”

“Hear, hear!”

The beerslinger grins and lights another stogie.

Now a rough-looking kid charges in. Startlingly handsome, he’s got a broad sunburnt face and hands to match. He finds a spare barrel and rolls it over to the table, nodding to the assembled company and fetching himself a beer.

Daniel nods to the newcomer and proclaims to his new friends, “I am Daniel J. Watkins of Saint Louis, London, and Paris, and I’m looking for lodging in San Francisco. Could anyone recommend a place?”

“Try the Palace Hotel,” says the rough kid sarcastically. His quick eyes flick over Daniel’s suit. Filthy fisherman’s togs, that’s what the kid is wearing. His thick curly brown hair spills over his ears to his collar. “That’s the dive for you, mister.”

Daniel has heard of the Palace Hotel, the first luxury resort on the West Coast. They say the Palace boasts eight hundred rooms and rivals the finest hotels in New York or Paris.

“Can’t afford that,” Daniel says mildly, sensing the kid’s antagonism. He offers the kid a ciggie, which the kid seizes and lights. No, he cannot afford such luxury. Not anymore.

“Yeah, I see,” says the kid. “Only a rich capitalist can afford a fancy joint like the Palace. I guess you’re no rich capitalist. Still, I guess you’re no tramp, either, mister.”

“Leave him alone, Jackie,” says Frank Norris. “He’s all right.”

“Yeah?” says the kid, eyeing Daniel’s bowler. “When the revolution comes, the property-owning class will be stamped out. Stamped out, I say, by the working classes. The working classes are the vanguard of the future. Without ‘em, the rich capitalists couldn’t survive. And with ‘em, the rich capitalists won’t survive. Get me, mister? Because the working classes will have a revolution. Oh, yessir, it won’t be long. Won’t be long at all before the revolution comes. Even as we speak, the United States of America is embroiled in a class struggle between those with property and those who labor in the service of those with property. A class struggle, and there’s no denying it. What do you say to that, mister?”

For once in his life, Daniel doesn’t know what to say. He has certainly heard such rabble-rousing in plenty of Paris cafés.

“I say drink your beer, Jack,” says Joaquin Miller. “Studying books all day has fevered your poor young brain.”

“Even as we speak, mister,” the kid says, continuing to fix Daniel with a baleful stare as he gulps his beer.

“Only time will tell,” says George Sterling. “This fiery young fellow is Jack London, Mr. Watkins. Jackie’s studying at the University of California over yonder in that cow pasture we call Berkeley. He may amount to some kind of writer one day, don’t you think, Frank?”

“If he doesn’t get thrown in the calaboose first,” Frank Norris says.

“I fear no jail,” Jack London says contemptuously. “I’ve seen the inside of plenty of jails.”

“What sort of lodgings are you looking for, Mr. Watkins?” Joaquin Miller says. “You a churchgoin’ man?”

“Hardly,” Daniel says, thankful to be off the subject of revolution.

“Ah. You’re wanting a quiet sort of place to rest your weary head?”

“Mr. Miller, I have journeyed many miles from Saint Louis, which is as deadly quiet a place as you can imagine.”

“Ah ha. You like the theater, then? The opera, perhaps? The Tivoli is the place for you.”

“The opera is all right,” Daniel says. “I can take it or leave it.”

“Leave the opera to the dogs,” Jack London advises.

“What’s your preference, then, Mr. Watkins?”

Daniel considers the question. “Sir, I have spent many months imbibing the Green Fairy at La Nouvelle-Athenes while whores danced the cancan and poets as fine as yourselves labored to express their desire to achieve ecstasy or die. I suppose you could say I’m lonely.”

The company guffaws. Jack London snorts, but Joaquin Miller slaps Daniel on the back.

“Then you must try Number Two Sixty-three Dupont Street, Mr. Watkins. Tell the lady there, a fine proprietress name of Miss Jessie Malone, that Joaquin Miller sent you. You’ll be in the thick of things, Mr. Watkins. The very thick of things, I assure you.”

“Sir, sir!” The stringy porter pokes his head in the door of the First and Last Chance Saloon. “The ferry to San Francisco, sir. She’s about to depart. Hurry!”

“Thanks!” Daniel says to his new friends, much refreshed by the boilermakers. “By the way,” he points to the sign above Johnny Heinold’s head. “Last Chance for what?”

“Last chance for a taste if you’re going to Alameda,” Frank Norris says, pointing south. “They’re dry as a bone over there.”

“And the First Chance?”

“Why, if you’re going to San Francisco, this is your first chance to get pickled, dipsy, pie-eyed, dead blue, and, dare I say it, loaded, Mr. Watkins,” shouts Joaquin Miller. “Verily, and lackaday, tell her Joaquin sent you, sir!”

Marvelous Californ’!

* * *

A magnificent double-deck steamboat, that’s the Chrysapolis. All black and white with a huge smokestack spewing charcoal-colored clouds. The willful bay would have flung a lesser boat about, but the Chrysapolis plows through wave and tide, speeding her passengers on their way. Some are pilgrims from the Overland train, some citizens of genteel Oakland or Contra Costa bound for business in the city on the other shore.

Daniel waves to Miss Cameron and her dreadful little friend, but the ladies snub him. Perhaps he does reek too much. They are ladies, after all, not whores. Well, to hell with them. What does he need with a couple of Holy Rollers? What he needs are new accommodations from which he can commence his business operations. Father holds mortgages on several parcels upon which Daniel means to collect outstanding payments or commence foreclosure, rousting the rascals out and repossessing the property. Two parcels are empty lots out on the city’s periphery in a place called the Western Addition. Of the two others, one is a commercial building on Stockton Street in the heart, Father warned, of Chinatown. The other is a shack in the red-light district of Sausalito, a little port north of San Francisco across the bay. Daniel grimaces when he thinks about this business of collection and foreclosure. By God, is he cut out for it? Hobnobbing was one thing. Strong-arming recalcitrant debtors quite another. He would much rather play with his Zoetrope.

As he ponders these dark controversies, he suddenly realizes someone is standing behind him. Alarm heats his blood. Damn Jack London with his talk of revolution. For a moment he fancies the golden-brown women have conspired against him, their fingers of thorn reaching for him, grasping, seeking revenge for all the wrongs done them by man.

Daniel turns around. A lovely little bird stands right beside him in a sky-blue summer dress set with snippets of lace. She is petite, with an astonishingly tiny waist. An ivory-colored veil is drawn over her face from a dainty hat perched upon her fair curls. Her topskirts swirl in the sea breeze, very much like the wings of some tropical bird. Yes, a little blue canary! She presses her fingertips in ivory lace mitts to her throat and moans.

“Please, miss, may I be of assistance?” Daniel says. Of course he is a man of nice sensibilities, quite sympathetic to the trials and tribulations of the weaker sex. Miss Cameron was barbaric in her shoddy treatment of him.

“Oh, thank you, sir,” the veiled bird says in a quavering voice. “The ferry makes me ill. I’m sorry.”

“No cause for apology, miss. There, there, now.” Daniel takes her elbow, places his hand on her tiny waist, and caresses the small of her back. He braces her as the Chrysapolis pulls into the Port of San Francisco.

The steamboat slams into the dock with a mighty thump! The veiled bird staggers toward him, wraps her arms around his chest, and clings to him like a child.

“Ooh,” she moans louder, leaning against him.

He can feel her corset, the stays, her heaving breast. An image of her satiny skin beneath the layers of fabric and whalebone rises up in his mind’s eye, making his breath catch. Come now, sir, this will not do. Still, it’s been hellishly too long since he’s shared carnal knowledge with a lady. He tightens his grip. She’s so frail! Perhaps he can persuade her to dine with him?

The crew of the Chrysapolis scampers about, tying up the steamboat fore and aft. A plank is lowered, and the passengers descend. Miss Cameron and her dreadful mousy friend trip regally down the plank, lifting their skirts only just high enough to find their footing, but not high enough to let anyone glimpse their ankles. Daniel snorts. He’s seen whores pose nude, splayed and shameless, in the studios of his artist friends in Paris and London. Truly, do these ladies believe men are not acquainted with every detail of their anatomy beneath the silks and cashmere? Yet Daniel finds himself peering at the elegant Miss Cameron, craning his neck for a glimpse of her ankle. What sort of shoes does she wear? What color are her stockings?

“Ooh, sir,” moans his veiled bird louder still, clinging to his waist pathetically. “Will you help me down the plank, and then I’ll trouble you no more?”

“Heaven’s, miss, it’s no trouble at all,” he says, gesturing at a strapping young porter to take his bags and trunk. “You must tell me your name. Would you care to dine with me?”

She shakes her head in weak assent, clutching her throat wordlessly.

“Do you live in San Francisco, then?” Daniel persists. “Have you an address where I may call upon you?”

“May I take your card?” she whispers in reply.

Well, of course. Why should she impart personal information to a stranger? He peers through her veil, getting only a glimpse of the curve of her lip, her wide-set eyes staring at him more boldly than he would have expected. He gives her the business card he’s used in Europe. “That’s my name, at least,” he says. “Daniel J. Watkins of Saint Louis, London, and Paris. I haven’t settled upon a residence yet, but I shall be here a while to settle my father’s accounts. When may I see you again?’

“Soon, I’m sure, sir,” the veiled bird says as they step off the plank onto the dock.

Though she had clamped quite a grip on him, and he on her, she manages swiftly to extricate herself and slip away. In less than an instant, his veiled bird disappears into the crowd milling about the dock. Such a tiny waist!

Never mind. San Francisco! San Francisco, at last! Daniel breathes the salt air, relishing the cold clean tang of it. Bang, bang, bang! He starts, then laughs at the smoke and the stink of gunpowder. Small boys leap about on the dock, lighting some sort of red tassels and flinging them on the planking. A Chinese man—a coolie, they’re called—clad in denim pajamas, straw sandals, and wide-brimmed conical straw cap chases after the boys, shouting and gesticulating. One boy tosses a silver coin onto the dock where the boards are pocked and uneven. The coolie dives frantically for his coin before it drops into the water below. Daniel smiles wryly. Cruel kid.

He strolls through the Ferry Building, a portion of which is under construction, the wood skeleton laid bare. The strapping porter trots after him, hauling his bags and his trunk. Horse-drawn wagons and cable cars and gangs of men mingle chaotically on the cobblestone avenue. A green and red cable car with “SIGHTSEEING” emblazoned down its sides waits on a track. The cable car is much like the trams he’s seen in Europe, only bigger and wider and grander. More American. They say Mr. Hallidie, the brilliant Scotsman who invented and built the first cable car line on Clay Street with twenty thousand dollars of his own life savings, is a multimillionaire now. There’s a business for a young gentleman to consider. Daniel wonders if he should buy a street-railway franchise, lay in a new cable car line.

Bang, bang, bang! A brass band strikes up a rousing tune. A gigantic parade promenades up the street.

“What’s that?” He points to the chaotic avenue before him.

“This here’s Market Street,” shouts the strapping porter, flushed with excitement. “It’s the Fourth of July parade, mister! Ain’t it grand?”

It is, indeed. Regiment after regiment of former soldiers in uniform pass by, some on foot, some on horseback, some in carriages or open wagons. Gold and silver braid crisscrosses jackets of blue or maroon, deep green or violet. There are high-peaked caps, caps with brims like wings, and plumed helmets. Feathers flutter, tasseled ropes swing. The men bear their pistols and rifles proudly. Banners and flags snap in the brisk sea breeze.

The United States Army and Navy march past, then the Coast Guard, the California Club, the Schuetzen Club, the Scottish Clan, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West. The Camera Club has set up their tripods in surreys and snap photographs of the cheering crowd. The Cycling Club rolls past, three men in tight bicycling togs wobbling precariously on old-fashioned high wheelers. The rest of the club—including ladies in bloomers—clip smartly along on modern bicycles sporting two low wheels of the same size rimmed in sterling silver, huge silver bells, and fish horns with which they produce a terrific racket.

Vehicular traffic congests Market Street, navigating around and through the parade. A splendid brougham trots by, pulled by matched chestnuts with plumes in their bridles. A hansom with an elegant blue body, green and carmine striping, and plenty of scrollwork in gold and silver leaf nearly collides with an ice wagon bearing on both sides a fine reproduction of Emanuel Leutze’s painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware. More coolies in wide-brimmed caps and denim pajamas dash across the avenue, their baskets heaped with vegetables or fish and slung on yokes that they bear over their shoulders. Daniel spies the Palace Hotel looming eight stories high and taking up the whole block. Other elegant commercial buildings boast an intricate style more flamboyant, more exuberant, more baroque than any architecture he’s ever seen. The street lamps are crafted of beveled capiz shell and stained glass.

Ladies in their summer dresses and gentlemen in top hats and checked vests snack from picnic baskets right on the street corners, uncork wine bottles. A crowd congregates around a tall fountain made of gray marble cherubs, dipping cups and glasses into a sparkling fluid spouting from the cherubs’ mouths.

“What is it?” Daniel exclaims.

“Help yourself.” A gentleman with a face blooming scarlet dips his hand. “Happy Fourth of July!”

Daniel scoops up a palmful of cheap champagne from the fountain, astringent bubbles tickling his nose as the wine slides down his throat. The strapping porter grins and plunges his face right into the champagne cascading from a cherub’s mouth. That’s San Francisco in the Year of Our Lord, 1895, Daniel thinks. Champagne for all.

A ferocious clanging cuts through the celebratory din. A spectacular red and black fire wagon with polished brass fittings, a gigantic brass cask of water, and intricate pumping equipment thunders by, pulled by wild-eyed blowing steeds whose prancing hooves show off their skill at negotiating city streets beyond the capability of the ordinary nag. Boys cheer and whoop and chase after the frantic fire wagon.

“Happens every Fourth, mister,” says the porter with a malicious grin. “Some blighter lands a rocket on somebody’s roof, and the whole joint burns down. Ha, ha.”

“Burns down!” What about Father’s commercial building on Stockton Street? Daniel suddenly wonders if Father’s tenants have any inkling he’s here. But how could they? Father felt that taking them by surprise was the best strategy and, after his last pleas for payment, he had wired no one. Still, Daniel feels uneasy. It’s the noise and confusion, he tells himself, the smell of gunpowder, the lingering aftertaste of puma piss. He takes out a handkerchief, wipes sticky champagne off his palm. “Let’s get going.”

“Sure, mister.” The porter stops in his tracks, holds out his hand. “But first, that’ll be two bits for unloadin’ you from the ferry.”

“Oh, very well.” Daniel searches his jacket pocket. He blew too much cash at the First and Last Chance Saloon, that’s a fact. But he’s got more. He reaches into his vest, his fingers searching for the smooth Moroccan leather of his boodle book. He’s got a few treasury notes, but Father warned him no one honors paper currency in the West. A gentleman needs coins, gold preferably, and he’s got several dozen in the coin pocket of the boodle book. Now where is the blasted thing? It seems to have migrated someplace.

Daniel searches, puzzled, and pats his pockets, reaching here and there. Nothing? Nothing! “Damn,” he mutters.

“Something the matter, mister?” That malicious grin again.

With an awful sinking feeling, Daniel knows the boodle book and its contents are long gone. “Seems I’ve lost my dough.”

“Cashed in your chips on the trip out, did ye?”

“No, I haven’t gambled since. . . . No. That bird. The little bird I left the ferry with.”

“Oh, her? Good ol’ Fanny, she’s a hummer, ain’t she?”

“By God, are you telling me she’s a dip?”

“Fanny Spiggot? Ha, ha. Faintin’ Fanny, that’s what we call her. A’ course, a smart young gentleman like yourself wouldn’t fall for her racket, now would ye?”

Daniel fights the anger and disgust welling in his chest while the porter sticks his mug into the stream of champagne for another guzzle. Naturally, he didn’t carry his whole kit and caboodle in the boodle book. He’s not some bumpkin. He’s stashed a few gold coins in his ditty bag. Then there’s the trunk with the deeds and papers, a bit of the art he acquired in Paris. He’s not wiped out.

Still! Still! The lousy little bitch, he could take her slender neck in his hands and twist it. Women! They’ll steal your soul if you give them half a chance.

The porter reels up from his guzzle, flushed and shiny-eyed. He’s drawn his own conclusions from Daniel’s sudden dejection. He proclaims with high spirits, “Hell with the two bits, mister. Where ye bound? It’s the Fourth of July. Welcome to San Francisco!”

“Thank you,” Daniel says humbly.

“Next time, I’ll charge ye twice.”

The porter lugs the trunk, Daniel takes the bags, and together they fight the festive crowd up Market Street. At last Dupont appears to the north. The porter turns right up a gentle incline that might as well be an Alp, for all Daniel cares. By God, he’s dry. And exhausted. Thank heaven Father cannot see him in this ridiculous predicament.

He and the porter enter another part of town, and the traffic, the sounds and the smells, the mood and the very light change. A saloon stands on every street corner, four per intersection, sometimes more if another proprietor has got the story up. Daniel has never seen so many saloons and resorts crowded together in such proximity. Music blares from doorways, inviting him in. Men guffaw and shout. Glasses bang on bars or crash together in toasts. The stink of gunpowder is infused with the powerful smells of whiskey, tobacco, roasting meat, and an odd indefinable sickly sweet scent.

A few women drift in and out of the saloon doors, but mostly linger on street corners. Daniel approaches a young girl who skips gaily down the pavement in a sailor’s costume, a navy and white topcoat over bloomers, striped stockings, and little button boots. A jaunty straw boater is pinned over her yellow curls. She sidles up to him and curtseys charmingly. He gapes at the heavy white powder over her grainy jowls, her thin masculine lips beneath the mouth drawn on her face in red paint. She frowns at his startled look and skips away, tittering.

The porter laughs nervously. “Here’s as far as I go, mister,” He unceremoniously plunks the trunk down and strides off.

Daniel glances around. Something dangles above him, draped over the telegraph wires. Lace and ribbons, straps and stays. A woman’s undergarment? On the telegraph wires? His eyes travel from the garment to a window where a lovely young woman sits. Half-dressed, her hair disheveled, she leans out, seizes a strap of the corset, and reels in the undergarment like a hooked fish. But she does not attend too closely to her task. No, her eyes—are they blue?—are trained on him. He looks over his shoulder, to the right, to the left. She throws back her head and laughs, her bare throat throbbing.

Heat rises in his face, under his collar, beneath his belt.

He drags his trunk a step further. Damn that porter, abandoning him in the middle of nowhere. He finds himself in front of a huge house with square-cut bay windows, angular battens, and geometric decorations. The house is painted a conservative pale gray with bronze green trim, sable brown doors and vestibules. He should think it a perfectly respectable house except for the young woman at the window.

Daniel checks the address. What luck! The porter didn’t abandon him in the middle of nowhere, after all. He climbs the stairs and pulls the door bell of Number 263 Dupont Street. The bell chimes within. The young woman at the window exclaims and scampers down from her perch as he stands at the front door of Miss Malone’s Boardinghouse for Gentlemen.