Calico Palace (67 page)

When the hut was finished Hiram and Pocket came over to admire it, bringing Geraldine a gift of fresh fish. With the pleasure of an artist whose work is well esteemed, Dwight led them both into Marny’s parlor and treated them to refreshments, Pocket to cheese rolls and coffee, Hiram to the best whiskey at the bar.

Unlike Norman, Dwight was in good humor these days. He had finished Hiram’s bank, a building of two stories and an underground vault. The Calico Palace was rising steadily, and now Dwight added a balcony at the back, so Geraldine would have a place to play. Here he set up a wondrously contrived wooden framework, on which Geraldine could climb when she felt like taking exercise, and he surrounded the balcony with a flat-topped railing where she could sit and look down at the world.

Besides the Calico Palace, Dwight had begun two smaller buildings. Marny told Kendra all his work was going well. Another reason for his cheer was that the buildings were costing less than he had expected.

Marny told her why. Men of business in Honolulu and the Atlantic ports had heard of the fires in San Francisco, the frantic rebuilding, and the high prices. Eager to profit by the need, hundreds of dealers had sent out bricks and lumber. Now, said Marny, they had glutted the town. A shipment of bricks that would have cost Dwight fifty ounces of gold last year, he could now buy for ten. Sometimes even less. The sellers were not happy, but Dwight and his fellow builders were in a gladsome mood.

People were doing a lot of building. Among others, the men of the fire companies were setting up reservoirs at strategic points about town, one of them in the plaza. The filling of each one was an occasion for ceremonies. On a September evening, with pomp and fanfare and torchlights, the firemen pumped water into the plaza reservoir. Marny went out on the front balcony to look, but she did not stay there long. The ceremony, merry as it was with its bands and shouting, gave her shivers. Any reminder of the fire danger always did.

Marny was not a fainthearted person. But she was anxious because the danger was real. Eleven days after the plaza reservoir was filled, the firebells roused the town again.

It was four o’clock in the morning. When the bells woke them up, Marny rushed to the safe; Kendra grabbed Geraldine.

Geraldine now slept in her hut on the back balcony. Kendra latched the door of the hut, where Geraldine had begun to cry, half in fright and half in anger at being thus disturbed. Carrying the hut, Kendra found Marny and Norman and the Blackbeards in conference before the largest of their safes. Through an open window she could smell smoke and hear the clatter of the engines.

The Blackbeards had just been looking out of this window. Right now Troy Blackbeard was telling them the fire was burning to the north, and might not reach the plaza at all. The best thing to do was get dressed and be ready to leave if they had to, but meanwhile to stay here on guard.

This made sense. When Marny and Kendra had put on their clothes and their guns they stood at an upper window, each of them holding a poke of coins. Kendra had set Geraldine’s hut on a chair beside them. The fire was roaring eastward toward Montgomery Street.

Marny spoke little. With nervous fingers she twisted the drawstring of the leather bag in her hands. Kendra was doing the same thing. The coins in the poke did not belong to her. She did not own as much of anything as Marny. But like Marny, she had her life to lose and her sound body to be crippled if the fire should come this way. She had good reason to be afraid.

From somewhere behind her she heard Norman’s voice, loud and angry. Lolo, afraid for little Zack, was sobbing with panic. Norman was shouting to her to keep calm. Kendra said to Marny,

“Why doesn’t
he
keep calm?”

“He’s in a bad humor all round,” Marny answered promptly, as if glad to be reminded of something besides the fire. “He wouldn’t own it for all the gold in California, but he still misses Rosabel.”

At the mention of Rosabel, Kendra caught her breath. “Oh good heavens—I hope the fire won’t go as far as Chase and Fenway’s!”

“I hope,” Marny said savagely, “whoever started it gets burnt up in it.”

They never found out whether or not her wish came true. Later that day they learned that this fire had started in a combination flophouse and saloon on Jackson Street. Nobody knew if it had been set on purpose or if some fellow had gone to sleep with a lighted cigar in his hand. The fire engines had responded promptly to the alarm, but the flophouse was in an area of flimsy wooden shelters and by the time the engines got there the whole neighborhood was ablaze.

The firemen fought gallantly, and they did manage to hold the flames within limits. The fire did not reach the Calico Palace nor the El Dorado nor the Verandah, nor the other buildings on Kearny Street facing the plaza. But it raced across another block and damaged the
Alta California
building; it wrecked the office of the
Alta
’s major rival, the
Pacific News
; it destroyed several fine stores and warehouses; and more important to Marny and Kendra, it destroyed the building that housed Pocket’s library and his living quarters.

That afternoon Pocket came to the Calico Palace with Dwight. Pocket had gone to Dwight’s office to discuss the rebuilding of the library. By three o’clock they were both hungry, but several restaurants had been lost in the fire and the rest were crowded, and Dwight had said maybe Kendra would have some leftovers on hand. They brought steaks to replace what they intended to eat, and a package of liver for Geraldine. While Kendra served them a meal of bread and cold beef, they told her and Marny more details of the fire.

Pocket was cheerful about his own loss. He said he and his assistants had managed to save the mail entrusted to them. Most of his cash and dust were on deposit at Hiram’s bank, and were safe in the vault. The fire had gone as far as Montgomery Street, but though several other buildings on the block had been wrecked, Hiram’s bank had withstood the flames. Chase and Fenway’s, at the edge of the burnt area, had barely escaped.

The store had escaped because of the new wing Messrs. Chase and Fenway were planning to build. They had bought a lot next to the store, and by great good fortune this lot was between the store and the fire. Right now the lot was empty but for the bricks they had bought from Captain Pollock’s brickyard. Sparks that had fallen there last night had fizzled out.

Pocket said he had gone by the store this morning and had spoken to both Mr. Chase and Mr. Fenway. None of the earlier fires had come so close to them, and Mr. Chase said the fright had aged him ten years. Mr. Fenway was complaining that he was worn out from lack of sleep. He was also complaining about the extra work he would have to do because of the extra trade. Folks would be crowding in all day long to replace the stuff they had lost in the fire. When he went home tonight, he said, he was going to take a bolt of cream-colored satin to make a new dress for Rosabel. Poor girl, she had had a bad scare last night and needed a cheering up. Bad times, these.

Pocket finished his bread and beef, and went off to add to Mr. Fenway’s labors by buying clothes to take the place of those he had lost in the fire. Marny walked downstairs with Dwight. Half an hour later she came back into the kitchen, where Kendra was delighting Geraldine with a pan of the liver brought by Dwight and Pocket. Marny sat down at the kitchen table, took out her ever present pack of cards, and began to shuffle.

“Life,” she said to Kendra, “is like a card game. No matter how the game goes, every loss is somebody’s gain.”

Kendra offered Marny a cup of coffee. Marny, laying out her cards, shook her head. Bringing a cup for herself, Kendra came to the table. Marny was smiling at the cards.

“Go on,” said Kendra.

“Dwight Carson,” Marny said without looking up, “is today the happiest man in San Francisco.”

Kendra smiled too. She thought she knew what Marny was about to say. Marny said it.

“He has proved himself. He
can
put up a building that won’t burn. He has done it.”

She looked up, holding the queen of diamonds in her hand.

“Dwight is no villain,” she continued. “He wouldn’t set a fire to prove his competence. But he can’t help being gleeful now that fate has proved it for him. Pocket’s library, which Dwight did not build, went down in the fire. Hiram’s bank, which he did build, is still there.”

She went on laying out the cards. Kendra hoped they would show a rosy future, because while she had no faith in fortune telling she knew Marny had.

Pocket and Dwight had told them about Hiram’s bank. Carefully designed, carefully constructed of brick and stone and malleable iron, the bank had no trace of the fire except smudges on the outside. Dwight had reason to be proud.

It meant that she and Marny had been fortunate too. The nugget she had found at Shiny Gulch, and her small savings of gold dust, were secure in Hiram’s vault. Also in the vault unharmed (though Marny had probably not called this to Dwight’s attention) were the jeweled pin and nugget necklace Archwood had given her, and various other ornaments Dwight did not want her to wear these days.

Marny finished her layout and studied it.

“Of course,” she said, almost as if appealing to the cards, “even when the Calico Palace is finished, we can’t be
sure
it’s fireproof. We can’t know unless a fire hits Kearny Street.”

—The last thing she needs right now, Kendra thought, is sympathy. But she does need to be encouraged. I can’t tell her the Calico Palace is fireproof because maybe it’s not. I can’t tell her Dwight is going to stay with the Calico Palace until it has proved itself, because maybe he won’t. But I do want to help her somehow.

“Marny,” she said, “my grandmother used to have a cook who was happy and wise. I suppose she was happy
because
she was wise. When I would run in, all upset about something that might happen next week, she used to say to me, ‘Little girl, the way to live is,
get ready
for the maybe. Then forget it.’”

Marny’s face lit with a smile. “Get ready for the maybe,” she repeated. “Then forget it. That makes sense.” She looked down at the cards again. “I don’t see any disasters here. And Dwight does build well.”

“So he does,” said Kendra. “Now if you want to stop worrying, get busy and do something useful.”

“Such as what?”

“Take out Geraldine’s sandbox,” said Kendra, “and put in some fresh sand.”

“All right. Where’s the box?”

“On Geraldine’s balcony.”

Marny gathered up the cards, put the pack into her pocket, and stood up. “I’ll get it.”

A few minutes later she returned, carrying the box, now filled with clean sand.

“Where do I put this? On the balcony again?”

“That’s right.”

Marny looked down at the pan of sand she was holding, and looked up at Kendra. “In times gone by,” she said reflectively, “I used to have my hopes and my ambitions. I used to think about the days to come, and I wondered what the future held for me.” She gave a sigh. “I thought of so many possible destinies,” she went on. “But never, in my wildest thoughts, never did I dream that I would wind up being chambermaid to a cat.”

M
ARNY TRIED TO GET
ready for the maybe. Maybe there would be another fire on the plaza. But three floors of the Calico Palace were finished now, the top floor was progressing every day, and if ever a building looked safe and felt safe, this one did. Over and over she reminded herself of the advice from Kendra’s grandmother’s cook. “Get ready. Then forget it.”

The second part of the advice was the hard part. How could she forget, when every week or two the bells resounded with another fire alarm?

In all these alarms, rarely was there any question of accident. A policeman or night watchman would be attracted by a glimmer in the dark. Going nearer, he would find rubbish piled against the wall of a building and set alight; or shavings heaped on a wharf, crackling merrily, and matchsticks lying about. Nearly all the fires were set in the blocks between the plaza and the waterfront, where loot would be richest. The volunteer firemen, prompt and profane, were keeping the fires under control. But every alarm reminded Marny that some day the firemen might not get there in time.

“I’m so damn mad,” she said to Kendra, “that sometimes I feel like I’ve got a fire of my own, right inside my skull.”

She was not the only citizen enraged. Every sort of crime was increasing. People and more people were crowding into San Francisco, some of them with no purpose but to help themselves to anything they could lay hands on. Every night men were knocked down and robbed in the unlighted streets. The papers did not even try to list all the murders. And what was worse, the authorities were not doing much to change things.

There were a thousand rumors about why this was true. At Marny’s bar and Hiram’s bank and Pocket’s library, men talked of bribery and corruption. More and more, they were saying it was time they took justice into their own hands. They all began, with pious monotony, “I don’t believe in lynch law, but…”

The safest streets were those around the plaza, because of the lights that streamed from the pleasure resorts. The safest people were women, because their rarity hedged them with a kind of aura. Even on ill-lighted streets, a man with a woman at his side was not likely to be attacked.

“Everything here is upside down,” said Marny. “The most orderly part of town is the region of gamblers and fancy ladies; and when a man has to pass a dark alley he hires a streetwalker to protect him. Was there
ever
such a place in the world before?”

Still, if there was much to remind her of the dangers, there was also much to turn Marny’s thoughts to happier matters.

Gold was streaming down from the placers. Much of this gold went out by the steamers, but a great deal of it never got any farther than Kearny Street. Marny could not find the days too worrisome when she was getting richer all the time. And if she did feel quaky now and then, she could always divert her mind by stepping out on the balcony to see what was going on in the plaza.