Chapter 2
Daisy’s hair was fine as milkweed fluff, the color of a dandelion, the shape of a bindweed tendril. Frances gathered it in both hands and the loose mass slid softly over her fingers, slippery and smooth.
She loved the luxury of its touch, so unlike her own hair, coarse and tight and black as soot. Winding the blond tresses around her hand, she heaped it on top of Daisy’s head like a great soft crown and stuck pins in to hold it there.
“It won’t nohow stay up that way,” Daisy said. “I can feel it coming down already.”
Frances chuckled. “That’s part of the trick, dovie.”
Only the thin canvas wall of the lean-to and ten feet of air separated them from the street; through the wall came a constant babble of voices and a tramp of feet that sometimes sounded as if everybody in San Francisco was walking at her. The lamp made the cramped space smoky. Daisy sat on the stool, her round white shoulders hunched a little against the night chill; she cast a sideways look at the canvas wall, at the uproar filtering in through it.
Frances picked up the loose strands of hair and twisted them around her fingers so that they dangled softly over the girl’s white throat. “There now.”
“Frances,” Daisy said, “are you sure we’re gonna get away with this?”
Frances rapped her on the shoulder with her knuckle. “Only idea I got.” She turned, reached behind her to pull back the flap of dirty canvas, and called into the foggy night air. “Gilbert! You ready over there?”
Gil Marcus stuck his head into the opening, into the yellow lamplight. His forehead was ridged with tension. “It’s not going to get any readier, Mammy.”
“Well then,” Frances said, “let’s go.”
Daisy stood, turning toward her. The satin dress hissed and sighed as she moved. Carefully Frances smoothed the wide skirt, shaking out the flounces along the hem. She had worked hard on the dress, cutting open the bodice and easing the waist, and now she gave a last quick fit to it, tucking the smooth cloth around Daisy’s body. Reaching in over the deep neckline she lifted the girl’s breasts into the top of the bodice. The warmth of Daisy’s flesh reached her like a gust of perfume.
When she bent down to straighten the hem again, Daisy took the top of the neckline and tugged at it, trying to cover herself. Frances swatted at her hands.
“Leave it. It’s fine.” Daisy’s breasts rode halfway out of the dress like ripe peaches in a full bowl. “You look very pretty, Daisy.”
“Hell,” Daisy said. She turned around again, like somebody dancing, her hands loose and fluttering. “I wish I had a looking glass.”
“I’ll get you the best looking glass in San Francisco,” Frances said, “if we get through this tonight.” She stroked her hands down Daisy’s shoulders and plump, fair upper arms, trying to calm her. Daisy’s cheeks, pinker with rouge, were stiff with strain; the soft, sweet red-painted curve of her mouth was caught at the corners in a fitful pout; her eyes were wide and fearful.
Frances said, “Watch me, dovie. I’ll be there.”
Daisy reached up and gripped her hand, the pretty pale fingers closing over Frances’ smaller, darker ones. “Let’s go.”
Frances’ heart thumped. She turned and went out through the gap in the lean-to wall and held the canvas open so that Daisy could come through without having to touch anything dirty.
Outside was Gil Marcus, a lantern gripped in his hand, a bungstarter thrust through his belt. He went ahead, up onto the makeshift stage, and climbed up one of the barrels on which the plank floor rested. Facing the passing crowd in the street, he began to swing the lantern around.
“Here it is, boys — here’s what you been waiting for!”
His voice was creaky with nerves. Frances shook her head to herself: this was not Gil’s best line of work. Short, square-shouldered in his plaid shirt, he looked inconsequential, not worth heeding. He stopped and cleared his throat.
“Come on, fellows. Let’s gather around.” As he swung the lantern its light swooped in a wide circle around him, beaming on the empty little stage, catching only the edge of the street; the crowd flooding by showed up as a flutter of arms, a sleeve, a foot, a white face turned briefly toward him. Nobody stopped.
Frances went over toward the corner of the stage, where she had left the basket of flowers, and looked quickly around. They had found this place by luck, only that afternoon, on one of the trails that led up toward the hill and, farther, the lagoon. It was a little patch of gravelly sand tucked between two sprawling, flimsy buildings, half hut and half tent, where miners slept and ate and drank and gamed. A bigger tent, the light of lamps inside turning its flapping canvas peak to a dirty-yellow pyramid, stood just across the crowded street; men went in and out of it in a steady stream. The path between was a river of dirt, its pounded surface constantly churned into the air, frosting everything along it with pale dust.
The previous tenant of the patch of ground where Frances stood had obviously meant to build something here, had dragged an old longboat up from the harbor and torn off some of the wooden planks and stacked them, and then disappeared. The boat lay tilted back along the slope just behind her, half gone. The two tents where she and Daisy sheltered were built against its side. Broken planks littered the ground around it. Out of the planks Frances and Gil Marcus had put up this makeshift stage, spending a good part of the afternoon doing it, and now Gil Marcus, sweating, hoarse, was calling out to the uncaring world for some attention.
“Now, boys, what you been waiting for, all these days, all these months, what you been looking for—”
Daisy had come up behind Frances, shy, staying in the lee of the stage. Now she said, under her breath, “That won’t work.” She hitched up the white satin skirts in her hands and scrambled up the barrel onto the uneven plank floor.
Frances followed her as far as the edge of the platform and bent down for the basket of flowers. She had filled it in the afternoon, picking all the blooms off the steep, sandy hillside just above the broken boat. The long white petals were curling and limp. She could not help but see it as an omen. She swallowed, feeling grim, already defeated.
Above her, Daisy straightened, standing on the stage behind Gil, and gave a twitch to her shirts. He was swinging the lantern; for a moment, as she settled herself, she was in darkness, and then the hazy glow of the lantern flashed over her.
She lifted her head. In the lantern light her white satin dress shone like pale gold. The heavy mass of her hair was already coming loose from its pins, sagging like a silk cushion. In the street, suddenly, the torrent of passing bodies slowed.
“Gil,” Daisy called. “Put the lantern down. Let me do it.”
Gil stopped shouting and turned toward her. His face settled, hollow-cheeked. He put the lantern down on the stage and backed away, putting one hand on the bungstarter in his belt.
Daisy stepped past him, up to the front of the stage, where the light was bright. She pressed her hands together, lifted her head like a child saying her prayers, and began to sing.
She had a thin little piping voice; Frances could not make it out well enough to recognize the song. What she was working with had nothing to do with the song. Like a rock thrown into the current, her mere presence turned the whole river. Around the front edge of the stage men were gathering, their heads tipped back, their eyes bright in the lantern glow. Behind them a rough voice shouted, “A woman, by God!”
“Nice-lookin’ woman,” said a bushy-haired man standing up front.
Gil Marcus had backed up as far as he could without falling off the plank platform. He glanced down at Frances, and their eyes met for a moment. Frances turned away from him, annoyed; he looked scared, or sick. She touched her lips with her tongue. Her body coursed with a rush of anticipation. The crowd was pressing closer now, all around the little stage, and a loud whistle shrilled out. Daisy’s voice faltered, half drowned in the rising excitement of the men watching her.
Suddenly the stage rocked. A yard from the bushy-haired man, a lanky boy with rope suspenders was climbing up onto the apron of the platform, his eyes hot on Daisy. Seeing him, the crowd let out a wild yell. Close to Frances, another man put his hands on the stage to boost himself up; his hat fell off.
Gil shouted, “Daisy, watch out!” Pulling the bungstarter out of his belt, he started toward the boy in the rope suspenders, the closer of the attackers. But Daisy got there first. She snatched the lantern up off the stage and whacked the boy over the head with it.
The blow caught him square on the skull and stopped him flatfooted. The crowd gasped. For a moment the boy stayed up, swaying, his face frozen in an expression of wide-eyed ecstasy, and then he crashed over backward into the mass of men at the edge of the stage. Like virgins they shrank back from him, and he fell alone into the street. The rest of the men wheeled toward Daisy, rapt. The girl glared all around her.
“Quiet down!” Her singing voice was feeble, but her shouting voice carried like an overseer’s. She put the lantern back down where it had been and stepped away, her hands on her hips. “Quiet down, damn you, and treat me like a lady, or I’m leavin’.”
A roar of voices answered her. Onlookers filled the street, a wild, stirring mob, but they were staying off the stage. Somebody in the back yelled, “What’ll you do for us if you stay, girlie?”
Daisy lifted her head. Her hair was slipping out of its pins, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes glinted. She said, “You won’t find out if you don’t settle down.” Her lips twitched, as if she had thought of something funny but meant to keep it to herself.
She turned and walked away with a bounce of her hips that brought a raw bellow from the men like a herd of lovesick bulls. “Give her room! Let her be!”
In front of Frances the hatless man was still halfway up onto the stage. The three miners behind him grabbed his belt and flung him bodily off into the crowd, and fought one another to take his place. One, a huge blond hulk, shouted out in a voice thick with accent, “Zing, lady! Shud up, da rest of you. Stand away, an’ let da lady zing.”
The quilt of faces illuminated by the lantern settled to an eager hush. Beyond the edge of the light, the packed darkness buzzed and seethed, the crowd stretching up and down the street, filling the narrow lanes between the stage and the tents on either side. Frances gripped the stage with one hand; the wood quivered like something alive. Daisy squared herself up, clasped her hands together, and lifted her uncertain voice again.
“Rock of Aaay-ges — cleft for meee —”
A low sigh rose from the faces upturned in the lantern light, and then they were silent. Gil Marcus, his forehead gleaming, paced along the rear of the stage with the bungstarter in his hand while the crowd pushed closer. Voices rose; people in the back could not hear her.
She stopped singing. Instantly a yell went up. “Sing, lady!”
“Not till you’re quiet!” She tramped up to the edge of the stage. “Damn it, you wouldn’t treat your sister this way!”
At the chorus of whistles and hisses that replied, Daisy put her hands over her ears. Somebody yelled, “My sister don’t say damn it!” But the crowd quieted. Maybe the hymns had them in a churchy mood. With a sudden buoyant excitement, Frances watched the vast herd ease off, settling, until in the cool night air the distant clatter of something falling in the tent across the way sounded clear as a little bell.
Daisy smiled. Slow, teasing, she walked forward to the very edge of the stage, and like an army of angels before the Lord, the men sank down before her.
Now she glanced down at Frances, in the corner, and Frances nodded and smiled and waved her on. The girl cleared her throat and faced the crowd.
“Oh —Jee-sus, Thy savin’ grace—”
More confident now, she swung her arms, waved her hands, tossed her head. Every gesture brought a luxurious murmur from the crowd, but no one moved, no one called or whistled. Their docile attention made her bolder. She paced around behind the lantern, drawing their eyes after her like hooked fish. The only songs whose words she knew were hymns, but by the third tune her hips were swaying, her breasts bouncing half out of the satin, her tongue tipping between her lips; she shut her eyes and crooned through “The Old Rugged Cross” until the men shrieked and pounded on one another with their fists. Gil stood behind her, the bungstarter in his hand, but it was Daisy who held the mob back, Daisy alone. Soft with relief, Frances laughed.
It was going better even than she had hoped. Now came the most important part. Up there, wiggling and rolling her shoulders, Daisy reached the end of another song, and Frances took a handful of flowers from the basket and threw them up onto the stage.
Her first toss scattered only a couple of petals past the lantern. Her hand dipped back into the basket for more.
She needed no more. At the first shower of gifts the men howled as if their lungs were split open. Before she could draw her hand out of the basket again, the air was thick with prizes. Leather purses, coins, flasks, playing cards, hats, and scarves pelted the stage. Daisy stepped back, smiling broadly, triumphantly out at them, kissed her fingers to them, waved her hands over her head, and sang “The Twisted Tree on Which My Savior Hangs.”
Two songs later she was done. Her voice was fluttering and she was tired; Frances saw it in the slump of her back, the sag of her shoulders. She cleared her throat and shook her head and said, “That’s all.”
The men screamed and whistled, stamped and bellowed, and flung everything they owned at her feet. “Another one! Sing another one!”
“Later,” she called. “Tomorrow.” She spread her arms out toward them, leaning over them like a mother. “Go home and go to bed.” She turned once around, flirted her big rear end toward the crowd, and came down off the stage beside Frances, and the men sent up a cheer that left Frances’ ears ringing. Daisy darted off toward the safety of the lean-to.
Gil stepped forward across the stage, into the torrent of noise, and stood there shouting and waving his arms. Frances could see his lips moving but could not hear him. With the basket she climbed up onto the stage and went quickly around picking up the prizes that littered it. The flowers and paper and hats she tossed toward the street, but the purses and other money she put into the basket. The crowd was still howling and whooping; Gil could not quiet them. Finally, throwing up his hands, he backed away, and he and Frances went down off the stage and left the crowd to yell itself out.
✽✽✽
“There’s still a lot of people out there,” Gil Marcus said. “I hired a few fellows to stand watch.”
The smell of perfume reached him and he swallowed. The women still made him tongue-tied and shy. He came only halfway into the little lean-to, filling the space where the flap of canvas was drawn up. It seemed like a frail defense against the turmoil in the street, especially now that the crowd knew that Daisy was here. She sat on the stool, back to him, hands in her lap.
Her face smooth with intent, lips pursed, Frances Hardhardt knelt before Daisy, wiping off the girl’s face paint with a handkerchief. Without pausing in the work, Frances said, “Shut the door there, please. Did you hire colored men, as I told you to?”
Stiffly, Gil moved into the room, letting the canvas swing down over the opening. “No, I didn’t. I forgot.”
She gave him a single hard look. She was small, dark, female: it ruffled Gil that she should try to give him orders. When he had first met her he had assumed she was Daisy’s servant. He had also assumed that she was old, a misimpression he now guessed that she worked to create. She was not old, maybe no older than Daisy. And definitely not her servant.
He let his gaze rest on Daisy.
The girl sat motionless, passive under the quick, deft hands, her head bowed. Her plump pink shoulders swelled up out of the dress. Her neck looked soft and white; her hair, still half captive in its pins and loops, was the color of champagne. Gil had not seen a woman up close for a long time, and he told himself again that that was why he liked looking at her so much, why he took this deep pleasure simply from being in the room with her. He said, “I’ll be going now, Mammy.” He had taken to calling her Mammy when he thought she was old.
Daisy turned to face him. “One third of that’s yours.” She pointed at the basket.
Gil cleared his throat. Her voice was like a feather drawn across his skin. What he had been doing with them made him deeply uneasy. He could not shake the idea that it was a lot like pimping. He said, “Look, I was just, you know, helping you out, a couple of lone women.” His hands moved.
Her blue eyes wide, Daisy was gazing steadily at him, unsmiling, while Frances went behind her and began to take the pins out of her hair.
He mumbled, “I felt sorry for you, that was all. I don’t want any of your money. This belongs to you.”
Daisy’s mouth quirked into a smile. Her cheeks dimpled. She said, “You’re a good man, Gil Marcus.”
“Thank you. So I’ll, I’ll —”
Frances said, “Sit down, Gilbert. Take your share out of the basket.” She took a brush to the sleek sheen of Daisy’s hair.
He could not bring himself to leave, although he still did not want any of their gold. Sharing the gold would certainly make it pimping. He sat down on the bed. Outside there was a shout and a shuffling of feet. He asked, “Are you going to perform again tomorrow?”
“Perform,” Daisy said, mouthing the word, and her eyes flashed. The smile widened to a wicked grin. “Why, I think I will, won’t I. We could fix the stage better.” Her head swiveled, directing her bright, eager gaze toward Frances. “Do we have enough money for that?”
In the basket on the foot of the cot there were purses and sacks of gold dust, Mexican silver dollars, local banknotes; they had plenty of money. Gil lifted his head, hearing the scuffling outside, and Frances said, “We can’t do it without you, Gilbert. Now you sound as if you’re leaving us.” She had a way of talking that ran backwards of her looks, a round Southern eloquence, as if she had been educated.
Gil said, “I told you, Mammy, I got into this because I could see you two needed my help. I don’t mean to make a life’s work out of it.” He jerked up onto his feet, every nerve crackling, at the flat blam of a nearby gunshot.
Daisy said, “Oh, God.” Just outside the lean-to somebody shouted, and there was a thud.
Frances came forward, past Daisy, past Gil, and pulled the flap of canvas open again. “What’s going on here?”
The tent shook. In through the gap in the canvas a huge man walked, not tall, but wide and deep as a barrel. Gil moved up beside Mammy and laid his hand on her arm. “What do you want, Friendly?” He pulled on the little black woman, trying to get her behind him, but she wouldn’t budge.
The fat man’s face tilted toward him, wreathed in loose folds of fat, the eyelids red rimmed. “You done emptied my saloon with that damn stupid singsong, just when I was making lots of money. I come here to make sure you’re moving on.”
Frances said, “I think we’re staying right here. Who are you?”
Friendly ignored her. His contemptuous gaze swept the little room and returned to Gil Marcus. “You get them and you out of here before tomorrah, mister, else I’ll call the Regulators on you.” Behind him, in the dark outside the tent, several voices sounded in support of him; he had brought a pack of men. Gil felt the fat man’s presence like a weight that filled all the space around him, keeping him from breathing, from venting his rising anger. His fists were clenched at his sides. Friendly turned and pushed out of the gap in the tent wall and the tent trembled again, half uprooted.
Daisy said, “God Almighty. Who was that?” Her voice squeaked.
Frances turned toward Gil, her mouth drawn tight, the skin glossy over her cheekbones. “Who is he?”
Gil gathered in his breath. He should have foreseen this. Abruptly, like a dam bursting, a lot of other things he should have foreseen cascaded through his mind. He said, “That was Friendly — he runs the saloon across the way.” He gave a single shake of his head. “This is trouble, Mammy.”
Frances glanced at Daisy, perched on the stool, looking like a worried child, and then she faced Gil again. Her smooth black face was wide-eyed, the heavy lips grim. “Who are the Regulators?”
“A gang. Toughs. They wear green jackets; you must have seen them.”
“Police?” Daisy asked.
Gil shook his head. “Not really. Maybe once they were. Now they just pretend to be.” He sat down on the bed again and reached for the basket. Frances watched him steadily.
“What are you going to do, Gilbert?”
Swiftly he gathered up the banknotes, counted them, tossed out a few he knew to be worthless. Without a scale he could not value the gold they had collected. He took the silver dollars too, then pushed the basket toward Frances. “Take this, hide it somewhere.”
“Where are you going?” Her hand closed on the handle of the basket.
He sat there, his hands full of money, and looked from her to Daisy. The girl’s eyes shone with uncertainty; she was leaning forward on the stool, her shoulders hunched, her mouth half open. Everything in him strained toward her, as if he could wrap himself around her and defend her against the world. He tore his gaze away and stared at Frances.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay here and make sure nobody bothers you the rest of the night. Then tomorrow I’m going over to see the alcalde. He’s supposed to be in charge here, although I’ve never noticed him to do much. But maybe you can get some kind of title to this place. Otherwise . . .” He rubbed his nose with one forefinger, tired, getting scared. He guessed the men were long gone that he had hired to stand watch outside. He looked around at the flimsy lean-to, which shook with every breeze. Frances was smiling at him.
She said, “Gilbert, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I haven’t done anything yet.” Might not be able to do anything at all, he thought. He got up off the cot and moved toward the door to keep watch.