Chapter 3
In the light of the morning sun things did not seem so bad. Gil Marcus, looking tired and frayed, went off with the paper money. The street was still crowded, men moving steadily back and forth, stirring the dust, and half a dozen of them were sitting on the edge of the stage when Frances went out there. Little heaps of sand had already drifted against the barrels that held the stage up.
Frances knew she had to keep Daisy under cover. If they saw her for free it would lessen their interest in paying.
The men who fringed the stage watched her with an eager attention. They were all white men, whom she could not use. Frances climbed the street a little way, in the other direction from the water.
As she went, she hunched herself over, she drew her shawl up around her head, she screwed her face into a wizened pucker. Nobody noticed little old black mammies, nobody bothered with them. She crept into this figure easily now, after months of learning it; sometimes, doing it, she even felt old.
Not today. Today she felt new and young and full of expectation. The sunlight glittered down on her like gold dust. The noise and movement of the street jumped with vigorous life, a power she could take and use. The breeze in her face smelled like dirt, like sweat and rot, but like work too, work and building. She hurried up the street, not wanting to leave Daisy alone for too long, the soft dust squeezing between her bare toes, strange voices yelling in her ears.
On either side were clumps and lumps of buildings, made of whatever had come to hand, ship’s sails and chunks of adobe brick, piles of wood, broken furniture, people’s clothes. Nothing seemed permanent or even planned. She passed a man standing on a barrel, waving a rag over his head, and calling in a dull, overused voice, “Shirts — shirts — got some good shirts to sell.” He himself was bare-chested. Other men rushed by his barrel, paying no attention.
That was how it went here. None of the men pushing up and down the street cared much about anything going on around him. Each one whirled along in his own cloud of dust, going as fast as he could, his eyes fixed ahead of him, his face set with concentration that ended where he ended.
Frances knew better than that; she kept her eyes open, looking around at everything, taking everything into account.
Under the inch of sandy dust that cushioned it, the narrow street was rutted and scored like a country track. Like the road past Fox Haven, soft under her feet; then, under the softness, hard again, uneven, a sort of warning: things weren’t as easy as they seemed. She had run away down that road, from Fox Haven to the sea, and things had not been easy, but now here she was, in this city at the edge of the world, her feet moving light and quick through the dust.
She passed a lean-to that was open-sided toward the street; within were three big wooden tanks full of water. Men sat in the water. Other men waited in line. She slowed, curious, until she saw them passing a sliver of soap around, and realized they were bathing. Then she almost laughed.
“One minute!” A boy walked along past the wooden tanks, banging on the sides with a stick. “One more minute!”
Frances lingered, hoping a few of the men would climb out of the tanks; she liked seeing men naked. They crouched in the scummy water, soaping themselves and talking, and none got out, and she grew tired of waiting and followed the street.
The street forked. The other way looked much the same as this one, a dusty, winding track through sheds and shacks and tents. She looked up its length but could not see the end, only more shanties, more dust, more people. She kept going straight, the way she had been going.
Ahead of her now the buildings were smaller, cramped close together, held up with poles and bits of rope and piles of dirt. From a narrow doorway a yellow man watched her.
At first these men with their strange skin and slitted eyes had sent cold shivers down her back, as if she were a child seeing monsters; she had thought they were black men turned off-color by some spell, some sickness, until she saw more of them and learned from Gil Marcus that they were Chinee. Celestials, Gil called them. They were as mean as the whites, and she hurried past them toward the cluster of huts and tents on the high ground.
Here a lot of people lived who had come up from South America, so that the place was called Little Chile. Flanking it was another place, a shallow gully creasing the hill, where she had seen before that some black men made camps. They built no roofs, no walls; they made fires and slept in the open. Now she walked up to four black men who were sitting on the ground around a fire.
She said, “Y’all want work?”
They looked her over, cautious, and the biggest of them stood up. He was square-faced and wore a black felt hat. “What kind of work?”
She nodded off down the street. “Building. I have some wood, have some land, want to put up something sturdy.”
The big man facing her spread an easy grin over his face. “Mammy, you in the wrong place for sturdy.” The other men laughed.
“We’ll see,” she said. “I’ll feed you-all. Pay something in gold dust. It’s just down the street, you can quit anytime, come back here, be no loss. Maybe, if we suit, you-all can stay on with me.” She nodded at them, looking each in the face, seeing each as a separate man. “All four of you. Well?”
For a moment they did not move, each waiting for some sign from the others. Then the big one before her nodded.
“All right. I’ll go.” His grin had disappeared. He turned his head a little, glancing over his shoulder at the others, and moved on down toward Frances, toward the street, and one by one they got up and followed him.
✽✽✽
The big man’s name was Josh. He went once around the little sliver of land, stared at the broken boat tilted up against the hillside behind it, and nodded. “Maybe we get somethin’ done, Mammy.”
“First thing,” she said, “is to build us some decent shelter.” Friendly’s invasion of the night before still raised her hackles. Along the front of the stage, in the street, little groups of white men stood watching her. She glanced at the lean-to, where Daisy slept, its walls sucking in and blowing out again with every passing wind. She faced the boat, resolute. “First let’s get the wood off that.”
Josh said, “You got a cat’s paw?”
Her resolution sagged a little. “What?”
“Somethin’ to . . .” His mouth kinked, his eyes sharp, his brows pulling down. “You got any tools at all, Mammy?”
“An ax,” she said. Gil had an ax. She fought the urge to look around, into the street, for some sign of Gil Marcus. Josh was staring down at her as if she grew smaller while he watched.
“An ax. Got any nails? Hammer? Saw? Wedge, mallet, anything?”
She swallowed. She had promised also to feed them, and she had not yet begun on that. One step, then another. She said, “I’ll go get the ax,” and went over to the lean-to.
By noon all four of the men were working. Josh and Phineas were ripping off the planks that formed the outside of the boat, and the young one, Laban, was worrying out the nails, and Micah was hacking down the last of the scrawny brush growing around the wedge-shaped piece of land. Frances had gone down to the beach and bought fish and clams there, Indian potatoes and onions; she hired a big iron kettle from one of the fishermen and even got him to drag it up the street for her. In front of the stage she had a fire going and the kettle simmering. Phineas had told her he knew where to get some greens, and she had sent him out after them; now she was cutting the greens into the pot, and she was uncomfortably aware that from the vast, quaking mountain of canvas and wood that stood across the street from her had emerged fat Friendly.
She lowered her gaze to her hands; she hacked up the greens with a knife. Trailed by a bustle of miners, the fat man pushed through the crowded street toward her.
“I told you to get out,” he said, halfway there.
Frances’ arms moved in short, jerky rhythms, snip-snip through the stems of the greens. The aroma was thick around her. She faced him, the steaming pot between them, her power in the steamy fragrance, in the fire and the food. She knew the street was full of people watching.
She said, “I’m staying right here, Friendly. You can’t run me out.”
He stalked closer to her, round like a boulder. “This ain’t your land. You’re trespassing.” His arm slashed out toward the work going on behind her. “You think you’re going to build something? Think twice! The Regulators will dispossess you before you get two nails driven.” He sneered at her. “We got laws here.”
In the crowd, somebody yelled, “Friendly, you fat asshole, leave her alone!” There was a low yell of agreement. Frances tossed the last of the greens into the pot. She wondered if anybody in the crowd would try to help her if Friendly came after her.
The fat man glared from side to side and behind him. “You all drink in my place. You all got chits with me.” He faced her; above his set of slumping chins his features were squeezed together into one small space, huddled around his pud of a nose. “Get out. That’s all I’m warning you.”
Frances straightened, the knife clutched in her hand. A noise distracted her. Off to her left at the back of the crowd there was a flurry of motion, people moving quickly out of the way. Gil Marcus was pushing through the bystanders toward Friendly and Frances. A tall, slender man in a well-fit coat and a brimmed hat came after him. Bursting clear of the crowd, Gil strode up to Frances and turned, standing in front of her. Taking over for her.
“Friendly, back off.” Gil’s voice rang out with a lot more weight and confidence than he’d managed in his efforts of the night before. “Get off my property.”
The vast face trembled. “Your property!”
“I just bought it for unpaid taxes,” Gil said, and glanced off to his left. “Mr. Rudd, will you confirm?”
The tall man who had followed him out of the crowd stepped a pace forward. “Yes. This piece of property now belongs to Mr. Gilbert Bradley Marcus.”
The crowd whooped, smelling the triumph of good, and there was a spatter of handclaps. Friendly fired one brief stare at the tall man and thrust his jaw out and fixed his attention on Gil. “You just bought yourself a pine box, pilgrim.”
Gil said, “You can’t pick on women, Friendly. It’s just too low, even for you.” That brought another yell from the onlookers in the street.
Friendly’s face screwed up even tighter. His gaze daggered toward Frances. His mouth contracted into a round pucker and fired a fat gout of spit toward the boiling pot; enough of it reached the pot to make a loud crackling sizzle. Turning, he barged across the street toward his saloon, his shoulders lifted up high, deeply grooved by his suspender straps. The crowd divided respectfully to let him pass, and many of them followed him.
Gil turned toward Frances, his voice lower, the note of power gone. “That’s over. Everything’s all right now. I put it in my name, because you—because of the way the law’s written, but this place belongs to you and Daisy.”
She stepped back from the pot, rubbing her hands together, staring at him: this short white man, unshaven, his plaid shirt worn cotton-pale at the elbows, who believed all these things he was saying. She said, “Gilbert, thank you again.”
Behind him, Tierney Rudd said, “Well, Marcus, I’ve done my part, I’ll be going.”
Gil turned and shook his hand. “Thanks, Mr. Rudd. And thank Sam Brannan, too, for his help. Come back tonight and see the show.”
Many of the crowd still lingered in the street, and now somebody called out, “Three cheers for Sam Brannan!” There was a dutiful bellow of applause for San Francisco’s leading citizen. Frances turned and looked behind her, at the half-dismantled boat, the stack of salvaged wood, the four black men standing there, motionless, watching her. Her look prodded them. The boy quickest, they went back to their work, but Josh stood there a long moment, smiling at her. Then Gil called her.
She turned to face him, expecting to see the tall white man still there, Rudd. But somebody else had taken his place, short, square, with long, straight black hair and dark skin. Not black but ruddy brown.
Gil jerked a nod at him. “Do we need another hand?”
She flung a look behind her at the four men already working there. They seemed to fill the lot. “I don’t—” She faced this other colored man, loath to let anybody go, even an Indian.
He was shorter than Gil. His eyes were strange, long, black as hellfire, with heavy, folded lids. When she hesitated, he said, “I build. I make house. Good hands.” His voice had an odd timbre, like two notes sounding at once.
She said, “You’re a carpenter?”
Gil said, “Take him. I don’t know the first thing about carpentry, Mammy.”
“Very well,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Mitya,” he said.
“Mitya,” said Gil, startled. “That’s Russian.”
“Russian,” the Indian said, and nodded. The strange long eyes slid a glance toward Gil.
Frances said, “You have to work some, first, to prove we need you, but when you do we’ll feed you and pay you, and you can sleep here if you want. My name is Frances Hardhardt.”
He said, “I sleep out.”
“As you wish,” she said. “Get to work.” He went up past her toward the boat; a few minutes later he was working loose one of the big pieces of the frame.
Gil sauntered by her, his hands behind his back, his forehead clear and vague. “Where’s Daisy?” he asked, without really looking at her, without really needing an answer; he went toward the lean-to, pretending not to.
Frances laughed. He had earned a little gratitude, which Daisy was better equipped than anybody else to dispense. She bent over the fish soup, inhaling the heady vapor.