Chapter 5
Daisy said, “Frances keeps me penned up here like the Christmas goose. Can’t you make it so I can go out for a while?”
Gil had bought a mule-drawn cart to haul wood in. He dumped out its load of redwood planks, set one crosswise in the cart’s bed for a seat, rigged a piece of canvas for an awning. He and Daisy sat there, in the shade; Josh drove the mule. As they rumbled up Pacific Street, heads turned and mouths fell open and two or three boys walked along beside, peering in at Daisy. It was a beautiful day, almost hot, without much breeze; Gil sat back a little, smiling, pleased with himself.
Daisy said, “This is wonderful,” and his satisfaction increased severalfold.
She bounced on the plank seat, nearly knocking it down. The awning shook. She wore a plain muslin dress, her hair tucked under a bonnet; her face shone, pink as roses. Lounging beside her in makeshift comfort, Gil got hold of her hand and held it.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. It’s practically a surrey.” She wiggled on the seat again, ducking her head slightly so that she could see out from under the awning. “Where are we going? I want to see the whole of San Francisco.” In his hand her fingers were cool and limp.
“The whole city,” he said, amused, wondering what she expected. “All right. Josh, take us to the Plaza.”
At the corner of Kearny Street there were deep ruts in the road that locked the wheels straight; Josh had to get out and lead the mule around the turn. A lean brown little man, seeing Daisy, stopped and took his hat off and stared at her as she passed. She twisted around in the seat to wave at him, as if she knew him. Her face flushed; she lowered her eyes and kicked the basket on the floor of the cart.
“What’s this?”
“A picnic,” Gil said. “I thought we could go out toward the Mission.”
One cartwheel lurched up over a rut and crashed down again, rocking the uneven seat so hard that Gil had to catch hold of the side to keep from falling out. The awning swayed on its frail supports, buckled, and collapsed. The hot sunlight swept across the cart. Gil grabbed hold of the canvas and pushed it back up again while they banged and rattled toward the Plaza. Daisy let go of a peal of rich laughter, watching him.
His ears burned. He tried letting go of the awning, and at once it tipped over sideways; he grabbed it again. Now a small train of men was trailing after the cart, and when the awning fell they cheered and broke into a run to catch up. “Need some help there, fellah?” Gil jerked the awning hastily into place and sat there holding it in place with both hands.
Daisy said, “Let it go, Gil. It’s no matter to me.”
He growled something. He wanted her to himself, a big matter to him. He wanted to look good to her, able, confident. While the cart clunked along into the Plaza he worked on the wooden slats holding the canvas up and managed to get the thing stable again.
“There.” He sat down carefully on the uncertain seat beside her. “Now. This is Portsmouth Square. It’s named for the ship that brought the American flag here, in ’forty-six.” She was hunching down to see out past the sway of the awning. Shrewdly he leaned toward her, pointing past her at the looming, raw board fronts of the buildings, streaming with red letters. “That’s the Bella Union, and that’s the El Dorado.” Only the El Dorado’s false front was of wood; the rest of the building was a vast tent, hooked on behind like a bustle. “They say thousands of dollars changes hands over their tables every night.” Smooth as butter he slid his arm around her.
She laughed, her head swiveling toward him, her wide eyes, crystalline blue, only inches from his own. “I can’t see,” she said, and stood up and pushed the awning down on top of the picnic basket.
A roar went up from the crowd around them. Suddenly the cart was surrounded by men — Americans in plaid flannel shirts, three or four gawking pigtailed Chinamen in long blue coats, a skinny Malay like a monkey, leaping up and down, and all of them calling to her in English and Spanish and a dozen other languages. Daisy spread her arms and bowed to them. Beside her, Gil sat with his hands on his knees, telling himself to be patient and think of the picnic. She plopped down beside him. Josh clicked his tongue to the mule and the cart rolled on across the broad, dusty square. The worshipful crowd followed.
“Daisy, sing us something!”
She shook her head, waving, and pointed across the way. “What’s that?”
“Post office,” Gil said, his lips stiff.
“You mean, all those men are waiting to get into the post office?” As usual the line stretched the length of the Plaza. Suddenly she stood up again. “I smell popcorn!” The cart rocked and she flung out her arms to save her balance, and the crowd trailing after them gasped in delighted suspense.
Gil caught her hand and made her sit. “Do you want some popcorn? Josh.”
His felt hat pulled down hard over his grin, the black man steered the mule toward the side of the Plaza. Daisy was looking all around again. “There’s so many people!”
“Another ship put in just this morning,” Gil said. “A lot of these men got off it. See?” He pointed. In the shelter of a doorway a dozen wretched, bewildered foreigners huddled among a pile of bundles and satchels and cases. Dressed in long black coats, in baggy black trousers, they looked like gravediggers; their black beards spread like bibs over their shirtfronts, their long black hair hung down over their ears in curls or braids. “Russians, maybe.” He wasn’t sure. She wouldn’t know any better; he could lie like a salesman. “Maybe Germans.”
“What are they doing here?” she said.
“Looking for gold, Daisy, for God’s sake, what’s anybody doing here?” Ahead, along the line of men waiting to get into the post office, a boy was selling popcorn in scoops made of dried husks, and Gil waved him over. Daisy was staring all around her again, ignoring the encircling upturned, adoring faces of her admirers. A man reading a letter as he walked nearly collided with the cart; tears were streaming down his face. Up at the front of the line somebody was shrilling, “Place to sell — here’s a good place in the line — ten dollars! Only ten dollars.” The weeping man, still rapt in his letter, banged along the side of the cart like a piece of driftwood past a boat and wandered blindly off into the crowd.
Daisy was craning her neck to see everything. “It’s so new,” she said. “Wasn’t there anything here before?”
“Well, yes.” Gil reached forward and nudged Josh, who urged the mule on again. Under the cover of his slouch-brimmed hat the big Negro was still smiling. Gil sat back beside Daisy. “You can see the old buildings in between the new ones. The little adobes are all Mexican, that little one, see, and there’s one on the far side —” He bent toward her to explain all this, relieved he knew something she wanted to know, and managed to get hold of her hand again. They crossed the Plaza toward Clay Street; he pointed out to her the big brick building there, brand-new, the only brick building in San Francisco, and the new firehouse, which had a bell bigger than its water wagon. “Sam Brannan gave them the bell.” Three or four men in green uniform jackets were loitering in front of the saloon beside the firehouse; Gil kept a wary eye on them, although the Regulators usually didn’t bother white people.
“Is Sam Brannan rich?” Daisy asked.
“Yes.”
“Where does he live?”
He felt these questions like spiked shoes walking up over his back. “I’ll show you. It’s on our way. Josh —”
“I’m goin’,” Josh said. “Can’t go no faster’n I’m goin’.” Gil bent forward and fit the wreckage of the awning mostly under the seat.
The cart banged over the ruts of Kearny Street again. Most of the crowd trailing them stayed behind in the Plaza. The cart passed a grocery shop, a blacksmith’s, a mercantile made of the crates its inventory had arrived in. They rolled into Mormon Town: a dozen small, trim houses with yards and gardens. A woman in a white apron stood in a doorway watching them. On the rooftop above her head a cock pulled itself up tall and ripped out a ringing salutation.
A few yards on, the street faded into brush and sand. They rattled over Mission Creek on a wooden bridge. Josh glanced back over his shoulder. “Still goin’ to the Mission, Mist’ Gil?”
“Yes.”
Daisy twisted and looked back at the buildings they had just passed. “You mean, that’s all?”
Gil cast a glance around at San Francisco. He could hear the roar of the Plaza still, dim behind them, fading into the silence of the wilderness. They had lost the last of her admirers. Around them now was sand and greasebush. “That’s all.”
“Where does Sam Brannan live?”
“In one of those houses. I’m not sure which one.”
“Hunh.” She sank down on the jury-rigged seat, frowning. “He can’t be that rich.”
Gil laughed, ruffled, wondering what she wanted. “A couple of years ago there wasn’t anything here but a Hudson Bay Company post, a customs office, and a flagpole.”
“Hunh.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. After a moment he reached out and took her hand again. Silently they rode behind Josh up through the wasteland toward the Mission.
“I’m hungry,” Daisy said flatly. “Let’s stop and eat.”
Josh heard her and glanced back over his shoulder, and Gil nodded. The road was crossing a bare, sandy flat below the brushy slope of a hill. Off to the south, Lone Mountain rose, a yellow knob. The uneven, rumpled hills to the east were old sand dunes. Josh drove the cart off the road and down behind a sand-blown ridge.
Here the high ground blocked the ceaseless wind, and some grass grew. Josh stopped the cart. Gil helped Daisy down and got out a blanket and the picnic basket, and Josh drove on, as arranged, up toward the Mission, where he could buy vegetables for Mammy’s cookpot. Daisy took off her shoes and wandered around, picking the scrawny flowers that grew among the grass stems, little purple stars, and yellow cups. Gil spread out the blanket on the ground, putting rocks on the corners to hold it against the fitful wind.
He had packed sausage and cheese and tortillas, a meal that had cost him over forty dollars, and he had two bottles of wine. The sausage was terrible but the cheese was good, and they drank all the wine. Daisy took off her bonnet.
“You’ll burn,” Gil said, sounding silly even to himself.
“I don’t care,” she said, and tossed the bonnet aside. She smiled at him, lounging on one arm, her hair all around her shoulders like a froth. “What do we do now? Didn’t you bring a fiddler or two? Or a couple of acrobats?”
He grabbed her. She laughed in his face but lay back and rolled around on the blanket with him, letting him slide kisses off her cheeks and nose and forehead, her arms between them, his arms around her. She smelled sweet and wild, her flesh abundant, soft, pliant under his hands. He slid down and through the pleated muslin pressed his face between her big, soft breasts.
Her hands stroked his hair. He lifted his head, and their eyes met; she was not smiling now. She tugged lightly on his hair, and he moved up and kissed her hard on the mouth, and she lay still and yielding there under him, and kissed him back. He slid his hand up over her breast.
This time she said, “Now, now,” and drew away from him. He let her go, his chest pulsing and his groin on fire. She sat up, arranging her skirts and her hair, not looking at him.
He lay down next to her, unsure. He said, “Want some more wine?”
“It’s all gone,” she said. She looked away, down to the south, where in the general tumble of low hills two peaks stood up like virgin’s breasts against the sky. “Aren’t there any trees in California?”
“In some places,” he said. “California’s a pretty big place. There were trees up on Lucky Bar, where I had my claim.” Or there had been trees, before the miners came and cut them all down. “Were there trees where you came from?”
“Charleston,” she said. “There’s beautiful trees all over Charleston. Live oaks, and palm trees. Beautiful houses, you know, and shops, with all sorts of new things from Europe. Because of the harbor. We got things from Europe all the time.”
“We,” he said.
“Ummm,” she said, and her hand rose and covered her mouth. She turned to face him, and her eyes were wicked with lies. “My sisters and me. My father was rich.” She lay down next to him, on her side, her great breasts heavy against the bodice of her dress.
“How’d you acquire Mammy?”
“Mammy,” she said, stupidly.
“Did your daddy just give her to you on your birthday?”
“Oh. You mean Frances.” Her gaze was dreamy, unfocused, a vacuum hiding universes. “Oh, she was our cook, actually.”
“Really. You and the family cook just one day up and took off for California together.”
Her mouth tucked in at the corners, dimpling her cheeks; the softness of her lower lip was like a fruit he wanted to sink his teeth into. Her hand slipped the distance between them and stroked down his chest. “Well, it wasn’t exactly like that.” He bent over her and kissed her again, and this time she let him touch her breasts.
“Daisy,” he said, “I love you.”
“Oh, don’t say that.” She nuzzled his cheek; he had the top several buttons of her bodice open, and she twisted a little to let him get at the rest.
“No,” he said. “I mean it. I love you, and always will.”
“Gil, stop. You don’t have to.”
“Damn it, Daisy, I want to marry you.”
“Gil,” she said, and turned away, and sat up again. “You have a way of wrecking things.”
“What?”
She looked down at her front as if she had just discovered it and began to do the buttons up. “You can’t love me. It’s just not going to work out like that. There can’t ever be too much between us.”
Gil said, “Why not?” His chest ached.
“You’re a good, sweet, kind man, Gil, and I care a lot about you, but we aren’t meant for each other.” She had reached the top button. She straightened her head, stretching her neck, smoothing the muslin down over her sweetness. With the backs of her fingers she patted up under her chin.
“Because I’m not rich,” he said.
“Now, Gil.” She squirmed, her mouth curling in a grimace, as if that tasted bad, but slowly her gaze came to meet his. She shrugged. “Well, yes. But I want nice things, Gil, and a nice home. If you knew —” She bit that back, turning away from him again.
He lowered his eyes; he wished she would tell him the truth about herself, and then a moment later he wondered if he really wanted to know. She swung toward him again.
“I’d like to be happy, Gil. Is that so awful a thing? And to be happy, I need to be rich. Is that so awful? Do you really blame me?”
Gil stared at her, the beautiful curved, soft mouth saying this, the clear blue eyes believing it. There was a knot in his stomach. He said, “Yes.”
She put her back to him. They said nothing more at all for the half an hour that intervened until Josh came back, the cart heaped with onions and tubers and long green stems, the awning gone entirely. Wedged in among the vegetables, they rode back toward San Francisco. Gil thought bitterly that she would have let him have his way with her if he had not said he loved her.
They rolled back down toward the Plaza. Daisy said, “Look. Is that a church?”
Gil settled himself on the seat. All along Kearny Street, there were lanterns set on poles, and the lamplighter was walking along lighting and trimming them. On the far side of the Plaza, a similar string of yellow lamps came on one by one. But something was different. A building stood on the corner where that morning there had been none.
“They were working on it when we left,” he said. “They just put the steeple up.”
She burst out laughing. “What a place! I love it here!” Her big, soft hands clapped together, her face swinging toward him, brilliant with high humor, her eyes agleam, her mouth jubilant. He reached out impulsively and gripped her hand and squeezed it. She laughed at him and squirmed over to sit leaning against him, and he put his arm around her. They went back to the Shining Light.