Chapter 6
Gil Marcus said, “I don’t see why we have to do all that much digging. Can’t we just pound the dirt down and go from there?”
Mitya glanced beyond him at the other workmen, watching and waiting. They had gotten the white man to ask this. They wanted to make the work easy. Mitya wanted to make the work good.
He could do nothing by himself. He said to the white man, “You boss. You no say, we no do.”
The white man folded his arms over his chest. “You want to scrape all this ground level? We don’t have the tools.” But he hesitated, unsure. He was an unsure man. “Tell me why we should put in so much work on it.”
Mitya said, “Start true, keep true. Start crooked, next thing fit bad, and next thing worse.” He shrugged, suspecting this was useless. “Make it true first. Make it easy later.”
The white man before him widened his eyes, turned and looked at the ship, and faced him again. Nodded. “All right. We’ll do it as you say.”
Mitya drew in a deep breath, pleased. He felt suddenly bigger. He looked past the white man toward the workmen and pointed.
“You. You. Come with me. Others, dig.”
For a moment they clung together, motionless, unwilling. Then the big man with the hat started forward after Mitya, and the others bent for the sticks and boards they were using to dig. Mitya shook his hair back. He was the boss now. With a little strut he went with his crew to dig a trench for the ship’s keel.
✽✽✽
Frances went to the big man, Josh, and said, “Do you know of any more people like us? Other than the men up by Little Chile.”
“Sure,” he said, and gave a deep, honeyed chuckle in his throat. “Why you ask?”
“Tell them,” she said, “they can come here. From anywhere, free or slave, they can come here. I’ll buy their freedom. I’ll send money back to their masters. I’ll give them what they need to live, if they come here.”
Josh’s lips pushed out, thoughtful. “Why come you do this?”
She rounded on him, angry. “Because they’re our people. That’s why. Do as I say.”
He said, “As you say, Mammy.” His lips curved in a broad smile at her. A little while later she saw him talking to Phineas and Micah, and they were all looking over their shoulders at her, and all smiling. After that, new people came, almost every day.
✽✽✽
Josh and Micah and Mitya dug a ditch to fit the keel of the Shining Light, rocked her upright, and braced the back wall with timbers and rocks and chunks of sod so that she stayed upright. This would be the back of the new building. Mammy got more hands to help them. She hired black men, or brown men, no whites. Fed them from the great boiling pot, fed them all they wanted, and lots of beer. The black men sang as they worked, and although they were all strangers they all knew the same songs.
They played with the songs, one singing out words in a line, and the others twining their voices around it and against it. The singing moved the work on.
They dug up the ground before the ship, a grinding chore with the tools they had, and dragged boards back and forth over it to make it even. Then Mitya took a bowl and filled it with water. He tied bits of string and rope together into a long line. He staked out the ground where he wanted to build, and with the bowl of water he went around making sure that all the ground was level, and where it wasn’t he made the other men dig the dirt down or pack more dirt higher. With the string he measured out the lines of the walls and drove stakes into the ground to mark corners.
He broke into the side of the ship, using the ax and an iron bar that Gil Marcus found. They cut through the planking of the ship until they could pick the wood out in pieces and lay it down on the fresh new ground. Gil found more tools. Mitya could feel the building around him, shaping the empty air. He stopped going away at night. Deep in the hulk of the ship he made himself a new nest. This was his place now.
✽✽✽
Daisy woke up around noon and lay in bed wishing she could go to sleep again. Before her stretched another day of sitting here in this hovel, waiting for the night to come and the show to start.
Through the thin wall came the sounds of the men working. She thought she could smell coffee. Grimly she stared at the ceiling and called, “Frances. Frances?”
Frances wasn’t there. Frances went out whenever she wanted.
Daisy thrust the blankets back and sat up. She could do whatever Frances could. For a moment she did not remember where she had put her old clothes, but some instinct steered her to a box under the bed, and there she found the pair of men’s trousers and longjohns and the canvas shirt that she had worn crossing Panama and on the ship north. The hat was there too. Everything was filthy and stiff, but she refused to stay in here anymore.
The longjohns were, however, beyond any resolve. She put on the cotton drawers she wore under her dresses, got everything else on, and went out the door. She pulled the hat down hard over her head and poked her hair into it.
She had not been out all yesterday, not until after dark; she had seen nothing of the building. Now, startled, she saw how much had gone up. Before her stood the wooden skeleton of a wall, ten feet high and twenty feet long, built of uprights and crossmembers. From the streetward corner another row of uprights marched away across the front of the lot; in pairs the men were lifting up the crossmembers and sliding them into notches on the posts. As she stood there watching, one of them began to sing.
“My old missus promise me —”
From all over the lot came voices shouting, “Shoo a la a day!”
“When she die she set me free.”
“Shoo a la a day!”
Daisy went up closer. The Indian was working on the corner of the building, fitting a crosspiece into the cut in the upright; he stooped and picked up a dish and put it on top of the crossmember and stared at it.
He seemed more like an animal than a man, not only in his looks, his short, heavy bones and odd-shaped features, but in his movements. He put the bowl down again. His head lifted and he saw her and waved her over.
“Hold,” he said, pointing at the crossmember, and then his gaze came back to her, sharp, and he reached out and flipped the hat off her head.
From all around the lot a crowing yell went up. Everybody stopped work and stared at her. Daisy stood there, her cheeks flaming. The Indian waved her off. “Go.”
“No, I’ll help,” she said.
“Go. Go.” He pushed at her. Stooping, he picked up the ax lying on the ground by the post.
“No, I want to help,” she said.
“Hey, Mit,” roared the big black man with the hat. “Let her give a hand.”
The Indian straightened. He gave her a baleful look, lowered the ax, and took hold of her right hand. Turning it up, he ran his finger down the palm. She could feel the softness of her skin against the horny callus of his. He gave her a squeeze, like a warning, and started to let her go.
She grabbed his hand instead, and squeezed back as hard as she could.
His head rose an inch. He stared at her, and then he smiled. He said, “Strong.”
“Yes,” she said, pleased, and let go of him. “I want to help.”
He was still smiling. He said, “Hold.” And pointed to the crossmember. To reach it she had to step inside the building, where the ground was dug up, soft and crumbling underfoot like cornmeal. She bent to hold it fast while he trimmed it.
A deep black voice rang out. “Now she die an’ go to hell!”
A dozen voices roared the refrain. “Shoo a la a day!”
“Hope that devil burn her well!”
Daisy stood up, listening. This was real singing, not like what she did; she loved to hear it. The Indian was watching her through the corner of his eye. She wondered if he thought she was shirking, and went hastily back to work.
He touched her arm. “Listen,” he said, and smiled at her. “Good to listen.” After that she stopped whenever she wanted to, and listened to the men sing.
Later, she went around the building looking for chores to do. By the end of the day many of these people were becoming real to her. The big black man in the cloth hat was named Josh, and he always sang the line of the song; he had a voice deep and smooth and sure as a river. It reminded her of her uncle’s farm, although her uncle, a poor man, kept no slaves; but there were slaves in the neighbors’ fields.
She didn’t want to think about Carolina anymore. She refused even to think about what her uncle had done to her, once he found out she was pregnant.
She hauled water in a bucket down from the spring on the side of the hill; everybody on Pacific Street used this spring, and by midday she had to wait for ten minutes to fill the bucket. Frances was talking about digging a well, but she had no water witch. Daisy helped carry planks, held things up to be fit in place, gathered up scraps and put them in a heap by the fire. She stood a while and watched the boy, Laban, drawing with a piece of charcoal on a plank, until Josh came along and hurried him on to his work. On the plank Laban had left Josh’s face, singing.
Josh said, “Boy’s got a head full of dreams.”
“It’s nice, though,” she said. “Do we have to cover it up?”
The big man took his hat off to talk to her. “I think so, miss, you want a wall there. He can make another. He does that all the time.”
“Where’s Frances?”
“Out finding us something to eat. Ain’t easy, you know. Things cost more than gold here, miss.” He put the hat back on and followed Laban toward a pile of wood. Across the way the Indian was carrying his bowl and his string toward the new work, and she trotted over to watch him.
“What use is that?”
“Make level,” said the Indian. His name was Mitya, she knew, an odd name; Gil had said it was Russian. He stood on a chunk of wood, held one end of the string against the top of the post before him, and let the rest dangle. He had tied something to the other end, something smooth and white. She grabbed at it: a long pearly bead.
“No,” he said, sharply. She let go, and the white bead swung in smaller and smaller circles until it hung still at the end of the string, straight down along the center of the upright. Mitya nodded at her. “See?”
“I see,” she said, brightly. “Can I look at that bead now?”
“Look,” he said, getting down. She picked up the bead, rubbed her fingers on it, held it against her cheek.
“This is beautiful. Is it yours?”
Mitya made a sound in his chest. With his ax he was shaping the ends of a beam.
“Is it Indian?”
He gave her a slantwise, half-angry look. She guessed he didn’t like the word Indian.
She said, “I’m sorry. Did you make it?”
For a moment only the ax moved, brisk, precise, shaving off thick curls of the wood. Finally he said, “No. Very hard, make so. Only very good maker make so.”
From the deck of the Shining Light, Laban cried, “Josh! Josh, look — down there, that’s our little Mammy.”
Daisy turned, shading her eyes; the sun was sliding down into the sky behind the ship. Laban stood there, pointing away down the street. She turned her gaze back to the glossy object in her hand. “What’s it made of?”
Up on the deck of the ship, Laban shouted, “Josh, she’s in trouble! They’s men rousting her. Josh! I see green jackets!”
“Frances,” Daisy said. She knew what green jackets meant: Gil had told her about the Regulators. She wheeled to stare down the street, filled with the busy, bobbing mass of the afternoon traffic.
Beside her, Mitya let the beam drop and walked over toward Josh, standing still, his hands at his sides, squinting down the street. Mitya called up to Laban, “What go? What go?”
Laban called, “The cart’s stopped, they’re rousting her, I tell you.”
Josh’s mouth was working. He said, low, “The Regulators, they’s all got guns.”
Mitya said, “Come on.” He walked out through the gap between two of the wall posts and started down the street. The other men stood where they were, their hands loose; Josh looked down at his feet. Mitya turned back toward them.
“Come on!” He waved his arm.
Josh said, under his breath, “I guess we got to.” He stooped to pick the iron bar up off the ground and went off down the street, with each step moving a little faster. The other men followed him. Laban came down the ladder like a squirrel and dashed after them.
Daisy went to the corner of the wall. Her heart was pounding. The men were running now, moving in a pack down the side of the street. She turned and ran toward the ladder, to go up to the deck where she could see better.
✽✽✽
Frances had spent the whole day out searching for decent food; the cart was piled high. When she turned into the bottom of Pacific Street, the sun blazed into her eyes, and she realized how late it was. She slapped the reins on the rump of the mule and swore at it and the mule crept on a little faster.
She started up Pacific Street, but she got no farther than the first corner. There three men in green jackets stepped out into her way.
“Now, Mammy. Where you-all going?”
She gripped the reins, her mouth suddenly dry, and scanned their faces. “Let me by. I’m just an old woman.”
“Ooooh,” said the bushy-bearded man who stood by the wheel of the cart. “Just an old woman. But I hear you’re making lots of trouble for some friends of ours. And we don’t like niggers making trouble for white men.”
“Get out of my way,” she said, and picked up the ends of the reins and flogged at the mule with them. The mule jumped and the cart jounced forward, so that one of the green jackets had to get out of the way fast, and the bushy-bearded man stepped back.
“You ain’t going nowhere, Mammy!” said the man by the cartwheel, and he took a pistol out of his belt and turned and shot the mule.
Frances screamed. The mule sagged down in the traces, stretched out its head on the dusty ground, and died. Frances wheeled toward the green jacket beside her and slashed at him with the reins.
“That mule cost me fifty dollars!”
“Well, well,” he cried. He danced back, laughing at her. “It ain’t no fool for work, is it. Maybe it’ll draw a little better if’n we lighten the load. Hey, boys, get rid of some of that garbage in there!”
The other two men jumped up onto the cart. Frances clambered across the seat, trying to stop them, and struck at them with the reins. They whooped, red-faced, making this a game. One caught the ends of the leathers and jerked and nearly toppled her.
The other cried, “Here, Roberts — catch!” He pitched a cabbage to the bushy-bearded man.
Frances screamed again. They were throwing all her food into the street. She had spent more than five hundred dollars and they were throwing it all into the street. The bushy beard by the cartwheel stood there roaring with laughter. A crowd had gathered along the side of the street, but they kept their distance, watching. Cabbages and apples flew out of the cart and into the crowd, and some of the onlookers caught them and cheered for more. “Hey, got any peaches?”
Frances climbed into the back of the cart, sinking into the loose vegetables up to her knees, and grabbed a sack of flour out of the arms of a green jacket. “No — that’s to feed my people, damn you.”
“Mammy!” somebody yelled, a voice she knew. “Get down!”
The cart rocked. She dropped the sack of flour and fell into the heap of vegetables, and the man in the green jacket fell on top of her. The cart was rolling. She squirmed out from under the floundering man and sat up. Its wheels shrill, the cart was hurrying up the street at a better clip than the mule had ever mustered. Beside her the green jacket scrambled to his feet, scraps of leaf and peel clinging to his front, yelled, and bounded out.
Frances grabbed the seat and pulled herself up to the front of the cart again. Before her, in the mule’s traces, Josh and Mitya, Phineas and Laban hauled the cart along at a dead gallop. They were running down the people on foot in the street ahead of them, and one of them bellowed a warning, and the crowd split to let them pass.
Frances sat down, grabbing hold of the seat to keep her place. The wild ride was tossing her up and down like a baby. She twisted to look back; but the crowd had already closed over the dead mule, and she could see nothing of the green jackets. Facing front again, she clung to the bouncing seat while the men spun her in triumph up Pacific Street and into the Shining Light.
✽✽✽
Frances said, “Friendly set them on us, for sure.”
Gil nodded. “I don’t doubt it.”
They sat huddled around the fire, shoulder to shoulder, drinking the last hot coffee. The sun had gone down. In a few minutes Frances had to take Daisy in to get ready for the show. She was reluctant to leave the fire; the circle of people around it felt safer than the shack.
She looked from one to the other of them. Josh’s face was slack with fatigue and worry under the bent brim of his hat. Next to him Laban sat idly tracing with his finger in the dust. His shoulders slumped. Phineas stared vacantly into the fire. Even the Indian, Mitya, looked low.
Frances leaned forward, reaching for a stick, and poked the fire up, so that the flames leapt. In the sudden wash of light the men straightened, startled.
“Look,” she said. “There’s good about what happened today, which is that we beat them. They’d have taken all our food, wrecked the cart, maybe, but we got out of it.”
Josh said, “They ain’t gonna quit. They be back. And they only have to win once.”
She said, “Then we won’t let them win.” She looked around the fire once more, wanting to blow some spark into them. Their doubts and gloom pushed her temper to the edge. “Anybody don’t want this, he can go now.”
There was a silence. Finally Josh said, “Nobody goin’, Mammy. This place is all we got.” There was a little low mutter of agreement from the men on either side of him.
Daisy turned to Gil. “Isn’t there anybody we can ask for help? Isn’t there a sheriff?”
Gil said, “No. There isn’t, not yet. Since the United States took California, back in ’forty-six, the Congress in Washington hasn’t been able to agree on even a territorial government. San Francisco has no law.”
Mitya, on Frances’ left, held out a little jug of whiskey. She passed it on to Gil, who poured some into his cup.
“There must be somebody,” Daisy said. “Otherwise everybody would just kill each other all the time.”
Gil rubbed his nose. “There’s the army. But they have no money and no men, so they can’t do much. There’s the alcalde, the Mexican mayor, who was here before any of us came. That’s Leavenworth, he may not sound Mexican, but he is. Nobody listens to him, since we beat up on the Mexicans, but he’s still got an office and some duties.”
“What about Sam Brannan?” asked Frances. “He helped you before, didn’t he? About the title to the land here.”
“Yes, he did. Brannan’s the elder of the Mormon congregation in San Francisco. They came in ’forty-seven. The Mormons stick together, they do what Brannan tells them, and they give him considerable money, which he uses very well. But family by family they’re leaving, going out to Utah, where there are a lot more Mormons than here. And I don’t know what Brannan can do about the Regulators.”
The fire was burning down, a great smoldering heap of coals. Frances stared at it, seeing San Francisco in it, a shapeless burning pile of power and money, not yet fallen into order. “Who are these Regulators?”
Gil said, “Most of them were part of a regiment of volunteers from New York, sent out here to fight in the war against Mexico. By the time they reached San Francisco the war was over. They more or less attached themselves to the alcalde as a sort of police force, but he can’t control them; he’s even afraid of them. They just walk around town taking what they want and doing as they please. They march on Sundays, just like real soldiers, and nobody ever says anything. A bad bunch.”
“How many are there?” Daisy asked.
“Oh, dozens. Maybe a hundred. They had a parade last month with over a hundred men.”
Frances pursed her lips. “Charleston suddenly seems so staid and old.”
Swiftly Daisy said, “Well, we got to do something about them.”
A hundred men was an army, a major force in a place like San Francisco. Frances sat staring into the fire, trying to see all this in one piece. This wasn’t a city at all, just the scattered makings of one. There was no order here, no safety. Yet in disorder there were opportunities that never came again.
Mitya said, “Kill Friendly.”
“What?” Gil’s head swiveled toward the Indian, sitting on the far side of the fire.
“Kill Friendly. He make this trouble. He go, Regulators go, maybe.”
Frances licked her lips. Gil said mildly, “Well, there are ways not so drastic.”
“What ways?” Daisy asked.
“We could pay them,” Gil said. “Give them a certain amount to keep from bothering us. A lot of people do that.”
Daisy scowled at him. Her head jerked around, her gaze reaching for Frances for support. “No. We need all the money. Don’t we, Frances.”
Frances said, “I think it’s time you go in and get ready for the show, so we do have some money.” She had no intention of paying the Regulators anything.
“I’ll see what I can do about the Regulators,” Gil said.
“We should keep a watch on Friendly, anyhow,” Frances said. “He might try something on the crook.” Her gaze went to the Indian. “Will you watch him tonight? Then tomorrow, someone else.”
“I watch,” Mitya said.
Daisy said, “I say you ought to get a gun, Gil.”
“I’m no hand with guns.”
“Come along, dovie,” Frances said, bending over her. She slid one hand under Daisy’s tender white arm and helped her to her feet, and started away toward the lean-to.
✽✽✽
Mitya sat on the deck of the half-unmade ship and kept his gaze on Friendly’s, but he was thinking about Mammy Hardheart. Wondering what she was building here, side by side and within what he was building.
He already loved what he was building here. Yet it was hardly begun, it was a place of air and dreams, mostly. A bad wind could blow it away and leave him with nothing again.
At Metini he had known what to do, even when he could not do it. Here he knew only what his hands made, the truth of lines and angles, the solidity of wood. At Metini he had known the people, his kindred, as well as he knew himself. Here he knew only the outsides of people. So his hands ached for tools and his mind for the work of building.
He thought of Daisy, who had followed him around all afternoon asking questions and trying to help him. He thought he knew Daisy, a little. But thinking of her reminded him of Olga. He wrenched his mind from pretty, wicked Olga, who had betrayed him and started all this. He aimed his gaze at Friendly’s again, keeping watch.