Read Waltzing In Ragtime Online

Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

Waltzing In Ragtime (45 page)

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime
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Matthew Hart smiled. “But the piano’s paid for.”
“It is?”
“Early — in eight months.”
“Well, I’m damned.”
“Here.” The commanding officer shoved a printed paper at Matthew. When he slipped his hand into his vest pocket, Matthew heard the ram of a gun bolt. He froze. After the red bull, he didn’t want to die for reaching for his spectacles. He showed them, watched the commanding officer. “Lower your weapon,” the lieutenant finally told the rifleman. Matthew slowly pulled the
wire rims out. His hands didn’t shake. He willed himself not to give them that satisfaction. “Read it to them,” the commander told him.
“There’s a darkness curfew,” Matthew explained quietly.
“In effect — the officer looked, puzzled, into the black clouded sky, “uh — shortly. Follow it and the rest of the mayor’s proclamation or be shot.” The lieutenant drew up his reins, turning his mount. His second let his bayonet hover around Matthew’s ear. “You’re pale for a dago,” he said.
The forces turned up Jackson Street.
Matthew growled low before he sat, opened his employer’s vest and felt against the man’s muscle walls. Mr. Amadeo lifted the paper from the seat beside him and read its proclamation.
“Authorized killing! Matthew, this is illegal!”
“Take a deep breath, Mr. Amadeo. In.”
“Dictatorial!”
“And out.”
“Unconstitutional!”
“Good.”
“Mother of God! No! Not good, not here! Not in America!”
“We ain’t in America tonight, sir. We’re in Hell. And the army’s in charge.”
On Jackson Street, shouts were followed by three rifle shots. The banker resumed reading. “Three armies — ‘The Federal Troops, the members of the Regular Police Force, and Special Police Force.’ We cannot reach my house before the black dark of night.”
“Can we get these nags up Russian Hill?”
“Who is on Russian Hill?”
“It’s where I left my family. Olana’s father’s house.”
“You should be separated from your bride no longer,” Mr. Amadeo decided. He turned to his officers in the second wagon. “The Bank of Naples is proud to stay in the city!”
Matthew sighed. “You’ll get along real well with Mr. Whittaker, sir.”
 
 
Olana felt so good pressed against him — clean, fresh, soft, with a lilac-colored ribbon wound through her braided hair. He kept holding her, letting James Whittaker trot off Mr. Amadeo for a tour of his house’s defenses. “Have you eaten?” she asked him.
“Not since the wedding cake.”
“Come inside. Mrs. Cole saved the last of the chicken for you.”
He looked up at the sky. “No daylight. The day’s done and there’s been no daylight.”
“It’s because of the fires’ smoke. Sidney delivered both editions of the
Chronicle.
It will explain. Come inside.”
The entrance hall contained only a fraction of the refugees of the morning. “Where is everybody?” Matthew asked, feeling more like a dull child by the minute. Olana squeezed his hand.
“They’ve come and gone all day. Some went for the ferries, some to the Presidio, or Golden Gate Park. Some planned to camp out along Van Ness. Ours are in the kitchen, having a jolly time.”
Matthew stopped inside the doorway to the back stairs. He saw the black cinders in her clean, fragrant hair. Where did they come from? From him? He kissed her forehead, leaving a smudge of black there. Yes, him.
Her smile quivered. “Matthew,” she breathed. “We’ve had the newspapers. But also terrible stories. All day long. Of looters being shot, rats rampant, even of a red bull running loose from the stockyards, terrorizing. I — I can’t stand to be separated from you any more. Where you go, I will have to go. I’m sorry!”
Her tears turned the grime on his shirt to sludge as he rocked her. “That’s a good plan. I like that plan,” he assured her.
In Mrs. Cole’s kitchen, his grandmother was speaking to a roomful of survivors while Possum slept in her lap. “Not the Presidio. I’m not going to be herded into any army barracks, and my Matthew ain’t spending even a night under their rule again!”
He smiled sadly as he handed Annie Smithers the mayor’s proclamation from his pocket. “Appears we already are, Gran.”
She raised her head. “Look at you. You’re not fit to partake of the last decent meal in San Francisco!”
Mrs. Cole blushed at his grandmother’s compliment. They’d hit it off. He’d always known they would. Aunt Winnie came forward.
“Olana! Give him a bath.”
“Upstairs,” Dora instructed further, “in Leland’s rooms.”Cold water, I’m afraid,” she apologized to her new son-in-law.
“But — I’m starving!” he protested in the same tone he would have used with his own mother.
“We’ll bring up supper on a tray. After you’ve eaten, and are feeling civilized, you may rejoin us,” she proclaimed with formal, steely softness. An elderly Chinese man stepped between them.
“Bull slayer, you must bathe. To honor your elders, and to honor the spirit of the great creature.” The small man’s deep, base voice resounded off the brick hearth. It stunned them all to silence before he bowed politely. Matthew felt Olana take his arm. Her hands were as icy as the crib girls’.
“Matthew. It was true? There was a bull? And it was you?”
“He was all beaten down already,” he tried to soothe her. “He was practically —”
The deep rumble of a voice from the hearth returned. “He was holding up a corner of the world! He would not allow himself to be killed by anyone unworthy of the task.”
Matthew began rubbing Olana’s hands. “I pulled a trigger. It doesn’t take much sense to pull a trigger.”
“You stole his spirit first,” the Chinese man said, and smiled.
Matthew met his gaze. “Is that what I was doing? It felt like he was stealing mine.”
“That is as it should be.”
The water was warmer than the mountain streams of the Sierras he’d bathed in, but Matthew groused about its chill, because it made Olana laugh, rub his back harder. She dug her fingers into his grimy scalp, but remembered to work around the morning’s lacerations gently. Finally his teasing or filth or both must have overwhelmed her, because she threw the sponge at him, said “Soak!” and left the bathroom wiping her brow with the back of her hand.
Matthew wondered if he should go after her, but decided to obey, though there were tears in her eyes. They were the tears of the chocolate cake afternoon in St. Pitias, tears that were often threatening in those days they were waiting for Lavinia. If they could get through this dangerous crimson time, they would wait again, dream again. Olana would give birth to another child. A healing child.
He leaned back in the water, enjoying the pulsing silence. He closed his eyes. For only a moment he thought. But when he opened them she was back, her cheeks glowing as she stroked his forehead. The love he felt dug deeper into his being. The bathroom was warmed and scented by the candles she’d placed on every shelf in a lighted path back to the nursery’s rooms. When he
stood she placed a towel over his shoulders, but he preferred drying himself against her full white apron as he embraced her.
“You must eat,” she told him between gasps. But it was her wondrous, changing shape that interested him now. He carried her to the bed.
Laid out on a table beside it, on cream-colored linen, was their wedding supper and the last decent meal in San Francisco. Matthew took a sprig of mint from the butter dish. He danced it against his bride’s bottom lip. She bit into half, then pressed the rest to his mouth. He chewed slowly, pausing to kiss her temple, earlobe, neck, as his hands worked to free the ties of her apron, the mercifully few buttons of her simple day gown. She pulled the towel off him and began kneading his shoulders, urging with the vibrant tones of her full, rich voice.
When down to her last layer of fine cambric, Matthew drew her under the covers, taking a hyacinth blossom from Mrs. Cole’s vase and coursed the flower along her bared side.
The heavy curtains were pulled against the red glow of fire. The explosions so continuous they sounded like a bombardment muffled and finally silenced under Olana’s cries of pleasure at his ear. After her first peak, Matthew reached across her for a lily of the valley. He loved her until all the flowers had joined them under the covers.
Sleep was ambushing his empty stomach’s protest. Olana nestled close. “Done, Mr. Hart,” she whispered.
“Done?”
“We’re consumated. I’ve got you now.”
“You’ve had me since you pounded the evils of the world into one of my poor trees, Mrs. Hart.”
He heard a soft knock. Olana soundlessly slipped back into her day gown before Matthew could figure out where he’d left his clothes. “At the bed’s feet,” she said as if he’d asked. As if they’d been consumated twenty years instead of twenty minutes. He reached for the long, starched and folded shirt, a leftover from another time, from his first stay in this room.
Olana opened the door. Matthew heard his grandmother’s
voice, uncharacteristically apologetic, then saw his daughter slip between the women’s skirts and leap into the bed with him.
“Well, you had a good nap, Flibbity-gibbet,” he said.
Possum touched the scar at his throat. “You came back,” she cried, then buried her head in his chest. He cast a pained look toward his grandmother. She shrugged. “Seeing is believing,” Annie said.
Possum lifted her head. “Did you find my mana?” she asked.
“Mana’s in Ireland with Farrell,” he told her gently.
“Did the sea swallow Ireland? Swallow them like it swallowed my mother?”
Matthew hesitated. “We’d best check the
Chronicle,”
he decided. “Olana, do you have the latest edition?”
She put the four-sheet newspaper into his hands, as his grandmother found his spectacles. He settled back in the pillows with his daughter snug against him.
He looked up at the women. Annie Smithers’ fine, worn hands were wound around his wife’s waist. “Ah, here it is,” he said, folding the paper to the story of the progress of the fire down Market Street. “‘We are happy to inform the citizens of San Francisco, and especially its children, that the rest of the world, including our own North and South American continents, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe, including that lovely green island known as Ireland, is safe from the calamity that has befallen us. Ireland and all its inhabitants are having themselves a fine spring day.’”
Possum tugged at his shirtsleeve. “What about the seals, Daddy?”
“Seals?”
“The ones on Seal Rock — down by the Cliff House.”
“Oh yes, the seals. Ah, here it is …‘the boys and girls of San Francisco will also be heartened to know that the seals, whose antics they’ve delighted in along the city’s shoreline, are safe. Being more intelligent than their human counterparts, they took themselves and their families to the open sea at the first sign of disturbance.’”
The little girl’s eyes went suddenly sad. “I wish we’d gone with them,” she said.
Annie Smithers’ hold on Olana’s waist tightened.
Matthew began searching through the newspaper again. “Hey, listen to this — ‘Though news of the earthquake dominates this edition, the
Gold Coast Chronicle
is pleased to announce that Miss Wesoma Hart of 435 Valencia Street now has a new mother to add to her collection of womenfolk including grandmothers, great-grandmother, godmothers, and fairy godmothers. At the ceremony Miss Hart was resplendent in a white nightgown trimmed in … ah, in …’”
He looked to the women for help and Olana mouthed “blue.”
“‘In blue. She carried a lovely bouquet which set off her hair to new heights of beauty. The wedding party retired to the home of Wesoma’s new set of grandparents, to eat a wedding cake of …’” Now he glanced at the top layer set out on the table. “‘Ivory roses and silver nonpareils.’”
He peered at his daughter above the rim of his spectacles. She was smiling.
“Is Alisdair’s photograph of us in there, Daddy?”
Matthew searched through the sheets. “I’m afraid not, darlin’.”
“I’ll draw one and we can put it in the paper. I’ll glue it right … there,” she pointed.
“That’s a good idea.”
Olana sat beside them on the bed. Possum turned to her. “You didn’t wear a white veil,” she said.
“I wore my biggest hat.”
“You looked pretty.”
“Thank you. So did you.”
“Will you take care of me now?”
“I’d like to help all your other mothers.”
“Good. I like your house, Olana. It only shakes a little here.”
Olana stroked the child’s hair. “Would you have dinner with us?” she asked. “We were just starting.”
Possum looked from Olana to her father, to the blossom-strewn
sheets in that peculiar way that made Olana feel the child was older than both of them put together. She giggled. “Why are you eating flowers?” she asked. “There’s chicken!”
 
 
Olana and Matthew stared at the two soot-covered men as they dug in the cold ashes of the servants’ parlor hearth. On the sofa, beside Dora and Winnie Whittaker, three bags of gold and silver, still in their grapefruit crates, waited.
“Mr. Amadeo? Mr. Whittaker?”
His employer stopped his digging. He stood, and took hold of Matthew’s shoulder. “As my senior bank officer, I charge you to remember where the liquid assets of the Bank of Naples are presently located. You will remember, even though it is your wedding night and your lovely bride stands at your side. Where, Matthew?”
“In the fireplace, sir?”
A grin lit the small man’s face. “Very good!
Bellissimo!”
“Stop teasing the boy,” Dora Whittaker chastised, rising from the sofa.
“Can’t you see he’s falling asleep on his feet?” Aunt Winnie took up the cause.
“And he is not to join you mad chimney sweeps in your task,” Dora insisted. “You look very nice, Matthew. Don’t go near them.”
Maybe he should have gone to bed, after his head fell into his piece of wedding cake, making his daughter laugh before she fed him the rest. Now he watched, astonished, as Olana’s mother took up one of the heavy canvas sacks. “Here,” she grunted, passing it to Winnie, who thumped it at the men’s feet. They carefully buried it deep in the firebox.
“Your women are strong!” Mr. Amadeo proclaimed.
“They have been hauling me around for the better part of a year,” James Whittaker said. Mrs. Cole entered the parlor with glasses of his prized champagne on a silver tray.
Mr. Amadeo took his. “Mr. Whittaker has provided our vault!
His home becomes the Russian Hill branch of the Bank of Naples! We, the people will rebuild this city together!”
 
 
Matthew and Olana slept on Leland’s bed, pushed into a doorway. Friends and family were all about. At Matthew’s right side was Possum, while on Olana’s right Coretta and Andrew dosed. Across their feet Annie Smithers was stretched out, snoring lightly. Under another arch, Olana saw her parents in the middle of a bed that contained Aunt Winnie and Mrs. Cole. Everyone, both loved ones and strangers, was within her sight. She didn’t mind a whit.
She felt Matthew turn, encircle her waist as his daughter’s leg crashed across his ribs. He winced. Olana giggled. She called Sidney, who was tossing nervously out beyond Annie Smithers.
“What is it, sport?” he asked.
“Can’t you sleep?”
“I
was
sleeping.”
Weeping too, she thought. At last. “Sidney?”
“Yes?”
“I think Basil would find our wedding night most amusing,” she whispered.
 
 
On a hill of rubble in Chinatown, Alisdair Dodge perched. It was almost midnight, but he could see clearly enough to read the final edition of the
Gold Coast Chronicle
he held between his hands. Down along Stockton Street, a red wall of fire rose. Blasts of explosives rang out regularly. He read on, proud of the
Chronicle
for getting out two single sheet editions before the fire engulfed the building.
Alisdair had liked watching the faces of frantic, rumor-plagued people calm as they read the accurate account of the disaster. It was so accurate that the mayor had personally signed passes for his editor Sidney Lunt to distribute to his staff. Alisdair
had his own safe in his vest pocket. He closed the newspaper, leaned his head on his arms.
He loved the streets of Chinatown, so different from the gray, worn concourses of his native Glasgow. He looked over the ruins, framing photographs in his mind’s eye, out of habit. Even if he had any film left, use of his flashpots had been strictly forbidden as a fire hazard. Only the legalized arson and crazy dynamiting that was starting new fires all over the city was sanctioned.
Chinatown, deserted. Were the rumors that a giant red bull had caused the panic true? Did the population flee because of the ancient belief that the world was supported on the backs of four bulls, and one had gotten loose from the stockyards? Perhaps he could find the remains. Sidney would love the story. Olana could write it beautifully.
Olana and Matty, married at last, by executive order of her dying husband. That would never have happened among Presbyterian Glasgowans. He loved singing for them. His life had seemed perfect at that moment. Anything could happen, here on the wild western rim of America.
Alisdair crossed Columbus, turned onto Kearney. In the middle of that block something moved, something embedded in a mound of rubble. No, not rubble. Something alive, rippling with gray, black, brown, and red movement. An explosion in the distance lit up the night sky and Alisdair recognized the gleaming machete, and the rats swarming over the body of the bull. Rats, freed by opened sewer lines. Alisdair swayed back on his heels, sickened by the sight, by the prospect of another story — plague.
BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime
12.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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