The Call of the Wild: Klondike Cannibals, Vol. 2 (4 page)

*  *  *  *  *

About halfway down Market street, Jack saw a family of five—father, mother, and three blonde daughters—all wearing identical face-masks, of the sort that doctors wore at surgeries. They were carrying suitcases as they hurried towards the Ferry Terminal.

As he whizzed
past he noticed that the girls were all crying. He didn’t really have time to ponder the scene: he had his own worries to contemplate.

Things were now looking very bad for him.
He couldn’t even get his foot in the door at the paper, and Eliza would be more money-conscious than ever now that Captain Shepard’s heart troubles were acting up again. His chances of making it onto one of the first boats bound for the Klondike were quickly slipping away.

As
Jack coasted down the hill towards the waterfront, picking up speed, he looked North, in the direction of Chinatown. He could see a plume of black smoke rising into the air.

His curiosity got the better of him
. He cycled several blocks up Stockton street towards Grant Avenue. He didn’t make it far: as he got closer the smoke grew thicker. Before long it became hard to see, and his eyes began to water and sting.

At last
Jack stopped, putting his foot down on the curb for balance, and peered ahead into the gloom.

Through the smoke h
e caught a glimpse of a line of fifty policemen blocking the entire width of the street. Thankfully they were facing towards Chinatown, and didn’t see him watching them.

He
didn’t stay long.

*  *  *  *  *

Jack managed to find a small fishing boat headed back across to Oakland that was willing to take him, and paid fifteen cents for his passage. Once ashore again, he quickly ducked into Heinhold’s for a quick bowl of soup and a couple of pieces of bread before heading off on his bicycle again, this time heading up towards Joaquin Miller’s house in the sierras to the east of Oakland.

Miller was a famous poet, known by ma
ny as the “Byron of the Rockies.” He’d come of age during the California Gold Rush half a century earlier, and had even spent a year living in an Indian village, which he later wrote about in his book,
Life Amongst the Modocs
. In his wild youth, Miller had been a jack-of-all-trades: mining-camp cook, newsman, lawyer, judge. He’d ridden for the Pony Express, and was a self-confessed horse thief.

What Jack wanted was Miller’s advice.
He respected Miller as an author and man of experience, and knew the older man loved playing the part of local sage, and always made time for young would-be authors who arrived on his doorstep.

Surely he would know what Jack should do.

As Jack rode up into the dry hills, a series of increasingly elaborate fantasies played out in his mind: Miller would be so impressed with Jack’s singular strength of purpose, and the fact that Jack was an award-winning author, that he would put in a good word with an editor for the
Morning Call
, and would guarantee Jack an interview, or better yet, a job.

Or perhaps Miller was going
North himself, and would consider taking Jack along as his personal assistant. Either way, Jack would get to go. By the time he was halfway to Miller’s house, he’d convinced himself his odds were actually quite good.

A
s the warm afternoon air filled his lungs, and he worked up a sweat, his mood lifted. There was something glorious in the workings of his muscles, the racing of his heart. All at once, Jack felt optimistic again.

Things would work out for him. Why not? They had bef
ore, in their own strange way. After all, his teenage years hadn’t been completely wasted in drudgery. For a few glorious seasons, he’d managed to escape, and, during that time, to see much of the world.

Perha
ps it would happen again. All he had to do was keep trying.

After
cycling up the dusty road for almost an hour, Jack arrived at Miller’s small white house. It almost looked like a miniature church, of the sort pioneers might build on the frontier.

Jack leaned his bicycle against a nearby tree and walked up to the front door. He knocked. “Hello?” he called out. “Anyone home?”

A young Asian gardener wearing frayed denim overalls came around from behind the house, and bowed curtly. His hands were caked with moist black topsoil. “Mr. Miller is out,” he said in slow and measured English, and Jack identified his accent immediately as Japanese.

Jack had spent a number of
drunken days in Yokohama, when the
Sophie Sutherland
docked there, and though he hadn’t seen much more of the country than half-a-dozen drinking halls and brothels, he was intrigued by Japanese culture and aesthetics.

“Do you know when will he be back? I will wait.”

“He went to Alaska.”

Jack held his gaze steady. “When?”

“This morning.”

“I see.” His mouth was suddenly quite dry.

“He will report for San Francisco
Examiner
.”

“Yes. Of course,” Jack said awkwardly.

The gardener caught the look on Jack’s face. “I will get water. Please wait here.” With another quick bow, he walked into the house.

Jack sat on the front step, staring
down at his feet. A long trail of black ants traced their mysterious way through the dirt, carrying tiny white eggs and an assortment of dead insects in a frantic line.

He
began playing through a number of desperate scenarios in his head. Maybe he could ride the rails up the coast to Seattle, and try to find passage from there? But once there he would be faced with the same problem he had here: expensive and overcrowded ships, and no money to pay for either tickets or supplies. Besides, Jack suspected that the rails would be overrun by gold-seekers, just like every other mode of transport was.

He’d
heard talk of overland routes to the Klondike, but they seemed slow and dangerous. Insane, actually, when you thought about them at any length. How could anyone possibly stand a chance on a journey of two thousand miles through unknown and wild terrain? It was hopeless, like walking to the source of the Nile in Africa.

No, he needed to somehow get aboard one of the ships heading to Alaska.

But how? Become a stowaway? A crazy image came into his head: he saw himself sneaking aboard one of the ships at night, and somehow staying hidden for the duration of the voyage at sea.

As Jack knew from his days aboard the
Sophie Sutherland
, life at sea operated by different rules. At sea, the Captain was King, the final arbiter between life and death. He could administer the harshest justice known to Man: he could keelhaul you, flog you with the cat-o’-the-nine-tails, make you climb high into the rigging, or scrape the hull free of barnacles. Stowaways were the lowest rung on the ladder, and, after being caught, were often chained up, abused, or given the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs on board the ship.

Still, if Jack thought he had a ch
ance, he would be willing to try. But he knew it wouldn’t work. The ships would be too crowded to escape detection for long. And what would he eat? For a moment he was nearly overwhelmed by despair.

T
he gardener returned with two wooden cups. He handed one to Jack, then sat down beside him, and took a sip of his own. “Every day is an adventure, and the adventure itself is home,” he said.

Jack
gulped down a large mouthful of the cool, clear water. “What was that?” he asked, when he’d finally had his fill. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand.

“A famous poet from my country wrote that.
Basho. In
his
book,
Narrow Road to the Deep North
.”

Jack blinked.
“What’s your name?”

“
Yone Noguchi.”

“I’m Jack.”

They shook hands.

Jack was curious. “How about you?” he asked, after a moment. “Will you head
North too?”

Yone
shook his head, and smiled. “I am already rich,” he said. “I grow things and have a view of the sea.”

Jack studied
the gardener’s handsome profile for a moment.

The
y sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the wind in the trees and looking out over the streets of Oakland, which shimmered and danced in the afternoon heat. Beyond them, across the Bay, was San Francisco. In the distant haze Jack made out the forms of the steamboats down at the docks, and—faintly—a plume of black smoke still rising from Chinatown.

Just to the North of the city, h
e could see the Pacific Ocean through the Golden Gate, beckoning ceaselessly to him with the call of the wild.

He had r
ested enough. He stood, thanked Yone, and wished him the best of luck in America. Then he got on his bicycle again and began coasting back down the road.

H
e let his speed build and build, fighting the urge to use the brakes, until everything was a blur and he was fully committed. If he fell or crashed now he would be badly injured, or even killed.

Overhead, a lone condor circled endlessly, riding the warm air rising off the scrubland hills.

*  *  *  *  *

As soon as Eliza
saw Jack dismount at the curb, she came out of the front door towards him. She could tell from his eyes that it hadn’t gone well.

“Listen Jack,
” she said. “We need to talk…”

“I know
.” Jack began walking the bike up towards the house, resigned now to his fate.

He knew
what she was going to say. He’d heard her speech about becoming a postal worker before. Her theory was, with so many men leaving for the North there would be a shortage of applicants, and that Jack could get in somewhere.

Truth
be told the prospect of delivering mail door to door wasn’t all that bad. Yes, if he could get the job, he’d probably be able to lead a nice, stable life. A humble one, sure, but who was to say that humble lives weren’t the best kind?

Except that
Jack knew his stubborn pride would never accept it. The thought of other men going and having tremendous experiences in the Northlands, while he remained at home, drove him crazy. They would always have that over him.

But maybe he no longer had a choice. Someone had to provide for the family. It should be him.

“I didn’t get it,” he told her, unable to keep the disappointment
out of his voice. “Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said…”

“Never mind all that right now.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the house.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly worried.

“You’d better come inside.”

He leaned his bicycle agai
nst the side of the house, and they went inside, making their way back to the library, where they found Captain Shepard poring over his map of Alaska. Newspapers were spread out all over the place, and the air was thick with tobacco smoke.

Captain Shepard looked up excitedly as they walked in the room. “We can take the
Umatilla
to Port Townsend, and then transfer to the
City of Topeka
bound for Juneau. From there we will unload our outfits at Dyea beach, and have them carried across the Chilkoot pass. The hard part will be building or buying a boat at Lake Bennett for the five hundred mile journey downriver to Dawson…”

Jack was
caught completely off guard. “We?” he repeated.

“Yes, my boy.
We
. We!” Captain Shepard’s face was flushed with excitement. He was practically jumping up and down like a schoolboy. “Eliza and I have been talking… If you agree, we will form a partnership, today, just the three of us. We can put up the money to buy your outfit and steamer fare. This way, you get to go, and I get to come with you…”

Jack
couldn’t believe his ears. He looked over at Eliza. She smiled back at him, a little cautiously.

“I re-mortgaged the house this afternoon,” she said simply.

She told Jack how s
he’d gone into the bank first thing that morning, and had waited in line for over three hours—apparently many people had the same idea—and finally managed to borrow a few thousand dollars against the value of her house.

Enough to buy two first-class outfits
, and passage to Alaska.

Raw excitement flowed through Jack’s body.
Just a couple of minutes ago he’d been so sure that he didn’t have a chance. But Eliza had come through for him. Again. Just as she always did, supporting him in his crazy schemes against her better judgment.

Jack turned back to Captain Shepard. “But your health…” he began.

“Oh, pshaw!” Captain Shepard said, with a contemptuous wave of his hand. “
We are men, aren’t we? We can do this. We really can. Besides,
I haven’t felt this healthy in years! All I need is the open road, adventure…” The ends of his well-oiled moustache curled upwards as he smiled. “I will put up some of my earnings from Shepard & Company, and along with Eliza’s investment, there should be enough money to get us there and keep us fed through the winter.”

Jack looked at Captain Shepard’s flushed face. He was now sixty years old, and al
most certainly had a serious heart condition. But it wasn’t totally beyond belief that the open road would do him some good, even help whip him back into shape. They had all read of men older than Captain Shepard heading North.
Even “Lucky” Baldwin—the famous local veteran of the great rush of ‘49—was leaving behind his string of lucrative hotels and estates to grubstake in the North at the age of seventy-one.

“I will only agree to this on one condition,” Eliza said
. “You have to promise to bring my husband back safely.”

Jack grab
bed her into a big bearhug, lifting her off her feet.

“Jack!” she squealed, playfully swatting at his shoulders. “I’m serious!”

“Of course.”

He put her down, and kissed her on the cheek. Jack looked at them both solemnly. “Partners, then,” he said. They all shook hands formally, sealing the deal.

Captain Shepard walked over to his bottles of bourbon. “We have a lot to plan, and not a lot of time. The
Umatilla
leaves in three days…” He turned to them both with a grin.

“Now who wants a drink?”