The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (6 page)

With
a lurch and a jolt, the brougham speeds away.

2

A
Toast to the First and Last Chance Saloon

Daniel
J. Watkins lights another ciggie as the Overland train bound from Saint Louis
speeds down the last miles to the Port of Oakland, California. He plays with a
miniature Zoetrope, a little drum whirling on a spindle. He peers at slits cut
in the drum’s cardboard sides all around its circumference through which he can
view watercolor paintings rendered in a sequence. The sequence merges through
the persistence of vision, producing the illusion of continuous motion. Typically
a toy like this shows a parrot on the wing or a peasant in country dress
capering about. The clever fellow who marketed this toy in Paris painted a
whore drawing black stockings up her bare legs and down again. Up and down, up
and down.

But
even the Zoetrope—which usually fascinates him—cannot cheer him now. The jolt
of nicotine does little to relieve the throbbing in his head. Bloody train. Well.
The Overland was a very fine train till he ran out of whiskey early this
morning. Now the train lurches and rolls from side to side like a ship in a
restless sea, and his stomach rolls in sickening counterpoise.

Daniel
drags the ciggie down in three great gulps, stubs it out. He tucks the Zoetrope
in his ditty bag, finds and lights another, humming the waltz from
Sleeping
Beauty
in a scratchy tenor. Poor Tchaikovsky kicked the bucket in Mexico
in ‘93 from that vile pox called cholera, which they say is contracted by
drinking filthy water. Tchaikovsky had not been an old man. Daniel has resolved
to drink nothing but bottled fluids during his sojourn in the West. Wouldn’t
you know that Father—the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins of Saint Louis, London,
and Paris--calls the waltz the work of the Devil. An inspiration for lurid
passions among the young and impressionable. How very true. He hums more
vigorously. Daniel adores works of the Devil.

In
the dawn sometime after he discovered his grievous shortfall of potables, the
Overland had stopped in Sacramento to pick up passengers. But the stopover
wasn’t long enough to scare up a little hair of the dog. By the time he’d
roused himself to a functioning consciousness, they were on their way again.
Daniel pulls frantically on the ciggie. Must he arrive in San Francisco on
vital family business shucked out, half-crocked, and airing his paunch like
some overindulgent schoolboy? He is nearly twenty-two, after all, heading for
old age and senility by swift and sordid leaps and bounds.

This
will not do, sir, indeed it will not. Daniel stands, groggy, and surveys the
passenger car. He roams the narrow aisle, spies the old cowboy who’s ridden the
Overland out from Saint Louis, same as Daniel. A grizzled coot in rustic togs
that have never known soap and water. Nor has the old cowboy bothered to shave
since their departure from that thankfully distant city. Skinny bowlegs
sprawling, he hunkers down in his seat, talking to himself, cackling, conferring
with an invisible companion now and then. And, oh yes, nipping at something
under his greasy topcoat.

In a
word, the old cowboy looks promising. Daniel slides onto the seat facing him,
grinning like all get-out with what he knows is a manly mustachioed face that
charms the ladies
and
the gentlemen. Oh, he charms them all. He gives
the old cowboy a wink, taps out a ciggie, and offers it.

“A
long haul, sir?” Daniel says, leaning forward on the leather seat, striking a
match for the coot, then lighting up another for himself. “But I suppose you’ve
knocked about this great continent of ours by harder means than the Overland
train. In the good old days, eh?”

“Them
was the days,” the old cowboy agrees, drawing down hard on the ciggie like a
proper smoker.

“The
glory, the wild glory, eh? Knocking about like that. I don’t suppose you’ve got
a drop to spare of that libation you’ve been nipping at?” Daniel grins when the
old cowboy squints at him with a bloodred eye, openmouthed that a stranger has
discovered his closely guarded secret. “I’m dry as a bone, sir, and we’ve
haven’t yet reached the coast.”

“’Tain’t
somethin’ fit to drink fer a young gent like yerself,” the old cowboy grunts,
eyeing Daniel’s gray gabardine suit and starched ivory collar, the blue checked
silk vest and tasteful French blue necktie, his British bowler of brushed felt.
“’Tain’t fit fer a bear, if truth be told.”

“Never
fear, sir, I have imbibed the Green Fairy herself.”

The
old cowboy peers at him more closely with that painful-looking eye. “What in
damn hell is the Green Fairy?”

“Absinthe,
sir.” Daniel sighs. What he would give now for a gold-green bottle of Pernod
Fils, a sugar cube, a perforated spoon, a lovely bell-shaped glass. What he
would give to be back with Rochelle and the gang at La Nouvelle-Athenes sipping
rainbow cups, flirting with poetry, lust, and death. “
La fee verte
, the
Green Fairy. The sacred herb. Holy water, sir. A finer, eviler brew has never
been concocted. One hundred twenty proof, reeking of wormwood.
Tremblement
de terre.
Earthquake, sir, that’s what we call absinthe.”

“Haw.
Well, you’ll find some o’ that out in Californ’, young gent.” The old cowboy is
unimpressed.

“Just
a hair of the dog.” Daniel offers another ciggie, cajoling the coot. “That’s
fine Virginia weed machine-rolled to perfection. Come now, what’ve you got?”

“Hunnert
twenny proof is a cinch, young gent.” The old cowboy cackles. From beneath the
topcoat, he produces a scummy bottle, a neat piece of glass with flat sides
that fit against the chest and do not extrude indiscreetly. The fifth is down
to four fingers, but that should last till they reach the Port of Oakland.
“This here’s puma piss.”

“Puma
piss?”

“Home-brewed
rotgut, tobacco juice, an’ a dose o’ white lightinin’. What some call rat
poison.”

“Dear
sir, you cannot mean strychnine.”

“Yessir,
I do, an’ a hunnert twenny proof is a cinch, but ye can’t prove it by me.” The
old cowboy consults with his invisible companion, cackling and nodding.

Puma
piss! Daniel will have to remember that! “Let’s have a taste, then. Just a
drop, sir.” With sunlight gleaming off his teeth, he offers a third ciggie.
Damn bloody coot! But Daniel can purchase more machine-rolled cigarettes in San
Francisco. The American Tobacco Company is spread out all over the West. He can
get anything he wants in San Francisco. Or so they say.

But
right now, right
now
, what he needs is a drink.

“Ah,
hell.” The old cowboy hands over the bottle.

“It’s
a cinch.” Daniel winks, knocks back a swallow.

Vile
cannot approach the taste of stagnant well water infused with putrefaction, but
the sting of newly distilled grain alcohol mangles the inside of his mouth and
his tongue. The taste swiftly becomes irrelevant. He knows the stuff is liquid,
but the sensation in his throat is of scorching fire. Or fangs. Fangs of a ravening
beast.

In
less than an instant, his heart begins to pound like lunatic desperate to
escape his chains. Pure vertigo seizes him, whirls him around. A black satin
curtain drops over his eyes. Oh, no! Has he suddenly gone blind? Sometimes homebrew
steals your sight along with your sanity. But no, the black satin curtain is
abruptly whisked away.

And
he stares out at the golden-brown hills of California, curving like the bodies
of women. Golden-brown women lolling about like whores with their golden-brown
breasts and hips and swooping waists. The ill-starred Sioux, perhaps, or the
Apache. Or the fabled Celestials, the Chinese. Golden-brown women harried and
driven by the brute forces of rape and slavery and murder till they have fled,
disguised themselves, mysteriously reincarnated into the landscape itself. He
sees their awful transmogrification, their anger parched and mute save for the
testimony of the hills, the golden-brown hills in which a man could get lost
and die. He hears them screaming now—by God!—feels them reaching for him. They
mean to tear him limb from limb with their curved fingers of thorn. They mean
to drive him mad with their anguish.

That
high rending sound? It’s only the train whistle.

Daniel
shuts his eyes, and the black satin curtain falls again. But the blackness is
so dizzying, his lids pop open at once. Now the landscape changes as he speeds
toward his destination. The hills grow greener, studded with shrubs and sturdy
trees. Abundant palms that are the rage in fashionable houses back East grow
wild by the track bed. Flowering bushes shamelessly offer up pink and purple
thunderheads, and huge, twisted succulents are so vibrant and filled with a
peculiar presence that they seem like living creatures in some cunning
disguise, waiting in ambush for the unwary. Waiting to pounce like pumas do.

Daniel
feels the hand of destiny spinning him round like a Zoetrope. Does he only go
through the motions of his life like a pathetic painted little figure? The tracks
clack below him. The lunatic again, he’s rattling his cage. A great fate awaits
him—he
feels
this in his heart—unlike anything he’s confronted before.
Not in Saint Louis, not in London or Paris. Perhaps he will live, perhaps he
will die in San Francisco. What does it matter, what does anything matter? We’re
all just painted figures spun round by the hand of God.

Now
grief wells up inside him, squeezing the frantic beat of his heart. Well, Mama
died. People die. He saw three grandparents meet their Maker before he was ten.
It was not as though family had never passed on before. Mama died in the late spring,
in the fecund heart of incipient summer. A time he always thought of as a sick
time--disease in the air, poison in the water, rotting food.

He
should not have been surprised. His mother had been dying for a long time. But
why did she wait for him? Why did she have to wait? He did not want to see her
face, pale and beautiful as always. Her eyes—what she called her deep sea
eyes—beseeching him. Her question, always her question, even on her deathbed,
“Danny, haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I always been good?” And his
answer, always the same answer, “Yes, Mama. Of course, Mama. Of course you’ve
always been good.”

He
takes one more swallow of puma piss, swallowing his grief and rage. “Ish a
shinch,” he says, handing the bottle back with as steady a hand as he can
muster. A gentleman must observe the niceties of sharing a drink.

“Haw.”
The old cowboy grins, showing broken brown teeth through his neglected
whiskers. His invisible companion apparently adds a trenchant comment. Daniel
himself can just about
see
the companion. Yes, there he is--a hand from
the good old days, long dead and still lively in the old cowboy’s eyes.

“Thank
you, shir. Mush oblished.” Daniel stands, the vertigo fading, his pulse
slowing. A fine feeling of arousal courses through his veins. When his stomach
settles down, his feelings turn to another part of his anatomy he has too often
abused. By God, his heart.

There
are ladies on the train. He vaguely recalls two fine ladies who boarded the
Overland at dawn in Sacramento. How could he have ignored them for so long?
What a cad! He should go pay his respects, find out if they’re bound for San
Francisco, too, and, if so, what in heaven’s name is their address? The pilgrim
seeks the comfort of fellow travelers, that is the natural way of the world, is
it not? He staggers to the dining car, newly filled with the spirit of amorous
adventure, tapping out a ciggie. Where are the ladies? Who are they?

Ah,
there. They sit at a table set for tea. The small girl with a narrow mousy
face, protruding eyes, and an overbite interests him not at all. She’s dressed
in charcoal-gray leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a plain gored dress. She chatters
and chirps in broad, ugly vowels. She is much too American for his taste and
much too plain. No, her companion, an elegant lady—now she interests him. A
high-cheeked face, rose-kissed skin, a lovely mouth with a full lower lip, huge
soft eyes. Oh yes, she interests him. A startling streak of white accentuates
her brown pompadour, but that doesn’t dissuade him. A lady getting on in her
years? In her late twenties, perhaps? Yet still with the spark of her youthful
passion, he can see it in her eyes. More passionate than her younger companion,
either because she’s experienced more of the world or less than she’s longed for.

She
is well-dressed, too, a quality in ladies for which Daniel has the highest
admiration. The young companion wears proper travelling togs. But her. The
elegant lady wears a full skirt the color of a good French burgundy. An ivory
silk blouse with abundant lace spills over the chinchilla collar of a cashmere
coat belted tightly around her waist. A gay hat, piled high with ribbons and
flowers, perches upon the pompadour. A voluminous veil is drawn over her face
and pinned at her throat with a glittering Art Nouveau brooch. And gloves. The
elegant lady wears immaculate gloves that accentuate her long, fine fingers,
the white cotton unsullied by any mundane contact with the world. Her fingers
twitch in her lap as if longing to touch a man.

Indeed,
sir, that is the only conclusion Daniel can draw.

“Good
morning, ladies,” Daniel says, carelessly tossing himself on the chair beside
her. She’s tall, he can see that. Tall with a long slim body beneath the coat,
the skirts, the bodice, the corset. Rochelle was tall, too, and her long legs
literally went up to her throat when she danced the cancan at La
Nouvelle-Athenes. Of course, Rochelle was a whore. But this one, this one. He
is smitten. What a marvelous land, this Californ’!