by Chip Jacobs
Jules smirked. “I’ll see you one Napoleon and raise you a Ralph Waldo Emerson, if I may.”
“You may, I think.”
“Emerson said, ‘History is a fable agreed upon,’ but I choose to believe in Remy’s heroism. The mystery is why his story disappeared.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on this,” Nick said, badly needing a subject pivot. “Did I ever tell you about Upton Sinclair’s junky teeth?”
Jules recognized what Nick was doing. “No,” she answered. “Please expound.” She didn’t have the heart to relay another historical nugget that she discovered in her committee folders. At Pasadena’s inception, there were more Iowans here than Indianans.
Later, Jules executed her own strike in the sun. She shoved Nick onto his back and rolled on top of him. There, she kissed him, acquainting him for a precious second with the tip of her vanilla-tinged tongue.
When she retracted, Nick revealed a ten-kilowatt smile. “Royo, where are you?” he hollered. “I’m being accosted by a gullible suffragette.”
His mutt galloped over, pouncing onto Jules, who lay over Nick, licking both their faces in sloppy delight. Hoping Royo’s telepathy was working, Nick thought, “She’s a keeper. Now get off of us before you spoil the mood.”
The dog heard that, for he woofed, and then trotted back to where he was cavorting before. While Nick and Jules tilted their faces to the fading light, Royo pursued a squirrel across the rocks and up into one of the nostrils of the Devil’s Gate’s rock face.
Airborne Cinema
As a native in a city with a foothold in the embryonic aviation business, Nick had seen his share of identifiable flying objects. He was in the whooping crowd when a Wright Brothers’ EX biplane touched down at Tournament Park for its record-smashing, transcontinental flight. He watched with his father at an airfield near the Raymond Hotel for the climax of a hotly publicized race between a locally operated zeppelin and a motorcar.
The automobile won; it wasn’t like it’d dueled Mrs. Grover Cleveland.
Now, as a new object streaked over the Arroyo in the early hours of this Friday, all Nick could think about was Reginald’s question about flying vehicles. That day was here, accidentally. Horrifically. He saw it all: the spinning tires with no road to grip, the dark-painted truck about to be crumpled.
The five-ton vehicle was moving at high speed on Colorado Street when it barreled through Orange Grove Boulevard and onto the access road angling downward to the bridge’s elevation. To avoid the barricades in front of the deck, the driver jerked to the right, and the truck sailed over the edge of the ravine with a head of steam.
It flew for twenty yards before its nose dipped and it slammed into the hillside. The truck jackknifed, rolling downslope like a kicked-in Campbell’s Soup can. When it stopped, it lay on its side in the dry creek bed next to the Scoville property.
Black smoke was seeping out of the truck’s grill by the time Nick ran there. Crushed-granite pebbles that were in the cargo bay now speckled the hillside’s dirt and vegetation. Surely, there’d be a corpse behind the wheel.
The twenty-year-old driver was alive, however, sitting on the ground with his head between his knees. He was bleeding from the forehead and arms, talking in a shaky voice to Marcus and others who rushed over to help. He said he panicked when the bridge he assumed was open wasn’t, and bailed out the side window before the truck’s second rollover. Someone soon took him to Pasadena Hospital.
An hour later, after a flatbed hauled his vehicle away, Marcus buttonholed Nick by the administration tent. “He’s lucky to be alive, that kid, even if his father may skin him for destroying his business’s truck. We’ve got problems of our own. As this demonstrates, it’d be half-baked for us to erect a world-class bridge and then have drivers killing themselves because they couldn’t see at night, or weren’t certain where to turn.”
Nick held up a finger. “My lamps should help illuminate the entrances, but—”
“But,” Marcus said, hijacking Nick’s sentence, “you were going to add we need a bigger batch of them. And you’d be prescient. I want thirty-six lamps on this side of the Arroyo, another twelve on the west.”
“Thirty-six—great. Is that adequate, though, on the other side?”
“Probably not. You just get started. The more light the better. Stay in budget parts-wise and keep me apprised. Chop, chop.”
For the rest of the morning, the image of the flying truck remained with Nick the way the story of Remy, wonder dog, remained with Jules. At noon, he took his lunch tray up to the deck. It was getting harder to find a seat in a mess tent crammed with so many new workers.
Fifteen others, including some of the Nellies, were already up top. How peaceful it was under the dumpcart’s trestle track during break time when no smoky engines roared or foremen yelled. You couldn’t beat the view, either.
Nick squatted down next to Darby, the rebar wire cutter. On his other flank was the temperamental Chester, who said “afternoon” and then resumed rolling his normal, post-meal cigarette. A short, animated Chinese American in a cowboy hat leaned against a post not far away, biting off the head of a dried fish he’d brought from home; the company was showing backbone hiring Lei Wong as some local firms advertised their policies against employing Asians. The two Colorado brothers, who mainly spoke in Spanish among themselves, sat cross-legged on the other side of Wong, fashioning stick figures out of wood scraps.
“Nick, I’ve been fixing to ask you what’s it like riding an ostrich?” Darby said. “I was at Cawston’s last year with my girl. When I saw those cowpokes bumping along low on them, I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Nick grinded a cracker into his chili and smiled; Darby was welcoming him by raising a subject in his wheelhouse. “I can’t lie,” he said. “Horses are more regal, smarter, too. But there’s something invigorating about mounting them.”
“I don’t know,” Darby said. “Seems a bit to me like, well, dry humping a feather cushion. I’ll stick with palominos.”
Everybody busted up, even Chester. Lei Wong must’ve understood it, for he naughtily waved his dried fish at Darby. When Darby left, Nick lost his buffer from Chester, whose pitted face was four feet away.
If there ever was an opportune time to inform Chester what he suppressed before—that A. J. Pearson’s machine shop debunked the superstitions about the bridge’s rattling and groaning—it was now. What was Chester going to do: throw him over the side for being rational?
“Chester,” Nick said. “I never told you about what I discovered a while ago.”
Chester spit out a fleck of tobacco and match-lit his cigarette. “Jesus. What’s that, college boy?” he asked with a scathing lilt. “Something new from your science book?”
The Colorado brothers and other blue collars nearby scowled; Chester’s lunchtime-asshole routine must’ve been wearing thin. Why bother, Nick thought. Better to drop the subject for good. “A book? No,” he said. “I was going to tell you about Buford’s Meat Shack, the best sandwich in town.”
—
The next evening, a Saturday, was his eighth date with the reliably logical Jules, and Nick scored them tickets to a sold-out lecture by a controversial explorer; he’d plotted a surprise for later. Dinner was a quick one—“commoner’s steak and fritters” at Smilin’ Dan’s, a casual diner next to Pasadena’s new Ford showroom.
Walking afterward under a starry sky, past shops advertising summer hats and sliced pumpernickel, they swapped job stories. Nick heard further about the good and bad of working for Lilly Busch, and Jules learned about the Mercereau Company’s cast of memorable bridge rats.
Nick then said “enough of business,” and suggested they play another round of the word-association game that Jules conceived on Mount Lowe. Tonight’s theme for “Things I adore, what I abhor” contest: canine doppelgangers of famous humans.
“Woodrow Wilson,” Nick said in front of Munger and Griffith’s, the plumbing store that sounded like a law firm.
“Starting big. Let me cogitate on that,” Jules said. “Okay. An erudite collie—a collie who’s as fanatical for sliced ham as our president, Mr. Princeton.”
“That’s daffy,” Nick scoffed. “Afghan hound: there’s your comparison. Same bone structure.”
“Nope,” Jules said. “Round one to me.”
“Debatable,” Nick said, bouncy-stepping around one of Colorado Street’s new pepper trees. “What about the Orville Wright of dogs?” Just as he asked this, an elderly neighbor of his wearing a small, tin “hearing trumpet” around his neck waved, and Nick waved back.
“Very tricky.” Jules smiled, eyes rotating upward in that fetching manner. “A Doberman. No, check that. Airedale terrier. Those lanky legs could negotiate a plane rudder.”
“Not a bad choice. How about something more your bailiwick: Susan B. Anthony?”
Jules pinched his arm as they stopped to let a carriage pass Cruickshank’s Dry Goods. “Boundaries, Nick. Disparaging one of my suffragette icons puts you on dangerous ice.”
“C’mon. She’d be a Bassett Hound; flat nose, soulful eyes.”
Jules slipped her arm through his. “Two can play this game. Upton Sinclair, the best male author of his generation. Hunky, too.”
“Yow; that stung. I need a breed with a big forehead and a rail frame. Chihuahua—a muckraking Chihuahua who enjoys the occasional greasy sandwich. Now let’s switch it up. Who does Royo remind you of?”
Royo, Jules knew, was Nick’s first dog. He didn’t have one in his house growing up because of his mother’s dander allergy. Missing that experience, Nick volunteered during high school at Pasadena’s Humane Society, which was regarded as one of the best around. “Royo deserves his own category,” Jules said. “With that big head and beige fur, we should call him the, uh, butterscotch wolf. Yes, the butterscotch wolf.”
“I like it,” Nick said immediately. “Suits him. Lord knows he attacks food like a wolf.”
What a time for frisky banter. The warm May evening was a showcase of Pasadena’s charms. Tipped bowlers, respectable cleavages, gum-free sidewalks. You wouldn’t find any pituitary giants or painted ducks trolling the Crown City.
At Clune’s, the white-bright marquee read, “Tonight: Dr. Frederick A. Cook, International Celebrity.”
Inside, Pasadena’s luminaries were out in force. As Nick and Jules walked to their seats, they passed rows of movers and shakers, some snacking on popcorn in white gloves. There was former Los Angeles mayor and water engineer Frederick Eaton; two guests from the Hotel Green hoedown (the tobacco heiress and a vacuum-cleaner scion); a son of Thaddeus Lowe; and numerous Pasadena politicians. There also was Edwin Sorver, amateur meteorologist and young chief of the Board of Trade, a go-getter to whom Nick was compared sometimes. These flashy names held the hottest ticket in town.
Nick saw further evidence upon reaching their row. Sitting in front of him, adjusting his tie, was none other than Charles Frederick Holder, Pasadena’s original Renaissance man—author, museum curator, naturalist, paranormal archaeologist, even a Throop Institute trustee.
“You want history,” Nick murmered to Jules, scooting in. “There he is.”
“I’d rather have Jujubes,” she said. “I’m up to my elbows in this stuff six days a week.”
“He’s a different breed. There’s no canine analogy for him.”
Holder, bushy-white at sixty-two, was among the first to market the city’s climate as a sellable brand. A cofounder of the Tournament of Roses, he sold the sun. “In New York,” Holder famously said, jabbing the East Coast cognoscenti that periodically debased Southern California as a repository of know-nothings and crazies, “people are buried in snow. Here our flowers are blooming and oranges about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world…”
After Nick returned from the concession stand with teeth-sticking candy for Jules, he asked her impression of Pasadena’s original movie palace. “Passable,” she said teasingly. “But I haven’t traveled to San Francisco yet.”
“Pshaw.”
Before them, Clune’s stage was lit with bulbs studded like giant baby teeth. The paneled ceiling oozed European sensibility, the intricate wainscoting English royalty. Since its curtain first rose, Clune’s performers included composer John Philip Sousa, actors in black face, and the “Dramatic Sopranos.” D. W. Griffith screened his films here.
The overhead lights were cut and the middle-aged Dr. Cook, a surgeon by training, strode out to polite applause. Mustachioed and faraway-eyed, he began presenting a travelogue of his harrowing trip to the North Pole. In reaching it, he’d bested, by a year, fellow explorer/rival Rear Admiral Robert Peary to the top of the world. During the excursion, Cook said his crew endured blizzards and near-starvation, and absorbed Eskimo wisdom. Rumors of cannibalism and mutiny were false.
The crowd, whether in black tie or plain pants, listened intently to what was both adventure story and victory lap. Nick, having been up since dawn, conked out ten minutes in. Jules’s nudge to his ribs soon brought him back. “Wake up,” she whispered. “The North Pole is turning hot.”
Nick did just as a banker named William McShane was hollering ten rows from the stage that Cook was a shameless fraud. Cook, who’d faced professional doubts before about his claim, did himself no favors now. He engaged the heckler, denouncing him as a liar. The audience stirred, organizers squirmed. Cook returned to his prepared remarks, but he and the banker went at it again. At one point, it appeared that Cook might leap from Clune’s venerable stage to punch out his naysayer.
The crowd took sides with hissing and catcalls. Who knows how the machismo-fueled debacle would’ve culminated if city rules didn’t stipulate the event conclude at ten. People exited the lobby in states of disbelief and titillation. Jules said it best: “What that lacked in dignity it made up for in fireworks.”
“I’m starting to question if there’s something in the air,” Nick said, “considering all the other odd happenings of late. Now, if you’re not too bushed, I have something to show you. And it’s nowhere close to the North Pole.”
—
On their twenty-minute walk there, Jules prodded Nick about something she was reluctant to earlier: why he was so preoccupied with the bridge. She, after all, originated from a city littered with them. Approaching from Colorado Street, the moonlight doused the arches with a creamy tint, and he tried enunciating his feelings.
“From the time I saw a rendering, Jules, it called to me. Busch Gardens and Mount Lowe are special. Don’t get me wrong. But this gal here,” he said, patting a bag of cement, “she’s unmatched. She isn’t here to impress us. She’s here to give people in their motorcars, and I’ll be acquiring one someday, the liberty to come and go as they please; to trust that this will stand as an exemplar of function and style.”
“That was eloquent,” Jules said, stifling a yawn. “I only wished I believed in something as material as you do this hulk.”
“Believe?” he said with a grin. “We’re staring at Euclidean genius here. It’s the suppleness in her lines; the way she’s curved and straight simultaneously. Have you taken her in from Ivy Wall? She jigsaws into the canyon as if nature willed it.”
“All that poetry for a bridge? And you get to overlay your other passion: solar power. It must be a dream come true.”
“Take my hand. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
They stepped toward the deck, where Nick hours earlier watched a gravel truck wing over the edge, and walked onto the boards. They stopped before reaching the tunnel under the dumpcart’s trestle track. “Don’t move,” he said. “As someone warned me, it’s a long ways down.”
Nick dipped under a sawhorse barrier and momentarily disappeared under the track. There was little street noise this late,
leaving an army of crickets to serenade them. He returned with his daypack, which contained the implements required to plop a cherry on the evening.
“Turn around and stargaze while I set up,” he said, unpacking his things into an empty wheelbarrow. “I think Saturn’s out.”
“Coy distraction,” Jules said.
While she searched for it, Nick placed a black, shoebox-shaped contraption on the temporary railing on the bridge’s south side. Extending from the front of his metal device was an old nickelodeon lens. A ring of small, concave mirrors on top connected to a tube that dove into the machine’s chassis. Behind the mirrors was a slot the width of a standard postcard or photograph. A hinge operated the lid. At the bottom of Nick’s solar projector was its energy vault: three inches of crumby, dark glass and earthenware, which stored heat from sunbeams channeled into them by the reflecting mirrors.
The principle was identical to his solar lamps, except there the heat activated the phosphorous gel coated inside the globe when darkness fell. The difference here: at nightfall, the trapped heat didn’t make a bulb glow. It illuminated and enlarged an image held inside the device by two treated magnifying glasses.
Into the slot he pressed a photo that A. C. Vroman, one of Pasadena’s most notable merchants and its best roving shutterbug, snapped a year ago; Nick had met AC ten years earlier when AC presented him an award at Nick’s high school graduation.
“Close your eyes,” he said, twisting the activation knob. “Now, open them up.”
Before Jules was airborne cinema: a grainy photograph that captured Mrs. Julius Caesar mid-step while ridden by a beanie-clad Nick. The twelve-foot-by-eight-foot photo radiated diagonally over the darkened canyon. For reasons still mystifying but welcome to Nick, the image shimmered with a slightly holographic effect. It did this when he tested it with Fleet behind his Green Street bungalow last month on a cloudy evening.
“Well, I’ll be,” said a gushy Jules, careful not to speak too loudly after Nick warned her he could get in trouble, even fired, being on the deck off-hours. “How can this be real? There’s no screen, no electricity. It’s breathtaking.”
