Hop Alley

by Scott Phillips

  With some reluctance I allowed as how she was correct, and the boy and I sat at the table. Neither of us said a word until his auntie brought the coffee in.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what we’re off to record in the light of the dawn,” I said.

  The question hadn’t entered his mind, and now that it was raised he remained incurious and indifferent, but I told him just the same, explaining what we were about to document, and he nodded his understanding.

  “I seen some of that last night. There was burning and yelling, and some of the harlots wanted to go take a gander at it and some of ’em wanted to bar the doors.”

  His aunt betrayed no reaction to that last statement as she brought in a plate full of bacon fried to black, and we didn’t speak as we ate. When we were finished I sent him around to the livery for the wagon, which we loaded up and drove to Hop Alley.

  The morning fog made the residual smoke from the inferno hang low, and blended with that from the city’s hearths the air at the site of the riot was acrid and damp. Hopping from the wagon near the streetlamp that had served as the old magus’s gallows I found the drunk who’d tried to keep me from cutting him down. He was unconscious, smeared with the mud he lay in, and he reeked of various effluvia. I touched him with my foot to see if he was alive; he grunted but didn’t wake.

  The street was unpopulated and silent, its calm so different from its normal frenzied activity that I wondered whether every single Chinese in town hadn’t been taken into custody. Above me, though, someone quietly closed a second-story window and latched it, and behind another window opposite that one I spied a face glaring at me in the faint foredawn light; as our eyes met it withdrew, ghostly, into the darkness of the room.

  I decided to start with some of the burnt-out buildings across the street from the one I’d taken the old man into, and by the time I had set up the camera and dark tent the sun was rising. As it crested the horizon it cast a dramatic ray on a charred interior beam of the building before me; on its ruined facade was a large sign with Chinese characters running down its left side and the word LAUNDRY to their right. Its interior appeared to be a total loss.

  Once three views of the ruined laundry had been committed to glass I ventured inside of it. The flames had already been put out by the fire brigade when I’d arrived that night, and the blackened timbers had grown cold. There was that particular sharp, smoky smell of an abandoned campfire, and of the laundering facility itself very little remained but some galvanized tubs full of water and ash and burnt wood. I took down a sign from the wall and laid it artistically on one of those tubs as though it had fallen there, and setting up the tripod I yelled for the boy to bring me some fresh plates.

  When I had done with them Lem took them to the dark tent as I poked around the room searching for another angle bright enough for a sharp image. I thought I had found one when the boy returned empty-handed.

  “There’s a whole bunch of Chinamen standing over there ’cross the street looking awful mad,” he said.

  Stepping outside I saw that this was so, and rather than risk starting another riot I ordered the lad to begin packing up. There were six or seven of them, of varying ages, and they stared at us without consulting one another or indicating what their intentions were. They did not appear happy at the sight of me traipsing through their ruined quarter like a Roman tourist at Herculaneum, and presuming what’s more to take pictures of it, and for a moment I felt an unaccountable sense of shame. I made a great show of moving the crate over to the wagon, and they watched as we packed up the dark tent and shoved everything onto the back of the wagon. Their eyes were still on us as we rode away, and they looked no more content for seeing our receding backs.

  I LIKED THOSE pictures more than any I’d made in a long while, and I printed up a set of proofs that very afternoon. By eleven in the morning the sun had burned off the fog, and not much later I sat up on the roof enjoying Old Sol as they came up. I had Plato’s Last Days of Socrates with me, but I had read it a dozen times before and wasn’t overly annoyed when the boy broke my concentration.

  “It’s that one-armed fellow again, got a package from back east.” He hesitated before continuing: “He mentioned he’d like you to make it quick this time.”

  “Tell him I’ll be with him presently,” I said, and the boy, looking nervous, went back downstairs. I examined the prints with greater care than was really called for, then set about a lazy inspection of the four corners of the rooftop. Having determined that they remained structurally sound and properly tar-papered I lazily mounted the ladder and descended into the foyer, where the disrespectful son of a bitch sat fuming.

  “I’m sure you think it a fine joke, keeping me waiting.”

  “Beg pardon?” I said, all innocence.

  He shoved a package in my direction. “That’s eighteen dollars and thirty-five cents, payable upon delivery.”

  “What’s it consist of?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that it contained a six-inch lens I had ordered eight weeks prior.

  “How would I know what’s in it? Look at the sender’s name.”

  I squinted and shrugged. “McAllister Photographic Supply Company, Philadelphia. Never heard of them.”

  “All right,” he said, and he tucked the box under the stump of his missing arm and strode toward the staircase.

  “Hold up, there,” I called. “I’ll pay.”

  “No, sir, Mister, there’s obviously been some kind of mistake made.” He was at the top of the stairs now, turned my way, smirking. “Good day, sir.”

  I did need that lens, and I was willing to let him win the game at this point. “All right, I was having you on. Now give me the package.”

  The smirk became a sneer. “I’ll by God eat the eighteen dollars myself before I’ll let you have it.”

  I reached out for it, thinking to snatch it from its perch between stump and rib, and he beat me to it with his remaining hand, the stump flailing like a dodo’s useless wing. “Sorry,” he said.

  “See here, a joke’s all it was.”

  His face was getting redder, and the scars showed white against it. “If you think costing me time on my route is a joke, friend, you’re sadly mistaken.” He stood there at the top of the steps, holding the box like a baton. It was a foot long, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine and stamped FRAGILE, and he made as if to toss the thing down the stairs.

  I rushed him, and instead of throwing it he brought it across my jaw with great force and a loud crack. The pain was sufficient to bring me down to my knees. “Eighteen dollars and thirty-five cents, please,” he said, and I rose to my feet. My left hand to my jaw, I was preparing to sneak a right uppercut when Mrs. Fenster came out of the kitchen to see what the trouble was.

  “Imagine what the folks will say when they hear how you beat up a one-armed cripple,” she said, wiping her hands dry on her apron.

  “Who’s a cripple?” the fellow said. “Anyway, I hit him.”

  She gave me a warning glance and turned on her heel, and chastened I held my hand out for the package. Reluctantly he gave it over.

  “Hey,” he said when I opened my jackknife and cut the twine. “You have to pay for that first.”

  “I’m checking for damage before I accept delivery,” I said. “If you don’t like that, you can go back and tell your employer how you broke the damned thing smashing it across the customer’s mandible.”

  The lens appeared to be in good condition, brass barrel undented and all elements intact, so I paid the man, who left without another word. My jaw had begun to throb, though oddly it wasn’t quite at the point where he’d hit me, and probing the teeth with my tongue I pinpointed the trouble spot at the lower left bicuspid. I hoped the pain was temporary and wouldn’t require a trip to the dentist’s for an extraction, for I had all mine still and was rather proud of the fact. When Mrs. Fenster served her midday meal I avoided the left side except for the bread pudding, and I thought it might be all right.

&
nbsp; COME THE TAIL end of the afternoon I had made a goodly number of prints of the Hop Alley views on albumen paper, and I ordered the boy to begin mounting them. I needed to make the trip to Golden that evening, but not for the usual reason. Not only for that reason, in any case; I had been brooding all afternoon over the prospect of taking over Priscilla’s maintenance. In the light of day it seemed a nightmarish proposition, an invitation to catastrophe, and it was only fair to tell her so now, if not in those precise, indelicate terms. Probably she’d already decided against it anyway, but in either case I had to retract the offer before its potential acceptance.

  I was too weary to drive the buggy, and so I treated myself to a train ride to Golden. When I descended at the tiny depot the sun was sinking, and the air quite a bit chillier than it had been down in the city. When she opened her door, dressed like Denver’s finest society matron right down to the hat on her head, she made no comment about the hour, to my relief.

  “Shame on you, Bill, I thought you mightn’t come. Step inside.”

  As I did so she explained that we were expected back in Denver at the Charpiot Hotel for a reception Ralph Banbury was giving for his daughter’s engagement.

  “I don’t think I’m dressed for the occasion, Cilla,” I said.

  “I’ve some of Ralph’s clothes here, and they’ll fit you close enough.”

  “Are you truly invited?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said, taking no offense. “Ralph and I had a long talk about things. He’s awfully relieved about your offer.”

  That seemed a promising opening for the hard news I wanted to deliver, but my tongue remained still in my head as she handed me an engraved card:

  Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Banbury

  Invite you to join them for a Reception

  to Celebrate the Engagement of their

  Daughter Gertrude to Mr. Harold Neville

  Seven o’clock Friday Evening the 26th of April 1878

  in the Ballroom of the Charpiot Hotel

  I wondered why I hadn’t received one of these, and I saw the envelope it had arrived in; it was addressed to me at the studio, and not to Priscilla.

  “You took this from my mail,” I said.

  “I saw who it was from, dear heart.” She touched my cheek with her gloved hand with great affection and squeezed. “Surely it was meant for both of us.”

  Wriggling out of this was going to be a more complicated affair than I’d imagined, and when I thought it over it seemed to be all the fault of Ralph Banbury. I didn’t see any reason we shouldn’t go to his reception; any embarrassment he might experience would be richly merited.

  We exited. At the same moment as it occurred to me that it was the first time I’d been in her house without screwing her, I realized that we had no carriage and no convenient train into Denver, and no available train for the return either, and I led her to the livery stable, where I hired a Concord buggy and a handsomer nag than I normally would have been willing to pay for. We said little as we bounced our way into town, and Cilla looked so content to be at my side I felt monstrous; I even doubted my resolve at one point and wondered how bad it would be to settle for a life with her, taking pictures of Denver’s illustrious and unknown and having her waiting for me à poil at the end of every day, as voluptuous and perverse as Messalina herself, with only bed, board, and the bottle necessary to keep her happy.

  We rode first to the studio, where I hurriedly put on my formal evening attire, and then straight to the hotel, where I turned the buggy over to a bellman, and from there we proceeded to the ballroom.

  With its walls festooned with crushed velvet and ten-foot-long tables laden with every sort of delicacy known this far west, and doubtless a few appearing here for the first time, the presence of a throne and England’s queen herself would not have seemed incongruous. We were met at the door by a liveried footman, and though I was famished, Priscilla insisted on immediately joining a reception line where the parents of the bride- and groom-to-be stood with their offspring accepting the congratulations of what looked to me like every single mining tycoon in Colorado, their wives and mistresses and an array of lesser figures, from Banbury’s fellows in the newspaper trade to the mayor of Denver and, if I wasn’t mistaken, the governor himself. A small orchestra played a waltz to which many of the partygoers were dancing, and waiters circulated with bottles of champagne.

  I watched Banbury shaking hands and making light and brief conversation with his guests, looking as miserable as I had ever seen him look, even though his eye was substantially improved, to the degree that it was completely opened and sported only a mild discoloration.

  “Look at that bitch,” Priscilla said in too loud a voice. “So he’s quitting me for her?”

  I looked around, wondering who she was talking about and astounded that Ralph would invite his new mistress to such an affair, and then I saw that she was referring to, and staring at, Mrs. Banbury. Once I’d caught sight of her I couldn’t take my eyes away either. The extravagance, verging on the garish, of her costume—a silk dress of sea green, with pea-green accents, and a hat decorated with bright emerald parrot feathers—only served to accentuate her homeliness, which would not have been so remarkable in a woman dressed in a more modest fashion. The daughter was no beauty either, with wide-set eyes and snaggled teeth, but her face betrayed a sweetness of character that her forbidding mother seemed at first glance to lack altogether; the doughy fellow next to her blushed to hold her hand and, despite Banbury’s claims of greed on his part, appeared genuinely consumed with affection for his fiancée.

  Though we had not yet taken plates for the buffet, the slow-moving receiving line passed by several tables, one of which contained a plate of hors d’œuvres that no one was watching over. Surreptitiously I took a tiny pastry from the plate—a tiny mushroom turnover, by the look of it—and held it behind my back, then scanned the room to see whether I had drawn any disapproving looks; satisfied that I had not, I popped the thing into my mouth and bit down, enjoying a fraction of a second’s joy at its warm savor before letting out a horrible yell and doubling over, as the left side of my face erupted in pain as sharp as any I’d ever felt in my life. The generalized ache of the morning was gone in an instant, leaving only that violent throbbing in my jaw where the one-armed messenger had smashed the box. I did attract a few stares then, including that of Muriel Banbury, who did not seem pleased, but the room was noisy and the orchestra had started a new number.

  One partygoer who had failed to notice my distress was Priscilla. We were nearing the honorees, and she clutched her purse and smiled fixedly. Still riveted by the blinding flashes of fire that coincided with each heartbeat I no longer worried that she would make some inappropriate remark to one of the Banburys, and when I heard her talking to Muriel I was only halfway interested in the exchange.

  I did see, however, that midway through whatever Priscilla said to her Muriel’s face froze and she yanked her hand away and turned toward me. “And you would be?”

  “Shadlaw,” I lisped, terrified of making any sound that would bring my upper and lower mandibles into contact with each other.

  “Our tenant.” She seemed genuinely surprised I’d made the guest list but recovered quickly enough. “The photographer. I see. I’d like to have Mr. Banbury speak to you about arranging a bridal portrait for Gertrude.”

  “I’gh ghe gherighted,” I said. Priscilla had passed the bride and groom, who looked offended and puzzled respectively, and was just reaching Banbury, who looked as uncomfortable as possible, and glared at me in frank anger.

  “Please feel free to call on him at the offices of the Bulletin,” Muriel said as I saw Priscilla open her handbag, into which she stuck her right hand very slowly. I thought Banbury was about to complain aloud to me; his mouth was open and he was looking straight at me when we both heard a familiar clicking sound; his eyes followed mine to Priscilla’s hand, which, as the prescient reader will have guessed, held the Baby Dragoon, its hamme
r cocked and ready. Before either of us had a chance to grab it from her it fired.

  The cellist stopped almost simultaneously with the shot, throwing the first and second violinists off tempo for a few beats until they too quit in confusion, leaving only the brave violist to stab gamely away at Herr Mozart’s quartet for another full measure. Ralph was on the floor with a bullet in his chest and Muriel bent over him, screaming, her hand slick with his blood.

  “Bargain for me, will you, you son of a bitch?” Oddly I was very conscious of being very, very hungry as Priscilla swung the Colt at my face, and also of her considerable physical attractiveness, which her rage only accentuated. I heard her say “I will not be treated as a goddamned mule—” and then the barrel made contact with my jaw. I remember a flash of pain more horrible than the last one, and going down toward the carpet with the first stirrings of arousal, and then nothing.

  EIGHT

  A BRIEF SOJOURN IN THE HOOSEGOW

  Opening one eye I determined that the prickly substance beneath my head was straw. The room in which I found myself was dark and suffused with myriad odors so delicately intermingled as to be unidentifiable, though I thought I detected a leitmotif of rancid urine over long-unwashed clothing and chronic mildew. My evening clothes were wet in spots.

  “What the hell’s this place?” I said, looking around at a dark room about eight feet by ten, with nine other men crowded into it.

  “Denver Shitty Jail,” lisped a man with as ruined a face as I’d seen since the war, his malformed nose competing for attention with a mostly missing upper lip.

  What could I have done to get myself locked up, I wondered momentarily, and then the throb in my jaw brought first one thing to mind, then seven or eight more that, scrutinized in the light of day, might have earned me a trip to the jug. I sat up and sniffed, and identified another scent among the many, an unpleasantly familiar one.

  “I smell rotten flesh,” I said, and as sick as I felt I feared it might be my own.