Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  That was the beginning of the end for Rebecca and Eben, for she wanted no more part of the quakes and shakes of San Francisco, and he would not be parted from his brother. Last anyone saw her, she had taken the train back to her folks in Baltimore. As for the octagon house itself, the inner walls were badly damaged, the windows shattered, and every room littered with plaster from the ceiling. On all eight sides, paintings had fallen to the floor or swung round to face the walls, and every good piece of glass or china on the mantels and in the cupboards was chipped or broken. A small fissure, the size of a man’s arm, opened in the northwestern corner beneath the roof, letting in the air and dust, but the house survived, unlike so many others. The structure stood firm and strong, though some small damage had been done.

  Not one of them was seriously hurt, but John C. had taken a bump in the church, though it made him no sillier than usual. It would have been a double blow to lose a child or lose their home on top of losing their fortune, and she was not sure she could have stood either, though in hindsight, perhaps better they had been forced to start all over and go somewheres else. As it was, the earth shakes was what did in Jams. He wandered back home that Sunday night in a daze, as if the world itself had fallen in on him.

  After the rubble had been cleared and the windows replaced and the cracks mostly plastered, Jams sighed at the state of things and went to bed and stayed there for four days. He made no complaint other than feeling powerful tired, and he could rouse himself to have a meal at eleven in the morning and seven at night and to visit the jakes, of course, but otherwise he slept like a newborn. His brother could not lure him with a hand of monte or faro or the prospect of a night in the hells, and Flo herself slept on the couches in the parlor downstairs for better egress should the shocks revisit. She left her husband alone. On the fourth day, the twins, unaccustomed to having their father lay about, jumped upon the mattress and then his prone body till he fought back, wrasslin’ little Zach and Jeb as though a child hisself again. “C’mon, Pa.” Jeb smacked him with a wooden sword. “You can be Johnny Reb and I will be Tecumseh Sherman and march you to Atlanta.” Their father roared at the boys and chased them in his nightshirt, pausing only at the top of the stairs to catch his breath.

  After supper that evening with the whole family, at which he seemed to brighten and return to his old energetic self, Jams climbed back up the stairs to the room with the crack just under the roof. He sat quite still in a chair and watched the stars pass by, not greatly participant in the conversations that surrounded him, but not ignoring the others either. Jessie read from Hawthorne to the others, and Ebenezer and Flo discussed the reports of damage around town from the shakes. But Jams just sat and did nothing, and this pattern he repeated several nights in a row—to All Hallows’ E’en—doing little till supper and retiring to watch the constellations turn, or if there was no stars, to stare at the clouds or the rain, and once or twice, let the fog seep through the fissure and engulf him and the chair and the whole room altogether, like they was in a dream. Through this routine he passed the time as if a man a leisure and not the head of house bound for ruin. When his brother asked him to go out for a game of poker or to hear the Mexican crooners or see the magicians from Siam now down at the hells, Jamie begged off. “Not tonight, but you go on and say whaddyaknow to the boys. I think I’ll just rest a bit.” And so he did, night after night, day by day.

  Rising each morning well after the children had been sent off to school or their new jobs, and much later than his lazy brother, James would dress in his silk gown and come down to the table to eat his breakfast when most of California was beginning to grumble for its noonday dinner. He’d learned to read by then and would take the newspaper, usually the morning’s Examiner, or when the steamer came, two weeks’ worth of Dickens’s serials in the New York papers, despite that rascal’s “American Notes,” and Jamie’s reading would occupy mind and spirit for several hours. Then he would dress just as the eldest were coming through the door—John C. from his job as a printer’s devil and Jessie late from her post in a ribbon shop on Union Street. Sometimes he and the boy would have a talk on the front porch, and Jessie was given a little dog by one of her beaus that her father would watch over and play with for hours at a time. A few times a week, Eben would go out and leave him alone in the house, and like as not, Jams would fall asleep by the fireplace or watching the stars through the crack. He was but six and thirty yet had the habits of a man twice his age.

  And so things continued to worsen. With little income from the children and nothing from her husband, Flo struggled to meet the bare expenses. Bit by bit, they sold off their possessions. No carriage, no horse, no need. The silver service for Eben and Rebecca’s marriage fetched enough to keep the household running for eight months. Gold and silver trinkets from their mining days went to the pawnshop or friends, who gleefully overpaid as a means of stealthy charity. New purchases were forsaken. His shirts began to fray at the sleeves and he saved the collars for the rare occasions he ventured in the city. Her dresses slipped out of and back into fashion, depending on her skills in mending. The children wore their boots and shoes to the nubbins, and the twins relied on the castaways and hand-me-downs from their elder siblings and had aught new from ’65 on. Thank the Lord they lived in perfect climes where the temperatures were mild year-round, for Jeb and Zach never had more than two gloves for their four hands. How they ever got those children raised was a mystery to their mother. The three girls married young to the first gentlemen interested enough to ask, and the boys left home early to seek their fortune. Young John C. ended up with Mr. Hearst’s enterprises, and one twin joined the gold rush to the Black Hills of the Dakotas in ’76, though the boy met his end that summer at the hands of the Sioux. The other left this mortal coil in an opium parlor attended by a Japanese woman who claimed to be his lawful wife, though her claim earned her nothing at the Worths’ home, for there was nothing to be had.

  It were not for any lack of effort on Flo’s part. Sure, she had coddled Jams early on, allowed him time to recover from the blows of first the stocks and then the earth shakes and the damage to the house, but in a few months, she thought to ask when he might be going to find work or some other means to money. “In due course,” he would tell her. “Right now I am aiming to rest for a while.” Her mam had been a nag to her pap, sending the man to moonshine, so she waited and bit her tongue till she damn near bit through it.

  At some point someone, probably Eben or one of the twins, had climbed a ladder and nailed a slat across the crack in the wall beneath the roof, obscuring the night sky, but Jams faithfully watched the stars in pieces each night. After many years had passed and all the children grown and flown the nest, the pull of gravity on both sides of the fracture proved too much. The nails popped one by one from the ends, and the board clattered to the floor. Unkempt and soft and bloated and dressed in his ancient silk robe, the man in the winged-back chair broke into a satisfied smile. “At long last,” he said, and the very next day, Jams woke early, shaved, and left the octagon house, announcing to his wife that he was off to seek their fortune and that she should not expect his return that evening or any time soon. She grunted a good-bye and watched the old sloth saunter down the avenue and disappear.

  Days later, the little dog starts barking at the door, so she like to think it might be her husband returning. ’Stead a package arrived in the post. She opened it to find a red lacquer box filled with notes from the First National Gold Bank of San Francisco in fives and tens and hundreds, enough money to change their lives. Atop the stack of currency was a letter in her husband’s hand: “This should keep you in the pink of the mode until my return. I must rest from my labors. Your Jams.”

  She turned to Eben, who had been speechless ever since she had opened the package, and asked, “What do you make of all this? Where did all this money come from? Where is Jamie, and when will he be coming home?”

  “Nuffin in the world no longer surprises me,” Eben said.
“I got no answers, though that looks like a Chinese box to me. Suppose when he’s done restin’, we’ll find out.”

  They waited for him to return to the old run-down house, waited night and day, week after week, watching the stars pass through the hole in the wall, pestering the postman twice a day to double-check for letters, taking turns walking the hilly streets to his old haunts, diving into the hells, and inquiring at the banks. None of their old friends could recall the last time they had seen him inside or out of the octagon house, and none of their old business partners or fellow speculators could even recall old James Worth. As the months became years, they had forfeited hope for the return of the prodigal brother and husband. He had vanished from the earth, leaving behind just enough, if they were careful, for the welfare of the pair. And for the most part, they husbanded their little egg well, though Eben pissed away a fair share gambling and dissipating. And then he lost all one day in 1881 when he crossed too close to a cable car racing down Clay Street, and he died at hospital from the injuries, leaving Flo all alone in the ramshackle house.

  Like Penelope faithful to Ulysses, she waited for Jams to come home. Over the years, the frequent earthquakes had widened the fissure in the wall to the point where she no longer felt safe entering the room, but his presence lingered there in the indentations on the seat of the easy chair, the shape of his body on the sofa cushions, and the picture of the universe he loved to watch. Rain and moisture left a trail of mildew that trailed down the wall and into the room below, and the carpets and furniture were constantly damp and coming to pieces. The stove was near impossible to light. Nails in the flooring had popped and would catch her slipper when she crossed. Her bed was lonesome, and whenever the house creaked she feared it was either another quake or his return. Mice had gotten behind the plaster, and she could hear their comings and goings in the dead of night, and seagulls had frequented the southwestern sides and streaked the outer walls with their guano. Forty years had passed since they had left Kentucky and a dozen since he had suddenly left her to go rest. Had he walked through the door at any moment, she would have given him an earful, beat him for abandoning her, and then held him in her arms.

  Just when all hope was lost, a Chinaman come to her door one Sunday afternoon. Ye scarce saw any Chinee since the Exclusion in ’83, for they kept to themselves more or less from fear of the whites. The young man on the stoop unnerved her. She had not a word of Chinese, and he little English, though he had a message to deliver.

  “Mister,” he said. “Mister in the bed.”

  “There is no mister here. I live by myself.”

  “No. Mister-in-the-bed no more. All gone.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Your mister. All gone.” He handed over a packet addressed to her. “Nee dohng mah?” He lifted his eyebrows as if trying to convey some understanding.

  She could not take his meaning, only that he had delivered it to the correct address as printed on the brown paper surface. “Thank you,” she said. “Wait right here, and I’ll find a penny for your troubles.”

  When she returned to the door, the boy was gone.

  With great care, she opened the packet. Wrapped in red tissue paper were a few personal things she instantly recognized as her husband’s. A silver pocket watch engraved “Virginia, Nevada” from his trip there. A tortoiseshell comb that Flo had given him on his thirtieth birthday. A straight razor with an ivory handle. A leather billfold, which she opened and found inside forty-nine dollars and a carte de visite with a photograph of the family, probably from before the silver disaster, and on the reverse, the family name and address of the octagon house. Stashed in the secret compartment was a yellowed clipping from an ancient newspaper, a brief story about the robbery of a red lacquer box filled with cash, owned by a well-to-do Chinatown importer named Li, a longtime resident of the city who had first worked the California gold fields back in the glory days.

  A letter accompanied these tattered effects:

  Please forgive me English.

  I am returning these few things of my tenant, Mr. James Worth, who left this world peacefully some months past. He was an ideal man and never caused any trouble. Although he seemed hale and hearty during our long acquaintance, he must have been otherwise suffering, for no one could enjoy his bed and sleep more than our Mr. Worth. I do not know if he is survived by any family, but in good conscience, I send these few remainings to the last no address.

  Ah Sum

  Beneath the English signature, the author had printed a character in Chinese, but this meant nothing more to her than the final inscrutable sign of her incomprehensible man.

  The spotlight snapped off, the houselights were raised instantly, and the shower curtain was drawn back a final time. The other women in the room gasped one by one as the golden jewelry melted from their necks and arms and evaporated from their ears and hair. All of the silver stock certificates in the bathtub began to curl and form little spheres, and as they rose, they changed into soap bubbles, exploding as they touched any surface, until the tub was clean and empty.

  Two young sisters, maybe ages six and three, screamed in the front yard as their parents blew soap bubbles into the summer air. Catching the falling light, the bubbles spun and danced, and with each new bunch blossoming from the wands, the girls chased after the floaters, following dizzying patterns, to capture with claps or open hands the ephemeral and shout with delight at each surprising pop. When the sun had nearly set, the fireflies began to appear, blinking their small lights on the lawn and in the boxwood and fragrant rosebush. The little sisters shadowed these insects, running after the slow erratic flights with outstretched arms to lure one to their fingers or clamp down on one struggling along a blade of grass. Their squeals upon capturing each bug sounded like ecstatic sirens, and they brought every prisoner to their waiting parents to show them the green glow in the cave of their tiny fists, and then, with a shake, released each into the June sky. From across the street, I had watched this comedy unfold, spying on the young family while I pretended to listen to one of the guests at our cookout drone on about marinades. My girlfriend, Sita, was trapped on the other end of the deck by two men from the architectural firm. They wooed her with a story about kayaking down the Potomac River. I longed for her to come join me on the chaise longue and watch the girls chase fireflies. But as the stars appeared in the night, the parents rose and called their daughters inside. My coworker began to explicate aromatic rubs and the Zen of the Maillard Reaction. Sita seemed enthralled by the pair of office goofs. The moment passed, as it always does.

  Fingers long and thin and stained with ink and nicotine flashed before my eyes. The old man was fanning his hand before me to see if I was awake or had fallen into some trance. The bubbles that lately had filled the air had disappeared, though the crowd of people in the bathroom was still real as ever. Four of the women stood at the cardinal points of the room’s compass, and Flo slouched, disconsolate, on the edge of the tub. She seemed to be speaking of me when she eulogized the late Mr. Worth.

  “I can forgive anything but laziness in a man. Show me a man without ambition, and I’ll show you a living corpse. Sure, he had his ups and downs, what else is life? But to give up like that, to crawl into bed and never try, well, it’s a form of cowardice, isn’t it? I’d take a crooked man, a liar, a brute, a fake, a cheat over the lazy man. Give up on yourself, okay, but give up on the rest of your responsibilities?”

  Dolly leaned forward and stuck the jut of her jaw into the cradle of her hand. “So, whatever happened to her?”

  “Lived for years in that house and was well known around the city as that old lady with the red box, which she carried everywhere she went. Perished, like so many, in the great quake of aught-six, and when they found her, buried in the rubble of the octagon house, she still had that lacquer box clutched in her hands, had to pry it off her. Funny thing, when they opened it, all they found was an old comb, a silver pocket watch, and a rusty straigh
t razor. Not a cent. She’d put it all in the bank and a few stocks and made do off the interest. Left a small fortune to the Chinese American Benevolent Society.”

  The last bit of her story made me remorseful for the hardship and loneliness she had to endure those final decades, and at the same time, I was pleased to learn that she had held on to both the box and the money. And as an architect, I was further delighted to learn that the eight-sided house withstood nearly sixty years of earthquakes, not to mention the hole in the wall. They certainly don’t make them like they used to. Almost by instinct, I began sketching in my imagination the plans for a modern octagon house of two stories and an attic, and thus engaged, I slipped away into the comfort of my mind. Perhaps it was the example of the man so desperate for nothing more than a bed, but an enormous fatigue settled into my bones, and I may have fallen asleep, for the next thing I remember was the sound of the old man’s fingersnapping next to my ear.

  “Wake up, Sonny. The night is young, and so are we.” The five women chuckled at his remark. “You were just about to relate how the dancing dames of the Old West were assaulting you with hugs and kisses.”

  A sort of yellow fog occluded my vision, and when I awoke fully and shook the exhaustion from my eyes, there before me in Beckett’s lap sat the child, now older by some months. He looked closer to two than to one year old, and when he smiled, eight teeth appeared in his bright red mouth.