Shaken to the Core

by Jae

  “Dr. Sharpe said it was purmunia,” Giuliana continued, her eyes damp.

  “Purmunia?”

  Giuliana patted her chest. “Sickness in the lungs.”

  “Oh. You mean pneumonia?”

  “Yes.”

  Memories of Corny rose unbidden. “I had a brother too,” Kate found herself saying, even though she’d intended to say only how sorry she was.

  “I know,” Giuliana whispered.

  Of course. Giuliana had probably overheard some of her conversation with her mother this afternoon. “His name was Cornelius, after my father and grandfather, but he, too, went by his nickname, Corny.”

  They both sipped their water without saying anything else, their gazes connecting over the rims of the cups.

  With Kate’s parents, their grief seemed to isolate them from each other and from her, but now, with Giuliana, it was as if it formed a connection between them, one that warmed Kate from the inside out as if she were drinking sherry, not water.

  Finally, Giuliana looked away and directed her gaze to a point next to the door. “Can I ask the question now?”

  Her heart pounding furiously, Kate nodded. What are you so afraid of?

  Giuliana pointed to where she’d been looking. “What is in there?”

  Kate turned her head. The carrying case. Of course Giuliana would be curious about it, wondering why she was lugging the thing all over the city. “My camera and a few plates.”

  “Do you take it every place?” Giuliana asked.

  “No. I…” Kate picked a piece of lint off her dress. Should she tell Giuliana? Or would Giuliana think that she was foolish for dreaming of a career as a newspaper photographer? She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, refusing to feel ashamed of her dreams. “When I found you in the study, I was about to go out and find a way into City Hall so I could take photographs.”

  “I do not understand. Why do you want photographs of City Hall?”

  “Not of City Hall,” Kate replied. “Of anything interesting that might come through its doors.”

  Giuliana shook her head as if that would help her think. “I still do not understand.”

  It was time to confess why she’d been so eager to take Giuliana to the hospital instead of calling a doctor or taking her home. With her gaze on her hands, Kate said, “Photography is not just a pleasant way to pass the time for me. It’s what I want to do with my life. I want to be a newspaper photographer.”

  “A newspaper photographer? That is…” Giuliana seemed to search for the right words.

  Kate tensed, waiting for her to say that it was ridiculous for a woman.

  “That is wonderful. The family in the next room gives me their newspaper some time, and I always look at the pictures.” Giuliana blushed and bent to tug on the bandages around her leg.

  Look at the pictures? Was it possible that she couldn’t read? Kate didn’t want to embarrass her any further by asking. “It is wonderful,” she said. “Well, it would be if the editor of the San Francisco Call wouldn’t be so stubborn. He flat out refuses to even consider hiring a woman as a staff photographer. That’s why I wanted to go to City Hall, where all the interesting things in the city are happening. I need to impress him with my work and show him that a woman can do the job just as well as a man.”

  Giuliana’s hands stilled on the bandages. She said nothing for quite a while. “That is why you took me to the hospital, yes?” A bit of hurt vibrated in her voice.

  “No, that’s not—”

  “I am not stupid,” Giuliana said. “I am poor and I cannot read, but I know a lie when I hear it.”

  “I’m not lying,” Kate said, but it sounded weak, even in her own ears.

  “To bring a hurt person is a good excuse to go to the hospital. How good for you that I fell down the chair.”

  “Giuliana, please, don’t be upset.”

  “I am not upset, Miss Kate,” Giuliana said without looking at her.

  Miss Kate…So now they were back to that. It surprised Kate how much that hurt, considering they barely knew each other. “I admit that I thought I could kill two birds with one stone…do two things at once. But my desire to help you was sincere.”

  Giuliana turned her head toward the wall, away from her. “You must go now. Your parents will worry when they find out you are not in your room.”

  Kate clutched the tin cup in her hands. With abrupt movements, she downed the rest of the water and then quietly put the cup down on the table. Walking to the door only took two seconds because the room was so small, so there was no way to delay the inevitable. When she reached the door, she turned back around.

  Giuliana was still staring at the wall.

  “I didn’t take a photograph, did I?” Kate said into the silence.

  “Scusa?” Slowly, Giuliana turned her head.

  The baby next door started crying again, so Kate had to raise her voice to be heard. “I didn’t take a photograph at the hospital, not even when they brought in the woman who’d been hit by the cable car.”

  Giuliana seemed to consider it for a moment. “No,” she said after a while. “You did not. Why?”

  “I didn’t think it was right, with her bleeding and helpless,” Kate answered. She shuffled her feet, unsure whether she should admit her second reason, but then said, “I also didn’t want to leave you alone. You seemed a bit scared.”

  “I do not like the hospital. It is where my brother…” She bit her lip.

  “I understand,” Kate said softly. Now she was glad she hadn’t abandoned Giuliana to take photographs of the accident victim. She waited for Giuliana to say something, to forgive her, but no answer came.

  The wails of the neighbor’s baby got louder. Someone trampled up the creaking stairs and hammered on a door.

  For land’s sake! How does she get any sleep with that kind of noise around? Kate waited until the cries had died down. “Are you sure you don’t want me to ask my parents to give you the day off on Monday?”

  “Yes,” Giuliana said.

  “All right.” That left nothing more to say. Kate picked up the carrying case with her camera, opened the door, and stepped out.

  “Thank you,” Giuliana called after her, just when Kate was about to close the door.

  Kate turned and faced her across the doorstep.

  Giuliana’s closed-off expression had softened. It wasn’t quite the smile she’d given Kate before, but at least she was no longer looking at Kate with that hurt in her eyes. “Thank you for all.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They nodded at each other, and then Kate turned and closed the door. Slowly, she made her way down the creaking steps, her thoughts still in the tiny room. Giuliana hadn’t said Kate when she’d called her back. Well, neither had she used the more formal Miss Kate. That would have to do for now.

  Kate strode past the men sitting on the front stoop and climbed back into the automobile. She placed the camera equipment on the seat next to her, where Giuliana had sat earlier. Forget her. You’ve got a photograph of a cable car to take and an editor to impress. Determined, she put the automobile into gear and pulled away from the curb without allowing herself to look back.

  CHAPTER 6

  Market Street

  San Francisco, California

  March 31, 1906

  Kate was beginning to understand that the most valuable instrument a newspaper photographer possessed wasn’t a camera with an expensive lens; it was a network of informants. With that, she would have found out hours ago where the accident had taken place and would be home in bed by now.

  If it had happened at the eastern end of the Presidio & Ferries line, she was out of luck anyway. Not that she’d ever been there, but she had heard that San Francisco’s Barbary Coast district was full of criminals, drunks stumbling out of saloons and grog shops, and women with painted faces and low-cut bodices leaning out of brothel windows. A respectable woman alone at night wouldn’t be safe there.

  The edit
or’s words rang in her ears. The newspaper business is too rough for the feminine nature.

  She shook her head to chase away the thought. No. She wasn’t ready to give up just yet, so she steered the automobile down Market Street.

  The broad avenue was still busy, with people strolling along the sidewalks and hastily crossing the street to get to Zinkand’s, the Palace Hotel’s Palm Garden, or other fine restaurants. No one stopped to ogle an accident site; no cable car stood unmoving on its tracks, and no puddle of blood gleamed in the glow of the gas streetlights.

  Hours had gone by since Kate had seen the woman in the hospital. They had probably cleaned everything up already and had taken the cable car back to its barn. She would never find it by just driving around, and she was wasting gasoline.

  Think! Since she didn’t have a network of sources, she’d use another valuable instrument: her brain.

  The accident had to have happened somewhere nearby; otherwise the ambulance would have rushed the woman to a closer hospital. She tried to remember which cable car lines went right by City Hall.

  The McAllister line! It was the line most highly frequented, so it ran more often than the others. But where was its car barn? She had no idea, so she decided to follow the tracks, the automobile’s carbide headlamps darting over the cobblestones ahead of her. The tracks seemed to go on and on forever until, after a while, the cobblestones ended, and the street became a rutted dirt path. Should she turn around? If something happened to the automobile, her father would kill her.

  Just a little farther. If she didn’t find it in five minutes, she’d turn around. She’d nearly driven all the way to Golden Gate Park when she finally spied a turntable and, behind it, a cable car barn built of wood and bricks. The tracks led directly into the open ground floor of the barn.

  She cut the engine, left the automobile behind some distance away, and snuck up to the building like a thief in the night.

  A dog barked somewhere, making her pause. With her heart thumping against her chest, she pressed herself against the side of the building. After a moment, the barking came again, and she realized it hadn’t been anywhere near her.

  Kate peeked around the corner.

  There it was! The yellow cable car had been pushed onto the sidings, and two men were working on it, cleaning the front and getting ready to apply a new coat of paint.

  She had to take the photograph now, before they removed all traces of the accident. The question was just how.

  Before she could decide what to do, a man cleared his throat behind her.

  She whirled around, nearly dropping the carrying case in the process.

  A man with a bucket of yellow paint stood before her.

  Kate clutched her chest and swayed dramatically, pretending to nearly faint. “Good heavens! You scared me half to death!”

  “I’m sorry, miss. That wasn’t my intention.” He grabbed hold of her arm to keep her upright. “Do you need to sit?”

  Kate nodded and pointed to the open cable car.

  Obediently, he led her over and assisted her onto one of the wooden benches.

  The two other men interrupted their work and came over. “What’s a young lady like you doin’ out here at this time of night?” one of them asked.

  “Um, I…” She stopped stammering and decided that maybe coming right out with it would be the best strategy. It wasn’t as if she could take a photograph without them noticing. “I came here to see the cable car. Would you allow me to take a picture of it?”

  “You’re not one of them pettifogging lawyers, are you?” The third man squinted at her.

  Kate raised her hand to her mouth and giggled. “Oh, no. Whoever heard of a female lawyer?” Well, she had, but they didn’t need to know that.

  The men traded gazes and seemed to relax a little. “Right. So, what do you want with the picture?”

  Kate thought quickly. “You see, I’m writing an article for the Ladies’ Health Journal, and when I heard about the accident, I thought it would be an important addition. Womenfolk really should be more careful when crossing the cable car tracks.”

  That should dispel their concerns about a lawsuit.

  The first man scratched his neck. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t let her.”

  “All right. But be quick about it. We need to finish this tonight.”

  As quickly as possible, Kate unpacked her equipment and even directed one of the men to hold the flash pan for her while she filled the narrow metal tray with a mix of magnesium powder, potassium chlorate, and antimony sulfide.

  “What’s that for?” He pointed at the flash powder.

  “It’s too dark in here to take a photograph, so I’ll use this to light up the barn for a moment. Don’t worry, I won’t blow it up.” I hope. The magnesium powder was highly explosive, and she’d heard stories about horrible accidents, but she’d used it before and felt she could safely handle it.

  She stepped around to the front of the cable car to study the damage. Considering the injuries of the woman who’d been hit, it didn’t look so bad. A bit of the paint had peeled off, and the sign saying Market & McAllister hung askew; that was all. Should she have taken a photograph of the accident victim after all?

  But now it was too late for regrets. If taken from the right angle, the photograph of the cable car would still look impressive. She opened her boxed camera and extended the bellows. Next, she adjusted the lens until the image of the cable car appeared sharp on the ground-glass screen. She relieved the man of the flash pan. “Could you take a step back, please?”

  When they did, she took a deep breath and prepared to take the possibly most important photograph of her life. One, two…At the count of three, she pushed the switch that ignited the flash powder with a loud boom. A brilliant white flare lit the barn, blinding her for a moment. As fast as she could, she pulled the dark slide from the camera to expose the glass plate to light from the lens.

  “All right. Now let us do our work.” One man wanted to push past her, but Kate stood her ground.

  “One more, just to make sure. It’s hard to get the exposure just right, and I’m afraid the editor will reject my article if the picture is blurry or overexposed.” She gave them her best doe-eyed look. “Please?”

  Finally, they relented.

  She set up the flash pan again. Her fingers were trembling with excitement, so she forced herself to slow down so she wouldn’t spill any of the dangerous powder. She stepped a little to the left and tilted the bed of the camera down a bit to get another angle. Then the flash went off again, and she exposed the glass plate with a practiced flick of her wrist.

  For a moment, she was tempted to beg for a third photograph, but the heavy white smoke from the flash powder filled the barn, so she wouldn’t get a clear picture anyway. Quickly, she pushed the dark slide back into the holder, closed the camera bed, and put the camera and the flash pan into the carrying case. “Thank you very much, gentlemen.”

  Before one of them could offer to see her home, she slipped out of the cable car barn and rushed to her automobile, feeling as if she’d just gotten away with stealing the crown jewels. She whistled a merry tune all the way home, already imagining what the Call’s editor would say once she presented her photographs. The first thing she’d do tomorrow morning was develop the prints, and then she’d pay her future boss a visit.

  * * *

  Kate could barely sit still at breakfast the next morning. She hadn’t slept a wink, too excited by the adventure and the thought that she’d soon take photographs for the San Francisco Call.

  Before dawn, she’d slipped out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs and into her darkroom. Now two perfect five-by-seven-inch photographs hung drying on a line, just waiting for her to place them in an envelope and take them with her.

  Mentally, she willed her parents to eat faster and finish breakfast so she could make her escape. But they took their time. Her father seemed more interested in the newspaper than in his scrambled eggs.
At least he hadn’t said anything about her taking the automobile out without asking him first.

  If she was lucky, he hadn’t noticed that she and the automobile had been gone for hours last night. Or maybe he was just waiting to confront her. With her father, it was hard to tell.

  In any case, she’d have to replace the gasoline she’d used up last night.

  He shook his head at something he had read. “I don’t understand why people aren’t more careful,” he said, more to himself.

  “Did something happen?” Kate’s mother inquired.

  “Some woman out on a stroll didn’t pay attention and stepped right in front of a cable car. They rushed her to the hospital, but her injuries were too severe.” He turned the newspaper around and held out the page for them to see.

  Kate almost choked on a bite of toast.

  Right there on the page, beneath the headline Deadly cable car accident was a large black-and-white image of the cable car, nearly identical to Kate’s second picture, only this one seemed to have been taken at the site of the accident.

  The print blurred before her eyes, and she stared at the image without really seeing it clearly until her father turned the newspaper around and went back to his reading.

  “What’s the matter with you today?” her mother asked. “You’re not eating. You aren’t sick, are you?” She reached a hand across the table to feel Kate’s forehead.

  “No. I’m not sick.” Kate leaned back so that her mother couldn’t reach her. “I just need some fresh air. Can I borrow the auto for a while, Father?” She needed to get out of here and clear her head.

  Her father looked up from the newspaper, studied her for a moment, and then nodded.

  Kate’s mother put down her fork. “Cornelius, I hardly think that’s a good idea. You just read what can happen to a woman who ventures out alone. The streets are crazy nowadays, with all that new technology. It’s not safe for a young lady to—”

  “Let her go,” Kate’s father said.