Nine Lives Last Forever

by Rebecca M. Hale

  I stepped back to avoid Monty’s wildly swinging arms, shaking my head skeptically.

  Monty shrugged his narrow shoulders. “The phrase goes back to Adolph Sutro, you know, the millionaire populist. He ran for Mayor back in the late 1800s. All of his campaign literature talked about chopping the arms off of the octopus.”

  I scrunched up my face, unconvinced. “Are you sure we’re talking about my uncle? He just wasn’t . . .”

  Monty pumped his eyebrows at me. “Don’t think of him as your dear old Uncle Oscar. Try to picture him more as—the Lone Ranger.”

  I put my hand on my hips. “My Uncle Oscar? The man who threw you out on your ear every chance he got?”

  “Ah yes.” Monty rubbed his right earlobe, remembering. “The Lone Ranger—with a dark side.” Monty’s face suddenly brightened. “Able to fake his own death with the use of a special spider toxin and tulip extract antidote . . .”

  Groaning, I leaned over Monty’s shoulder to take another look at the black-and-white photo.

  “Why is Oscar dressed up like Mark Twain?” I asked, still thrown by his strange costume.

  Monty let out a spurt of laughter. “You really don’t know about the frogs, then?” he asked, shaking his head with a giggle.

  I glared sternly at Monty; I was growing irritated by his antics. “How do you know so much about this?”

  Monty thunked his finger against the pointed tip of his nose, causing the cartilage to quiver in vibration. Then, he swung his hand toward me, palm facing outward.

  “Wait,” he said as I gripped the edge of the counter in frustration.

  Monty placed the green Twain book on the cashier counter next to the photo and flipped it open to the featured essay, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. He motioned his hand between the essay and the Twain-impersonating Oscar.

  I stared at the two items, trying to understand the meaning Monty apparently deemed so obvious. Nothing came to me.

  “Why is there a frog in my basement?” I finally demanded testily.

  “It probably came in through that nasty tunnel of yours,” Monty said with a dismissive shudder. He raised his finger professorially. “I’m far more interested in the frog at City Hall.” He winked encouragingly. “That’s the one you should be asking me about.”

  I sighed, trying to draw on my last reserves of patience. “Okay, fine. What was the frog doing at City Hall?”

  Monty clapped his hands together gleefully. “It’s the VC’s calling card. The sudden appearance of frogs, that is.” Monty’s eyes were now gleaming with excitement. He pointed enthusiastically at the photo. “Back then, back when the Vigilance Committee was active, that was their code, their symbol—their mark.”

  Monty stepped back from the counter and slashed his right arm through the air as if he were holding a sword, making three wide strokes in the shape of a Z.

  “Perhaps less of a Lone Ranger,” Monty said slyly, pinching his fingers over his lips and drawing out a long, curving mustache. “Your Uncle Oscar had more panache than that. He was more like . . . Zorro!”

  I pursed my lips to stifle a retort as my eyes focused back in on the photo where Frank Napis and my uncle stood, shoulder to shoulder, smiling in a friendship I knew to be fake. The sight made me cringe.

  “And, now?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer. “What is the significance of a frog appearing now?”

  “It means they’re back!” Monty announced exuberantly. “The VC is back in action!”

  He started jumping up and down on the squeaky floorboards, triumphantly throwing his hands in the air before finally bubbling out.

  “And the best part is—I’ve been recruited!”

  Chapter 19

  THE BUS RIDE

  MONTY BEGAN RUNNING celebratory victory laps around the Green Vase showroom as he reveled in his pronouncement. I picked up the photo from the cashier counter, this time focusing on the background of the scene.

  Dilla, Mr. Wang, Frank Napis, and Oscar appeared to be standing outside of a small storefront on a busy neighborhood street. The number for the store’s street address was painted on a glass door behind the group. Squinting through my glasses, I could just make it out: 575.

  “Do you know where this was taken?” I asked, pointing at the photo. “It looks like it’s in San Francisco?”

  Monty spun around, flipping his head toward me in surprise. “You really don’t know?”

  I shook my head. I was growing weary of feeling so uninformed.

  The shadow of an orange and white MUNI bus lumbered past the window, and Monty’s eyes brightened with the flicker of an idea.

  “Grab your coat. I’ll take you there,” he said brightly, picking up the photo. “If we hurry, we can catch the bus at the corner.”

  “Oh no,” I moaned as Monty grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the front door. “Not the bus.”

  I snatched my jacket from a peg near the cashier counter as Monty yanked me outside of the Green Vase.

  “It’s unhealthy, this phobia you’ve developed about buses,” Monty opined as he dragged me down Jackson Street. “I’m staging an intervention. Come on, it’ll take us right there.”

  Monty waved frantically at the driver who downshifted the bus to an idle, holding it at the corner. Monty sprinted ahead of me as the side doors of the bus unfolded. With a flourish to indicate his thanks to the driver, he bounded up into the carriage.

  I hung back, balking from an overwhelming sense of dread, but Monty waved urgently for me to follow him inside. Monty paid my fare as I reluctantly started off after him.

  I should have trusted my instincts. I should have resisted Monty’s persistent hand gestures. I should have known better than to get on that bus.

  I BROKE INTO a sprint to catch up to the front door of the bus before it took off. As I climbed up the steps, I glanced briefly at the driver. His face was turned away from me; he appeared to be adjusting the driver’s side mirror. Something struck me funny about the way he stuck his arm out over the back of his shoulder to wave me past, but I thought nothing of it until later in the ride.

  Even though the bus was practically empty of riders, Monty strode purposefully toward the rear seats, plopping himself down onto a bench near the back.

  Monty reached his seat just before the bus lurched forward, but I was still walking, midway down the aisle. The momentum of the sudden acceleration nearly knocked me off my feet. I had no chance to regain my footing. The bus immediately swung into a sharp right turn, causing my hips to bang against the metal framing of the nearest seat.

  Gripping onto a seat back, I hauled my wobbly legs down the remaining length of the bus, finally landing with a hard bump on the bench across the aisle from Monty.

  “So, where are we going?” I asked weakly, my stomach already protesting from the roughness of the ride.

  Monty smiled, preening in his knowledge advantage. “The Castro, of course.”

  “The Castro?” I repeated, thinking back to my conversation with Miranda. “Does this relate to the slain Supervisor, Harvey Milk?” I asked, trying to make the connection.

  Monty nodded his head. “The members of the Vigilance Committee were big supporters of Harvey. He was a perfect fit for them, really. He epitomized many of the goals they were trying to accomplish.”

  Monty threw his right arm casually over the back of his bench seat. “You see, when the VC first got together, they focused their efforts on helping pass a grassroots initiative that was aimed at changing the seat allocations for the city’s Board of Supervisors—from citywide to district-by-district. The VC felt that district seating would give cash-poor candidates a better chance of winning since they would have a much smaller area to canvass and solicit voters. The VC reasoned that Supervisors elected under a district-by-district system would be more connected to the concerns of their respective neighborhoods and less likely to be influenced by the political power of the pro-growth real estate interests.”

 
Monty spread his hands wide. “It was a huge coup when the referendum passed. San Francisco’s political power-houses were completely blindsided. The VC had their appetite whetted by that first taste of success, so they set about picking Supervisor candidates to support in the newly outlined districts. There were several contenders that caught the VC’s attention, but Harvey Milk stood out from the crowd.”

  I stared up at the exposed metal roof of the bus as I listened to Monty’s speech, desperately trying to calm the queasiness in my stomach. My aversion to public bus transport was growing by the second. I must not have been alone in my dim opinion of the city’s bus system. We’d made only one stop since Monty and I got on, and no other passengers remained on board.

  “Harvey had run several times for a citywide Supervisor seat, but he’d never garnered enough votes to make the cutoff,” Monty chattered on. “Even after the switch to district seating, no one took him seriously. He was even shunned by the established leaders within the gay community. They saw him as an upstart, someone who was pushing too hard and who hadn’t yet paid his dues. Harvey ruffled a lot of feathers when he signed up to run for the Castro district’s new Supervisor seat.”

  I was trying to listen to Monty’s discourse, but our bus driver seemed bent on plowing through each and every bumper-scraping pothole he came across. Each dipping whomp caused a jarring recoil in the back end of the bus. The spring beneath my seat, I was convinced, had been permanently rearranged to its most uncomfortable conformation.

  “Harvey refused to listen to the naysayers,” Monty continued. “He was relentless. He canvassed street corners, bus stops, anywhere he might get ten seconds with a potential voter. He campaigned nonstop during the day, and then returned to his camera shop on Castro Street—his campaign headquarters—to work late into the night on fliers, posters, all of the nuts and bolts that a political campaign needs to get its message out.”

  Monty clamped his hand back down on the seat as we rode out another roller-coaster bump.

  “More importantly, Harvey’s political message began to resonate across the city. In addition to promoting gay rights, Harvey had a broad populist agenda. He talked about promoting small businesses and protecting San Francisco’s eclectic neighborhoods from rampant real estate development.” Monty tilted his head toward me. “And, of course, it didn’t hurt that Harvey was extremely charismatic. The way I hear it, he could charm the wool socks off of an Eskimo.”

  Monty grinned, waiting for me to appreciate his joke. I was too green to offer more than a weak smile.

  “As Harvey’s campaign took off, his volunteer base expanded. He gained the support of the city’s unions and the Chinese American community, both of whom sent workers to his campaign headquarters. The Vigilance Committee easily slipped themselves—and their money—into the mix.”

  Monty pulled the black-and-white photo I’d found in the basement wardrobe out of his back pocket and handed it to me. “This picture was taken outside of Milk’s camera shop, 575 Castro Street, the site of the Harvey Milk campaign headquarters.”

  I slipped the photo into my jacket pocket, pondering Monty’s VC story. Both he and Miranda had mentioned the importance of the VC’s money to its political endeavors, I reflected, but it struck me as odd that neither one had said where that money had come from. Before I could ask Monty about the source of the VC’s financing, he switched topics.

  “People often wonder why San Francisco became so closely associated with the gay movement,” Monty said conversationally, his stomach apparently unaffected by the nonstop bouncing of the bus.

  “It goes back to the city’s history as a naval port. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, if a sailor were suspected of being a homosexual, he would be kicked out of the Navy and decommissioned, usually here in San Francisco. Many men decided to stay in California rather than return to their hometowns and face the stigma of that label. It’s not that San Francisco was all that amenable to the gay lifestyle—many citizens were openly hostile to gays, and the police were constantly conducting late-night raids targeted at homosexuals—but gay life here was better than, say, small-town America.”

  Monty paused briefly to look out his window as the bus slowed to a halt in front of the 17th Street stoplight, cueing up for the sweeping left-hand turn from Market onto Castro. Seeing our location, Monty pulled down on the signal rope by his window, indicating we would be getting off at the next stop. The driver’s head nodded, acknowledging receipt of our request. Monty leaned back in his seat and resumed his history lesson.

  “Just as San Francisco’s gay movement began to build, the historically Irish Catholic, blue-collar neighborhood of the Castro fell into decline. The area was filled with rotting, peeling Victorians. The local grocery store was falling into bankruptcy, and a crime syndicate had taken over the streets. The few working-class families that remained were horrified when the city’s growing gay population began to move in. Many of the older residents sold their property at a discount; they were convinced that the presence of gays in the neighborhood would cause property values to tank further.”

  Monty waved his hands at the busy street-life surrounding the intersection where the bus idled, waiting for the light to change. “What happened, of course, was just the opposite. Gay men from across the country began flocking to the Castro. They bought many of the old, rundown Victorians and began fixing them up. Property values sky-rocketed, increasing four or fivefold over the next ten to twenty years.”

  The light turned, releasing the bus for its wide left turn. The gentle down slope of Castro Street spread out below us as the iconic Castro Movie Theater sign loomed into view. The bus began to pick up speed as it accelerated down the crowded street—and barreled straight past the next bus stop.

  Waiting passengers yelled, angrily waving their hands in the air as the bus zoomed past.

  “Hey!” Monty yelled at the driver, but he merely hunched deeper into his seat. “Well, that was Milk’s old place,” Monty said, annoyed as he pointed at the storefront of one of the many renovated Victorians we were now zipping by.

  Irate car horns honked from every direction as the bus blasted through the next intersection. We hit Castro’s valley floor and began driving up the ascent of a steep, city-topping hill. Monty lifted himself off of his bench seat and staggered up the aisle toward the driver.

  I could hear the gears grinding in the engine beneath me as the bus sped up the incline. The driver had committed the full resources of the gas pedal to the climb.

  Monty was striding forward now, gripping the metal handles that hung down from the ceiling. He was working against gravity and momentum, but he would soon reach the front of the bus.

  In the rearview mirror, I saw the top half of the driver’s face as he glanced back at the carriage. The driver’s hat was pulled down low over his forehead, nearly obscuring his eyes, but the reflected image struck me cold.

  I’d seen those eyes just moments earlier—in the black-and-white photo tucked into my coat pocket—and, a few months ago, on a face that wore a feathery orange mustache.

  “Monty!” I called out, trying to warn him, but the sound of the bus’s roaring engine drowned out my voice.

  The two visible slits of the driver’s eyes flicked once more to the mirror, honing in on Monty’s advancing figure.

  “Monty!” I yelled again, but he didn’t hear me. He had almost reached the front of the bus.

  I rose out of my seat as the bus slowed slightly at the top of the hill to navigate a left-hand turn. Tires squealed as the bus tilted, nearly toppling over as it screeched across the intersection. I crawled back into my seat, bruised and nauseous, and caught sight of Monty’s curly head poking up from the floor.

  Ten seconds later, midway down the next block, the bus lurched to a sudden stop, throwing me chin first against the bench back of the seat in front of me.

  Rubbing my jaw, I looked up the aisle toward the driver’s windshield. The road dropped off in front of us, ro
lling down toward the flatlands of the Mission. We were at the top of 22nd Street, at the crest of one of the steepest hills in the city.

  I watched in horror as Monty staggered forward and reached out to tap the driver on his shoulder. Just as Monty’s arm swung around, the driver cut the engine, jerked out the key, and leapt up from his seat. Monty stood, stunned, as the driver hurled himself down the steps and out the front door.

  Frank Napis glanced back at the bus, a smirking sneer on his flat face, before scuttling away down a side street. As Monty and I stared at his fleeing figure, the bus began to roll, driverless, down the hill.

  Chapter 20

  DOWN THE HILL

  THE WHEELS BENEATH the bus rolled faster and faster, picking up speed as we careened down 22nd Street. A block of Victorians flashed by my window, their bright painted colors blurring into a gabled rainbow.

  The rear side exit of the bus had opened when Napis fled out the front door. I climbed across the aisle toward it and looked down at the street, measuring the pace of the asphalt. We were already moving far too fast for either one of us to jump out safely.

  Monty spun his head back toward me, his mouth dropped open in surprise. “That was—”

  “I know! I know!” I yelled, my voice echoing in the eerily silent, motorless bus.

  “But what was he—” Monty sputtered.

  “Grab the wheel!” I cried, cutting him off. “Pull the emergency brake!”

  Monty nodded, acknowledging my advice with a raised finger. He crawled forward as the bus began to weave wildly back and forth. The flat, terraced square of an intersection, filled with crossing traffic, loomed in front of us.

  With difficulty, Monty threaded his lanky figure into the driver’s seat. His hands gripped the steering wheel as he frantically searched through the numerous levers, buttons, and switches for the brake.