Gold Mountain (39 page)
Authors: Karen J. Hasley
One welcome reminder that life is not made up of only failures and disappointments is my little bird, my Suey Wah. She finished her schooling at Mission San Rafael and returned to 920 as a young lady, still petite and somewhat delicate but with a will of cheerful iron. She currently resides there as a resident teacher of English and always—in the sweet manner she retained from her childhood—credits me with her language skills. Not true, of course, but I have learned to smile my protest and change the subject. In any battle of wills, Suey Wah will always win. That she is alive proves the point.
Three years after my marriage, Ralph Gallagher dropped dead at his office. A shocked Martin brought the news to Ruth, who called me right away. I never shared what I knew about Ralph Gallagher with either Ruth or Martin and following his exit from the Pandora Transport Company never saw the man or talked to him again. I have no way of knowing if he ever managed to do even a single good, unselfish, and generous thing for anyone. I hope so but consider the prospect unlikely at best.
Jake and I were in China when the earthquake of 1906 knocked San Francisco to its knees, and I instantly feared for Ruth and her family. We rushed back to a ruined city of flames and rubble, an unbelievable sight. Many people died, but the only one I knew personally was Irene Gallagher, who refused to leave her Nob Hill mansion and died under its bricks. Ruth, Martin, and their two children were safe and came to live on board one of Jake’s boats until we could get their house rebuilt. The docks stayed safe and the transport office was unscathed, but the beautiful city of San Francisco lay in shambles. Like the proverbial phoenix, however, it continues to rise from the ashes, and I suspect that one day it will be twice as magnificent as it was before the catastrophe
Providing proper but far too infrequent balance to the inequities of life, many of the men I’m certain were involved with Ralph Gallagher in the despicable practice of human smuggling have paid for their sins, one way or another. Abe Ruef currently sits in prison, convicted of extortion and Eugene Schmitz was recently found guilty of accepting bribes. Jake says Schmitz won’t spend a day in jail, and sad to say, I fear Jake’s right. The former mayor knows all the right people. To no one’s regret, Judge Mackiver hanged himself in his chambers one afternoon. Unfortunately only the actors—not the play itself—have changed. Until the United States repeals or alters the Chinese Exclusion Act and allows Chinese men to bring their wives and families legally into the country, the demand for Chinese women will continue, with a never-ending supply of villains eager to take advantage of the situation.
To this day, Donaldina Cameron remains the center and core of 920, a woman of indefatigable energy and surprising vulnerability. She led her girls through the earthquake to safety without turning a hair; I wish I’d been there to see it. We are friends now and I believe always will be, the mission our common bond. I have never met a woman more worthy of admiration and respect, and I fear that someday who she was and what she did will get lost among the wars and the legislation that passes for history nowadays. Will anyone remember her in a hundred years?
Recently when I voiced my concern to my husband, he merely shrugged. “Who will remember any of us in a hundred years, Dinah?”
“Our grandchildren will.”
“Our grandchildren will look at pictures of us in an old album somewhere and wonder who we were and what we were like. They won’t remember us. Not really.”
“Memory is a funny thing,” I replied quietly. “Who’s to say that along with brown eyes and red hair and a love for water, we won’t also pass along a thread of memory to our grandchildren, some spark of connection to this thing called family.” I looked over at Jake, a touch of silver at his temples and the scar on his cheek showing pale and prominent against his brown skin. Still the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life.
While neither Jake nor I could by any stretch of the imagination be considered meditative, whenever we strolled the beach around Cliff House, I was reminded of Colin O’Connor. He had completely disappeared, despite Jesse Cook’s vigorous search for him, and I often wondered what became of the rugged Irishman. I couldn’t help but think of him as “poor Colin,” even as I acknowledged that he had been weak and greedy. I had almost loved him, and something about his memory still touches me, despite everything. “
As I hear the sweet lark sing / In the clear air of the day,”
Colin had crooned in that rich tenor voice, his breath on my cheek. I thought that if he had survived the vengeance of the Black Dragons, his life and future still could not have held much music these past years.
Unlike my life, filled as it has been with the music of family, music sometimes discordant and often much too loud—the Greeks have an exuberance for living that is never quiet—but rich and textured and beautiful, nevertheless. The thought reminds me of a recent family outing.
I recall our daughter Sophia standing at the water’s edge staring at the Bay, mesmerized. She will inherit the transport company someday, and she will run it smart and hard because more than her brothers, it is Sophia who carries the force of her father. My two sons are good boys both, twins and alike as two peas in a pod, intelligent and curious and kind, but they are no match for their sister. Sophia has her father’s dark beauty and my pragmatic nature and despite her tender years, she is already a force to be reckoned with.
As I watch my daughter, Jake reaches out to brush my cheek with the back of his hand. “I’ve been thinking about that thread of memory, and I hope you’re right because our grandchildren should know their grandmother for sure, how the sun turned her red hair to gold and how the sea rested in her eyes. I want them to know that.”
At his words, I am suddenly, momentarily, breathtakingly overwhelmed with love for this man. In every marriage, someone once said, one partner loves more than the other. If that’s true, then I am the one that tips the scale. I know Jake loves me, but I know he also loves the sea and his boats and his good name. Loves them differently from me but loves each with a unique passion I have learned to accept. I must share his affection, but I don’t care. Just a fraction of Jake Pandora holds more allure and excitement than any other whole man I know. I want to tell him all that he means to me, how he inhabits me as tangibly as the blood that flows in my veins, how I treasure his faithfulness and his friendship, how he has freed me to love him without restraint or regret. But Jake and I are not two people who comment on such things very often. Neither of us feels the need or takes the time. Our days are busy with travel and children and the transport business, and our nights—well, our nights can be busy, too, but for us, words are seldom necessary. More often than not they only get in the way.
“Look, Mama! Look, Papa! Look at the ship! Isn’t she grand? Isn’t she beautiful? Look at her!”
I recognize the sharp excitement in Sophia’s voice, which carries clearly through the muted conversations around us to where Jake and I stand on the shore, and I understand what I hear in her voice. The thrill that comes when the wind catches a vessel’s sails just so and pushes it powerfully, gracefully forward. The incoherent exhilaration of freedom. I follow my daughter’s pointing, imperative hand to a magnificent schooner that sits ready for adventure and poised on the edge of the horizon, its sails bleached a blinding white in the sunlight.
“Yes, Soph,” my husband calls, “I see her,” but his dark eyes are fixed on my face as he continues in a much softer voice, “and she is beautiful. She is that.”
From Jake the words are a sonnet, and the deep feeling I hear behind them offers a rare look into something about which he speaks only infrequently. I am speechless with surprise and pleasure and desire, a confusing combination. He smiles, confident and handsome, clearly enjoying the unusual accomplishment of throwing me off balance. Shameless still and proud of it. A man who likes to have the last word almost as much as I do and is not averse to employing a compliment to get it. Well, I am shameless, too, in my own way and because his words pleased me, I kiss him lightly on the cheek without a rejoinder. He thinks he got the best of me in that exchange, but there will be other times, and I don’t always let him win. With no more to be said, we join hands and continue our stroll down the sand side by side.
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