Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

20

VALOR, n. – A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s hope.

–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

The meeting was in the basement of the Stoller building on Mission Street, about thirty of the True Blues on a collection of rickety wooden chairs, and Boss Chris Buckley at the podium with his toadies around him. He gazed out over us with his blind eyeballs and managed to appear amiable and impatient at the same time, as though he still had to talk to half a dozen Democracy or Antimonopoly Clubs tonight.

He waved his hands for silence.

“When the Lord created the Universe,” he began, “He looked around and said it was good enough for ordinary folks, but there must be a better piece of handiwork for the Democracy, so He created California. And then He said that the special folks that lived in California ought to do something to earn this special piece of His Handiwork, so He let the Enemy create the Monopoly so that California would have to do some labors to get rid of it.”

That started things off with a laugh and applause, and the Blind Boss went on from there. I sat with Emmett Moon and August Leary in the third row.

There were other matters than Regulation of the Railroad to discuss, and after Buckley and his bunch had gone on, Sam Rainey took over the meeting, and we listened to opinions on the United Street Railways of San Francisco who wanted to install overhead trolley lines, and the latest scandals from the water works.

So we were a long way off the evils of the Railroad when a dozen bullies crowded in and began breaking up the furnishings. A good many of the True Blues evaporated out the door into Mission Street, but those of us who had sworn off being pushed around went into action. I engaged a fellow with a black cap on and hit him a couple of good wallops before he took up a chair to swing at me. Emmett and August and Fred Till were in action also, but, though we outnumbered the toughs, they were more certain what they were after. I heard my name.

Three of them came for me. Small, Medium and Large, Large with a puffy clean-shaven face, an undershot jaw and a chest like a barrel in a faded blue shirt. “Redmond!” he shouted at me. He had fists balled up like melons.

I hit him left and right and backed up and hit him again, but he kept coming with his cronies blocking the flanks so I was pushed into the corner, panting like a locomotive and wondering where my own pals were. Large hit me so hard in the belly that I spewed any air I had left in me along with my dinner. When I was crawling on the floor he kicked me in the chest so I thought my ribs were broken. After that he stood back with his meathooks on his hips and watched Small and Medium kick me around.

“Back off!” Large said. “Hear?”

I lay there aching all over and half fainting, and I nodded.

“Back off!” the chief tough said again, and the pack of them banged off, kicking chairs over and stamping on them, and trooped out and were gone.

August and Fred Till helped me home and up my stairs where they washclothed the blood and vomit off my face and rolled me into bed. It felt good to groan. I waked up to see a figure in a tweed suit standing with the light from the window turning him black with bright edges. Bierce was looking through the books in my bookcase. Morning sun gleamed in his frosted hair. He swung around to stand over me, looking down.

“It wasn’t Pusey this time,” he said.

“No,” I croaked. I ought to be asking him to take a chair, but it was too much trouble. I ached from my face on down. I moved a leg carefully.

“Back off,” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“The message was to back off.”

He paced over to be haloed at the window again. “Tom, I am sorry. You have taken punishment that should more rightly be mine. I cannot ask you to be the recipient of any more of it. Should we abandon the piece on Jennings? For that is what this seems to be about.”

“Be damned to them.”

He turned, his cold face twitching into a slight smile. “Very well. Be damned to them shall be our motto.”

It was easier to nod than to speak.

“I have brought you something.” He took a Colt’s revolver from his jacket pocket and placed it carefully on the taboret beside my bed.

When he had gone I sat up, groaning, and stashed the revolver in the drawer of the taboret.

Mrs. B. brought me breakfast and left it even though I told her I couldn’t eat anything. I slept the morning away. I was wakened by a rap on the door. “Lady to call,” Mrs. B. said, disapproving. An exception to the no-women-in-the-rooms rule had been made in my case.

I was trying to sit up and brush a hand over my hair when Amelia swept inside.

She seemed to provide sunlight in the dim room as she circled around, exclaiming at everything she saw. She stood over the bed with her gloved hands clapped together, gazing down at me from under her considerable bonnet with an expression of dismay.

“My hero has been brought home on his shield!”

“You are not to leave your house without a guardian!” I raised myself to say.

She flapped a hand toward the open door. I could see a helmeted policeman leaning on the stair rail.

“Constable Button is my sentry today!” She seated herself on the end of the bed with a graceful swing of her hips. She held her hands clasped together before her as though to immobilize them.

“Mr. Bierce said it was a Railroad gang who did this.”

“It was a message for me to back off.”

“What does that mean, please?”

“I’ve been writing a piece on Senator Jennings that they don’t want published.”

She sat looking down at her hands with her pretty mouth pursed. I admired the sweet symmetry of her bosom. “And will you back off?” she asked.

“No.”

“Poppa knows Mr. Crocker and Mr. Stanford.”

I laughed, which hurt in my chest and belly. She laughed with me. I thought it must be the irony that amused her.

“What can I bring you, Tom?” she said.

“You’ve already brought me the best thing you could bring me.”

I was astonished to see her blush. It swept up her throat and over her chin into her cheeks like a pink shadow. She clasped a hand to her throat as though to stop it.

“My mother makes a bruise remedy from cucumber cream and arnica,” she said. “I will send you a bottle.”

I asked if she would accompany me to Marin on Sunday, up Mount Tamalpais.

“I would love that!”

She rose swiftly. “I must be going. I don’t know what Constable Button will think!” She swooped toward me. The brim of her hat scraped my forehead, her lips brushed mine, and she was gone.

Late in the afternoon Belinda arrived for a visit. She sat in the chair just inside the door with her feet tucked close together and her hands in her lap. She had on her Sunday dress and a bonnet that made her face look like a china doll’s.

“Miss Brittain came to call on you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Mother doesn’t think she should have been alone in your room with you.”

“She stayed two entire minutes.”

“Ladies aren’t allowed in the boarders’ rooms.”

“You are here,” I said.

“I’m not a lady yet,” she said, looking down at her hands in her lap. “Mother thinks she is very pretty,” she said.

“Well, so are you, Belinda.”

She didn’t look up. “Tom.”

“Yes?”

“That man followed me home from school yesterday.”

“What man?” I knew what man.

“The playing-card man.”

I was breathing hard suddenly. “What did he do?”

“Well, he just followed me home. Then he stood at the gate for awhile after I’d come inside. I watched through the window. Then he went away.”

“Don’t you worry about him,” I said. “I’ll walk you home on Monday.”

When she had gone I lay with my eyes closed and my teeth gritted. My head felt filled with some overheated substance that ached behind my eyes. I had had no idea how vulnerable I was. But now I had an idea how the Railroad pursued its ends. I thought of the revolver in the drawer, and having come to the pass where I must carry it to walk Belinda home from school.

It seemed that when you were in possession of a firearm you began to think in terms of it.

A hackie brought me a green bottle wrapped in white tissue paper. It was Amelia’s mother’s bruise remedy, and I dutifully sloshed the white stuff over my bruises and rubbed it in until I stank like a cucumber stall at the Washington Street market.

Jonas Barnacle carried my supper on a tray up the stairs. “So they gave you a good pummeling, Tom.”

“They did,” I said.

“Those Railroad folks can get away with about anything, I guess.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said.