Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

21

FAITH, n. – Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

I was still aching and shaky on foggy Sunday morning when I presented myself at the early service at the Washington Street Church. I slid into a seat in a pew at the back of the church, which was a hollow box of bricks, with a lectern instead of an altar, a crucifix on the wall, and some numbers chalked on a blackboard, that must be hymns. These Protestants did not go in for decoration.

There were about thirty people present, and I could see Klosters’s bald head in the second row. The preacher, the Reverend Stottlemyer, who had brought Klosters to Jesus, paced behind the lectern. He wore a black suit, a high collar and a four-in-hand tie. He must have been six and a half feet tall and skinny as a post.

I had brought some rage and nervousness to this brick church, together with Bierce’s revolver in my pocket that seemed to weigh ten pounds.

Stottlemyer paced and halted to gaze out at the congregation with saucer eyes in his gaunt face. The eyes seemed to be fixed on me as he spoke.

“ ‘And the fear of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air; with all wherewith the ground teemeth, for into your hand are they delivered.’

“The words of the Lord! For these beasts, these fowls, represent our lower natures, my friends. And this lower nature must be subdued and disciplined by the regenerate Jesus-man.

“The Jesus-man must govern his lower nature, my friends. The ox is strong to labor, but that strength may no longer be expended without direction. Those fierce thoughts, which are as the lions and bears, must be stilled. After man has passed the flood and is regenerate, those very lions may be loosed upon him, the lower nature be slain, the Jesus-man in his higher nature left standing beside his own carcass.

“For as the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air are within our lower natures, so are the twelve apostles in our higher. They correspond to the twelve degrees of the Jesus-man, my friends, brought into perfect harmony and atonement. For in the central place in these harmonies is Adonai himself, Jesus spreading his welcoming arms to the Jesus-man.”

He paced, swung, and paced the other way, big-nosed and narrow-headed, with his eyes that flared like candles as he preached. He did not work himself up into any ferment, as though saving himself for the second service of the day, so it was difficult to understand what had caused Klosters to change his ways, but when he gazed out over his flock it continued to seem as though he stared straight at me. I leaned forward to cross myself and whisper a prayer, for it was like Satan himself in that jackstraw preacher knowing he had a shaky Catholic in his sights.

But after awhile he shifted into the offertory: “Our offering, my friends, is the table of Jesus. It is the food of God. The fire of heaven, which is the holiness of Jesus, consumes this offering, and all in seconds it ascends as sweet incense to Him!”

It seemed my salvation to skin out the door into the blowing fog of Washington Street when Stottlemyer wasn’t looking. I took up a post in the mouth of an alley a hundred feet down the street, wondering what to do if Klosters chose the other direction. But he came my way, looming out of the fog, big-hatted and alone.

I let him pass, then stepped out and jammed the muzzle of the revolver into his kidney. “Just step this way,” I heard my shrill voice say.

He stepped into the alley before he had figured out who I was. When he faced me I prodded the muzzle into his stomach. His hands were raised shoulder high. His pockmarked granite face was close to mine, his bloodshot eyes regarded me, his mouth turned down at the corners.

“What do you think you are doing?” he grated.

“You followed my landlord’s girl home from school on Friday.”

The corners of his mouth turned up. “These girls do like me. Can’t think why.”

“Don’t do it again,” I said.

His eyes closed in weariness, as though this was all too much for him. “You are a foolish young fellow,” he said. “You know you are not going to shoot me, and I know you are not going to shoot me.” But he did not lower his hands.

“I will shoot you if you offer that girl any harm,” I said, and suddenly I felt as futile as Major Copley.

When he lowered his right hand it came down like a hatchet on my wrist, knocking the revolver clattering to the pavement. Before I could move he slammed his boot down on it.

Panting a little from his effort, he said, “You are writing something about Senator Jennings that don’t want to be published. If you leave off publishing it I will leave that girl be.”

I rubbed my wrist, trying not to grimace at the pain. In fact I had not written much of the piece on Jennings, and I could rationalize that Bierce didn’t actually want to publish it anyway, he only wanted Jennings to know it was being written. It was entirely probable that he had made sure that Jennings learned of that fact, which had got me the beating I still ached from, despite the cucumber arnica; and this botch as well.

“All right,” I said.

He stooped to pick up the revolver and handed it to me butt first. He smiled bleakly. “Here’s your piece,” he said. “Don’t forget the Concealed Weapon Ordinance.” He opened his coat so I could see that he himself was not armed; then he lumbered off into the fog.

I was not in a good mood when Amelia and I took the ferry to Marin. I had been Futilitarian with a Concealed Weapon. In fact I had not been much of a hero since I had gone into action on the Brittain’s porch, having come out on the short end of all my scrapes since.

Amelia and I stood on the deck with fog blowing past us. I put an arm around her, to which she seemed to respond. “What’s the matter, Tom?”

“Things going wrong,” I said.

“Can I know?”

“Not today,” I said. “I wish the fog would let up, though.”

“It’s just what I chose for today!”

I gave her a squeeze.

The hoots of foghorns resounded down the Bay. Alcatraz loomed up like a ship bearing down on us, and faded away behind. We ascended Mount Tamalpais still in dense fog blowing over us in the open carriage with other sightseers crouched together in the seats before us, and Amelia huddled against me so that I could look down on the plane of her cheek, and the fringe of eyelashes beneath her bonnet. Suddenly we were out of the fog in brilliant sunshine.

Amelia cried out, “Oh!” as we sailed above the ocean of clouds that extended as far as could be seen in every direction, gleaming white, smooth as cream here and tumbled there, with Mount Diablo knifing the far billows to the east across the Bay like a fin.

As we strolled the summit she clung to my arm in the uneven footing, matching her steps to mine. “What a lovely show you have given me!” she said.

“It is only displayed this way for beautiful young ladies,” I said.

She laughed her warm breath against my cheek.

She pressed against me as we strolled like lovers among the other couples and two family groups with pinafored and sailor-bloused children running and calling to each other. We admired the prospects and walked on random paths. It was impossible to retire from the view of the others without descending two hundred feet into the clouds. It seemed to me that Amelia’s discomfort matched my own.

I held my arm around her waist and she pressed against me, looked into my face with a misty expression and laughed. I laughed with her. We were very far away from the dangers of Taylor Street, and her guardian constable, and my defeats.

“This evening is the Overland Monthly salon,” I said.

“I have heard of it,” Amelia said.

“I am invited, if you wish to attend with me.”

“I don’t know why I should be so lucky twice in one day!”

“What do you mean?”

“I would admire very much to meet the famous poets of San Francisco!” she exclaimed, leaning her weight against me.