Carter Beats the Devil Read online

  Mr. Carter was due back at dusk on the twenty-eighth of December. That afternoon, Charles and James sat on the floor of the playroom to play Stealing Bundles with a deck of cards they’d fished out of one of their toy chests. It was frightfully cold; the boys were done up in layers of wool like Eskimos. Charles played with one eye on the clock, and an ear cocked for the sound of an approaching cab. James, who usually liked card games that he had a fair chance of winning, plummeted into a snit.

  “You’re cheating!” he cried.

  “I am not.”

  “You aren’t playing fair.”

  “James,” Charles said, “you can’t cheat at Stealing Bundles. That’s why it’s a game for babies.”

  “Patsy!” James yelled. He stood up.

  “We’re not supposed to bother Patsy. James!” Charles followed his brother as he raced out of the room.

  “He’s cheating! Patsy, Charles is cheating!” With Charles in close pursuit, James ran up the back stairs, not even holding onto the banister.

  The third floor, the servant’s quarters, was a narrow hallway lined with doors, all of which were closed. The amber lights of the wall sconces flickered gloomily. Charles felt uneasy. This was unfamiliar territory—the boys weren’t supposed to disturb the domestics in their private rooms.

  James banged on Patsy’s door; Charles tried to restrain him, but James lurched away and banged again, yelling, “He’s a liar!”

  “Fine,” Charles declared. “Let the baby cry, then!” He folded his arms and pretended interest in the wall, where there was an etching of a European city.

  It was cold in the hallway. Charles tried to see his breath, but it wasn’t that cold. Still, he wondered why no one had thought to build a fire. Heavy clouds swelled outside the tiny window at the end of the hallway.

  James went quiet. Biting at his knuckle, he looked up just as Charles frowned and looked down at him. They both knew how long they could carry on before someone, somewhere, hushed them. That time had passed.

  James removed his finger from his mouth. “Cook! Cook!” And he bolted past Charles, to the stairs.

  But there was no one in the kitchen, or the pantry, or even in Cook’s ready room, where she always sat and read while her stews simmered. In the parlor, they found a note from Cook, printed in her block lettering. She and Patsy had gone to a very important revival meeting and picnic just across the bay, and would be back before dark.

  Charles pushed the buzzers on the wall, all of them, at once: they rang all the rooms on the third floor. When there was no response, he looked at the note again.

  “They left?” James asked.

  “Yes, they left,” Charles nodded. “They’ll get in trouble for that.”

  “Why did they leave?”

  “Religion,” Charles said, with the same sour expression their parents used when saying the word. “‘Please tell your father dinner will be ready by seven o’clock. If you have any trouble this afternoon, don’t worry, Mr. Jenks will look after you.’” Charles shuddered.

  “We’re all alone,” James said. Charles could see James wasn’t sure what this meant: was it exciting? Or a nightmare?

  “It’s the first time they’ve left us alone,” Charles said. He looked out the window; the sky was gloomy, darkening. “They’ll be back any minute.” He put his hand on James’s shoulder. “Where does Cook keep the Fry’s chocolate?”

  . . .

  The sky was dark for a remarkable reason. San Francisco was about to be blanketed with snow. When the first flakes fell, at 3:30, the Carter boys bolted out the front door and onto the street, where they twirled in a circle together, heads back, feeling for the first time ever snow on their faces.

  It was like feathers on their skin, for the first minute, and then there was a violent shift in the winds. “Ouch!” Charles winced, for he had just discovered what hail felt like.

  “Look!” James shouted, as he caught a pellet of hail on his hand. “It melts! It melts on you!”

  The hailstones scattered as they hit the streets. It sounded like it was raining pennies. The boys ran inside and stood in the open doorway, watching in safety until the hail switched again to snow.

  “It’s not melting anymore,” Charles cried. Before they knew it, there was an inch of snow on Washington Street. James dashed back into eddies of powder, kicking it around with his boots.

  Charles was about to join, but held back. He needed to watch for just one moment—his brother, dancing a jig, scarf flying, in the white, as snow caught and stuck in the oak trees. There was no one else around. No children sharing in this miracle. Up and down Washington Street, all the families were gone for the holiday week, and servants were taking their leave. James was the only sign of life.

  By dusk, there was almost a foot of snow on the ground. Charles and James had spent the afternoon in the parlor, noses pressed to the window, mostly delighted. But every hour, when the clocks chimed, they fell quiet, and Charles suddenly felt the need to be brave.

  Patsy and Cook didn’t return that night. Nor did Mr. Carter. The boys silently ate cereal with milk for dinner, with more chocolate tablets for dessert.

  “The snow is keeping them from coming back, right?” James asked.

  Charles nodded. He had a better command of geography and transportation than James. “Daddy comes back from Sacramento on a train, and Cook and Patsy take the ferry, and it’s storming over the bay, so maybe they’re staying overnight in Oakland.”

  They decided everyone would return the next day, and their only problem was staying warm until then. Neither one of them was allowed to touch the gas or the fireplaces.

  “We could ask Mr. Jenks for help,” James said.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Charles replied, folding his arms tightly around himself. In his universe of things to fear, Jenks outranked the wolves, the mangler, and even Sullivan, whom Charles recognized as simply a bully. Jenks was something different, something unknowable.

  They looked in all the fireplaces, discovering that each had already been prepared with wood. The one in their father’s study seemed most inviting, as it also contained kindling and old pieces of mail. Charles sent James to fill a bucket with water, in case there was a mishap, and then, after making sure the vent was open, he touched a match to the paper in the fireplace. The wood caught easily. “We’re explorers,” Charles said. “We’re on an island and we’ve gathered all the wreckage from our boat.”

  “And we’re making a fire. So they can find us.”

  “Right.”

  Soon they had a splendid fire, which popped excitingly, and which they fed with extra wood stored in the benches that flanked the fireplace. James dashed to the windows of the study and waved his arms back and forth.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Signaling.”

  Charles let his brother signal to their rescuers while he laid out some blankets for them to sleep on.

  “It’s still snowing,” James announced.

  Charles joined him. Pellets of snow made a kind of lace curtain through which they could see a light coming from Jenks’s cabin window. There was a single slender wire running from their house to Jenks’s; all Charles had to do was ring for him, and Jenks would come. It was a terrible idea, and Charles imagined going to the kitchen, pushing the button, opening the door, and waiting. He had the sudden urge to draw the blinds. “The snow is beautiful,” he said woodenly.

  “When is everyone coming back?”

  “By daylight, for sure.”

  “But if it’s still snowing now, how will they get back?”

  “They just will. They know we’re alone, they’ll come back.”

  “Who knows we’re alone?” James looked at Charles, who normally would have smacked him for being so stubborn.

  Charles said, coolly, “Daddy knows—”

  “He thinks Cook and Patsy are here.”

  Charles shrugged. “Cook and Patsy know that we’re—”

  “No, Charlie
, they think Daddy’s back now.”

  “Oh, be quiet!”

  “Does Mr. Jenks know we’re alone?” James drew a face on the window, right where his breath had made a spot. He tended to trust the world and had never noticed, when they played outside, the way Jenks loomed at the periphery of the garden, blotting out the sun.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think he knows,” James said. “And Daddy was supposed to pay him today.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Daddy and I go over the accounts sometimes,” James said.

  Charles and Mr. Carter had never gone over the accounts. He didn’t even know what the accounts were. James continued to sketch on the window, making a fat body under the smiling face. Charles felt himself shrinking.

  “When do you look at the accounts?”

  “We’ll see Mr. Jenks soon. Today was his payday.”

  But Jenks did not show himself, and it continued to snow long into the next day.

  CHAPTER 4

  For almost ten years, the blizzard of 1897 stood as the worst natural disaster to hit San Francisco. Telegraph wires snapped. Water mains burst so that awkward ice sculptures dotted Market Street. Some buildings under construction, like the new civic library, partially collapsed under the weight of the snow. Transportation halted—the streetcars wouldn’t run, and even though horse and buggies could make emergency trips, few knew how to drive in the snow, and there were many accidents. San Francisco’s cobblers, it was said, produced fine shoes for walking, but not for skiing. So pedestrians stayed indoors, waiting out the storm.

  Though Jenks was accustomed to snow, he preferred to stay in his cottage, far out of the eye of strangers he might startle.

  Years ago, he had looked all over the country for a fortune, and Alaska was supposed to be the last stop. He had prospected for gold, losing three fingers and all of his toes to frostbite. Finally, a stick of dynamite had blown a brass ingot through his cheek.

  He sold his claim at a loss, and came to San Francisco, where the Carters took pity on him. Officially, he was the gardener, but he was excused from any sort of adequacy in that regard. He also was available if anything heavy needed to be lifted.

  His cottage overflowed with the Carters’ old newspapers, which he burnt without reading, for reading reminded him of how hard it was to think. But the day of the blizzard, when he rolled and bound a hundred pounds of newsprint into dozens of tight logs, a headline caught his eye. How could he miss it—it took up half the front page: GOLD STRIKE! Beneath it, a map of Alaska, showing exactly where the Klondike was.

  Involuntarily, Jenks made a small sound, like fabric tearing. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  . . .

  By the morning of the thirty-first, it had stopped snowing, and had begun to thaw. Across the city, people were taking the first tentative steps back into life. But there was still no sign of Mr. Carter, or Cook, or Patsy.

  That day, their third in solitude, was the first that Charles hadn’t performed a hygienic inspection for himself and James. If their faces looked a bit grey, Charles wasn’t sure if he cared anymore.

  He began to trespass. He wasn’t listening for imps; he felt instead like a detective looking for clues with which he could punish the guilty for having left him alone. His first area of ingress, his mother’s dressing room, was also his last, for he found something truly baffling there.

  It was a wooden box about the size of a dictionary, with twin latches that opened easily. Inside was a metal object with a round head and long nose, and a hand grip. It could almost have been a pistol but for its immense weight—further, it had a cord and an electrical plug. Charles had seen but one object in his life that had an electrical plug: the toaster. His father had explained that one day, there would be an electrical refrigerator and an electrical oven, and that Patsy had an electrical sewing machine upstairs that eased her chores. “Electricity is a marvel,” Mr. Carter said. “It starts here, in the kitchen, and one day will be in every room.”

  Charles wondered if this odd appliance was related to sewing somehow. There were a half dozen attachments, which he quickly determined fit over the ball-shaped nose: cones, grids, planes with raised bumps.

  Then he found the brochure:

  VIBRATION IS LIFE

  What woman hasn’t lost her fair share of life to the mysterious ailments that incapacitate her zest and zeal? Feminine complaints can constrict the flow of the vital humors, leading to restlessness, furtive amativeness, a corruption of morals and the downfall of her happy home.

  Treat yourself to an invigorative cure! Lindstrom Smith White Cross Electric Vibrators provide 15,000 pulsations per minute, relieving pain, stiffness and weakness. Just five to ten minutes with the Electric Vibrator, and all the pleasures of youth will throb within you. Steady and frequent application treats hysteria, chlorosis, greensickness, neurasthenia and all manner of hysteroneurasthenic disorders, and even simple fatigue and melancholy.

  Apply to the area that feels the most congestion, and let the Lindstrom Smith White Cross Electric Vibrator relieve you with its thrilling, penetrating, scientifically-proven action. The application, when pursued for five to ten minutes (time will indeed fly!), leads inevitably to a convulsion of the affected region, followed by blissful relaxation and sometimes a tranquil slumber.

  Can be used in the privacy of the dressing room or the boudoir.

  The text didn’t help—he still hadn’t a clue what he’d found. Feminine complaints? Corruption? The diseases would no doubt be listed in the dictionary, but he suspected the definitions would, in the maddening way of dictionaries, lead back to themselves with the practiced evasiveness that excluded children.

  Then his eyes fell on an electrical outlet. He would have been less surprised to find a zebra grazing off the makeup table. That his mother had an electrical outlet in her dressing room made him breathe shallowly, as he’d stumbled across yet another adult mystery.

  Without further thought, he sat on his mother’s fainting couch and plugged the device in. An illustration showed a woman holding it to her cheek. This Charles did, and the sensation was indeed pleasant. He pretended to have come home from a hard day at work.

  Gradually, however—in truth rather quickly—he grew bored. After five minutes of studious application to the cheek and forehead had passed, he looked at the brochure again, for he hadn’t proceeded through any convulsions; nor did he wish to slumber. He gave it another minute about his head and neck, and then turned the vibrator off, for his face was beginning to go numb.

  A strangely incomplete feeling nagged him as he wound the cord around the appliance and packed it back up just as he found it. The light against the walls felt different, as if he’d peeled back a curtain on the world and found there only more curtains and drapes and odd masking. He wondered how Joe Sullivan had made the nickel vanish.

  That afternoon, James read a book and Charles visited the attic, where he was not allowed. It was a well-organized place, free of dust, and illuminated by windows on all sides that today showed friendly slices of blue sky. In one corner, under a bell-shaped glass, was a small marble figurine, a nude that had once been on top of their piano. It was very delicate and cold to the touch. Charles inspected it carefully, running the tips of his fingers around its breasts.

  He was proud of how responsibly he held this piece. Admiring it in the light, turning it to better see the details. “This one,” he said to himself, “comes from Italy. It is an Italian woman—note the texture.”

  And then, without even seeming to slip, it dropped through his fingers. It hit the floor and shattered.

  He gasped. He stooped to see if he could somehow patch it, explain the noise. He paused. Who was going to scold him?

  It was New Year’s Eve. Every year, he had been put to bed early and told that when he was old enough, he could stay up to ring in the New Year. And now, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. As if they had a life of their own, his arms reached o
ut and held a brick over the statue. This was an Italian sculpture, he thought, dropping the brick.

  He lifted his brick up, then dropped it, then again, and when the statue was reduced like broken bits of seashell, Charles crushed them under his shoe.

  In the back of his throat, he felt a miserable longing for someone, anyone, so he could hit them with all of his might. It had stopped snowing; the snow was melting now, and there were people out on the street: still, both his mother and his father were gone. It dawned on him that there was no one coming, no one to stop him from destroying the world.

  . . .

  Charles miserably joined his brother in his father’s study, where their fire was still going. They had dragged in wood from other rooms and thrown in logs whenever it had threatened to die. Since they had fought that morning over who got to look through the kaleidoscope, and were not speaking now, Charles looked out the bay window. In many different places the color white capped a hundred shades of green: snow on the far ivy cliffs of the headlands, rough water on the bay, frosted branches in the nearby Presidio. Right below him, snow on the eaves of Jenks’s cottage. The wire connecting their houses had survived the snows and a finch sat on it, head twitching, wings fluttering.

  James, who lay on top of the tangled blankets on the leather couch, had a huge old book from their father’s shelves propped on his stomach. He said, “Well, well, what do you know?”

  Charles didn’t answer him.

  “Well, what do you know?” James said, louder, eyes popping at his book.

  “I’m not interested in whatever baby book you’re reading.”

  “I’m not talking to you. Well, what do you know?”

  “I’m coming over there and I’m going to hit you.”

  James opened his hands. “Ala-ka-ZAM,” he cried. A quarter dropped out of his hand. It rolled in circles on the carpet.