The Bully of Order Read Free Page A

rain whipped against the windows. The punky wood of the southern sill was swollen. My thumbnail scratch from last night, made to test the rottenness of the wood, was there and beady wet. I beheld a watery reflection in the imperfect glass and lo it was me. Thy ugly self a-blinking.
    A face doesn’t change anything, but hundreds do, because then they’re faceless.
    You say San Francisco is a rough town? New York? Shanghai? Our washerwomen are tougher than their meanest ax-murdering thugs. Our smallest, puniest orphan can beat Jim Corbett at arm wrestling. Our shortest Chinaman is six-four if he’s an inch.
    A body is a mob, a convulsion, an orgasm of destitute rabble. Listen to it breathe. Feed it. Keep it appeased, always. It’s written on the wall: T HE H ARBOR W ELCOMES Y OU .
    Down the street, at the docks, a new crowd was forming, inveterate roil. Among the black sea of hats was the pale flesh of a shaved head and the amber wood of a club. The hats parted and scattered and the bald head lurched after them. It was that mad German, Bellhouse, the barking dog that kept the Harbor up nights. He’d taken the strong and lawless ground and become a structurist (the Coast Sailor’s Union labor fight) and harrier (mill owners) and ultimately the king of the rampallions; a company of thieves, pimps, and murderers that served as the tendons and muscle to Bellhouse’s brain.
    I followed the pale head, a thumbnail among so many blackened hands, through the crowd and up the gangplank of a schooner christened Feather . Three men followed close behind him. No mistaking the biggest of the three, Tartan, a head above the tallest in the crowd, a shimmering green greatcoat and a black bowler. His big hands swung around and swatted two men onto their asses to study their feet, behold ye upended boots. On deck Bellhouse was passed a hatchet and he held it up and howled at the rain. Then a shotgun blast rang out from somewhere on deck and the crowd pulsed and shifted back and then forward like tidewater plants. Tartan had fallen. The two other men with him brought out their pistols and fired two shots apiece at the wheelhouse. There was no more shooting after that. A man was dragged from the cabin with a rope around his neck and tied to the rail like a finger in a square knot. Tartan was lifted to his feet and helped toward the wheelhouse. He’d been shot in the leg. My heart thudded against my ribs because I knew they’d be coming to find me. But not yet. The German yelled something at his men and then chopped the stern line. He forced his way forward and did the same thing to the bow. At first the ship didn’t move, and then ever so slowly it parted from the dock like ice from the floe and the gangplank slid and dropped into the water. With Tartan injured, Bellhouse and the two others had a tough time chasing the remaining stevedores from the deck into the water. If they wouldn’t jump, they were thrown. Hats were lost, tobacco surely ruined. A lone deckhand stood at the rail, nervously looking over his shoulder to make sure Bellhouse approved, and waved the tug into position. The tugman’s boy pitched him a line and he tied it off. The swimmers were fished out of the black water and hauled onto dry land. This was a Thursday in May, a day of no occasion.
    Bellhouse stood over the man tied by the neck, the ship’s captain most likely, pressed the man’s face against the stern rail, and waved good-bye to the crowd with the ax. People mostly cheered, save a few brave souls who booed. I never saw the shotgun. I had everything ready downstairs if they came back and needed buckshot removed. I’d sleep lightly tonight, expecting them.
    There were reasons for everything, even low piracy. Bellhouse and his men would ride back with the tug, and the next ship that didn’t pay the German’s tithe would get the same treatment or worse. Pay somebody or make them pay you, those were the