Jack & Charmian London (the novel) - July 17, 2011

JACK & CHARMIAN LONDON
(based on the screenplay "London in Love")
by
James R. Goddard

Chapter One - Foreshadows

Oakland, California - 1886
Beneath the Piedmont Hills, the young lad left his parent’s house, and headed across a farmland, in a town known as Oakland. If the morning fog would disappear, he could see the city of San Francisco looming across the bay. However seeing San Francisco was the furthest thing from his mind. He had a mission, a very important one, and needed to see it through. Lifting his voice, he shouted through the morning mist -
“Pa!”
No answer.
Nor even a whisper of a reply. Not even a -
With frustration that only someone who has grown up around the Bay Area can appreciate, what with its fog, wind, and more wind and more fog, ten-year-old Jack London set down the bucket of beer he was carrying. Its contents sloshing about and spilling over the rim, descending down upon his father’s field of - well, dirt.


“Pa!” Jack shouted – rather fruitlessly, as the Bay wind scattered his words into nothingness – thus the frustration.
He sat down - the prospect of his mission apt a failure becoming more and more a possibility. The mission – bring his father, working hard in the field, plowing, sweating to bring his family food, a bucket of beer to refresh his deep thirst.
Jack looked at the beer, contents spilling. Knew there wouldn’t be much left after he found his dad. Hmm. Maybe he could do with some refreshment himself. Ahem. Jack, being thirsty as well as being tired – what with slogging the bucket of beer across an empty field – and, well, tired of the never ending, miserable ceaseless wind.
He looked at the beer. He looked at his plight. Dying of thirst and boredom, he grabbed the bucket and lifted it to his lips; took in the brew, found it pleasing and thought – “I had to wait ten years for this?”
He smacked his lips like some kids sipping a soda. Jack couldn’t believe his good fortune. He thought, well, he’d be helping his dad if he had some more. Instead of the beer falling to the ground, useless, he’d have some of the beer fall into his stomach instead, ergo (in his ten year old brain) it wouldn’t be wasted.
Don’t argue the logic of a ten-year-old.
And now, in the distance, he could hear the sound of his father. Time to get up, Jack thought. Licking his lips, he stood and lifted the bucket of beer off the ground. The bucket being considerably less heavy than when he left his house minutes ago.
“Be careful, you,” said his mother, “mind you don’t spill any of that beer.”

“You bet,” Jack said, somewhat more sober at the time.
An acre away, John London stopped plowing, wiped his sweaty brow while gazing across the horizon. No son in sight. The wind whipped his face dry the moment a bead of sweat appeared. Throat dry, his body spent. Hard to plow without a horse, harder to live without food. He asked the gods for a moment’s rest – and for that beer, which his son was commissioned to bring.
“Jack!”
No answer.
He looked again, and this is what he saw - a young tow-headed youth mysteriously appearing, disappearing, and again reappearing across the field. John London scratched his long white beard with the same perplexity of all fathers of ten-year-old boys. Seemed the earth sort of swallowed up his son, then regurgitated him back upon the dirty soil.
“Curious,” said the dad.
The wind grabbed on to his word and flung it to the outer lands of nowhere. The wind tossed his beard, his hair, and raised the dust that, at times, could be blinding…there upon the open field which was his, within the city boundaries of Oakland, where they called home.
“Jack!” yelled the dad. He then took off his shoulder harness, letting it fall unceremoniously to the ground. Walked a few paces toward the phenomena of the disappearing and reappearing boy.
Walking across his field, he finally came across his son. (A son that he would claim his own, but would never admit if he was or was not the boy’s natural father.).

Jack saw his father looming in the eastern sky. Tall and lean with his forever long white beard. His steel grey eyes, which were altogether gentle, and, unlike his wife, showed the world his was an unpretentious soul.
Jack, what with the beer half gone from the bucket, smiled a large, boyish grin at his father, standing right above him. Stretching out his hand, the bucket of beer held in its grasp, “Hi ya, pops!”
The dad grumbled, or tried to grumble. He tried to look angry, but he failed at that too. He looked at his son…a son who never knew any closeness to his mother. A mother who never gave him any affection, didn’t even breast feed him. Rather, gave the honor to a wet nurse - Jennie, a black woman who would be the only source of affection Jack would know for many years.
His mom was a mother. His father was a dad.
The dad looked at his son, and seeing him tottering, reached for him, trying to grab him before he fell over.
Oops.
Too late.
Jack fell backwards, landing in the soft dirt, somehow managing to keep the bucket held upright, still wearing his boyish grin which would carry him through his entire life.
“Well,” said the dad, picking up the bucket of beer out of Jack’s young hands, “might this be the bucket your mother asked you to bring out to me, now would it?”
“Yes, it would.”

“And would there have been beer in that bucket?
“Yes sir.”
“Might I inquire what happened to the beer which the bucket carried?”
“You might.”
“Then let's have it.”
“Oh, well, you see, it spilled.”
“And where might it have spilled?”
“All over me.”
“I can see that.”
“Yes, I caught it before the stuff hit the ground...and, uh, the ground, and I...I didn't wish...uh, sir - I didn't want any more to, er, fall.”
“So you've stated. Seems you’ve prevented the smallest drop from touching ground.”
“And I have...haven't,” he proudly replied. “And I am happy I did. For little spilled, as I drunk plenty to make sure, all of it – I mean, isn't...spilled... Ohhhhh.”
“It all spilled in your gullet.”
“Yep.”
“Are you ill?”
“Yep.”
“What do you think of it now?”
Jack, suddenly pained, “I don't like it much.”


“Good,” his dad looked into the bucket – there was about enough to drown a mouse on a wet day. “Still, I’m glad you found it in your heart to save me some.”
Jack tried to sit up, smiled, and waved, “that’s okay, Pops". Jack tottered, began to fall, his dad quickly reached out to catch him before he landed.

* * *
Oakland, California – 1889
The Pacific sun dropped out of sight across San Francisco Bay. It was early evening. And every evening usually meant the sun was going to disappear behind a thick blanket of fog. The wind, the fog, the smell of fish, the chill and the long summer nights of San Francisco Bay ever radiated. Hadn’t Mark Twain recently written: “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”?
Jack made his daily trek to the Oakland Library. When other boys were playing stick ball and swimming and fishing and chasing girls and going to school (for whatever reason, since he learned nothing there – nothing in comparison to what he was learning when at the Library) he was studying life and chasing his imagination.
He would read throughout the evening and ponder the great works and worlds which lay within. He studied thinkers and found himself captivated by knowledge. He loved to learn. And, most of all, he loved life. All of its possibilities excited his grey cells. And although he was learning things which upset him and made him see the world in different lights, it never


came in the way of his love for living, for life, and for an early appreciation for the concept of “like”. Forevermore this would be his primary motivation for anything he did.
The books would be the beginning of his adventure. His joy, and, he would soon discover - his dread.
He smiled at the shelves – so much knowledge and a new world tucked within its pages. A world within which he found writers who only confirmed his young beliefs regarding such topics as love and romance. Subjects which were abolished by science – and only confirmed by the heartstrings of Jack London, who knew no love…and he knew – as a teenager – no affection. The closest he ever came to nurturing was from Jennie - the woman who nursed him.
However - the future was ahead. Life was open and he was young and free. Time to study and time to learn…just don't forget the living.
The library was closing. Adventure time. He exited and walked toward the Bay on a continuing mission at which he was becoming particularly accomplished, sailing along the shores of San Francisco Bay and stealing oysters.
Why? Secondary, because it beat work in the grist mills. More importantly - because he liked it.

It was fun being an oyster pirate. Even more exciting when the California Fish Patrol gave up trying to catch him. They offered Jack a position to run down and catch pirates all over San Francisco Bay. When tired of chasing pirates, signed aboard the “Sophia Sutherland”, piloting (at 18) the three-masted schooner through a typhoon off the coast of Japan. Months

later he rode the rails over the Sierra and joined Coxy’s Army on a labor march to Washington, D.C. He never made it that far. Traveled the rails some more, and spent thirty days in jail in Buffalo, New York for doing nothing but sleeping in a hay field outside of town.

Back in California he enrolled in Oakland High School, long enough to graduate early which allowed him into the University Academy in Alameda, leading to his entrance to the University of California. But he soon tired of it. Finding the university structure had “no vitality, no awareness of life, and that the professors and students were oblivious to the social needs of the day….the professors being neither intelligent nor honest and yet they are reputed to be the best of the middle and upper classes.” He agreed with the writer Shorey’s description of college; “the passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence.”

So what to do next?


Chapter Two - The Northland

They call it the White Silence. Snow so thick you can’t see past your face. The stuff falls so silently – floating on the air like a ballerina in mid flight…gliding downward, descending without a sound…a movement of grace and ease - the laws of gravity are in submission to a ballet dancer. Likewise, snow falling gently, silently, playing with the wind, until landing softly as it kisses the earth.
Snow as white as father time – can blacken the night. Without a wind stirring and rustling the world about you, you can’t hear a thing – for snow makes no noise. On this particular night, the temperature was below a freezing 50 degrees – just another night in the Yukon Territory.

The Prospector carried his pouch of mail dutifully through the streets of Dawson City. The muddy avenue reached the tops of his boots. The cold pierced through his thick leather clothing. He had hoped that the young man who awaited his mail would have a warm fire, available for two, ready for company (the law of the Klondike).


He sloshed through the mud and leaned into the wind, finding shelter within the many saloons and dance halls which lined the street. Men and women (mostly men), found warmth alongside raging fires and the rarity of tender sheets and comforting souls in upstairs beds. Lights shown from windows and the sounds of gaiety from either side of the street, visited the prospector’s frozen eyes and ears. All things considered, he’d rather be out of a job, and find himself within the confines of those walls.
Any wall.
A warm wall.
Even a warm wall with warm sheets and a warm -
Any of the walls he left back home in Tennessee would work.
“Lord!” he said aloud, “was there something I did to tick You off?”
A shout of wind in return silenced further speech. The prospector ambled on…and reached the outside of town.
The streets were dark from the snow falling behind him. Ahead lay nothing but snow and the blackness. Not a glitter of light – anywhere. Somewhere ahead he knew a cabin and its occupant awaited him.
The prospector shouted, “London!”
The snow answered in its silence. Not a return shout, nor a volley of words. How much further to travel? Don't think about it - just one foot in front of the other. Focus. Move. One step at a time.
But complain? Really, really complain to the point of leaving the land? Never!

There was something about this land…and about being alone, just like this snow shell he was in. He felt alienated, yes, like he was the only one in the universe…couldn't see out, no one could see in. His protected space; his protected world. Many men and women, though they were few who ventured to the Northland, felt at home in the silence. It wasn't so bad, then, that he was where his soul found joy. (Being mad as a hatter had some benefits after all.)
Therefore, other than the drawback that his bones were freezing and he'd probably be dead in minutes - well, everything was peachy.
Now, where was that cabin?

* * *

Inside the cabin, warming his feet by a Klondike stove, Jack London allowed memory to warm his heart, as he grabbed on to his past and wrote on what he knew. He was a disciplined writer who wrote methodically to the tune of his own soul; dedicated to the truth of memory. His wish, just be real, write…with the reverent hope of staying away from the dreariness of the ordinary.
Though very much influenced by Rudyard Kipling and others, he had adapted and maintained his own style. He had been criticized for writing far less than literary perfection, rather accused of being a common man's writer and writing for the cultured starving and poor – well, he thought, so had Shakespeare been such a writer. He was in good company. To the world, he just muttered, "why should I care?”

In the long winter days of cabin life, Jack wrote of tales of not just the northland, but his adventures piloting ships across the Pacific, hopping freight cars, riding rails from California to the east and across Canada. And, well, not to forget being an oyster pirate. And a member of the Fish Patrol. Along with his youthful socialist views and other concepts that danced in his brain ceaselessly. What, pray tell, did other miners in the frozen land talk about? He didn’t know, he didn’t care. The gold he strove for was locked in his soul. He just had to do the mental digging – often, he thought, harder to do than to pound the daylights out of rocks and wading through icy streams. Young, he had lived a full life already, it was just now time to write something about it.
Still...

Still he wondered...(second guessing was a life long trait, along with a good excuse for not placing pencil to paper. Not writing is the easiest thing in the universe to do.)
And this is what he wondered - was any of it - would any of his efforts - be worth the pain of the mother who bore him? The madness to break away from the toil of back-breaking work and impossibly long hours - like his father had done – and for what? To see all that work come to meaninglessness…like chasing after the wind.

Even as a child, he had to work long, sweaty hours, side by side with other children. Sixteen hour days. Forget school. Everyone in every family that he knew had to work to survive the


day. He pondered - what then was the point? Was there escape? Would he find it in made up worlds?

He certainly now was deep into his own. Writing took him to ethereal realms where he could disappear, melt away within the firmament of imagination. Creating worlds out of nothing he became each and every character, acting out each and every scene. Therein he could disappear, and become his own re-creator. The coldness, the cabin, even hunger, slipped away while he was in a made up world.

Resolved - he would escape the toil of life through writing, and make up his own path of life. He would live to see the sun.
* * *
The Prospector stared at his feet, which he could feel no longer. The only evidence he had that they were there was the command his mind was giving them to keep moving. Staring at his feet, he could see the order being carried out. A good portion of his mind, though...was beginning to drift...and his soul began to beg for the green leaves and kisses of his homeland sun.
Snow and snow and endless snow...would it ever end? Where was that blasted cabin?
And then…a flicker of light broke through.
Tennessee and warm sun drenched kisses disappeared and his feet took on new life. For a few paces more a lone cabin appeared out of the falling snow. The Prospector picked up his pace - suddenly forgetting about his content world of living inside a white, however freezing,

cave. Light from one solitary window flickered and promised a life within. Atop the roof was a pipe, and of the pipe bellowed smoke, which promised a fire, which promised warmth. The Prospector was surprised the smoke didn’t crystallize and send icicles plummeting down and shattering the roof.
He managed to open his mouth, but only one word formed, and he let it out with all his might –
"London!"
As he dragged himself to the door, the Prospector really didn’t expect the man inside to hear him – the wind carrying his words away with an angel's ease.
Reaching the door, he banged away, raising his voice, again shouting, “London!”

* * *
Jack studied his pages. Going over words and checking for clarity. Consistency. Cut down on all those annoying polysyllables. And, yes, he wasn't Shakespeare and didn't try to be. Write clear, to-the-point sentences which didn't linger the reader to the point of boredom.
One such offending page he wadded into a tight little ball, and flung it across the cabin, hitting a tin cup which clung upon a rusty nail on the door. The door sounded back with a rapping noise. Jack thought nothing of it - rather odd, though, that a wadded up piece of his work would make such a sound. Probably large chucks of ice falling off the roof, and banging on the door as it fell. Yawn. No matter. Back to his safe place in the world of words.
He could penetrate very deep into that world.

Now, he disappeared into a made up world of Artic life. A man; a woman; another man and a dog sled team. Imaginary characters, however the land and the space were not. It was drama which was happening on a daily basis. And this is what he wrote:
"'Mush! Baldy! Hi! Mush on!' Mason worked his whip smartly and, as the dogs whined low in the traces, broke out the sled with the gee pole. Ruth followed with the second team, leaving Malemute Kid, who had helped her start, to bring up the rear. Strong man, brute that he was, capable of felling an ox at a blow, he could not bear to beat the poor animals, but humored them as a dog driver rarely does- nay, almost wept with them in their misery.
'Come, mush on there, you poor sore-footed brutes!' he murmured, after several ineffectual attempts to start the load. But his patience was at last rewarded, and though whimpering with pain, they hastened to join their fellows.
‘No more conversation; the toil of the trail will not permit such extravagance. And of all deadening labors, that of the Northland trail is the worst. Happy is the man who can weather a day's travel at the price of silence, and that on a… "
"LONDON!"
Someone, more like some thing broke through his wall, broke through his boundaries, yanked him from out of his made up world and sent him crashing back to the present reality.


Ruth, Mason, the Kid, the dogs, all gone. He had been pulled out and he was not happy about it. Who was this fiend who –
"I'm COLD! Ez you in there or ez you ain't!" came this noise which sounded more frozen than anything human.
Jack tapped pencil upon paper – glared through the door and through the soul of the destroyer of innocent imaginary characters freezing and toiling in imaginary worlds. Jack was about to rip the fiend's heart out when he thought of two things:
One, the law of the Klondike.
Two, if he did not answer the door and let the frozen voice in, the owner might just keep pounding there the entire Artic winter long.
He rose.
* * *
The Prospector screamed, begged, and if he cried you’d see ice cycles forming on his eye lids, "I know yer in thar! I kin hear ya talkin' to yer self! Come on, 'ave a heart! Said I'd bring yer mail and all - well dang 'ere it tiz and 'ere I am."
Nothing.
The Prospector pounded the door. "I'm shiverin' clean through me bones....now I mean it I tell ya! Would yer be givin' a body ah -"
The door swung opened and an arm came prodding out, holding in its hand a cup of steaming coffee. The Prospector, speechless, couldn't believe his good fortune - took it, held it - it was gold.

With one hand holding the door open, the other grabbed a hold of the Prospector's coat and pulled him inside to the warmth of the cabin.
* * *
Inside, Jack London closed the door, and the Prospector merely stood there, reeling in his coffee find.
Jack went back to his comfort spot, “What's your name?" asked Jack.
"Russell Addison," said the Prospector. "You must be Mr. London."
"Jack," he corrected, as he picked up a fresh piece of paper, to begin again.
The Prospector looked about for a spot to nestle in...a place close to the fire would work. Why, he even figured, jumping into the flames was certainly an option.
Warming himself by the fire and rubbing his hands, the Prospector gave a look about the cabin. He looked - saw nothing unusual – the same trappings of any miner's cabin. Lantern hung on a nail - snow shoes leaning against a wall. Blankets, pick ax, pan, leather bags, various jars of various sizes, a coffee pot sitting on a Klondike stove.
His eyes then lit on the curious form of Jack London. What caught his attention was this...this scribbling thing he seemed to be doing. He couldn't figure it out. Folks in the arctic didn't have time to do such things...never heard of such a thing as writing in the freezing winter...a thousand miles from any thing remotely making sense.
"Oh!" the Prospector took from his still ice covered body the pouch full of Jack's mail. He tossed it. Jack caught it, and let it drop out of his hand. Back to writing.


The Prospector nestled his self upon a leather chair, which wasn't more than four pieces of wood fashioned together with leather straps. His knees creaked and he uttered a groan as he squirmed to get comfortable.
He broke the chair. Crashed on the floor of the cabin, his arms flailing, but by golly he didn’t drop one sip of that coffee.
Jack didn’t react, as such feats of coffee rescue were quite common in the Klondike. Jack was just trying to get back into the world of Ruth, Mason, and the Kid.
Sitting himself upright now, the Prospector looked at what Jack was doing and could control himself no longer. His frozen frame was now overcome, even swimming, with curiosity.
"What yer writin'?" asked the Prospector.
"A story," said Jack, not looking up.
"Like a book?"
"Yeah, like a book."
"What kinda book?"
"A story book."
"Like a picture book?"
"Yeah, like a picture book."
"Got pictures in thar maybe?" the Prospector said with hopeful eyes.
Jack gave him a glance which wasn’t hopeful, which ended any form of hope from the Prospector’s gleeful eyes. Still, his fallen countenance aside, said (well, perhaps he had heard wrong) ,“No pictures, eh?”

"Nope."
“Well, if that don’t beat all,” said the Prospector. Then memory loosened its grip within the frozen cells of his brain, the Prospector straightened up, thumped his chest with a finger, and gaily sang out, “I read a book….”
Write, write, ignore, ignore, write, write, disappear...
"....once.” The Prospector grinned with the memory. Now, if only he could remember the title of the book.
Jack London sighed. Laid down pencil and paper and crumpled up the page he was working on, and set it flying across the room - said ball of paper bouncing off the cabin door, and plopping right into the Prospector's coffee.
He tried again. Took another blank page and stared at it. Hopefully something magical would leap out and appear right there as words which would amaze and cause the heart to wander along with him.
But nothing came.
Jack London did not care to wait around for inspiration. He knew it would never come. Only by work, and more work, and words, would the magic come out...but not now…not yet…but soon…
He sighed. Shook his head. His soul was now a barren field without a glimmer of artistic expression. He spotted the pouch. Picked it up. Opened. Took out the batch which lay therein. A bill from the Dawson Mining Company, a reminder for a sack of coffee and tins of ...something he couldn't remember ever eating or wanting.

The next was from home, or near home, from Berkeley, California. Addressed, "The Overland Monthly", written by its publisher, Netta Eames.
HIS publisher. Finally, short story world would turn into book. The letter began –

"Mr. Jack London. Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Dear Jack. I wish this letter finds you well - wherever it may find you. I have finished reading several of your collected stories and believe they will make a fine collection of your work. Looking forward to more, and to your return home, as I eagerly await your arrival. I have requested my niece, Charmian Kittridge, to serve as editor. I know you will like her. She is distinct from other women. Different from the average sort."

Jack stopped reading, leaned back, smiled, and gave a glance at the Prospector - still trying to get comfortable. Jack actually enjoyed the company - the warmth of another human being - one didn't see many out in the northland. However, he would never let on that - although a distraction to his writing - it was nice to see a friendly face. Why, he almost spoke English.
In the Klondike, though seeing a kindred soul every now again reminded one who and what they were, and though a pleasant surprise, it was not a good occasion to get used to. For being close and chummy with anyone wasn't all that wise of an idea. For one's heart, anyway. You get to know a guy, he tells you his life story (and now the Prospector, fully settled, began to tell Jack all about his life in Tennessee), and before you know it, you've bonded - then he packs up, and


leaves...or gets shot with an arrow, or falls into a mine shaft or becomes muddy drunk and questions your ancestry or finds a woman or...
What else can happen in the northland?
"Freeze," Jack muttered, hoping the Prospector would do that very thing.
"Wuz that?" the Prospector asked.
"I said I wish I had some tea," said Jack.
"Aye," said the Prospector. "Would be nice. Now, back in Tennessee, there was this gal - now, she -"

There was always a girl in every back home story in every frozen corner of the frozen regions, thought Jack. Women were reason two why men left for the Yukon and her surrounding territories. Generally, all the women had the same name, too. Alice- May, or Annie, or Mary Sue, or even…

"Sally McGee, the gal's name was. Might still be her name, I don't know."
Jack tried to finish the letter. Netta wanted this Charmian woman to edit his work. It wasn't the fact that it was a woman who would be doing it. No, Jack never had a problem with a woman's gifts, talents, or strengths. He had been around strong women all his life. He didn't have a problem with the concept of equality of the sexes, either. He enjoyed the different ways men and women were, and he found most women could pull a day's wages just as strong and sturdy in their own way, like a man.

"What do you think," Jack toyed with the Prospector's mind, "of a woman owning and running a monthly magazine?"
"Anybody re'd it?" questioned the Prospector.
"Yeah, it's the largest circulated paper in the San Francisco Bay area," Jack didn't know if this was the case or not, he just thought of its effect.
"No, no, don't think much of it all. Never heard of such a thing. It ain't possible. Don't think so."
"It is so."
"Truth straight up?"
"As can be."
The Prospector leaned back, his mouth agape, eyes wide, his head then went crashing forward into his hands, visibly shaken with the thought. He mumbled, "Never heard the likes of that one. Not in my time. But you say it was in California?"
"IS in California."
"Well then," the Prospector sat back up, "that explains everything. Now, in the cotton fields of Tennessee, where it was blooming' and white and the ..."
Jack listened...but he wasn't there.
His soul returned to another era; another world, where women, strong women with stronger hearts, all were the stuff that filled his heart. When his youthful days were filled with youthful concepts of romance...and it was in those days he had still given thought to the notion that love really did exist. He remembered a girl. Her name was Mabel and she was his princess.

From a culture he had tried to penetrate and never could get inside; a culture of upper class and upper homes upon upper streets. Mabel was from such stock. Her parents never knew a barren day, and her mouth never knew a moment without the hope of finding food. Hers was a family he had never had. Loving, affectionate, secure.
They lived in a house of love and things which had eluded Jack in every material way - but not in his hopes and wishes and dreams. In Mabel there was a hoping of that place he wished to dwell. In her heart he had hoped to call home. Love would be his mentor and his life.
However…the girl and the dream disappeared.
Another boy from a different part of town. Parents who weren't too sure who this scruffy looking kid from the fields was all about. Dreamer. Adventurer. Self taught and even though bright enough to finish high school earlier than anyone else - still, not the cup of tea they envisioned for their little girl to spend happily ever after with.
She kissed him one autumn day. In front of the porch which was connected to her parent's fashionable house. It was goodbye. She turned, walked up the steps, and opened the door. Jack turned, his crumpled cap held tightly in his grasp. He did not watch her disappear from his life - he merely turned in the opposite direction, and walked away.

So that was love.
He would find no further comfort in its hope. Rather, bury himself inside of books, abandon notions of romance, learn about science...for science was understandable, reachable, almost


touchable. Soon he would learn how science abolished such myths as matters of the heart, particularly love.
Jack sighed.
The Prospector went on with reckless story telling abandon.
Jack was weighing in his knowledge and youthful discovery. And he wasn't all that thrilled about it either.
"And so, ya see! That's wot a woman can do to a man!" said the Prospector with a final flourish of hand, arm, eye brow and facial expression. "Now wot do yer think o' that?"
Jack just smiled. He would be a writer. And he would live. That's all he knew. He picked up the letter again, and studied the name. Charmian. Odd for a girl. Different. But, no, he wasn't panicked about a woman doing any editing...or any man, either, he just wondered who this person was, this stranger, who would be going over his work...his very life...examining his every heartstring. Tearing his work apart. Finding all its faults. Why couldn't Netta just do the editing? What was wrong with her getting in, digging, keeping the gems and discarding the nonsense?
Jack tapped his pencil against his knee.
Hmm.
Netta didn't have some secret agenda brewing, now did she?


Chapter Three - Agendas, Berkeley 1900

The morning sun had broken over the entire country's land save for the eastern side of San Francisco Bay, still shrouded in fog, still cold from the night. Then, appearing from out of the fog, galloping on a chestnut colored quarter horse, Charmian Kittridge road over the green hills of Piedmont, heading toward her home in Berkeley.

She was a different sort of woman than most of her time. When she rode a horse, it wasn't side saddle in any dainty sort of way. Rather, it was hell-bent-for-leather, all out, tackled the same way as she did to all her pursuits. Boxing, fencing, dancing, piano playing, life making. She was open and free and didn't give a care who was offended. The offended generally being other women, who did not tend to be gracious to this wild woman's ways. She was different. For she could put on the lady well-dressed-refined look and manner when she needed to, and just as easily throw on the "dress pants", or split skirt, and go horseback riding - astride, not side saddle - and play with the boys on her own terms and at their level.


Like Jack, a California native. Though he from the north, she from the south, born in Willington, in the county of Los Angeles. Her father was a cavalry officer, her mom mentally unstable, died when Charmian was young, in an insane asylum. When her dad could no longer care for her, Charmian went to northward to live with Aunt Netta.

Twenty-nine and unmarried was not a desirable position in those days. Either your husband was dead or you were an incredibly boring person to whom not the lowest unemployed gutter dwelling male soul would have anything to do with. Or, in Charmian's case, you just hadn't met any male who wasn't, essentially, a very boring person to whom had no life in them. Charmian believed in love, which delighted the women, and she believed in play, plenty of it, which delighted the men.

As her years went along, though, she was in want of a man who had life, adventure, no stuffiness in his closet - meaning heart - and who would be as loyal to her as she was prepared to be loyal to him. Translation: someone different.
Yet...
She was afraid to go completely go in that direction. As there was something to be said for the stuffy males with the starched collars and predictable routine - yes, boring but stable - lifestyles.




They had, after all, jobs. God forbid they be artists, musicians, actors, or worse - writers. And though most of the starched collars she knew had some gleam of intelligence, education, culture within their own mortal coil, all of them lacked any understanding of life - and how to live it.

Unlike artists, musicians, actors, writers and such.
This drove her up the wall, and would make her wish to go out and find some male to have a fencing dual with - without the protective tip. (Cut, slash, and stand atop the defeated, whimpering male, the proud victorious woman.)
* * *
A clambake of women, all fashionably dressed to the nines sat drinking tea at an open air cafe in Berkeley, turned their heads as they heard a sound like thunder from the north. Expecting to see a gathering storm approaching, and didn't, as the only storm witnessed was Charmian riding into town.
She knew they were there, as she streaked past them, though not looking, she could see right through them. The ladies looked, but never saw her. Which was the mystery of Charmian. No one, not since her mom, could ever find out who the real person she was...although...she never tried to hide it. That was the thing about Charmian the women could never figure out. Her self was there for the taking – unpretentious, out there, free for all to see.
She turned a corner and headed down a street lined with oak trees - which always pleased her about her home - it wasn't lined with palms. She hated palms. All her young life in Southern California she had become sickened to the sight of palm trees. Wherever one looked,

palm trees growing like sagebrush across the desert. Well, the southland WAS desert. Even the palm trees were imported.

However, in the fields of northern California, there were trees of all shapes and varieties. Oaks and elms, redwoods and sycamores, cottonwood and birch...an endless array of native tree and plant...the ethereal land of northern California. A land where no one can find just one description to call her fertile fields, mountains, shores. Picture heaven. And there is your start.

Minutes later she had unbridled, unsaddled her horse, fed him, brushed him, and turned her back to the stall, found directly behind her home. She then walked to the back porch, opened the door...and disappeared within it's Victorian walls.
The day was done. Onward to the next...still...
She paused on the staircase, leaned against a wall. Still...there was something dreadful about tomorrow – meeting yet another one of Netta's male friends. Something to do with his talent, whatever that might be. Just another pretentious, stuff shirt, starched collar accountant type fool, no doubt a lawyer who paid his servants scraps.
She sighed.
She would not concern herself with such matters as men. Not now. Go upstairs. Read. Play piano. Anything. Just get her mind off this gentleman caller. Today still had enough trouble of its own, therefore she would not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow being yet another morning of the world.

* * *
She had woken up that next morning of the world to find herself bathed in the dreadful anticipation of his calling. A meeting of which she kept remembering she had been talked into by her aunt Netta (to whom the magazine she published owned its very existence too, the Overland Monthly). Netta's mission - publish stories, promote new writers, find Charmian a mate to benefit her own career, and generally, be annoying as possible.
Charmian stretched, yawned, rose from her bed, and prepared herself in front of a mirror. All this while knowing, and choosing to ignore, the presence of Netta, staring at her in the reflection of her full length mirror.
Netta tapped her foot at the door way. Arms folded. Waiting. Charmian couldn't wait any longer either - for her aunt to disappear. Finally, not standing it any more –
"Was there something you wanted, dear aunt?"
"Only your happiness," said Netta from the reflection.
Charmian, finishing her make-up, "Do you ever tire of these stuffed shirt aristocratic college fools you insist sending my way?"
"You're twenty-nine now, in that you've proved your point."
"Being?"
"You're old."
"And all my friends are married. Thank you for depressing my day."
"Just trying to help."
Charmian turned to face her, "By dragging me into relationships for your own agenda?"

"Just wishing to improve our standing. For example, Aaron James. Rich. Powerful. Could help our -"
"'Our?'"
"- YOUR career."
"He's married."
"Details."
"Facts."
"Then don't confuse me with them!"
"He's also empty headed."
"All men are empty headed."
"And all of them a penchant for promises - and all of them from the bed. I've never had a relationship built on respect. Integrity. And dare I say it - LOVE."
"Why let it all stand in the way of power, money - sex?"
"Oh, I don't know. A little adventure would be different," she stopped her frantic pace, and sighed. Long and deeply. "Fine. This fellow you want me to meet. Does he have a grain of life, of adventure in him?"
"Adventure runs through his veins."
"Sure it's not insanity like the rest of the male sex?"
"I'm sure. I've been interviewing him. He's published in our paper."
Charmian was stopped cold by that one. "You didn't tell me he's a writer."
"He's a writer."

"Thanks."
"Charmian, he's a real individual. A true man of the world. He's just twenty two, already piloted a three master schooner, traveled to Japan, rode the rails from here to New York, was called the Boy Socialist of Oakland, did two years of college work at Berkeley in a four month period, is currently returning from gold prospecting, and, I might add...was even once an oyster pirate in San Francisco Bay. Naturally, he became a writer. Bound to be -"
"- an over night sensation. Yawn."
"He's poor, you'd love him."
"But a writer?"
"You are listening. Now, finish getting dressed, because he'll be here any min..." she stopped talking. Her attention being caught by a bicycle being driven up her walk, a boyish young man, riding upon it. She turned back to Charmian, "any moment, actually."
From downstairs, they could here a knock coming from the front door.
"Already?" Charmian said.
"Niece. He's just coming over to drop off his collection of short stories, meet you, then he's leaving."
"Painless."
"I just wonder what you'll think of him."
From somewhere in the house, they could hear another woman's voice. "Miss Eames! A gentleman to see you!"
"Coming, Hannah!" said Netta, a tad or two louder than lady like. But that was Netta.

She walked toward the hallway, Charmian following her, "He's a writer. He's poor. Rather redundant, wouldn't you say?"
"Just be polite"
"I am always polite."
* * *
At the entry way, at the bottom of the staircase, a woman in the costume of a housemaid greeted the women descending.
"You didn't let him in?" asked Netta.
"No mum. I didn't think this could be the gentleman, he is just a boy, dressed like a tramp. Smells like a sailor."
"Maybe," Charmian said, "that's why she didn't let him in."
"I thought it best to tell him to wait outside."
"Not necessary," said Netta, reaching for the door.
"You never know, Netta. Hannah could be saving us from a life of -"
The final volley ceased before it crossed Charmian's lips, as the door opened wide and Jack London stood before them. Smiling, holding his cap in his hands. His demeanor proud but not smug, his eyes shinning brightly but not arrogantly, his manner like his collar - not stuffy nor starched.
Different.
"Why, Jack," said Netta, "you're here. Do come in."
"Thank you," said Jack walking across the threshold.

"This is my niece, Miss Charmian Kittridge".
Stretching out her hand to him, in melodramatic fashion which would make Sarah Bernhardt faint, "So PLEASSSEDDDDDD to make your acquaintance."
Taking her hand, wondering what to do with it, other than shake it in mid air high above his head, "Pleased to make yours. Actually," he said with his boyish grin, "we've crossed paths before."
"We have?"
"You have?" said Netta.
"We have. Yes. It was a couple of years ago, still, I remember you…"
Then the light came on.
"The social in Piedmont. If I remember, you were the fellow passed out on the floor."
Netta, dying,
Jack, unfazed, "Nope. Must have been someone else. Never been drunk a day in my life…sorta."
Netta, wanting to change the subject with a desperate abandon, "Jack, the proofs?"
"Right here," Jack said, pulling out from underneath his shirt, a brown package. Thick with pages. Handing them to Netta, but looking at her niece, "Charmian. I love your name. Means 'joy' in Greek, doesn't it?"
Charmian had two thoughts, one was to hit him, what with his airy attitude. However chose not to, as he might fall on the floor and bleed all over everything. The other was to give him a verbal education on how to properly talk to a lady. She had misplaced her memory for the

moment that this Jack fellow was the type and attitude she had always wanted in a man and had never seen. Instead, like a child crying for ice cream and finally getting it, looked at the situation, and didn't know really what to do. Gaze? Devour? Look annoyed? Smile with glee? Or simply toss aside?
She chose, for the moment anyway, to go for annoyed. She wasn't sure WHY, she just felt it was her part to play.
"Jack," said Netta, diffusing the situation, whatever it might become, "would you be a dear and place your work in the parlor?"
"Of course." Jack smiled at both. Then spotted Hannah lurking in the back. Gave her eye contact, and said as he departed the room, "nice dress."
Hannah placed a hand to her mouth (to either stifle a scream or a laugh, we'll never know), and scurried away into the depths of the house.
When out of ear shot, Charmian whispered rather flippantly toward Jack's direction, "I-love-your-name."
"Niece!"
"So that's your wonderful Jack London. A less than elegant caller!"
"Granted. And I don't think he missed your barely concealed critical look my dear. Nothing escapes that boy."
"Other than his tailor?"
"I doubt he can afford better. Besides, with genius, clothing doesn't matter."
"Genius doesn't pay the bills, Netta."

"His will."
"He's not the only genius amongst your friends. None of whom ever came to our house looking like this one," Charmian said, heading back up the stair case.
"Where are you going?"
"I believe upstairs. That, apparently, is where my feet are taking me. I believe I'll follow their lead."
"Okay, why are going upstairs?"
"To play Chopin."
"Now?"
"It'll keep me from knocking senseless your oyster pirate."
Jack reappeared.
"Jack," said Netta, overly cheerful. "You found your way back."
"I always do."
"Oh, spare this wandering soul," said Charmian, at the top of the stairs, her head tilted back, her long hair dangling, "who goeth to wander again."
"Where she going?" Jack asked Netta,
"To insanity!" shouted Charmian, "wanna come?"
She opened a door. Entered a room. Closed it behind her with a melodramatic thud.
"Hmmm. Never been to insane. Have been to Buffalo."
Netta, contemplating dying. Instead, said, "Jack? The interview?"
"Interview..."

"For the Overland Monthly. You were coming over to drop off proofs and to let me interview you."
"Oh! Yes, soon. Can we, though, can we wait -"
"Wait?"
Jack began to climb the stairs, "Yes, we'll do the interview. Not yet, but, umm, soon."
"Okay. Of course. When…" she stopped. Watched him climb. "Where are you going?"
"To find out where insane is."
On the other side of the door. The music from the soul of Chopin played crisply and clearly, though muddled, it sounded as fine Jack had ever heard. He decided to hear it un-muddled. And without fear - or knocking - opened the door. "What took you," said the woman responsible for making love with the piano keys.
Jack closed the bedroom door behind him. Not a worthwhile practice, to enter a room in a woman's house without permission. In this or any century. But it wasn't a typical moment. Jack wasn't typical. He didn't think like others, and didn't attempt to be like anyone else other than himself. What he did was hear the sounds of a beautiful composer played, he presumed, by the beautiful fingers which had stretched out to him, not three minutes ago. He followed beauty wherever it led him. He liked beauty. As he did everything based upon the motive of "like".

This motive was something no one - except Charmian - would ever grasp about Jack. He did things simply motivated by "like". No deep hidden agenda nor drama. Just that simple notion of living by what his soul choose by what he cared, what he appreciated. He liked sailing on the

Bay because he liked the freedom the sail, the water, the wind gave him. He liked piloting three-misted schooners through gale force winds - not because he felt it was the male danger thing to do - to be a hero, even - he did it because he liked it.

He liked to write because it paid the bills and was a much better alternative to the factories he had to work at as a child. He liked horses and he liked to defend the rights of the poor, and speak up for the oppressed in lectures, in rally's, and again through the power of the word.

He liked the moment. He found contentment in the here and now. And in this here and now was beauty...from the music...and from the woman who was making her instrument sing.
He was proud to be his “own normal”.

Jack said to Charmian -
"I've a great fondness for music. The keys like you."
Still playing, stopping for nothing, she said, "Tell me. What do you do when you're not stealing defenseless oysters from San Francisco Bay?"
"Write. Listen to music. Read. Sail. Lecture. And I don't pirate anymore," Jack moved over to examine the many books on the many library shelves of Charmian's parlor. He was amazed, and appreciated their number.
"Pity. Made for an interesting picture. What else?'


"I horseback ride. Don't walk. Never walk. I hate walking. I love too..." Jack's voice trailed away, lost in thought...deep in thought - finally broken -
"Love to what?"
"To dream," Jack said. He found one book, which he slipped from its place, and opened up the cover. "Boxing", was the title. Interesting, thought Jack. Not what he'd expect to find in a lady's library.
Charmian turned to look at Jack, saw what he was reading, and was surprised he wasn't shaking his head in amusement.
Jack, impressed, simply said, "You have books on boxing...find it strange that a girl -"
"I box. Thought everybody knew that."
"We must have a match one day."
"One day," Charmian stopped playing, picked up a book which rested near her, and tossed it to Jack, "here."
Jack caught it, and read the title, "'Song of Solomon'".
"What are your views on love?"
"Sex?"
"No, love."
"Never placed much stock in it."
"And what brought you to this sad conclusion?"
"My upbringing. I came from a family of spiritualists and strict materialists. They only preached a philosophy of science."

"What about affection?"
"None. See - the only affection I ever received was from the woman who nursed me."
"Mom?"
"No, my Aunt Jenny."
"Your aunt?"
"She isn't my aunt. She was my mammy. A black woman with a bigness of heart that - well, she'll be the only argument for 'love' I'll ever..."
"What is it?"
"You know, libraries are frightened to have the types of books you own."
"They're my jewels."
Then – in the rule that states that all things beginning possible romance must be broken up eventually – Netta entered from the hallway. She walked in as though she owned the place. Well, she did own the place. Still, thought Charmian, she might have knocked.
"How are we getting along?" asked Netta.
"Perfect. Go away!" shouted Charmian.
"Just checking on you two."
"Now that you've checked," said Charmian, "disappear."
"Oh, you're such a kidder," said Netta. Turning to Jack, "you did receive my letter indicating Charmian will be reviewing and editing -"
"My works. Yes. As you wrote -"
"You'll find her extremely competent - "

"I understood she was self supporting."
"She was brought up to rely on no one but herself " said Netta.
"'One must do to survive.'" said Charmian
Jack smiled. "Kipling said that."
"You've read him?”
"Of course I've read him. There's no end to Kipling in my work."
"Well read oyster pirate, prospector, and whatever else you are."
"Yes, I know," Jack said with a smile, "what am I today? However, thank you. And now, I'm afraid I'm lingering. I hate lingering."
Jack headed for the door, and entered the hallway. Charmian followed. Followed by Netta.
"Thank you for coming. I'm…" Charmian, a moment after catching her breath - "pleasantly surprised."
At the downstairs landing, Jack said to Netta, "We'll have to rain check that interview..."
"Of course," said Netta.
"When can I see you again?" Jack asked Charmian.
"Saturday?"
"We'll go riding."
Jack smiled at Charmian, tipped his cap to Netta, turned, and took two paces toward his bicycle, as Netta closed the door, turning to Charmian.
"What do you think of my boy now?"


Charmian smiled, turned aside, and tried, very hard, to be remote, distant, unassuming, and innocent.
She failed.
"What ever do you mean?"


Chapter 4 - Gatherings
"...to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all."
- Jack London
Chocolate.
She needed chocolate and she wanted it NOW.
He wasn't listening.
She wasn't speaking.
SHE felt it nothing to imagine that HE should be knowing what she was wanting without HER having to voice the word. Unfortunately, HE was oblivious and didn't know how much he was, certainly, a cup and saucer short of a full place setting.
However, SHE already knew HOW oblivious he truly was. Why can't a man simply read a woman's mind?
She – Carrie Sterling - wasn't, in the end, surprised.
He – George Sterling, poet laureate of San Francisco - was fencing with Jack London and she was sitting on a very large rock. Said bolder sat at water's edge of the Russian River, weaving about the Redwood forests of northern California.

Carrie could have cared less that the Russian River flowed through any forest, and less that it flowed along these banks through Humbolt County. She was mad, unhappy, wanted a chair and wanted to be home where there weren’t things like – bugs.
"MEN" she uttered, as she tried to get comfortable on the rock. Long dresses didn't go well either, not out here, not on a warm day. She played with her hair, hoping it wasn't messed up...not too much, by the wind and her boredom.
"Good, Jack! Ram him through!" said a nearby woman, Anna Strunsky, applauding wildly.

Anna – Russian born and a poet with a heart with wings. Her raven hair cascading down upon her shoulders...dark eyes which masked the depth of her soul. She was, in a time when men and women weren't friends, Jack's best.

Carrie gave Anna a bored look. Strange, in these days, that a man and a woman could be a friend.
Imagine that.
Better, thought Carrie, someone should figure out a way that a woman wouldn't have to wear long dresses bloody everywhere.
Jack and the Sterlings were not alone.

"The Crowd" as they called themselves, had gathered for one of their Saturday excursions. A clan of Bohemian artists - meeting, dreaming, playing and enjoying - and accepting one another

was their way of life. A life style, it must be noted, not quite appreciated by the normal world where such boisterous fun by the dream makers was looked down upon with general disdain.

"The Crowd" consisted of some of the top crafts men and women in the San Francisco Bay Area. Aforementioned George Sterling, along with fellow poet Joaquin Miller (the "poet of the Sierras", he was called), writer Mary Austin, artists like Xavier Martinez, and there was Cloudesday Johns and Jim Whittaker and many more. Non-artist wives and husbands congregated, too. Enjoying the free spirit of the day, the free spirit of living. All, that is, save for Carrie, and for one particular friend - Bess Maddern.

“The Crowd” would fence, ride bikes, play music, listen to another's works, and, annually camp out at the Bohemian Grove for their summer "hijenks".
But this was not the Bohemian Grove.
That was evident because women were there along the Russian River.
Today was just an adventure. Bring your wife, girl, kid, and don't forget the food. Careful to park your horse and/or carriage. Don't mind the wind.
Today was just a romp. Fencing matches. Food. You were only a starving artist if you couldn't catch a fish.

"Cut, slash and run!" yelled Anna, "before George discovers how really silly your thought processes go!"

"I already know how silly his thought processes go!" said George, taking a swipe at Jack's head.
"George!" screamed Carrie. Jack only laughed.
"He'll draw no blood from me!" said Jack, lunging, countering, lunging.
"Hope he draws more than blood, dear friend," said Anna, "and cut out that silly scientific approach to romance you have a penchant for, you materialist monist you."
"You're a wha - he's a what?" Carrie asked, still wishing for that chocolate.
"Materialist monist," said Anna.
"And that would mean?”
"He simply doesn't believe that spirit and nature coexist in man," said George, countering Jack's moves, trying to find an opening he would never get.
Maybe.
If Jack kept talking (something he was well practiced), George might be able to run him through with is foil.
"All phenomena,” said Jack, “whether it be an emotional response, or a sunrise, can be reduced to a chemical reaction."
"Emotion...reduced to science", said Anna.
"Everything can be explained by scientific principles....Aghhh!" said Jack. "Don't move while I'm slicing you to ribbons!"
"What about love?" said Mary, who had been playing catch with a multi-colored ball - tossing it to an eight year old girl.

"A worthless quirk of biology", replied Jack.
"Find any satisfaction in that?" said George.
"None whatsoever! That that!" replied Jack with a mighty forward thrust.
"Jack won't marry for love..." said Anna, toying with Jack.
"He'll only marry for the breeding of strong Saxon sons!" said George, trying to counter, and not succeeding.
"Straight...as an arrow...I lunge toward thee!" Jack did so, thrusting his sword into the chest of George, who fell over backwards, landing on the ground by Xavier's boots. Xavier, who was wearing them, moved them.
Bess smiled a thin, short smile. Such a child. But I love him. (Well, that was her.)
Jack stepped on George, with one foot, pointing his foil at George's heart.
"I find sexual conquest much more rewarding than 'love'," said Jack.
"How nice for you," said Anna, humoring him with a dainty, humoring applause....
"I find no reason to abandon the doctrines of the books. WE - are thusly enlightened and that light shows us that the future holds bright for science, and the doing away of romantic inclinations."
"Exactly!" said Bess, then, after a moments thought, "well, not exactly."
"Jack London," proclaimed Xavier, raising an invisible glass in a melodramatic toast, "in all manner of conquest, an optimist - regardless of how misplaced."
"I think," said George, "he's more of a pessimist."
"Not at all!" said Jack, "no one who is a lover - "

"Ohhh!" shouted the "the Crowd" as one.
" - and a dreamer, can be a pessimist."
"I think George is referring to your love of Ecclesiastes," said Mary.
"How such a depressing book ever made it into the Bible," said Xavier.
"If you bothered to read it through to the end, you would find, that everything...," said Jack, giving eye contact to every breathing soul about him, before continuing, "tallied at life's end, is pointless and shallow without....without..."
He stumbled on his own thought as well as Ecclesiastes’ ending line.
"Were you going to say, love?" teased Anna.
"Was I?" said Jack, recovering, "what was I just saying about sexual conquest?"
They had to laugh at that one. And they did.
* * *
Carrie was tired of the rock, tired of her husband, his poetry, his art, but most of all she was tired of not having chocolate and most of all she was tired of Jack. She yawned, stood, and said, "Jack, people will think…"
And Jack said:
"Why should I care what people think? Let 'em say I'm a rough, savage fellow, untrained, unrefined, self-made. A man which strives, with a fair measure of success, to hide beneath an attitude of roughness and unconventionality. Do I attempt to un-convince them? It's just easier to leave their convictions alone."


He stopped. He looked around. Forever to his last breath the command he had over people...the attention, the respect, shown upon him...amazed him. The thing was - he never had even tried. He was just himself. He just wanted to be and be alive and to share that life. With his forever dancing eyes he smiled and this is what he told them –
"It's so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all."
The little girl tossed the ball to Mary, but Mary wasn't watching. It hit her foot, caromed off and skipped off a rock and landed at Carrie's feet.
She bent over to pick it up.
She threw it at George.
"Can we go home now?"
* * *
In the magical time between day and twilight, there is an ethereal feeling in the northern California climate. It makes young hearts beat in anticipation of the coming sunset, followed by the falling night. It is time to water gardens and finish harvesting vineyards. The fish prepare to jump in the crystal valley streams and people out on jaunts prepare for home.
Not a lot of street lights along the Russian River.
Most of "the Crowd" had left. Jack and Anna stayed. To discuss what they always discussed, which was the subject of –
"Love. Tell me, Jack. Why do you have such a difficulty about this little subject - open minded as you often proclaim."

Jack Smiled.
They walked together along the river's edge. Slowly. No purpose nor agenda. Just a man and a woman, walking, talking...friends.
“Anna, there is no need for love. Love is not practical. It is a myth which will propel us into the future and science is its fuel."
"You really are a materialist", said Anna.
"Completely."
"Dear soul, don't feel so happy about it."
"I'm not particularly 'happy’ about it. I'm just at grips with reality."
"Love is reality. Love is freedom. Love is -"
"Love is a trap set by nature for the individual. One must not do nor base anything on such frivolous things which science can not explain. Romance being in the same mix."
"Do you discount relationships between a man and a woman? And dare I mention marriage?"
"I'm all for marriage."
"Then what - in your well learned opinion - should be the basis for a couple to marry?"
"Certain qualities....which are discerned from the mind….in a rational, explainable way. The reason one should not marry is for any concept of love."
"I am REALLY sorry I asked."
"One who marries for love, is simply not rational."
She laughed.

She said, "Right. You want her for her mind, her brains, her attention to philosophy and not have a worry what flowers you might bring her. So, pray tell, enlighten me some more."
"You're teasing me," he said with a smile.
"And they only said you were slow."
"Man should choose a mate based not on things which are really childhood fantasy - for example - compatibility, chemistry - rather, on what is essential for their own race."
He knew he hadn't won her over. Which is why he loved her. She could match him word for word, line for line. It was like what he and George had been doing. Fencing. With Anna, it wasn't with swords, it was with words and kindred hearts.
"You argue so brilliantly and passionately - so passionately as to suspect that you are not as certain of your position as you claim to be."
"I only claim to be justified in living the life I have."
"The narrow minded one?"
"I can afford to be - I'm right."
Anna turned to look at him as they continued to walk.
She saw him smile at her.
Not in arrogance did he debate her words.
Was it love written across his face? What was his soul struggling and fighting about? Why the war within?
She laughed at his face.
"What?"

"That'll win a girl's heart for sure."
"It has."
And Anna turned to look up at him in wonder. She wondered who. And more, wondered what had happened....Jack never settled on "one" particular woman in his -
"By the way, Anna," said Jack. "A heart is an organ which pumps blood. Nothing more."
And that is when she pushed him into the river.
* * *
The birds sang and the long shadows lengthened longer from the towering Redwood trees. The stream played music with the rocks and the first fish leaped out to snare an unsuspecting fly. Jack and Anna laughed into the twilight.
And in the far background a woman stood in a stand of Redwoods. Watching. Contemplating. The man she was totally, and completely, in love with was frolicking like a child in the California twilight....with another one of those Bohemian artist types. Oh, how she loathed! However put up with, for the sake of her Jack.
Her name was Bess.



Chapter 5 - Like
"One Life, and Why Not Live It?" - Jack London

She had woken up with every intention of seeing the sunrise. Instead, cloudy skies greeted her blood shot eyes. Blood shot because she had spent most of the night being unable to sleep. For the coming dawn meant the coming day, and which would signal soon, the appearance of her new friend.
It was Saturday. And he had promised to take her riding.
She stretched and smiled. For gloomy as it was outside, within her soul there was a sun shining brightly. You could see it in her hazel eyes. Eyes that danced. And mouth which could form a smile like a river can form a brilliant canyon. She was - certainly if not in love - deep, deep, in like.
Pouring over "The Son of the Wolf," Charmian saw past every word, was driven deeper into the story...she disappeared within the pages of his collection of northland tales. She joined the Malamute Kid and Ruth as they urged their dog-sled team through the frost and bitter cold. She shivered with the nameless man who thought he'd out wit even his dog - while he was starving

and dying - his dog was too smart to stay anywhere near his starving finger tips...and the dog ran away to safety.
She joined the wilderness trail - and was there - panning for gold and hunting deer. Adventuring into the wilds where no one could claim ever being before. She began to feel, within, a connection to this - oyster pirate.
She was getting to know the man through his words.
Forget "like".
She was falling in love.
"Charmian!"
"WHAT! You don't have to scream from the stair well, aunt, I'm not deaf yet."
"Jack isn't here. When do you think he'll be here? Do you think he misplaced his calendar?"
"Funny. I thought I was the one he had a date with."
"Oh, silly, Jack is everybody's date. You're just…"
"I'm just what?"
"The lucky girl who gets him today."
“That certainly breeds a ton of confidence in me.”
“If you play your cards right – “
"- we'll see - "
"- he should fall helplessly in love with you, and take you up the career ladder with him - "


"If YOU play YOUR cards right," Charmian said, "you'll have a rich successful nephew-in-law writer whom you can proudly say owes to YOU all that richness and success."
"Of course. I have no such pretensions for anything else, my dear."
Charmian smiled, and rose from her bed to walk to her aunt and greet her with a kiss.
"And that is why I love you," Charmian said, "no one is - at the same time - diabolical AND as honest about it as you."
"Miss Kittridge!" came a yell.
"I wish Hannah wouldn't shout," said Netta.
"I wish BOTH of you wouldn't shout," said Charmian.
"What, Hannah?", said Netta, as she went half way down the stairs to meet Hannah, on her way up.
"Messenger just arrived," Hannah handed over two letters to Netta.
Netta saw one for Charmian, and one addressed to herself.
"Oh, how nice...from Jack."
She climbed back up the stairs. Entered Charmian's room, as Charmian was getting dressed.
"For you," said Netta, handing a letter to Charmian.
"Don't you people knock?" asked Charmian, taking the letter.
"You're welcome," said Netta, as she turned about and headed back out of the room, opening her own letter.


Charmian walked to her day window. Sat down. Leaned against the wall, opened her letter.
And this is what she read:
"Dear Charmian, it will be impossible for me to keep this Saturday's engagement. My letter to your aunt will explain..."
Suddenly, like the planet Mars was streaking through her home, Charmian could hear Netta screaming from down below.
Charmian continued...
"Sometime in the future, perhaps. Sincerely, Jack London."
The letter slipped through her fingers and whether it ever landed or not Charmian could have cared less. Her heart, on the other hand, fell downward into a pit which was named, "again."
"Oh....well...." she softly spoke into her tangled, shattered remains of hope.
Moments later, Netta was stumbling up the stairs, shaking. She was shaking across the stair well and she was shaking as she opened Charmian's bedroom door. And she was shaking as she handed the letter to Charmian. With reluctance, Charmian took, read, and let it fall to the floor.
This is what it said:
"My dear Mrs. Eames, I must beg off from going to your place Saturday. You know I do things quickly. Last Saturday I met with your niece Charmian. Sunday morning I had not the slightest intention of doing what I am going to do. By afternoon the idea came, and I made up my mind. By evening I began the search for a mate. Monday the quest was well under way, and thus, this Saturday morning I shall wed, Bess Madern. One

only has one life, and why not live it? Besides, I shall be a wholesome man because of this marital restraint. Sincerely yours, Jack London."
Charmian sighed.
Netta paced. She was beside herself. How could she do this to her? "I mean Charmian!" she said out loud.
"Whom are you speaking too?" asked Charmian.
"I meant, how could he do this to YOU."
"He did. It's done."
"How can you be taking this so calm?"
"Experience. Learned long ago that being frantic - like you right now - doesn't do a whole lot of good. Not in the long run...not in the..." she sat on the edge of the bed...staring blankly at nothing in particular.
"He's crazy!" said Netta. "A sensible, considered marriage for a creative genius like that!"
More pacing.
"One life - and why not live it? Marrying in cold blood is living life? Ha! Crazy like a March Hare, I tell you!"
"Netta, Netta," Charmian sighed, collapsing backwards on the bed, "he's saner than most."
"He thinks he is."
"Or thinks he is. He's simply directing his madness into what he perceives are practical channels."


Netta stopped at the doorway. Arms crossed. Fuming.
"There is NOTHING practical, it seems...about Jack Lon-"
"Mrs. Eames!" came Hannah's voice.
"What?" shouted both Netta and Charmian.
"Mr. London is at the door. He's with a woman."
Netta and Charmian exchanged glances.
"Is that all?" Netta tried to sound casual.
"No mum. She's dressed very nice and she's very pretty."
Charmian growled.
Netta sighed.
Heading to the stairs Netta muttered, "Nothing practical at all."
* * *
She had fallen in love with his words. They took her to places she had never been before. The men with starched collars and degrees never took her to such places. But they were men - she justified - who had real careers and reality written across their bleak, shallow souls. They had
steady careers, and not - a Bohemian one. She could love them for what she saw in that land of what she perceived as reality. Stability. All together – predictable security.

Jack, well, he was just about words. She had fallen (she told herself one thousand nine hundred eighty two times) in love with his words. He was a wordsmith, nothing more than that. And she


was very, very, very glad she had not fallen and made the mistake of her life. Now, he was someone's else's nightmare. Pity for Bess.

At the top of the staircase, she could see Netta greeting Jack and Bess at the door. Charmian sighed again. And let the agony - she hoped it would feel more like relief - escape her soul, her chest, and escape from out of the disappointment of her mouth.
She had been down this road too often. What was this thing about artists?
To the gallows with them all.
* * *
"I heard you were getting married today," Netta said to Jack, as collected as any woman inwardly going out of her mind. Outwardly, Netta could be as generous and polite as any lady - as any lady needed to be who was a professional working in a man's world. She could play all parts.
Charmian inched slowly down the staircase. Stopping a quarter way down. Watching. Maybe, somehow, if she stared long and hard enough, she could reach some conclusion as to the
soul of this person who now was invading her space. This person who dared show up and interrupt their comfortable lives and make a mockery of it all.
She wasn't thinking about Jack.
She was thinking about Bess.
"We are getting married today," said Jack.


"How nice," said Netta. Steam rising from her ears. She brushed it away with a toss of her head.
"Later this afternoon. First, Bessie and I thought - "
"Bessie?" thought Charmian. "BESSIE?"
"-we'd go for a morning ride. I mentioned my meeting with Miss Kittridge-"
"And so now it's 'Miss Kittridge,'" thought Charmian.
"- for a possible ride, and mentioned how things change, and then Bessie thought, well, let's go over and see them both!"
"A woman with a death wish," thought Charmian.
"For a few moments," said Bess, rather too cheerfully for Charmian and Netta's tastes, "we don't wish to upset your plans."
Charmian came downstairs on that one.
"Oh, no," Charmian said, airily, "none at all. Why, Mr. London! Was today the day? Oh, silly me. I was all set for working in the dirt and trimming rose bushes. Weren't we just going to do that, my dear Mrs. Eames - I mean, auntie?"
Moments later.
Outside in the crisp morning air.
Charmian wanted to know more. Let discovery, followed by knowledge, and possibly earn a gleam as to what happened from last Saturday to this Saturday. Allow Jack and that woman to hang around for a few minutes. She wanted them to stay, so she could pierce their souls and find out, exactly, what caused all this - madness to come about.

Nearby, across on the opposite end of the garden, Bess helped Netta with rose trimming. Closer to the porch, Jack adjusted his bike along with Bess’. Charmian stood by, standing over Jack as Jack was on his knees, messing with a chain, just – staring at him.
Moments…and Jack began to sweat. He was male but he wasn't completely stupid. Almost, but not completely. He could feel something wasn't right. The feeling was coming from Charmian. Hmmm, thought Jack, perhaps it was his stories?
More silent moments.
Which was making Jack uncomfortable.
"Good," thought Charmian. He looked uncomfortable. He SHOULD be uncomfortable.
Aforementioned, Jack was not stupid. He knew there was something on her mind. And was just about ready to burst and demand to know what it was all about - just as much as Charmian wanted to burst out at him (possibly with her fists).
"Okay. Fine," he said, "tell me how really awful my Klondike stories are."
Finally...
As nonchalantly as she possibly could, she asked, "How long have you been in love?"
Jack's impatience, and stress, disappeared. He was so relieved for so simple a question.
"Oh," he said with boyish smile, "I don't love her."
And now Charmian was stressed.
She wondered how soon murder could be legalized in California.
With all of her education, life experiences, culture, breeding, the only response she had as a rejoinder was, "Huh?"

"You see," said Jack, digging himself deeper, "it has to do with science."
No response from Charmian. Perhaps, thought Jack, she wasn't getting it. He continued, "A scientific marriage. Based on scientific principles. Based upon the principle of what is good for the race. What it is not based on are the silly notions that blind the -"
Charmian waved her hand to stop his speech.
"Does she know you don't love her?"
"Of course," said Jack. And then, thinking this would solve all issues, answer all questions, solve all mysteries, "but I LIKE her."
Charmian straightened up. Backed away. Her feeling - that perhaps - the starched collar guys didn't look so bad after all.
She disappeared into her aunt's house. Couldn't remember walking up the stair way nor into her room. Walked to the window. Saw Jack and Bess climb aboard their bikes, and ride away. She turned, collapsed onto the window seat, and melted away into tears.














Chapter Six - The Crowd

"Those were the best of times "the Crowd" would ever know. There was always good, clean, wholesome fun. Boisterous, kindred hearts beating in love and freedom. We'd lay aside our cares, fears, and dance away through those bright California days and nights of our youth...oh, youth...gone too soon.” - Charmian Kittridge London

Time spent along the way to any of the Crowd's adventures was always dreamingly simple and gentle like a meadow wind and the sound of child’s play. The days spread onward, one after another. Life was grand and writers wrote and poets dreamed and artists painted and singers sang. The Crowd, again, had gathered along the banks of the Russian River. The setting, the same, the cast too. Artists all. Save for Bess. Who really didn't have a reason to be there...except for Jack.

Some chased each other, and others picked up wooden instruments and played. Kids blew bubbles and laughed at the sun. Xavier Martinez had his canvas out, and could be seen working

on a portrait of a lady (and there she was, too, sitting on a fallen Redwood), with the river as backdrop. Beauty complimenting beauty. Life complimenting life.
Some waded in the river, and others just talked, listened, mused upon the day. All found contentment in the company of themselves. Happy in their own skin. Enjoying life and being amused in the moment.
Bess, however, was not amused. She tapped her foot upon the earth. No one heard. No one cared...save ground squirrels, hunkering down in their borrow beneath her feet...fearful of their home being caved in. Annoyed at this intrusion, there was not a happy squirrel camper in or out of sight
However not as annoyed as Bess.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She did not like artists. Lazy never-do-wells. Why couldn't Jack be like - well, like HER. And HER family. And be, NORMAL?

Women adored Jack.
Men adored Jack.
Bess adored Jack, she just didn't adore any of the Crowd.
No one played at the game of life like her husband. And when he spoke, even if it was to chase a mosquito off his arm, his voice had a presence that commanded attention. There was something in his character...not really grace, nor beauty, but PRESENCE. In a world where no one liked everybody, everybody liked Jack London.

Bess' attention was drawn from her mournful thoughts, to the Crowd. They were laughing. And all focus was on Jack. Jack - telling a tall tale, or perhaps chatting up a shopping list - didn't matter. His words were what drew you in...he was real, and people were starving for what he freely gave.
Bess sighed.
The laughter came and came from the Crowd. They laughed at Jack's amusing story (laughing in all the right places, Jack noted,) and they applauded (warmly, he noted,) when he was finished. Had nothing to do with ego, it's just nice to know if you're losing your audience or not.

His drawing power over others always befuddled him. He never tried to be successful...he just WAS. He never tried to be liked...he just WAS - and more - LOVED. He just couldn't quite clearly see it.

"And that," said Jack with his boyish grin, "is why the duck mistook the polar bear for an ice flow."
Everyone laughed, save for his wife. Thumping the ground, Bess was not happy. This was not appropriate behavior for an adult. Such a child. When would he grow up?
“Never,” said Carrie, looking down her long nose at Bess, reading her mind as women who have kindred hearts only can. “They never grow up. Girls become women, boys grow up to be boys.”

"I have had enough," Jack laughed, waved away the Crowd, and walked across the meadow.
Xavier asked, "Tuckered out?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact."
"Where you going?"
"I see a hammock, with my name on it."
Bess rolled her eyes. The man she loved would disappear, rest, and forget she was there. The Crowd wouldn't know what to do while he was gone, at least, not for a few minutes until they recovered over the shock. Their dependence on the object of their affections was - unnerving.

The dependence would have tragic effects, soon after Jack died. Evidenced by the fact that a good number of Crowd members committed suicide. They had lost their beckon...the heart which pumped their lives. They simply didn’t know what to do.

However...
There was another woman there. One to which she had been born to love. She figured knowing him, and the chance to be with him, would be worth the pain of the heart that he had crushed…and continued to crush. He was different than the...well, average sort. The type of man which you really didn't know what to do with. She had some thoughts on that subject...but didn't see much promise in wishing for a future regarding those thoughts.


Charmian saw him. Her eyes bathed him in loving contemplation. So much so she would have drowned, unless she stop contemplating. Not a chance. She couldn't shake her attention from his soul...his dancing eyes...his boyish, unpretentious grin. In him there was no guile. A creative, brilliant soul...with - she noted with a sigh - one obvious flaw. His damnable notion on marriage, and the reasons for one to be married. Scientific marriage based on scientific gobble-de-gook.
"I am mad to want him," she thought.
She tried to turn away and stare, instead, at the glistening river, rushing by and past the Redwood trees. Oh, but her body turned, but her heart could not. A heart which...months ago, he had - and not purposefully, she knew, as there wasn't a mean cell in Jack's body - broken.
Charmian looked upon the Crowd. And whispered to what ever gods there might be, a thanks, that she was with these magnificent people...and had been born to laugh along with them.
Freedom. Beauty. Truth. And love. And Charmian was there to enjoy it all. This was, with or without Mr. London, her element, her family. She belonged.
If only Jack hadn't been such a stupid, idiotic dunderhead…
* * *
Across the way, in her line of sight, a tall, slender elderly gentleman with a long white beard sat on a log...crossed his legs, and planted a book in his lap. It was Joaquin Miller. "Poet of the Sierras", he was called. He thought that now might be good a time as any to read one of his poems. Why not? No particular reason. He was an artist, like them all. They needed to create...to share...to express. Had to happen.

Several of the Crowd members strolled over to him, and planted themselves about his earthy countenance. And this is what he recited:
"BEHIND him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”
Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”. . .
* * *
On the outer banks of the gathering, at the place where the meadow met the forest, Jack was snuggled in a hammock - tied between two Redwoods. Eyes closed. His thoughts drifting...trying hard not to think. Enjoy the northern California warmth...the sounds of the river, the wind gently touching then fleeing past the Redwood pine. In the background, he could hear Joaquin speak...faint...and more faintly...as he fell into comfortable slumber.
* * *
"Too comfortable," said Sally. A teenage girl, daughter of a Crowd member.
"Very," said Robin. Another teenage girl.
They both looked across the meadow at the relaxed author. Arms folded. Staring with mischievous grins and daring eyes.
"Guess we better do something about that," said Sally.
"Immediately," said Robin.
Meanwhile, the Poet of the Sierras continued:

“My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”
The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
Why, you shall say at break of day, ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! And on!’”
Sally and Robin walked past their parents, the Crowd, Joaquin, with nothing more coming out of their souls but what seemed to be a terminal case of the giggles.
"What are you girls up too?" asked Anna.
"Heh-heh-heh," was the girls only response.
"Heh-heh-heh," they liked that so much they said it again.
Few noticed as they crossed the meadow and headed for Jack. Save Anna, who remembered easily what being a young girl was all about. Particularly when it came to warfare against unsuspecting adults...to whom they loved.
Anna watched. Bess noticed. And fumed. What were they up too?
Joaquin simply ignored, moving right along.
"They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said: “Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”—
He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!” ...



The girls drew closer to Jack, stepping now cautiously like a mountain lion toward its prey. Quietly. Smiling. Stifling giggles. Jack was, as far as they could tell, deeply into sleep. Sally pulled from a deep dress pocket a needle and some thread. Robin gathered some twigs. Dried brush. Redwood bark.
The needle and thread went to work - sewing Jack up in his hammock. The wood, twigs and such went to building a fire underneath Jack's hammock. This gained more attention from the Crowd. Anna stood, smiling wide, watching. George, too. Bess folded her arms and questioned his ancestry. Charmian tried to pay attention to Joaquin.
Jack slept.
The sewing done. Robin lit the wood. The girls backed away, and the smoke curled up. A moment....and then....the first sniff from Jack.
Sniff.
Another. But his eyes were closed.
He tried to wake, and he tried to move his left hand to wipe away whatever it was that was annoying his nostrils. He couldn't move his hand...nor his other.
And now flames were making crackling noises.
And then he woke up.
"HEY!"
The girls turned, ran, laughing hysterically. Looking at each other with their eyes glistening of victory. Jack struggled out of his bonds, ripped the threads apart, and burst out of his hammock - right down into the fire.

Hysterical laughter, this time compliments of the Crowd.
Jack rolled off of the fire the moment he landed on it. Jumped up, dusted himself off. And laughed, in a ghoulish way, and ran after Sally and Robin. Pretending to be angry. "Come back here and take your medicine!" he shouted.
"Run, girls!" said Anna, laughing herself silly.
Sally and Robin ran across the meadow, jumped over logs, people, and things. Jack followed in hot pursuit. "Take it like women now!"
George screamed, "Tell 'em Jack! Don't let yourself be shown up by a couple of teenagers!"
They all laughed.
Bess sulked.
Joaquin recited:
"They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
'This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?
The words leapt like a leaping sword: “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”
The girls stopped on the edge of the far clearing, panting, turning to Jack, who was just about to pounce on them. With a youth's skill, they leaped out of the way of his grasp, and darted yards away. Stopped. So did Jack, himself out of breath.
"What's the matter, old man?" said Robin."Old? Dare you call me old?"
"Twenty-six, aren't you?" said Sally.

"I'd say death.”
"Then you shouldn't be afraid." Jack, with his winning smile, said to the girls, "Come, let's go back, and we'll have a go at the gloves."
They were young, pretty, and too smart to fall for that one.
Robin laughed, "Don't think so!"
"Not with you!" said Sally.
"Why not? Afraid I'll forget you're ladies?"
All three turned, and headed back to the meadow, where the Crowd watched, anxiously and approvingly, at them.
"Nope," said Robin. "We just want to quit while we're ahead."
Moments later they walked into the Crowd's midst. To various forms of applause and comments. Robin and Sally bowed, curtsied, congratulated themselves.
"Nicely done!" yelled Anna, "you won that round!"
"Good for you!" said Mary.
"Not seeking revenge?" asked George of Jack.
Jack just hung his head. Oh-I-am-so-defeated, his look seemed to say.
The women made a big deal out of it, and hugged the girls, and made them feel like they were - well, they were - victorious women warriors.
Joaquin, continuing on -
”Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck— ...

Jack, ever so quietly, taking advantage of the fact the focus of attention was not on him for a change, walked about looking for...hmm...there it was...right...there - he could not believe his good fortune.
He picked up a bucket of water...slowly...carefully...without a care. Innocently. What sort of threat could he possibly be? He certainly had zero intentions of drinking any of it.
And now, he was walking behind the girls’ backs, gently whistling. Carrying water which was fished out of the Russian River. Which flows from the Sierra Nevada. Which, even in the summer, is still, VERY cold. Whistling turned to whispering - "You really got me, yes you did."
And then -
Quick like a cat pouncing upon an unsuspecting field mouse, Jack moved quickly toward the girls, raising the bucket over his head, ready to toss the cold clear Sierra water at them -
Joaquin, stopping for nothing -
"A light! A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”"
Carrie saw, out of the corner of an eye, Jack, with his pail of water sloshing out (he never could keep liquid from spilling from a bucket), ready and aimed at Robin and Sally. She shrieked, "Girls, run!"
At the same time she shrieked, she pushed the girls out of the way of the flying water - it sailed right toward them - then sailed right past them, finding a landing place somewhere else. That somewhere else would be Charmian. Dead in the way.


Charmian was hit full force with that Sierra water. Drenched. And it was then, and only then, that Joaquin Miller stopped reading his work. And this is what he said - turning to Charmian -
"I wish you would go and tidy your hair, young woman."
* * *
The magical land of distant snowy peaks. Rivers running wild, clear, and blue underneath blue skies and puffy white clouds. Where the coast is near enough to touch, and where you can't see the tops of the trees. Where gentle hills are covered with orange trees and livestock and grapes. And people can laugh at the day. And play in harmony.
The Crowd laughed. Someone found Charmian a towel. She wasn't angry. Happy for the joy she felt in her heart...the acceptance. The connection. She loved them and they loved her...they loved each other.
And the day sped along in its joyful hour.
The squirrels came out of their earthen shelter (hadn't heard much pounding lately), to witness what these creatures where laughing about. What the singing of their voices might mean.
Bess had one thought on her mind -
"Husband and I are going to have a chat."
A foot pounded again, and the squirrels ran and hid.
No one cared. The sun was out, the world was new, and the players were young again.







Chapter Seven - The Scientific Marriage
"Concerning myself, I am moving along slowly, working out a philosophy of life, or rather, the details of a philosophy of life, and slowly getting a focus on things. Some day I shall begin to do things, until then I merely scratch a living.” – Jack London
On July 21, 1902 Jack received an offer from the American Press Association to journey to South Africa to write on the Boer War. At the Oakland station, he kissed Bess and his baby daughter Joan good-bye, then departed, headed for New York. When he arrived, he learned the war was over, the British military heading home. Jack changed his plans, and headed for England, wanting to interview the war’s participates.
When there, he discovered something else to write about – the slums of the east end of London. Jack put on the rags of the locals, melded into their society of suffering, and discovered how wretched life can be. He ate with them, worked with them, starved with them, slept outdoors with them. His efforts resulted in “The People of the Abyss”.


Jack would one day tell Charmian: "Of all my books, I love most 'The People of the Abyss.' No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor."

While in Europe, Jack learned of the birth of his second child, Becky. He ended his trip that very moment, gritted his teeth, and decided that he would do something he had never done before with his wife – he wrote her a love letter. He would do his best to make the marriage work.
* * *
January 1903 – Piedmont, home of Jack and Bess London
"I'm sick of your friends," said Bess.
"Good morning to you, too," said Jack, as he walked into their study, seeing Bess sitting at his desk, pouring over bills. Tossing envelopes. Ignoring him as he walked behind her. “What cha doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing something.”
“Racking by brains on how to make the household work. Stressing about finances.”
“Just another day in America,” said Jack, trying to light.
"Why are we always so out of money?"
"I can't guess."
"I can. You feed every bum who walks by."


Jack moved to her side, leaned down, inspecting the notes in which were the culprits to her aged appearance. "We're that much in debt?"
"Yes."
"I don't like being that much in debt."
"Funny, neither do I."
"Look, don't worry. Things really are looking up."
"I suppose something will turn up."
"Something always does. You'll see. It'll be fine."
"You mean you're going to acquire a decent job for a decent living?"
"I do what it takes, Bess. Right now it happens to be writing."
Jack picked up on letter, addressed from his publisher, The Macmillan Company. "They wish more Klondike Stories. Will no one let me out of Alaska?"
"When they get bored with you...sure."
"I'm already bored with myself'." Jack walked about his office. Glanced at a book or two. Stopped. Sighed. Turned back to Bess, "A man does one thing in a passable way and the dear public insists on his continuing to do it to the end of his days."
Bess stood up. Gave him a half smile, with a look which was less than passionate. She shook her head, "Don't expect so much." Then she turned, headed for the door leading back into their house, stopped, turned, and said, "after all, you're no Mark Twain."
"Now," said Jack to himself, "what was that suppose to mean?"


* * *
He wrote potboilers. He did this for one particular, rational reason – they sold. Stories which would sell. Stories which the publishers wanted - not particularly what he wanted...not what his soul wanted to write. One day, he felt, he would escape the gristmill of the publishers, and write what pleased his own passions. For now, he would have to accept the fact that he was writing for someone else, like working on a ship, or in a factory, working as a slave to - someone else.
He would not be content on working for his publisher. Like always, he would break away and run his own race. Sail his own ship. Run his own - factory. Write what pleased him. For now, though – as he would often sigh aloud - he would write to make money. It was his talent. The way he paid the bills. There were worse ways to make a living.

He glanced across his desk, and his eyes followed the knickknacks of his office to a table stand over by a window. On the table, lay such a manuscript which, he knew, and felt deeply about, was a story that was fearless, raw, and full of "red blooded life". In a matter of days, he'd be sending it to his publishers. The rest, he prayed, would be history.

It was “The Call of the Wild”.
Jack London and Mark Twain had a lot in common. Both from poor, working class families. Both adventuring across the wilderness, the wilds, the stormy places, the dry and wet places. They both picked up life from their experiences. And both stumbled upon writing...and were amazed that it kept them out of the mines, the factories, the death mills. They were Americans –

Twain from Missouri, London from California - and they wrote of an America which - particularly in the east, and certainly in the world - was still a mystery to many...a romantic adventure to most. Nothing more fascinating than the American pioneer spirit. The Wild West was as remote as Jupiter. The land still wild, and there was plenty of room for growth, new ideals, and every day was a constant stream of new adventure.

The public saw these lands fresh and exciting the way a baby first looks out into the world – “what, pray tell, is this all about, and how can I find out more?”

Jack had a lot of stories still in him. Stories which were more socially in conscience than typical, well - potboilers. In the meantime - it was back to dog stories.
And his thoughts went to an unfinished story sitting innocently - and frightfully - on his desk. A story which he had been working on for weeks. He stared and continued to stare. The story, he mused, wouldn’t write itself. Wonder why? Well, hey, let the story simply write itself. Find, he could deal with that.
He sat.
Stared at the aforementioned story which refused to do its own plowing. Jack would have to plow himself. Just let the characters lead him onto the journey path. And he would be surprised as they became surprised as to what happened next. Fine. Pencil-pen in hand. And….and nothing. Stuck.


A man. A dog. Temperatures which are hard for a southlander to comprehend. He tried not to worry. The words would come. They always did. He just had to place them down...and pray and have faith as his hand clutching pencil-pen descended upon paper that those words would appear. Magically. A one, a two, a one-two-three and –
And nothing again. Like a boxer sending a left hook to his opponent’s right cheek when an invisible hand prevents his arm from making a follow through. Zip. The opponent reaches out and smashes him to smithereens. Okay, free associating way too much. Get to work.
The uncompleted story stared back him. Waiting. "To Build a Fire" he called it. Cold, oh so cold in the Artic. He rubbed his hands in the warm California home which was his. Recalled, vividly, the land, the people, the horrors and joys of the northland...and he knew and could feel, the memory of that awful, awful cold.
He had to try and write something. Anything. Even if it was garbage, and he knew it would be trashed. Daringly, challenging his thoughts to deny him, he plunged ahead – and pencil-pen found its way down to the empty page, and this is what he wrote -

"At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for traveling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than


seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained."
He stopped.
Looked up.
"Hmm....."
His thoughts drifted for a moment. Connecting the dots in his mind. Bridging thoughts which would carry onto paper, and then leap out at the reader in something looking like a flowchart...taking the reader into his own world, joining the author in the journey.
“Getting too much like a boring accountant,” he mused.
Finally now, he was very much into his made up world. Oblivious to the outside elements. Dig. Tune out. Focus. Just tell the truth.
And begin again....
"The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man's brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague - ..."

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
The sound rattled the cages of the universe, his universe, taking him out of his made up world and sending him crashing to the hinder lands of the earth. He was taken back, and



replaced within, the confines of the mere boring dimensions of the planet. Someone, some THING had interrupted his world...
Not the first time he had so landed...sadly, he knew, nor the last.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Jack sighed.
Gathered his famous courtesies and polite, gentlemanly ways and shouted, "It's open!"
The door from the outside world opened wide. And revealed to Jack a woman he had not expected - Charmian.
His bruised continence changed to one of pleasant surprise. His heart welcomed the sight of her. His mind wondered why.
She asked, "Interrupting anything?
He stood.
He smiled.
The cold and the very frozen Northland disappeared in the warmth of Charmian Kittridge.
"No," said Jack. "Nothing at all. What brings you this way?"
"Wanted to see your girls."
"They're with their mother, at the park – by now."
"Ah," she said, just as casually as she browsed over his office.
"Want to wait?"
"No, no." She saw on the table, the non-published manuscript laying there. “What is this?”

“Fodder for the fire.”
“Really?”
“I hope not. Sending to my publishers come Monday. Listen, stick around, Bess would be happy to see you."
Charmian turned to him, much like Sara Bernhardt making a show ending dramatic point. She smiled, saying -
"Nice imagination."
"Listen, Charmian...swing by tonight. The Crowd will be here."
"Yeah, well..."
"I'm serious."
"Think you should ask Bess, first," she said.
"It'll be find with Bess. Trust me."
She walked toward him...and placed a humoring left hand on his right shoulder (Jack couldn’t fail to notice there was no invisible hand to stop her). She looked deeply into his eyes and say, "Ask Bess."
She turned away and walked out of the room and disappeared out the door...with not an intention in the universe of walking out nor disappearing from his life.
Jack wasn't sure if she should show or not...he just wanted her to be there. Seemed, well, like California was a better place because she was there.
* * *


Out the door and gone Charmian knew she wouldn't miss coming back that night for not even the best horse or glass of wine in the world. She pondered that Bess, on the other hand – as a wife's wishes needed to be respected – might feel she was crashing the party. Maybe she'd see an invite after all. “Nah, I’ll crash,” she said with a heart full of smile.
* * *
Jack, back into his made up world....stuck for a moment....he tried -
"But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague recollection of its breed which caused it a ...a...ah....."
He tapped his pencil-pen against the desk. Left it there as he leaned back in his high backed leather chair. What does - how does a dog relate to the same things a man does? Keener instincts, absolutely. Does it think? Or does it need time to gather up thoughts...to ponder...to collect his instincts, gathering information before deciding on how to act whether in minutes or the time it takes his heart to make a beat? Or does a dog simply - DO?
Hmmm.
He tried again.
Sat up, taking his instrument, and watched as his thoughts spill on paper...easily, dreamingly.
"It experienced unclear but steady fear which sub...subdued....."
That wouldn't do it.
Crossed the offending sentence out with reckless abandon, as if it might come and attack him in the middle of a good night's sleep.

He leaned back. And was just into thinking that it might be a good idea to call it a day....he had penned more than his daily goal of one thousand words. Better to forget the unfinished sentence for now...allow it to linger overnight, rest, and by morning ready to dance with his muse and make magic work on paper again.

THUMP! THUMP! CLUMP! SLAM!
He didn't turn.
"Hi, Bessie."
She walked to the front of desk, into his full view.
"Well?"
"Well, what?" wondered Jack.
"Are you having your friends over tonight?"
"Is this Wednesday?"
"Yes."
"Then that would be a 'yes'".
She grumbled. She stood with her fists on her hips, staring at the ceiling. Then her eyes turned back upon him.
"They are not all coming, are they?"
"Yes, and more, no doubt."
"Like who?"
"Never know."

"WHO?"
"I thought," he looked up her with his boyish eyes, hoping his warmth and charm would remind her that he had, still, warmth and charm, "we might invite Miss Kittridge."
"WHY?"
"She's...she's different from the average sort."
"Very."
"Bessie, she's been a member of the Crowd for a long time, and I thought we should invite her over. She's a kick."
"That's not all she is. She's a spinster with too much - too much daring in her for my tastes!"
"Certainly you have the most narrow of tastes "
"What?"
"I said there is nothing in your heart which wastes."
"That's not what you said."
"Clever girl," went the words from his mouth, along with any more pretensions of warmth.
"I don't even know her."
He laughed. "Truer words have never been uttered. Even though you've met her several times."
"There is nothing to meet for. She or your other band of misfits and artist vagabonds."
Jack was tempted to suggest the point that it was these same misfits that did, indeed, create the art, the music, the performance she enjoyed. Instead -

"Maybe if you would actually spend some time getting to know Charmian. You might really get to love her."
"What is there to love…" she sighed, and walked about the office. Surprisingly, thought Jack, like Charmian had done minutes earlier. He thought NOT to mention the coincidence to Bess. He couldn’t imagine what she was fuming about, and asked -
"Well?"
She stopped. "Interesting that YOU of all people would mention the word ‘love’".
She walked out of the room. And as she did, said, "Invite her. I don't care. What's another misfit."
The door slammed. The sounds of footsteps disappeared into their home.
Jack sighed. Leaned back. And then...suddenly...
The universe exploded.
Exploding with inspiration and he was inspired.
Reached for his pencil pen, and disappeared back into his made up world, and this is what he wrote as he began again... –
"...But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly
every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air."
Inspiration and structure, Jack discovered, can truly come out of disharmony and chaos.






Chapter Eight - Surprised by Love

That night. Jack’s weekly Wednesday gatherings for “The Crowd”.
The noise of people, music and other things which annoyed her, Bess – carrying baby Becky in her arms – opened up the front door after the second knock, saw who was behind it, and didn’t change much expression.
"Good evening Mrs. London,” said Charmian, “thank you for inviting me."
"Jack insisted."
"How's little Becky?"
"Getting heavy," said Bess, as she carried her youngest daughter away from the door, allowing Charmian to enter. Charmian stared at her back for a moment, saw the face of Becky over Bess' shoulder, to whom waved a little "hi" in her direction. Charmian waved back, then turned her attention to the room full of "The Crowd."

George and Carrie Sterling. Anna Strunsky. Xavier and Mary, Jim and Cloudesley. Joaquin Miller. More. Reveling in their freedom, finding moments of happiness in their gaiety. Some

sang. Others ate. Some sang and ate. Telling stories and planning adventures. The Russian River, the Bohemian Grove, exploring the rivers and the canyons and the Bay Area swimming holes and opera houses. The names the same, just the places were different. And wherever they met, the friendship and love constant and true.

"Hey, Charmian!" said Jack, shouting across the room.
Eyes turned, looked. Watching her at the door way as she walked in, watching them. She smiled. A step, another, she was in their midst. For some reason Jack had given her the floor, simply by approaching her. That eyes were on Charmian was only because they were focused on Jack - as she wandered into his space, as he enveloped himself into hers.
"Miss Kittridge. Pleasant surprise to see you."
"You too, Mr. London.”
She thought of killing him.
Then - since he had an audience - with a melodramatic flair and flourish, introduced her (though she didn't need it, and, since she didn't need it, wasn't all too thrilled that he did it). To the Crowd he pronounced, "Charmian Kittridge, editor, writer, world class horsewoman. Scholar. Pianist. And, she boxes as well."
Wild applause. More for Jack's delivery than for Charmian's well known talents.
"Fine," she thought to herself. Two can play this game. Ready to dual, big boy? She smiled, and said -
"I do anything ‘as well'."

A chorus of "ooohhhs" bounced off the lips of all.
Jack smiled.
"Some day you must let me show you a thing or two."
"You promised me that two years ago," she said, smiling, challenging. "No time like the present."
More applause. This time on behalf of Charmian's dare.
"You're challenged old friend," said George.
Jack smiled, all around.
"Very good," he said. He went to George, who already had a set of boxing gloves in hand. George proceeded to help Jack place them on his hands, saying, loud enough -
"Be careful now, Jack. She is, after all, a girl."
A collective groan. Except from Charmian. Who - as Anna helped her on with her gloves - just smiled that woman smile which said - "…we'll see."
They both placed over their heads and over their chests protective pads. This was, after all, to be a game, fun, and not be a new approach to the eternal battle of the sexes.
Trained stance. Arms at perfect angle. Feet planted. Eye contact. Focus. Jack noticed these in Charmian. Indeed, she knew what she was doing.
"What's your problem?" she said, “throw the first."
He laughed in her face, "Not a chance in the whole wide -"
That was what the opening she was looking for. His focused dropped, he was somewhere else, making a joke, relaxed - the perfect place for her to belt him one.

"Score! Miss Kittridge!" cheered Anna.
"I left myself open," said Jack, "didn't I?"
She smiled. "Yes, you did."
They danced, and they jabbed, and they teased. Particularly in Jack's eyes, and in members of the Crowd...the male members (along with Anna), that is, appreciation grew.
Anna loved Charmian. And was already there for her in heart and soul. The women, well...they were happy when they only thought of Charmian as one who was merely this bizarre however lovely creature who rode horses astride. But to show her worth against a man in boxing? A man's game?
"Oh, my," said Carrie, as Charmian flew a fabulous right to Jack's head.
And the audience went wild.
The men anyway.
Jack stopped. A smile on his face which was longer and deeper than the Grand Canyon.
"How are you at the foil?" he asked.
"Let's find out."
Gloves off.
Boxing head protection off.
Fencing head protection on.
Foils in hand.
They approached the other. Saluted with foil. Commenced. And danced about the other. Focused. Intent on devouring their competition. Charmian was not some mere wisp of a girl.

Yes, different than the others, everyone knew the obvious. Talented. She even had a job. She was accepted. If not completely understood.
However, to hold her own - against a man? Being his equal, even in fencing? Why, she was even better competition than that of Jack's friend, George Sterling.
George noticed. The notice made him sit down. Rather...flabbergasted there was so much - grit - in this woman.
The men, then, at this point, became rather unnerved at Charmian Kittridge.
Jack not only could have cared less what the women or the men thought, he wasn't even aware of their feelings nor even if they had any feelings on the matter at all.
And then…he became oblivious to the fact that anyone was in the room at all. The room began to disappear. And the only voices he heard - where his own, and, of course, hers.
Step. Lunge. Counter and lunge.
She countered each of his moves with a better one of her own.
Now the world began to disappear.
"I'm impressed," said Jack.
"Are you?" said Charmian, rather dryly.
"Yes."
"Who knows, you might find we're an even match."
"Funny, I was thinking the same thing."
As those words spilled trippingly over his tongue, Jack threw down his foil, took off his head protection, and grabbed Charmian, who was just an instant step behind, tossing her head

gear off, dropping her foil, and allowing Jack to envelop her waist with his arms - and she let him draw her into him - her breasts fully pressed up against his chest, her lips finding his - and Jack could feel the taste of those lips, and they together melted into the other - passionately in embrace.
And the universe disappeared.
And Jack's heart -
Jack's heart -
Jack -
He stepped back.
But just an inch. Just an inch because something stirred inside he hadn't felt before. Something - matured within. He wasn't expecting this feeling. He really didn't know what to do with it now that he had it.
Charmian stared at him - with those woman's eyes which could melt a man's soul. "Did-he-feel-that?" and she wasn't talking about the physicality of the moment. She was wondering if he felt that excitement of the spirit. The connection. That gift. The passionate spark of something different, new, something she believed in and discovered that once, for once, she felt that gift of something she knew was out here - and one day would find.
For Jack, who never knew. And thus he never expected. Something that he had tossed off and humored as non-science, seemed...now...very, very...real.
Like a falling star streaking across a California sky, it walloped him with all the thunderous noise of the universe.

He was in love.
And drunk with it.
And Charmian wondered again, "did he feel it? Did he know it when he felt it?"
She closed her eyes, just part way, to let him know, she wanted more. His lips again fled to hers, and found home. Their eyes closed and their hearts crashed out of their chests. The world swirled about them, dreamlike, a fantasy - and, yes, the second time was better than the first, and was stamped approval that the first was, in fact, not an illusion, however very real.
Again Charmian pierced Jack's soul - with want, with question, with hope, not to mention mad desire and passion. Jack, for his part, felt like he'd been hit with a sledge hammer. Their hearts pounded still, and their lungs gasped for breath as the second kiss was deeper than the first. Their connection became like an infliction, one might say, a terminal one, one of which they both had never felt before, and would never recover from.
Charmian knew she was in love. And Charmian knew that Jack - God bless him, hadn't a clue in any swirling galaxy as to what, in actuality, had indeed hit him.
Only the distance between the moments of heartbeats would tell.
In the meantime, the world still spun. Except not one of the Crowd noticed. The dealings and doings of kings and queens, peasant nor nave, did not cross anyone's minds. Baseball scores and the state of the weather in Australia did not bring a flicker of thought to anyone. Not a ponderous thought - nothing deep nor shallow. Just - the overwhelming sensation of a miracle.



Though Mary – terrified - did pause long enough in fear to pray to God that Bess would not choose that moment to re-enter the room. Other than that, she was fine.
The collective silence was a very loud one. If every heart stopped, no one could tell. For all the universe saw was Jack London and Charmian Kittridge in long, deep, passionate embrace.
Some things, Jack felt as his soul embedded deeply into Charmian’s, were well worth waiting for.
What could even be imagined to be the first thing that could break the silence? In a room full of artistic souls, to whom words were never a challenge to be uttered in any place or time, who would break it? And what word would be perfectly uttered, what intellectual, stimulating turn-of-phrase and literate chord would be possibly struck?
And then it came.
"Oops," said Carrie.
"So much for the scientific marriage," said Anna.














Chapter Nine - Aftermath

All about the Piedmont home it was dark and star filled. Across the Bay one could see the twinkling lights of San Francisco. No one but God, the angels and the people inside of that London home knew what had taken place therein. Save for Bess, who, miraculously, didn’t know at all. And as the earth moved in its continuing circle, not a creature outside the house stirred. Not a sound until – the front door burst opened wide and Charmian, followed by Anna, walked briskly away.
Now, thought Charmian, now that she was outside breathing air maybe her senses would return. Since, well, Mr. London - this oyster pirate, mad writer person - probably WASN'T in love with her after all! Relief! Pity!
And tears.
Though, she thought, wait minute, she did see it in his eyes. He HAD to have felt that kiss to the bottom of his soul, a kiss which surely wiped away forever his despicable notions of scientific principles, reasoning, and other foolishness.
Sigh.

Now, what if he HAD fallen in love with her?
SIGH!
Moot point. Since, after all -
She stopped just yards into the street. Glared up at Heaven, and thusly declared -
"HE'S MARRIED!"
Something like a growl came from Charmian's soul, and she preceded again to walk away. Anna followed, with the intent to offer her some time for reflection, thought, ponderous mediation, before speaking to her closest friend. This lasted a half a second, when she said -
"Now, that was interesting."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean."
"I was just overcome by the moment."
"Let’s not have any of that.”
"He obviously loves her," Charmian vainly attempted.
"He likes her."
"She loves him."
"She loves his success."
"She just wishes it weren't writing."
Charmian stopped. Placed her hands on her face, groaned, and then ran her hands through her hair.
"Oh, Anna! What am I thinking? He has a home, a wife, children -"

"Two of three he does love."
Charmian paced. Fretted. Ached.
"I'm a, a – spinster - albeit free spinster - with nothing but -"
"Dreams, compassion, love - "
"For a man who doesn't know a thing about it?" said Charmian, almost hysterically.
"I think he learned a little bit, in there, you know?"
"Shattered all his ideals, no doubt."
"Charmian, he's lost in his ideals. He's so caught up in his principles that when he was hit with love it knocked his reasoning senseless. He cannot see, any longer, the same world which ensnared him for so long."
"I'm not the one to turn him around."
"You made a good start of it in there."
"And there it shall end."
"Not convincing."
No one could sigh like Charmian.
"Listen. I may just disappear -"
"Running away never made anything disappear."
"I can certainly try and find out."
"Darling, where would you go?"
Charmian tossed her hair back. Placed her hands on her hips. Turned. Stared at the heavens again. Looked at the London home. Turned back to look at Anna. Then declared -

"Maine, Iowa, someplace, anyplace!"
"You have family in Iowa, don't you?"
"Most of them NOT male. That'll help."
"It'll help if you're looking to be physically separated. However the mind, the heart, are just a beat away."
Charmian stared at Anna.
"Does the phrase – ‘Out of sight out of mind’ mean anything to you?"
Anna smiled at Charmian.
"I'll miss you," Anna said, hugging Charmian.
Holding Anna in return, "Perhaps two thousand miles will take my mind away from - not only him - but his bizarre concepts!"
Two sisters.
United by their spirits along with all things womanhood. Tied to the same individual who was tied to life...and just becoming closer to that thing which ties all life together. He was a hard act to follow, and an even harder one to separate from.
They still held each other under the California night.
"I'm not going anywhere," said Charmian.
"I know," said Anna.
The night closed about them.
And their tears were wiped away by the stars.


* * *
Inside.
When Jack and Charmian had let go lip from lip, they parted slowly. Both breathing deeply. The Crowd stirring. And a moment later found Charmian leaving. You can't, after all, kiss another woman's husband and stick around to sip tea with her later. As if nothing happened at all. Because women are not stupid, and Bess, woman that she was, WOULD KNOW.
Charmian would take herself out of the situation. Deal with this - incredibly emotional moment on her own. Have control. The crowd could deal with "what happened, why nothing at all" routine all on their own. She felt like shouting on her way out the door, "you're on your own, gang!" However didn't. Since, well, she was rather short of breath.
Out the door, beating heart with her.
Anna followed, closed the door behind her, and thus joined Charmian as they both disappeared into the night.
Jack would never remember what happened next.
George, or someone anyway, made a joke. Someone laughed. A pillow was thrown. And Teresa the music maker played a clever tune, causing a welcome diversion – some danced, and others - well, most others, whispered in frantic little polysyllables and other phrases which didn’t add up to much more than gossip.
And that is when Bess came back in. The party was over.


The Crowd made excuses to leave. Quickly. Since Bess did not care for their company anyway, she didn't notice anyone not giving her eye contact. She swept into the room with reckless abandon, tittering over things, making sure nothing was broken, stolen, or misused whilst she was out of the room.
"Miss anything?" she said, trying to be light, polite, and failing to seem interested.
Mary gagged on her tongue, and George ushered Carrie toward the door quicker than a rabbit stepping ahead of a coyote.
“That late?”
“And it’s getting later.”
“Much later.”
“Good night!”
“Night!”
“It certainly is.”
“Late!”
"Leaving?" said Bess, and before anyone responded, "Pity. Let me show you the door."
She did.
The Crowd left.
Bess and Jack were alone.
And Jack, to whom had not left the spot he had been standing on since Charmian kissed him, said to Bess after the last guest left - "Interesting evening don't you think?"


Bess turned on him, furious as a wolverine in a Roman bath - "I am sick of these Wednesday night open houses. I'm sick of your friends. I'm sick of my home being run for a bunch of, of - artists and - and musicians and penny a page poets, and, while I'm thinking about it, writers!"
Jack walked from his spot. Bess and the room had not changed. He was conscience that the only that had changed - was himself. Bess moved toward him, now standing where Charmian had. Jack was also consciously aware that Bess wasn't good enough to inhabit any space that Charmian had ever inhabited.
"This is their refuge," he said.
"They have no class! No decencies!"
She walked away from him, walked anywhere, slamming cupboards, tossing dishes, and continued with - "They don't belong here!"
She started cleaning dishes that had never been dirty. Jack slowly walked to her, and reached out with his hand, trying ever so gently to touch her arm.
"Bessie, they're our friends."
Bess recoiled, and quickly walked away, "No! They're your friends!”
Angrily she left. Out of the kitchen, through the living room, through a door way. Slamming things. Throwing others.
It became quiet, and Jack moved back into the center spot of the living room. Emotionally spent. It had been a very long day. He found himself…lost and once again…
Alone.







Chapter 10 - The Call of the Wild

When Jack had returned home from Europe, his foremost thought was to move out of northland tales, and plunge into other writing worlds. However, before he could so indulge, he was given 150 dollars per month advance from his publisher to complete “Tales of the Fish Patrol” – his days battling against the oyster pirates, “Faith of Men” – which was even more tales of the northland, and continuing on with collaborate work with Anna Strunsky called, “The Kempton-Wace Letters”.

With “Call of the Wild” published, Jack took his advances and bought a boat, “The Spray”, to sail about San Francisco Bay, work on a sea novel, “The Sea Wolf”, and to stay away from Bess.

He had moved his family from Piedmont – just north of the Bay Area - to Glen Ellen, in Sonoma County. Here, he, Bess, and their girls planned to stay for the summer in a lodge, run by Netta Eames, called Wake Robin. The main house, built of Redwood, was surrounded by Redwood trees, the landscape green and lush and dotted with a few cabins for renters.

* * *
Glen Ellen, CA - Summer 1903
Along the banks of Graham Creek did Wake Robin lay. Along the Creek there was a bolder, and Jack found it one of his favorite writing places. Sat in a chair, Jack bent over his writing tools, using the rock as a writing desk. The ever present Redwoods (one can’t escape the Redwoods in northern California, and why would one?) – along with the northern California blue sky – being his canopy. The only sounds he could here was the run of creek water, and the wind pushing through the pines.

It was here at Graham Creek he began his adventure of the sea, and the rough men who sailed between earth’s shores. This would be first an adventure book, pitting man against man and man against the fates out on the high seas. However, it would also be Jack’s argument against Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’ philosophy, his belief in concepts of anti socialism and individualism – pitted against Jack’s ideals of cooperation, democracy, and socialism.

Nothing romantic here. No starry eyed heroine like the one in “Daughter of the Snows”, a woman no one, not even himself, believed in. Or the wispy city woman in “The Call of the Wild”, who came from a dry, safe land and felt she could survive in the rugged north, where nothing was dry, and less was safe. She was not sturdy, no, not like the women he had come across in his prospecting days. Still, he wrote of her. And when she and her husband and her brother led the dog sled team into a frozen river in the midst of it breaking up, and plunged

through the ice (while Buck and John Thorton watched from the sidelines) and perished, Jack was glad to be rid of her.

Thusly, this would be a man’s story. Would be a message piece about the human need to bind together, to cooperate, to be tolerate of the other. With his experiences piloting schooners, along with the tales of seafaring adventures he had heard from countless sailors, he plunged into his work, and this world became his own place to paint, which ever bright or dull color he wished to paint it.

He willingly dived into his past, wherein he conjured up the memories of his sailing voyages, the long days and nights being tossed by the Pacific, being a teenager and piloting schooners, and there he began his journey….and this is what he wrote -

“…The vessels came together before I could follow his advice. We must have been struck squarely amidships, for I saw nothing, the strange steamboat having passed beyond my line of vision. The Martinez heeled over, sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of - “

“Jack!”
He sighed, and didn’t see his pencil-pen slip his fingers and land on the earthen floor. He could feel her eyes behind him, staring through him, her voice penetrating like a mountain lion clawing through his heart.

“Yes, Bessie?” said Jack, as he bent over, and picked up his writing implement, bent back up, and started again –
“…was a crashing and rendering of timber. I was thrown flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard…”
“Are you going to turn around and speak to me, or do I have to come out there?”
“…the scream of the women. This it was, I am certain, - the most indescribable of blood-curdling sounds, - that threw me into a panic…”
He could hear the footsteps. Knew he would have to come completely out of his ocean tale, away from the crashing of the waves, the tearing apart of the ship, as the “voice” would not go away.
“What is it?”
“What time are you expecting your friends?”
“Is it Wednesday?”
“I wish it weren’t but you know it is.”
“Then it is, ship mate.”
She screamed at that one.
“Would you please, refrain, from acting childish for one day out of your life?”
“What would be the fun in that?”
She screamed again.
He wanted to disappear.


“… I remembered the life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept backward by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes I do not -”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Talk,” said Jack, as he returned to his rock writing desk, trying to place his nether world upon paper, “that's what lips are for…sometimes.”
“I don’t want any of them in our home. They can meet outside – in the front of the lodge. I don’t want them around, cluttering up my cabin.“
“They won’t be in our cabin, our cabin is too small, we’re meeting in the lodge, and it’s not our cabin.”
“Will you be coming in soon?”
“Maybe.”
“The girls asked when you were coming in.”
“Then I’ll be in soon.” Jack suddenly turned around toward Bess and asked, “Would you like to see what I’ve written?’
She didn’t hear him. She was already marching back to their cabin. He turned to his writing table. Scratched his head, and his thoughts were temporarily distracted by the frantic antics of two chipmunks running across a fallen tree. He smiled at his own amusement, bent down, and wrote again.
* * *
That night.


Outside the embers burning bright, inside the lights on in Wake Robin lodge full. The male members of “the Crowd” congregated outside, some sitting, others standing, a few leaning, all listening to Jack. Holding a book in his hands, opened, and he was reading. A book just delivered a few days before, the first edition of his latest efforts.
Inside, the room was warm, and noisy, and comfortable. The female members of “the Crowd”, sitting, standing, a few leaning, all listening to each other. Bess was there, too, holding court, just as Jack held it out amongst the embers.
Outside, he took his listeners on a journey. It was winter, in the high country of the Yukon. A pack of wolves were being led by one distinctive animal – not quit looking all wolf, more dog, but certainly acting more wolf than dog. They ran ahead of the wind, and underneath the light of the moon, they escaped the woods and entered a long, low valley...the lead dog, Buck, running ahead, his proud head held high -
"But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack, through the
pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack".
The next sound the men heard was that of Jack closing the book to his novel. He looked about. And smiled his boyish grin, waiting for reaction. There would be no applause, as he hadn’t expected any and if there had been, he would have tossed cold water on the offender’s head. These were friends, not fans. He craved honest, thought out criticism. He knew his work could only be approved by such comments.

“Nice,” said Jon.
“Advocating a return to nature?” contemplated Xavier.
“Or simply a dirge against civilization?” said George.
“Neither. I wrote it to make money.”
“No, no, no. You don’t write a word without some hidden meaning."
“Perhaps,” he said, tossing them a mischievous grin.
* * *
Across the lawn, across the broad porch, leaning against the open front door frame, Charmian. Observing the scene from the darkness – hidden in the shadows where no one, she had discovered, could see her.
Watching, listening to the men, but also within ear and eye shot of the women in the living room. Hear, observe, both worlds. Men over there, women over here. A beautiful serendipity,
she thought, as an amused expression crossed her face. Turning away from the men, she looked inside to where the women were - quiet, listening, all eyes and tea cups focused on Bess.
* * *
“How long are you staying at Wake Robin?” asked Mary.
“Just the summer.”
“Her husband is writing another novel,” said Carrie.
Bess sighed, “I really can’t keep up.”
“More tea?” offered Mary to Bess – who had designated her self official tea hostess. Bess lifted her cup up, and didn’t watch as Mary poured.

“Is it under a contract or is he writing without?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I just care that maybe this time he won’t throw his money away.”
“On what do you suppose?”
“A boat.”
“What ever for?”
Netta sat across the room, and rolled her eyes.
Bess looked all across the room, before sharing, “Whoring, no doubt.”
“You can’t mean that,” said Kathleen.
“She means it,” said Carrie.
“I can’t prove it. Not yet.”
“Bess, you’re simply out of your – ” Netta stopped. Which was unusual for Netta.
Bess snickered. “I know everything, I always do. Men, they think they are so – clever.”
* * *
From her center spot of the universe, Charmian’s gazed fixated on Bess. Wondering now, what and who and whatever would Bess be saying next? She could clearly see Bess, resting against her chair. A faint smile had crossed her lips. She knew, really knew, she had a captive audience, knowing she was building up the suspense. Reveling in it, Charmian thought.
Bess smiled a thin, knowing smile. Charmian knew it was dirt the ladies were looking for. She sighed deeply. Where was Anna? She needed her friend. She knew Anna wasn’t there for


some reason or another. Probably, smiled her half smile, probably a lot smarter at not attending than Charmian.
“Well?” asked Carrie.
The women stopped sipping. Leaned toward Bess, listening.
Teresa asked, “Any suspicions, Bess?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you do,” thought Charmian. She turned again to the embers lighting up the night time sky, and focused her attention on the men.
* * *
“I tell you, I’m leading an empty, frivolous life. A life which has become a living lie,” said Jack.
“Ah, Bess again,” said Xavier.
“There’s no companionship, is there?” said George.
“And no love,” Jack said, rather strangely, to the ears of “the Crowd”.
“You didn’t love her to begin with.”
“True.”
“You simply liked her.”
“I don’t even like her anymore.”
“Then there’s only one solution.”
“A mistress.”
“As soon as possible.”

“Tomorrow.”
“Right now would be better.”
“After all you have a boat.”
“What else are you going to do with it?”
“Said and done!”
“Now, with whom?”
“There are many women in our mist.”
“Really,” mused George, “there is only one which is truly available at any given moment.”
“Charmian!” they all sang out.
And Charmian’s jaw dropped. But not as quickly as her heart as it plunged like a bank vault plummeting to the bottom of the sea. Her eyes widened as broad as that of any canyon on Mars. Then she heard –
“No, too old fashion.”
“Spinster.”
“Yes, but since Jack already knows she can –“
“Shhh!” they all whispered.
“However, very available.”
“Charmian is always very available.”
“Settled, then.”
Jack, shuffling his feet, trying to look and sound nonchalant, “Right, if you gentlemen insist.”

They howled with laughter.
* * *
The howling reached Charmian’s ears. She thought, maybe, that pack of wolves would enter the front lawn, and devour each male, one and all. She’d even help serve. What was it with this writer? To bad every oyster he ever killed couldn’t come back and attack him in the middle of the night.
Her attention shifted to the women. Waiting the moment when Bess would end the suspense, and tell all WHO Jack was seeing, wooing, having an affair – if only an affair of the heart – with. Charmian knew it wasn’t her. However, knowing how people talk, just kinda wondered…if Bess really knew what had happened back in Piedmont. Whether or not she did know, it was moot. She had just been stabbed, and would be therefore protecting herself – with a vengeance.
* * *
Back inside, a woman leaned in toward Bess, and, though close to her face, whispered loud enough for all to hear, all the while indicating Charmian standing outside, asked –
“What about…her?”
Bess laughed.
“No, I don’t consider her a rival at all. I have too much pity for Charmian.”
Netta gagged, and wanted to be the second woman in line to strangle Bess.
“Then who?” asked Teresa.
“The woman in his heart – which firmly isn’t me I can tell you…”

Netta watched, over the lip of the tea cup she was drinking from. Across the room, and outside the windows, if they could see plainly, they’d have seen Charmian’s chest heaving up and down.
“Is?” asked Kathleen.
“Is Anna Strunsky.”
Netta gagged on her tea as the sound in the room was – with the exception of Mary, Carrie and Netta - one collective gasp.
Carrie looked away, staring at a wall, a painting, something.
Mary rolled her eyes, and walked out of the room.
Bess said to Netta, “Are you all right?”
Netta waved the concern away, “Oh, fine. I almost died laughing."
The room was full of murmuring and chattering. And someone brought out the possibly reason as to why, in fact, Anna hadn’t shown up.
And then there was more murmuring and more chattering.
* * *
Outside, Charmian sighed. She contemplated crying, though knew from prior experience, tears would have been shed in vain. She turned to look back at the men. The were huddled together, in their own world. How, she wondered, had the human race ever survived? The men were like - going over a battle plan. She had the uneasy feeling that, somehow, she was the play book.







Chapter Eleven - The Perfect Match

Evening left and refused to return. Promptly enough for Jack, that is. He walked with George Sterling to where the Sterling buggy was tied up, outside and down the way from Wake Robin. Carrie trailed behind, like there might be something wrong with walking alongside her poet husband. Imagine!
“Jack,” said George, “when shall the adultery commence?”
“Not yet, but soon,” Jack said, as easily and effortlessly as if he was ordering coffee.
“Will you be joining me for some horseback riding this weekend?” asked George, "I mean before you go aboard "the Spray", and…"
“Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss - riding for anything. Horses this weekend, then on Monday, yes, when I get back I’ll arrange something with Charmian. I think she likes me.”
“Would it matter?” asked George.
“Of course it matters."
“Hmm…”
“Hmm?”

“Never matters to me.”
“What of Carrie?”
“Nothing bothers Carrie.”
Jack nodded his head, though he wasn’t sure why, as they reached the buggy. George climbed aboard, and Carrie walked, still trailing behind, through her own shadows. Apparently, she thought, the gentlemen weren’t bothered whether she could hear them or not. Well, at least they were open about it. Still, maybe they – her husband in particular – didn’t know she was there.
“Carrie!” shouted George, “hop on up!”
“Well,” thought Carrie, “at least he acknowledged my presence.”
Short moments later they were off, and disappearing into the night.
Jack smiled. Pleased with himself. A good night’s sleep, then a morning of working on “The Sea Wolf”, then camping with George for the weekend. Monday, a trip to the Oakland waterfront – write more aboard “The Spray” and then entertain a woman to whom his lips had already been acquainted with.
Life is wonderful when it is all planned and perfected out.

* * *




The weekend came and the weekend went. Nothing earth shattering except for a spirited discussion between Jack and George on the subject of work. As they road horses lazily though the Valley of the Moon, George said to Jack, “Ye shall sweat in your labor, thus spoke Genesis."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning the Scripture is a dirge against anyone who makes a living and not getting his hands dirty."
"That's not what the text means. You're insane -"
“Why?”
"Why should a man get his hands dirty if he doesn't need to get them dirty."
"Because labor is an absolute, and one who wishes to succeed, sweats."
“However if you can avoid getting dirty hands, avoid at all costs! If you can avoid the drudgery of endless hours with nothing to show but your own blood spilling forth - along with placing riches into someone else's pockets. If you can escape hard labor, then why not?”
“You approve, then, of Pegasus flying and not needing to plow in order to fly?”
“No, I don’t approve of Pegasus plowing if he can fly. But I believe in his plugging like hell in order to fly.”
Such ponderous intellectual battles came sudden and easy for Jack and George. Just as spontaneous as they could come, they could as quickly go. The subject not being the point, the debate being everything, the fun was in the sword play of their intellect.



They rested their wits and gave pause to the ethereal sounds of the Valley of the Moon. In quiet contemplation their minds were given rest, as their souls drank in the perfect spectacle of the universe. The cool air refreshing their spirits. They drank in the day as they road upon horseback. No destination, the journey was the point. It always was with Jack.
It was after several minutes of silence, and after several minutes of riding past oak trees and wild flowers and crossing creeks, that Jack let out a sigh, and said, "One hour of love is worth a century of science.”
“Huh?”
Jack shook himself.
"Nothing. Had misplaced where I was. Something Anna had said."
George looked at his friend. Jack was a soul which bound so many together. A beckon of light in a sea of souls who – without him – were forever shrouded in fog.
“Jack,” asked George.
“I’m back again, to earth, that is,” said Jack.
“Nice to have you with us,” smiled George, “Welcome. The world stopped spinning without you.”
“Pity. I needed a rest.”
“You’re going home tomorrow?”
“Which one?”
"Piedmont.”
“No. Taking my things to Oakland."

“Your mother's place?”
“Yes. I’m leaving some things there, as I’ll be moving out soon from the bungalow, and then will be going to the Oakland waterfront where I’ve docked 'The Spray'. Working more on my sea tale. Unencumbered by women.”
“All women?”
“As best I can.”
“What about…”
“I’ll attend to her later. Anyway, I’ll be up and out of Wake Robin early tomorrow.”
George stared at him. He was Jack’s best friend. Could always tell when something was REALLY bothering him. Lingering behind the boyish grin. The façade of the unruffled outer shell.
“Jack, tell me, how are you getting along with all your current affairs?”
Jack laughed. Then said, with the sadness eyes -
“They're all in confusion. I don’t have a clue as to what I shall do. No one can help me. I have nothing to use but my own strength.”
“Just remember, my friend, you’re not an island, no matter how much you pretend you want to be.”
“Oh, I know that I’m not, no one is, no who –“
“Your mouth says that, my friend, but your eyes tell another story. "
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."

"We'll see."
* * *
The next morning found Jack weaving through the oak groves, wild flowers and vineyards, driving a one horse buggy with grace and ease, keeping his horse at a comfortable, easy pace. Jack had a lot to think about. Unfortunately he wouldn’t have much time to think about it – when came a bump – followed by a cracking noise – followed by his horse reacting to the sudden disturbance, bolted.
Which caused the already broken buggy wheel to completely break, and fall off the buggy. Crashing and landing atop a good part of California soil, Jack rolled a few times. Looked up and this time he again saw stars, though not the ones he saw in the heavens.
Broken.
Bruised.
His horse standing many yards away, looking at him, as if to say “what’s your problem?”
* * *
Hours later.
Jack had managed to stand, and half walk, half crawl to his horse. Un-harness his faithful stead, and beseech her to let him ride - of which she had no wiliness to let him do. Thusly, without much hope nor strength to try again, he led her by the halter, and they walked – every painful step (for Jack, not the horse) – to Oakland.
* * *
In her Berkeley home, Charmian picked up the phone on the third ring.

“Yes?”
“It’s Mrs. London. “
“Hello, Mrs. Lon –“
“Jack’s had an accident –
“What happened –“
“On his way back to Oakland his buggy broke a wheel.”
“Is he injured?”
“Banged his knee. He’s apparently covered with bruises.”
“How awful!”
“He’ll get over it. Probably did it on purpose. Anyway, there’s something I need you to do for me.”
Charmian wanted to laugh hysterically. Decided against it, for some reason which eluded her. Instead, asked -
“And that would be?”
“A favor, Charmian. Can you handle a favor?”
“Yes, Bess, of course, just get to the point and tell me – “
She could hear Bess sigh from the other end of the bay, and half way up the Valley of the Moon, even without the phone.
“There are some things in Piedmont I need, can you take them to Jack - he's writing on that boat of his - and when he’s well, he’ll take them up to Glen Ellen.”


Charmian wondered, why couldn’t Jack – when he became well – just go over to Piedmont, pick up these “things” whatever they were, and deliver them himself?
She decided to ask Bess, “Mrs. London, why can’t Jack just – “
“Miss Kittridge! If you can’t do one simple thing for me, I – “
“Fine, Bess - I mean - Mrs. London. Tell me what you want…”
* * *
An hour later Charmian was on her way to Piedmont. Gathered the needs for the London clan, and decided – “why should I go to the wharf and see that heart breaking oyster pirate and his boat? Let him come to my own home and let him pick them up. Growl! Men and men’s wives!”
* * *
She picked up the phone on the forth ring. Maybe the fifth. She couldn’t remember but she couldn’t care less. Phone calls were less and less interesting. This one was less than less interesting.
“Yes, Jack, I have the things your wife needs…yes, I heard of your injury…I’m very sorry, feeling any - …what was that? No, I have no intention of taking them to you. Yes, I heard Bess and I still don’t have a clue as to why she can’t, you can’t – “
She sighed.
Listened more.
“No, didn’t know some of the things were what you needed.”
Tapped her foot…her arms were already crossed.

“And your point would be?” she asked Jack.
She listened, and then said, “Sorry you’re too lame to pick up your own stuff…fine, I’ll come out to the ship…the boat, whatever. What’s that? You what? It was you who asked Bess to ask me to pick up her and your things?”
Really big sigh.
“What ever for? Just…wait, listen…listen, would you? I will come out… Yes, how clever of you, I am in fact being less than affable…why? Because I don’t feel like being lady like!”
* * *
'The Spray'
Jack listened to her hanging up on the other end. He was impressed by her forcefulness. He liked that in a woman. In that woman. Editor, boxer, fencer, pianist, equestrian, unafraid to wear pants, and fearless speaker to any male unwittingly crossing her path.
He smiled, as he bent over his writing pad. His bandaged leg raised on a table, he was ready to dive back into his made up world. The gentle rocking of his boat placing him into the perfect mood -
“The captain, or Wolf Larsen, as men called him, ceased pacing and gazed down at the dying man. So fierce had this final struggle become that the sailor paused in the act of flinging more water over him and stared curiously, the canvas bucket partly tilted and dripping its contents to the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels, straightened out his legs, and stiffened in one great tense effort, and rolled his head from side to side. Then the

muscles relaxed, the head stopped rolling, and a sigh, as of profound relief, floated upward from his lips."
He finished re-reading the words he had just composed. He liked the way “The Sea Wolf” was coming about. He smiled, and leaned back, arms folded behind his head. He let out a long soulful howl. Like Buck at the moon.

More like, now, his current protagonist, Wolf Larson. Wolves. Many wolves. A pattern here? You bet. Wild and free. Messages? Always messages. Jack just would never admit to them. Sometimes. His life a dichotomy of abstraction – not a life to be looked upon as the inability to make up his mind on what he thought. To him, within, there was reason and cause. Complex. Yet, he would tell anyone who would listen that every decision he made was based on the principle of “like”. Who was he today? He knew. Jack just didn’t feel the need to explain himself to anyone – rather, he would just hope that everyone else would simply catch up, and join him.
Aboard a boat, or a ship, was always a good place to escape. The harbor at Oakland always his favorite place to sail in and about. Perfect, to write his sea faring tale.

A wind came up and ‘The Spray’ shifted naturally to the bend of breeze and water, which made Jack’s position a little uncomfortable. He tried to shift. Move his hurt leg – the pain told him that it probably wasn’t a very good idea. He stopped. Picked up his writing tablet again and stared at an empty page. Took his pencil pen, and began to write –

"The jaw dropped, the upper lip lifted, and two rows of tobacco-discoloured teeth appeared. It seemed as though his features had frozen into a diabolical grin at the world he had left and outwitted.”
His thoughts only stopped when the gentle rocking sounds were taken over by the sound of buggy wheel on wooden dock. He placed his writing tools down. Listened to the sounds of shoes landing on the dock. A sound, like a…like the sound of a woman’s moans, efforts, handling things heavy. Maybe, he thought, had to be Charmian, unloading her buggy, and moving, carrying the boxes herself.
* * *
Outside on the dock.
Other women would have daintily come to the boat’s side, announced her presence, waiting for the man to do all the unloading. Charmian wasn’t going to wait on any man. That, and she could jolly well do it herself. So why not? Besides, she wanted to drop everything off, turn, leave, get back aboard her buggy, and take off and never see the Bay again - Jack, anyway.
Her horse turned his head in her direction. Watched her swing a large satchel over her head, the strap across her neck, the bundle at her side. She picked up a grip in her right hand and in the other picked up a box and wedged it between the grip and her right arm. Left hand picked up two bags and another satchel, managed to bend over, and with both her hands, lifted another box and she was off.
The horse shock his head, ever grateful for not being a human.


Down the dock she went. Of course, she thought, 'The Spray" would have to be on the furthermost end of the furthermost dock in all of Oakland. Finally reaching 'The Spray', she lifted them over the boat’s railing.
Sighed.
Caught her breath.
Wiped her sweaty brow.
“It’s here!”
“Come in!” shouted the voice within.
“Naturally,” she thought.
* * *
Moments later.
From within 'The Spray' Jack watched Charmian walk through the cabin door and into Jack’ cabin, carrying in her arms all of Jack's things. She sat them down, in various ways, in various positions.
“I told you I’d bring your - whatever these things are – and, well, here it is. All of it,” she turned, and began to walk away.
Jack had no intention of letting her walk away. “Wait.” He forced himself to stand, as Charmian stopped, and slowly turned to him, as in – what is it now?
He hobbled over to her. Assured his every attention, however presumptuous they might be, would be welcome. Because, after all, he was a man, and, after all, the personification of wolf.
“Thank you for your trouble,” said Jack.

“You’re welcome. There was plenty of it.”
He hobbled closer.
“Please stay. For a little while.”
“It’s late.”
He hobbled within a foot of her.
“Then let me give you something for your efforts,” and with that, Jack reached over, grabbed Charmian by the waist, and kissed her full on the lips. His eyes were closed, hers were wide open. His smile was complete satisfaction. He knew his charms had won her over.
Wrong again.
She pushed him away with the words, “I…am NOT…your whore.”
“You’re somebody else’s?”
A moment.
Oh, somewhere brave men die in battle. Fearless. Unafraid. Others sweat out a living by working in mine shafts wherein they bury themselves deep and dangerous underneath the ground. Some men face moments of decision which are pressure filled – life and death swinging in the balance, tragedy waiting in the wings of their every move. Others find how truly idiotic, and stupid, they really are, and at times, are able correct their own problems. And, at times, have the ability to correct their flaws before something worse happens.
At times anyway.
Jack was, at this moment, not one of those latter types of men.


To say he had miscalculated the workings of the female heart and misinterpreted the female mind would be a gross understatement. For although he had made good and wonderful decisions in his short life, had done and seen many things most men never saw in their long lifetimes, Jack had misplayed this one – to the full.
He was, basically, out to lunch with this presumption, which was no where scientific, and no where approaching the concept of what love was all about. Forget the fairy tale.
Additionally, he had neglected, along the way he neglected the laws of chivalry, to remember that Charmian knew how to box.
As she wiped off her lips with the back of her right hand, she let sail a brilliant left hook to Jack’s chin, which sent him flying to the opposite end of the cabin.
Jack landed with a crunch, and he held tightly to his one previously undamaged knee.
“There,” said Charmian, “now you’ve a matching set.”
She turned, walked through the cabin door, slamming it shut. Jack moaned, all the way back to a sitting position.
And then…
And then a light went on.
Somewhere in the universe a star was born. Where a moment ago it was a dead, lifeless object, now was a brilliant orb of energy, lighting up its corner of the galaxy.
In his head, it clicked and finally…it all made sense. Who would have figured?
He said, “Oh, I like her.”


With sudden drive, Jack made it to the cabin door, and opened - to see Charmian climbing aboard her buggy, reins in hand, ordering her horse onward with every happy intent of being out of his life forevermore.
Jack stumbled outside the cabin. Reached for anything that he could pull himself up on, and without second thought nor cause nor alarm nor care of anything which had ever happened to him before in life yelled – “I have come to the unmistakable conclusion that I cannot stand not being in love after all!”
He gasped in pain. And his knees sunk to the deck. Though his heart was racing so much it beat with a joy that he had never experienced before. Nor dreamed he could ever experience.
Charmian, at the other end of the dock, aboard her buggy, went dead.
Her eyes widened as she pulled the reins up tight to her chest. She didn’t turn. Then she closed her eyes as if to say – this is not happening, why me? I was happy and content with the notion that I would never see this oyster pirate writer prospector tramp ever again
She still hadn’t turned her head, as she lifted her voice and yelled to him, “You should have come to that brilliant conclusion three years ago.”
Jack somehow had made it to the dock. Hobbled toward her, like he could really catch up. He could see her order horse onward again. And then he said something which surprised himself, Charmian, and all that he held to science, reason, and all things he thought being rational exploded with –
“I LOVE YOU”.


That stopped her as well as the horse. The only sounds one could hear all across the great Bay called San Francisco was the pounding of her heart. She ordered her horse to make a 'U' turn, heading toward Jack's direction.
Pulling alongside him she said, “You would’ve avoided a lot of heartache by seeing I was the ideal woman for you – long ago.”
Jack was out of breath, “My mind was clouded over by principles – principle of science, you see, and – “
Charmian waved him away, as she started up again, and again made another 'U' turn, “You were stupid.”
As she circled him, Jack said, “One could say such, however, my mind, you see – I was, I was overcome by what I had perceived were the naturalistic scientific –“
She passed him again, this time without stopping, waved him away again with “You were stupid!”
And then she rode off.
Jack, in pain, hobbled some more…and watched her disappear from the waterfront.
He said to the wind, that mighty Bay wind, “Yes, and in addition - for the very first time in my life - I am in love…and I am in love with you.”
He laughed, in a lot of pain, but he laughed. At himself. At the world. At such silly beliefs that he had woken up with that very morning.
It was a new day. And the world looked young, and very, very different.


Back to "The Spray', he stopped at his cabin door way. In deep and sudden thought. Almost, terrorized with -
What would Anna think?
























Chapter Twelve - Awakening to Love

"When I finally came to grips with love, I found fame a vanity, success - meaningless. But this did not cause me to become self-centered. I found meaning in the company of my kind, and self worth in the company of love, which is the best fame of all." - Jack London

“You were stupid,” said Anna with a smile. Playfully nudging Jack in his ribs.
He sighed, and said again, “yes, I was.” His look was so humbled, Anna had to do all she could not to laugh. He went on:
“Your arguments on the very concept of love have been an inspiration - you make marriage founded on love more appealing every time you mention the word.”
She embraced him. “Dear kindred spirit, love is a very appealing, natural process. Please, don’t look so defeated! It’s all right. Really!”
He turned and smiled at her. Then his gaze turned again to watch the water in Graham Creek bubble and churn, skipping over stones and heading toward the valley bottom below.


“You know, Anna, apparently some things are true, even if it is impossible to prove scientifically.”
“Yes,” she smiled in classic understatement, “I know.”
“I am astounded by how much I have had to unlearn in so short of a time,” Jack said. Paused. Looked across the stream and noticed trees he had seen before, though this time, curious he thought, seemed he was seeing them for the first time. “I’ve learned…” he stopped. Opened his mouth, couldn’t speak.
“What have you learned?
Jack sighed.
For the first time in his life, he really smiled. (Not to be confused with the thousands of other times he had smiled through his life. They all seemed rubbish now. This smile – this was the first and the best.) He turned to Anna -
“The greatest thing is to love.”
“I am so happy you have woken up and smelled life - life in it's purist,” she kissed him and continued, “and in addition have woken up to discover that it is the heart’s secondary function to pump blood. The very first function is to pump love, romance, and things of the spirit.”
“I knew you'd say that,” said Jack, putting on his boyish grin.
Anna applauded. And he felt like he wanted to push her into the water. After all, she had done it him, so it would have been her turn. "Tell me, what can we except from you now?"
“Funny you should ask.” He slapped his knees with his hands. Stood. Sighed. Rubbed his head. Looked everywhere he could - except toward Anna.

“I’m waiting,” said Anna.
He stopped, and turned to look at her.
“I’m having second thoughts about my marriage.”
She really wanted to burst out laughing. However…she looked at his face – serious, neither flippant nor bemused nor was it remotely understated as some sort of dry wit gone astray.
He was so serious and in such earnest, she knew that laughing would hurt him deeply. Stay composed, thought Anna. Nod up and down – but at the right places. All for show, all for Jack’s feelings – which she would not hurt for the whole wide world.
She was just happy for his revelation.
“I’m not surprised.”
“I’ve even…” he paced. Looked somewhere else. Returned to sit own next to her. “I’ve even wondered if I might be falling in love with you myself.”
“Ha!” She gave him a full body embrace. “You and I could never be more than the most intimate of friends.”
Squeezing him, kissing him on the cheek, then looking at him eyeball to eyeball. “Why are men such fools when it comes to seeing the obvious!”
He gulped.
“Are we suggesting I come to my senses regarding Miss Kittridge?”
Releasing her hold – “No one has ever accused you of being slow – why start now?”
He smiled.


The embrace was long and Graham Creek never rushed so briskly and beautifully before. The day soon done, Jack’s heart was lost to writing again…though not to his novel (which suddenly would have a new character, named Maud, a heroine…who would suspiciously look like Charmian, being introduced into the plot just as soon as his pencil pen touched down upon paper again), rather, his time would be spent on a different form of composition…
* * *
This is what he had written to her, that morning beside Graham Creek, and deposited that afternoon in the Glen Ellen Post Office, and read the next day by her wet, joyous eyes:
“Dear Miss Kittridge, I am sorry for causing you any grief those many days ago. I am desirous of telling you in person. And in some…humble way making it up to you. At the moment I can’t think how, except to say – you have stolen my heart. Test me and try me now in this - allow my soul to comfort your heart within the shelter of my own. For to you it is a save harbor, for you to nestle yours within its protective shelter…I can think of no other way to end this letter of love but to tell you this – I did not know what love was until the first time your lips touched mine.”

* * *
If one could fly, one could take a journey gently sailing over the rolling hills of the Valley of the Moon. Lightly brushing against the breezy valley wind, floating over the vineyards and oaks, the tree lined roads and the Redwood tops. The orchards and cattle, the streams and grassy meadows. Gliding over the foothills, leaving behind the farmhouses and red barns, the

white picket fences, dancing over the vineyards and over the hill tops to discover a forest…the forest giving way to a warm grassy meadow, and in the middle of that meadow, kissed by the northern California sun, one could see two solitary people. A man. Oyster pirate, tramp, writer, dreamer. A woman. Editor, fencer, pianist, dreamer too.
Never to be alone again. Never to be afraid of the coming day.
Charmian’s touch penetrated him to his core. He felt it in his very soul. From the top of his head right down to the ground. His body was an intense thrill of rapturous joy. For this was truly the first time in his life anyone had ever touched him with any tenderness at all. He was alive and he was free. Free to love and to be loved in return.
He took her chin, cupped in both his hands, looking dreamingly into her submitting, wanting eyes. Moved in delicate fashion toward her lips, she closed her eyelids part way – the signal that, indeed, she was ready. And lip touched lip. Though not in the mad passionate, even erotic way at the Piedmont bungalow. This kiss was sent out and delivered in pure loving tenderness capped within a song of joy.
Jack simply cherished her. She knew she was cherished. She felt his penetrating soul, pierce her heart with a love she had only imagined – a love she never thought would ever - could ever - be real. She had always believed in love. And now, it was here.
Well worth waiting forever for.
They embraced and with grace and ease melted to the warm soft floor of the meadow. Apart from God, the Heavens, and the towering Redwood trees, they were alone, and could just


be “they”. No one noticed, no one cared. Two becoming one – soul to soul, heart to heart, body to body – the eternal search complete.
Fly away, for now you would depart. For they do best who leave before being counted upon as gawkers to the acts of love (doers “do”). Better to fly to one’s own nest, and be like they…alone with the other, alone amongst the universe, alone but with a loving God who takes great delight…in those who dream…to those who love.





















Chapter Thirteen - Turning Points
June 30, 1904 – San Francisco, California
Jack, coming home from covering the war between Russia and Japan, reporting for William Randolph Hearst. Before departing for Japan, he asked the Macmillan company to send checks directly to Bess and his daughters. He then requested his step-sister Eliza Sheppard - whom he had asked to oversee his affairs to give "Miss Kittridge anything she wants."

In every way, his trip was a success. By wit or by tenacity of spirit he had broken through to report on the front lines - scooping all other reporters.
* * *
To say “the fog engulfed the Bay,” is such a redundant thing to say when it comes to speaking about San Francisco. Still, it was a sight, seeing the steamer appear from out of the fog at the Golden Gate, far from the sidelines, as it were, from the dock – “the Crowd”, the press, the fans, waiting for the hero of the day to arrive. A hero. Even a writer hero, returning from a far country, who took upon himself to chase another man’s – Hearst’s – employment – but in the


end, as always the case for Jack, the adventure, and the pursuit of it, always the means to the end – which was always adventure and because of “like”.
Out of the midst, then, the steamer arrived from her long voyage. Cheers went up, as the steamer finally docked.
George, Jim, Mary, Xavier, Carrie, Jon, Kathleen, all of the Crowd, and many, many mere adoring fans stood cheering, waving.
Jack waved back.
He smiled at all of them.
He didn’t know what he knew for sure anymore, but this is what he did know – his marriage was over. It had to end. He had found love and now that he was back from his journey, and now it was time for another to begin.
To the continuing chorus of cheers and delighted screams of joy, Jack disembarked. Lofted his cap high above, and waved it to everyone he saw. His eyes were dazzling and his soul full of joy. To a Californian, being anywhere else simply meant one was homesick until one could touch the golden land again.
Four people where absent from the throng, two of whom he didn’t expect to be there. He had hoped to see his daughters, but they weren’t there. Where was Bess? He didn’t care. He looked again. Eliza couldn’t have brought them? He sighed. Of course, Bess wouldn’t have let Eliza or anyone else bring his girls. Any thing for spite.
In the meantime - smile.
Wave.

Laugh at whatever George is snickering about.
And then, from the crowd, sticking out like a grizzly bear in the middle of a Bambi convention – a solitary individual…pale, a nervous looking man. No one noticed him. As a matter of fact, all looked right through him.
Except for Jack.
Jack saw him. Jack continued to smile, wave, chat, and shake hands…still, couldn’t help but notice the nervous looking man – and noticed him even more as the fellow approached.
“Hello,” said Jack, in his very own amiable nature.
The nervous looking man smiled very quickly. Handed a Jack a long brown envelope. Smiled quickly again, turned, then disappeared into the crowd.
“What have you there?” asked George.
Jack opened, read its contents. His smile evaporated. He was shocked – ‘cause it was he who planning on being the first to move. Bess had beaten him to it.
Jack handed the papers to George, saying in response, “Freedom.”
George read what was lettered on the page, then handed them to Carrie, and told her what they were, “Divorce papers.”
Newspapers, Jack was to discover that same day, ran headlines such as - “Poet Responsible for Breakup of Writer’s Marriage” and “Anna Strunsky Cause of London Separation”.
Anna would have none of that. As the press descended upon her, accusing her of the breakup, she didn’t hold back her disgust - “His behavior toward me has always been above reproach. Always chivalrous, always founded in friendship and love”.

But Jack didn’t read the papers…not then, anyway. Didn’t want to hear of the words of those who knew absolutely nothing about him. He could not have cared, in the end, less. He knew his motives, and why he did things. The pain he felt, though, was of his daughters…and of Charmian. He longed to see – all of them – again.
* * *
Glen Ellen – Wake Robin
Jack was alone and free at Wake Robin to hold his own court. “The Crowd” had gathered. The men, that is. This night the women would not be tolerated – as the guys needed to talk to Jack, their wayward friend, with his new improbable ideals, and with the mission in their hearts to straighten “this fellow out”.
Jack new something was up. When he saw his friends sitting in his living room, not particularly doing anything…waiting, waiting long. For what? For someone to speak first and break the silence? Not simply talk. Oh, at first they talked about things they generally didn’t talk about – like the weather, shopping deals, and what the east coast baseball teams were up too. How long would it take, Jack thought, before they arrived at getting to what was really on their minds.
His friends finally ran out of small talk. Which was good, as Jack was running out of patience. Xavier started it, blurting out -
“Really, Jack, refusing Charmian as a mistress.”
“What was the problem, was there some sort of problem?”
“Maybe she wasn’t good enough for him.”

“She wasn’t good enough for you, Jack?”
“Maybe you weren’t good enough for her?”
“I think she was good enough. Jack is just – picky.”
“Where is Charmian?” asked Jim.
“In Iowa. Escaping gossips, no doubt,” said Jack.
“She coming back?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“What is she too you, then?
“The woman I love,” said Jack.
“The WOMAN you LOVE?” they all sang like a chorus.
“Yes, but what IS she too you?” asked Jon.
“What are you going to do with Bess?”
“Divorcing her. Don’t you read the papers?”
“I don’t understand this – this divorce business –“
“- nobody understands this. Jack, really, why can’t you just have your wife, and sow your oats on the side?” asked George.
“I need more.”
“What possibly more could you want?”
“A soul mate. A friend –“
“We're your friends.”
“A wife is not a friend, Jack.”

“If a wife is your friend then what do you need us for?”
“I've lost you. I really have” said Jack.
“We've lost him.”
“What are you going to do now? Take her sailing?”
Jack had had enough. He walked to his very own front door, opened it, and walked out of his very own home. Rather live in the trees and talk with the squirrels than deal with – his friends.
Having watched Jack close the door behind him, George said -
“Artists. They're so - fragile.”
* * *
He didn’t, for the first time in he didn’t know how long, feel alone. Among the Redwood trees and the stars overhead and the thought of her, how could he? The night was cold and he only shivered outwardly as he walked along the bank of Graham Creek. Upward the gentle slopes of Sonoma Mountain beckoned him. There was a full moon to guide his path, and he could find his way through the darkness with little difficulty…and in his heart, he had his love for Charmian, to keep his insides warm. He missed her like the desert missed the rain. The desert never really understands how dry it is, until the water flows again…likewise Jack didn’t know how empty of love he was until Charmian filled him up. He was taken with her, and his focus was upon her.


Yes, there had been other women before her. And other women when he was with Bess. He found nothing hypocritical or wrong about adultery. Until Charmian, the thought just didn’t enter his thinking why he should remain faithful to someone he did not love.
Merely liked.
Merely was the mother to his two strong Anglo-Saxon daughters.
He stopped as he was now far enough away from Wake Robin and the lights of Glen Ellen that he couldn’t see them any longer. He was alone with the wilderness, alone with God, and happy about it. Reflection time. There was a lot to reflect. To ponder his life, and all he had to learn, re-learn. He smiled. Remembered something another writer had written about learning. About love, about holding three things close to heart. Faith. Hope. But the greatest was love. And he thought of another writer, who wrote that all was vanity was chasing after the wind. That without love, we were nothing.
Resolved. He would be faithful to love. He would be faithful to Charmian. He would not abandon his friends but he would have to distance them at second place.
This was not, at this period of America, a time when a man placed a woman – a wife no less - above the friendship of another man. Such things weren’t done.
Jack hiked a little more up Graham Creek. In the distance could see Sonoma Mountain in silhouette. Marveled, again and again, how beautiful that mountain, and all of the Valley of the Moon was. Must write about it, he thought. In the meantime, he had plans to make. Write to Charmian, have her come back, and they would begin to plan a life together. He knew he would be judged for his crimes of romance, and he also knew Charmian would be the brunt of most of

the abuse. He couldn’t see any way to avoid it. Just deal with her pain, and his daughters’ confusion, and his friend’s abhornance to his new focus, the only way he now knew how –
He would just love.
And he would write to pay the bills.
And he knew…really knew, as he smiled at the moon and breathed in the cool air, that he and Charmian HAD to build their dream home here…up on those Sonoma slopes, here in The Valley of the Moon, and build their home.
Time was all they had, and their life was all ahead for them. However things – now – seemed to be…placed on some celestial hold he just could not figure out. He was never in want to have his life on hold. He saw no reason to be on hold now. And asked whatever gods there might be, to send her home. Besides, it was time.

* * *
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“If he would just type,” thought Charmian.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She ran her finger over Jack’s hand written pages. Deciphering his words, often times surprising herself at her gift of interpretation and ability to read his own version of Egyptian verse. Still, she was glad to deal with it, indeed in exchange for the fact she was back in California with Jack. She and he had settled down together in Wake Robin. Sharing, though, space with Netta, and her husband Roscoe.


She had spent time in the Midwest and East Coast, visiting relatives and friends. Keeping tabs on Jack, not just through his letters, but also through the press – which, if nothing else, gave her great amusement. She had read them through the long summer days of Iowa, and now into the autumn days of Vermont. Being anywhere from two to three thousand miles away had helped her soul to regroup and reckon order, along with the simple chance to allow her mind to sit back and think.
She read headlines such as “London’s Estranged Wife and Daughters Left Destitute”, “London Family Starving on the Streets!”, “Russian Love Nest Destroys California Socialite.”
When the leaves of Vermont turned, and the wind chilled her bones, she knew it was time to go back to California. Those sentiments shared, apparently, by those who occupied the fully loaded train which carried her west.
During her trip, she felt at peace. Time had seen a lot of water flow underneath the bridge. Her head cleared, and she missed Jack. She even missed her aunt which showed her how desperately she did miss home. And now, transcribing Jack’s novel from his handwritten notes to type set, she wondered about those missing-her-aunt feelings, as Netta walked into the room and said –
“When is Jack learning how to use a typewriter?”
“He has me for a typewriter.”
“Yeah, I know.” Netta turned, gave Jack, sitting nearby, pencil pen in hand, a pile of paper in his lap, a very long look, turned again, and for the moment, took her business elsewhere.
Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Did you see the letter I received from Macmillan today?” Jack said to Charmian.
“No.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Soon they'll want all my work typed up before I send it to them.”
“Yes, they will dear.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
From the other room, Netta entered again, adding more of her own unsolicited advice -
“I can see their point. You've some wicked penmanship.”
“Thanks,” said Jack.
“You're welcome,” said Netta.
“Charmian? Would you care to pile on me too?”
“You choose what you want me to tell you - what does it matter as no one pays you for your penmanship or do you want me to tell you what I really think?”
“Please, the latter.”
“You should be grateful no one pays you for your penmanship.”
“You think it’s wicked?”
“Like a vampire on a bad night.”
“You too, then?”
“It's just neater. Publishers want clean, un-scribbled manuscripts these days.”
“They want everything.”


Charmian smiled, shook her head, and patted Jack on the head, like coddling a child, “My poor ba-beeeeee. Not everything. Just clean, un-scribbled manuscripts.”
“Picky picky picky” said Jack. “Neatness will not make me a better writer.”
“True,” said Netta, “but it’ll make you a neater one.”
“Mail today?” Jack asked Charmian
“Sure, change the subject,” said Charmian, picking up a letter, “this is from the Houdini’s. When we get to Chicago, they’d like to hook up with us.”
“I’m for it, maybe they’d like to come to our wedding?”
“I’ll write back today.”
A grunting sound came from another corner of the room. It came from Roscoe. Netta, reacting to him, walked over to where he cradled a book in his hands, looked at the title and asked, “Sea Tales?”
Roscoe muttered, “Joshua Slocum's voyage around the globe –“
“He did it in a thirty-five-foot sloop,” said Jack. “Using an old tin clock for a chronometer - pretty primitive.”
Jack, deep in thought, stood, walked to Charmian, knelt down to beside her, and said, “If we built a boat - say, ten feet longer, used modern equipment, hired a crew, why couldn't we do it?”
Netta shook her head and sighed, “Sounds like I'm out of this one,” and walked out of the room.
“Hmmm…” thought Charmian.
Tap. Tap. Tap.

Jack stood, and walked over to Roscoe. “Well? What do you think?”
“Sure,” said Rosco.
Turning back to Charmian, now high into excitement, “Charmian - what if - five years after we're married and we've built our house, we circumnavigate the world in a forty-five-foot sloop?”
Tap. Ta -
She stopped. She smiled. “You know I'm game…but…”
“But...?
“But why wait five years? Let the house hang for five years, let's begin
construction of the sloop in the spring. It's silly to build a house then leave it. We'll make our home on the high seas. Just you and me...”
Jack walked to Charmian, pulled her up to her feet. They melted together in one, wonderful embrace. A little uncomfortable for Roscoe’s tastes. However he was more afraid of being left out. He cleared his throat, and said – “And the crew.”
They turned to him and said as one, “And the crew.”












Chapter Fourteen - A Magic Act of Their Own
End of Winter 1905

“Dear, dear Woman. Somehow, you have been very much in my thoughts, these last few days, and in inexpressible ways you are dearer to me. I will not speak of the mind qualities, the soul qualities, for somehow, in ways beyond my speech and thought, you have suddenly loomed colossal in comparison with all other women.
Oh, believe me, in these last several days I have been doing some thinking, some comparing, and I have been made aware, not merely of greater pride in you, but of delight, in you. Just you with strength and surety, and power to hold me to you for that old peace and the rest which you have always had for me. I am more confident now than a year ago that we shall be happy together.
God! And you have grit! I love you for it. You are my comrade for it. And I mean the grit of the soul.
I think of you swimming, and jumping and diving and my arms go out to the dear, sensitive, gritty body of yours, as my arms go out to the gritty soul of you within that body.

"My first thought in the morning is of you, my last thought at night. My arms are about you, and I kiss you with my soul.
Your own Man.”
- letter from Jack London to Charmian Kittridge
* * *
She was not a happy camper. A woman scorned was the banner she held across her chest, and another hovered above her head. The banner screamed out – “Below Rests the Soul of a Woman Betrayed”.
Bess was ticked.
She felt abandoned, and had the real right to feel that way. Her daughters had more reason to feel left out – however – they were more on their daddy’s side than most imagined…and more on his side – though Joan had her doubts - than they were willing admit to their mom.
Bess had left Jack emotionally long ago. Though it was the act of being in love which caused Jack to finally see it. Not being in love, well, it made it so Jack didn’t care and certainly didn’t notice that her relationship attachments had departed.
Long ago.
The kids were not stupid - they knew that mom and dad were not happy. They also knew that their parents were only happy when they weren’t together.
“That’s not accurate,” said Joan one day, while she and her sister, Becky, were discussing their parental units.
“No, it’s not. Dad is certainly happier when he isn’t around mom.”

“And mom is simply more miserable when she’s not with dad.”
Divorce is only terrible, ultimately, on the children.
And Jack tried to bring his kids into some sort of – concept, or acceptance, or enlightenment, or security, or… – he stopped. Sighed. This would be a no win scenario. He just couldn’t place the responsibility of letting Bess talk to the kids about why mommy and daddy couldn’t stand the other – HE would have to take those duties on. Be the first to approach his girls, be the first to tell them that…his separation from their mom…it would be…well…somehow everything would be all right.
“I love you both,” he had said to them, again and again, up to and including when he stepped aboard the train which would take him east.
“I love you daddy,” said Becky.
“Mommy says you’re mean,” said Joan.
”Will you miss us?”
“Are you mean?”
”You still love us, don’t you?”
“If you leave us you’re mean.”
“Is this our fault?” tearfully asked Becky.
“Of course not, it’s daddy’s fault,” said Joan. “Mommy said.”
Jack could go on for days, telling his girls how much he loved them. How much he would miss them. How sad he was that all this had to happen, and that he had put them in the center of the storm. He just - and this he wouldn’t share with them - could not stand to be with their

mother ever again. Cold, distant, critical of him in private as well as in public. Not a partner nor a love mate. But Charmian – oh, in her was everything he ever desired, dreamed would be in a woman. She was beyond his very imagination. If only it were Charmian who had given birth to Joan and Becky.
“We love you, daddy!” said Becky.
“But you’re leaving us. If you love us then why are you leaving us?” asked Joan.
”Good-bye, daddy, we love you and we will miss you,” said Becky. And as Jack stood on the steps leading up to a passenger car, the train rolling away from the depot at Glen Ellen, he waved back in answer to her own tearful wave. Joan placed her hands on her hips, and far away, he could see Bess…and Bess was looking not at him – rather, staring at the woman standing on the platform watching Jack leave. Her goodbyes said, Charmian stood at a respectful distance away from the girls and himself. Charmian’s soul however was catching a quiver full of every arrow imaginable known to woman shot her way from Bess.
Charmian – to whom Bess would never again call her by her first name – simply would refer to her as “that woman”.
* * *
His train plowed and crawled over the Sierra Nevada. Sled down the eastern side and glided through the Nevada and Utah deserts, then plowed and crawled over the Rocky Mountains, and glided down the other side, taking a smooth ride all the way across the plains onward to Chicago. Although arriving in Chicago would be weeks away, as Jack had several lecture stops to make.

He would lecture on socialism, and the coming revolution. Not a revolution of guns and words, but of justice, freedom, and basic human rights. He would speak about worker’s rights, women’s rights, and, a concept new to a lot of the upper classes - child labor laws. He felt children should be in school, and not forced into labor – sweat shops or factories or anything else.
Imagine.
Scheduled stops included within the boundaries of Kansas and Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska. Indiana and Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin. New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. He would speak out about life, and all that he had learned about living, and the freedom of living for each other, speaking up for being bonded together for the purpose of succeeding and building a classless society, and he spoke passionately for the simple need of NEEDING EACH OTHER. Ergo he spoke out against individualism, and the pedestal placement of materialism.
His presence was felt and needed and even craved wherever he went. His magnetism was as strong as it was enduring, gentle, and demanded notice. A heart for others, a heart for giving, for loving.
Though many gave him their heart, he only gave in return a portion of his. After all, only Charmian had rightful claim to all of his. To his everything. He missed her and wondered, at all times, at the beauty of the love he had for her…and the wonderment at love she had for him.
Before they had parted, upon that misty morning of the world when his eyes would not set themselves upon hers again for quite sometime…they held hands beside Graham Creek, and this is what they said:

“I feel, at times, I’m asking for what is impossible. To have you free and clear.”
“Mate, you have no need to be worried,” said Charmian.
“Not really worried, just this never ending business drags on and on…“
“Which one? There are, after all, so much business that drags on and on” she said with a smile and a playful nudge.
“If the courts, the world, would not give me divorce, I would not give you up for the whole wide world.”
“I’m very glad. For you would have an impossible time losing me.”
“We would go to some distant shore, to some other corner of the world, and victoriously live out our days.”
“Like a true married couple.”
He kissed her and then he said, “I don’t love you enough.”
Charmian kissed him back and said, “You love me more than I could ever have wished. Trust me, I have wished a lot.”
“I will always love you more tomorrow…and the next day, and the next day after that one has ended, and and and…”
“You might as well, you know. ‘Cause no one else will love you or be more closer to you than I.”
“You are more kin to me than any woman I have ever known.”
“Then there is nothing to worry about, is there?”

\
* * *
Then the impossible happened.
News came to him in Elyria, Ohio, on November 18. Judge Ellsworth of the Oakland, Californian court signed the final decree of divorce. He and Charmian were now free to marry. He was never so much happier than the day his girls were born.
He wired to Charmian to come out and meet her in Chicago as fast as possible. That very next day she was on the train headed east.
Upon arrival, and several long embraces and kisses later (in Jack’s hand, the wedding license which he had procured from the Cook County Clerk, in Charmian’s hand, her mother’s wedding ring), they took a cab to the offices of Notary Public J.J. Grant to make their wedding vows.
Wedding night was an eventful one. Jack and Charmian had planned – like a zillion other married couples since the institution was incorporated into the frabic of life – to have the night alone and to themselves. Not to happen. All night long their room at the Victoria Hotel was pounded by the fists of reporters. Demanding, what else, a story. This union was, of course, sensational news. Jack not only was “deserting his wife, who was living in the streets”, he now was daringly getting married while the ink of his divorce decree was still wet.
* * *
After the wedding night, and escaping down a balcony ladder like they were teens in love escaping from parents to whom couldn’t possibly ever understand such things as love and romantic stuff, Jack and Charmian toured the “windy city” (Jack always felt that whatever fellow

named Chicago the windy city obviously had never visited San Francisco), and drank in all her sights and sweet sounds.
Another appointment they had was to meet up with Mr. and Mrs. Harry Houdini.
* * *
”We might as well be living on the streets!” the papers quoted Bess. The aforementioned
headline being held up in the air by the master of illusion. A dinner table in a very public restaurant. Didn’t phase Jack. “What’s another dozen or more strangers knowing my private life, anyway."
Harry smiled. Jack crumpled the paper into a ball, and let it fall to the floor.
“I’ve escaped some beauties in my life,” said Harry at their dinner table, “but for the life of me I wouldn’t be able to start guessing how you escape such a woman.”
”With great difficulty,” said Charmian.
They spoke of social issues and disappearing acts. Which is sometimes both the same thing. They laughed about the current political jokes and agreed that most of them were in Washington. They spoke of writing, and Harry’s wife mentioned how Jack’s works had been compared to Rudyard Kipling.
“I will never be Rudyard Kipling.”
“You’re a classical writer, brilliant –” said Harry.
Jack waved that away. "I’m not a classical writer, nor even close to being a great one. I’m nothing more than a competent artesian. One who writes not to make great statements, rather


one who does so because it is the way I have found to pay bills while avoiding the drudgery of the industrial sweat factories.”
“Aren’t you able to write for what pleases you?”
“Not yet. I write what the editors want. The only reason I bow to their whims is because I am well paid for my labor.”
“You call your writing labor?”
“Every bit of it.”
“You’re more of a slave to your public than even I am.”
“Apparently. Except I’m not under the pressure of tempting death every time I place words out in the reverent hope someone will read them.”
“Every time he does a stunt,” said Mrs. Houdini, “I watch the people. I study their anxious faces. They are waiting for him to do something so death defying, that he won’t be able to escape.”
“Yes, they can’t wait for me to keep pushing, pushing, to do the things vicariously they would never do in a million years.”
“Yes, therein lies the illusion,”said Jack.
“Which is?” asked Charmian.
“It’s all an illusion” said Harry. “You never tell your audience, ‘we’re doing an illusion, folks!’ That would keep them away. It’s all so smoke and mirrors. And as long as the illusion remains, there will always be work. Same with you.”


Jack laughed. “Yes, I must keep my readers – my audience – under the illusion that I am writing for them, and never for my editors. Although when they read my works, they are reading parts of me and things I have to say – still – they’re reading what the editors are telling them what they should read.”
“The artist is all about magic acts, you know?”
“I know.”
“People come out to see if death will finally capture me, and people read your works in the hope that you’ll take them places they have never been before. Factory and office workers. Seamstresses and accountants. Maids and miners and brick layers. Sinner and saint. They all want to escape. They all need escape artists. Illusionists and writers. We’re all connected.”
Waiters came by, and gave them their plates. Filled with food, and wine was poured. Mouths stopped talking, and began eating. Thus another ritual continued. Another time. Another place. Other names. Food a common element. The breaking of bread, the fellowship of man.
Jack thought - what was this thing about art? Needed? Important? What was so eternally important about entertaining? Wasn’t it just so much – in the end – chasing after the wind?
Harry’s wife noticed Jack’s Pheasant looked undercooked.
“He likes it that way,” said Charmian.
“Will get you no where but ill,” said Harry.
“Why is that?”
“You’d look down in the mouth for sure,” said Harry.

Jack creatively tossed a napkin at him.
Harry caught it and made it disappear.
And the world continued.
More stories. More planning. Charmian told of the London plans – after Jack’s lecture tour ending – to take a steamer ship to Jamaica, Cuba, then to the Florida Keys. Harry’s wife told of their plans to tour in Europe. And Harry sketched out on a napkin his model idea for an underwater apparatus which would certainly signal his certain death to his public.
“Give the people what they want,” said Jack, "and they’ll turn out for it.”
They all broke up into laughter, when…
A reporter came by, a photographer in tow.
“Might we have your story, sirs? And a picture to go along with it?” said the reporter.
“Here, now?” asked Harry.
“Of course,” said Jack.
The reporter instructed the photographer to set up his equipment “just so” and while that was under operation, asked questions –
"What brings you to Chicago?"
"The wind."
"Are you performing while in town?"
"I never perform. He performs. I sit."
"Oh, you're Mr. London."
"Jack"

"No he's Jack."
"I'm confused."
"Nice to meet you, I'm -"
"Sirs! Just a simple answer certainly will suffice."
"What was the question?"
Nearby, the photographer was having trouble - it seemed - with his equipment. Tri-pod not setting right, camera tottering on top, hitting a women with a ponderous THUMP.
"Your photographer is having some -"
"Difficulty!" said the reporter. Turning full around, he asked, "what is wrong with this picture?"
"There isn't any. I mean there won't be any. I mean - I mean - "
"What do you mean?"
"This is not working,” said the photographer, sweaty faced and red with embarrassment.
“Explain,” replied the peeved newsman. "Is it the photography equipment?"
"No, no, this is - this is all fine…it's…I mean it's not -" then pointing to the Londons and Houdini's, "tis them."
"Them?"
“They’re not…um...oh, how should one say?”
“Speak up, man! That is what tongues are for!” ‘
“Here’s the thing…Mr. London and Mr. Houdini…”
“Pour out the matter. They’re right here, plain as that ponderous nose on your face.”

“They are not…” he thought for the length of Creation, then blurted out, “they are not aesthetically balanced –“
The newsman was beside himself with relief.
“Ah! Not aesthetically balanced! Now I perfectly and clearly understand!”
“I am so glad, as one can not simply tolerate a thing which is aesthetically unbalanced.”
“My apologies,” said the newsman, as he reached out to shake the photographer's hand.
“Apologies? Whatever for?” said the photographer.
“I am so - flabbergasted at my inability to have not guessed to your drift, man!”
“As long as we now understand each other,” said the photographer, wiping off his sweaty brow, “that is all that matters.”
“Perfectly.”
“Good!”
“That’s not 'good', why that’s wonderful!” said the newsman. He turned back to the table. “I beg your pardon, however we are not making pretty pictures.”
“Pictures?” asked Charmian.
“Pretty pictures,” said Mrs. Houdini.
The photographer beseeched, “Mr. London, Mr. Houdini, would you be wonderfully good as to trade places? Thank you, we’ll wait. Hurry now.”
Jack and Harry gave each other one quick, meaningful look. No, they didn’t get up. This is what they did do…


Jack took off his jacket, right along with Harry taking off his. They traded jackets and they traded ties. They took off their shoes and they handed their pair to the other. Then they took their silver ware and their plates and glasses and swapped those too.
“What are you doing, sirs?” asked the photographer. Then, turning to the ladies, “what are they doing?”
“Swapping places,” said Charmian. “Mrs. Houdini and I would exchange clothes too, but it would shock the myriads in attendance.”
“Well, tell them to quit it!” fumbled the newsman, already full into hysterics.
“Not a chance,” said Mrs. Houdini.
“This is too much fun,” said Charmian.
“This, this” the reporter sputtered, “this simply isn’t done… I’ve never seen such madness.”
“Pity, in California we see it every day,” said Charmian.
And they broke up into hysterical laughter.














Chapter Fifteen - California, Home

After Jack’s lecture tour – which took them to Ohio and Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York, Indiana and Illinois – along with many other states - found them continuing their honeymoon in lands such as Jamaica, Cuba, and Key West. It was all adventure, and all fun. They met many people, experienced many cultures, types, taking into their hearts the diversity of so many living in so many places – it was marvelous as much as was, indeed, very fun.

They dived into crystal waters and they rode over magnificent hillsides. They dined with the common folk as well as national celebrities like Sara Bernahardt, Sinclair Lewis, and of course Harry Houdini. They saw new things and they experienced the wonderment of it all without a second’s hesitation.
The journey thrilling…however…
However it wasn’t California.


It wasn’t home. It came time to go – to be able to stand in the middle of a sun kissed valley, while at the same time gaze up at the snow capped mountains, knowing the surf was only an hour away, well knowing that in California every moment held a dream to come true.

It was also time to go home to build a ship…and venture out again.
* * *
They had made plans, those long lingering honeymoon days, on what their boat should look like, it’s keel to its cabins, it’s masts to it’s –
“Iron - needs to be built of iron,” thought Jack, as they lounged in their compartment, aboard the train headed west.
Charmian was intently watching the scenery…sweeping past…fields and fields and –
“Hmm, dear?” she said.
“If we make our boat an iron keel, ballast won’t be necessary” said Jack.
Charmian continued to stare out the window. Something was – odd – though she couldn’t quite place it.
“Something odd about an iron keel, my mate?” asked Jack.
“No, no….I was just reflecting on – something…”
“Then go right ahead. I won’t stop you. I think we’ll make her about a five ton keel. I know just the place and the company.”
“San Francisco.”
“Absolutely. ‘Anderson Ways’ is a fine builder. We can have her outfitted in Oakland. A perfect Californian craft.”

“Remarkable,” said Charmian. But not to Jack.
“The Snark or something you see out the window?”
“Nebraska looks like Kansas. Ever notice?” said Charmian.
“Much like eastern Colorado. I think we’re in Colorado now.”
“Who can tell? I mean, without the Rockies standing right in your way,” said Charmian.
“When I was walking with Coxy’s army, on our way to Washington D.C., the countryside took on this shape of – difference at every step. Now, traveling much faster across the country, much faster than foot work, it all looks, um -”
“Redundant?”
“Yes. That’s the word. Why do you suppose?”
“You were young then. Every step looks different when you’re young.”
“When did you get so philosophical?”
“Whenever I have had to travel across states which all look the same.”
“I kinda thought you gravitated in that direction because you were being intellectually influenced by being in my company.”
“That too.”
They kissed.
* * *
They came home – arrived at the Glen Ellen station – having a welcoming committee to meet them (George, Carrie, a few other members of “the Crowd, but not Jack’s girls – Bess refused to allow them to see “that woman” who would be accompanying their father at the depot).

Days spent becoming re-acquainted with family and friends, catching up on business, and learning to live underneath the one roof of Wake Robin – shared with her owner, Aunt Netta.

Building of the ranch, of course a priority. Planning the building of “the Snark”, another. Much of the world about them unchanged. Things were ready to – roll – right along as planned.

* * *
April 17, 1906 - Glenn Ellen, CA
Wake Robin Lodge
“You’ve a freckle I’ve yet to kiss,” said Jack, as he and Charmian sat in front of a fireplace in the living room at Wake Robin. It’s flames flickering off the walls, and off of the Londons, as they snuggled and dreamt before the fire.
“What are you goin’ to do about it, sailor?
“I seek permission to kiss it.”
“You do, eh? Hmm…shall consider.”
“You will?”
Those horrible moments that men are terrified by…asking a woman a question, waiting for a response…no one, not the angels in Heaven, knows what she is thinking until she -
Jack couldn’t wait any longer, he certainly wasn’t going to wait for the angels in Heaven to figure it out, ”Well?”
“Well, what?”

“My lips are waiting for permission to come aboard and kiss that freckle.”
“They’ll just have to wait.”
“How long must I wait?”
“Ah! Therein lies the mystery.”
“Mmmm...I love a woman of mystery.”
“Is that what I am? Mysterious?”
“All women are mysterious.”
“You’re reducing me to a stereotype because I am a woman? That we are all the same? Speak quick. For you’re in hot trouble already.”
“I’m trying to avoid being in trouble.”
“Too late.”
“Pity me.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“No. Getting back to mysterious…”
“Tiptoe on those egg shells carefully.”
“Aren’t you mysterious?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“Mmmm…”
Jack moved his arms about Charmian’s shoulders, nuzzled his face into the back of her neck – Charmian felt something wet….
“What pray tell are you doing?”

“Giving your neck a cat bath.”
“Dear husband, I don't recall giving you permission to give my neck a cat bath.”
“My dear wife. I happen to own this place on the back of your neck. And I can do with it as I will.”
“Ha! You own nothing on me. You can’t touch me without permission.”
“No?”
“No. But, then again…of course, you know…”
“Hm?”
“You don’t ever need my permission to touch me.”
“No?”
“No. I’d just rather you kiss my freckle.”
Jack moved his lips from her neck, nuzzling as he moved along, up to her cheek, and finding her lips - kissed them -
“Hey,” she purred, “there's no freckle on my lips.”
“I know.”
They kissed again.











Chapter Sixteen - April 18, 1906
5:10am
“Did you feel that?”
“Wha….?”
In the blackness of the night, there was a stillness. Not like the night generally is in northern California. Gentle wind rustling the pine trees…crickets singing love songs…a dog barking in the distance, the howling of a coyote, the persistent sounds of a night time alive with activity. But it was still. Still enough to wake up Charmian, who repeated, “Jack! Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Nothing. It’s quiet.”
“Of course. Makes…sense…since it's night…or, ah, dawn, which would explain the light…now, what did you –“
“Something's wrong –“
“Yes, you’re waking me up.”
“Listen!”
“To what?”

And then the world ended at 5:12am.
They would say…those who were there…and those who came after, that no one had ever witnessed such deconstruction of so great a city as San Francisco. Not since the first time California became a notation in some sea captain’s log, anyway.

There was ONE working fireplug in the entire city. There was no saving anything – except for that one fortunate city block with the one fortunate working fireplug.
It seemed the San Andreas fault broke in two, splitting the land with a 7.9 magnitude quake. But what really destroyed the city, was the fire. With the aforementioned singular fireplug the fire lasted four days. At the time, the city boasted the ninth largest population in America, figuring around 400,000 souls. When it was over, 230,000 were homeless. No one knew, or would ever know, the death toll.
The photographs of the desolation that can be looked upon today, were most likely taken by Jack & Charmian.
* * *
Atop Sonoma Mountain Jack and Charmian sat upon their horses, just above Glen Ellen, and overseeing the Valley of the Moon. To the north, they looked, they searched the sky, and saw a black flume of smoke, coming in the direction of -
“Santa Rosa,” said Jack


He was suddenly nudged, or pushed, and practically hit, by Charmian. He looked at her and she was in tears. She was pointing south. And then Jack saw where her eyes were leading her – not a mere flume of smoke – like a distant chimney, but of something one would say that, yes, the world had just ended – and to thousands, it in fact did end. One could imagine lives coming to a screeching halt. The world indeed had blown up.
* * *
Hours later they had arrived in what now was the burning skeleton of San Francisco. They had galloped like the wind, rested when they needed, and then galloped again to Oakland – where, it seem miraculously, there was still a ferry which was operating.
Across the bay, and touching land, they stepped off the craft and walked into hell – photography gear in tow. The smoke was thick in most places – and panic was screaming her lungs out in frantic desperation. The Londons could hear the smashing of glass, like windows – and they knew it could only be from looters. Only the natives bury their own wounded.
They wandered through the wounded streets and saw people who hours earlier had been sleeping peacefully in their beds and safe in the security of their homes now in desperate struggle to survive. In unison with thousands, dream worlds were shattered, thrashed, and all, or most all, became helpless. Weeping over their plight, and greater, weeping over their dead.
And then - the music began.
It had started faintly. Charmian was the first who heard it. First she thought it was an illusion, her own soul playing tricks with her imagination. Hearing things - like hope - she


wanted to hear. The wind swept past and she shrugged off to wishful thinking - then she heard the sound again.
She stopped.
Held Jack's hand stiff in her own, making him almost topple over himself.
Nothing.
Was it just the wind?
She took another step, and paused…and then, faintly, she could hear the un-mistakable sound of -
"A piano," said Jack.
"Yes. You hear that too?" she whispered.
Jack nodded his head.
They walked on…looking about the skeletons of progress. Listening. They turned their heads, cupped their ears.
Walking closer toward - a sound which really wasn't anything pretty. Just -
"Bizarre to hear anything remotely making sense," whispered Charmian.
But there it was.
Stepping though the rubble of tears the music grew much louder than the terror about them. It was a tune written in another century, however it seemed to complement the reality of the present hell hole which was once a fantastic city.
The Londons walked on and on and the music grew louder. And then they saw what could only be described as a miracle - in the middle of a shell of a home, stood a piano, the only

surviving piece of furniture in a home that was all but destroyed. That someone was sitting on a piano bench - an elderly gentleman - playing out his heart upon the keys, shaking, frustrated that his fingers couldn't work or fly like they had a day before.
Finally he stopped. The shaking not going away. And he began to cry. He turned to wipe his face against a shoulder, and that is when he saw the Charmian.
He stood. His entire body quivering. He tried to speak, and couldn't. He tried to wet his lips, nothing would come out. Charmian walked toward to him. He beckoned her to come closer. He managed to say -
"Would you play…please?"
Charmian walked to the bench, and sat down. Tears welling up in her eyes she bent over the keys and the melody she played - well, it didn't fix the city but it lifted the gentleman's spirit.
It was a start.
Music - the birth pangs of a people who would rise together, bond together, rebuild together. And though shattered and scared, one could feel that San Francisco would be, in the end, unbowed.
But not today.
There was too much grief.