money she spent for food as money collected from workers at the store.
That day she offered to help Dominick peel potatoes, and afterward she shared the beef stew that fed the striking longshoremen. That was the beginning.
It was a beginning threaded through with illusions. One illusion concerned the nobility of the longshoremen. She invested them with qualities that she felt she had found in her father, uprightness, quietude of suffering, morality. Another illusion concerned Dominick Salone, again as a variant of her father, who had started as a fisherman and had married a daughter of the Seldons of Nob Hill. Still another illusion concerned what she felt was a cloak of invisibility that she had thrown about herself, making the game of being another person with another life and background all the more enticing. The relationship with Salone had gone no further than their exchanges in the kitchen and then one day he walked with her down to the docks at the end of Townsend Street and pointed out Harry Bridges to her. Bridges, leading the strike, was Salone's hero, not a "phony," not "some lousy smart aleck" making a career out of the labor movement, but a plain longshoreman like himself. "The best goddamn man I ever knew in my life," Salone said. "There's nobody else like Limo, nobody."
"Why do you call him Limo?" Barbara asked.
"He's a limey, from Australia."
Looking at Bridges, Barbara realized how much like Dominick Salone he was, skinny, the same height, a narrow hatchet face, large pointed nose, dark hair that was combed flat over his head, held tight in the wind by Vaseline— contrasting both of them with the boys she knew in what was still called in the city the "Nob Hill set," the tall, well-fleshed, well-fed, athletic young men who kept horses at Menlo Park and sailed their boats on San Francisco Bay.
"You think a lot of Bridges, don't you?"
"I told you—the best man I ever knew."
They walked along in a world that was only a few miles from her home, yet another world entirely, looking at ships that her stepfather and her mother owned, ships tied to the docks and walled off by the lines of bitter-faced pickets. Salone talked slowly, throwing out the words in bits and pieces, sometimes glancing at her, but making no move toward her, no advances, not even taking her hand.
As for what she felt about him, if anything at all beyond the curiosity his strangeness and difference aroused in her, Barbara simply did not know. And now, weeks later, driving north from Menlo Park after she had sold her horse and wept for the horse and for herself, she still knew no more of the reality of this thing into which she had plunged. She remembered Oscar Wild's story "The Happy Prince," about the gold- and jewel-encrusted prince whose statue loomed high over some European city, and the sparrow who brought the prince stories of poverty and suffering. Each time, the prince surrendered a bit of gold or a jewel to be sold to ease the misery of the poor—until finally only the leaden core of the statue remained. She made the comparison with herself, and then was wise enough and sane enough to burst into laughter at her own sentimentality.
"What a dreadful, impossible ass I am!" she said aloud. "I don't blame mother for losing patience with me."
She was honest enough with herself to recognize that in selling everything of value she owned—jewels, trinkets, car, and now the horse—she had experienced more satisfaction and plain excitement than ever before in her life. It was really a very easy game. She had never known hunger, never wanted for money to exist, and each night she went home to the great barn of a mansion on Pacific Heights.
At the age of seventeen, Joseph Lavette was six feet and one inch in height and weighed one hundred and eighty pounds. The coach of the football team at University High in Westwood in Los Angeles singled him out and pressed him to try for the team. Joseph refused. He was a gentle, soft-spoken boy, introverted
That day she offered to help Dominick peel potatoes, and afterward she shared the beef stew that fed the striking longshoremen. That was the beginning.
It was a beginning threaded through with illusions. One illusion concerned the nobility of the longshoremen. She invested them with qualities that she felt she had found in her father, uprightness, quietude of suffering, morality. Another illusion concerned Dominick Salone, again as a variant of her father, who had started as a fisherman and had married a daughter of the Seldons of Nob Hill. Still another illusion concerned what she felt was a cloak of invisibility that she had thrown about herself, making the game of being another person with another life and background all the more enticing. The relationship with Salone had gone no further than their exchanges in the kitchen and then one day he walked with her down to the docks at the end of Townsend Street and pointed out Harry Bridges to her. Bridges, leading the strike, was Salone's hero, not a "phony," not "some lousy smart aleck" making a career out of the labor movement, but a plain longshoreman like himself. "The best goddamn man I ever knew in my life," Salone said. "There's nobody else like Limo, nobody."
"Why do you call him Limo?" Barbara asked.
"He's a limey, from Australia."
Looking at Bridges, Barbara realized how much like Dominick Salone he was, skinny, the same height, a narrow hatchet face, large pointed nose, dark hair that was combed flat over his head, held tight in the wind by Vaseline— contrasting both of them with the boys she knew in what was still called in the city the "Nob Hill set," the tall, well-fleshed, well-fed, athletic young men who kept horses at Menlo Park and sailed their boats on San Francisco Bay.
"You think a lot of Bridges, don't you?"
"I told you—the best man I ever knew."
They walked along in a world that was only a few miles from her home, yet another world entirely, looking at ships that her stepfather and her mother owned, ships tied to the docks and walled off by the lines of bitter-faced pickets. Salone talked slowly, throwing out the words in bits and pieces, sometimes glancing at her, but making no move toward her, no advances, not even taking her hand.
As for what she felt about him, if anything at all beyond the curiosity his strangeness and difference aroused in her, Barbara simply did not know. And now, weeks later, driving north from Menlo Park after she had sold her horse and wept for the horse and for herself, she still knew no more of the reality of this thing into which she had plunged. She remembered Oscar Wild's story "The Happy Prince," about the gold- and jewel-encrusted prince whose statue loomed high over some European city, and the sparrow who brought the prince stories of poverty and suffering. Each time, the prince surrendered a bit of gold or a jewel to be sold to ease the misery of the poor—until finally only the leaden core of the statue remained. She made the comparison with herself, and then was wise enough and sane enough to burst into laughter at her own sentimentality.
"What a dreadful, impossible ass I am!" she said aloud. "I don't blame mother for losing patience with me."
She was honest enough with herself to recognize that in selling everything of value she owned—jewels, trinkets, car, and now the horse—she had experienced more satisfaction and plain excitement than ever before in her life. It was really a very easy game. She had never known hunger, never wanted for money to exist, and each night she went home to the great barn of a mansion on Pacific Heights.
At the age of seventeen, Joseph Lavette was six feet and one inch in height and weighed one hundred and eighty pounds. The coach of the football team at University High in Westwood in Los Angeles singled him out and pressed him to try for the team. Joseph refused. He was a gentle, soft-spoken boy, introverted
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