“That’s ‘Wappy’ Wappenstein,” Fahn whispered. “He used to be the chief of police, until he got caught up in some scandal and got himself fired. We used to have to pay him a ‘garment’ tax—all the crib joints and parlor houses did. Now he’s been relegated to security at the fairgrounds and we pay off his replacement.”
The man smiled and tipped his hat at the ladies as they walked by.
Ernest smelled popcorn and waffle cakes. Maybe it was the perfect autumn weather, the morning sun, or the stable of beautiful women he traveled with, but Ernest couldn’t remember ever being so happy.
The Tenderloin brigade gathered in the Court of Honor, between the towering Alaska Monument and the magnificent columns of the Government Building, which looked like what Ernest had always imagined Roman architecture to be like. There everyone began drifting, the crowd, his makeshift family, to the right. He turned toward the bright colors and sounds of the Pay Streak—raucous laughing, joyful screaming, and carnival barkers with peculiar accents amid the warbling of a brass band.
But Madam Flora shook her head and smiled. “My Gibson girls, please consider this the season’s final exam on the intricacies of proper manners, decorum, restraint, and etiquette. You are at the fair to be educated and edified by the galleries, the exhibits, and the architecture. There’s even to be a thrilling debate between the world’s foremost scientists and geologists about who reached the North Pole first—Peary versus Cook—where they’ll settle it once and for all.”
The finely dressed girls groaned and a few cursed like sailors, even as a group of society debutantes passed by with their matronly chaperones, noses in the air.
“Just until suppertime,” Miss Amber interrupted. “Then Madam Flora’s leash comes off. And the rest of you—behave yourselves. Enjoy. Remember this day.”
Ernest felt Maisie and Fahn each take one of his arms as they turned and stepped toward the Pay Streak, the sideshows, and the thrilling rides.
“And where does our little Mayflower think she’s sailing off to?” asked Madam Flora.
Maisie stopped, hung her head, and stomped her heel. Madam Flora motioned for her to join the Gibson girls. She sulked as she followed behind her mother, looking back to wave farewell like a prisoner being led to the gallows. Ernest felt awful for her. Fahn took his hand and said, “Three’s a crowd,” as she led him away.
—
ERNEST HAD READ that the AYP was a dry exposition, but as he and Fahn worked their way down the crowded Pay Streak avenue, he smelled alcohol every which way he turned. There were delegations of men and women in matching suits, dresses, and uniforms, sporting ribbons from Hawaii, Oregon, and California, celebrating their final day, and sailors from the United States, Japan, and countries he didn’t recognize. The street was a delirious, delightful madhouse.
Ernest and Fahn had skipped breakfast in their hurry to leave the Tenderloin, so they used money from their envelopes to buy rice cakes and handfuls of Idaho cherries, spitting pits on the ground, and drank fresh-pressed lemonade from paper cups.
They paid twenty-five cents each and wandered into the John Cort Arena, where they watched a catch-as-catch-can wrestling match between a huge man, Jess Westergaard, and a stout champion named Dr. Benjamin Franklin Roller. The doctor was introduced as a professor of physiology at the University of Washington, and he won the bout, taking two out of three falls from the Iowa Giant.
As they left the arena they were nearly run over by a parade of Franklin automobiles. A man from the Seattle Auto Company stood on the hood of the one in the lead and shouted, “The only car to make it up the Queen Anne Hill Counterbalance in high gear!” As Ernest wandered, Fahn’s hand in his, he thrilled to each new attraction, frittering away nickels and dimes at the Foolish House, the Human Laundry, the Land of the Midnight Sun. They even saw the world’s largest piano. Ernest noticed Professor True standing in line, whistling a happy tune as he patiently waited for a chance to play the oversize instrument.
Next, Ernest and Fahn took a jinrikisha ride to the Igorrote Village, where a barker introduced the crowd to the primitive and mysterious dog eaters of a distant island nation. They paid twenty-five cents and waited nearly a half hour to get past the curtained entrance, but when they did there were no dogs to be seen, padding about, on a roasting spit, or otherwise. Nor did the short, dark-skinned villagers look fearsome or frightening. Quite the contrary, they vaguely reminded him of the Indian kids he’d known at the Tulalip school, not their features as much as their lack of smiles, the vacant look in their eyes, even when they danced and sang.
As Ernest watched them walk about in nothing more than loincloths, even the women, he recognized a familiar voice and noticed Mrs. Irvine and her group. The ladies moved through the crowd, passing out printed handbills and shaming the male attendees for staring at the topless savages. The men pulled their hats down as they tried to ignore the matrons.
Mrs. Irvine spotted Ernest and gave him a stern look of disapproval. He waved and nodded politely as he was led away by Fahn before the older woman could clear a path to reach him.
The two of them continued snacking their merry way from storefront to storefront, sampling roasted peanuts, salted in the shell, and spears of juicy pineapple from South America. With Fahn at his side, Ernest felt a bit older—wiser, more prideful perhaps. In a month and a half at the Tenderloin he felt he’d learned more of the world than he’d ever seen or read about during his previous years at school. He’d been thrust into an adult realm of discovery and responsibility, though deep down he knew that he was just a kid, and Fahn was just a teenage girl, who seemed reckless with her heart. Ernest didn’t protest her affections, though he quietly wondered where Maisie was, what she was doing, and if she was thinking about him, even just a little.
“Oooh, this is what I was hoping to see!” Fahn squealed over the calliope music from a carousel and a parade of drummers and wailing bagpipers. She took his hand and led him past men demonstrating gold panning, around the Temple of Palmistry, to the crowded incubator exhibit.
An official-looking gentleman in a lab coat with a clipboard and slicked hair shouted, “See these pint-size prizefighters battle it out with a bottle for three rounds, while living in a futuristic machine that serves in loco parentis!”
“What is this place?” Ernest asked Fahn.
“Babies,” she said, clapping and hopping up and down. “You’ll see.”
The barker kept up his routine. “Right here, we’ve saved the lives of babes from every country—there’s a Russian, Italian, German, Syrian, even a little Parsee girl, a Siwash boy, and newborn Oyusha San—a Japanese maid that’s as cute as can be!”
Fahn eagerly paid for both of them as they were ushered past a plush red velvet rope, guided through a door and into a room where a dozen metallic and glass-walled contraptions contained infants. One had a painted sign attached that read: PLEASE, ADOPT ME!
Through the glass, Ernest could see the babies swaddled in blankets of pink and blue. Some cried, some stirred and wiggled, but most slept as nurses checked on them, adjusting temperature gauges on the incubators. At least Ernest thought they were nurses. Another man in a lab coat walked by, and Ernest saw tattoos on his forearm, which made him suspect that they might all be carnies, dressed up as hospital staff. It was impossible to know for sure.
“What do you think?” Ernest asked as Fahn lingered over the newborn Japanese girl. She waved to get the baby’s attention, but the infant didn’t stir. Ernest was reminded of his long-lost baby sister.