Other picnicking families dotted the grass of the park. Children ran and played and got into fights. Boys barked their bare knees. Somebody who'd brought a bottle of something that wasn't lemonade started singing loudly and badly. Sam lay back, watched the gulls wheeling through the blue sky, and declared, "I refuse to let myself despair on account of God's creation being imperfect to the extent of one noisy drunk."
Alexandra reached out and ruffled his hair. "I'm sure He could have done a much better job if only He'd listened to you."
"It's so nice to know, my dear, that we can stay together when they start burning freethinkers," he said, quite without irony. "And to think that, if I'd left San Francisco, I never would have met you. I didn't intend to settle down here, not for good." He started another cigar, also on the first match. "But it has turned out to be good, I'd say."
Before Alexandra could answer-if she was going to answer with anything more than a smile-the breeze brought a thin scries of cries from the west: "Hut! Hut! Hut hut hut!"
"Hear that?" Orion said to Ophelia, who nodded. "You know what it is?" She shook her head. He was jumping up and down with excitement. "That's soldiers, that's what it is!" He ran off, legs pumping. His little sister followed a moment later, slower both because she was younger and because her dress dragged the ground, but determined even so.
Samuel Clemens got to his feet. "Those are soldiers, of sorts," he said; he knew the sounds of drill when he heard them. "I'd forgotten they were teaching the volunteers to walk-I beg your pardon, to march-in the park. I think I'll have a look at them myself. After all, they may be protecting us one day soon-and if that notion doesn't frighten you, for heaven's sake why not?"
"Go ahead," Alexandra said. "I'll stay here and make sure things don't take a mind to wander off by themselves."
Only a couple of low swells of ground had hidden the volunteer troops from Sam. There on the grass, surrounded by admirers, a company raggedly marched and countermarched. Seeing them took Clemens back across the years to his own brief service as a Confederate volunteer. They looked just the way his comrades had: like men who wanted to be soldiers but didn't have it down yet.
About half of them wore Army blouses. About half wore Army trousers. Only a few wore both. The rest of the clothes were a motley mixture of civilian styles. A few carried Army Springfields. Rather more had Winchesters, probably their own weapons. Many still shouldered boards in place of rifles.
"Left!" shouted the sergeant drilling them, a grizzled veteran no doubt from the Presidio. A majority of them did start out with the left foot. He cursed the rest with fury enough to make women flee, small boys cheer, and Clemens smile reminiscently. No, sergeants hadn't changed a bit.
Somebody called, "What the devil good are you people if you can't get to where the shooting's at because the Mormons have the railroad blocked?"
One of the volunteers took the board off his shoulder and thrust with it as if it were a bayoneted Springfield. "We ain't afraid o' no Mormons," he declared, "nor their wives, neither. They send us east, we'll clean them bastards out and then go on and slaughter the Rebs." Spectators burst into applause.
The drill sergeant was less impressed. "Pay attention to what I tell you, Henry, you goddamn stupid jackass," he bellowed. "Forget about these, these, these- civilians." He could have cursed for a day and a half without venting more scorn than he packed into the single word. Still in stentorian tones, he went on, "How do you know that nosy bastard isn't a Confederate spy?"
"I am not!" the man so described said indignantly.
"I'm sorry, Sergeant," Henry said. "I didn't think."
"Of course you didn't think," the sergeant snarled. "You've got your brains in your backside, and you blow 'em out every time you go to the latrine. And you're not sorry yet. You haven't even started being sorry yet. But you will be, oh yes you will." He spoke in somber anticipation of disaster still ahead for the unfortunate volunteer private. "Hut! Hut! Hut hut hut!"
A small hand tugged at Sam's trouser leg. Face shining, Orion looked up at him. "I wanna be a soldier, Pa, and have a gun. Can I be a soldier when I get big?"
Before Clemens could answer that, Ophelia, who'd tagged after her brother, shook her head so vehemently that golden curls flew out from under the edge of her bonnet. "Not me," she said, and folded her arms across her chest as if things were already settled. "I want to be a sergeant."
Sam threw back his head and shouted laughter. He picked up Ophelia, spun her through the air till she squealed, then set her back on the ground. "1 think you'll do it, too, little one-either that or wife, which is the same job except you don't get to wear stripes on your sleeve."
"What about me, Pa?" Orion jumped up and down. "Pa, what about me?"
"Well, what about you?" Clemens spun his son around and around, too. By the time he put Orion down, the boy was too dizzy to walk, and had had all thoughts of soldiering whirled out of his head. Sam hoped they wouldn't come back. Having been a small boy himself, he knew what a forlorn hope that was.
When Orion was steady on his pins, Sam took both children back to Alexandra. As if by magic, she produced two more cream puffs. That partially reconciled Ophelia and Orion to going home.
Alexandra was putting the picnic hamper back in the buggy and Sam folding the blanket so he could lay it on top of the hamper when a great roar, like a rifle shot magnified a hundredfold, smote the air. Even the gulls in the sky went silent for a moment, then screeched their anger at being frightened so.
Ophelia squealed. Orion jumped. "Good heavens!" Alexandra said. "What was that?"
"One of the big guns up at the Presidio," Sam answered. "They've had guns there since this place belonged to Spain -never mind Mexico. I don't think any of them have ever shot at anything." Another roar, identical to the first, disturbed the tranquility of Golden Gate Park -and of the rest of San Francisco, and, no doubt, of a good stretch of surrounding landscape as well. Sam thoughtfully peered northward. "Sounds like they're getting ready to, though, doesn't it?"
"Golly!" Orion said. "It'd be fun to shoot one of those." This time, Ophelia agreed with her brother.
"How much fun do you think it would be to have somebody shooting one at you?" Sam asked. His children stared at him. That side of war meant nothing to them. It seldom meant anything to anyone till the first bullet flew past him.
The coast-defense guns kept firing as Sam drove home. "By the sound of them," Alexandra said, "they think we're going to be attacked tomorrow."
"Whatever else may happen in this curious world of ours, my dear, I don't expect the Confederate Navy to come steaming into San Francisco Bay tomorrow, flags flying and guns blazing." Sam winked at his wife. "Nor the day after, either."
"Well, no," Alexandra said. "Hardly." Another gun boomed. "I suppose they have to practice, the same as the soldiers you were watching."
"If they're no better at their jobs than those poor lugs, the Indians could paddle a fleet of birchbark canoes into the Bay and devastate the city." Sam held up a forefinger. "I exaggerate: a flotilla of canoes." That made Alexandra laugh, which was what he'd had in mind.
When they got back to the house on Turk Street, Ophelia and Orion ran themselves and the pets ragged. Watching them, listening to them, Sam wondered where they came by the energy; even though they'd torn up Golden Gate Park all afternoon, they were still going strong. But, by the time he and Alexandra went through the house lighting the gas lamps, the children were fading. They went to bed with much less fuss than they usually put up, and fell asleep almost at once. Ophelia snored, but then Ophelia always snored.