Read Online Son of Fortune by Victoria McKernan - Free Book Online

at sea, he had grown used to the feeling of the bed moving and the sound of the wind. It was strange to have everything so still. Though he was very tired, and aching from the fight, he could not fall asleep. It felt like his entire life was stampeding through his head like a herd of buffalo. He had no family, no home, no possessions and now no money. Aiden tossed and sweated in the narrow bunk as weary sailors snored all around him. The world was full of gorgeous things and awful things—things that made no sense and things like the temples of Greece. How would he find his way through it all?
    He knew he had finally fallen asleep only because he was awakened suddenly. It was barely dawn, but the entire boardinghouse was noisy with activity. Men were hurriedly stuffing clothes in their bags and downing plates of fried potatoes and onions as fast as Mrs. Neils could cook them.
    “The weather is coming in,” Fish explained groggily as he finished off a large mug of coffee. “If we don’t get out of the harbor, we might be stuck in for a couple of days.” He grabbed his cap and kissed his mother on the cheek. She dropped her wooden spoon and yanked him into a real hug instead. No one, Aiden knew, ever went to sea without thinking it might be the last goodbye.
    “I’ll see you in two weeks or so.” Fish tipped his cap at Aiden. “And we will have a grand night then! Good luck.”
    Then, just like that, the place was empty.

o work, sorry.”
    “Got nothing. Go on.”
    “Who sent you?”
    After an entire week spent looking for a steady job, Aiden was starting to get worried. He had figured that in a city this big, there would be plenty of work, but every place he went there were lines of men and always the same answer.
Not today. Go away. Nothing here.
In the East, the machines of war had shut down. There were foundry workers laid off from the cannon works, tinsmiths no longer needed for pails and canteens, engineers with no barricades to build. Men were fleeing west: soldiers and bankers, blacksmiths and drovers, shopkeepers and organ-grinders, paperhangers and butchers. There were embalmers, with their satchels full of potions. The profession had barely even existed before the war, but there was not enough ice in the world to carry all the bodies home, so men had learned to plump the dead with arsenic instead. Embalming was now becoming cautiously fashionable in the cities. One undertaker on Montgomery Street proudly displayed a real body in his front window.
    The world had changed and no one really understood how, but they all needed to make a living. The East was scorched and tired and so they came west. California had always been the promised land, but the promise was stretched thin here as well. The gold rush was long over. The transcontinental railroad was more than halfway finished, and lots of skilled men were being laid off. There were still places for architects and engineers, for bankers, of course, and for the interior decorators they needed for their sumptuous mansions. But the plain labor that most men had counted on—the digging and hammering and hauling, the factory work that could build a simple but secure life for a family—was getting more difficult to find.
    “It’s the damn Chinese!” a man muttered to Aiden after they had both been turned away from yet another laborer’s job. “Chinese take all the Irish work here, you know! There’s not a hole been dug by a white man in ten years! Women’s work too! My wife used to get fifty cents a dozen for buttonholes in the shirt factory. Chinese do it for seven. Seven cents! No one can sew more than twenty buttonholes an hour—and that’s only if the thread is good! My children used to shuck oysters—Chinese took over that too! One dollar a day for a good white child—Chinese do it for fifty cents!” He slammed the beer glass down on the bar. “And the children had decent hours!”
    “What’s good hours for shucking?” Aiden asked.
    “Ten