The Octopus: A Story of California

A month later, Presley is in San Francisco, securing passage on one of Cedarquist’s India-bound ships of wheat. After his failed attempt on S. Behrman’s life with the pipe bomb, Presley believes he can do nothing more for the ranchers, and he resolves to make one last attempt to help Hooven’s family (his wife and two daughters) who moved to San Francisco after the shootout. Finding they were evicted from their lodgings a week ago for missed rent, Presley can’t locate them. He is near the P. and S. W. head offices, so Presley decides to visit the man he believes is responsible for all the suffering in the valley: Shelgrim, the president of the Railroad. Shelgrim, however, is impatient with Presley’s meandering questions, and he denies any agency in the situation. He suggests Presley “[b]lame conditions, not men” (576), portraying the Railroad as a natural force resistant to human whims. A rattled Presley leaves the offices and believes he sees Minna Hooven, but he cannot find her after.

The narrative then moves backward a few days, and charts Minna’s journey through the city. Minna, finding no work in the unfamiliar city, had returned one day from her search to find her mother and sister thrown out of their lodgings. Unable to locate her mother and sister after a few days spent on the street, she meets a woman who offers to help her. Later, Presley, on his way to a dinner at the Cedarquists’, runs into Minna, who has resorted to sex work: “I’ve gone to hell,” she says, “It was either that or starvation” (588).

As Presley attends the Cedarquists’ dinner—a lavish affair in an ornate mansion, celebrating the superficial accomplishment of their daughter traveling to Europe—the narrative again splits, contrasting Presley’s extravagant meal with Mrs. Hooven and her youngest daughter’s time on the San Franciscan streets. Mrs. Hooven, evicted and unaware of any social infrastructure to help those in her position, wanders the streets for days. She begs enough to feed her daughter meager meals, before succumbing to starvation and dying.

Presley returns to Los Muertos to retrieve his belongings and runs into S. Behrman, who now runs the ranch and is happily overseeing its bonanza crop harvest. S. Behrman relates to him that Dyke has been locked up for life. Presley disengages and heads to the Derricks, who S. Behrman has allowed to stay on the property for a few more days. Mrs. Derrick explains that she and her husband are leaving for a teaching position she acquired, but when Presley speaks with Magnus, he finds the man in a disoriented haze, unclear about his future. Magnus has so retreated from his life that he hardly notices when S. Behrman enters the room and offers Magnus a position working under him for the Railroad. Distracted, Magnus accepts. S. Behrman also reveals that he knows Presley is the one who tried to bomb him, but he isn’t concerned with the attack. Flush in his total victory, he views it instead as evidence “there ain’t anything can touch me” (627).

Before he leaves, Presley speaks with Hilma, who has resolved herself to widowhood and sadness, and Mrs. Dyke, who, sure she is near death, is taking Sidney to a sister who will care for her. As he is about to leave the valley, Presley comes across Vanamee and notices the shepherd’s happiness. Vanamee tells him of Angéle’s return, citing it as proof of the continual regrowth and resurgence of life; he insists that all things fundamentally and inevitably lead to good, even if mortal vision can’t apprehend the scope of this cosmic drama: “Death and grief are little things” (635), he says.

Later, S. Behrman is in San Francisco, supervising his grain being loaded onto the Swanhilda, a large ship bound for India. It would have been expensive to bag the wheat, so he’s decided to have it all poured “in bulk” into the hold of the ship. In a compulsion to observe the pouring of the grain from the elevator into the hold of the ship, S. Behrman slips and falls helplessly into the hold and, despite his attempts to free himself, is crushed to death under the weight of the wheat.