Fools' Gold (24 page)

“It's gone,” he said, “and very quickly too.”

The old man finished the last sip of his whiskey, held the cup high in the air and hit it with the bent knuckle of his other hand.

“In Japan our sake is as clear as creek water,” he said. “If I were to fill my cup with sake it would appear empty, as it does now.”

The old man shouted but his voice was dulled by the soft walls of the shelter. “In the fall, when Fujino was here, we would get drunk and walk over the creek and up into the hills. Fujino in his young body would often run ahead leaping into the air like an animal. He was in excellent physical condition, not like any of us.”

Finn reached behind him and brought out another stiff piece of moss to lay on the fire, darkening the room while the flame burnt through.

“You may know a lot,” Kaneda said, looking at Phil, “but you don't know what it is like to grow old. Nor do you know what it is like to be Japanese. Growing old is indescribable; to be Japanese is to live your life as the brass tip of a walking stick. The weight of the rest of the stick and of the walker are constantly upon you. It is something that severely limits freedom.”

Phil held the last sip of his whiskey in his mouth, letting it wash between the wide spaces of his teeth. His father had not been a drinker. Nor had he been a talker. He could remember long evenings like this spent under the earth but he could not remember his father's voice. And, if he tried to recapture what his father looked like, he saw only the face of Kaneda instead. After they got to know each other he would ask the old man if he'd like to visit the village. Everyone would comment on how he looked like Phil's father. His wife would remember, so would his sisters. His children would be told, “This is what grandfather looked like.” Ah, but if he said that, they would ask if this was grandfather and Phil would say no, not grandfather, only what grandfather looked like, grandfather's face, grandfather's body.

Phil watched the flames poke through their moss lid. The faces of the other men were highlighted quickly by the fire, washed as if by a snake's tongue. The old man had stopped speaking and closed his eyes, probably thinking of his home and daughter. The fire's shadow danced about the hair on Finn's thick wrists. Finn and he had become friends, he supposed. People who came in search of gold were generally very friendly. Still, he questioned their intelligence in coming here to look for it. Why not stay home? Surely if there was not gold in their country there must be something of value. Of the five foreigners he knew, Phil liked the reverend best. He was a good storyteller. He had energy for his stories, and though he might tell the same one a dozen times he always changed it. Phil suspected that the old man, that Kaneda, was a good storyteller too, and even though the style of his storytelling was nothing like the reverend's, even though he couldn't understand, Phil enjoyed the stories. It was like listening to music. It was like it had been years ago, listening to his father's father and to the other old men telling wild hunting stories. It would be interesting sometime to discover what the old man spoke of. He would not be surprised if they too turned out to be stories of a good hunt.

Phil reminded himself that it would be necessary for him to begin telling stories himself soon. He should have started long ago but he didn't seem to have the knack. He remembered his experience with the two owls and thought that that would make a good story. He was pleased that he had had the presence of mind to pick up all the owl feathers he'd found stuck to the ice of the Snake. White feathers, exactly the kind used for sealing. The owls had presented him with dozens of them in return for the block of ice they took. He could use the feathers as proof, bringing them out in the middle of the story to add weight to what he was saying. Still, the reverend would never do that. No really good storyteller would. It was like wearing a costume or drawing a picture. It was a crutch, was really much like saying that the story or the teller was not good enough on its own. No good storyteller needs a feather to lean upon.

The old man was asleep and the whiskey soaked Phil's thoughts until he too smoothed out his bedroll and turned toward the wall of the tent. That left Finn. It was an unusual experience for him to be awake and sober while others lay in drunken sleep. What an evening. Three men, three languages. It didn't seem to matter to either of the other two that there was no communication. Kaneda, praying or not, could go on this way forever, Finn was sure. And Phil, hardly more than a sentence to Finn and he shifts to his own language. Eskimo. Japanese. Maybe it was the drink that let them enjoy their isolation so, and if it was Finn would be sure to join them next time. He'd see what he could remember of Gaelic and add that spice to the pot. My God, and now they're asleep without so much as a goodnight. Is it the booze or the terrible weather? Each desires more than anything to talk and so he talks to himself and pretends that the other is listening. Finn spoke out loud a moment in the sleeping room. Not much satisfaction. If it's booze that makes them sleepy I should have matched them cup for cup for I'm wide awake now. Damn, it was irritating. Each talking to his own like that. No sir, an Irishman would never do it. In an Irishman there's love for the other, not just for the self. What in God's name would be the purpose of a pub if all were like these two? A room full of people, warm and cozy, all speaking bloody different languages. Finn had to laugh at the thought of it. Maybe it was just as well after all, for look how well they got on. No, not so. Sociability is a man's responsibility. Customs. Politeness.

Finn pushed at his bedroll and lay down, staring wide-eyed at the darkness. The fire was nearly gone; only a few orange stars remained in the gray ash. Each man should stay with his own then, that's the answer to it. The Irish with the Irish or with those close to them. Here he was, starved for the sound of English, and Phil spoke Eskimo to a man who didn't understand it.

Finn reached over and took another bottle of whiskey in his dark hands. Sleep is liquid. He pulled on the bottle, letting his tongue act the cork. Even drunkenness takes time. While Finn waited he played a game with himself. He began listing all the things he and Phil might have said to each other had they had a conversation.

The pale path in front of the bath was peopled with bathers waiting. A hot bath when the winter had been so long, what better way to make time pass? For a week it was more popular than the saloon. Ellen was forced to set a temporary soaking limit of fifteen minutes and to charge double should a customer require extra water. Clean men walked the streets, back to their dirty tents, the hair they had washed forming frost caps, making them all look old. Ellen worked the front room, Henriette the back, and they both carried snow and ice in buckets and watched it settle over their slow fires. They collected money in a cigar box and kept supplies in the empty chicken coops behind the counter. Towels. Soap. They gave the bathers what was needed to get clean, Henriette washing the towels after closing, hanging them above the tubs to dry.

Henriette went to the Gold Belt and gave the owner a card allowing free baths to the winners of the bar's continuing contest. Nearly every man in Nome had tried to balance himself on the Gold Belt's scale swing, to equal his body weight with those sacks of sand. There had been a few winners, perhaps one in twenty, but the contest had been good for business. The owner, in return for the gift, bought each of his employees a bath and arranged for them all to come at one time, early in the morning after the bar had closed. He turned toward Henriette and asked about Finn.

“Finn?” she said. “Fine. We tried like you did at the beach but we didn't make much. Since then, for one reason or another, the bath's been closed.”

“Yes,” he said. “There's not a man in town who hasn't seen the sculpture that closed you. Some thought you'd gone into the mortuary business as a sideline.”

The owner grinned at Henriette from behind his mahogany bar. As always he held large cloths under his hands, continually turning them, shining the spot where he stood.

“That was the result of an accident,” said Henriette.

A mock chandelier pushed light over the edges of tin cans so that one customer could see another in the bar. Henriette had never liked this man, though Finn thought he was all right. She compared every man now to the reverend. Had she never met the reverend she would never have known what it was like to hold a man as a man holds a woman, of that she was sure. Henriette liked to remember how the day after their first night together he'd been deeply embarrassed, busying himself with Ellen, talking to her and doing little favors. He spent hours making breakfast and then said he wasn't hungry and left the two women to eat alone. Henriette had seen him from the loft window, standing waist deep in one of the Eskimo tunnels, looking down into the earth. It was such a strange sight, seeing a man whose body from the middle down seemed stuck in the frozen ground. He'd looked like the trunk of a tree. And when he finally came back home he spoke to neither of them. He went to his desk and composed a little note and then sat at the piano playing until Phil's friend came to take them home. He was such a funny man. Afraid to say a word to her, forced to write everything down.
“Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
That is what the note had said. No greeting, no signature, no date. Just the one sentence, printed and dark, as if he'd pressed very hard on each letter with his pen. Still, he'd used the best paper, and Henriette carried the note, tied through a loop, on a string around her neck. She hadn't told Ellen; she hadn't told anybody.

“Accident or no accident,” said the bar's owner, “it was a shocking sight even for such a rough town as this and I'm glad to see something was done about it.”

Henriette stood still in front of him. The bastard. He'd never talk this way to Finn or Ellen. She was trying to think of what to say in reply when the flap was pushed back and John Hummel came in, neat as a pin, in his heavy coat but still carrying that sack of money around his neck.

“A drink for myself and one for the lady,” he said, looking straight at the bartender. He pulled at the tips of the fingers of his gloves, then set them on the bar, his light hands on top of them. He smiled and Henriette peeked quickly at his gums for any sign of what had been. Though they were as clean and pink as those of a baby, he still had that sucking habit, as if he too could not quite believe that the scurvy was gone. He alternately smiled and sucked, giving the appearance that he was trying, abstractedly, to dislodge a particle of food from between his teeth.

“I was on my way to the bath,” he said. “If you're going back we can walk that way together.”

The owner placed two glasses of sherry in front of them and received proper payment from Hummel. He worked his way down the bar turning his rags under his hand as he went. It was his policy never to listen to the conversations of customers.

Under her heavy coat Henriette wore her thin sealskin jacket so Hummel ran the back of his hand along its fur and let the sherry run slightly along the seam of his lips.

“I'm going to build a house,” he said, “right where my tent is now. I'm going to build a tall house and buy the best furniture for every room.”

“Your tent is in such good order that it seems like a house now,” said Henriette. “You're a man who doesn't need a woman to keep things straight.”

“I can't stand a mess,” said Hummel, sucking grimly at the side of his upper lip. “Never could.”

Hummel took his hands off Henriette and began to tell her about Idaho, his home state. He'd lived without a father and said he tried to keep his tent as clean as his mother had kept their house. Alaska had taken him by surprise, the harshness of it, the terrible difficulty of everyday life. Now he was all right, but when he first arrived he began to bleed from the mouth almost immediately. He was forced to stay in Nome where he could get occasional fruit from the ships, and because of it he hadn't been able to stake a claim and had no chance for the big money that everyone always spoke of. Big money. Now he knew better. He'd make big money as Dr. Kingman's accountant and be able to stay clean and warm and dry while he did it.

“You seemed like you wanted to kill us,” said Henriette. “We were all afraid you'd try something.”

“The beach belongs to me,” he said. “I still believe that, but I no longer think looking for gold is important. I was angry for a long time, but I'm not anymore.”

Hummel smiled and, to prove his goodwill, bought more sherry and made Henriette touch glasses with him.

“Here's to the business end of it,” he said. “You and Ellen and Dr. Kingman and the saloon owners. Now that I'm an accountant I know how much the average miner makes.”

Hummel and Henriette touched glasses twice more, then ducked through the flap and into the twilight. Hummel took Henriette's arm and pointed off into the gray sky toward the second floor of the bath, toward the room she had used so well for nursing. No one ever talked much while walking here, for the winter moved into open mouths and clung to wet tongues. Hummel tried to walk beside Henriette on the narrow path, but soon gave up and took a step in front of her. His head, as she watched it, bobbed in and out of the collar of his coat.

Inside the bath Ellen had finished pouring and was ushering another bather into the back room. The fires in both rooms were down a little and as they came in Henriette hurried to restoke them, nodding while she did so at each waiting customer and telling Hummel to have a seat.

“It takes two to run a bath,” Ellen said.

“I've brought Mr. Hummel. He says he's going to bathe himself every day.”

Ellen ignored Hummel, took the money of two clean miners, and walked with them toward the door. Ellen had fixed the door the day of their arrival back in Nome. It was either that or ask their customers to come and go through the window.