Fools' Gold (25 page)

The reverend was in a blue mood, sitting at his loft window, rereading something from his small collection of fiction.
McTeague
again, the horror and greed of another gold rush. It was Sunday and the reverend had finished another hollow sermon. Had they always been as bored by what he said as they were today? He hadn't been involved. He'd given only cheap truisms, an hour of the kind of rote Christian rhetoric he'd hated as a child and promised never to stoop to himself. He'd read from the Bible and heard in his tone the same boredom that he saw on their faces. Boredom and anger. Once he had told them never to come out of a sense of duty.

The pages of the reverend's book were loose in their binding and slipped out of it into his hands. He needn't put them back in order if he chose not to. That was what he liked so much about storytelling. And he knew
McTeague
so well that he felt free to reorder the story in his imagination. He could change parts of it here and there and still be true to its essence. Many variations were possible in the world of
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, just as many were possible in his own world or in God's. Christianity frees the imagination. If he could teach just one lesson that would be the one he would choose. Christianity frees the imagination. He had proven it so many times in his sermons. He was a magician, not a liar, even if today he had failed. Someday he would discover in the fabric of his Christianity an eleventh commandment, another golden rule. Thou shalt exercise thy imagination. Thou shalt carry thyself to the limits of what it is possible to think, bending thy language and thought fearlessly. Blessed are those who imagine for they shall view the world through the eyes of God. Oh what a sermon that would be. So why hadn't he given it today?

The reverend made notes on the edges of the loose pages of his book. There is no difference between the truth and what one imagines the truth to be. When you search for God, search for Him in your imagination. It was stunning. If missionaries were of any use at all this was the lesson they needed to teach. The reverend imagined all the questions that might arise from such a sermon, all the bad uses men might put it to. What a joke, here he was in his misery, rediscovering the essence of his religion. He had always known it but had never before considered it so clearly. Yet it must have been common knowledge at the time of Christ. So much a part of thought that no man feared that it might be lost. So much a part of thought that God himself had failed to command it. It would have been foolish, like saying, Thou shalt breathe. The imagination is boundless. Imagine and let imagine. Let this commandment be your guide.

The reverend considered his body and knew he had let it limit the imagination of Henriette. Being with her had not been an act of love but an act of violence. It was the first time in his life he had so severely broken God's law. And he had broken it again with the note he had written:
“Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
How could he have been a party to such lies? It made him sad. For days he'd told himself that when she returned he would tell her the truth. Thank God he was past such sober-faced frankness now. The truth was as volatile as quicksilver. He'd relived his moments with her countless times and each time the experience was altered. He remembered the violence but he did not relive that part of it. And, as a matter of fact, each time, in his memory, the act became less violent, became, even, more lovely.

The reverend rose and padded down the ladder on the soft rungs. There were papers scattered about the house where earlier people had sat listening to his listless sermon. He would never be a bore again. God help him. He still held his book and walked with it into the kitchen. It was always a little cooler here than in the loft, until he kindled the fire. The reverend was hungry and in no hurry to return to the world of
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. He had thought, once or twice, of reading to his parishioners from this book. He might read just a little each week until they'd heard the whole thing. He could use it as the beginning of his sermon on the imagination, a springboard into a whole series of such sermons. The reverend poured oatmeal into a pan and looked out the small kitchen window at the nearby trees. Henriette beamed at him from the branches. He had been right to make her go away, for when she returned it would give their life together some sense of formality. They would not speak of the night in the loft yet each would continue to imagine it. The reverend brushed the vision of her from his eyes and looked into his steaming breakfast. He would carry his food and book and climb the ladder softly, just as he had that night. He could imagine Henriette waiting there, asleep and then sitting up and then pulling him to her. She always held him by the back of the neck, lifted him off the ladder like a flag lifted high off its pole by the wind. Her soft skin. How he fluttered around it.

The steam from the bowl covered the reverend's spectacles and swirled around the loft ladder as he climbed. No matter how soft his foot she would awaken. The reverend peered across the loft floor, finding her obscured a little, but nestled on the gentle boards. Henriette, diminutive of her father, who wanted four sons all trailing in his footsteps down the dusty ruts of his farm. Henriette, swallowed whole by this salmon preacher who turned her in his mind to suit himself. The steam from the oatmeal thinned. The reverend began reading again, eating between sentences, at the ends of paragraphs. The pages of the book were ever so loose in his hands. It did not matter what order he read them in, for as yet he was only testing, seeing if he could read, could leave the proper intervals between the words. This was not the Bible, was never meant to be. Only
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. Fiction. A proper springboard into his sermon on the imagination.

N
ome awoke from winter long before the season ended. Construction started again, and for a few hours each day hammer shots cracked the thinnest ice, workers pooling their talents, everyone doing one job and then another. When someone posted a plea for a town meeting Ellen offered the use of the bath. She turned the tubs on their tops and brought in benches and baked bread. Everyone contributed something, tea or cookies or bowls full of hard-boiled eggs. Ellen expected one hundred people and got fifty more. Many hadn't seen each other since the beach strike and were embarrassed into a light kind of laughter. It was a time of low talking and gentle movement. Many spoke of the dead man, and of the mule he'd rode so coldly in front of the very room where they now met. They sat toe to toe on the stairs, or on the floor, backs against the wall.

Ellen waited an hour before finally knocking for quiet on the top of her counter with the rounder end of the marble egg. Though no one was in charge of the meeting, John Hummel spoke first, offering his services as town secretary. He said he'd be honored to record what was said at the first town meeting. Ten minutes later Dr. Kingman was elected mayor.

“This town will be a good one,” Dr. Kingman said. “One that avoids the problems other frontier towns have had. If we work together we can raise all the public buildings by the end of winter. And then we can start on private homes. We will do them by lottery so that though the length of time a man has to wait may be unlucky, it won't be unfair.”

Hummel had devised a shorthand and bent seriously over his journal, taking down every word. Henriette sat next to him fingering her necklace and the reverend's note, and Ellen sat across the room holding her marble egg. Someone nominated the assayer as tax collector and it was agreed that he'd be able to levy taxes best, on the prospectors at least, at the time he weighed their gold. The tax revenue would be used for public buildings and for paying the construction crews. Everyone agreed on everything. They talked about what the town needed: a hospital, a newspaper, a bank. Did they need a sheriff? Did they need a jail? Did they have the power to make their own laws and punish those who broke them? The mayor ordered the town recorder to write to the United States government for answers to their questions. At the next meeting they would nominate and elect the other town officials.

“I'll put nomination lists on the wall of my pub,” said the owner of the Gold Belt, and when he said it Ellen raised her hand.

“In that case perhaps we've voted for mayor too quickly,” she said. “There should be nominations and a proper election for that office as well.”

Some of the prospectors protested, but Dr. Kingman insisted that she was right and it was decided that, yes, that too was only fair. They should elect the mayor too, only after nominations.

When the meeting ended nobody wanted to leave. It was warm and friendly in the bath, and the walls were made of wood rather than canvas. John Hummel immediately began transcribing his notes, shorthand to long, writing in a clear and beautiful script. The minutes would be posted on the walls of the bath for anyone who hadn't attended the meeting. Henriette found some tacks and sat ready to help post them when he'd finished. She appreciated anyone who could write clearly. All of the others had taken to socializing again. There was a group standing around Dr. Kingman, and another large one in the other room, helping the owner of the Gold Belt turn the bathtubs upright again. Tonight would be the night that all his employees took the baths he had bought for them.

Even though his election had been put off for a while, Dr. Kingman would be elected mayor. Everyone in the room thought so. He was the logical choice. Still, it was hard to congregate around a man who volunteered so little. He stood in the center of a group of talkers, the shortest among them, but the man everyone spoke to. He hadn't been the first to arrive in Nome, but he was the first to strike it rich, and that made him important. He'd started just like any of them and now wore European clothing and was refined in speech. Ellen stood near him and listened to the others telling him what they thought he wanted to hear. They didn't know him and she didn't know him either, for he had a bath of his own. He's no dummy, our Dr. Kingman, she thought. Still, he hired Hummel and he had the mule cut down. Ellen moved along her counter and in among Dr. Kingman's group. Someone said they doubted there'd be any opposition at all, that it was obvious who was the best man for the job, but Dr. Kingman remained silent. Ellen stood a few feet away, waiting to catch his eye. Finally Kingman said, “Striking it rich is not necessarily the sign of a responsible man. Why should it be the sign of a good mayor?”

“The mayor must be someone who is willing not to go to the fields once the spring comes,” said Ellen. “That's why being rich is a good qualification.”

“Then any of the town's businessmen…” he said.

“Yes,” said Ellen, “but any of a very small number of people. Everyone else is gold hungry.”

Dr. Kingman and a few of the others looked at Ellen. There was always a woman or two around who was willing to speak her mind and this one was nearly the only one who was not working in one of the tent saloons.

Ellen took a deep breath. “I've been meaning to ask about the mention of murder,” she said. “Our friend Mr. Fujino's death was sponsored by his own hand, no one else's.”

The men standing near her looked about. Hummel, still hunched over his notes with Henriette, stood.

“Investigation is the proper path,” he said from across the room. “If he'd been a white man we'd all be worried about it.”

Ellen heard Hummel but was still looking at Dr. Kingman, who simply shrugged. “Hummel took care of all that,” he said. “Who'd want to kill him? Why ask me?”

“It was you who ordered him removed, was it not? Do you know we've got the poor mule's feet stuck like the stumps of saplings in the ground out there? What made you take it upon yourself?”

“I was trying to do a favor,” he said. “One of your men asked me to help.”

It was the remaining mule's feet that really bothered Ellen, though she knew they were fast in the ground and would have been very difficult to dig up. She had an image of the evil uses those feet might be put to. She saw them strapped to the legs of a man and making false tracks. Still, it was not Dr. Kingman's fault. It was Hummel who'd seen fit to use the saw.

Ellen moved off a little toward the door and opened it. “Anyway, we've got a bath to run,” she said. “The meeting's over.” She walked back to where Dr. Kingman was tucking his light hands into his gloves. He wore a fur cap that fit down over his ears and strapped around his chin. His coat was long and stainless.

“We'll be wanting to give a Christian burial with the spring thaw,” she said.

“He's not the first waiting under the snow,” said Dr. Kingman. “Burial is a rite of spring around here.”

Finn had told Ellen once that Dr. Kingman was a man who carried weight in his words. Influence. Now she remembered Hummel saying nearly the same thing.

“You'll be sure to show us the spot where he's buried?”

“I'll have Hummel draw a map. I wasn't there myself, so I don't know the exact location.”

Dr. Kingman answered Ellen's questions as if he recognized no complaint in them. When he left he went through the door by himself, not waiting for the few men who'd been standing back waiting for him. Here was a man who'd been so successful he'd had to alter his ideas of success. For him anything was possible. Ellen followed him out a few feet with buckets for the gathering of snow. It was hard work drawing baths, and there'd be no rest now until the early morning.

“Goodnight,” said Dr. Kingman, speaking back out of the pitch darkness.

When Ellen returned, Henriette and Hummel were standing next to the wall nearest the door, carefully tacking his neat notes to the dried boards. “Oriental,” she heard Hummel say. “If you ask me someone slipped him something.”

The bathers were sitting on the regular benches, the women wearing greatcoats, looking nothing like they did when they worked the bar. It seemed to them a kind of punishment, to have to wait so long for a bath. Henriette started the fire under the burners and placed some of the waiting water in the tubs. Ellen said, “Goodnight, Mr. Hummel. You'll have to try your theories elsewhere; we've got work to do,” and Henriette walked him to the door.