Fools' Gold (26 page)

The minutes of their meeting were as neat as anything Ellen had ever seen printed by hand. John Hummel was a man of strange talents.

“Late winter always seems warm to me,” said Phil. “Perhaps it has something to do with the longer hours of daylight.”

“Perhaps it has something to do with the longer pulls on the whiskey bottle,” said Finn. “This old man is teaching you to drink all over again.”

Phil splashed the sleep from his eyes at the side of the icetorn creek. Finn, squat beside him, spoke from deep inside his fur-lined hood. Five nights in a row now Phil and Kaneda had emptied one of the fifths of whiskey, slipping with each sip into their own drunken languages, into Eskimo and Japanese.

“I am not a drinker,” said Phil. “We are not drinkers.”

“Nor am I, it appears, judging from the last few nights,” said Finn. “And if you're not why do you carry on so?”

“I am his guest and must follow his lead. What would you have me do?”

“This old man drinks a dozen times more than he did when it was just he and I. He is doing it because he thinks it pleases you.”

Phil, rebuttoning his jacket, watched the water of the creek turn still again. He felt a little better, though his head still ached. It was true, he could not keep this up very much longer. His real father would not have been so demanding. The whiskey bothered his stomach even in the hours furthest from the end of drinking, and he could tell from the pale cast of the old man's eyes that he also was tired. Neither of them spoke during the day, but at the end of dinner the old man began, and after a few minutes, when he had at last achieved the strange tone he was after, his hand would flutter off toward the whiskey box and, clutching weakly at its neck, he would bring forth another bottle. It was as if that hand worked independently, mindlessly, like Finn's dog after a stick. And it was Finn's job to pour. Phil thought that was where the cycle might be broken.

“If only you would not pour,” he said as they pinned the hide flap tight from the inside. “If you did not pour it is my feeling that he would say nothing. But for him to leave the bottle where it stands is impossible.”

The old man lay gape-mouthed and snoring, his waxen face reminding Finn of Fujino in death. Phil stepped over him and sat back down on his unrolled bedding. The flesh on his face was still cold from washing, and felt to him like a mask frozen in its lines. How long had they talked last night? It was not unpleasant to listen to the old man without understanding the words, the meaning. Phil would like to become a storyteller himself and had the perfect story of the owls to practice with. Phil could remember that his father had not become a storyteller until he had become a grandfather. With the warming of his face Phil felt sleepy. “There is nothing for us to do today,” he said to Finn, and turned toward the wall to rest.

Finn lay with his hands behind his head listening to the two men sleeping. Perhaps it was time for him to be getting back to his other obligations. Kaneda wanted Phil, not him. And as for the death of Fujino, Kaneda was over that now, so what would be the use of staying around and trying to help? He was needed in Nome. He was a man of the city and was foolish to try to make something else of himself. What was becoming of the bath without him? Certainly they'd still be in need of help.

Phil's deep breathing merged with that of the old man. The room stank of dirty men and dog. Stubs of jerky were lying about, and in the corner the dog had placed bits of his own stash; bones and fish heads floated in his bowl of water. Men living with animals, at home in the company of such a dog, warm in their dirt-stiff shirts and growling at each other in their private languages. Enough. Finn was a sociable man and preferred to be growled at in a language he understood. Ellen and Henriette would know what he meant. My God, when they'd stayed together they'd treated each other civilly, even through the tragedy of Fujino's death. There were boundaries and considerations to be made toward one another and he and Ellen and Henriette had known it.

Finn was disgusted with himself. He and his vows, his guilts, his obligations. He remembered coming here on his sled and with that awful dog. He remembered what he'd thought and what he'd told himself he had to do. It was his fault, in a way, the death of Fujino, but what was to be done about it now? His sacrifice was unwanted so the best thing to do would be to redeem his life where he'd left it off. He would find out if his future was at the bath and if it wasn't he'd look elsewhere for it. If not in Alaska then back in the United States or all the way back, even, to Ireland. Finn was a great one for making pledges but a poor one for following through. He could see his pledges built up behind him, leading all the way back to his school days, nay, even further. Finn the promiser always promising. Still, what was there for him but to keep going? Take another breath and start again. That was something about being a Catholic. Go to confession, get it out of your system and start again. Make a clean breast of things, put it all behind you and start afresh, that's the Irish thing to do. And who had a better handle on that than Finn? He'd learned how to start with the best of them. He could talk and charm. And he could always, always, pick himself up again.

So that's what Finn would do. Tomorrow, or no, the day after, he'd head off again toward Nome, though he didn't look forward to another long winter trek. Tonight he'd try not pouring and see how the men did sober. Would they be able to carry on so? The lion and the tiger growling at each other from opposing cages. He liked these two men; he should not forget that. He liked them but was not one of them, and the best thing for all would be for him to try to get back to his own. No soul could rest if not Fujino's, soothed and wooed by prayer as it was. Finn only hoped that someone would pray for him half so fervently. It was electric, whether you knew the language or not.

Well then, it was settled. Tomorrow, or no, the day after, he'd start out again for Nome. It always made him feel better to have made a decision. And no talk of going for supplies. He'd tell them that it was time for him to be getting back and they'd not question it. Tonight he would try not pouring. He remembered a trick or two in that direction from the old days in the pubs of his hometown. It would be easy with these two paying attention to nothing more than to what they were saying in their secret languages. And then he'd be on his way. Phil would give him directions and he'd make an easier journey of it than he'd done in the coming. For now he'd sleep on it. He pictured the room with all three of them and the dog asleep and with the sun beaming in through the cracks. The air was dank and putrid. In the spring he'd sleep out under stars once more.

Finn was very impatient to see Ellen and Henriette. It would be fun coming in the window and seeing the looks on their faces. There would be fresh air in the bath. A fresh start. He felt like he'd been to confession.

John Hummel stuck to Henriette, appearing each day with those flower stalks of candy from his old spittoon, or with long, evenly printed poems, copied from a book. Henriette compared the way he wrote with the reverend's single sentence as it hung from the twine around her neck. She listened to his talk about working as an accountant, about the long rows of small numbers that he kept in the neat ledgers of the mine.

“Showing him the way I could write helped me get the job,” he told her. “It was half the battle. A good part of accounting is penmanship, you know.”

Hummel laid his hands upon Henriette's wrists, a guide. “Give me something you've written lately and just from the way it looks I'll be able to tell you what you're doing wrong.”

Henriette brought him the only thing she'd written since coming to Alaska, the death diary of Fujino.

“I've never let anyone see this,” she said. “You can look at the letters, but you mustn't read what it says. You'll have to promise.”

“Certainly,” said Hummel, already into the second sentence. Henriette's hand was impossible. The letters stood high or leaned back or ran forward across the page. “My stomach is hard and small,” he read.

“You have to learn to be consistent,” he told Henriette. “You have to choose the style in which you'd like to write and then keep your mind on it. Never let your mood take you from that. Always be consistent. ‘My life was planned, do you understand? I knew whom I would marry and I knew the house where I would live. It is terrible to have to tell you this.'”

“You're reading!” said Henriette, snatching the book back and standing and tucking it into her sweater. “You promised you wouldn't.”

“Not reading,” said Hummel, “only a word or two, to get the idea.”

Henriette held the book to her middle, but in a moment leaned back toward Hummel once again. He apologized and, taking Henriette's elbow, guided her back down onto the bench beside him. He held her hand in his, laying it upon his lap, upon the practice paper that he had there. “Your best letter is the one that stands straight,” he told her. He pulled her toward him slightly, she looking at the paper, he at her fluttering eye. He smiled and sucked, then took another long candy stalk from his jacket and tucked it down into her sweater, next to the diary.

“I am an organized person,” he said. “I am a good printer. I am an excellent cook.”

Henriette let her hand be pulled from the page and held. She could feel his dry breath on her. What did he want? Why did he come to visit each day? Though she had not answered the reverend's note, Henriette had been thinking of herself as engaged; she had no second thoughts about it. But now her hand was encased in the dry hands of Hummel. She could see him smiling at her out of the corner of her eye. It was the most amazing thing, the way his mouth had cleared up like that. She'd never have let him hold her hand previously.

“Why do you come to visit me?” she asked quickly. “What do you want?”

Hummel, embarrassed by the question, looked at the wall.

“Never mind,” said Henriette.

“For the moment what I want is to make you dinner,” he said, letting go of her hand and closing his notebook. “I said I was a good cook and I'd like to prove it to you. If you're sure that Ellen will let you have the evening off. I've noticed that evenings are often the busiest time around here.”

“Ellen and I don't have days off,” said Henriette. Then she added, “But I'm sure she'll let me go.”

Hummel stood and looked at his pocket watch. “Seven o'clock, then,” he said. “And don't eat anything until then. I've a surprise in store for you.”

Hummel left, opening and closing the big front door quickly and walking lightly over the path in front of the bath. Henriette could see him through the window. He walked with his shoulders straight, his head down. Henriette saw, once, the sucking motion that he made and she saw him spit on the snow just before he stepped out of sight. Seven o'clock for dinner. She fingered the reverend's note and wondered what Mr. Hummel would prepare for her. He couldn't cook anything very special on that wood stove of his. In the Eskimo village the reverend had cooked fish, mostly fish, but she knew that Mr. Hummel would be making something different. He planned to build a house on that very spot, the spot where his tent now stood. He talked of rising with Dr. Kingman's mining company, and everything he said made her believe that he'd stay in Alaska forever, would consider this place his permanent home.

When Ellen came down from upstairs Henriette told her of the invitation and received a rude reply.

“Leaving one woman to run a bath's no way to fulfill your responsibilities.” Ellen spoke and then turned away. “The business is starting to go so well,” she said. “This is not the time to be taking a vacation, either of us.”

“A woman has the right to accept an invitation,” said Henriette. “Especially if it's the first in the whole time she's been here.”

Ellen stopped and looked at her friend. “That man is up to no good,” she said. “I can feel it and you'd be able to as well if he'd not cleaned up his mouth as a disguise.”

She spoke harshly, pushing the day's receipts from one box to another. “What this town needs is a bank,” she said. “You've got no choice but to trust that assayer. And he'll be the tax collector too, and I don't like it.”

Henriette was angry and pulled hard on the twine around her neck until the reverend's note came off in her hands. She tucked it quickly between the pages of Fujino's diary. One chance to have a pleasant evening and Ellen has to act this way.

“It wouldn't hurt either of us to put aside an evening for fun once in a while. I've been invited and I'm going. And another time I'll be happy to work the bath alone while you go off somewhere.”

Ellen closed the money boxes carefully and swished in her skirts back up the stairs without speaking. She closed the door to her room quietly and stood at her window looking down at the holes in the snow and at the black tops of the mule's dead feet. This was the room where Fujino had stayed. It was the last room finished, so even now the walls were slightly sticky with sap, not completely dried. Still, the room had its own stove and was warm and homey. This was where Ellen spent her own free time, what little of it she had.

Henriette, hurt and angry, worked hard for several hours more, cleaning all around the bathtubs, and taking the last of the lonely chicken feathers from the empty coops. Before she left the bath she took warm water up the stairs and washed next to the stove in her room, trying to make noise enough for Ellen to hear from across the hall. Henriette wore a wool dress and the sealskin jacket under her greatcoat. She stroked her hair one hundred times with the brush Finn had given her then touched each cheek with scent. Would the reverend mind, as much as Ellen, her having dinner with a friend? She thought of Ellen's angry face, her large jaw all tight and muscular. It's her lack of invitations that makes her mope so. It's jealousy, not the rigors of working the bath, that has jammed her sense of a person's freedom.