Fools' Gold (27 page)

Henriette removed the twine, already lightened by the loss of the reverend's note, and walked quickly down the stairs and out along the dirt-black paths, using landmarks instead of memory to guide her to Hummel. It was perfectly all right for an engaged woman to have dinner with a friend, and Mr. Hummel had gone out of his way to be her friend. She looked back and tried to see the look on Ellen's face as it glowed from the little window on the second floor. Ellen would be thunderstruck if she knew about the reverend. And though Henriette had no trouble understanding it herself, there would be no way she would be able to explain.

John Hummel was hungry for he'd saved himself, hadn't eaten since morning. Ptarmigan, frozen in bunches around his tent, feathered and cleaned before freezing, was to be his main course. Then potatoes, cooked deep under coals, and wine and a salad made of fruit, every bite of which meant to brighten the pinkness of his gums, lining his teeth into even brighter rows.

It was past seven so he poured the wine and sat in idleness, warm in his good clothes, waiting for Henriette to arrive. He was on the right track now, he felt it, he saw it in the way he kept the room around him. On a peg to the right of the entrance Hummel hung his canvas sack. He still had some of the money left but he kept it in Dr. Kingman's safe now. And he made that much on his new job nearly every month. Already he'd saved money enough to start building the kind of house he wanted, and if he was lucky in the construction lottery he'd be able to begin with the coming thaw, with spring. He'd be able to plant vegetables and walk on the softened earth. The town would be underway, and the news of gold would bring even more people; perhaps twice or three times the number that were here now would come during the warmer months. There was no way he could lose. The newcomers would buoy him up in their scramble to get in under. He'd stick with Dr. Kingman, and he would do fine.

Hummel heard Henriette on his frozen path so he swept his tent flap back and smiled into the darkness. Henriette circled the tent once and surprised him by coming up on the left.

“Hello and good evening,” she said. “I like the feeling of your path beneath my feet.”

“I'm so glad you've come,” said Hummel. “The possibility that you would not was beginning to enter my head.”

Hummel secured the flap from the inside by sewing it shut with a large cord. He had candles burning all around the room and music coming from a large gramophone, borrowed from Dr. Kingman for the evening. Henriette had seen gramophones in San Francisco but had never been in the same room with one. It was so strange, wound up and with its thick disk whirling around like some dinner dish on the finger of a juggler.

Hummel took Henriette's heavy coat and placed it on a peg next to one of his own. He had wine glasses sitting one on each side of his shiny candy container, and he picked them up, handing one to Henriette. He took a small amount of the wine in his mouth, satisfying himself with its taste, and Henriette saw, for a moment, the old Hummel, all red-lipped and smirking.

“Dinner can be served any time we are ready for it,” he said. “The surprise I told you about is called ptarmigan, it's a local bird and has a wonderful flavor. And there are other things: potatoes to remind you that I am from Idaho, and fruit that only Dr. Kingman had the foresight to freeze before winter.”

Henriette looked around him at the stove. “We're not having fish?” she asked. “It's been nothing but fish for weeks and weeks.”

Hummel had pushed his long bed against the wall and made it up to look like a sofa. He'd put candles at either end, and the remainder of the bottle of wine was on the table next to the candy.

“For the time being this must serve as my dinner table,” he said. “But when I finish my home there'll be a whole room for only that purpose. I plan on taking part of my design from what you and Ellen have done at that bath of yours.”

“I don't know what I'd have done without my room,” said Henriette. “It's the only place in the whole country that I have to myself. For those times when I want to be alone.”

“I'll be building three bedrooms,” said Hummel, “though I suppose I'll be living here alone.”

Hummel had the wine bottle wrapped in the snow-white folds of a clean undershirt. He'd borrowed special wine glasses from the owner of the Gold Belt, but had his own silverware, given to him by his mother as he was leaving Idaho. He refilled both glasses, smiling at Henriette through the candlelight.

“If you haven't eaten since I saw you this morning you must be starving,” he said. “Relax, finish your wine. I'll get dinner.”

Hummel made the tent seem larger as he slid away from her and began moving about the stove. He had a talent for using space well. She could smell the slightly burnt skin of the ptarmigan as it floated to her through the wine.

“Do you like cheese?” Hummel asked, looking at her. “They make the best cheese in Switzerland. It will last for years. Dr. Kingman gave me some.”

He came back for a moment with a plate of cheese. He refilled the glasses and offered a toast.

“Here's to a time when we'll be able to live like human beings in this cold country, all year round.”

Henriette touched glasses with him again then nibbled at the edges of a piece of dry cheese.

“Cheese is something I haven't had much chance to taste,” she said. “We used to make it at home but it was a different kind, a different color.”

“This cheese goes particularly well with the bird we are about to eat. Light or dark?”

“Pardon?”

“Light or dark meat? We've got plenty of each so don't be shy.”

“I'd like the drumsticks. Do ptarmigan have drumsticks?”

Henriette was having fun. The wine was soothing her, making her forget the argument with Ellen and the hard work of carrying buckets of snow all day long. Hummel was a nice man, a man pleasant to talk to in the same way that the reverend was, though both were very different from others that had entered her life. Had she finally broken the pattern of loud farmboys drinking boot liquor and thinking dirty thoughts all the time? The reverend, Mr. Hummel, gentle men who busied themselves with gentle things and who treated a woman right, that's the kind of man she liked. She wondered if she'd tell the reverend about the others before they got married. She didn't think it would make any difference to him what she'd done before. One thing though, she ought to tell Mr. Hummel about the reverend. It wouldn't be fair to let him go on too long if he was interested in more than just her friendship.

“Just one more second,” said Hummel, unlacing the tent and reaching out for another bottle of cold wine. He had everything on serving plates and had the plates that they would eat from warming in hot water in a bucket near the stove. He wiped them dry and placed one at each setting. The steam rose around Henriette's eyes like the wine to her brain. He placed a potato on each plate and then sat down on a small chair across the table from her.

“This is the first time I've been able to cook for anyone since I've been here,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

He lifted a tiny drumstick and three or four other pieces of ptarmigan off the serving plate and across the center of the table to Henriette. He produced a small container of sauce and told her that it would enhance the flavor, make her savor each bite. “The trick to the flavor of a meat is in slow cooking,” he said.

Henriette chewed and nodded at him. She'd grown up on a farm and could remember great meals, though they were uncommon. “We used to do the same thing with beef,” she told him.

They ate, Hummel proudly looking up from his plate every few seconds. The candlelight showed pale and warm on Henriette's forehead, reminding Hummel of his mother. “I told you about my mother,” he said. “She sent the silverware along with me. The candelabrum too. She loaded me down with all the necessities. I complained quite a lot at the time but I'm beginning to be glad she made me bring it all. She was against me coming here for a long while. But as far as I was concerned it was now or never. Getting away from home, I mean.”

“I never knew my mother,” said Henriette.

“I'm going to bring her up here as soon as I get the house built. She'd never be able to understand my living in a place like this.” Hummel spread his arms out, taking in the entiretent. The shadows of his arms stood like clubs along both walls. He reached across the table and poured more wine.

“She was always afraid of raising me wrong. I mean alone and all. She tried to replace those things that a father could teach with a touch of class. Those are her words and that's the reason for the accessories.”

“Did you know your father?”

Hummel waved the question away and continued with his own thoughts. “You'd never believe the worst of it. I've got bedspreads and a place setting for twelve. I've got needles and thread and material for making clothes.”

“Where do you keep everything?” asked Henriette. “Your tent seems so spacious.”

“Along the walls of my office. In Dr. Kingman's house. I've got boxes stacked four high.”

“You never knew your father and I never knew my mother,” said Henriette.

“Before I got that office everything was here. I told her when I left that it was too much. I told her all the other prospectors would laugh at me, but she wouldn't listen.”

Henriette laughed and told Hummel how much she liked the meal.

“When I get her up here you'll be the first one she meets. And then Ellen. She'll like you two. She'll like the fact that I've become a bookkeeper too. When I was a child people asked me what I wanted to be and she always had me say that I wanted to be a supervisor. In a way it's come true, I suppose. Funny how things turn out.”

They finished their meal and the second bottle of wine, so Hummel reached across the table to pick up the dishes. The breeze pushed the candle flames, and shadows fluttered across the canvas. He put everything in a waiting tub of warm water and returned with more wine.

“My mother was very good to me,” he said. “I hope I didn't give you the idea that she was not.”

Hummel turned the table back parallel to the bed and, sitting down next to Henriette, started the new bottle of wine.

“I've got one last surprise,” he said. “I've baked a pie. I spent the afternoon at Dr. Kingman's and I baked a pie in his slick new oven. If you'd like a piece now it'll still be warm.”

Henriette showed her delight at this last and greatest of surprises, and Hummel got busy again putting pie to plates and slipping them onto the dark table. When Hummel returned he linked his right arm with Henriette's left and they ate in unison, like a crab with two mouths. Apple pie, the fruit of Hummel's healing. The forks worked like pinchers, snipping long slices of apple and bringing them to their churning mouths.

“Dr. Kingman gave me the apples,” said Hummel. “In case you'd like to know. He thought of everything before the freeze and stored them in his wide basement. You asked me if I ever knew my father and I must say that I sometimes see him in Dr. Kingman. Though, of course, he's not nearly old enough. Besides, my mother's told me quite a lot about my father and the description doesn't match at all.”

Henriette washed the last of the pie from her mouth with the last of the wine. She felt snug and satisfied, the food heavy around her middle, making the diary tight and uncomfortable in the taut waistband of her skirt. Hummel still held her arm and gazed at the long clean table in front of them.

“Everything has been so lovely,” she said. “It is the nicest evening I've had in years.”

Hummel reached down to the ground and brought a waiting plate of cheese up to the table. He slid it toward Henriette and then very gently laid his head on her shoulder.

“Oh, no thank you, I couldn't,” said Henriette. “I'm stuffed. Right up to here.”

She held her free hand parallel to the ground and raised it to her eyebrows but Hummel wasn't looking. His breathing was regular and audible in the gray-dark room.

“The reverend, the missionary at the Eskimo village, is a friend of mine,” said Henriette. “I've been there twice to visit him.”

Hummel didn't speak but sent his own left hand, like a scout, across his lap and around Henriette's waist.

“He's a very good man,” she said. “He's a lot like you, very gentle and interesting to listen to. Perhaps one time we could go together, for a visit.”

Hummel turned his head and attached his lips softly to the side of Henriette's neck. His tongue touched her skin and then his own clean teeth and gums. He began sucking, first gently then not, and soon he could taste, very slightly, the tinge of blood that had come through Henriette's skin, like the emergence of a wound through gauze. It was a taste he knew and it lodged between his teeth, making itself at home on the tip of his tongue.

Henriette, spinning with the wine, bent her head toward the pressure on her neck.

“I like a gentle man,” she said. “Everything is so confusing.”

Hummel laid Henriette along the thin bed and draped himself over her. The wine buzzed in their lips like a bee seeking pollen. The tent swirled as through space though it held its pattern, part of the town's tail, whipping in wider and wider circles along the edge of the peninsula. Twice, how could it be happening twice? Henriette felt skin next to her own, clothing opening. She thought of the reverend alone in his loft; she could see him sleeping against the lids of her wine-shut eyes. She could feel the diary outlined against her stomach, still stuck in the skirtband, though the skirt itself was now up around her shoulders, and she imagined the reverend's simple note pressed like a flower at its center.

Henriette held Hummel to her in his silent movement. She could hear her own voice pushing sharp sounds out into the wide room, and she heard Hummel say, “It was me, it was my mercury mounting in his mouth.”