Fools' Gold (33 page)

“First we have the election for mayor,” said Mrs. Kingman, “then the mayor will run the rest of the meeting and do what he thinks best for the smooth organization of our town.”

The people in the room settled themselves like concert goers and Mrs. Kingman looked toward her husband and stood back as he got up to give his speech. The bright lights dimmed considerably as he began to talk.

Finn did not listen. He could feel Ellen, tense and political to his right, and Henriette, listless and pretending to listen on his other side. He was aware that people considered Ellen the smarter of the two. Or, more correctly, that they thought Ellen intelligent and Henriette not. Henriette flickered in and out of intelligence like a faulty electric light. But she didn't busy herself as much as the rest of them with the petals of her memory, so she lived her days well. He could tell that, like himself, she was not really listening to what the man said. Ellen, though, was taking notes.

Oh, if Finn only knew enough Gaelic he would give his speech in it as a lesson on what it had been like living at Topcock Creek. What a joke that would be. Gaelic! He was sure of the reaction he'd get from his two women. From Henriette there'd be the same countenance that she now directed toward Kingman. But by Ellen he would be abandoned. In Nome everyone tried to speak the same language and expected that language in return. It was little enough to ask of him and he would comply. He would speak to them in English and would ask that they elect him mayor. He had practiced his speech many times though he'd refused when Ellen asked him to say it once in front of her. He wanted it to be a surprise.

Finn looked at Ellen's notes and for a moment heard what Dr. Kingman was saying. He heard the words “kindly consider what all this would mean…” and he thought of an aging Dr. Kingman walking along the boardwalks of a squarely built town nodding and tipping his hat. His house, though old, would still be the most prominent in the town. Once his plans were established he would pass the mantle of mayor on to someone else and would return his full energies to his business. When he spoke everyone would understand that he really did have the best interests of the town at heart.

When the speech was over everyone applauded and Mrs. Kingman stood and said Finn's name. Finn took a glass of water and looked at the audience through it. His vision was as blurred as he hoped his speech would be. He took a long drink.

“If I had written my speech out longhand I would roll the paper into a telescope and look at you all more clearly,” he said, and a few people around the room laughed, surprising him.

“I have been pacing about my room speaking to the walls about the mayorship and through many attempts I have rather telescoped in on what I believe the future of Nome to be.”

Finn stopped again and saw that they were all taking him seriously. He sought the eyes of Henriette and found comfort in the knowledge that she, at least, was not paying any real attention to what he was saying. She sat comfortably listening only to the sounds he was making, and from then on he spoke directly to her.

“We will build our buildings and make our laws no matter who the first mayor is so it might as well be me. You all heard Dr. Kingman say what he would do just now and I'm telling you that if you choose me above him I will do the same things. If I had spoken first then it would be Dr. Kingman who'd be standing here now copying my programs. So, rather than repeating everything so that you can hear what it sounds like coming from my mouth and using my voice, I'd like to say, ditto. I will do everything he will do and with equal energy.”

It crossed Finn's mind that he could sit down now if he wished, for he had explained himself clearly. Yet only a moment had passed and all but Henriette looked at him quizzically. He decided that as long as Henriette was not listening he would continue, for he was speaking for her. If she once cocked her head in that questioning way he would stop, but not until. It was the music of his voice that was guiding her daydreams, so it was for her that he must continue singing.

“Of course it is easy to say ditto and I would not say it if Dr. Kingman's programs were not sound. Those things which he spoke of would be good for our town, would be good for any town.” Finn could tell that the tone and speed of his voice were not satisfying Henriette. Though she was still not listening, she might begin to soon if he didn't give a better accompaniment to her thoughts. A change of pace, a lullaby.

“Back at home, I might say, back in Ireland where I come from, there are those who believe in the politics of chance. They don't care who's in charge or which party might be speaking, and I've seen what can happen when a people are like that.”

Finn looked quickly at Henriette and found her safely back out of his control once again.

“Let me tell you about a man I knew, Hugo Reily, who had connections everywhere, was disattached from none. He was a man of my own village and he spent a year of weekends riding in his carriage from farm to farm so that on election day he would be able to collect each vote as a man collects the fruits of his field labor.”

Finn had succeeded now on two fronts. Henriette was not listening and neither, in a way, was he. For Henriette he could not say, but he was thinking of a day Hugo Reily had come to their farm, hat in hand, how he had roughed Finn's hair while talking into the eyes of his father. Though Finn's father and his elder brothers and perhaps even Reily himself had believed that the words were what got the votes, Finn had understood that it was the roughing of the hair.

“He was a wardman in our area for seventy-five years and during that time he did not miss a funeral or a wedding or a single night at the pub that was known as a political center. Hugo Reily, I can see him now, and I wonder as I'm standing here if he's not still making his rounds, for indeed when I left that country it was he that saw me off, it was he who reached up to my tall head and ran his fingers through my hair. It might have been my own hand he knew the terrain there so well.

“It was a coach that I was taking into the town of Londonderry, and as I looked for the last time among the members of my family, there he was, third from the shortest, and as the coachman got the horses moving it was Hugo Reily who began to sing. Oh he was the consummate politician! He had a grand voice and he did not stop when the coach was out of sight or even when the rest of the family had gone on home. Indeed, I know because miles away when we had occasion to stop for a man who stood at the side of the road, I thought I heard his voice coming thin and sharp along the road behind us.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?” he asked the quiet room. “Regardless of which of us you elect you'll have your programs for the development of our city, so it is not very important who you choose. But beyond that my able opponent is in business for himself and I'll be in business only for you. This town will become my family and I'll treat your children like Hugo Reily treated me. If I am elected mayor I will rough their hair. And if any of you decide to leave I'll be at the dock and I'll sing to you so that you can stand at the ship's rail and listen and I won't stop singing even when you are gone, even when your ship's smoke no longer darkens the horizon.”

Finn looked down and was disappointed to see the moon eyes of Henriette upon him. Only a moment before he was sure that she'd not been listening but now he knew she was. The whole room was quiet. He had everyone's attention so he sat down quickly to the rising applause.

As near as anyone could figure, spring broke during Finn's speech. In the morning, at first light, the townspeople crowded the beach, looking out along the waterway that filled a huge crack in the sea of ice. It was like looking down a long blue road. And by the end of the day there were other roads cracking off into the solid ice halves. There was a general giddiness among the people, a tendency to run about in shirt sleeves, to run about underdressed.

Henriette spent the morning bent at the waist, her head lodged between her knees. She had eaten nothing and therefore had little to give other than a retching sound, a hollow imitation of the soft ice tearing through the middle of the bay. She tried to be sick gently so as not to give the baby discomfort. During the meeting the night before Henriette had thought of the baby as a boy, as a small copy of the reverend, floating, like a marble egg, inside her, and she did not want him to be sick too. Luckily she was alone in the bath. Finn and Ellen had gone with the rest of the town, down to watch the sea parting. It was like a miracle and she knew that the reverend would rejoice as the expanding crack passed the village. She saw him clasping his hands together and standing on his toes; she pictured the entire village engaged in a dance along the still-hard sand. It was a painful moment for her. Her jaw was tight and saliva ran slowly from the corners of her mouth.

Finn lost the election. He was defeated three to one. Ellen stood with him on the upper part of the beach and talked quietly about his speech.

“I maintain you had a chance,” she said. “It was that ‘ditto' that lost it for you. It isn't done. One political speaker does not follow another and say ‘ditto.'”

Finn smiled and tried to hold her hand. “I got fifty-three votes. Not counting the three of us, fifty people in this town weren't stopped by my speech. Fifty people would have me over that other fellow.”

In truth Ellen had enjoyed the speech and was not upset now. There'd been an old politician in her village as well and at his death it was her own father who'd vied for the position. But why hadn't the fool told the story and then presented a genuine platform to the people? Maybe he would not have won but he would have collected more votes, more than just the fifty-three.

“Look at the way the ice breaks,” said Finn, turning her attention back to him. “In a week the ground will soften and the prospectors will go back to their gold fields. Won't it be easy running the bath when there's no thawing to do first?”

Ellen looked at him then saw herself working the difficult bath for innumerable seasons ahead. She had not been there a year yet she was very tired. When spring comes can winter be far behind?

“I'll tell you something, Finn,” she said, letting the election skip behind her. “In a week, in two, when the ground softens enough, we are going to have a proper funeral for Mr. Fujino. We'll ask the reverend to preside and we'll commit that poor man to his maker.”

She looked at Finn as if daring him to disagree. It surprised him that she should mention Fujino now. Except for Hummel's constant hounding Finn hadn't thought of Fujino since leaving Topcock Creek. If the reverend came, perhaps there would be word of Phil and the old man, but Finn did not look forward to seeing the frozen zero of Fujino's mouth again. It seemed impossible that the dead man could still be alive to all of them. No matter whose fault it had been, the man was now dead and should have been buried long ago. “A Christian burial though he was not a Christian?” asked Finn.

“A Christian burial to get the man out of sight,” said Ellen. “Do you suppose he will stay hidden once the snow has gone? Do you suppose it's not our duty?” Ellen fairly shouted, then reached over and twisted Finn's arm. “Respect,” she said. “That's what is lacking.” The word echoed in her head as she said it and she pictured herself carrying endless buckets of water.

As soon as the village children had their skates cut and tied the ice became too soft to support them. The sleds lay like amputees along the path from the storehouse, and deep practice grooves zoned the ice in front of the village. It was too abrupt an end for the popularity of skating, and the children had a difficult time bringing their enthusiasm back to the golden snowflakes. They wore them on all occasions, but with the discovery of skating the snowflakes had become commonplace, followed the course of sketch pads and parasols in their lives.

The reverend and Phil and Kaneda had been giving lessons. Each was popular with the children and each enjoyed the chance to do some free skating. When all were finally forced to hang up their skates they went back to their snowflakes without speaking. Many trips were made back and forth past the broken sleds until finally the abandoned runners were stuck in the softening ground beside them, like steel totem poles.

The reverend was making preparations for school. It was his habit to begin longer lessons the morning after the children moved back above ground, and he intended, this year, to be more organized in his planning. He would ask the old man to visit the class and perhaps teach them something about Japan. As for himself, he would teach his weak subjects well and would read aloud to them from the books he loved, from
McTeague
and from others.

The reverend and the old man sat in the soft loft chairs and watched as the lean-to poles were driven through the thin snow. In a few days the summer village would stretch before them and a few days after that parties of other Eskimos would come, like bears, out of the low hills, lean and hungry after hibernation. In other years this was a time when the reverend felt the beginning touches of homesickness, a time when he sometimes considered going home. This year, though, the old man sat next to him and talked continuously. He rarely looked at the reverend but his voice sawed through the quiet room like a prayer. He made the reverend remember his schooling, the times he had studied Latin, the peacefulness of not understanding. It was a pleasant sensation. He sat there easily, making believe that his large chair was a rocker, that he was being sung to sleep.

When Finn arrived in the village he found construction well under way. He had been sent to announce the burial of Fujino and to ask the reverend to come to Nome to say a few words. The snow had already melted down around the mule and rider and the two women were forced to take snow from other parts of the city, and to heap it wet about the remains.