Fools' Gold (12 page)

At selected spots around the Gold Belt iron-bellied stoves burnt heat into the room, and at each stove a wire mesh fence kept people away, kept them from locking their cold hands to the metal. Snow from the boots of customers melted into the sawdust and dirtied it so that every few days the owner laid the floor again, fresh sawdust covering the old. At the end of winter it would be higher than the floor of the city and customers would have to step up to get inside.

For Ellen and Finn the room was in half light, the ceiling as black as a starless sky. It gave them the feeling of limitlessness. At the center of each table a kerosene lamp glowed as far as the faces of the customers, round circles of light extending only to the table's edge, making it difficult to see those who walked near. A waitress appeared out of the darkness and took their order. A whiskey for Finn, tea for Ellen. Music drifted across the room, soft military marches. There were soldiers in the bar, the luminous stripes that ran down their pant legs visible in the dark, vertical shafts of light swinging across the room like clock pendulums.

“A whiskey and a tea,” said the waitress, suddenly beside them again. Finn placed heavy coins in her hand.

“It's more like a country carnival than a pub,” said Ellen. “It reminds me of a circus or a traveling show.”

“The man does have a flair for the grand spectacle,” Finn told her. “Look what he's done.”

He pointed to one of the waitresses passing their table. The waitress and most of the others had round red circles of rouge painted onto their cheeks, large red lipstick kisses on their mouths. And each girl had a gray wool shirt tucked neatly into canvas trousers. When the waitresses were not tending to customers they often picked partners and danced between the tables. Familiar faces from the bath and the beach strike appeared around Finn and Ellen as they sat sipping their drinks.

It was a surprise to Finn to discover that many of the creek mines had shut down late, caught by quick winter, and now some of the men had nowhere to go and refused to leave places like the Gold Belt and the New York Kitchen even at closing time. At the edges of the room in which they drank, a few men were rolled into blankets, asleep on the dirty sawdust floor.

Ellen pushed her teacup about the small table. “Men turn out this way or that depending on what's inside them,” she said. “That same group would be lying flat on the lower streets of Belfast. Those that turn out well here would turn out well elsewhere.”

“Such talk,” said Finn. “No credit given to a bit of luck? None to a twist of fate?”

Before Ellen could answer, John Hummel, whom she'd not seen since the day before Fujino's accident, came into their circle of light, still wearing his canvas necktie with its twelve-hundred-dollar sign. A new lively tune began and Hummel stretched his necktie into a dancing partner and whirled with it two or three times around them. It was a waltz and the dips and stops that it afforded him pleased some in the crowd and encouraged him to continue. He held his left arm out stiffly and pressed the canvas sack to his chest, making it the back and shoulders of his dancing partner. He glided and turned, dipping nearly to the floor. The heavy coins in the necktie clanged together in clumsy time to the music. He smiled broadly at Ellen and Finn, letting small liquid whips of spittle escape from the corners of his mouth and arc to the floor. Hummel danced until the music ceased, then he let the sack bounce dully on his chest and come to rest once again as a dead weight, one that he might dance with, but one that might carry him to the bottom of the river as well.

He scooted onto a chair, letting his elbows rest on the back of it, wiping his mouth on his sleeve before speaking.

“Hello, Ellen, how's your bath?” he said.

Though until now Ellen had had sympathy for the man and his condition, she detected the note of menace in his voice and answered guardedly: “Hello, Mr. Hummel…”

“Have you forgiven the community for jumping your claim then?” Finn asked, half smiling at the man. “The last I saw of you, you'd have liked to shoot us all.”

Hummel knew what the result of his work had been. Every day since the incident he'd scurried through the blinding snow to hide behind the rump of Finn's dead mule and peer through the windows of the bath. He had seen them standing, heard them talk. He'd moved back from view when Phil left and tonight had followed the two of them as they tried not to crack the frozen top of the paths that the winter had made.

“Forgiven,” he said, “but not forgotten. Everyone is rich on my discovery.” He wanted to ask after the condition of the Japanese, but knew he could not. He turned his attention to Ellen.

“I would have been by before now, miss, but I've noticed that your place is closed.”

“We've a sick man there, and the winter has been more than we'd counted on. Even our door is frozen shut.”

“Well, I want to be the first customer again, after you reopen.”

Hummel stood and saluted, then marched once more around their table, his stick shouldered again like a gun. Finn and Ellen looked toward the bar as he marched that way. They watched him duck through the heavy flaps of the tent and into the darkness. The Gold Belt was still crowded and many of the girls and customers were dancing. A few moments after Hummel left a fight broke out and one of the men cracked his head on the corner of the bar and was carried away. He bled into the sawdust from a wound in the back of his head. There was not much blood, but Finn saw Hummel in it, smiling at him from his wounded mouth. With the beginning of another tune the girl who'd been waiting on them extended her hand to Finn. He looked at her briefly then recognized the invitation and stood quickly. He waited to see if he could detect disapproval on the face of Ellen before he began roughly whirling her across the floor.

Mounds of earth were covered with snow and dotted the flat area of the Eskimo village like insect bites. The lean-tos had been dismantled pelt by pelt, the materials placed inside the storage sheds, away from the water's edge. The reverend's house still loomed, its large front window reflecting the sun, but otherwise only Nanoon's cold coming-of-age hut could be seen.

During the daylight hours the men and women of the village walked again on the paths between their underground houses and out onto the ice of Norton Sound, where they cut holes and pulled fish out of the freezing water. During the daylight hours Phil's women wore their golden snowflakes on the outsides of their jackets, dangling down their fronts heavily. The reverend wore his too, not hanging from his neck, but pinned to the outside of his greatcoat just over his heart so that sometimes when he walked from his house toward the village the sun caught it and the villagers knew who was coming.

This was a village of crazes, and soon Phil's golden snow-flakes had been seen and handled by everyone. Phil had brought back not only the product but the method of the snowflakes, and the reverend decided that he would send all the children scurrying, when winter broke, into the streams and rivulets for nuggets. A snowflake for everyone, he promised them, for though it was a village of crazes, none would be content unless all possessed. There were too many examples to number, but going back just a year, each member of the village had collected a pink parasol, a soft-lead pencil, and a sketch pad.

And now the golden snowflakes. The children lived in anticipation, asking questions. They wanted to know if the shapes of their snowflakes would be something they could choose and if all the snowflakes would be of equal size. Phil told them what they got would represent purely the shape of chance, but they were not satisfied with his answer and within a week there had been a revival of the popularity of the pencils and pads. Each would draw the snowflake of his choice according to the web of his imagination. Then in spring, as the golden snowflakes were made, they would be compared to the drawings and given to the person who most truly had imagined what the first and then the second and then the third snowflake would be like. The members of the Eskimo village believed that no two imaginations were alike. Thus, rather than saying, “I am first; the first snowflake is mine,” they decided upon the shapes of their snow-flakes and then waited for them to come true.

Darkness falls, whatever the activities of the day have been. The villagers crawled into their huts, into their underearth homes, through the tunnels they had made. The walls of the houses were truly made of ice, and of dirt and wood and pieces of cloth. Inside there was tar blackness and lamps that lightened it slightly and chimneys that projected upward and air vents that came in from the sides. The floors of the underground rooms were covered first with skins and then with small dried pieces of fur from rabbit or beaver or fox. Game was not plentiful in this area but the robes lasted years and during the summer were stored carefully away. The Eskimos tried to sleep only as much in winter as they did during the summer, or only a little more. During the long hours before sleep, when it was dark and early on the outside earth, the families sat and talked, told each other stories, or made love. There was an unsureness as to the parentage of the children, so as a precaution everyone was mother or father to each. Stories were told of the old days and the old were revered for their storytelling.

Each night the reverend reentered his house and started his fires and sat with tea in one of the warm chairs in front of his window. At sunrise and at sunset he saw the Eskimos fading in and out. At night he saw the area in front of his window take on the appearance, once again, of a wasteland. This was the time he used for writing long letters and for preparing his next day's lessons. Several times he had written to Ellen, but of course he had no easy way of sending his letters, and as much as they were letters to Ellen they were letters to himself. He did not believe in loneliness, with his memories and his God and his busy schedule as teacher.

With the quick descent of darkness the window in front of the reverend became a mirror, and it was his habit to look at himself in it for an hour each night and in a loud voice to practice sermons as he remembered them being given in seminary. He was not a preacher really, but he liked what he saw in the window. He was a happy man but did not suppose he was responsible for that happiness or for the happiness of the village. On some nights he sat in his chair, forgetting to eat, just staring at his poor face in the reflected darkness. He liked the sound of his voice and it would occasionally stir him to stand and descend the ladder. By this time his stomach was usually growling and he could not imagine how he had ignored it for so long.

The village and Nome and the camp on Topcock Creek form a triangle across the permafrost. At the third point, up on the edge of Topcock Creek, Kaneda still waits, leaning asleep over the fire that he does not let die. He has stopped mining but has hunted, piling each new pelt, no matter what the size, close around him on the floor of the tent. He has built fires around his camp, on four sides, and he feeds them with moss, for he believes this will keep the wolves away. Though he is older, he looks so much like Phil that even he will be surprised when they meet. He is sure that Fujino is very late. If nothing has happened to the boy it is unforgivable. The gold that he has been able to take out by himself is not a quarter of the amount that Fujino has, and if he is forced to work alone he will not be able to make that much again. He is not strong and cannot work more than nine or ten hours a day.

Kaneda has continued telling his stories though there is no one around to listen. In order to pass the time he decided to start at the beginning, to remind himself of all he has read and learned about the history of the country he loves. He talks in a loud voice and shakes his finger in the air when making an interesting or important point.

“It is always best to begin at the beginning,” he says. “Though Japan has existed forever, we began taking notice of ourselves only three thousand years before Jesus. That was during the Jomon period and we know of it only because some of its pottery has survived.”

His goal is to tell himself everything he has ever known about Japan, from the beginning of time to the arrival of Commodore Perry, whom he himself saw. Fujino will be sorry when he finds out what he has missed. Kaneda knows not only the events of history but many of the stories behind the events. He has read journals and diaries and looked through the libraries of Tokyo for the notes that generals used to send each other. He would be able to teach Fujino as much as he could learn in the best universities if only the young man were there to listen. But in fact not hearing it will be a part of Fujino's punishment for being so late. When he comes back he will have lost all that Kaneda has already told. That will be lost to him forever. Kaneda takes a deep breath and sighs. “We don't know very much about the Jomon,” he says, “but we do know this….”

Finn secured the window, the cold tin handle of it sticking briefly to his skin. He saw the dead mule and thought how strange it was that he could get used to such a sight so quickly, that he no longer noticed the frozen corpse much. Ellen placed a large copper pot upon the stove. The smell of freshly cut boards was renewed to them and the room seemed much too hot.

Henriette appeared from the bath and stood staring. “You've let the heat out,” she said. “The room's got cold again.”

“We thought you'd be upstairs,” said Ellen.

“He's worse. As soon as you left he got worse. I had to bring him down all by myself. He stopped talking and began to shiver. I thought you'd never get back.”

Finn and Ellen moved quickly across the room to Henriette. They pushed her back and peered into the steaming bathroom. It was difficult to see through the mist and hot air, but as they walked into it Fujino appeared to them, sitting naked up to his neck in the hot water of the bath.

“I had to drag him,” said Henriette. “He's bleeding from the other end.”