Fools' Gold (6 page)

The grand opening of Ellen's bath was on a Tuesday. Her hours would be from noon to midnight, but today they began at nine. The night before, those who had worked on the bath used the tubs for the first time, telling each other how clean they felt and how sure they were that the business would be a success. Ellen bathed first, then Henriette, then Finn. Ellen decided that she'd charge two dollars a bath and that eggs would be fifty cents each. The first real customer was a man named John Hummel, who had scurvy and had not been out of Nome since his arrival six months earlier. Hummel pursed his lips and smiled, letting the red scurvy line show itself around the gold caps of his teeth.

“You ought to have a slogan,” he said. “Something to bring people in from long distances.” He entered the back room and Ellen listened to the sound the water made as it slid across his shoulders and back down into the tub.

To help with the bath's advertising, Finn had gone about the town handing out leaflets made by Henriette. Ellen and Henriette kept every inch of the bath clean and ready for use and Ellen had a sprinkling can full of water near the front room counter so that she could wet down the dirt floor occasionally, keeping the dust away. Here at least there would be cleanliness. Here it was easy for Ellen to imagine herself not in Nome at all, but still in the Eskimo village. And so she rarely went out. If she had an errand she sent Henriette, or, indeed, would ask Finn to go. She spent her spare minutes thinking of the village and the reverend, or thinking of home. She daydreamed, wondering what the reaction would be to an Irish stone house around here, the kind she'd lived in as a child. Stone houses…From hers it had been a forty-minute walk to the little school where she'd studied with the others, maybe six of them. There was a pub in her village and a post office and a small store. That was all. Though it was a tiny neighborhood her father never tired of talking to the same men each night. He'd go to his pub or feel guilty if he didn't. And they'd wait, the women, all sitting in the quiet living room, the same subjects returning like the hours of the day.

Ellen remembered the grandfather's clock in the narrow front hallway of that house. As a small girl she'd once hidden within it, ducking behind the sharp pendulum and staring past it and through the dusty glass as the members of her family searched for her. She must have stayed in that clock for more than an hour, for she remembered the lonely sound of its striking. It echoed through the wood and into her body. The pendulum sliced the air in front of her nose, making soft cutting sounds. Several times her mother or her sisters had stared directly at her, but they saw only themselves in the flat surface of the glass, never the girl hiding behind the sockets of their own eyes.

It was Ellen's grandmother who finally found her. Her father's mother. The small door had opened and the old woman bent down, peering past the pendulum.

“Ellen?” she had shrieked, her voice darting past the sharp seconds. She pulled the child out and stood her on the clean floor and closed the clock door without starting the pendulum again. It had moved silently, and in little circles.

John Hummel, the forgotten first customer, finished his bath quickly and startled Ellen when he stepped in front of her.

“Oh,” she said.

“If you'd like me to pay?”

Ellen sat forward and looked at him. “I'll tell you,” she said. “Since you are the actual first customer let's call it fair that you should have a free one.”

Hummel had his money ready but stopped counting and smiled, his hand covering his diseased mouth.

“That's very kind. If there's ever anything…” But Ellen silenced him with a short wave and Hummel nodded, spitting into his handkerchief before moving toward the door. When he was gone Ellen took the towel he'd used, quickly throwing it into a tub of waiting water. She looked around the room for something out of place and then sat back down to wait for the next customer. Henriette needed twenty minutes to ready the tubs, but before Ellen could lose herself in Ireland again the flap of the tent was pushed aside and Finn entered. He'd stopped somewhere during his rounds to purchase Ellen a grand opening gift.

“What is it?” she asked.

“‘What is it' is a question that can be answered by its opening,” said Finn. He had two boxes and stretched one toward Henriette when she came through the curtain.

“To get the business off on the right foot is all.”

Ellen opened her package first and held up a heavy cream-white marble egg.

“It's for giving those chickens the idea,” Finn told her. “You put that marble egg in under them and they get to thinking it's real and then they get the urge to duplicate it. It truly works. It will double your yield.”

With thumb and forefinger, Ellen held the egg up to the light. “I've never seen such a thing,” she said slowly, one eye closed and peering at it like a jeweler. “So small and smooth yet heavy as a bantam.”

In Henriette's package there was a hairbrush with a handle of marble the same color as Ellen's egg. She quickly ran it through her hair then held it up as if proving that it too worked.

“Well then,” said Finn. “I'll grant there are still a few out there who don't know of the bath's existence.” He lifted the remaining stack of leaflets and left again before the women could say anything about the egg and the brush.

About many of the nearby tents lumber had been stacked in anticipation of the construction crews that were even now being formed by those men who had not staked claims. Finn was confident, for he had his tools and had posted his own name. He was a man looking for a crew. There was something about a place like this. Here a man could start again. All he had to do was post a list upon the canvas side of a tent, saying that he was a boss looking for men, and some men, many of them, would sign below. Finn supposed it was because many men thought there was some secret to being boss, some obscure knowledge of procedure. But, as for him, he had his tools and just enough money to buy building materials. He only needed a helper or two, and he'd be on his way. He already had a job contracted. He told Ellen that he'd put up the bath building for two thousand dollars and said he'd have it done in a month. And he'd pay whoever worked with him fairly. Now was a time to be fair with other men, for he'd be paid back in the end, he knew.

Finn, thinking and handing out leaflets, imagined the things he would do with the money he made. The crowd flowed in the direction of the beach, and he let himself be taken with it. He tried pushing leaflets into the hands of those near him, but they were excited, so Finn put the leaflets neatly inside his coat and looked where the others were looking. Out in the bay, anchored or anchoring, stood three gray American troop ships. He could see skiffs dotting the water, men and equipment being lowered from the high decks by mechanical hoists.

“Down by the mouth of the Snake,” said a voice, “they're going to build a fort.”

Finn knew the site of the fort to be just where he and Henriette and Ellen had crossed the Snake a few days before, but he hadn't thought about what the coming of the army might mean. He'd seen soldiers before so turned to leave but found that a whole group of townspeople had come up behind him and that his way was blocked. He moved sideways along the edge of the beach trying again to distribute his leaflets, but the crowd had a heavy face and was moving with the soldiered skiffs, northwesterly, toward the Snake.

By the time they reached the raft landing at the edge of the river, five of the gun-gray boats had already notched the soft sandbar on the far side. Many of the men and women in Nome had come out of the tent city and walked to the bank of the Snake to watch the army arrive. They stood now close together, quiet at the water's edge. There were already a dozen soldiers on the far sand, directing the landing barges and helping to stack the shored supplies. They were organized, these soldiers. Finn liked the stiff brown shirts that they wore and the precision with which they marched, seaward and back.

“We have our own laws,” said a man near Finn, shorter and calmer than the others in the crowd. As he spoke the body of men and women standing around him tightened, moved in behind him to form a V, like a reflection of the southbound birds that even now blackened the sky above Nome. “We have our own laws.” Like people singing in rounds the crowd began a murmur. Finn found himself in the middle, unable to turn or to slip away with his leaflets undamaged. The soldiers on the far side of the river were at ease or were standing boot deep in the water. The man who had first spoken was quiet again, and soon the others were too.

The third ship was unloaded and more troops stood along the opposite sandbar. The officer in charge was one of the last to come ashore but the first to give an order. “Axemen ready,” he said.

They would build their camp beyond the bar on which they stood and away from the river, on the flat moss of the semi tundra. At another order from the officer the axemen turned and swung their way into the scrub, walking six feet apart and clearing everything in their path. Finn looked at the soldiers, then at their own leader, the little calm-looking man in front. Everyone was quietly watching. Finn was in the center of the group, a head above most of the others, so he put his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Hello … Why have you come?” He looked quickly about him, but no one took up his call. The commanding officer walked down to the edge of the water, raised his hands, and spoke back.

“By order of the President of the United States. We have come to survey the land.”

Finn didn't know what to say next. It had been an experiment, his yelling. He'd wanted to see if he could get the same reaction that the short man had gotten, an echo from the crowd, a group following. The prospectors looked at him now, waiting for him to respond. On the far bank all of the soldiers stood still.

“You are not here as a police force then?” asked the short man. “You are not here as lawmen?”

Immediately the group around Finn took up the call. There was movement among them, side-stepping. The entire group turned like a divining rod, the short man its pivot. Even Finn thought the question so to the point that he heard himself saying so under his breath. They shifted a little, closed upon each other, their many feet moving.

“We have no plans to make one of our tents a jail,” said the officer, smiling. “Our main job is to survey the gold region. If anyone hinders us from that duty we have the power to arrest. If not, you haven't anything to fear from us.”

He turned then and marched back among the soldiers before anyone could say anything more. The little man broke the tip of the V and quickly worked his way back toward the town. Finn was next, first among the followers. The others, soon seeing that the officer had dismissed them, turned and shuffled, talking among themselves now, mumbling their way back into the dusty labyrinth from which they had come.

Finn stood beside the short man and handed him one of the leaflets advertising the bath.

“This will be a boon to the community,” he said. “First we clean our bodies then we build a fine strong town.”

The man read the leaflet more carefully than anyone had thus far. “You'll need a map,” he said. “Nome is just a shanty town now. How would you expect anyone to find the place?”

He stuffed the paper back into Finn's hands then turned and walked away. And he was right. Finn had assumed that people would know of the bath's location from others who knew of it. But to have a map would be better. In truth it was very hard to find. There wasn't even a sign.

Finn walked back along the paths of the town, distributed a few more leaflets, and returned to Ellen's bath. He peered in through the wire mesh on the front of the chicken coops. The first chicken he saw was sitting high on an egg of her own and on the marble one Finn had given Ellen. He reached in and took both eggs in his hand and the chicken settled down once more. The real egg was warm and slightly larger than the marble one. Finn slipped it into the box on top of the coop, then slid the marble egg through the door and under the next bird. He took Ellen's watering can and was sprinkling the dirt floor of the room when Ellen came in from the outside.

“I've been about the town,” she said lightly. “I saw your name but there's still no one signed up with you.”

“The army has arrived. Did you notice?”

“I noticed the crowd about,” she said. “I noticed the ships in the harbor.”

Finn pointed to the new egg and told her about the mistake he'd made on the handouts.

“A map?” said Ellen. “And do you think in a week there'll be a man who doesn't know the place?” She cupped the cooling egg in her hands and laughed. “Just a little time,” she said, peeking in at it. “That's all we need.”

Finn thought of the short man again. When that man had said a map was needed Finn had known he was right. And now Ellen made it seem not necessary at all. He was relieved that he'd not made a stupid mistake yet displeased that he'd been so easily convinced that he had. He'd thrown the last two or three dozen leaflets in a barrel and could not now retrieve them.

“I've got to find a crew for the building of this bath,” he said. “If they won't sign up I'll snatch one or two from the saloon.”

Finn left again quickly so Ellen walked to the tent flap and watched him go. Directly outside was the dirty back of another tent. To the left the path ran toward the beach, and to the right it wove itself further into the fabric of the town. Since it was warm outside and warmer in, Ellen decided to leave the flap open and pinned it back with a peg. In the back room both baths were ready, had been for an hour. Ellen sighed. She could clean the place again or check the long-drawn water or sit low behind the high counter and wait. The sight of foolish Finn made her remember Ireland again, the silly strengths and weaknesses of its people. With Finn as a reminder would she ever forget? It was strange but when she thought of Ireland she almost never thought of her mother or her sisters. It was always her father or grandmother who bothered her peace of mind.