Fools' Gold (8 page)

“We know your good faith without having it displayed in coin,” Finn said, but he took the money anyway, and used it to buy wool shirts. Winter was sliding down off the top of the world, creeping up to the edges of the farthest gold fields, and they were cold at night.

The frame of Ellen's bath went up in a day. The two men worked with nails in their mouths, occasionally shouting at each other unintelligibly. Others worked in other parts of the city, and when Phil or Finn looked away for a moment they would sometimes wave at the others, nails falling from their lips and sticking in the ground like icicles. This was industry: the city of Nome inching upward, the men working long days without complaint. And Ellen's bath, empty most of the day, was crowded at night. Lines of men stood with towels over their arms. Business was booming. Ellen and Henriette often worked well past midnight, then took baths themselves, splashing and talking over the curtain at two or three in the morning.

Finn and Phil had been working for three days when John Hummel, the man with scurvy, the first man to bathe in Ellen's bath, invented beach gold. He had been a loner all his time in Nome, a man who stooped when he spoke to others and covered his bloody smile with his hands. He spit constantly, rubbing his small mouth along the long sleeve of his shirt to dry his disease away. He used a walking stick and when he stood in one place he dug it into the ground. Hummel often roamed the beach, where the stick moved more easily, where the liquid that ran from his mouth was quickly absorbed by the easy sand. This day he noticed five gold nuggets standing like little sentries around the end of his stick, so he picked them up and then sat down on the ground for an hour of hard thought. This was not fool's gold and he was no fool.

Hummel cupped his hands and scooped the sand and dug deep. He found a nugget here and there and setting them with the others formed the letter H on the ground next to him. When he looked back toward the city he could see Finn and Phil and other builders high on their perches like birds with hammers. He scooted along the ground, digging, making a trough that moved him toward the water line. Hummel found most of his nuggets within twelve inches of the surface and discovered that the vein was perhaps three feet wide and moved up from the water in an almost perfectly straight line. When he moved his digging position, he took with him the nuggets he'd found and re-formed the H shape until it became too large and began to worry him. He changed his strategy, spelling his entire name in smaller letters four inches high. And by the end of the day he had spelled not only his full name but the names of his mother and two of his sisters, and in capitals, the name of the new state of Idaho, where he was born. He plunged the nuggets deep into his pockets and hunched over them when he walked. What was he to do? He walked like a crab past the assayer's office a dozen times that evening, knowing that to sell the nuggets would mean revealing his find and sending the whole town to the beach, like swimmers. He was no fool. This was not fool's gold.

John Hummel waited until the line diminished before paying his two dollars and entering Ellen's bath. He usually came at the end of the evening, and Henriette hated the sight of him, for it meant that she would have to spend extra time scrubbing at the heavy sides of whichever tub he used. She imagined that spittle of his everywhere, and would not let the slightest part of her skin touch the tub. Here was a man who leaked and she could not abide him.

Tonight Hummel slipped into the back room quickly and took off his sandy clothes. He had purchased a canvas sack, so, naked and shivering, he quickly transferred all the nuggets to it and took them into the tub with him. His white chest heaved at the sight of the sack of gold. He climbed into the hot water and lowered himself, holding the sack before him like a fig leaf. He felt the weight of it against his crotch and leaned his head back and let the red spittle stain his chin. What did he care? He was rich. He opened the sack under the water and looked through the steam at it and plunged his hands into it, moving the nuggets about with his fingers. He washed his gold with soap. He washed his body, extending long fingers into his mouth and scrubbing up and around his peach-colored gums.

Hummel had only his sandy clothes, so he slapped them against the side of the tub before he could bring himself to crawl back into them again. He was a rich man and these were the clothes of a beggar. Already he felt it. He let the sack of gold lose the water through its seams and then looked again and was content that the color was now purer than it had been on the beach. He was a rich man but would have to tell someone if he wanted to exchange the gold for money. He would have to ask someone to exchange it for him if he expected to keep his secret, and he decided that he would ask Ellen. She had always been kind to him, had never avoided his eyes while staring at his drooling mouth like the others always did. He waited until he heard Henriette leave the tent, until he thought that Ellen would be alone, then dressed and clean he took his sack of gold through the curtains and laid it on the counter before her.

Fujino arrived in the dim town at midnight, the mule walking beside him like an equal. For the last six hours it had been necessary to save the mule's energy so it would not tire and fall. He did not recognize any of the tents or half-buildings and didn't know where he would sleep. He thought of Kaneda at their camp, telling himself stories. Now, though he was in the city, the place he'd thought of each day since his arrival at the creek, he was exhausted and wanted only to sleep. It would be better to examine what had happened to the place in the freshness of morning. Presently he came upon the iron beds of a new hotel piled high in the street. A tent stood beside them and at its flap was a man with a cigar box in his hands.

“Welcome, weary traveler,” said the man.

“Is this a hotel?”

“It is a place to sleep.”

Fujino handed the man large coins and, taking the pack from his mule, entered the dark tent. There were many sleepers lying about on the ground, on the mattresses that would soon be used on the gleaming beds. The man dropped the coins into his box and tied the tired mule to a post outside. He pointed toward a stack of brown blankets on the table.

“Checkout time is eight-thirty,” he said.

Ellen looked at John Hummel's gold and told him to go to the assayer's office. “I've no proper place to keep it,” she said. “Many men would come in here for that.”

Hummel shuffled for a moment and then, like a bat, folded his body around the gold and went directly out. He stood on the bent path before he entered the assayer's office. Once inside he watched as the assayer added weight to the side of the scale opposite his sack. The man was tired and not aware that Hummel wasn't just in from the mines. A guard sat, propped against the wall, on a stool next to him.

“That's good clean gold. Twelve hundred,” said the assayer.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Twelve hundred dollars. Do you want it on account or in cash?”

“Cash. Twelve hundred dollars …?”

The assayer opened a heavy safe and placed the gold on the bottom shelf. He took bank notes and coins and placed the correct amount on the counter before Hummel. “There you are, sir. Looks like you're on your way.”

Hummel scooped and shoved the money into the sack that had contained his gold. He turned to leave but turned again.

“I found it on the beach,” he said, standing straight. “I want to stake a claim.”

The assayer looked up from his books and the guard sat down on all four legs of his stool.

“The beach?”

“I want to stake a claim. Right now.”

The assayer took a handful of claim maps from under the table and showed Hummel what he had to do to register his claim.

“This brown space is Nome,” he said, “and you'll be able to recognize all the rivers and streams and the coastline here. You mark in red the site of your claim and give me a dollar and then we both sign here at the bottom.”

Hummel turned the map around on the table, looking until the rivers and the coastline came clear to him. He took up a pencil and drew heavy lines all along the beach directly in front of the city. He would claim from the Snake to the Nome, the entire beach; that was safe. He turned the paper back and let the assayer see what he had done. His dollar rang slightly on the hardwood counter.

“That's our beach,” the man informed him.

“That's my claim.”

“But it's not possible to make a claim inside the boundaries of the town.”

The guard stood and walked in small circles. He had a shotgun slung across his arm and he swung his toe back and forth like a schoolboy.

“That's my claim,” Hummel said again, hoping.

“I'm sorry … You found this gold on our beach?”

Hummel pulled the dollar back toward him, letting it fall into the open mouth of his canvas bag. He looked at the assayer and at the guard.

“It's mine gold,” he said, turning. “This is really mine gold.” He hung the money bag around his neck and went directly to the beach again. It was still gray midnight and he was able to find the spot where he'd found the nuggets earlier. The tide was considerably lower now so he dug twenty feet farther, turning the handle of his walking stick in the drying sand, looking again for the gold in the full darkness of the early night.

By daybreak the news had spread. The story of Hummel's find had closed the entire town. Twelve hundred dollars, some said more, and he'd tried to claim the entire beach as his own. Those who didn't know Hummel remembered him when others mentioned the man with the stooped walk and the bleeding mouth, and they laughed.

Fujino heard about the strike in the New York Kitchen and again at the assayer's office. He'd exchanged his gold for much more than twelve hundred dollars and left it in the assayer's safe. He asked around town for Ellen and Henriette and was told about the bath and by mid-morning had made his way there and pushed open the canvas flap, his arms loaded with gifts.

“Hello,” he said. “I am Fujino.”

The flap that led to the back bathroom was pinned open. Ellen alone remained; the rest had gone to the beach, following the news and the people, and she was pouring cold water into the blackened pots on the fire.

“Come in,” she yelled, not hearing who it was.

When she emerged from the back room Fujino bowed and extended the gifts toward her.

“My lord, Mr. Fujino. Does news spread that fast then?”

“I am so glad to see you.”

Ellen shook his hand in both of hers. Though the young man had been on the trail and had slept in a public tent, he was fresh-looking and smiling broadly. He'd changed into clean clothing and had wet his hair, combing it down flat across his head.

Ellen said, “Are you changing claims then? Do you know about the beach?”

“I have turned in our profits. We are doing very well. Mr. Kaneda sends his warmest regards.”

“He is not with you?”

“He will work the claim slowly until my return. Where is Miss Henriette?”

“You've
not
heard about the beach gold, have you? They all went down to Finn's tent to dig. It seems he's located very near the main lode.”

While they were talking Phil came in, so Ellen introduced them. The two men looked at each other for a long moment, bowing rather than shaking hands.

Phil told Ellen that the numbers of people on the beach were growing and that Finn was having a hard time protecting even that portion of sand that his tent sat upon.

“Most of the town is there with shovels,” he said. “All construction has stopped.”

“What about the bath?” she asked.

“Finn thinks we can make money. He thinks we all can but he wants us to work together. Equal shares.”

“But the bath.”

“What is important is to complete the building before winter. We have decided that I will remain here working alone and that you and Finn and Henriette will work the ground of the beach. We have found gold under his tent already.”

Ellen looked at Phil and at Fujino, who was still smiling.

“I'm supposed to close the bath?” she asked.

“There will be few customers while this strike is on.”

Ellen turned to Fujino and asked him if he'd like to join her in a walk to the beach, then she put on old clothes in the back, leaving Phil and Fujino alone in the front room. Phil was older than the young Japanese, and thinner. He thought Fujino looked like an Eskimo, even like particular Eskimos he had known. Ellen had told him about the Japanese friends they'd made on the ship and he tried now to think just exactly where Japan was. He thought of maps he had seen in books and he remembered hearing someone say “the islands of Japan,” so this must be an islander.

Fujino said, “Excuse me, but I am surprised that you look like my partner, Mr. Kaneda. I believe you have Japanese blood.”

“Japan is a long way from Alaska?”

Fujino nodded. “It takes weeks by boat.”

Ellen came out of the back wearing trousers. “I'll find them at Finn's tent?” she asked Phil, and when he told her yes she and Fujino went outside and took the left path, walking slowly on moss and sand. At the beach the tide was high, the ocean slapped the wounded land, and hundreds of people were digging. Trenches were already so deep that only the heads and shoulders of the diggers showed above ground. Men dug and women carried buckets of water from the sea, pouring it over the red and the black sand and shaking loose the gold. Fights broke out. People poked sticks into the earth at four corners of the lot they were staking, then patrolled the edges of their land with clubs. Even from the top of the beach it was difficult reaching Finn's tent. People watched them suspiciously until they had passed.

One man walked out chest deep into the churning sea and was attempting to set stakes down through the water. He leaned on the thin poles he carried and pushed hard, but though they would stick for an instant, the sea quickly turned them sideways and floated them away, erasing his weak boundaries, and he was frantic. Soon the tide would turn, would creep out, and he wanted the land ready for shoveling when it did. Fujino watched with fascination. The man will surely drown, he thought. He remembered Kaneda and the peaceful proficiency of the job they were doing. This man's mouth and eyes filled with saltwater and his partner threw him a hammer, screaming at him from the beach when the hammer dropped, slid under the blanket of the sea and was gone.