Fools' Gold

by Wiley, Richard

  “Twelve hundred dollars. There ought to be at least two more zeros. The way I see it, everyone here owes me.”

  Henriette thought it was like listening to a country preacher. She remembered the reverend and wondered how he would deliver a sermon. She could see him clearly but couldn’t get the voice right. She had him speaking with the lilting vengeance of Hummel, but softly.

  The prospectors were not able to get back to work while the man stood there. Everyone was quiet and Hummel, too, was silent for a long while before lowering the walking stick off his shoulder and pointing it at the group. He sighted down the rough wood at all the small targets. He swept across his horizon, raising his rifle up and down, trying to pass over everyone. Those who are left standing can go free, he thought.

  In another moment Hummel shouldered his stick and marched off toward the Snake. One of the prospectors cheered, but none of the others did. Just one lone cheer. Afterwards there was silence everywhere. Even Phil, who had seen none of it, was bothered by the excessive loudness of his own hammer as he tapped away at the inside of Ellen’s bath.

  John Hummel was no fool. He knew mining and he knew the properties of quicksilver. Only the scurvy had kept him from making his name known in Alaska as one of the big strikers. Never mind, now his name was known. They all knew him as the man whose claim was jumped and who’d done nothing about it. He would show them, and he’d begin with Ellen, the woman who sent him to the assayer’s office in the first place.

  Hummel stood outside Finn’s tent and waited until all he could hear was the sounds of sleep. Maybe she wouldn’t be there, but these were her men and she’d feel the injury as much as they. Hummel turned back the flap and peered into the darkness. He crouched and waited for his eyes to adjust. The lantern was out, but there was a rim of orange coming from the round stove in the corner. He waited and in a few minutes could see the sleeping figure next to the stove. He could see the frypan used for making those golden snowflakes he had heard so much about, and he could see the jar of quicksilver.

  Hummel moved, silent and sideways, across the room. He took long moments to get to the stove, longer to move the frypan up onto the hot top and to remove its lid. The piece of tubing was still attached to the top of the frypan and to the bottle of mercury. Slowly he undid the stopper from the bottle. It was heavy and half full of the shimmering silver substance. He held the bottle up and tipped it until it became light and empty. The quicksilver was in the pan, the pan was on the fire. He reached inside his shirt and removed a second bottle equal to the first and heavy as his heart. He poured it all in and then quickly replaced the frypan lid. The hose extended from the top of the frypan and twisted off the stove. The end of it was in Hummel’s hand. He put it to his mouth until he tasted metal, and then he slid like a snake across the ground and pushed it through the bedclothes and up toward the head of the sleeper.

  Hummel left the tent more quickly than he’d entered, and finding his stick in the sand, walked with it down to the edge of the water. The night was cold, it was the first time he had noticed that, and the money sack around his neck seemed lighter than usual. He turned west, toward the Snake, then left the beach near the top of the town. He too had a tent, but he had not been there in nearly a week. He expected it had been rummaged; people would be looking for his money. But when he turned back the flap and entered the tent it was cold and neat. Things were in order, just as he had left them. He’d often wanted people to see his tent; he knew they’d be surprised by it. They expected him to live like a pig because he bled like one. Men were not so simple as some people believed them to be.

  When Hummel closed himself inside his tent he quickly located the can that he used as a spittoon. He never spit on the floor here. He nearly always had to get up in the middle of the night to empty the can, but he did it because he wanted the room to be dry and clean. He sat on the bed and spit into the can now and listened to the metallic sound of it hitting the bottom. It reminded him of the taste in his mouth, the taste he’d received from the end of that hose, the mercury that was even now covering the head of that sleeping stranger. He spit again and took a swallow of whiskey. He swung the sack around his neck in order to rest his head upon it. It was not comfortable having the cord always pressing into his neck but he was afraid of thieves. He hooked his fingers on the cord and pulled until it was loose enough for him to sleep. He woke dozens of times to lean off his bed and spit into the can, and once to stumble to the edge of the tent, open the flap and fling the red liquid out onto the floor of the city. The sand, hardening every night, didn’t seem to absorb the spit like it used to. Rather it stayed on top as if rejected, frozen into little red lakes.

  Everyone spoke freely in Ellen’s bath. They made plans to stop work on the beach strike soon. Winter would arrive momentarily and Phil told them what to expect: snow and wind and nearly total darkness all the time. It was a season for waiting. It was not like winter in other countries, he told them. He said, “Though I have not been to other countries I am sure it is not the same.”

  When Finn and Phil left the bath for the night they hurried along the circular paths, for it was cold and they had no heavy jackets. The bath building, finished and towering above the tents around it, shadowed them. It was the first building completed, the only one to have progressed during the rush on the beach. There were few stars and only a slice of moon, but they knew the way and once on the beach the work lanterns lit their path and they were able to see each other. Phil had a half-dozen golden snowflakes wrapped in a cloth and tucked under his shirt. They were to be gifts for his people. He even had one for the reverend from Ellen and Henriette.

  Finn and Phil entered the tent and quickly wrapped themselves in their bedrolls before they noticed the metallic air. Its presence was overpowering. They smacked their lips and waited very still and quiet as if expecting to hear something. They had been gone more than three hours. Finn struck a match and lit a lantern. Phil was already standing.

  “It’s the quicksilver,” said Finn. He lifted the lid off his frypan like a man expecting burnt breakfast.

  When they pulled the blanket back off Fujino, he woke up and said something in Japanese. “Sore wa nan da! Wakaranai! Wakaranai!” His black eyebrows were silver now, with small drops of the re-formed mercury. His hair also had a beaded cap, and when he tried to speak again he began to cough and silver fell from his mouth. He did not try to rise.

  “My God, he’s tried to do himself in,” said Finn. “Let’s get him up to the bath.”

  Phil had already rolled up the side canvas of the tent to let the night wind sweep the place. It came in immediate and cold, taking what was loose and blowing it out the other side. Fujino’s hands and feet were round with swelling, but when they raised him he was able to stand by himself. Phil held the lantern and Finn carried the man around the twisted paths of Nome and back toward the bath. Absurdly, though they had made the trip a hundred times, they got lost, once even entering a strange tent. Gamblers looked up at them, cards held close to their chests, stacks of gold coin leaning against dim lanterns. Fujino, his face sagging, pointed a finger at the men.

  When finally they got to the bath the new doors were locked and sturdy. Phil shook the handle proudly for a second before banging on the door with both fists.

  “Open,” he yelled, and Finn added, “Ellen. In God’s name. It’s an emergency. Hurry!”

  Through the crack in the door they could see a lantern dimly moving. Ellen turned the big key and swung the door open and stared at them. She wore a long white robe tied in the middle. Fujino, still wrapped in the brown blankets of the tent, fell toward her, Finn holding on to him in back.

  “Is he drunk?” she asked.

  “What’s going on?” said Henriette, coming down the stairs from the bedroom.

  “He’s swallowed a gallon of quick. It’s a wonder he’s breath left to cough with.”

  Ellen’s face dropped, her voice clouding. “Henriette, fill the bath then go look for a
doctor. Make the water as hot as you can.”

  She turned back to the men. “You, Finn, get the man out of those clothes and throw them away. Hurry now.”

  The blanket dropped from around Fujino’s shoulders. He stood nearly by himself, his eyes open and focusing on whoever stood in front of him. His mouth filled, saliva dripping from his lips. Finn took a knife and cut the shirt and undershirt off the man. He handed them to Phil, who carried them outside. Finn took Fujino’s pants and wrapped him in a clean blanket.

  Henriette told them when the water was ready and ran into the night, not knowing where she was going. Phil went with her. There was a doctor in Nome, they had heard, but they didn’t know his name or where his tent might be. She would look, she said. She would not return until she found him.

  Ellen and Finn took Fujino into the back bathroom. The walls had been freshly done and the whole room had the smell of newly-cut wood. They had not yet painted, and in places the new boards bled, the sap running down the walls. It was a pleasant smell.

  The bath water was getting hot. Finn put his hand in, pulled it back quickly, then put it in again. It was hot but it would not burn, he decided. Ellen took the blanket and Finn lifted Fujino up and lowered him into the tub. It was difficult to bend Fuji-no’s legs, but once inside he sat without making a sound, staring through the steam. Some of the quicksilver on his head and eyebrows slid lazily off him, disappearing when it entered the water.

  Ellen got a bucket from the fire and, after testing it with her hand, poured it little by little down over Fujino’s head. All the visible mercury washed away with it.

  Finn said, “He’s got a lot of the bloody stuff in his body. We needn’t worry about what is on the outside.”

  Fujino’s mouth was open and a black line appeared on his lower gum, running all the way along, just below his teeth. It made the gum look hard and bloodless. His lips too were darker than before and his hands, gripping the sides of the tub, were swollen and weakened.

  They left Fujino in the tub for nearly an hour, then took him out and wrapped him in warm blankets and put him in one of the rooms upstairs. The walls up here bled like the ones below. The room had a cot in it, and a window and a door. They put a lit lantern on the floor beside the cot and left the door open so that they could hear any sounds he might make. It was such a pleasant new building that even going up and down the stairs gave them a feeling of clear satisfaction. They sat quietly and drank tea and looked up when Phil and Henriette came back alone, no doctor to be found. The weather had turned and Phil and Henriette warmed their hands on teacups. The four of them stood around the stove, then moved a few feet and stood in front of the new windows. Had it been daylight they might have been able to see the mounds of gnarled beach between the tents. But it was night and through the clean glass they could see only darkness.

  “It’s snowing,” said Henriette. “It’s begun to snow.”

  As she spoke smallish white flakes darted through the darkness, one or two of them landing on the outside ledge or melting against the window. A larger flake pressed its intricate design against the glass and then began to fade away. Darkness with flecks of white. Winter moved like a hand over the city, the flakes lacing together to form a blanket. On the beach the rivulet that they’d used turned slowly to ice and was covered with snow. The mountains of sand grew solid and immovable. No one would be going back to the beach again. The snow began to mount on the window, building from the bottom, its whiteness rising. From the sky the lights of the city disappeared, one by one, like dying fireflies. None of them thought of sleep. They moved from the window to the fire to the window. The snow sealed the eyes of the city, leaving it dark. Even after the sun had risen no one noticed. They might have stayed this way forever, the house quiet, winter falling. It was peaceful. They had no thoughts. The four of them turned toward each other when Fujino first began to scream. It was abrupt, an irritation. He screamed twice more before the first of them ran toward the stairs.

  3

  Glass windows, one to a wall; four figures, each with a face pressed to glass. The world outside swirled in white funnels, the ground rose. Winter had arrived, in one day, as fully as it would. The sand on the beach was immovable, the tools of the miners frozen to it, as much a part of the earth now as the gold. The tents puffed smoke into the air but the smoke lacked movement, seemed to freeze in its upward curve. And Finn’s mule was dead. It stood stiff-legged and staring at the bath from the post where it had been tied. Finn had forgotten the mule, who would stand there now, perhaps collapsing only with the spring thaw, or, like a variation of the groundhog myth, awakening to its shadow and moving on.

  Fujino survived to scream. He was cared for by the others in rotation. Finn, Phil, Henriette, one at a time climbed the stairs to see him. They looked in at the new door with its sap still running and listened to his complaints of itching and watched as he drew sharp fingernails across his thighs. His gums still held the dead color of lead in them and he talked. He screamed for Kaneda and for Kaneda’s daughter. “Kimie! Kimie!” he said, using her given name bravely and for the first time.

  Snow fell for three days and then stopped and turned concrete, a wave across the city. Doors would not open. The only way to leave the bath was through a window. The four stood in still positions until their muscles ached or they thought of Fujino. They stoked the fire or ate eggs and listened to the clucking chickens with equal disinterest, equally lost in thought. Phil imagined himself in heavy clothes, heading out the window and off toward his village. The storm had stopped so there was no reason for him to stay. He thought about offering to go to Kaneda to explain, but he did not. He pictured himself arriving at his winter village with hide strings around his neck, the golden snowflakes dangling. He would place one around the neck of each of his women, one atop the cool hut of his little sister, Nanoon. There would be movement in the village, and by now the ice of the bay would have holes in it for fishing. Phil had prepared everything for his return. He’d readied the supplies and the gifts and the money. By the time he got there the winter homes would be dug and warm and he would be able to speak as many hours as he liked each day with his children. He imagined the golden snowflakes as the talk of the town.

  Phil turned from the window and picked up his pack. He visited each of the others where they stood, saying good-bye. He told them that he was long overdue at home, that they would meet again in the spring. He said, “Things look bad for the Japanese,” then backed out of the window, pack first, feeling the snow break under his feet. The three watched Phil walking away. He turned once, swatting the flank of the dead mule and grinning. They all heard the dull thud of the slap and saw the snow falling from the frozen body.

  After Phil left, the rotation fell apart. Henriette alone sat in a chair at the side of Fujino’s bed watching and noting each of his movements, everything he said, on pieces of paper. She had it in mind that she was his nurse, and nurses kept records. She liked it better upstairs, for her mind was more directly connected to what she saw. Unlike Finn and Ellen she was not given to living in her imagination. In her the past and the future met as they were supposed to. She relied on her senses as the others relied on their memories, as the others tried to understand their lives by thinking.

  Henriette kept Fujino’s room warm and marked everything she saw or heard or smelled on her pieces of paper. She told Fujino that there was no doctor but that time healed all wounds, and when he screamed for Mr. Kaneda she patiently informed him that Mr. Kaneda was not there. And when Fujino was quiet she entertained him by telling him stories, or by describing the world around them, standing at the window and telling him what she saw.

  “It’s all ice and snow, really,” she would cheerfully say. “There are no people and the ground is so pretty. The strangest thing I see is a dead mule who won’t fall down but who stands in his frozen tracks staring right into the house. The poor thing. It’s Finn’s mule. Sometimes from this window I feel as if he is looking directly up a
t me, looking right up into the room here.”

  No one knew how much of what Henriette said Fujino understood. He heard about the mule all right, for once he tried to question her about his own mule, but she would only say, “No, it’s Finn’s mule,” and then she’d carefully tell him that she hadn’t seen anything of his since winter began.

  In a week or so Henriette moved her cot into Fujino’s room. “It’s warmer in there and I can help him if he needs anything in the night,” she said. From below they could hear her talking. Or if they couldn’t they knew she was busy writing, putting everything down in the little notebook that she made.

  And Finn too now, as Ellen had been doing from the beginning, began moving in Irish circles, gliding over the smooth surfaces of memory, going back, much as he said he would never do. He stood in the frame of the window looking into the eyes of the snow-covered mule and saw himself reflected there twice, in perfect unison. Since childhood Finn had had the habit of talking to his mirror image, so why not into the mule’s eyes? “Well, when are you going to make something of yourself?” he might ask, looking into pub mirrors or into the dirty glass above washbasins in lavatories.

  Now if he turned sideways his image in the eyes of the mule turned sideways as well. He saw himself as two small marchers who had timed their turns so perfectly that even the most demanding drill sergeant would not be able to find fault. It had been that way in school if he remembered correctly. Boys lined up on the playground as if they were soldiers. He remembered cold knees more than anything else. It had been so long since he’d let himself slide into Ireland this way. No good living in the past was his motto. Still, if he turned in the room now he knew he would find Ellen standing, swaying in front of another window, and if he asked her something it would take a moment for her to respond and he would be able to see in the tightening of the muscles on her face the stages of her awakening. It was like being alone in the house, except for the cries of the man upstairs.