Fools' Gold

by Wiley, Richard

  Finn listened hard to the sounds that were coming from Kaneda’s mouth. Nothing. He understood nothing.

  “Fujino. Fujino. Fujino.” The old man repeated the name evenly, in the same monotone he used when telling stories. “He died knowing nothing of our heritage. Knowing nothing!”

  “Suicide,” said Finn, taken away by the grief that he heard in the old man’s voice. “All my fault.”

  The two men talked, each unsatisfied with the sounds he heard coming from the other.

  “Penance,” said Finn. “Do you know what that is? I am here to take his place.”

  Finn held the bottle high, trying to show the old man the strength of his pledge. “I will work for you while the gold lasts. I will consider my duty finished when you return to Japan. Until then I will act as Fujino did. I am here to take the place of Fujino.” He sat heavy with the weight of such a promise.

  “Fujino,” the old man said, shaking his head. “I wish you were able to tell me the circumstances surrounding his death. I never thought Fujino would do that.”

  “Mercury,” said Finn. “Mer-cu-ry.” He pointed at the drawings of the bottle and the solar system.

  “Certainly. Help yourself,” said the old man. And then, “You know, Fujino was going to be my son-in-law. He was going to marry my daughter.” He looked at his watch. “It is midnight. That means in Tokyo it is late and my daughter is standing at our gate waiting for the postman. Do you know, was Fujino able to post a letter when he arrived in Nome? Did he write to my daughter?”

  “It’s bloody cold,” said Finn, “and dark. What kind of land is this for men to be living in?”

  The old man began to cry. “Of course not. He would not have dared to write her without my permission. And he would not have dared ask me.”

  “Here, here. Wait on that,” said Finn, trying to reach across the fire. “That’ll do no good. Those tears’ll freeze on your face.” He picked up the whiskey bottle and stuck the neck of it underneath the old man’s nose. “Wouldn’t a spot of this help? I’m sure it would.” He nudged the old man with the bottle, trying to get him to look up.

  “I should have given him permission. I should have volunteered it. He was a good boy whom I did not appreciate.”

  The old man took the whiskey bottle and poured a little of the liquor into the tin cup that he held in his lap. He drank, then poured more and offered it to Finn.

  “You are from Ireland,” he said. “You probably know nothing about the history of Japan.”

  Finn heard, miraculously, the word “Ireland” as it cleared the cave of the old man’s gibberish.

  “Ireland?” he said. “I’m Irish.”

  “I should have told Fujino these stories. I, in my selfishness, started without him as a punishment for him being late. But I was slowing down. I wanted him to hear especially about Hideyoshi. About his invasion of Korea and all the strange things he did that are not easy to find in any of the history books.” The old man wiped his eyes and looked up. “Would you be interested in hearing?”

  “Ireland,” said Finn. “What was that you were saying about Ireland?”

  The old man adjusted himself under his blankets and furs. He put another log on the fire and poured whiskey into two cups. Finn watched carefully, sensing that something might happen. When the old man felt quite comfortable he closed his eyes and waited for a long time. Finn thought he was asleep, and at the sight of him, tiredness from the week of long travel swept over him. The mute dog was asleep behind Finn and provided a comfortable backrest. He closed his eyes and had the sense that he was pushing the sled, looking for the proper trail markings, trying to find the old man. His feet slipped through the crust of snow once and he jerked awake, and then fell immediately into a deep sleep. The old man tracing the story of Hideyoshi in his mind came to what he thought would be an interesting starting place. He said, “Hideyoshi,” three times, testing the evenness of his monotone. He kept his eyes closed, waited a moment longer, then began:

  “Hideyoshi was the ruler of all Japan but felt that if he wanted to stay in power for long he would have to do something about unemployment. For years his army had been busy defeating the armies of all the local barons, and now, in the late 1580s, he had tens of thousands of soldiers sitting around the castle towns with nothing to do. His advisors thought the situation to be critical….”

  The old man stopped for a moment. He felt he had gotten off to a good beginning. He didn’t want to make any mistakes or say anything that would be confusing. One could not be too careful. When talking to a foreigner rhythm was everything.

  Large branches cracked and fell upon the Snake, ice heavy. The army, on the far side, used the river as an extension of its camp, laying it with straw and wood chips, then bedding down their dogs. The raft that was used in summer for transportation protruded from the ice now, at angles. It was tied to the nearest tree by a rope that had crystallized and that was supported by icicles growing from it and rooting themselves in the ground.

  The army had been nearly invisible in Nome, was nearly so now. The tents and buildings blinked dim light out at the winter or an occasional command shot pistol-clear off toward the frozen sea, but the soldiers and the officers stayed inside. They were surveyors and would sleep or play cards until their equipment could once again be pushed into the spring-soft soil. They had no fence and expected no visitors. A single man, on guard duty, stood inside a closed house on the river, leaning over a charcoal fire.

  Phil, in the village these few weeks, was rested and had come to the river early this day so that he would be standing on the ice when Ellen and Henriette arrived. It would be hard for them coming even this far, so he’d brought a dog sled ready with blankets and furs. He let his dogs stand close to the army dogs, each group looking at the other, none barking, the leaders quietly rolling their lips back away from their teeth.

  Phil had a pair of heavy metal blades with him, ice skates that he now strapped to the bottoms of his hide boots. They belonged to the reverend, who’d shown him how to use them and who, as a child, had been able to move backward as well as forward across the ice. He and Phil had spent several secret hours out on the frozen shallows of Norton Sound, and Phil, supposing that Ellen and Henriette might be late, had the skates today, knowing that he could practice the length of the river without worrying that the members of the village would see him and then would not rest until their feet too slid smoothly across the land.

  Phil sat on the rump of the lead dog, tightening the straps with his bare hands. From here he could see the trail that the women would use. He pushed his hands back into his gloves and slid, still kneeling, away from the dog, his arms trailing next to the skates across the ice. He stood and, clasping his hands behind him, began to move in the manner the reverend had taught him. He kept his ankles stiff and circled down toward the sound once then back up the river. Behind him he left two small grooves in the ice. The air that pushed around Phil’s hood and into his face made his mustache freeze, and the hairs in his nose too, froze when he inhaled and thawed when he exhaled again. The army dogs and the dogs of his sled forgot each other and followed Phil with their heads.

  The river, as it moved back from the bay, grew smaller, turned a corner and then turned back again so that it looked like two rivers, a stretch of white land between them. The Snake, that source of all the gold, unchanging for as long as Phil could remember, had changed the territory. Phil wondered whether it was good or bad. Men here had lust for gold as they should have for a woman. Still, there was no denying what the gold could buy. It was hard for him to understand how one metal could be worth more than any other. The steel of these skates, for example, was a tribute to what men could do to improve upon what they took from the land. This steel was harder than anything, and it was smooth and sharp whereas the gold was soft and cumbersome and heavy to carry around. Of course the golden snowflakes were beautiful, but the men in Nome cared nothing for them. It was money they were after, and Phil knew that with
gold in hand money was easy, but it seemed a strange choice of metals. He had no idea who had started the rumor that gold was valuable, but that it had begun as a rumor he had no doubt. And like many rumors it had long outlasted anyone who could remember its origins and had become a truth. As with invention and discovery, white men looked at the concept from the front and then from the back and then forgot that what they were seeing was a single concept, one idea.

  Rumor. Truth. Invention. Discovery. Phil used the four words as cues for pushing first his left leg, then his right. He was far up the river now and turned so that he might not miss Ellen and Henriette. The dogs were craning their necks to see him, sniffing the air for clues. Phil coasted. The problem of skating would be in building up one’s ankles and keeping one’s rhythm. Rumor. Truth. Invention. Discovery. He saw the two women standing on the Nome side of the river, looking with the dogs. He waved. A few of the soldiers stuck their heads out of their tents and watched him skate by.

  “Hello,” Phil shouted, gliding, letting the skates dig him to a stop next to the women.

  He turned toward the dogs and yelled something in Eskimo and the lead dog stood, nipped at the others until they too were up and stretching.

  “My,” said Ellen.

  Henriette held a package containing the stockings and necklaces that they had made, and Ellen carried her carpet bag, the one she’d brought with her from Ireland, the one her father’d given her the day she left.

  “Where’s Finn?” asked Phil.

  “He’s gone to tell Mr. Kaneda about Fujino’s death, to offer his services.”

  “He died then.”

  “He bled to death,” said Ellen. “Finn feels we didn’t do right by him.”

  Phil stood with the lead dog, walking bent over and talking in its ear until they were well past the army tents, then he went to the rear of the sled and alternately walked behind it or stood on the back runners. His ankles were sore from skating and the skates hung like the snowflakes around his neck. Ellen and Henriette were tucked into the sled, completely covered by pelts, rubbing their hands together silently.

  Waiting in the village the reverend wrung his hands. He stood at his window looking up along the coast toward the Snake, then struggled into his outdoor clothes and paced the frozen beach. All of the Eskimos waited under the earth. The reverend thought of himself as an apparition alone in the utter wilderness. He paced like a worried head of state, wondering if they would come, if his letter had ever reached them. He’d spent many of his last days preparing his Christmas sermon and cleaning his house. He’d boiled buckets of water and washed his window and done his laundry.

  Behind the village the reverend and the children decorated a tree. Phil’s wife and sisters lent their snowflakes for the top of it and the men of the village dyed strips of white fur red with the blood of a seal they had caught. The reverend, following an old custom of his own, made popcorn and taught those who were interested how to string it and drape it around the tree. It would be a fine Christmas. He had dusted his carol books and practiced playing the village piano, which spent every winter in his house. He was in the spirit, looking forward to seeing the women from Nome, to waiting with the children for Christmas morning.

  When he saw the sled, the reverend’s heart sank. Phil was there but he could see no one tucked under the folded pelts, he could see no one else walking. The reverend strode, trying not to slip, over to the sled shed to help Phil unharness the dogs. Ellen and Henriette pushed the robes away and stood when he had his back turned to them.

  “Hello, hello,” they said, lifting their parcels to him.

  “Oh, hello, well…” he said turning. “I didn’t think you’d come. Hiding in the sled, were you?”

  “Popped up like prairie dogs,” said Henriette.

  The reverend grinned and took their bags and lifted the sled robes and peeked under. “Finn?” he said.

  “Do you think we had him hidden under us?” asked Ellen.

  “He went to the Japanese camp. Explaining the tragedy.”

  “Suicide,” said the reverend. “I heard from Phil.”

  The reverend was so happy to see Ellen, to see Henriette, that he could not adjust his face to the subject of suicide. “We prayed for the young man,” he said, grinning. “Phil and I.”

  Ellen said, “Finn’s Catholic and would confess that he had some hand in it if there was a priest about. He finds strength in that kind of thing.”

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” said the reverend. “If Finn were here I would tell him so. Was the young man a Christian?”

  “We talked gold,” said Ellen. “He was with us during the beach strike and we talked of nothing else. Finn asked him to stay on when he came to town for supplies. That is why Finn feels responsible. He taught us how to mine the stuff.”

  The reverend nodded and told the women he’d be honored if they would stay with him again. He walked between them, linking an arm in each of theirs, telling them not to slip, guiding them. When they got to his house he said he hoped they’d be pleased and opened the door and pushed them through. Phil was with them and hung the ice skates on their proper hook.

  “The whole village has disappeared,” said Henriette.

  “If you look hard you can see us,” said Phil. “We’ve gone mostly underground. It’s easier that way in the wintertime, and much warmer.”

  The reverend had a fire in the wood stove and had hung the walls with anything that reminded him of Christmas. Behind the stove were two red stockings, one marked “Ellen” and the other “Henriette.” Next to them was a small box marked “Finn.”

  “It’s lovely,” said Ellen. “Like having Christmas at home.”

  “Any port in a storm,” said Henriette.

  The reverend pushed the door shut and hung layers of everyone’s clothes on all the spare hooks. He’d made Christmas cookies and reaching into his small kitchen brought some out, laying two in each hand. In the center of the room his tin punch bowl was full again, steam rising from it warmly. He handed everyone a cup.

  “Cheers,” said the reverend, holding his cup high.

  “Cheers,” said Henriette.

  “To the health of hard-headed Finn on his journey,” said Ellen.

  “To Fujino,” said Phil.

  “May God have mercy on his soul,” said the reverend.

  The punch in their cups cooled as they drank it. “Christmas comes but once a year,” said the reverend, getting everyone another drink.

  They drank and talked and made preparations for Christmas. It was the twenty-third, the reverend told them. Did they realize how close that was to Christmas? Two days. My, how time flies. He would give his service at midnight on the twenty-fourth and then while the children slept they would ready the gifts. And they would have Christmas dinner on Christmas day, at two in the afternoon.

  After more punch, Phil went home to rest and to talk to his family. The reverend and the two women went up the loft ladder to sit in the big chairs looking out at the empty village.

  “It seems like no one lives there now and no one ever did,” said Ellen. “You must feel lonely during these long winters.”

  “The view sometimes makes me feel that way. And, of course, I am alone. But as for activities, my days are as full as your brimming cup of punch.”

  The reverend sat smiling. He’d pulled a hard-backed chair from his kitchen in anticipation of the three of them sitting here this way. He wanted them to take pride in the winter view as he did, so he had placed the big easy chairs close to the window. They watched Phil walking across the whiteness. He stood by his sister’s hut a moment, then turned toward them, raised his hand, and sank into the earth.

  “Like a captain gone down with his ship,” said the reverend.

  “Like a prairie dog,” said Henriette. “I know what you mean.”

  The reverend carried the remaining punch up the fur-runged ladder and placed it on the floor between them.

  “If it’s not fini
shed while it’s hot, ladies,” he said, “it is very weak in spirit.”

  He filled the cups, squeezing the dents out of the tin as he did so. He handed the punch to the women, his thumbnail stained.

  Ellen said, “By way of gifts, reverend, we’ve knitted stockings and made them necklaces. A gift should be useful as well as desired.” She reached into the bag at her side and carefully unwrapped one of the long packages. “I’ve knitted a size that, though it might be large for some, will be too small for no one.” She handed the stockings to him, pointing out that the bulge in the toe was Henriette’s necklace.

  The reverend was beside himself. “Oh, ladies,” he said, “I meant only a trifle, a piece of candy, a balloon.” He held the long stockings up to the window then pulled the necklace out of the toe and placed it around his neck. “You really shouldn’t have.” He stuck a hand deep down the throat of each stocking and pinched them into puppet faces, snapping his fingers together for mouths.

  “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,” his left hand said.

  “I only thought they must have a hard time of it keeping their feet warm,” said Ellen.

  The reverend let the mouths of the puppets yawn open until they turned to stockings again. “It’s a wonderful gift,” he said. “And that every child will have the same thing couldn’t be better. It will avoid capriciousness. The many will not cast aside their gifts for the toys of a few.”

  The reverend stuffed the necklace back into the toe of the stocking and refolded them into their Christmas wrapping.

  “‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,’” said Ellen. “My father read me that book across the open fire, with the flames warming our own cold house. Your having said it takes me back. Do you remember what comes next? Do you remember the next line?”