Behind the Masks

by Susan Patron

  “Would you run away to China? Would you stow away on a boat?”

  “Never,” she said. “Well, not never. Someday when I am very rich and have many servants and sons. If I went to China now, I would only get sold to some man as mui jai.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Indentured servant. Like a slave. And he’d ship me back here to Gold Mountain anyway, to work off my debt. At least for right now I can do work I want and keep the money.”

  “‘At least for right now’?” I repeated.

  But Ling Loi pointed to a sign on the door that made us stare at each other after we read it.

  NO SCRIP ACCEPTED. U.S. CURRENCY ONLY.

  “That does not make sense,” I said. “Scrip is the only money the miners have—it’s what they get paid for their work! Everybody uses it!” I knew Ling Loi had seen plenty of scrip, too—like gold dust or nuggets, it was more common than regular U.S. currency. Papa was always paid in scrip when he defended miners, and other people, too. Not that we ever dined at such a fancy restaurant as the Occidental.

  The dog stretched out its nose every time someone walked past us, as if it had to sniff everything in the world. Ling Loi shifted it to her other shoulder. “Will that teacher try to make me go away?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “You were cute with her. I think she liked you.”

  “I know.”

  I made no comment on Ling Loi’s modesty or lack of it. But in fact she was just being honest. As we walked, she explained.

  “When I was a little tiny girl,” she said, “miners paid to kiss me. They had not seen a baby in a long while, I suppose, and never a Chinese one. One miner paid an ounce of gold to hold me for an hour so he could smell me and kiss my face. It is true!”

  “Ugh,” I said.

  “I did not mind it,” she said, “then. But if it was now, ugh.”

  I laughed. “Lucky for you. You were like a little gold mine with none of the work.”

  I was surprised when she scowled at me. “You do not understand, Angie. You could never understand.”

  We had arrived at Mr. Johl’s shop. Ling Loi seemed reluctant to go inside, but I opened the door and pushed her in.

  It was still early, but the day was warming and Mr. Johl’s big bald head gleamed with sweat. Behind him some carcasses hung. He wiped his cleaver on his apron and leaned forward on his palms, peering at us over the huge worktable. “Ha! No bones for dogs until end of the day,” he said. “Come back later.”

  “I want to buy some pigs’ feet, sir, if you have them,” I said, “and we were hoping you needed a good strong dog. No fleas.” I shot a sideways look at Ling Loi to remind her not to scratch.

  He seemed to inspect the dog and Ling Loi both. He laughed. “That is a pup, not a dog.”

  “This pup here is a smart one, Mr. Johl. Its mother was the bravest dog in Bodie.”

  “Maybe,” he said, and went back to work, rending a mighty blow to a joint on his table. “I will ask Mrs. Johl. It is possible.” He nodded to us. “Pick up your pigs’ feet when you return. Pay in dollars—no scrip.”

  “But, Mr. Johl, I have only scrip. My mother, Emma Reddy, is too ill to go to the bank today.”

  “Ah,” he said, and looked anew at me. “Of course, of course, you are Miss Reddy. Bring your scrip, then, and we will make do.”

  “Thank you,” I said, wondering how we would manage, if all the shopkeepers began not accepting scrip. Wondering how anyone except the very rich would survive.

  We started to leave when Mr. Johl came around from his table, reaching for the dog. Ling Loi gave it to him, and it seemed to all but disappear in his huge hands. “Ha! Leave the dog,” he said. “We will see.”

  Later

  I hurried on to school, not wanting to be late after that encounter with Miss Williams. Ling Loi headed toward Chinatown.

  A handbill that had been much trampled upon caught my eye at the edge of the sidewalk, for written large across the top was HORRIBLES WANTED. I have inserted it here:

  Of course, dear diary, you know I could never go up on a stage and perform, as my tongue would turn to stone, my teeth would lock shut, and I should die of fright and embarrassment. In any case, I believe it rare for women to become Horribles. However, how I would love to write the lines for the actors to say! How I would delight in knowing all the players’ identities, and in passing freely among them, going backstage and providing what help I could in the production. Since finding the notice, I’ve done nothing so much as dream of becoming a member. It is said they are so excellent that one day they will take to the road, performing at theaters in all the great cities. Oh, how grand it would be to join them! Inside my mind, I envisioned a play about the

  AUTHENTIC LIFE

  of a Western Mining Town

  and I began to hear the actors’ voices. I started to know what they would say, and the terrible and comical things that would befall them.

  Perhaps I should invent my pen name, against the day when I become nearly as famous as Mr. William Shakespeare. Like the Horrible actors, I shall mask my true identity.

  After school, as I headed for Main Street, worrying about Papa, an idea came to me. It seemed at first too bold, too much of a risk, but my feet made the decision to detour toward Fuller Street, where there is not a saloon, not a hotel, not a business, nor much of the usual traffic of animals, carts, and wagons—only cabins and houses.

  I know this street because back in February, during the hardest winter anyone recalls, when many died from the cold and consumption and dreadful fevers, and a dozen children were taken by diphtheria, Momma and I made our way here on snowshoes, pulling a little sled through huge drifts of snow. People called it the “pneumonia winter.”

  We brought supplies and food to the houses where no smoke came from the chimneys, for in them were the untended sick and the dying, with no one able to keep a fire going. It was along this street where we had heard a faint weeping from within a large fine house. We stopped at the front door. The face of my classmate—beautiful, studious Eleanor Tucker—appeared at a window and then she had let the curtain drop, nor opened the door, so we went on our way. Momma said people’s sadnesses are their own concern, and that respect for their privacy is the most charitable gift.

  Today I found Eleanor outside, whacking a braided rug with a carpet beater that made me cringe inwardly, so much did it resemble Miss Williams’s paddle. She nodded on seeing me and made to go inside, but I called to her.

  “Eleanor, wait,” I said. “I need your help. Will you give it?”

  She glanced at the house, dropped the carpet beater, and hurried to meet me, a finger to her lips. Grabbing my arm, she pulled me back the way I had come. All of this encouraged me in my enterprise.

  When we were some distance, still walking rapidly, I said, “I have heard that the Walheims were driven from town by the 601.” I kept to myself our encounter with Hank Babcockry and Con Williams. “Someone”—I didn’t say that it was Hank—“mentioned your father. Is he a member of the citizens’ vigilantes? Do you admire them?”

  If she was surprised at these direct questions, she didn’t show it. “No, I do not admire them. Before, I thought they were keeping the town clean. There was just too much lawlessness for the sheriff and the constable and the few deputies to handle. But hounding whole families out of town—those poor Walheims!” After a moment she said, “You asked about my father. Did you know he is a great philanthropist? He helps so many people, and he helps the town, too. Right now he’s working with other volunteers on all the games and contests for the Fourth of July celebration.”

  I frowned at her. Too much bragging, I thought, about a man with secrets: the secret of the accidental shooting, and maybe the secret of his being with the vigilantes. I had to risk my new friendship with Eleanor by asking, “So since he’s the Patron Saint of Bodie he wouldn’t have been part of that vigilante group … ?”

  Her eyes grew wide and she stopped walking. I feared she wou
ld turn and stride away. “Angeline,” she said, “I don’t know. My father … is complicated. Mostly he is calm and jovial and kind—pulling coins out of boys’ ears and giving peppermints to little girls. And he loves me fiercely. I know he would give his life for me. But”—she touched my arm lightly—“may I speak frankly, trusting that my words will be between us alone?”

  I nodded. “I promise.”

  She continued, “I confess to you that there is another side to him. A side I do not understand. Sometimes he has outbreaks of rage. He’ll say to my mother, ‘You made us lose hope!’ and then she’ll cry and go to bed with a headache. It is something between them. That is all I can say. You are kind, Angie, to let me share these private matters with you, and you must trust that you can do the same with me.”

  Of course I could not tell her what I had learned from Momma, and it made my heart sore to keep a secret from this girl who had so willingly told me one of hers. “Eleanor,” I said instead, “will you come and help me, even if it means we may be caught and punished?”

  She looked alarmed. “What crime would you have us commit?”

  “Oh, not a crime, nothing dangerous, more a minor transgression. I just want to know if you’ll come and look at something.”

  She began walking again, but slowly. “What is the punishment,” she asked, “should we get caught?”

  I shrugged. “It won’t kill us.”

  “Oh!” she said, her hand flying to her mouth. “Your father! So it is true what you said, that the newspapers are wrong and he has not been murdered?”

  “That is what I want you to help me find out, Eleanor. Will you?”

  She walked along silently for some time. “My mother desires to send me east to finishing school,” she said at last. “And to pay for it from her own inheritance. Oh, I long to do it. I dream of it every day. But my father says he cannot bear to lose me, that I have no need of more schooling, and of course his word is law. Nevertheless there is great … discord … over this in our house. So far my mother has held firm despite the torments of their arguments. If I were involved in a scandal or wrongdoing with you … Angie, my mother is not well.”

  I understood. The rats of worry nipped at Eleanor in the dark night, as they did at me with Papa gone. She would be taking the risk of adding to her mother’s burden if she were to help. “Your poor mother. I’m almighty sorry to hear this, Eleanor. But there will be no wrongdoing on our part,” I said, “although in truth I cannot promise there won’t be a scandal if we are caught. But would not your mother be proud of you for helping me seek justice?”

  She smiled in a musing, troubled way, then nodded, and put her arm through mine. “Angeline, you are a forward, cheeky girl, and because of that—though he would never reveal it to you—my father would not like you. Let us go.”

  I had never thought of myself as forward or cheeky, or that being so would gain me both a foe (Eleanor’s father) and a friend (Eleanor herself). But most surprising was the way the words also described Ling Loi and thus, strangely, how she and I must be somewhat alike. Though if cheekiness were a commodity one paid for, I believe that it would be considerable more costly for Ling Loi than it is for me.

  Eleanor and I returned to the alley behind the undertaker’s shop. As before, it was easy to sneak in through the back door. Today the caskets were arranged differently, and we had to search among them before we found the one marked with my father’s initials. But this time the casket had more heft, and I began to dread the next step: opening it to look inside.

  Yet Eleanor was eager to leave this room filled with the dead and their spirits, the gloom and the embalmer’s sickening chemical smells. She lifted the lid without delay and we both peered in.

  The dead man had a reddish-gray mustache, a curly beard on his cheeks, and a shaved chin, just like my father, but he was a good deal older. His nose and forehead were both small and bulgy, unlike Papa’s high forehead and long nose.

  “This is not Patrick Reddy,” Ellie whispered, frowning. Papa was a familiar figure in Bodie, and anyone would have recognized him.

  I clasped my handkerchief, filled with relief. “No, it is not.”

  She straightened up, looking outraged. “We shall tell Mr. Ward of this mistake immediately,” she said.

  “No!” I said. “For plainly he already—”

  At that moment the door in front slammed and we froze when we heard a man saying something about “… that cowardly 601 business.” If a bear could sing, that is how it would sound—a deep, soft, musical rumble with claws and teeth and power behind it. It was Antoine Duval’s voice.

  Another man answered, “It’s no concern of Wells Fargo and Company, Duval.”

  Ellie turned to me, eyes wide, finger to lips. She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “That’s my father!”

  I nodded and said, “The other one is a Wells Fargo clerk. Antoine Duval.” The men continued arguing.

  “This is a rough town, Tucker, with a lot of wealth coming out of the ground every day. The bank has vested interests.”

  Mr. Tucker laughed. “The bank doesn’t have to worry about the 601 Vigilance Committee. I told you that already. Sometimes a town needs its own citizens to be vigilant.”

  I couldn’t read Ellie’s expression. She stood motionless, listening.

  Antoine said, “In the middle of the night? Wearing masks? I’d wager the town doesn’t really want a handful of its citizens to deny Walheim or anyone else a fair trial.”

  “And I’m telling you—warning you—that the bank’s interest is banking. Not starting a panic over scrip.”

  “You have it backward, Tucker. Production in the Standard Mine is slowing down. It’s no secret the mine is running out of gold. But the company—guided by you, one of its major shareholders—is continuing to pay the miners with scrip.”

  We could hear the fury in Mr. Tucker’s voice when he answered. “You know that’s how it works, Duval, in all the mining districts during a boom. There isn’t enough U.S. currency flowing in for us to cover our payroll. But once the bullion goes out on the stage, the currency comes in.”

  “Except,” Antoine said, “at some point the banks will no longer trust that you can back that paper with gold. Your scrip will lose value and we will have no choice but to refuse to exchange it for U.S. currency. If that starts a panic, and it could, it won’t be the bank’s fault.”

  I thought I understood, now, why Ling Loi and I had seen that notice at the Occidental Hotel, and why Mr. Johl wanted regular money from his customers. The mine owners were betting that more gold would be found, enabling it to pay its workers, but businesses were calling their bluff.

  The door slammed again and I figured from the hard clanging ring of his boots on the wooden floor that Sheriff Pioche Kelley had come in. I heard that he hammered nails into the heels so you’d know when he was coming. Something like a glass or a gun was slammed onto a table. Then the sheriff spoke. “So accordin’ to the doc, Pat Reddy’s body was delivered to you for embalming, Ward. Is that correct?” He talked almighty loud, like he worried folks wouldn’t listen otherwise.

  Mr. Ward answered, “The doc … of course, Sheriff.” Whether he was selling a cradle or a coffin, he spoke in a mournful, gloomy manner.

  “It’s been in all the Bodie newspapers,” the sheriff bawled. “And on the front pages in San Francisco and Sacramento as well. The whole town’ll be at the funeral and then a long woeful wake in the saloons.” The sheriff tapped a boot heel on the floor, like a teacher using a wooden ruler to get her scholars’ attention. “And every man who ever even thought of stepping on the other side of the law will raise his glass in sorrow. Some will want to avenge his murder. Tell you right now—I’ll be takin’ off my badge that night, and God help us all.”

  The reason the sheriff said that about how sad and mad everyone will be is because of Papa’s reputation of never having lost a legal case in California and the territories. I guess Sheriff Kelley decided God would have
to be in charge of keeping the peace during Papa’s wake.

  Mr. Ward made little murmuring noises. He had a way of sending your own words back to you by repeating them. “Glasses raised in sorrow, oh, yes. Every glass. A fine man, Pat Reddy, a fine, fine man. A close friend. Would not have liked that raid, nor sending the Walheims packing.” After a pause, he said, “As to the funeral services you ordered, Mr. Tucker—”

  “I want a brass band and the finest horses hitched to your fancy hearse, Ward,” Mr. Tucker said. “I will pay all expenses.”

  “Why would you do that, Tucker?” Antoine asked quietly.

  I knew why: because he had caused my father to lose his arm in that hunting accident. But we did not get to hear his answer, as Eleanor put her mouth to my ear and whispered, “The curtain twitched. They may be coming back here!”

  Eleanor pulled me out the back door and then we walked around to Main Street, on which the shop fronted. I guess we both wanted to see what would happen when the men came out. “Aren’t you going to tell them it’s not your father in that casket?” she asked me.

  “No, because I don’t know whether it will help him or hurt him,” I said, hoping that was the right decision. “Act calm,” I whispered. “We’re just taking a walk.”

  The sheriff and Antoine emerged from Ward’s Furniture and Undertaking onto the wood plank porch. Several idle-looking men were already there, occupying chairs Mr. Ward had out on display, drinking from pocket flasks. Seemed like a lot of people were still arriving in Bodie and finding neither gold nor work. Eleanor and I continued to stroll toward them. Tempers flared easily and brawls were not unusual on Main Street, and we knew girls and women best not get in the way. But I had to try to find out why Papa was going to have a funeral when he wasn’t dead.

  As we approached, I saw Antoine Duval looking our way. He bowed. “Miss Angeline,” he called. The other men stared at us. “I believe your father’s funeral is being planned. Please give your mother my condolences once again.”