Behind the Masks

by Susan Patron

  Eleanor took Mrs. Tucker’s hand and held it to her cheek. She said, “Mother,” and she whispered that one word so tenderly it filled my eyes with tears.

  Mr. Tucker, groaning, seemed to summon all his strength just to get to his feet. The tiny coffin appeared to overwhelm him with its weight. He looked at his wife, daughter, and all around the dusty, silent room. None of us returned his gaze. It was as if he did not exist. We left him standing there with Hope’s last wish.

  In the cool, rosy morning outside, I should not have been surprised to find Ling Loi in the alley with Mr. Ward and Antoine—she who appears and disappears like a magician’s apprentice. But the beautiful light blue silk gown, the mask and chignon, had been replaced by her usual cotton pants and jacket, long braid, and serious, unsmiling countenance. She stood beside Miss Williams, who was also back to her old self, no longer a nun from the Middle Ages but terrifying all the same.

  I pulled Ling Loi aside. “Where’s your dress?” I asked. “It was so pretty.”

  She scowled at me. “Lottle gave it to me and I still have it. But this is who I am. Chinese, remember?”

  “Oh, I’d completely forgotten,” I said sarcastically. “Yes, I remember.” Then I realized something. “You were the ‘boy’ who stowed away in the Johls’ wagon, weren’t you? And at the ball it was Mrs. Johl who gave you the derringer you passed to Antoine.”

  “It was your idea—well, stowing away was.”

  “What? My idea?”

  “One time you asked me if I would ever stow away to China. Bridgeport is much closer than China and it was all I could think to do.”

  “So you’ve been with the Johls all this time?”

  “No. And stop trying to know everything about my life.”

  “Ling Loi, you’re so stubborn! I missed you, is all.”

  “Not enough to find me.” She pinned me with her eyes in that way she has where it feels like you’re looking into a gun barrel and you hope she won’t decide to fire.

  “In Bridgeport? How would I do that?”

  “No, in Bodie. Miss Williams came and found me along the road after she read the newspaper story about the stowaway. I lived with her while we decided what to do. And,” she leaned in to whisper, “don’t ever say anything bad about Miss Williams again.”

  “I won’t. Except—”

  “Angie, never, ever.”

  Slowly and clearly, I said, “I am trying to call a truce. Okay?”

  Slowly and clearly, she said, “Were we fighting?”

  I laughed. “We Irish are always fighting—didn’t you know?”

  And then a fine and rare thing happened. Ling Loi laughed, too.

  “I’ve made the arrangements,” Teacher screeched, and those words somehow magically transformed Mrs. Tucker’s face from melancholic to elated. Miss Williams continued in her brisk way. “I will be the girls’ chaperone on the afternoon stage next Monday. Everything has been set for Ling Loi. The good sisters of St. Benedict’s are eager to educate a Chinese girl in church history and in every particular. She will do quite well, I’m entirely certain. Mr. and Mrs. Johl are sponsoring her and they repaid her parents’ debt to Mr. Chung. Though at first most reluctant to let her go, he and Popo finally gave their blessing.”

  Eleanor shouted, “Mother! Does this mean that I shall go to Minnesota? To St. Benedict’s Academy? Why have you not told me?” She hugged her mother so fiercely I thought Mrs. Tucker might faint.

  “Once more unto the breach,” I thought, as in my chest an ache suddenly lodged, a jealous bitter realization that Eleanor and Ling Loi would be together someplace very far from me. Though I had no wish to leave Papa and Momma, I envied my friends in my lonely, dark heart.

  My face must have registered shock and anguish, for Eleanor said, “Oh, Angie, please don’t look so … so miserable! It’s really the most wonderful thing—Miss Williams has written countless letters to the school—” She turned to our teacher. “I can never repay your kindness, Miss Williams! St. Benedict’s Academy is what I’ve always wanted!”

  The only good part that I could find in this news was the departure of Miss Williams. As if she had heard my thoughts, Mrs. Tucker said, “Miss Williams will be attending a teacher college in order to learn the newest, most modern education methods and practices. She will be nearby, and she will help should you girls encounter any problem.” I sincerely hoped (but did not say aloud) that those methods and practices Miss Williams would be studying would not include the paddle.

  Then I remembered, finally, a shred of manners, and offered Ellie and Ling Loi all my best wishes.

  Eleanor said, “I will write to you every week, and you must do the same, Angie. You see Bodie in a way no one else does, right through and clear-eyed. I shall depend on you for a faithful account of all the news and events.” She gave me a private look that meant I should share, especially, any “news and events” of a romantic nature. I promised her I would.

  If Mrs. Tucker’s husband had aged dramatically inside Mr. Ward’s shop, she, by contrast, looked more youthful—like a shorter, rounder, softer version of Ellie. She took my hand. “I will be the provisional teacher here, until they can find another woman willing to come to Bodie. You’ll be a fine help to me, Angie.” I was pleased that Mrs. Tucker thought she could rely on me, and thus I determined to do my best.

  A hand rested on my shoulder—from the corner of my eye I saw clean nails on the long, ink-stained fingers of a bank clerk-detective-actor. I turned to him.

  He said, “We have a Horrible offer for you.”

  “Would that involve ink stains on my fingers? I’m not Swift, you know.”

  “But you are quick. The vote was unanimous.”

  So I was to be a playwright, news that made my breath catch in my throat with the glory of it. By day I would teach, and by night, with Mr. Swift and Mr. Shakespeare for company, I would use my pen to feed tragic and comic words into the mouths of my players. I would find stories in Bodie’s best nuggets—in secrets behind masks.

  “There’s something else,” Antoine said in my ear. “I’ve made a discovery.”

  I hadn’t realized he pursued mining interests, and stared at him in astonishment. I whispered, “A vein?”

  “A larger discovery—a major lode—the greatest treasure in Bodie. I shall have to hurry to stake my claim and register it properly.”

  I did not respond, feeling a keen and unwarranted disappointment. I should have been glad for his fortune, though I’d learned that mining brought bad luck as often as good. I frowned hard at him for not having figured this out, too.

  He laughed and said, “What I’ve discovered is a cure much sweeter than Swift’s for hearts injured by indignation.”

  Confused, I asked, “Gold?”

  He shook his head and, in one word—made to shine by his way of saying it—he answered, “You.” He’d earned an almighty smile for that, and he got one.

  Sometimes a casket can be full of both trouble and hope. I was full of the certainty that with diligence, I could make time, every day, for a player and for plays. Trouble and hope suited me fine, and might even turn out Horribly wonderful.

  Epilogue

  In 1881, as Bodie’s boom continued to decline, Angie and her parents moved to San Francisco. Patrick Reddy reestablished his law practice and maintained his long streak of never losing a case. Angie worked for her father and spent all the money she earned attending plays and theatrical shows of every sort. She continued keeping a diary. By the time she entered the University of California at Berkeley, she had written and published a five-act play based on her experiences as a young teenager during Bodie’s gold rush. The play enjoyed a long run at major venues throughout the country and made Angie’s reputation (writing under the name A. M. Reddy) as a playwright.

  In the aftermath of the devastating 1906 earthquake, at the age of fifty-seven, Emma Reddy worked tirelessly to help and nurse those injured in the quake. She died from exhaustion and pneumonia as a re
sult of these efforts.

  Ling Loi Wing and Eleanor Tucker graduated from St. Benedict’s Academy in St. Joseph. Eleanor married a railroad magnate and became a philanthropist, endowing colleges and other schools for women. Ling Loi made her way to the Kingdom of Hawai’i, where she remained the rest of her long life. She married and bore five sons and many of her descendants still populate the islands. Angie, Eleanor, and Ling Loi corresponded with one another throughout their lives, though they never met again.

  Sheriff Pioche Kelley, Constable Kirgan, and Con Williams were convicted of numerous crimes. They were held in the jail adjoining the warden’s house in Bridgeport. The jail shared a wall with the parlor of the house, where the warden’s daughter often played the piano. When she did, the prisoners sang along in top voice, which encouraged her to bang the keys even harder. At the same time, under cover of the noise, they sawed the bars of their prison. Eventually they escaped. Their whereabouts were never discovered.

  Miss Williams returned to Bodie. Big Bill Monahan met the stage and carried her bags. He succeeded in making her knees, elbows, and attitude considerably less sharp by feeding her custard pie and molasses pudding. They eloped and relocated to a frontier town called Los Angeles, where the weather was temperate.

  Hank Babcockry became a respected lawman. He wore suspenders for the rest of his life.

  Lottie Johl was not able to serve on the Committee of Arrangements for the 1881 Fourth of July Ball. She died in March of that year as a result of an incorrectly filled prescription for medicine. Eli Johl insisted she be buried in the consecrated ground of the Bodie cemetery, and the townsfolk, still intolerant of her past and after much controversy, finally agreed, as long as her grave was close to the fence. Eli decorated her grave with infinite, lavish care and spent many hours there over the years, grieving.

  Antoine Duval continued working for several years as a detective for Wells Fargo & Co. He pursued some of the most hardened criminals throughout the West, bringing most of them into custody. While recuperating from a gunshot wound to his shoulder, Antoine attended a showing of The Bold Bad Boys of Bodie in San Francisco. At the end of the play he went backstage and, in view of the entire troupe of actors and stagehands, proposed on bended knee to the playwright. Angie said, “Are you afraid?” to which Antoine replied, “Yes, afraid you will refuse; how did you know?” She said, “Because ‘boldness is a mask for fear, however great.’” She liked his boldness, his wit, his insouciance, and his tragic eyebrow, as she always had and as she always would, so she accepted.

  Life in America in 1880

  Historical Note

  The town of Bodie did not exist before gold was discovered nearby in 1859. At an elevation of 8,375 feet, on the windswept and rocky eastern side of the Sierra, the weather is dramatic and extreme in every season.

  At that time, the Kuzedika, a specific group of the Mono Paiute Native Americans, were the people living in what is now the Mono County region (not in the Bodie area itself) when W. S. Bodie (or “Bodey” or “Body”) and the gold-seekers arrived. The harsh, dry landscape required great skill and many strategies for survival: hunting, gathering, some agriculture, and trading. Kuzedika settlements in the area had dwindled by 1880 because of land encroachment by European Americans and the resultant disruption of the local ecosystem. Settlers, miners, and merchants greatly diminished the plants and animals on which the Kuzedika depended for survival. Like the Chinese, Kuzedika people in Bodie lived in their own section of town.

  The Chinese community in Bodie numbered some 350 residents according to the 1880 census report. No Chinese children were listed. At the time of this story, the Chinese were not eligible for membership in the Bodie Miners’ Union. Two years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act, a way of eliminating job competition from Chinese labor, was enacted. This marked the first time in American history that members of a specific ethnic group were denied entry and naturalization rights on the basis of race. It was not repealed until sixty-one years later, in 1943.

  The National Park Service website includes an article on the history of Chinese Americans in California with a description of the Bodie Chinese American community in 1880: www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/5views/5views3e.htm.

  Many of the characters in Behind the Masks were real people, and all the saloons, businesses, streets, the cemetery, the Chinese quarter, the Reddy home, and the Miners’ Union Hall existed in Bodie in 1880. Some of them are still standing, although a few have moved. According to “Map of Bodie, Mono Co., California, 1880” (c. 1991 Brownell Merrell) compiled from period sources and made available by the California Department of Parks and Recreation at Bodie Historic Park, the jail in that year was located, as stated in the story, at the end of Bonanza Street. By the following year a new, larger jail had been built at the beginning of Bonanza Street, where it appears on contemporary maps of the town.

  Brothers Ned and Patrick Reddy were extremely famous in their day. Patrick lost his arm in a gunfight and took up the study of law at the urging of his nurse, Emma, whom he later married. He was a brilliant courtroom lawyer and at one point had law offices in both Bodie and San Francisco. The Reddy house remains intact in Bodie. Robert P. Palazzo’s “The Fighting Reddy Brothers” in The Album: Times and Tales of Inyo-Mono, Chalfant Press, 1996, provides a finely researched portrait.

  Patrick and Emma Reddy did not have children; Angeline is entirely fictional.

  Eli and Lottie Johl were well-known residents of Bodie, and Lottie’s background and subsequent rejection by the “respectable” women in town is essentially as presented in the novel. A piece of her artwork is displayed in the Bodie Museum (the former Miners’ Union Hall). Marguerite Sprague’s Bodie’s Gold: Tall Tales & True History from a California Mining Town, University of Nevada Press, 2003, documents in detail the Johls’ story while providing a comprehensive view of life in Bodie. The name of the establishment where Lottie worked prior to her marriage to Eli is difficult to verify, so for the purpose of Behind the Masks she is fictionally employed at the Palace, which according to the previously referenced “Map of Bodie …” was located on Bonanza Street.

  Ling Loi Wing is fictional, and the story of miners wanting to kiss babies is borrowed from Mark Twain. Sam Chung was an actual person, and was famously and successfully defended by Patrick Reddy in a murder trial (the series of three trials mentioned in the story actually took place in 1881). Judy Yung’s Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History, University of Washington Press, 1986, lucidly assembles a great deal of insight and information on the pioneering Chinese women in the California mining camps and the extreme hardships they endured. Yung writes, “Mui jai were girls who had been sold into domestic service by their poor parents. Their owners were expected to provide them with food and lodging and to find them husbands when they came of age. However, in some cases, they were instead sold to brothels.”

  Constable Kirgan was a real lawman. Pioche Kelley was an outlaw who was made into a corrupt sheriff for the purpose of this story. The 601 vigilante group did exist, and it evicted numerous people it considered undesirable. Roger D. McGrath documents the rough, wild, violent way of life in Gunfighters, Highwaymen & Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, University of California Press, 1984.

  The Horribles presented costumed performances in Bodie, lampooning its residents. The Ghost Town of Bodie, as Reported in the Newspapers of the Day by Russ and Anne Johnson, Chalfant Press, 1967, offers a lively account of daily life, including the antics of the Horribles at the Fourth of July celebration in 1880.

  In 1877, the Standard Consolidated Mining Company was formed and the Bodie Miners’ Union was organized. Three years later, when this story takes place, over fifty Bodie mining stocks were listed on the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board. The population at this time was between 6,000 and 10,000. The next year, Bodie’s great boom leveled off and its decline began.

  Fires have been devastating throughout Bodie’s history. Sixty-four buildings were lost
in 1892, and in 1932 most of the town was destroyed by fire.

  In 1942 the U.S. government halted all gold mining because of the second World War. That removed the main reason for the town’s existence, and nearly everyone left.

  Bodie State Historic Park opened to the public in 1962. The Park is open year-round but in winter it is accessible only by skis, snowshoes, or snow-mobiles. For more information, visit www.parks.ca.gov.

  An overview of Bodie, California, from around 1880. The fires of 1892 and 1932 both contributed to destroying much of the town. However, there are some buildings still standing today. Those left are in what is called a “state of arrested decay.”

  The Occidental Hotel was located along Main Street (seen here to the right of City Market). Unfortunately, the hotel is no longer standing.

  A view down one of Bodie’s streets in 1877.

  The Bodie Standard Mill in 1879. Although it burned down in 1899, it was rebuilt within a year. The Standard still stands today; however, it’s no longer a working mill.

  Bodie residents outside a cabin.

  Stage coaches lined up outside the Grand Central Hotel in Bodie, California.

  A Bodie couple in 1879.

  A group of Standard miners with an ore train. Once mined, the ore went to the Standard Mill to be processed.

  C. R. Wedertz’s Bodie Meat Market in the early 1900s.

  Anti-Chinese sentiments were common in the second half of the 1800s, especially in California. Many feared that Chinese immigrants were being hired for available jobs because they would work for cheaper wages. The above engraving depicts Denis Kearney inciting an anti-Chinese mob in San Francisco in the late 1800s. Kearney was a California politician known for his public anti-Chinese views. Extreme racism, including violent attacks and riots such as these, took place throughout the West during this time and led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a shameful chapter in U.S. history.