by M Dressler
She looks at me as though she hopes for an invitation to say more.
“And how are Mr. and Mrs. Berringer this morning?” I oblige. There’s nothing easier, or more useful, than giving a soul what it wants.
“Oh, they’re cut up to pieces by all this. They’ve known Ruthie for longer than any of us, ever since she was born. I told them I know they care about her, but they need to be at home. At their age, it’s best they stay put and conserve their strength for the winter. In fact, Rose, they—we—were just wondering . . . if you might be able to go over to their place today, and help them? They’re shutting their inn down for the season, and now that they’re both in their eighties it’s getting harder on them. They need to get some silver and linens put up . . . a couple of final chores . . . Normally I go over and help out, but do you think you might be able to?”
It’s the elders in a town who know the most about its buried bones. “Of course,” I oblige again. “I’d be happy to. I’d like to get to know them better.”
“Wonderful. I’d be so grateful. And if you can get them talking while you’re helping, keep their mind off things . . . that would be terrific. You’ll like chatting with them, Rose. They’ve been here forever. A Berringer was the first lawman in White Bar. I think sometimes John likes to pretend we still have a sheriff, the way he barks at us all. But of course, don’t tell them I said that,” she says quickly, brushing the dust from her desk. “Good people, the Berringers, of course. The fact there’s a town here at all is pretty much because of Berringers and Huellets. Without them we probably just would have ended up a pile of sticks and rubble. It’s how most gold rush towns ended up.”
The gold rush, I’d read in the book I’d taken from the museum, was short-lived. Five years or less for most of the boomtowns. As the early days of gold fever waned, hardships set in. Competition, assaults, and claim-jumping soared. Matters of justice were often settled by mob rule, including whippings and hangings. Disease reared its head and raged through the camps, often undoctored. Partnerships, marriages, families collapsed under the pressure. For those communities that managed to survive the collapse of the boom—and most didn’t, their ruins still clinging to the slopes of the high ranges—there was some recourse to be found in farming or ranching. The rest, the Great Ghost Towns of the West, were for many years remote and unwelcoming. In some places hauntings kept development at bay for decades, until the advances of the late twentieth century afforded technologies to bring peace back to the mountains. Today, Gold Country is best known as a pleasant and storied place to visit, with its resorts, cabins, and quaint restaurants.
“I told the Berringers I’d send you over right after coffee.” Martha hurries toward the dining room. “Let’s not keep them cooling their heels. You don’t like to keep them, I mean old folks, waiting.”
Mary Berringer opens the door to her inn. Her entryway is crowded with flowered wreaths, painted vases, and a hall tree covered in shawls and warm caps.
“Rose.” She presses her hands, sweetly, to my cheeks. “You’re so quick! Come inside and get warm.”
I wipe my new boots on the doormat and step inside, asking, “How are you and Mr. Berringer bearing up?”
“I would say we’re managing, dear.” She closes the door gently behind me. “Martha has told us Ruth is stable. For that, we are grateful. We know it’s best to go on with our chins up. So that’s what we’re going to do. Ruth would want us to keep moving forward. Come this way, my dear. We’ve been polishing and ironing in the back.”
I follow her shawled shoulders through the parlors of the first floor, thick with heavy, dark furniture and more urns and vases. We pass a fine wooden staircase, with a bannister rubbed smooth from years of comings and goings, and a dining room full of tall, carved pieces.
“Such nice things you have, Mrs. Berringer,” I say, truthfully.
“Thank you, dear. We try to hold on to the charms of yesteryear, live up to what visitors expect of an inn in this area.”
“And you and Mr. Berringer run it all alone?”
“We do. It can be”—she looks over her fringed shoulder at me, smiling—“quite a job in high season. We had hoped our grown children would have come back and taken over from us. But of course, the innkeeper’s life isn’t for everyone. Here’s the sitting room, and John!” She leads me in to a cozy parlor, shuttered and warm. “He’s been at the polishing and I’ve been getting the linens ready for storage. John, look who’s here, all ready to help us.”
The old man peers up from a round table castled with silver servers and urns.
“She doesn’t look ready to me.”
“Rose,” the old woman gasps, “my goodness, he’s right, I haven’t even taken your coat! Now you give me that and go sit with John. We’ve made a good start, but we’re just so tuckered, doing so much, especially with all the plate.”
I go to sit across from the man and his polishing rags, and see right away that most of the work is, curiously, finished. Knives lie glistening like silver ribs in an open velvet box. A few small chafing dishes are left, tarnished. The linen’s neatly folded on a deal table.
“You’ve made more than a start,” I point out.
Mrs. Berringer sits down beside me. “Yes, but every bit of help is welcome, no matter when or how it comes! John, Rose has been admiring our things, our house. It was built in 1852,” she says, turning to me, “though we don’t have a plaque, like Ruth’s does. We’ve done too much updating.”
“Jetted tubs,” John Berringer grumbles.
“But it was worth it, John! You have to know when it’s time to improve. Speaking of which”—she pats one of my wrists, seeming to have forgotten I was meant to come and housekeep for them—“what do you think of, dear, when you hear talk of improvement, and doing better, however you can? Is that something you aspire to?”
So perhaps I’m the one to be rubbed up? I pick up the polish and the chafing dish and say, “I don’t know if I understand you, Mrs. Berringer.”
“You can call me Mary, dear. Well, all I mean is that I know—John and I both know—that you’ve recently been through . . . troubles. We won’t speak of them if you don’t want to, of course.” She pats my sleeve again, sober now and serious. “We’re here to guard your privacy. You are safe with us. What I mean is”—she leans kindly toward me, as the old man watches from across the table—“with what you’ve just suffered, what might be the antidote, do you think? What might be the good life, now? I don’t mean only a life of comfort and safety, though everyone deserves that, if they can find it. John and I”—she sighs and sits back—“have lived long lives, and what we’ve learned is that while comfort is important, far more important is living a life of meaning. What we’re saying, dear, is that we’re concerned for you. What will you do now, with your life at a crossroads?” She looks tenderly at me, like a preacher hoping for my salvation. “What might you do to restore your dignity and self-respect, and your sense of purpose? Do you believe you have a right to good things? No matter how badly life has treated you? Do you see yourself as the kind of person who will take a good chance, if it comes your way? And become part of a community, a special community that nowadays needs young people, like you?”
They can’t know I’m far older than they are, and needy, too.
“Maybe she’s not ready,” the old man humphs and shrugs.
“It’s more that I don’t know what to say,” I answer him. “I think,” I say, turning to his wife, “you’re asking me to stay in White Bar?”
“Exactly!” she says, beaming. “To consider it, dear! To consider becoming part of a way of life that was here to comfort you when you needed it.”
“Maybe the girl wants to know more about us,” John says, watching me.
Not a dull man. I nod in reply. “I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can, Mr. Berringer. I do feel so drawn to the . . . the history here. You’re right, it seems so full of meaning.” I need to get them to say more.
“It is, it is!” The old woman presses her hands together excitedly. “John and I know the history better than anyone else! We’re the oldest residents, you see, from one of the oldest families—along with Ruth’s. Ruth’s forebears were a pair of doctors. John and I—we’re cousins—are descended from the first sheriff in town. Together, the Huellets and the Berringers—”
“Yes,” I say, “I know, they brought order to the town. Ruth told me. They built the jail. And the school,” I add, smoothly. “The school, too.”
The old man barks, “Which school’s she talking about?”
“There was more than one?” I ask, my ears pricking.
“Yes, dear, there were two,” Mary Berringer answers. “But we don’t talk about it publicly, dear, I mean, not in the museum . . . not with all the families, you see, that come here during the season. It wouldn’t set the right tone. We don’t want to sell ourselves as an unhappy place. We’re not”—she wrinkles her nose—“Donner Lake, here. People don’t come here to feel morose. They come because they want to feel the excitement of the pioneering days of the gold rush, the spirit of our Old Prospector, our statue out there on the square, and what it took to pull riches straight out of the ground with nothing but your own muscle. But I guess”—she looks at her husband—“we should speak the truth to dear Rose, don’t you think, John? If we’re hoping she’ll stay, and help us?”
“She looks ready now, I guess.”
“You see, Rose . . .” The old woman looks anxiously into my eyes, seems satisfied by what she finds there, and goes on. “The sad story is that the first school in White Bar, down in what we call the Basin, burned and had to be destroyed. A teacher went mad there. His gold claim didn’t pan out, and he got what they called back then the panic. He locked his pupils in the schoolhouse and killed them. Justice being what it was in those days, they strung him up on a tree. And then they tore the school down, and built the new one you see on the Knob. It’s something we don’t stress in the town’s history. Though worse things have happened in these mountains—” She falters.
“Cannibalism,” the old man puts in.
“We don’t,” she goes on, “want visitors to think we’re that kind of place, the kind of place where people go insane. We’re all about peace and serenity here, as Martha says. Not failure. We’re about success. We’re one of the few boomtowns in this part of the Sierra to last. And now that we’ve told you all this”—she smiles, almost tearfully—“you can see how much we trust you, Rose. This isn’t a story we tell to just anyone. Only those we know, in our hearts, are the most worthy of our trust. In fact—” She stands all at once. “We’ll trust you with even more. John. John! I’m going to go get the letter.”
“If you think it’s best,” he says. “And just what are we supposed to do while you’re at it?”
“Why don’t you show Rose where to put the linens away? We’re so lucky to have her help”—she nods eagerly—“we should use it.”
She disappears, hurrying through a side door. The old man fidgets in his chair, arching as though his bones ache.
“So.” He points. “Can you carry that much linen all in one go? Haul it to the hutch in the dining room? The big armoire, in there? Just go put it on the top shelf inside. Hard for us to reach. Need to keep the material away from the moths and rats. And anything else that infests.”
“Of course.”
The pile of runners weighs little to me. Every burden is lighter than death, I think. I go quickly so I’ll be able to return and learn more about the murderous schoolmaster Longhurst; so that my hunt might move quickly forward; so that . . . what?
I falter in front of the burled chest in the dining room, catching myself. Admit it, Emma Rose. You’ve thought no farther than finding others like you—not what you’d do after you found them. And what about a whole schoolroom full of spirits?
Uneasy, I reach one hand out to unlock the armoire. The creaking hinges swing wide open.
I fall back with a cry.
A human outline. Inside.
The burl’s interior is streaked, painted with the ashy shadow of a body. A blasted spirit burned, frozen, arms wide, in its final scream.
A blasted soul.
Because a hunter was here. And did a hunter’s work.
All faltering goes out of me.
We had one hiding in an armoire in the dining room, they said in the café. The doors on it were forever sticking, and oiling the hinges didn’t do the trick.
This is what they do. This is how they “clean” us.
I feel nothing but pure anger. I will—
A voice behind me chimes, “Oops, forgot to tell you about that, kid.”
The old man is apologizing, shrugging. “Gave you a surprise, I bet. Had a problem in there quite a few years ago. Professional took care of it for us, though. This antique is even more valuable now. More historical. Just put everything up on the high shelf, would you?”
Before I can answer his wife comes, with an envelope in her hand.
“I see you’re getting a little more of our history!” Her wrinkled face is earnest. “Now, if you’ve never seen one of those before, that’s called a flash cast. It was quite a while ago. We have no troubles now. We don’t tolerate trouble. John, you finish putting those linens away. Now here, dear Rose, is the letter I was telling you about.” She puts it in my hand before I can withdraw it. “We trust you with it, Rose. We want to show you that when we really care about someone, who says they feel drawn to us—and when we feel exactly the same way, oh my goodness, we feel it so much—we hold nothing back. Our lives, our fortunes, our truths. This will tell you more about our private history. And John, I’ve also had another idea. I think we should have a little get-together this evening at the café, to introduce Rose to everyone else.”
I feel not a letter but ashes in my hand.
“A fine idea,” her husband says approvingly. “It’ll make everyone feel better, after Ruthie.”
“We’ll make it around six? Come, dear Rose.” She’s brought my coat as well, and begins walking me to the front door. “You take some time for yourself, now, before dinner, to read things over; and I’m sure you’ll see how much we respect you and want to help you find a new place, new meaning, and everything you deserve. But don’t thank us yet.” She squeezes me, happily. “You don’t know how much you help us, just by being here. Read the teacher’s confession—this is an original, historical document, we know you’ll be careful with it—and we’ll see you at the café this evening. We’ll let everyone know to come. It will be a joy to share with you who and what we love, and that we know you’ll come to love, too. Goodbye, dear.”
They shut the door of the inn behind me, abruptly. The last I see of them, behind the frozen window boxes, they’re embracing, folding each other into relieved arms. And all the loneliness and anger inside me, it’s so cold and fierce, the icicles stop their dripping on the porch at my feet, and the dried flowers shatter in their beds.
12
It’s a hideous thing, to be wanted and not.
To know that, as a ghost, everywhere you look, you see what wants you found . . . only to finish you. Destroy you.
The only way you manage it is by pretending you don’t feel what you feel, don’t know what you know. You blend in and mix with those who want you dead, though they smile in your face, sweetly. You look back across the square at the curtained inn where they just fawned over you, and you know it’s all a trick of the light. To survive in this world, you must wear a skin that isn’t your own, borrow a coat that fits but will never warm, smile when you want to slash and burn.
You must go on. As best you can.
I sit at the base of the Old Prospector’s statue, and in my hands are the sheets the Berringers want me to read, sheets that fill them with a thrill of secrecy; but it’s not with them, with the living, I feel and take secret company, but with those in the armoires, hiding in the basements and attics and closets, in the chimneys and schoolrooms, in
all the places I’ve hidden in, too, because I didn’t die the way the world wanted me to die.
In the cold, gray, clear light, I open the letter of one dead.
It doesn’t matter who the dead man is. It’s my duty.
October 20, 1852
Dearest Sister,
For the second time, I try to write to you. An earlier letter, written some weeks ago, I found myself for various reasons unable to send. I have no wish to burden you with my strange fits. I am well. After two seasons of prospecting, I’ve secured a toehold in the wilds of California where, it might surprise you, I have found employment serving as a schoolmaster to a group of ragtag children. They sit in front of me even as I write this. I’ve given them a lesson to round out the final hour of today’s class. My first day as a schoolmaster was, I’ll admit, difficult. I never meant to follow in our father’s footsteps. Also, I was faced, as I entered, with the most rudimentary schoolhouse, its only window a row of glass jars nestled between chinked logs, throwing strange light on a passel of half-combed heads. A boy whose name turned out to be Jack, eleven years of age, I spotted first for his wild red hair and for a bruise that looked like a smudge across his wan face. Adelaide, eight years old, I noticed next—the kind of blond apparition so rare in a place like this I thought at first I had imagined her. Ola I saw next, tall and unsmiling; a stout, dark girl of fifteen, with hair the color of a rusted anvil, and a plain face. William, also dark, is a tot of six years, in mended knickers, his boots unable to touch the ground under his seat. Anton, the oldest boy, sits meekly at the back, a brother I thought at first to Adelaide, but no; their fathers are partners in the Tack and Hardware and they both live in the rough-hewn houses that merchants, not miners, are beginning to build behind the square that anchors this place.
