Gold Rush Girl

by Avi

  Doing what was required meant I grew physically and mentally stronger every day while onerous tasks became easier. Here was a new kind of spirited life, a new me. Could any heroine ask for more?

  Was this difficult? To be sure. You may believe I was truly required to live the notion I would rather be happy than dignified. Let it be admitted, I had little dignity. Let it also be said that I enjoyed the independence.

  I think my working — and my way of dressing — was an embarrassment to Father. No doubt he barely recognized me. Well, then, we hardly recognized him.

  He started to dress like a miner, complete with red flannel shirt, slouch hat, and boots. He even grew a beard. He spent all his time learning what he must do and where to go while purchasing the tools he needed for the diggings. Father, the most placid of men, now had a bowie knife in his belt. I doubt he ever used it.

  In Providence, before he lost his position, he had been, as I previously described him, a careful, nonadventurous man. Announcing that he was now merely days and a little effort away from acquiring colossal wealth, he thought only of gold. This was not unusual. If gold fever was an illness on the East Coast, in San Francisco it was a universal plague.

  Beyond all else, Father, who had been a most thoughtful if restrictive parent, now showed us, his children, almost no attention at all. For the most part, he left us alone, telling us he was looking for servants and a school for Jacob.

  In all of this, only Jacob stayed the same. Whereas I had begun to work, Jacob was at a loss as to what to do. At first he tried to follow Father about. Father shooed him away. Then he tried to join me where I was working. That too proved impossible. As a result, he wandered aimlessly, though never far from our tent.

  It was painfully clear that Jacob much preferred to be taken care of, not wishing to make choices for himself, not willing to bestir himself. I was struck with the truth: that as a sister grows older, her brother seems to grow younger.

  The most useful thing Jacob did was befriend our across-the-way neighbor, Señor Rosales. The good man was ever patient as Jacob chattered and tried to help. As for me, Señor Rosales called me corderita, which I understood to mean “little lamb.”

  A few days before Father headed for the diggings, we sat in the tent around the box that was our table, the sole light coming from a small solitary and smoky candle. As we ate our dinner of slab beef, which I had cooked outside over a fire, Father abruptly turned to me and said, “Tory, I trust you understand, when I leave, it’s all well and good that you are working, but your chief responsibility is to take care of Jacob.”

  Taken by surprise, I echoed, “Chief?”

  “Of course. You are his sister, four years older than he. That makes you in charge. I have tried to hire a servant. None are to be had at the wages we paid back east. And, I am afraid to say, there seems to be no school here.”

  Let it be said, the notion that henceforward I was to be the sole person responsible for Jacob was hardly pleasing to me. Once again, this was not what I had envisioned in coming west.

  Jacob’s angry face made it clear this was not what he desired either. He argued with Father, begging him to let us go to the gold fields with him. Father refused.

  “I’m depending on you,” Father continued saying to me, “to take care of your brother. Mother is depending on it. Is that understood?”

  No doubt I nodded, but I was thinking not about Jacob, but myself: Here I was, a fourteen-year-old girl who had just begun to enjoy full freedom. Though Jacob surely was my dear brother, I cannot say I wanted to engage my time being a nursemaid to him. Yet I had to acknowledge, this was, in part, my own doing. If I had not come to San Francisco, surely Father would have taken Jacob with him. There was nothing I could say. Even so, with Father about to leave us alone in San Francisco, I made an important decision: I would not give up my new life for my brother.

  THREE WEEKS AFTER WE ARRIVED IN SAN Francisco — it was in September — I rowed Father, along with his shovel, pickax, gold-sifting pans, and other equipment, across the shallow, smelly waters of Yerba Buena Cove. Jacob was with us. We were taking Father to the Senator, a black-and-white side-wheeler steamship. She was anchored some two hundred yards from San Francisco’s landing beach, ready for the ten-hour trip to Sacramento and the gold diggings.

  We reached the boat and climbed aboard. Once there, Father chucked a brooding Jacob under his chin to get him to look up.

  “Keep watching for Mother,” he said. “You know how unpredictable ships are coming from back east. But you understand, I can’t wait for her.” (He kept saying this as if he needed to justify his leaving us alone.) “I need to get to the diggings before the gold gives out.”

  “Mother may well arrive tomorrow,” Father continued. “When she gets here, stay with our tent so I can find you. Keep checking the post office. I have to assume she’ll write to say on which ship she’ll come.”

  “Now, I have asked Señor Rosales to keep a watch on you. Pay heed to him.”

  (It wasn’t as if Father had become friends with the señor. But the young men who were in tents to either side of us changed frequently, moving in, then moving out, quickly replaced by new miners. But aside from the fact that Señor Rosales was the only one who stayed, I found him to be wise, kind, and generous.)

  “I’ll return no later than December first,” continued Father. “By that time, I’ll be rich, and I promise you, I’ll build a bigger and better home than our Providence house.”

  All I said to Father was “Yes, sir.” I lacked the courage to tell what I had learned: only a few miners made fortunes. Truth be known, I had more gold in my pocket from working in the city than most. What’s more, I was weary of Father’s empty assurances and lecturing.

  Father, who continued to smile through his new beard, which made him look like a short, pudgy bear, turned again to Jacob and said, “Try not to worry.”

  To me, he added, “Try and act a little ladylike. Think of what Aunt Lavinia would say.”

  I no longer did.

  Father gripped our shoulders and gave us a final squeeze. “I’m planning,” he said, “on all of us having a plum of a Christmas right here in San Francisco.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Continue to take whatever suitable jobs you can,” he said to me, “and be careful with the money I’ve left you for as long as possible. You should have enough until I get back. Victoria, make sure to keep the money in that belt I got you. Is that clear?”

  He leaned forward and in a half whisper added, “I’ve put a knife in the belt. In case.”

  A knife. The notion frightened me. But then I reasoned that it was what so many San Francisco men had. It was part of the outfit. It might as well be part of mine.

  “And here,” Father said to Jacob, “is a good-luck pelican feather for you.”

  I knew my brother well enough to guess his thoughts: A knife for Tory. A feather for me.

  He had become a sullen boy.

  Next moment, the ship blew a whistle blast that snatched me from my thoughts.

  “Time for you to get off,” said Father, and he shook hands with Jacob and gave me a hug, his new beard scratchy, which I did not like.

  As we climbed down the ship’s rope ladder, Father leaned over the rail and watched as we got into our borrowed rowboat. It was part of the freedom of San Francisco that rowboats and other small boats were left at the cove beach, and people could borrow them so long as they brought them back.

  I took up the oars. Jacob got into the stern seat. Father, standing among the crowd of gold miners who had paid fifteen dollars for deck passage, waved goodbye. There were so many men on the ship that it listed to starboard. Jacob refused to look back, but only gripped the gunwale of our rowboat, muttering crossly to himself.

  I began to row us back to the cove beach. There it was: Jacob and I were in San Francisco — alone. How did I feel? Exhilarated. To my knowledge, there was no book that I had read about a girl alone in a wild and wi
cked city. I was a heroine like no other.

  Then I considered Jacob, sitting in the stern, looking small and abandoned. He was an impediment. He had become, I realized, a new anchor.

  HATE FATHER GOING,” JACOB SAID AS I ROWED toward shore.

  “That’s foolish,” I returned, compelled to truly begin being in charge of him. “The whole point of our coming here is so he can gain riches, is it not? And we need to wait for Mother. Correct? Please stop worrying. I promise: Mother will get here soon. Ships are arriving all the time. I heard twenty came in yesterday, among them one from China and two from Chile, as well as ones from England and Australia.”

  He said, “What about from Rhode Island?”

  When I made no answer, he shifted around to seek a last look at Father. “What if Father doesn’t get any gold?”

  Though I knew that was a perfectly fair question, I gave no reply.

  “Not everyone gets rich, you know,” he said, and took off his hat and studied the feather Father had given him. “And if the feather is so lucky, why did he give it to me? He’s the one who needs luck.

  “Another thing,” he went on. “I met this boy just in from back east. Said there’s some sickness there. Called . . . cholera.”

  He was trying to keep from crying.

  His list of possible disasters not complete, he said, “What if Mother gets sick? And . . . and I don’t like Father’s new beard. It scratches.”

  I said, “All miners have them.”

  “But what if —?”

  I found Jacob so aggravating that I smacked an oar down on the water and splashed his face.

  “Jacob Blaisdell,” I cried, “don’t you know anything? The more you speak ‘what if’ balderdash, the more likely it’ll come true. Let your will decide your destiny.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You’re too young to understand.”

  Jacob, sulky, wiped water from his face and glared at me. Next moment, his boyish chest heaved with suppressed sobs. Then, in a switch to a sarcastic voice, he cried out, “Nothing bad will happen. Nothing.”

  Then, in his true voice, he added, “Except I keep thinking that something bad is going to happen. But don’t listen to me.”

  “I don’t intend to,” I snapped. “I am going to enjoy my new life. I urge you to do the same.”

  As I rowed, I had a keen sense that it was hard being the older sister: hard for me and for Jacob. Did he wish to be independent of me or be under my supervision? I think it was difficult for him to know.

  It is curious: the same conditions make people act in different ways. San Francisco’s wildness caused Jacob to worry and be wrought with anger. It filled me with energy.

  We reached the shore and started walking uphill. Halfway back up to our tent, passing mules, donkeys, and horses pulling wagons, Jacob’s left boot stuck in the mud. Frustrated and irate, he twisted around and looked back down at the bay. The morning fog had lifted and a wind was rising, gusting that everlasting dust.

  I followed his look. Beyond the four hundred or so ships of Rotten Row, and the dozen newly arrived vessels, I saw the Senator. Side wheels churning, she was moving toward the gold fields, leaving a trail of vanishing smoke.

  “Tory,” said Jacob in a voice full of true despair, “what if Father . . . disappears like . . . like that steamer smoke? People say it happens all the time. The men go up to the diggings, get lost or die. We’d know nothing. We’d never hear of Father again. And what if something happens to Mother’s ship? If she doesn’t come? We’d have to stay here — just us. Or . . . or what if something happens to you? What would happen to me? I don’t want to be alone!” Tears were flowing down his cheeks.

  “Jacob, you’re like a pincushion with every worry a prickly pin.”

  “You’re not so great!” he cried. “You dress like a boy. You’re tall and scrawny with brown hair braided down to the middle of your back. Nothing but a skinny scarecrow. Ugh.”

  Refusing to let him diminish my spirits, I merely called, “Come on, slowpoke. You heard Father: we’re required to stay together.”

  With a gross glugging sound, Jacob pulled his booted foot out of the mud and started to move uphill again.

  I had the thought: What will I do with him?

  AS DAYS PASSED, JACOB KEPT SAYING THAT IF there were a school, he could make friends. But as Father had discovered, there wasn’t any school in San Francisco. A one-room schoolhouse existed near the plaza, but the teacher had — like so many — gone for gold, and the building had been converted into the headquarters for the city police and a jail. Somehow Jacob learned that the Baptist church might open a new school soon. For my brother’s sake, and mine, I hoped it would happen.

  San Francisco also had no library. How barbaric.

  As for the young men of San Francisco, if they had wives and children, they had left them behind, intending to go back as soon as they gained their heaps of gold. As a result, there were only a few boys Jacob’s age in town, and most often they had jobs with family businesses — boardinghouses, stores, eating houses, and the like. They were almost always working, as I was.

  Jacob did not work. Rather, he grew more despondent. Every day he went to the post office to see if a letter had come from Mother. The sole post office was a one-story wooden building with a front porch on Clay Street above the plaza. There were two places to get mail: A to N were on that front porch, O to Z at the side of the building. For some reason, no letters came to the city until October. But even when they did start to come, no letters came for Blaisdell.

  While I always managed to find employment, it was only now and again that Jacob roused himself to find a little occupation: fetching for carpenters, masons, or washing dishes in Señor Rosales’s café. But I admit, he brought in some gold.

  Portsmouth Square, or the plaza, as some called it, was the center of the city. It had a flagpole from which hung the United States flag, with its thirty stars. The old Mexican adobe customs house was on the plaza, as was the alcalde’s office, which served as city hall. The post office was near.

  It was also where the Parker House and the El Dorado, the city’s biggest gambling saloons, stood. Every hour of every day they drew wagering and drinking men. The drunken, staggering miners often dropped grains of gold on the big, open, muddy area. Jacob and others (including impoverished men) would go there in search of specks and now and again found some. Since gold might be worth from eight to twenty dollars an ounce, it was worth looking.

  “See?” he’d say, showing me his tiny bits. “I make money too.”

  Yet Jacob, who was smaller, less strong, and, let it be said, less eager to find jobs that engaged him, became bored.

  Father had once given him a copper-colored coin — he called it a token. Something from an election. It had a picture of Henry Clay on it, a man who had run for president of the United States. Jacob liked to spin and flip it. He could, and did, spend hours at a time whistling and doing nothing but flipping that coin. If that is not emptiness I know not what it is.

  By way of contrast, I engaged with new people, finding new skills, animated by a new life. Though I loved Jacob, in his loneliness, in his homesickness, he clung to me like a barnacle. And just like a barnacle on a ship, Jacob became an increasing drag to me, which, more and more, I resented.

  Fortunately, there was Señor Rosales. I told my brother he must be of help to the good man in exchange for his kindness to us.

  The señor had been a Mexican soldier before the United States annexed California after the war. Not only did he cook in his café, but he lived in it as well. He even slept there in a coffin, claiming it kept him dry and was much cheaper than paying ten dollars a week to a crowded, noisy, and filthy boardinghouse. He preferred to send his money to his family in Sonora, which was elsewhere in California.

  Señor Rosales had a telescope from the time he was a soldier. He lent it to Jacob, who climbed Goat Hill, the highest point in town, where he spent hours looking at the incom
ing ships in hopes that Mother was on one of them. Not that he knew what Mother’s ship was called. What Jacob saw mostly were birds, such as gulls and pelicans, flying around that mid-bay island — the barren one called Alcatraces — which I had observed when we first arrived.

  Jacob became increasingly distressed and anxious when Mother did not come. I admit I began to think he was right, that something bad was going to happen — not to Mother, but to him.

  I would retreat behind my privacy curtain, but from his side of the tent, Jacob blathered on about his troubles and his worries. How many times did I hear him say, “Tory, if something happened to you, what would happen to me?”

  Be assured, I followed Father’s orders: I took care of my brother. I cooked our food — mostly beef on an open fire, which was dangerous. Though I disliked our tent, I had no desire to burn it down.

  That said, our tent was a difficult place in which to live. Always damp, the floor often got muddy. When the winds blew, we had to keep it from flying away.

  Now and again I washed Jacob’s clothes and mine. I kept the tent somewhat orderly. But for the most part, I worked, earning enough to buy drinking water along with food, all of which kept getting more and more expensive. Beef was cheap since it came from inland cattle ranches. But how many tough steaks can you eat?

  With so much rain — the worst rain ever, people said — the tent reeked of mold. We woke to dank mornings. Muddy paths — those so-called streets — surrounded us and became thick, gluelike, and bottomless. When the rains eased, a damp chill permeated everything. When Jacob complained, I reminded him that in Rhode Island winters were raw and snowy. In San Francisco, it just rained or else winds blew dust all over.

  There were also gray fogs, thick, wet, long lasting, which often made the city disappear. I chose to consider them mysterious.

  The truth is, without anyone to scold or rule me, I was strengthened by my freedom. I came and went as I chose. I worked hard. Earned gold.