by Joseph Flynn
But Michael Walsh and Hans Koenig could not agree on their beer.
Herr Koenig insisted that beer be brewed only one way — the way he had learned. The way German law had decreed beer should be brewed since medieval times. Michael Walsh had no objection to brewing his father-in-law’s way. It made a grand beer, right enough. But he, too, came from a country with a proud tradition of brewing and distilling, and anytime Michael tried to brew some fine dark stout, even in his own house, Hans would fly into a rage about “Irish swill,” throw all of Michael’s wonderful elixir into the street, and threaten to take back his daughter, his grandchildren and the house in which Michael lived.
All of which led Michael Walsh, at age thirty-one, to sell the house his father-in-law had fortuitously put in his name, buy two wagons, four oxen, brewing equipment and all the supplies Adeline insisted upon, bid the bitter Hans farewell and set off for California with his family to brew Irish stout for all those miners, many of them his countrymen, making ten to fifteen dollars a day.
He was sure they were thirsty. He was sure his fortune would soon be made.
The early part of the Walsh’s journey was relatively easy. They drove their wagons, in caravan with those of four other families leaving Chicago, across the blessedly flat and relatively settled prairies of Illinois to St. Louis. From there, they enjoyed the comparative comfort of a steamboat ride to Independence, Missouri.
But once in Independence, the place where large parties of migrants formed for the westward push across the vast wilderness, life became a great deal more precarious. The plague of cholera struck. The disease was debilitating at the very least, producing bouts of diarrhea, projectile vomiting of blood and, most commonly, death.
Michael and Adeline were fearful for their family: nearly panicked on the one hand that they would die and leave their children orphans, stranded hundreds of miles from their Chicago home; filled with dread on the other hand that their children would die, leaving them with broken hearts.
To ward off the possibility of disease, the Walshes hit on two strategies. Adeline made sure that each of them was meticulously clean, right down to scraping the dirt from under their fingernails. She’d noticed, growing up, that those people most susceptible to disease and death were invariably the ones who went the longest between baths. Michael’s contribution was to soak bandannas in a barrel of his stout that he’d brought along, and then cover the faces of his family with them.
The Walshes’ masked countenances soon drew public notice, as did the fact that they remained healthy. Others emulated them, though not many chose to bathe, and Michael even allowed them to dip their bandannas — once they’d been well laundered, at Adeline’s insistence — into his barrel of stout. In short order, a party was formed to head west on the Overland Trail, and escape the pestilence of the staging area. The Walshes were among them. Many in the party came by the Walshes’ wagons to dip their face masks in the stout again, until they were sure that the danger of contracting cholera was well past.
Not a single migrant in the Masked Man Party, as it came to be called, came down with the dread disease.
Neither did a single migrant come to consider Michael Walsh’s stout anything but medicine. It worked just fine for that, thank God. But drink it for pleasure? A substitute for real beer?
“Mister, don’t make me laugh,” one and all told Michael Walsh.
The gold seekers pushed on through present day Nebraska. Even though the greatest hardships lay ahead, the long journey was beginning to take its toll on the Walsh children, the oldest of whom, Wilhelmine, was only six. Rory and Erik were four and three, respectively.
Adeline did not want to see her children die of exhaustion or depletion of their spirits, not after she’d kept them safe from the cholera. At every trading post along the way, she asked her husband if they might not establish their home there, if he might not make a success of his business there. After all, so many others had set up their businesses and were prospering from selling to the flood of immigrants.
But Michael Walsh was determined to make it to California. He said that’s where the greatest concentration of riches lay, and that’s where they would go. Unspoken, even to his wife, was his fear that if he didn’t find a large gathering of fellow Irishmen with gold in their pockets, he’d never be able to sell the stout he wanted to brew.
So, they pushed on through the treacherous mountain passes of the Rockies and the great, deadly deserts of the West. In Nevada, the sun was so fierce they had to travel at night by torchlight. One morning as the migrant party stopped to rest in the shade of an outcropping of rock, Michael Walsh found his three children with his wife’s fingers in their mouths. Their parched little mouths were red. They were suckling on Adeline’s blood.
It was moisture, she said. She’d pricked her fingers and was giving her children their mother’s strength.
Others in the wagon train sought a less drastic way to slake their thirst and preserve their meager stores of water. They finally came to Michael Walsh for small measures of his stout. But even dying of thirst, they developed no taste for the stuff. This filled Walsh with a dread almost as great as the thought of death.
Finally, eighteen grueling weeks after leaving Independence, Missouri, the Masked Man Party reached the Sierra Nevada, only to find inclines so steep that their wagons had to be broken down and hauled over jagged ridges. But now, even this backbreaking work could not dampen the enthusiasm of the gold seekers. They knew they were near their destination. Just the other side of these mountains was the green, fertile Sacramento Valley where gold lay waiting to be found. They would dig their fortunes — their dreams — right out of the earth.
The Walshes never made it that far.
They were stopped by the epiphany Adeline Walsh experienced when the sparkling majesty of the lake that would later bear her name first filled her eyes. She drew a deep breath, clasped her hands to her heart, and turned to her husband. The words she spoke to him that day were later recorded for posterity.
“Michael, we have found Eden on high.” Her next words were less poetic but had far more immediate impact. “This is where we will stay.”
Assuming his wife meant where they would rest, fill their barrels with the crystalline water from the lake, and gather their energies for the final push, Michael did not argue. But by the very next morning he understood clearly that if he were to continue the journey, he would do so alone. On foot.
Adeline felt certain that it was her destiny to live out her days in this place. Michael argued that it was already September, and that if they didn’t leave soon, they would be snowbound and no doubt die there. Adeline’s response was that she better start felling some trees then, build a cabin and lay in some food.
Michael Walsh was galled to have come so far and be stopped just short of his goal. But try as he might — and try he did — he couldn’t imagine going on and leaving his wife and children behind. He was sure he’d be consigning them to their deaths, and even if they were to survive somehow, he’d miss them sorely. Taking pity on her husband without losing a bit of her resolve, Adeline comforted Michael. Then she cajoled him into making a further concession, even more vexing than the last. She talked him into brewing beer her father’s way.
Adeline was sure that once word spread about the lake, anyone traveling through these mountains would stop there to replenish their water supplies. Doubtless, many of those who did would like something stronger to drink. She was sure that Michael could brew and sell the beer her father had taught him to make.
With great gentleness, she reminded him that her father’s beer was a very good brew.
“And everyone thinks mine is snake oil,” Michael Walsh said bitterly.
Hurt to his soul, but still wanting to make his fortune, he reluctantly agreed.
When the remainder of the Masked Man Party was told of the Walshes’s decision, they viewed it with suspicion. To a man, they were sure that Michael Walsh had somehow stumbled on t
o gold. The Miner’s Commandment said: Thou shall not tell any false tales of good diggings. Meaning don’t send your fellow gold-seeker off on a wild goose chase to your own advantage, lest you taste his vengeance.
But Michael Walsh hadn’t done that.
Rather, he’d said he was staying because his wife wanted him to stay. With one exception, the other twenty-three gold seekers of the Masked Man Party were bachelors — but even the married man couldn’t imagine having come so far, enduring so many hardships, and then stopping just short of your goal solely for the sake of a woman.
In the early days of the gold rush, one of the most alluring tales pulling migrants westward was that of Goldstrike Lake. Legend had it that a prospector had found a beautiful mountain lake where gold was strewn on the shores just waiting to be picked up. Unfortunately, the prospector had died, been killed, some said, before he could file his claim and reveal the lake’s whereabouts.
The common suspicion in the Masked Man Party was that Michael Walsh had found those legendary golden shores. So in the name of gratitude for the aid the Walshes had given in the face of the cholera outbreak, the party delayed its departure to help the family fell trees and erect a rough log cabin. Of course, they really stayed to make a collective effort to find the gold that tight-mouthed, want-it-all-for-himself, papist bastard Walsh had blundered upon.
The problem was, the lakeshore was twelve miles long. And with all of the shoreline’s inlets and points, there had to be twenty-five miles of ground to explore. More daunting than that, some parts of the shoreline could be reached only by descending sheer cliffs. That or paddling in by canoe. Many a gold seeker in the Masked Man Party tried to worm the secret out of Michael Walsh, but the brewer never let on. Not a word. Just pretended like he didn’t know what the hell any of them was hinting at.
The cunning Mick.
Several men took to following Michael Walsh around when he wasn’t busy working on his cabin. They watched him fish and hunt. But they couldn’t catch him out. He didn’t drop the smallest clue as to where he’d made his strike. When he wasn’t engaged in providing for his family, he spent most of his free time filling his bucket in the little springs that fed the lake, and then he toted the water home.
Pretty soon, some of the men wanted to beat his secret out of him.
If he hadn’t had his wife and children with him, they might have tried.
But as October approached all but one of the party finally decided they had to push on before they became snowbound. As a farewell gift, Michael Walsh gave them a barrel of his new beer — the kind Hans Koenig had taught him to make. The Masked Man Party was delighted with the brew, said it was the best beer they’d ever tasted. Then they rebuked Michael Walsh for not making it earlier. Such good beer certainly would have made crossing the desert less painful.
The Masked Man Party departed drunk, singing and promising to return. They’d be back to have some more beer, and see if Walsh hadn’t had a little luck prospecting the area.
Michael Walsh never did. It had never been his intention to prospect. But Timothy Johnson, the gold-seeker who had stayed behind, became a legend.
In the dead of winter, in the middle of a howling blizzard, when the Walshes hadn’t set foot outside their cabin for weeks, except to fetch snow to melt for water, and after they’d had to butcher one of their oxen for food, Johnson banged on their cabin door. He’d gone off into the mountains by himself shortly after the others had left, and now he returned covered with snow and in the company of a short Indian woman with a solemn face.
He also had with him a dozen nuggets of gold.
Ranging in size from a raspberry to a baby’s fist.
“She led me right to these,” Johnson told the wide-eyed Walshes. “She’s teaching me her language, and I just know when I understand it better, she’s going to take me straight to the mother lode.”
The Indian woman said nothing. She didn’t speak a word in the four days that she and Timothy Johnson sheltered in the Walshes’s cabin.
Before they left, when the blizzard had finally blown out, Johnson grandly traded his twelve nuggets of gold for all the beef and beer he and his female companion could carry. As the two made ready to leave, Johnson thanked the Walshes for their hospitality.
“The next time you see me,” he said with a farewell smile, “I’ll be a rich man.”
But that was the last any white person ever saw of Timothy Johnson or the short Indian woman. The only trace left of him was the gold he’d given Michael Walsh.
Which was more than enough.
In the spring of 1850, several of the Masked Man Party who’d failed to find gold further west returned. Along with them they brought others who’d been similarly unlucky in their search for riches. All of them thought to make one last stab at wealth by prospecting the mountain lake.
Michael Walsh told them he’d named the lake in honor of his wife, Adeline. Nobody was about to debate the point with the man who made the best beer west of St. Louis. They accepted Walsh’s decision and the name stuck.
Then Walsh told them the tale of Timothy Johnson. And he showed them the nuggets of gold to prove he was telling the truth. He did the same for the newcomers heading west who were among the tens of thousands caught up in the second year of the rush.
He said he had no idea of where Johnson and the Indian woman had gone or where they’d found the gold. The mystery didn’t deter the gold seekers; it fired their imaginations. Just as staring at the twelve nuggets of gold renewed their lust for riches.
The prospectors speculated aloud about what they knew of Tim Johnson, then made whispered plans with favored partners, and then stared some more at the golden nuggets, all while drinking Michael Walsh’s wonderful new beer.
By the fall of that year, three hundred men and fourteen women lived in the vicinity of Lake Adeline. Michael Walsh prospered on their thirst. He built a large addition to the original cabin. He established a trading post that sold durable goods hauled in from San Francisco.
Years later, for his own consumption and that of his sons, he brewed Walsh’s Private Reserve. The dark stout nobody else would drink.
One hundred and twenty-three years later, a former Navy chief petty officer, trying to make a go of it in civilian life as a bill collector decided to take an acting class in Los Angeles. He didn’t aspire to a movie career. He just wanted to improve and diversify his collection technique. Jack up his take-home pay as much as he could.
His name was Clay Steadman.
Steadman had been knocked off his intended career path as a navy lifer after he’d beaten a lieutenant commander to a pulp. He took this drastic action when he caught the officer screwing the wife of one of his men. The sailor had been the first to catch his spouse and his superior in the sack, but had been intimidated by the officer into not filing charges. Instead, the sailor had complained to his chief.
Clay Steadman had never liked the brass in general, and that particular officer was a pustule he’d wanted to squeeze for a long time. In short order, he managed to ambush the officer, timing his entrance to the San Diego motel room to catch the officer and the cheating wife in mid-stroke.
He said to the illicit lovers, “Naughty, naughty.”
The woman screamed. After stealing a pillow from her to cover his flagging member, the lieutenant commander promised to court martial the chief petty officer. He ordered Clay Steadman to leave the room immediately, and to confine himself to his quarters.
Chief Steadman considered the situation. “You’re fucking the wife of one of my men. When he objects, you threaten to court martial him. Now, I catch you at it, and you threaten to court martial me. Have I got all this right?”
The officer arrogantly assured him he had.
“Well, if you’re going to court martial me,” Clay Steadman said, yanking the man upright by his hair, “let’s make it for something worthwhile.”
The court martial never took place. CPO Steadman let the base commander kno
w that if he was charged with assaulting an officer — breaking the man’s nose, jaw, and six ribs — he would file an adultery complaint against that officer. A deal was struck: the adultery charge would go away, and so would Steadman. He was given an honorable discharge.
In the civilian work force for the first time, Clay joined the EZ Does It Collection Agency in North Hollywood. The policy of his new employer was not to browbeat their deadbeats, but to speak to them in tones of such cold, quiet menace they’d think if they didn’t pay up immediately, someone from EZ would creep through their bedroom window that night and repossess all their vital organs. Clay Steadman was a natural.
But after a couple months on the job, he began to feel his delivery was getting stale. He thought that, as a collection technique, quiet menace was so … expected. The only thing more obvious would have been giggling-lunatic menace. The Richard Widmark bit that had been done to death. What Clay thought might be interesting was woeful menace. Tell the deadbeat assholes his sad story, imply how it would truly pain him to work them over with a baseball bat, but he had bills to pay, too, or people would be coming after him.
The thing was, he didn’t know if he could bring it off, be believable enough that the freeloaders wouldn’t laugh at him. Still, he wanted to try, so he signed up for acting lessons.
He’d had all of six lessons, at a workshop in the Valley, for God’s sake, when he landed the second-lead role in his first movie. His acting coach, who knew greatness when he saw it, had a cousin who knew the movie’s casting director from high school. The coach sent Clay to the casting director on a flier, after explaining to his student that while most actors did in fact starve, the ones who got lucky made somewhat more money than people collecting on unpaid toaster ovens.
The casting director said Clay’s reading just about made him cream his pants — and he was straight. Clay was given the second-lead, the part of the arson investigator in The Fire Within.
The lead was supposed to be Terry O’Dare, who played the giggling lunatic arsonist. All the reviews said O’Dare gave a fine, nuanced performance … given the limitations of his cliché-ridden part. But the actor who stole the show was newcomer Clay Steadman, whose dogged investigator pursued the villain with a sense of menace that was made human by his almost palpable melancholy.