Fools' Gold

by Wiley, Richard

  For a month, ever since his arrival, Finn had drifted with the milling crowd, waiting for his opportunity. He listened to the accents and the different languages. There were other Irish, there were Asians, Indians, Frenchmen, there were Jews. He floated through the restaurants and bars, careful about the spending of his money. He watched men, hundreds of them, fanning over the tundra to work the mines during the day and closing in on the town in the evenings or on weekends. There was a sense of generosity, one toward the other, each man knowing he would strike. Finn adjusted himself to the mood easily. He discovered one night that the owner of the Gold Belt saloon was Irish, and from then on that was where he spent his time.

  This evening Finn pulled on his heavy boots and waded into the low surf for loose bark and driftwood. He leaned it against his tent to dry then stoked his stove with the previous day’s collection and sat alone in front of the fire’s red glow. At ten o’clock Finn changed his shirt and stepped out into the bright night. The Gold Belt would be full now and it would be proper for him to make his entrance. This pub had a wonderful game, a contest really, and though Finn had been signed up for days, tonight was the first time that he’d actually be allowed to play. There could be only one contestant at a time, and tonight, after the long wait, it would be Finn. He worked his way along the soft sand paths, two gold coins heavy in his pockets. He felt the heft of them, one to each side, like the weight and balance of his father’s gold watch.

  The Gold Belt stood opposite the New York Kitchen, and as Finn passed he saw Ellen and she saw him. She leaned against the handle of a long broom just at the entrance, her hair a shambles, her eyes gone tired. Finn slowed some and, looking in her direction, turned and stopped.

  “Top of the evening,” he said.

  “It’s a different world here, I’d say,” said Ellen. “At home the pubs’d be closed by now.”

  “Oh yes,” said Finn. “But the longer hours take away the tendency to gulp.”

  The weight of Finn’s two coins stood him evenly in front of her. It takes an Irishwoman to criticize the drinking habits of strangers, he thought. Finn asked after Henriette and inquired as to the difficulty of the work. He spoke politely, but he had the contest on his mind and in a moment excused himself and stepped toward the bar.

  From the cool path Ellen watched him go and watched the movement of the miners through the smoky tent flaps. Mouths were wide, heads were thrown back, but somehow no sound reached her. Strange that pubs were so open here. One could walk by and see directly in. At home they were always closed, political. At home men drank and talked darkly, their heads just off their pints. Ellen could remember her father coming in, always at ten after the closing hour, the gist of an argument still with him. He would stand in their narrow hallway looking down into the kitchen, but he’d not see her until his thoughts caught up with him. And then he’d throw back his head, his features turning fatherly once again and he’d laugh…. But not here, she thought. No serious talk here. She could see faces that she knew from the New York Kitchen, and she could see Finn, standing at the bar, holding a fistful of it. The first joke she could remember was her uncle quoting from the Bible: “As it says in the book of Guinnesses…” he’d said, and it had taken her years to understand.

  Ellen stood transfixed in the shadows. Now, after such a short time, she was beginning to say “prospectors” just as she used to say “farmers.” She laid slabs of beef or fish before them; she carried dozens of brimming mugs of coffee, placing one in front of each dull face. Ellen sighed and stepped back into the kitchen and began clearing the dirty plates away. She had to bend to get into the corners where the ceiling sloped to the wall. She guessed among her traveling companions it would be those two Asians who’d make it. The Japanese. They’d left for the unclaimed lands on the very first day. A people like that, shifty-eyed and small.

  When Ellen finished for the night she walked once more past the Gold Belt and saw Finn again, holding his black mug up timelessly. It would be a shame to go directly to bed but she’d not be going into one of these saloons. Saloons indeed. Pubs was what they were no matter what fancy name you gave them. She walked between several of the tents, her black shoes twisting on the soft ground. Here, as everywhere, there was a mixture of sand and moss. She left the path, popping from between two tents to walk on the beach for a while. The tents behind and beside her glowed pale and ghostly in the night, and she could hear voices from within them. Men were making plans, women laughing. Was it the same everywhere then, Ireland, America, Alaska? If it was, then what was there to gain anywhere in the world? Ellen looked at the water. She looked at herself standing there in her black dress, the waves stepping loudly toward her. She raised her arm and spun around in the wet sand until her hair pushed against her forehead, the ends of it flowing into the gray night. She pointed east and then south a little. Follow your finger to Ireland, she thought. Hullo, daddy, what time is it there? Are you home from the pub yet? She spun a little more and danced a little. The tents, the sea, the tents. Oh how she’d spun in the fields of Ireland: the house, the fields, the house. She slowed a little, tired. She came back along the rim of the horizon, pointing at each dim star, looking, trying to find a familiar constellation.

  Inside the Gold Belt Finn drained his pint and took another from the owner, a man who was praising the beauty of his own bar.

  “…and with so little good hardwood around,” he said. “It comes from the Philippines and there’s not a scratch on it. It’s used to the dainty drinking habits of the Spanish, I suppose.”

  The owner pushed a large cloth about as he spoke, polishing one place or another, not getting far from his conversation with Finn. The bar too had come on the Portland, a few voyages ago, but though the tent was large, the bar, with its dark red grains, would not quite fit. It pushed against the end of the tent and against the flaps. Before winter there would be a building big enough to make the bar look small, but now it was grotesque.

  Finn looked at his long reflection in the warped mirror behind the bar. It made him look thinner than he was, made him think less of himself. The mirror was attached to the canvas wall and was never still, so that in its reflection a calm man looked nervous.

  “I’m heavier than I appear to be,” Finn told the owner. “I’ll not be fooled into thinking I’m not.”

  “Only another half hour until midnight, then we’ll see.”

  The owner was referring to his contest. “Worth your weight in gold,” he called it, a game he’d invented and one that had filled his saloon with hopefuls each night of its running.

  Finn looked from the mirror to his body. He checked his pockets for extra weight and then slipped his boots from around his thick feet.

  At exactly midnight four women dressed in the costumes of ballerinas walked to the front of the tent and began unlacing the canvas, untying it from the wooden pegs in the corners. They rolled the tent sides up, exposing the twilight. A breeze lifted papers off the tables and moved the dust around the floor.

  One of the girls came close to Finn. “The trick is in the sacks,” she said. “Only the ones near the bottom are correctly marked.”

  The customers moved their chairs around so that they were facing a small platform. Several more of the bar women came forward carrying chains and lengths of hollow pipe and began assembling a huge balance scale on the platform, one which in every detail except size matched the scale in the assayer’s office. When the scale was complete, the plates on either side of it sat firmly upon the wooden stage; one was empty and on the other was a straight-backed chair. The scale had a crank in the back of it, and at its side someone had placed a wheelbarrow full of sacks, sand representing different amounts of gold dust, the weights clearly marked on the outside.

  “I’m on then,” said Finn, walking around the beer stains in the earth to the place where the scale was constructed. The owner was there waiting for him.

  “Here’s our candidate,” he told the calming crowd. “Finn Wallace f
rom Ireland, who should have it down for he saw it done here last week and then the week before. But for those of you who have come by ships still weighed in the harbor I’ll explain that all the man needs to do is place these sacks on the scale to the one side, and then place himself upon the chair over here. After he is ready I’ll crank him, and the sacks too, high up off the ground, and we’ll all watch the central needle just as we do when we are weighing our own week’s work. If he is within a pound, or within two, he’ll receive a pack mule and sundry equipment and goods, enough to allow him to strike out on his own. Also, and perhaps he’ll feel it’s more important, he’ll win an entire night’s drinking, compliments of the house.”

  The owner stood down and looked toward a girl, who brought Finn forward. From the open side of the tent dim stars could be seen. The crowd was quiet; the wind blew in without notice. Finn walked over to the wheelbarrow and began placing twenty-pound sacks on the scale. He chose only those sacks near the bottom, setting the others aside.

  “I know my own weight,” he said. “I’ve weighed the same for fifteen years.”

  As he neared the end of the weight placing, many of the customers stood, trying to see how much he’d put on. Finn lifted two hundred and five pounds onto the scale, then looking at his clothes and the chair he placed another ten-pound sack on top of it.

  “If I’m wrong it’s the lifting of these sacks that’s caused it,” he said.

  A ballerina offered Finn another pint glass but he waved it away and sat back easily.

  “Lift away then,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

  When the owner moved to the back of the scale the silence broke, the crowd began yelling instructions.

  “You’re heavier than that, bud ….”

  “You’re lighter by ten.”

  Finn stared calmly down off the chair at them. And, though the customers argued hotly, they stepped back and pulled their chairs and tables with them, making room. Outside people stepped onto the paths to watch. Though it was past midnight the streets were still busy. Finn saw the forms of dozens of people in the gray night.

  The owner turned the crank at the back of the scale, slowly lifting the two sides of it off the ground. Everyone watched the space between the scale and the platform increase. The sides of the scale lifted unevenly and the needle swayed, first toward Finn, next toward the sacks of sand. The scale was lifted high and when it stopped moving the needle settled on the center, or perhaps half a pound in the direction of Finn.

  “He’s a winner!” bellowed the owner, coming out from behind the scale and pointing at the needle. “It’s almost exact!”

  The ballerinas and the customers cheered. Finn watched them jumping about below him. Even outside the tent he could see some of the ghost figures leaping into the night. The owner took hold of the chain that supported the sacks of sand and pulled it toward the back of the stage so that the scale became a swing, sending Finn out over the people in the bar and out through the rolled-up canvas wall and into the street. Finn glided above the sandy paths, then back into the Gold Belt and over the customers once again. Round and round, the owner kept him moving, faster and faster.

  Finn could see the shadows of people standing in front of their tents far off toward the beach. He could see Ellen, standing back by the New York Kitchen, and from one place he could see the sea itself. Finn heard the shouts of the people and the slight crash of the waves from the beach. In a moment one of the sacks of sand slipped off the other side of the swing, and Finn dipped slightly down. The audience got louder. Four or five of the costumed ballerinas kicked their legs in unison, leading the customers in their applause. Finn spun on, outside and in, the scale a replica of the one down through the town, heavy on the counter of the assayer’s office.

  Ellen woke Henriette with the news that it was time they got going, that Finn would accompany them, that the Eskimo village was a good two hours away. They were traveling out of Nome to buy fish for the New York Kitchen, and Ellen saw the strong back of Finn’s new mule as the help they needed. Also, Finn knew the Eskimo village and could make introductions, help them with the bargaining.

  Ellen stepped into a dress then out of it again and into her first pair of trousers. They hung from her in wrinkles but were warm and followed the action of her legs, surrounded them at whatever pace she chose. If her father could see her now he’d hold his breath, she thought, or scowl and call her his son. It made her laugh. Here was Henriette in trousers too, happy to be leaving the city for a day.

  The two women left the Kitchen loosely clothed, tucking in the corners of their shirts and looking about for strangers. Finn’s mule stood blank-eyed near their tent and the man himself was ready, the blear of the previous night’s drinking washed from his eyes, his mood expanding for them like the fellow countryman that he was, like an older brother taking charge. When they started up the beach the waves were high and it was overcast and gray and raining. The mule pushed his stub legs into the sand and in a while the tents sank behind them, only the tops visible, even the largest blending with the landscape. They walked past the outskirts of town to the mouth of the Snake, where the water touched the powerful sea. There was a raft on their side of the river and a rope stretched across it and was tied in the secure mist of the far bank. The mule sat back eying the situation.

  “This is the site they’ve chosen for the Army post,” said Finn, putting his arms around the mule’s neck and tugging. “There’ll be American soldiers here before winter.” He strapped a piece of canvas around the mule’s eyes and rode him onto the raft. Ellen and Henriette stood beside the animal, holding its head. It was easy crossing the river, the current taking them from one side and tossing them toward the other. The river washed the sand from their feet and matted the hair around the mule’s hard hooves. Finn held on to the thick rope, pulling. The only danger was in letting go, or in letting his feet slip from the slick wet planks. All three imagined the raft bobbing out to sea. Finn saw himself hanging from the cross rope, watching it go. He imagined the women waving their hands and the confident mule staring peacefully into the dark folds of its blindfold.

  When they bumped on the far bank of the river the mule bolted, running off the raft and down the beach a ways. Ellen saw its sightless head turning to her out of the grayness, so she walked over and held it, waiting while her companions secured the wet raft to a tree. The mule, nostrils deep, dipped its head toward her and she covered its ears as she’d seen her father do. “Whoa,” she said, “calm yourself, donkey.” She waited until Finn took hold of the loose reins before she stepped forward and led them along the narrow beach. She walked just ahead of the animal, letting it see her wide back and lose itself in the plaid pattern of her jacket.

  In two hours they came out of the gray morning and saw the Eskimo village, circles of wooden lean-tos pushed into the melting ground. Around the village poles were placed in the earth with rows of drying fish stretched on lines between them. Eskimo children ran toward them on the sand and Finn reached down and hoisted them, one and then the others, high up over his head. There were open bags of salt, kayaks and canoes pulled high up the beach.

  A man approached them extending his hand. He was Finn’s age, but looked to Ellen like Kaneda, the older of the two Japanese. The man’s name was Phil and he was the head of the fishermen’s group, the one that did all of the dealings with the people from Nome. He said, “You’ve come just ahead of a storm.” He pointed up the beach to a large lean-to and told them that there was another group, visiting Eskimos from Port Clarence, and that there would be plenty of fish to buy. He asked them to follow him and they turned and threaded their way up to the lean-to, walking between the sacks of salt, followed by the children.

  When they entered the lean-to they found the group of visitors sitting in a circle talking to a white man, Reverend Raymond, a teacher and the pastor of the village mission. The group from Port Clarence stuck their fingers into bowls of meal, spoke softly, and munched on dried fi
sh.

  “You should plan on spending the night,” said Phil, once the Port Clarence group had spread out, making room for them all to sit down. “Soon it will be too dark and stormy for you to make your way back.”

  The Reverend Raymond sat forward smiling and trying to shake their hands. “There are plenty of places to sleep,” he said, his mouth still half full of food.

  Few of the Eskimos in the group spoke English, but one of them, sitting next to Ellen, asked her questions and got answers, which were translated by the reverend.

  “Have you come for the beginning of Nanoon’s womanhood?” the man asked. The reverend answered without waiting for a response.

  “They have come to buy fish,” he said.

  “We have come for Nanoon’s womanhood,” the man told the reverend to tell Ellen. “Everyone is excited about it.”

  “Today is the day that one of Phil’s sisters begins her passage into womanhood,” said the reverend. “Everyone is feeling rather festive. We’d be happy if you’d join in the celebration.”

  Ellen looked from one to the other of her traveling companions. She could see a lengthy row of lean-tos opposite her and a smaller, newly built hut in the exact center of the village. There were no tents here and all of the buildings had one open side facing away from the sea, away from most of the wind and the rain. On each lean-to a heavy skin tarp covered the entire front and could be rolled up or down depending on the weather. The inside walls of the lean-to where they sat were covered with insulating furs. The reverend told Ellen that each of the structures had to be rebuilt each summer. He said that as soon as the support poles were placed in the ground they began to sink down toward the permafrost causing the entire village to slowly sag.

  At a suggestion from the reverend, Ellen got up and left with him to take a tour of the village. The reverend was a tall man, and seemed a happy one. He was a Protestant and told her that he’d been in the village for four years and had built his own home and taken over the duties at the school from his predecessor, who’d given the villagers their Christian names. He was from Wisconsin and had gone to seminary in Minneapolis. He had a brother in Alaska someplace, panning for gold.