Gold Fever

by Vicki Delany

  It was six o’clock, and Ray and the men were ushering our customers out. One or two protested and tried to point out that the other saloons and dance halls were not closing. As if Ray hadn’t noticed. As usual, he mumbled something about “the boss”, laying all the blame on me.

  Which was fine, as in turn I usually put the blame for everything the customers didn’t like on him.

  “Feeling all right, Fee?” he asked once the last straggler had been evicted.

  I touched my head. “No.” No matter how bad I felt, I still had to go upstairs, settle the women’s drink chips and prepare to lock up our night’s takings.

  * * *

  It was going to be another hot, dry day. If the rains didn’t turn the streets into rivers of mud, the dust choked everything and everyone it touched. Only in the winter did the mud and the dust go away—then you couldn’t walk as far as the outdoor privy without so much clothing, you resembled an Eskimo. Not that I’d ever seen an Eskimo, but I had seen pictures of them standing beside their ice houses with nothing showing but noses and happy smiles. What on earth, I asked myself, was I doing in this cursed country? Tomorrow I would tell Ray he could buy me out, and Angus and I would take the next steamship south.

  As I mumbled and grumbled, earning a strange look from a properly-dressed woman on her way to begin her day’s work, I knew Angus and I were staying. In no place I’d lived had I ever felt as alive as I did every day in Dawson, nor was I able to make so much money. Legally, that is. Although considering the pain that was throbbing through my miserable head, I could do with a touch of numbness right about now.

  Before collapsing into my most welcome bed, I would have to speak to Mary. She could continue working for Mrs. Mann, if Mrs. Mann wanted her to, but she was to vacate the Savoy immediately. If she couldn’t find alternative accommodation, she could sleep in the street.

  The laundry shed was beginning to steam as Mr. Mann fired up the stove, and Mrs. Mann sorted through piles of filthy clothes.

  “Where’s Mary?” I said.

  “Not here,” Mrs. Mann said.

  “She late, she not get pays.” Mr. Mann straightened up from the fire, holding a fist to the small of his back, his face red with the heat and the exertion of carrying wood from the big pile beside the shed. “She very late, she fired. My wife not do all zee works herself. Stupid Indian.”

  “She was prompt yesterday,” Mrs. Mann said, holding up a shirt for inspection that was scarcely more than a rag. She tilted her head from one side to the other. “Wash this, and it’ll fall apart.”

  “Is Angus up?” I asked.

  “He was eating his breakfast when I left the house. How do you suppose this shirt got all these little holes in it?”

  “I truly do not want to know.”

  “Perhaps Mary slept in. Can you ask Angus to go around and fetch her?”

  Angus was in the kitchen, eating porridge and bacon, and bread fried in dripping while reading a penny dreadful. I asked him to go to the Savoy and pound on Mary’s door to get her up. Considering that I’d seen her not much more than an hour before with her dress around her waist in a back alley, it was unlikely she was in any condition to get up and face a day’s work. But I’d been the one who’d arranged for Mrs. Mann to hire her, and I’d make sure she faced her commitments.

  Angus sopped up the last of his dripping and stood to give me a greasy kiss on the cheek. “You look dreadful, Mother. Go to bed.”

  So I did.

  I had scarcely untied my hair, washed my face (the water was lovely and hot; Mrs. Mann knows my schedule), removed my jewellery, struggled out of dress, petticoat, over-corset, corset, stockings and undergarments, and pulled on my night-gown, when Angus was hammering on my bedroom door to tell me there was no answer from Mary’s room.

  I sighed and told him to come in. We debated for a few moments—Angus insisting that

  something had happened to her and we had to go in search of her; me attempting to remind him that this was a small town in terms of geography, but bigger than many cities in terms of population. Angus suggested I could at least check Mary’s room to make sure she wasn’t sick or dying, then we could ask at the hospital and Fort Herchmer if they’d had news of an accident.

  I knew where I’d look first, but I didn’t want my son going there on his own. He’d taken to Mary, and his lovely face was pinched with worry. Against my better judgment, I shooed Angus out of my room and told him to wait in the kitchen. While I struggled back into undergarments, corset, over-corset, stockings, petticoats, and day dress, pinned my hair and selected a hat, I developed a plan. We’d check Mary’s room, then Angus could go to the hospital and the Mounties while I went to Paradise Alley and discretely asked around. If I found her there, I could at least tell my son that Mary’d decided the life of a laundry maid wasn’t for her, and she wouldn’t be back.

  Dressing completed, I sat on my bed to lace up my street shoes. It shouldn’t be much of a mystery to anyone why Mary would so quickly go back to her old life. Mrs. Mann paid two dollars a day, plus three meals and the occasional cup of tea, for twelve hours spent in a stifling hot, steamy and quite dangerous (with all that boiling water and open fires) laundry shed, sorting through working-class men’s disgusting clothes and sordid undergarments. I cringed merely thinking about it. I’d heard that some Paradise Alley prostitutes could get ten, twenty dollars per assignation, of which they gave fifty to seventy-five per cent to their manager. Mary was an Indian, so she wouldn’t command top rates, but it had to be a lot more than a laundry maid got. Perhaps even enough to endure the beatings I’d seen evidence of on her back.

  I’d once been faced with similar choices. I’d decided to accept neither of them and find my own way.

  It was the thought that Mary was searching for her own way, like a young, frightened, but dreadfully cocky Fiona MacGillivray, that had me out of my nightgown and back into my street clothes.

  Chapter Twelve

  Angus’s friends often complained about how long it took their mothers and sisters to get ready to face the world, but his mother always seemed to be able to get herself decent in not much more time that it took some men. On the Chilkoot trail, he’d seen the amount of clothing she wore, and the many more layers she’d brought for when they reached ”civilization”. It always amazed him that she was able to get dressed in under several hours.

  This morning, he’d scarcely finished another chapter of his book before she was in the kitchen, in a crisp, lacy white blouse with a big blue bow and a dark blue skirt. Her hair was perfectly arranged, and her hat, featuring a huge blue feather and a cluster of fake plums, was properly in place. Only the hint of dark circles under her black eyes indicated that she hadn’t yet slept.

  “We’ll go to the Savoy first,” she declared. “And if Mary isn’t there, you can inquire at Fort Herchmer and the hospital. I will…uh…search elsewhere.”

  Angus had not the slightest doubt as to where ”elsewhere” might be. Nor did he doubt that he would not allow his mother to search Paradise Alley on her own. Mary had been a prostitute; Angus knew what that meant. He also knew that people like Mrs. LeBlanc, who controlled prostitutes, considered them not much more than property. So someone might well have taken poor Mary against her will from her room in the Savoy under cover of the noise below, or even snatched her off the street.

  At the Savoy, Angus pounded on the door to Mary’s room.

  The sound echoed throughout the empty building. When no one answered, his mother cautiously opened the door.

  The room was plain, with a narrow bed and a small dresser to hold the chipped wash jug and basin. The walls and floor were cheap wood, and there were no pictures on the walls. A scrap of red cloth covered the single window to serve as a curtain. The room was neat, the bed made, the basin wiped out. A single stem of fresh purple fireweed sat in a water glass on the dresser beside a pocket bible. Fiona shut the door. A plain dress hung on the hook at the back. She pulled out a dresser draw
er to reveal a few scraps of neatly folded undergarments and stockings. The sum total of Mary’s possessions.

  “Looks like she hasn’t moved out,” Angus said.

  “No.”

  “Is something the matter, Mother?”

  “No.”

  They left the Savoy and stood outside on the boardwalk. One half of the town was starting to come to life as men walked to work, stores opened, and respectable women went about their family’s errands. The other half was closing down as men staggered out of dance halls and less respectable women stood in the shadows. The line in front of the Vanderhaege sisters’ bakery stretched a good way down the street.

  “Are you looking for someone, Mother? Someone other than Mary, I mean.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “It’s just that you keep looking around, and you seem nervous.”

  “What a ridiculous idea,” Fiona said in that haughty tone which, Angus had come to recognize, meant he was right.

  “Go to the hospital and then to the Fort,” she said. “I’ll look…elsewhere. We’ll meet up at home.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Mother, I know you think Mary has gone back to Mrs. LeBlanc, and you’re going to Paradise Alley to find her. But she hasn’t. Remember, I was there when we collected Mary’s things. She hates Mrs. LeBlanc. And Mrs. LeBlanc was really mean, told her to never come back.”

  “Angus, dear. Sometimes people don’t always do what they want to do. Or even what’s best for them. I’ll check to set your mind at ease. Then I really do have to be getting to bed.”

  “I don’t want you going there by yourself, Mother.”

  Fiona looked quite astonished. “Angus…” She started to say something but changed her mind. “I don’t want you there at all.”

  “I know what happens in Paradise Alley, Mother. I know about men paying women like Mary used to be to make love with them. I know what sex is, Mother.”

  Two men, out-of-luck old timers by the look of them, stopped dead on the boardwalk. They looked at Angus through red-rimmed, bleary eyes. “Good for you, lad,” said the first one. “I was almost twice your age ’afore I figured it all out.”

  “Wouldn’t have been tellin’ my ma, though,” the second one said, his words slurred almost beyond recognition. “Times are changin’, eh, Roy.”

  “Do you mind, this is a private conversation,” Fiona snapped. “Stand aside.” She pushed the one named Roy off the boardwalk. They chuckled and went on down the street, talking loudly about what the times were coming to.

  “We will discuss that particular matter later,” Fiona said.

  “Now, go to Fort Herchmer.”

  “I would like to accompany you, Mother,” Angus said, trying to sound grown-up and formal. “It is my responsibility to protect your reputation.”

  To his surprise, his mother threw back her head and laughed. “Where on earth did you get that idea?” she said once she could speak again.

  “Sergeant Lancaster told me if a boy’s father isn’t around, it is his responsibility…”

  “Oh, yes. Sergeant Lancaster. You can take his advice with a grain of salt, Angus; he does have an ulterior motive.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “All right, you win. You can show me where you got Mary’s possessions, Angus. The girls around there might tell us if they’ve seen her.”

  They walked up York Street to Second Avenue and headed south towards the heart of Paradise Alley. It was morning, and the night’s business was coming to an end. A few girls still stood in the doorways, but most of the cribs looked to be closed for the day. Despite what he’d said to his mother, Angus didn’t really know much about what went on behind those cheap wooden doors. His friends whispered about it sometimes, and Dave had told everyone that he’d visited Big Bessie’s crib with his dad lots of times. But no one believed him, particularly because Dave couldn’t describe anything that happened after Bessie took off her clothes. He didn’t even seem to know that women wore a corset to give them that funny shape, all kinda pulled in and pushed out at the same time. Dave thought they were made that way, probably because he lived alone with his dad, who was a bartender at the Horseshoe.

  The women watched them pass.

  A man came out of a crib, doing up his tie and straightening his hat, and stepped directly into their path.

  “Fiona, what on earth?”

  “Graham! What are you doing here?”

  Donohue flushed and left his tie askew.

  “Fiona. Angus. This hardly seems like the time or place to run into you. Not that it isn’t a pleasure, as always.”

  Fiona’s dark eyes blazed. Angus almost thought he could see a flicker of a red ember in their depths. “I asked what you are doing here, Graham.”

  The newspaperman took her arm and dropped his voice, forcing Angus to strain to hear. “Working on a story, Fiona. A big one. Some of these unfortunate ladies are being kept here against their will. It seems…”

  “Tell me another time.” Fiona pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief out of a tuck in her dress and rubbed at a smudge on Donohue’s cheek. “Why do you have lipstick on your face?”

  “The dear lady,” Donohue’s eyes clouded over, and he nodded towards the crib from which he’d emerged, “is afraid to speak to me openly in case her boss sees us. She was so grateful to me for listening to her story that she honoured me with a kiss.”

  Angus snorted, but Fiona smiled at Donohue. “It is a disgrace what goes on in some of these places. The poor girls are treated like cattle. I’m sure your story will do a great deal of good, Graham.”

  Angus couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His mother had accepted Donohue’s nonsense? Just when he thought he understood women, they went and did something completely stupid.

  “Whatever you’re doing here, Fiona, I suggest you consider your reputation, and Angus’s young sensibilities.” Donohue attempted to steer Fiona back in the direction from which they’d come. Fiona, never one to be steered anywhere, resisted. A minor tug of war took place over her arm. They sort of danced up and down the street, and Angus bobbed and weaved as though he were in the boxing ring, trying to keep up with them.

  Eventually Fiona tired of the struggle. “Graham, I insist you unhand me.” She wrenched her arm out of his grip. She stumbled backwards into a tiny opening between two of the cribs.

  Angus heard a cry, and a crash, then a good bit of bad language.

  “Fiona, are you all right?” “Mother?” Graham Donohue and Angus MacGillivray peered into the darkness. It was daylight, but the space between the buildings was so narrow, the sun couldn’t poke its probing rays into the alley. Only the white froth of Fiona’s petticoats was visible in the gloom.

  “You fool, help me up. If I’ve ruined another dress, you’ll pay for it, Graham Donohue. Be careful, there’s something there, and it tripped me. It’s sort of soft and squishy. I most certainly hope it isn’t a dead dog.”

  Donohue stepped forward. “Hard to see anything,” he muttered. “Hold out your hand, Fiona. Oh, god.”

  “Are you going to assist me or not? Angus, come here. Graham seems to have found something of greater importance than helping me.”

  “Angus, get your mother up.” Donohue’s voice was flat. “Keep against the right hand wall. Get her out of here and don’t look down.”

  Angus looked down. The shape at Donohue’s feet started to take form as his eyes became accustomed to the lack of light.

  A woman lay on her back with her skirts twisted around her body so that her stockings were showing up past her knees. Angus averted his gaze and immediately wished he hadn’t. The eyes were wide open and staring directly at him, and her head lay in a patch of mud that hadn’t dried after the last rain. A fat fly buzzed loudly as it flew past his ear, and there was a strange smell, sort of sickeningly sweet, filling the alley. Angus looked again and realized that it wasn’t mud at all. The dirt under the woman’s
head was soaked with blood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  What on earth is the matter with men these days, I thought. I was practically flat on my back, struggling like an overturned turtle to get up, and Graham and Angus were studying something at their feet. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around and the smell was dreadful. There must be a dead dog in the alley. Most unpleasant, and if I got any of it on my dress, you can be sure Graham Donohue would be promising to buy me a new one before the sun was much higher in the sky.

  By the incredibly squeamish way they were behaving and the rather unsettling sounds they were making, you’d think that Donohue and Angus had never been inside a butcher shop.

  Then, as if the school bell had rung, they sprang into action. Between them, they actually lifted me off the ground and carried me out of the alley. They weren’t fast enough, and I still had my wits about me, so I saw what they were lifting me over.

  “Put me down immediately. Angus MacGillivray, put me down, or you’ll spend the rest of the month on bacon and beans.” An idle threat, as Mrs. Mann did all the cooking, but the only thing I could think of on the spur of the moment.

  I was unceremoniously dumped in the street. No thanks to my rescuers, I managed to retain my balance.

  “Keep it down,” a voice called from the nearest crib. “People is sleepin’ round here.”

  I took a deep breath and steadied my shaking limbs. I looked at my son—he was white around the mouth, and his eyes were round. Graham shook his head slightly and tried to step in front of me. I pushed him aside and forced myself to look.

  Bile rose in my throat, but I pushed it down. I’d allow myself to be sick later, in private.

  My first thought was relief. It wasn’t Mary, as I’d feared, lying there at my feet with her eyes wide and staring as a fly landed on a lid. I reached behind me and fumbled for someone’s hand. I clutched it and hoped it was my son’s.

  It wasn’t Mary lying there, but it was someone I knew.