Behind the Masks

by Susan Patron

  He moved toward the door. “My Lottie is fond of the dog. We take our Bonanza with us.” Then he added, “It is her little joke, the dog’s name.”

  “Please tell Mrs. Johl I regret that I didn’t get to know her better … tell her I wish her well,” I said. “And … and … Mrs. Tucker and her daughter, Eleanor, also send their regards, and Mrs. O’Toole, and my mother. I wish—”

  “Yes,” he said distractedly, and barked the sound that should mean laughter—but didn’t. “Ha! We wish, too. But now that they have removed your father, the vigilantes are taking over Bodie. I sell my shop at a loss. Soon scrip will not be honored—it has begun already—and people will panic. It is over. The death of the town of Bodie has begun, and we won’t be here to witness its last tortured breath. Good-bye, Angeline Reddy.”

  Before leaving, I wished Mr. Gibson a safe journey. He was cleaning a shotgun with an oily rag. “It’s a dirty business, miss,” he said, and wiped his hands on his pants.

  Returning home, I wondered how it can be that meanness may be a sin but it is not even a crime. Perhaps it is worse than a crime, for often no justice may be brought—at least in this life on earth.

  For I knew the real reason they were leaving. Mrs. Johl would never be fully accepted in society, never have friends among the other women. If they’d stayed in Bodie, their dreams and hopes would have been severed by the keen knife of respectability.

  I have pasted below, dear diary, the Daily Standard newspaper account of what happened next. Momma always says things turn out as they are meant to, and Papa adds, yes that they will, but only if people do the honorable thing. I can’t imagine how that is true now.

  *LATE EDITION*

  June 28, 1880

  ______________

  HOLDUP ON THE BODIE-TO-BRIDGEPORT ROAD

  Odd Discovery in Luggage

  Prominent Bodie butcher, Mr. Eli Johl, and his wife, Mrs. Lottie Johl, were held at gunpoint when attempting to move their household from Bodie to Bridgeport.

  MASKED MEN

  Three masked highwaymen blocked the road and demanded cash and valuables from the couple. Teamster driver Zachariah Gibson of Bodie shot off several rounds that went wild. Rather than returning fire, the highwaymen disarmed him and took his shoes and belt. Mr. and Mrs. Johl were forced to hand over their entire savings.

  NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES

  Rarely have highwaymen demanded personal belongings of the fairer sex during holdups on our roads. The Johl robbery therefore stands out as an especial affront to women travelers. One of the masked men dismounted and addressed Mrs. Johl, who held a dog on her lap. He is reported to have said, “Give us the ring, the broach, and the hatpin. You can keep the mutt.” Mrs. Johl complied while Mr. Johl, who was unarmed, offered several unprintable insults in response. In the course of this, the dog jumped down from the wagon and sank its teeth into the dastard’s boot. With the masked men’s attention distracted, Mrs. Johl drew a double-barrel derringer from under the seat and shot the hat off of one of the attackers, revealing hair she described as “the foul nest of a rat.” She took more careful aim on the hatless man, who mounted his horse and fled, apparently unharmed, followed by his partners.

  AN ADDITIONAL SURPRISE

  After the highwaymen retreated, a stowaway was found to be hidden among the luggage and other belongings in the wagon. He jumped down and ran in the opposite direction. No description was given but the stowaway is thought to be a young boy who may or may not have been in cahoots with the robbers.

  REWARD

  Anyone with any information leading to the arrest and capture of these bandits should contact Sheriff Pioche Kelley of Bodie. A reward will be posted.

  Wednesday, June 30, 1880

  Dear Diary,

  When Momma went for a quick visit to Mrs. O’Toole’s, I decided to wash the kitchen’s wood floor, still sticky and crumbly from the Sunday mask-making project. Some grease stains had to be treated first so I put some lye into the tin cup kept for this purpose and placed it on the stove until boiling hot, poured a little on each spot, and scoured with ashes. Next I filled a bucket with soft hot water and was scrubbing when Momma returned. She brought friendly gossip from Mrs. O’Toole via her boarders; all were talking about the Johl robbery. Mr. Gibson, the teamster, said he had lost both his boots and a friend with Mr. Johl’s departure.

  I wrung out the mop and began to attack one corner of the floor. Once it had cooled down enough, Momma cleaned the stove. She removed the ashes and cinders from every part, rapping smartly on the sides of the pipes to dislodge the soot that collects there. I watched her curiously, for she beat that stove as if to punish it, as if its heat had transferred to her and raised her temperature.

  She got into more of a temper when she discovered that I hadn’t saved bits of meat left from supper and I’d forgotten a bar of soap in a basin of water. “A woman can throw out with a spoon faster than a man can throw in with a shovel,” she admonished me. “That meat could have made a nice little hash for breakfast, and the soap has dissolved in the water unnecessarily. You must learn to be more thrifty and less wasteful, Angeline.” After a moment she added, “I noticed this morning that your dress has a rent in the sleeve and dust on the hem. It looks shabby and poorly cared for.”

  I felt hurt by this, after all my labors during Momma’s illness, but of course I didn’t argue. I did not wish to add bad manners to my list of offenses.

  Momma swept out the ashes with a longhandled brush-broom and plenty of vengeance. We worked in silence for some time. Then, abruptly, she dropped the broom, sank into a chair, put her head in her hands, and began to cry. I busied myself in the corner, not wishing to intrude—but she continued to cry as if she could not stop.

  There can be no more pitiful or frightening sound to me than my mother sobbing uncontrollably. It clenched my heart like a muscle that seizes up. It hurt my chest.

  Finally I pulled a chair near to her and put my arms around her, appalled at the meagerness of her shoulders. “Oh, Momma,” I said, “please don’t cry. What is the matter? Is it Papa?”

  My voice must have jolted her out of some deep place of misery, for she gained control of herself and poured water from the pitcher onto her handkerchief. She cooled her face and turned to me.

  “Forgive me, Angie. I was wrong to scold you. I am the one who is shabby and poorly cared for. I need your Papa and I curse this town for keeping him from me.” She looked at me, her eyes full, still, of tears. “For keeping him from us. You have grown up since he left, and I have gotten old.”

  I pondered what she said about me, for I felt no different—still a plain-faced, constantly blushing girl with no natural gifts and, in public, a great excess of shyness. I said, “Momma! It’s only been a few weeks! We cannot have changed so much in that time!” I jumped up, picturing Papa with a witness, asking the questions that get them to say (or admit) the truth. I propped my foot on the chair, right elbow on knee and pretend-cigar in hand. I rolled the “cigar” between my fingers, smelled it, let my left arm dangle straight down. His stance was easier to imitate than his voice, but I curled my lips in imitation of Papa’s winning smile. “Now, darlin’, you want me to stand by and watch while the thugs and hoodlums take over Bodie? What kind of husband would I be then?”

  “Oh, Angie,” said Momma. “You do sound just like him! And you made me remember something one of Sally O’Toole’s boarders told her about your friend Ling Loi. She no longer comes to the jail for laundry. She seems to have disappeared.

  “On my way home I decided to ask about her, and stopped at several shops in Chinatown, but no one had any information.” She paused. “Except at the Emporium. Mr. Chung, the owner, appeared angry at my questions, though he took pains to conceal it. He was very polite, of course—I know he feels grateful to your father for defending him in the three trials. But he seemed to imply that Ling Loi has run away!”

  I had told Momma very little of Ling Loi’s background and doubtful future
. I know she would have forbade me to interfere or become involved, as none of it was my business. Now I was almighty worried about Ling Loi and where she had gone.

  I returned to my mop and my corner in order to hide my traitorous face from her. One look and she’d have known I was concealing something. She said, “I was followed everywhere by a group of unemployed and unwashed cowboys, though I tried to lose them by dashing in and out of shops. They came nearly to the house before they finally wandered off. Poor Mrs. Babcockry is right that Bodie, with its fragments of humanity, has become no fit place to live.”

  To keep my back to Momma, I swished my mop to a corner I’d already cleaned. One more thing I hadn’t mentioned—to keep from upsetting her—was about the guard of Horribles Papa had arranged for us. Had she known, she’d have indignantly sent them on their way. This secret made me smile, and hope, at the same time, that this unwashed group was keeping an eye on Ling Loi. But there was a strange and disturbing sensation within me—instead of being glad that Momma complained about Bodie, I was worried. For now the Horribles and their carefree madness called out to me. I longed for their camaraderie, their sophistication, their fearlessness. Rather than leave Bodie, now all I wanted was to stay.

  Thursday, July 1, 1880

  Dear Diary,

  Eleanor has made a discovery! She asked me to come to her house after school and at first I made an excuse—it was indeed true—that I needed to go to the general store for mending thread, but the urgency of her request, and her promise that her father would not be at home, made me agree to it.

  We passed a flock of wild sage grouse, all fat from late-spring gorging, and I wished I could trap or shoot some of them. They make for fine eating when browned in lard, though being small they are harder to pluck than ordinary chickens. Momma loves their livers mashed and mixed with onions and herbs, fried, and served on toast. However, it is a great test of skill to capture a sage grouse, as they scatter and fly low, and I am not up to the task. Once again I missed Papa, whose perfect aim would have guaranteed a fine meal.

  “Do not look behind,” Eleanor said to me as we watched the flock run in back of the apothecary. “Con Williams is following and I have no wish to speak with him.”

  “Oh, Eleanor, is he yet another beau of yours?” I whispered.

  “He would like it to be so,” she said, and grimaced. “But not I.”

  “But he’s Teacher’s brother,” I teased. I knew Eleanor would not permit a person to court her just because it might give her an advantage with our teacher. She elbowed me in the side and shook her head.

  By then Con had caught up with us. He apprenticed over at the livery, and was said to be a good hand with horses. Younger than Miss Williams, he shared her piercing voice and overall boniness. I had not seen him except in passing since he came to our home with a gun and a burning torch. “Miss Tucker, Miss Reddy,” he said. “You are going the wrong direction! Back up Main Street, in the Occidental Hotel, the Horribles are rehearsing. They pulled the curtains but I can show you a way to listen to them.”

  “Please excuse us,” Eleanor said curtly. “We have no wish to eavesdrop on the players and we are in somewhat of a hurry.” She linked arms with me and continued walking briskly. I said nothing, for I have not yet told Ellie about my skit, as I wish to finish it first. I was curious, though, to see what satire the Horribles’ male playwrights had produced.

  “Ah, give it five minutes, Miss Tucker,” Con pleaded. “You should hear their little play about some of Bodie’s biggest shareholders in the Standard Mine.”

  Eleanor stiffened, as certainly the skit was about her father and his friend Mr. McPhee, but she did not slacken her pace. Oh, I know what made Con beg: her delicate, fine-boned face with cupid’s-bow lips and bright blue eyes, her graceful posture and upswept hair. She looked as if she belonged in an opera house, peering through a looking glass with a mother-of-pearl handle, not slogging through trash on a dirt street in a mining district. I figured Con just wanted to own all that beauty and be able to caress it whenever he pleased, clear and simple. She said, “I am weary of men hiding behind their masks.”

  Con must have been as let down as I was to hear this, but for different reasons, for he recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “Good-bye, Miss Tucker,” he said, and turned his back. I heard the spatter of his saliva as it hit the dirt.

  When we had come nearly to her house, I asked, “Eleanor, do you think Con Williams still plays at being a vigilante? Or were you really speaking of the Horribles?”

  “Oh, no, I’m not weary of the Horribles,” she said, and squeezed my hand. “I know you are drawn to them like a moth to a candle. They are filled with wit and insouciance, like you, and they seem to have such fun.”

  I did not know what insouciance meant, so I asked, hoping it was something good.

  “Oh, lightsomeness. Con Williams is another matter. He has neither wit nor moral fiber that I’ve ever noticed; I believe he’s an opportunist and a thief. As for the vigilantes—some would say that Mr. Babcockry got what he deserved, since he’d been a member himself, but Phillip Walheim was—” She broke off and I saw her eyes fill with tears.

  It took me a second to realize she was talking about the family that had previously been driven from town. “You mean Mr. Walheim the boot maker? He was … ?”

  “Not the boot maker. His son.”

  “Yes? His son … ?”

  “Oh, Angie. I liked him. He read to me. Philosophy and theosophy. Books his grandfather sent him from back east. He had such a fine reading voice, and he could explain the most exotic theories of life and religion. And, and … oh, I don’t know.”

  “I wish I had heard him!”

  She looked both furious and sad at the same time. “He was the only boy who ever understood how much I want to go to St. Benedict’s Academy in St. Joseph, Minnesota—how much I want to learn something useful. At the Academy they teach elocution, religion, logic, botany, bookkeeping, all the classical and womanly subjects, and, Angie, you can learn the piano, the organ, the harp, and the zither.”

  “How do you know so much about St. Benedict’s?”

  “We sent for the brochure. I know it by heart! But other boys ridicule the idea of a female having her own means of support, and my father … he gets angry and says he will never let me go far from him. Were it not for Miss Williams and her letters of introduction—”

  “Miss Williams!” Ellie had shocked me several times in rapid succession.

  “Oh, she is a terror with the paddle and dreadfully strict, but she has been a good friend to my mother.” Ellie wiped her eyes with a frayed handkerchief, as if it was worn out from having wiped altogether too many tears. She added, “My mother could not have held up against my father were it not for the private encouragement of Miss Williams.”

  We had arrived at her house. “Now let us speak of this no longer,” she said, with all the confidence and fortitude I was used to. “I will show you a secret. Prepare yourself if you can, Angie, for it is sure to shock you greatly.”

  Diary, what follows is the pitiable story. I shall keep you hidden, and should any soul be reading this without my knowledge, may you feel sorrow in your heart. Whether you can forgive as well as pity is for you to decide.

  As she had promised, no one was at home. Eleanor bade me tie a kerchief over my hair, and doing the same, she took me to a shed behind the house. It had the musty smell of a windowless place seldom opened for airing, a resting place for deceased chairs and lifeless old tools. We stirred fine dust as we moved in the cramped, dark space.

  Ellie opened a broken-down wooden ammunition box in a far corner. She lifted out a stack of brittle newspapers, a scrap of cloth with military medals pinned to it, a soldier’s cap, a chipped mug. At the bottom lay a neat, flat bundle: layers of yellowed cotton cloth. Ellie brought it out of the trunk carefully and as she did a strong feeling of dread came over me; I wanted to run from the shed yet felt powerless to move. Frozen, I watched as she tu
rned back the top layer of cotton fabric.

  The tiny pair of red shoes and hooded red cape sent a shiver through me and prickled the back of my neck, despite the warm day. My hand trembled as I reached out to touch the leather and the soft wool. They were shrunken and stained and so small they made my heart catch.

  “My father has hidden these clothes,” Ellie whispered. “My mother never comes to this shed, and I’m certain she does not know about them—or if she does know, she cares not to be reminded. Why, Angie?” She looked searchingly into my eyes, as if she would find an answer there. “Does my father keep this secret out of shame? Out of fear?”

  I gripped her shoulder. “Put them back, Ellie. This is not for us to question. I do not want to be here in this place any longer.”

  A fierce expression came upon her face, almost as if she had put on a mask—a mask of her own face, but carved with an expression of terrifying urgency. “But it is, Angie! It is for us to question, you and me. Why do you think the ghost child appeared to us in your father’s antechamber? Because she cannot rest in peace—I’m certain of it. An injustice has been done and the child wants us to discover it. And somehow, you are the conduit.”

  “But why?”

  She touched a row of miniature shoe buttons, one by one, as if they were a path she was following. “Your father’s study is a place where crimes are examined and justice is sought. The moment you brought me there, the ghost child … came to us, because—” She broke off.

  “—because she wants us to learn the truth about her death.” I finished.

  She nodded.

  “But what can we do? Show these clothes to your mother?”

  “Oh, no, I think not that. I have a sense it would bruise her heart beyond repair.”