by Win Blevins
“At such times the tin on half a dozen roofs may be seen flapping in the breeze in chorus, each section of roofing giving out a roar more startling than would be the combined sheet-iron thunder of a dozen country theaters of average enterprise.
“Not to exaggerate, I may say that at times such clouds of dust are raised, that, viewed from a distance, all there is to be seen is a steeple stickin’ up here and there, a few scattering chimneys, an occasional poodle dog, and perhaps a stray infant drifting wrong end up, high above all the housetops. Down below in the darkness, gravel-stones are flying along the street like grapeshot, and all the people have taken refuge in the doorways.
“Out on the divide between here and Gold Hill, where the wind has a fair sweep, the air is filled with dust, rags, tin cans, empty packing cases, old cooking stoves, and similar rubbish. Hats! More hats are lost during the prevalence of a single zephyr than in any city in the Union on any election held in the last twenty years. These hats all go down the side of the mountain and land in Six-Mile Canyon, where drifts of hats fully fifteen feet in depth are to be seen in the bed of the canyon just named. All these hats are found and appropriated by the Paiute Indians, who always go down to the canyon the morning after a rousing and fruitful gale to gather in the hat crop. When the innocent and guileless children of the desert come back to town, each head is decorated with at least half a dozen hats of all kinds and colors—braves, squaws, and papooses are walking pyramids of hats.”
Now Sir Richard was grinning with a slightly unfocused expression. I’d come to recognize it—it meant he was trying to remember the lines to write them down. Maybe it was Sam being interviewed and not the other way around, unbeknownst to him!
I had something else in mind, after the mention of Indians. “What do you know about the Paiutes? Where’s their camp? Can I meet some?”
Sam regarded me with curiosity and delight. That was what made him Samuel Clemens, I would say, a mind roving restlessly and a sense of humor about all it beheld. “I am acquainted with the Paiutes,” he allowed, “as few white men here are, and would be pleased to escort you on a tour of their camp and an elucidation of their ways.” Now he clicked his eyes from me to Sir Richard. “Especially if Captain Burton would grant me an interview.”
Sir Richard hesitated. He was willing enough, I knew, to talk to the press, which is to say to spin his own tall tales. But he had secrets to protect. He said, “Can we strike a bargain, Mr. Clemens? I will grant the interview if you will show us around your fair city.”
As the three of them strolled the streets, Burton felt exhilarated by the very air. A mining camp reeked of… desire. Everywhere the thump of hammers, the rasp of saws, shouts, the rattle of wagons, the clop of hoofs, lads yelling out the headlines of their newspapers, posters trumpeting chances to get rich, bulletin boards declaring the latest prices of mine stocks—everything in the world rushing to become what it was not, as of yet.
Cravings churned within Burton. He knew that, against the precepts he had learned so diligently in the Orient, he had not changed himself. He suffered from desire and dissatisfaction with the present as much as any.
They strode on briskly. Burton loved his little charade with Clemens and was intrigued by what the newsman pointed out. Yet the attacks on his sense swept away his whole being. Opium. Women. Booze. Opium. Women. Booze. Oh, Isabel.
As they passed gambling houses, he felt pleased that he was no addict of the roulette wheel or the faro box. His first enchantment was women, and here they were aplenty. Painted women, some of them showing their legs and sneering provocatively, even in the early evening. Women looking damaged, actually selling their pathos and helplessness. Elegant women of the demimonde, young, beautiful, dressed even better than their respectable counterparts in the latest San Francisco fashions. There were fancy respectable women, too—wives of the prosperous, many of them, out for shopping or for luncheon. Wealthy women, owners of land, investors in stock, about the town on business. Burton couldn’t yet tell invariably which women were respectable and which not, but all the citizens would know.
He breathed in and out deeply. He might want one of these women, the high-class harlots. Or he might want one of their low sisters. Though it shamed him to admit it, he might especially want a Chinese woman and then opium.
For now he felt exhilarated. The desire was ripe for him to breathe. Desire for gold, desire for flesh, desire for power, desire for inebriation, desire for lotusland, desire for madness. He loved the feel of a mining camp.
He would indulge. Temporarily, that is. Burton well knew—hadn’t he and Isabel talked about it for long hours? hadn’t he made her promises?—yes, he well knew that for him wine, women, and opium were the road to madness. He could not indulge. Well, not more than briefly.
Clemens looked sharply at Burton. “Perhaps the great American enterprise is selling illusion,” he said with a touch of asperity. The captain beheld a street blocked by wagons, and on the boardwalk a huckster of the typically American sort haranguing a small crowd. His speech and dress gave him away—both attempted an impression of substance, but a glance revealed that the man had no breeding. What compelled Burton’s interest were a lad with spotted skin, a gargantuan snake, and a female dwarf.
“Gentlemen,” the huckster began, “you will agree the creatures before you deserve both your pity and your generosity. Behold this wonderful spotted boy, captured in the wilds of Africa, the huge boa constructor, which you see him handle with the greatest possible freedom. And here is the wonderful little Fairy Queen, eighteen years of age, and only thirty-one inches in height. She was born in Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, has a thorough education, and possesses the graces and manners becoming a lady of the highest standing in society.”
“Let us move on,” said Burton. He felt revulsion for the show, for the illusion. Somehow the huckster would turn sympathy into tossed coins, and would hint that the diminutive Fairy Queen, possessed of such graces and manners, might be available after dark for unusual sexual experiences. Burton had seen it in a hundred cities.
They strode briskly past every kind of business, saloon, general store, restaurant, outfitter, assayer, nearly all in tent buildings with false fronts. They turned up a steep street—everything was aslant here—architecture, engineering, business, and of course morals. The breathless climb stopped even Clemens from his tour spiel until they turned back onto a horizontal road. Then he began a history of the Comstock Lode.
Burton knew the story well enough. Three and a half years ago a bunch of miners panning for gold, doubtless the usual riffraff, discovered by accident that the ground was bursting with another metal entirely, silver. Even the muck they were throwing away to get at the gold was silver ore. Silver that assayed at unheard-of prices. Bonanza!
The California gold rush was old and tired, the easy pickings gone. So over the Sierra Nevada swept hordes of gold rushers. They set up a tent village. The first winter they came deuced close to starving to death—supplies packed here soon ran out, and snows closed the mountain passes. Then the diggings turned out to be demanding. Instead of panning and washing, the miners had to probe far into the earth. This required many men, much labor, expensive equipment, and, most of all, it necessitated capital. Thus did big money come to Washo. The more independent-minded miners went elsewhere, and the others became employees or …
“Do you know by what means most men live here, Captain?” Ever a showman, Clemens was determined not to let his audience’s attention wander far. “By our wits. You think by mining, or building, supplying lodging and meals, washing clothes, selling supplies, and it is so, for some people. John Chinaman concerns himself a good deal with woodcutting, laundering, cooking, and waiting on people. The Paiute devotes himself to physical labor. But the man of wit and enterprise, he casts his glance higher. If he starts by mining, he soon moves into high-grading. If gambling, he soon learns to play sharp. If prospecting, he learns to sell a worthless prospect. If investing in mining stocks, h
e develops sources of forbidden information. And if she came for love, naturally, she soon apprehends how to make love turn a profit. You never saw such a people for living by their wits.
“After all, we have money, money, money. Where there is plunder, there will be pirates. No one really minds. Money is happiest, they say, when it is running from pocket to pocket to pocket.”
At this very moment an old codger approached Clemens and waved him into a doorway. Clemens went, smirking. The codger spoke, hesitantly, reluctantly, a look on his face that was a parody of secretiveness. After a few moments Clemens put on a very sincere look, indeed a falsely sincere look, and gave the man a few coins. The fellow gazed back into Clemens’s eyes with a regal countenance, as though he were dispensing boons to the newsman, not the other way. He slipped a ledger from within his raggedy coat, produced a nub of a pencil, and made a few marks in the ledger, surely in an impenetrable code. Then the codger looked about as though for enemies, hid the coins upon his filthy person, and slunk away.
“What was that about?” said Asie.
“That old prospector, name of Fitzgerald,” began Clemens in the way that indicated a delectable story was coming, “is one of our shrewder citizens at living by his wits. He sells shares in mines that don’t exist.”
Burton was tickled.
“Don’t exist?” said Asie. “How does he get away with it?”
“Originally, he bought a mine of some worth and sold it,” said Clemens, “establishing his bona fides, so to speak. Then he disappeared for a bit and came back with a story of a strike up in the Black Rock Desert. Naturally, he needed a good stake to develop this strike. He went about and gave a few of us the opportunity of coming in on the deal—just his special friends, except that we never saw him outside of bars. It was all very hush-hush, of course—if word got out, claim jumpers would be all over the place. He allowed us to invest twenty dollars each in his great enterprise.”
“Twenty dollars wouldn’t buy a fig,” said Burton.
“That’s why I was sure old Fitzgerald was running a blazer. Anyhow, when he’d raised enough, he headed out to do his proving-up work, so he said. No doubt he actually went to the pleasure palaces of San Francisco to reinvest our funds in personal delights. In a few weeks he returned with the sad news that the stake wasn’t enough, he’d misjudged a little, and he needed more. Again, hush-hush, we invested our twenty dollars a head, and he marked down in his ledger how much of his great strike we owned.
“In due time he disappeared and returned once more. The strike was greater than even he had imagined. He had assays to prove it—why just look here at these papers, which of course he bribed from any assayer what needed money. Sixteen thousand dollars a ton! Eighteen! And the vein was much longer, three times, once he really got to working on it! He would need …
“Once again coins were exchanged for marks in a black ledger.
“On this climactic occasion, however, he has surpassed himself in imagination. Everything is in readiness, he says. When he goes back this time, he will finish the staking out and proving up and make an announcement. Why, this news will blow the lid right off Nevada!
“He has only one problem! Rumor threatens to undo him. If he leaves, he will be followed by gents who have heard of his bonanza, and rough gents, too! He must outwit them. So he must hire a man to wear his clothes and set out down the mountain with burros and wagons, to the northeast. He himself will buy a fast horse, disguise himself impeccably, and ride south to Carson City. When he’s sure the disguise has fooled everyone, he will ride like the wind to the Black Rock Desert …” Clemens held up both arms and shrugged. His eyes told how much fun he was having. “He needs an additional investment of only ten dollars!”
“Won’t you fellows catch him crooked?” said Asie.
“No, he’ll buy that fast horse, sure, and use it to make for San Francisco.”
“Why do you go along?” asked Burton.
“Actually,” said Clemens, “I am a special case, his smallest investor, his gesture of friendship. And he gives me something for my money. Old Fitzgerald knows more about who’s who in Virginia, and especially who’s well fixed, than any mortal.” Clemens looked brightly at Burton. “It was him that give me you, matter of fact. But he told me you was Richard Burton the explorer and author.”
“That is Captain Richard Burton.” He put a smile with the lie. “I am Captain Sir Richard Burton. It is a common name.”
We walked along in silence a while after that, me feeling sheepish.
But I was excited, too. Virginia was like no other place on earth, mainly because of the people. Businessmen dressed like going to their clubs in San Francisco. Miners in overalls, caps, shoes, and no shirts. Mexicans, Italians, Greeks, South Americans, all swarthy. Germans, Serbians, Russians. Irish, with their musical accents. John Bulls. Backwoods Americans. Yankees. Gentlemen of the South, and riffraff of the same place. Even Mormons. Most exotic were the queued Chinamen leading donkeys humped with firewood for sale, and the Paiutes in face paint, claw necklaces, feathers, and white men’s shirts and trousers.
The streets were stuffed, and Sam said they were crowded in Virginia day and night alike. The mines worked in shifts, the miners wanted food, drink, gaming, and women when they emerged from the dark shafts, and the providers obliged, gladly, in return for coin.
The languages were babel. You never heard so many foreign ones, nor so many ways of talking English. Sam wrote a sketch of it in Roughing It, no need to repeat that here.
Physically, aside from the canvas buildings and the steep slant, its greatest peculiarity was that the village was tucked in among huge piles of rock debris—tailings from the mines, which made all human endeavor look dwarfish.
“Those who come to Washo,” Sam went back to his tour-guiding, “have no need of hell. The devil himself is affrighted of visiting here. We supply our own devils, who call themselves badmen. They dress like gallants, wear a sidearm on each hip and another in each boot, and walk with the swagger of giants. Until you’ve shot your man, you can’t be a badman, so many aspirants come belching flame. They kill the first man that annoys ’em, or strikes their fancy as a handsome corpse. That’s why ‘Dead man for breakfast’ is the rule. Ever’ day you wake up, there’s a body in the streets, holes in it, but otherwise unaccounted for.”
“Dead men for breakfast,” said Burton. “Washo is a very dangerous place.”
“Not just because of that,” said Sam. “There are three main diseases at this altitude. The one ever’body talks about, lead poisoning, which is a considerable hazard. The second one, more dangerous, is greed. I scarce need to elaborate on that one,” he commented, and then elaborated anyway. “I say the easiest mark in the world for a swindle is any man in Washo. Ever’ one has conned himself before he got there, and merely awaits confirmation.
“The third disease? Why, that is illusion. True, this malady grows as a native the world over, but Washo is a case so conspicuous a man can hardly credit it. Ever’ man here walks around imprisoned by his own dream of what he is about to become.” Sam gave us the big eye, and the bush on his lip twitched. “Why, sultans and caliphs have no vaults of treasure nor any concubines to compare. Why …” He fell silent for a moment. “Boys,” he finally said, “I’m sorry to say I am defeated. The power of illusion in Washo, why, I can find no words big enough to serve it up true.”
So the party fell into a funk—defeat will do that. We walked along catching our breath for a little. Then Sam says, “Mebbe now that interview …”
“What could a traveler for pleasure like myself tell you?” says Sir Richard.
“Mebbe whether, like they say, the twenty-ninth language you speak is pornography.”
Sam grinned, and Sir Richard held out an arm that guided us into the Heritage.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As we clinked through the half doors of the saloon, I heard the fine upright piano opposite the bar, singing and singing. Felt like someone grabb
ed me by the ears.
I did what I do sometimes, circled away from what had hold of my mind, pretending to look at something else, anything else. I hadn’t seen anything like the Heritage before. It was a two-bit saloon, a place where everything—a beer, a whisky, a cigar—cost two bits. Ordinary saloons in Virginia, for workingmen, were bit places, where everything for sale cost one bit, twelve and half cents, or even a short bit, a dime. The Heritage was class, class, class: The front half of the room was small tables, the right side a polished bar with a grandly carved back bar. The whole rear was gaming—outfits for bucking the tiger, roulette wheels, chuck-a-luck layouts, and felt tables for poker, each manned by a tinhorn in a tuxedo. Oil lamps lit the house. The bar had a brass footrail. Brass spittoons served convenience everywhere. Mixologists—that’s really what they called them—served up drinks with ice. Can you imagine ice in your drink, hauled all the way from Lake Tahoe and stored all summer long, in a town where they near starved to death three years before?
I stood there for a minute, beholding the finery and listening to the music. Then I noticed one of the mixologists was beholding me. When he looked down, I knew I was OK. In America fine duds can make dark skin acceptable, lots of the time.
I walked toward the piano against the far wall, away from the bar. By now I was so mesmerized, I bumped into chairs as I went. The tune was one I knew, “Didn’t It Rain,” an old spiritual. The pianist was giving it a different feel, though. He sped the tempo up fast till it made your feet itchy—now it was actually too fast to dance to. Did things with the melody, too, notes to give it a mournful feel, mournful but really alive. Most of all, though, he was fooling with the rhythm, giving the tune an off-the-beat bounce. Instead of BAH-bah-BAH-bah it was b’BA-ah! b’-BA-ah. I can’t rightly tell you about it, but you would recognize that feel in a jiffy. What you would call it was colored people’s music.