The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  “One people builds fine brick houses. The other lives in scraps. One people eats steak, the other eats the leavings. One …”

  “You get on,” she said, good-humored now. “You see better’n that. Or you don’t, come to camp, set down and look. Yes, they rich, we poor, you bet. Now. They miserable. Far away from families, men alone with other men, I know how they live. Go to whores, get drunk stay drunk days and days, rob each other, beat on each other, kill each other, kill themselves from misery and despair. I seen it, sure I seen it.

  “Look at poor little me, then, crossed to the other side. I give up fancy houses, smooth sheets, and canned food, and for what? Lemme tell you for what. I got my family, I got my husband and kids, I got my brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandpas and grandmas, nephews and nieces, I got everything.” She nodded at me as though to repeat, Everything.

  My heart did a little tap dance.

  “How many men come here with they families? Where your family?” She pointed straight at me, and I could feel how rude the jutting finger was. “Where’s that Sam’s family? Back in Missouri. Where’s that Sir Richard’s family? Back in England. You all living like sailors come into port. I bet. Civilized? We’re civilized, watch out for each other, make sure everybody treat each other OK. No Paiute goes too hungry, we get food together and share it. We don’t let nobody end up naked, or get sick without being took care of. How much of that can you say? How many you men in Virginia watch out for each other? Or do you watch out see if somebody dies so you can get what’s in his pockets?

  “Last year a white man said he’d go and get me a job, I wanted to come back to town and live white. I laughed in his face. Why would I want to live white? Lose my husband, who takes care of me? Live alone, get preyed on by white men who see a lone woman as a target. If I fall into debt, go to jail or work like a slave or sell my body to pay it off. Be lonely every day, not know what I’m living for, not be able to offer my children anything to live for, ’cept get treated bad by white men think they’re superior.

  “I’m rich, and you men are all the way paupers.

  “And here’s the worse of it. Every day you white folks wake up and think, ‘We’re high and all other creation is low.’ That’s as what sticks in my craw. So I wake up every day and say, ‘Praise God. Lord, you set things right, you made me red and not one of them whites.’”

  On top of the divide there I turned back. They invited me to camp for dinner, but I felt like being alone. I noticed Paiute Joe just kindly smiled sweet and kind as we said our good-byes, and sure didn’t say anything to correct what Sallee Joe had proclaimed, nor set her down for saying it.

  My walk home was strange; I don’t know how to tell you. I wasn’t a white man, I wasn’t a red man. Nor even knew which I wanted to be. I wasn’t thinking Virginia City was a jimmy-joomy place, but I wasn’t holding out for the Paiute camp either. I saw the truth in a lot of what Sallee Joe said, and could have added other unpleasant truths from my own experience. I started out on this big ramble partly to find out if maybe my soul was Indian.

  So what was pushing my feet toward the town instead of the camp? I could have made a list of reasons, I suppose, but I wouldn’t have believed it. Right then, I don’t think it was anything fancier than, My friends are in town. I’m traveling with these, not those. I know about this, not that. I speak English, I don’t speak Paiute.

  I was feeling pretty subdued as I walked along. Didn’t recover any of my spirits until Daniel and I started making music for the dinner crowd at the Heritage. Come quitting time, I stayed and played all through the night. Slow ballads, spirituals, sad, soulful songs. I fingered soft chords on the piano and whistled above them, high and slow and sweet. White-man music, that I did understand.

  Richard Burton was shaving carefully. The scar on his cheek was always a nuisance to cut around, and he believed that he did it better than most barbers. A well-groomed appearance was important to him. After shaving and dressing, he would take his morning constitutional, have luncheon, and get down to writing.

  The afternoons worked well for writing. Nights he spent enjoying himself—forbidden pleasures, in whatever moderation he could muster. Well before dawn he was in bed. During the forenoons he slept, then a substantial luncheon—one Virginia restaurant was not half-bad. Then write all afternoon. For some days of the journey he had only notes, and he filled these out into full and proper entries in his journal. He felt fitful when doing it. Would he ever be able to reveal to the reading public that he’d traveled in America a second time? And let the Unionists know Her Majesty’s government had opposed them? Doubtful, very doubtful.

  Sun Moon’s fever was only occasional now—a spell of fever, say, every second or third day. Customarily, she went out to dinner with him. Sometimes she felt up to going out to luncheon as well, or for a short evening walk. In ten days she might be ready to travel. In that time he might have indulged himself sufficiently in Virginia’s pleasures—or might not. Praise be, there was always San Francisco. What hurry should he feel to get back to the exile of Fernando Po?

  When he had completed his toilette, he found Sun Moon waiting for him in the sitting room. “Please luncheon today here? I need talk.”

  Intrigued, Burton ordered food brought up. They exchanged small talk, which he normally hated, but took pleasure in with Sun Moon, as a way of showing her the social graces of the British and observing the social graces of Tibetans. He was gratified to see that she held back her particular object of conversation until they had set the dishes aside and poured the last of the coffee.

  “I tell secret, you keep?”

  Now Burton was intrigued. “Naturally.”

  “Promise.”

  “Yes.” My profession is secrets.

  “Thank you pay passage ship to Calcutta.”

  Burton was delightedly surprised. Sun Moon never discussed money. As a nun she had little occasion to use it. Now probably she found her financial dependence on him embarrassing. They both knew better than to add to her embarrassment with a vulgar discussion of dollars.

  She looked at him over her cup and said baldly, “I need more money.”

  He waited. Life was infinitely amusing if you waited and observed.

  She touched her belly. “I need help for my child.”

  Burton tilted his coffee right into his lap.

  Sun Moon managed not to smile at him. She waited patiently while he changed his trousers. When he returned, Sir Richard simply picked up where they had left off. “Your child?”

  She moved her fingers gently against her belly and took strength from it. She had thought it out, but she must go slowly and thoughtfully. What to tell, what to keep for myself. How to ask with dignity.

  With the power from her belly she quelled her desperation. That life in her belly, it kept saving her life. Now her position for meditation was left hand on the heart in her belly, right on the heart in her chest. Her mind sank into the point below and behind the navel that was the center of herself and the center of her child. I am making a new it, it is making a new me.

  “I once think this plan. Leave San Francisco few weeks, sail Calcutta, arrive winter, stay convent. In spring travel through mountain passes with traders of my people, go Lhasa. Stay at holy city, meet other teachers at ta ts’ang”—she fumbled for the English word—“college.” In summer travel east with traders to Kham, to Zorgai, to my convent, arrive autumn. One year.”

  She lifted a finger. “Was plan. No more. Now not safe.”

  She took thought. She must make him understand. “Child,” she said, her eyes moving to the hand on her belly. “Daughter.” Can you understand I know it is a daughter? Can you understand she is my life?

  “In spring I am big in belly. Show not chaste, not like nun should be. No respect. Travel dangerous for me, dangerous for child.” She let herself feel the life within her for a moment, enveloped, protected, nurtured, loved.

  She opened her eyes at Burton. She looked her appeal i
nto his heart. “Must have money. Not dress as nun. Dress as wealthy woman. Hire guides, servants. Much money. Must do. Else child—daughter—not safe.”

  She breathed in and out slowly, taking strength from her twin centers. “You help?”

  Burton felt the effort these words had cost her—even he felt exhausted. “Asie’s child?”

  She looked at him evenly, with great serenity, and did not reply.

  But he knew. And he saw. He saw that the life within her was changing her spirit. It gave her the desire to live. He felt a pang of love.

  He spoke gently. “I will be delighted to help. How much do you need?”

  She named a sum in Tibetan silver tamka. Burton translated that in his head into rupees, then into pounds, last into dollars.

  “Five hundred dollars should do it,” he said. Actually, he’d doubled what she asked for.

  She nodded. The sum must seem immense to her, who had never had access to money. For a Tibetan surely it was a vast sum.

  “Sun Moon, I’m delighted to help you. Don’t you think, though, that you should tell Asie? It strikes me that he has a right to know.”

  “You promise keep secret,” she said sternly.

  He nodded. “And so I shall. Don’t you think, though …” He stopped his tongue. Obviously you don’t.

  “What kind of life will your daughter have?”

  “She will be a nun of the convent at Zorgai, her life dedicated to moksha.”

  Burton pictured the convent in his mind, the huge prayer wheels turning, the prayer flags ever fluttering, the deep, nasal sound of the great brass horns, the chant of the nuns in the Lhakhang, the glow of the butter lamps. The ruined mother, the impeccable child.

  He looked at the autumn sunlight flooding in the window. He listened to the silence dancing around them, full of meaning and mystery.

  “Money,” she said hesitantly, “you have much?”

  Burton nodded. Five hundred dollars would in fact pinch considerably, but he considered it a debt of honor.

  “Sun Moon, you have both my affection and esteem. I will help you in every way possible.”

  She smiled, and in that moment he knew perfectly the meaning of the word beatific.

  Asie, though. Asie had struggled to save not only Sun Moon’s life but her spirit, her love of life. Now he was the instrument of her deliverance. Was he never to know?

  I swore.

  Sometimes Burton despised fate.

  Daniel took the next two mornings off from teaching. I clunked along practicing Chopin and Gottschalk on my own. When he got back, he put a proposition to me.

  “I have a job for you.”

  I looked at him peculiar. “What sort of job?” I mumbled. The Heritage going to pay me to side you every noon and night? That’s a full-time job already, without wage.

  “I’ll pay fifty dollars a week.”

  “Fifty dollars a week? Robbing the ore shipments?” It was double what a miner got paid.

  “At Western Union Telegraph Company,” says he.

  “At the Telegraph Company?” I squawked.

  From Chopin to the Telegraph Company—how could you make those two play in the same key?

  “So. Will you worm your way into the Virginia City Western Union Telegraph Company? Starting as soon as possible?”

  Fifty a week? It was a stake. It was what a young half-breed wanderer needed to get a decent start in life. It had to be underhanded. “Until Sun Moon is healthy enough to go on,” says I.

  She was still well one day, down the next.

  “Then we’ll have tea with Tommy Kirk,” says Daniel. “He’ll explain.”

  It wasn’t what Sir Richard described to me as a tea. Maybe it was more of a half-breed tea. Tommy had a cook that provided his eats the way he liked them, which was half from his father the John Bull diplomat and half from his mother the Shanghai courtesan. We had tea with scones and dim sum. Heckahoy, when I told Sir Richard, he thought it was funny as a dog with five legs. But to me it was new and fun.

  When we’d done a few sips and munches and the socially proper time had passed, Daniel pitched in. “I have thought it out with care,” he said. He commanded my attention with that hawk look of his. “What is most valuable in Washo is information, good information. If a man knows what wildcat mine is going to make a strike, or when the Gould and Curry, Mexican, Ophir, or Sergeant is going to open into a rich new vein, he can make money. Real money.” The Ophir, Mexican, Sergeant, and Gould and Curry were the main outfits in Virginia at that time. “He would buy stock in those enterprises. Or sell it. When news of the strike became public, the stock would rise on the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and a man could take his profit.”

  Tommy gave his generous smile. “Nothing is so common as information about what strikes are coming along. And nothing so unreliable.”

  Daniel nodded. “I investigated paying for good information. Unfortunately, whatever the wildcatters tell you is blue sky. The managers know the truth but keep their mouths shut. The miners in the new shafts talk sometimes, for money. But you can’t tell who’s telling you righteous and who’s not.

  “After giving the problem considerable thought, and after discovering personally how difficult it is to make money trading stocks in the normal way, I have hit upon an approach.

  “The principal owners of the four big mines live in San Francisco. The mine managers communicate with them constantly. By telegraph. They wire news of discoveries, news of busts. The owners wire back decisions to make announcements, to seek new capital, to buy new equipment, to expand or abandon shafts, and all other business ways.”

  The transcontinental telegraph was new those days, and businesses played with it like a new toy.

  Daniel took a big breath and let it out. “Rumors are flying just now. The Mexican is supposed to be on the verge of a huge strike. The Gould and Curry is supposed to be discovering that its new shaft is a bust. They say it both ways about the Sergeant. Stocks have been rising and sinking for over a week on these reports. Bonanza is going long, borrasca is selling short. Guess right both ways and your fortune in stocks will be bigger than the one in the ground.” Of course, no one knew yet the one in this lode was the biggest in the world.

  He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward toward me. “But why guess? Why not intercept the reports to and from the mine owners? And invest before the news becomes public.”

  “How?” I asks.

  “That’s where you come in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  It turned out easier than it sounded. I rambled round to the Company office and watched the operation. The fellow at the telegraph key wrote every message in dark pencil in block capital letters, then copied it out again and stuck it on a spike. The outgoing messages got stuck on another spike—a copy of every single message going out, a copy of every single message coming in, my snooping mind recorded.

  Then he gave it to a kid, and a word on where to take it. In those days they didn’t have messenger boys hooting around town wearing cute little cap and on bicycles (which hadn’t even been thought of yet). No, those days boys hung around the telegraph office and carried the messages for tips. Right off I saw the sticky part—if I just hung out like those boys, I’d get just a portion of the messages that came in, and maybe not the ones we wanted.

  So I lounged around the office and jawed with the operator, fellow name of Alvord Smith, about thirty, hair thick and stiff as a broom and totally gray. Main thing was the constant clatter of that fancy-looking key. Alvord could savvy its meaning without more than half-listening, but it didn’t make any sense to me at all. The very idea of sense from that racket reminded me of the nonsense lines from that song about the Celestials we’d learned on the trail:

  O ching hi ku tong me ching ching

  O ching hi ku tong chi do,

  Having got the hang of what was up and what was down in the operation of the office, though, pretty soon I had my idea. Alvord needed a backup operator, an
other hand to run that key, and wouldn’t I be his boy!

  Alvord, Sir, I think this telegraph business is just the jimmy-joomiest work I ever saw. What is Morse code anyhow? (Says Alvord, I happen to have a codebook right here.)

  I don’t hardly see how anybody can hear sense in all that commotion the key makes. (Aw, shucks.)

  I don’t hardly see how anybody can move fingers as fast as those code clicks and clacks go. (Aw shucks, aw shucks.)

  Maybe, maybe, Alvord, Sir, could I just try tapping something? (Why, yes, try SOS. I happen to have a spare key in this cabinet.)

  Clickety-clackety crash! Oh, Sir, it must take a devil of a fellow to do that.

  That same afternoon I got apprenticed to learn the operating trade. Alvord didn’t even have to pay me to get the training, and in return I was so grateful I’d deliver any messages he wanted, anywhere he wanted.

  So I had three ways to steal information. Take a message to deliver and sneak off and copy it. Get hold of the copy Alvord made. Learn to decipher that clacking with my own ear.

  Though I had pretty good ears, I wondered how long it would take to figure out that clickety-clack like Alvord did. That would be the unbeatable way.

  I made doodledy sure I was in that telegraph office every minute it was open, unless I was carrying a message somewhere. I figured out how to grab the messages for the mine myself and foist the others off on the hang-around boys. I slipped back to our rooms and scribbled down copies of whatever telegraphese looked good. A promising one might say, SIXTEEN GEARS SHIPPED STOP EXPECT DELIVERY 9-28 STOP. A not-so-promising one read, DO NOT THINK YOU CAN EVER COME HOME. Fearing I might miss something important, I got Alvord’s permission to come in at night and practice on the key. Then I read all of that day’s copies, and copied off the good ones. Alvord trustingly gave me a door key for coming and going.

  Infiltrating wasn’t as much fun as playing piano, but it was kind of fascinating. I’d sit near the sleeping form of Sun Moon with my bootlegged copies and read happily. Wasn’t I a regular spy, just like Sir Richard!

  After some thought, I took a little talk with Sir Richard that very evening. We spies don’t tell our conversation.