Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  Nate had left early that morning, again. Gone digging for gold in the river, refusing to let her join. Telling her to stay put. Warning about unsavory men roaming around, men with a mind to take what they will. Elisabeth was done waiting on him to bring her something decent to eat. She grabbed her satchel and headed for the river trail, thinking on how she’d get food in her belly with no money left. She wasn’t thinking about the roaming men but about the blisters on her feet still burning something awful from that long journey getting to the river. Elisabeth walked all afternoon alongside the American River roiling loud, cutting through the valley, tempting her. Tempting Nate. Her eyes burned with the honest light shining lush and vibrant through the narrow valley. The grass glowed golden along the river trail, and the rich green pines marched up the steep sides of the canyon, swaying alive and standing taller and fuller than the scraggly pitch pines at home in Concord. Warm air whooshed through the branches, spreading a sweet smell around.

  Arriving in Culoma Town, Elisabeth picked her way through a mess of empty tents strewn haphazard. Plopping down on a log in the center of town, she unlaced her boots to let her stockinged feet breathe and witnessed new beginnings. Industrious fellas buzzed around, hammering up buildings with fresh-hewn boards and siding and plank floors and shingle roofs. Jabbering and rushing. Heaving pails and shovels and pans and timber. Haggling for food and supplies. No women milled about, and she wondered if they were all hiding away too.

  Some of the fellas in town noticed her sitting alone on the log. One man dropped his hammer and walked over, stammering and stuttering as if he hadn’t seen a woman in years. She smiled polite, introducing herself as Mrs. Nathaniel Parker. More men came. And more. Until over a dozen stood around gawking at the only woman in Culoma Town. She pulled at her dress collar. Shifted her bottom on the log. Cleared her throat. When a few of the men sat down in the crisped-up grass like they had all the time to waste, she wondered why but didn’t dare ask. A fella with a long curly beard dripping down his chin offered her a cup of cool river water. She took it, gulping. Wiping her cheek with the back of her hand, she reddened with shame. When one man tossed two bits into her empty cup she looked at him coolly, thinking him daft. When another coin clinked into the cup, then another, she didn’t give them back. Didn’t look at the coins either. She simply stared up at the clear sky, fanning herself with her shabby straw hat, acting like she couldn’t care less if those foolish men wanted to waste good money just to sit near a woman looking not exactly pretty.

  “I’m not out here to beg,” she said.

  “Of course not,” said the long-beard fella.

  She shuffled her unlaced boots, tamping down the dry grass.

  “I’m simply out getting some air,” she said.

  “We all see that,” he said.

  An older man, wrinkled up like a prune, scooted up to her left knee. She caught him looking her up and down, leering, and she wanted to slap him for the lack of manners but held back. Letting men stare for money was unseemly, no matter the circumstances, but she knew each clink of a coin meant she and Nate would eat tonight. Oh, he’d be furious, of course. He’d probably even accuse her of flirting. Maybe she was. Flirting. Encouraging. She didn’t care. She needed a proper supper and a hot bath. Besides, the men seemed harmless.

  She considered how many coins those fools had given her, but was too afraid to count for fear they’d wise up to this absurd payment-for-gawking scheme and demand all those coins back. The men stared at her wide-eyed while a pecker pounded on a nearby trunk, knocking and knocking for grubs, matching the thud in her head.

  “Any of you know a Henry Goodwin?” Elisabeth asked.

  “That your husband?”

  “My father. He settled a claim up the North Fork,” she said.

  It’d been nearly a month since he’d run off with that Indian girl, and she still stung sore and angry at his leaving. She convinced herself he’d change his mind. Convinced he’d return to the claim eventually.

  “Sing us a song?” A prune-face fella asked.

  “Not hardly,” she said.

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  Not exactly delicate, Elisabeth lacked the finer qualities admired in most ladies. Her singing sounded more feeble frog than melodious finch, and she had no patience for sitting still for parlor conversations, finding the feminine topics of curtain colors and canning peaches dreadfully dull. Nate said she walked too heavy, but she knew he’d appreciated her strong back when they’d taken turns pushing their cart loaded down with his case of books through the foothills and into the river basin.

  “Can’t,” she said.

  Conscious of her mousy plaits splayed loose and messy, she smoothed stray strands behind her ears and slipped a hand into her skirt pocket, touching the little booklet she carried always, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance.” It was a parting gift from her dear friend Louisa May Alcott, inscribed by the author himself: “In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”

  She’d read the book over and over again, until she could nearly recite whole sections by heart, stuffing herself up with more learning than she’d ever known. Her mind stumbled through the chapters searching for an understanding, making her feel halfway educated, however far below the intellect of Louisa May, whose parents actually believed in educating a woman toward betterment.

  She fingered the worn spine of the book, listening as the men gathered around peppered her with questions teetering on the edge of aggressive.

  “You got something else for us, then?”

  “Something sweet?”

  “What you got, lady?”

  “Sing for us.”

  “One song, lady. Won’t you?”

  Their voices mixed together into an animal chorus, like pups yipping with eager expectation, falling all over themselves looking for mischief but baring sharp teeth nonetheless. She wasn’t about to encourage them in the wrong direction. A trickle of sweat dripped down her brow as she squeezed her eyes shut, more than a little afraid of what she might’ve gotten herself into.

  “My husband is returning any moment,” she said.

  “Why’d he leave you alone?” the prune-face fella asked.

  The question lingered in her ears as she wondered why, indeed. Wiping her forehead with her dress sleeve, she stuffed her fear and studied the faces of the men circled around. They looked as if they’d spent months ripping their hands raw digging for gold in the river with nothing to show but a head full of dim-witted dreams. Way too skinny, the lot of them. All sun worn and covered with a thin layer of dirt and dust, and stinking with a western rank she couldn’t place. Covered in sweat mixed with burnt grass and warm sunshine and hope, they looked in sore need of comfort, all the while grinning like they knew a secret she hadn’t yet learned. She wondered what brought them west, if they’d been desperate like her, or sought adventure. Either way, who was she to say no if they wanted to rest in the grass flipping coins into her cup for nothing?

  “Perhaps I’ll read aloud,” she said, hoping to redirect their attention.

  She cleared her throat like Louisa May’s mother did before saying something important.

  “In ‘Self-Reliance,’ Emerson says our minds are subject to an unhappy conformism. He lives in the town where I grew up. Concord, Massachusetts.”

  Opening the book in the middle, Elisabeth began, reading Emerson’s words slow and deliberate.

  “The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

  After two pages, the prune-face fella sidling up close put a hand on her boot, but she didn’t flinch. When he slid his hand up to her ankle, she kept on reading, wondering how far he’d go. The other men didn’t say a thing about prune-face fella’s wandering hand. Perhaps they didn’t notice, too caught up in Emerson’s words coming out of he
r mouth. When the prune-face fella ran his rough fingers up her stockings, she still didn’t stop him, finding herself aching pathetic for the attention. When his hand went up her skirt, nearly reaching her knee, she stopped reading and looked down into his face. He smiled with a mouth full of white teeth, not looking old after all, just wrinkled up red without a hat under the California sun. With sudden contempt for both the man and herself, she kicked prune-face fella’s shoulder harder then she’d meant, and he fell backward onto his bottom with a crunch in the grass.

  “Keep your hands off!” she said.

  Prune-face fella laughed wild and loud.

  She closed “Self-Reliance” with a slam, and another man spoke up.

  “Don’t scare the lady, Joe,” said the long-beard fella.

  “You leave her be, Joe. Her reading’s fine,” said another.

  “Awww. She don’t scare so easy,” said prune-face Joe.

  As she laced up her boots, the men asked her to stay. Pleaded. Begged her to read more. She shook her head no. When the long-bearded fella handed Elisabeth a slice of bread, still warm and soaked with butter, she hesitated, knowing nothing came for free.

  “Go on, ma’am. It’s a gift. For reading,” he said, sounding earnest and kind.

  She was too hungry to refuse and grabbed the bread, gobbling it down in three bites, spilling crumbs down the front of her dress. She looked down at her palms, crusted over with calluses from pushing the cart loaded down with supplies. Her nails stuck out ugly, ripped ragged from her nervous biting. Those lovely gray gloves Nate had given her as a wedding gift had torn to shreds weeks ago. Traveling west had stolen her womanliness. With a pride all but gone, she figured it was time to get up and walk away with that slice of bread in her belly and all those coins jangling in her cup. They wouldn’t dare stop her. As she finished lacing her boots, two more fellas walked up, talking loud and boisterous. One man took of his hat off and whistled.

  “Looky here, Chana. A real live woman! Well, aren’t you a sight. The pink of perfection.”

  “Pardon his rudeness, mademoiselle. My friend hasn’t seen a woman for so long, he’s forgotten himself,” said Mr. Chana, tipping his hat.

  She straightened up, nodding polite.

  “Jim Colton’s the name, ma’am. I come from West Virginia. Figured diggin’ gold from a river out here beats digging for coal down a mine out there. This one here’s my digging partner, Claude Chana. He’s from France,” said Mr. Colton.

  “France!” she said, amazed he’d come from all the way across the world.

  “I must say, ma’am, you’re a beam of beauty. Those green eyes! A solitary sight bringing a man to tears. Offering a bit of joy in the hardness of life. Piercing our blindness with a rainbow of color,” said Mr. Colton.

  His words sounded silly, like a joke at her expense. She knew she looked a mess with stinky stockings and unwashed hair gone all catawampus. Even so, she liked the man’s humor.

  “Oui. Belle,” said Mr. Chana, his voice heavy with a French tongue.

  “Like our mothers and sisters and wives all rolled into one,” said Mr. Colton.

  She placed a hand over her lips to prevent a nervous laugh from escaping out her mouth, and stood up.

  “I was just leaving. Good day, gentlemen,” she said.

  “You know mending?” Mr. Colton asked.

  “Of course,” she said, turning around.

  “I done torn my shirt. See here?”

  Mr. Colton peeled off his shirt before asking her price. She’d never seen a naked man. She’d only been married eight months and had been traveling most of that time. The few times she and Nate had been intimate, he’d kept his shirt on, leaving her to imagine his naked body by running her hands along the muscles in his back.

  She couldn’t look away from Mr. Colton’s bare chest. His big belly flopped generous over the top of his dusty brown trousers. He filled out paunchy in the gut with thick patches of hair sticking out all over his shoulders down his chest like a mangy dog, but his arms looked better suited for a younger man, sinewy and firm. Elisabeth was surprised she didn’t feel a lick nervous seeing a man standing in front of her half naked. On the contrary, she felt calm and in control. She took his shirt, turning it over, wondering on a fair wage for fixing a two-inch tear. If she asked too much, Mr. Colton might balk. Too little, and he might not take her serious. Remembering the price gouging at Brannan’s Dry Goods in San Francisco, she bet on the value of scarcity.

  “A rip along the seam like this will split your whole shirt in no time,” she said.

  “I figured,” said Mr. Colton, slapping Mr. Chana on the back.

  “Two dollars.”

  “Deal.”

  “Merde, Jim! You really need that chemise fixed? The Chinamen will fix it up for half.”

  “Mind your damn business, Chana. I aim to cheer the lady.”

  “I’ve only white thread. It won’t match the gray.”

  “Matching don’t matter t’all. Take your time. But not too much, otherwise that afternoon sun’ll burn me up like a spit pig,” Mr. Colton said, laughing hearty.

  She dug around in her satchel for a thread and needle. Relieved at negotiating an honorable trade, she now sat tall on the log, threading through Jim Colton’s shirt, while he and Claude Chana sat down with the other men in the grass watching her work. She pulled tiny, tight stitches through the shirt slower than necessary to make Colton think he was getting his money’s worth.

  “Smaller stitches hold up better with rough digging,” she said.

  “Mmm,” said Colton, looking on with the rest of the men.

  Prune-face Joe was sitting a ways behind Mr. Colton, and she relaxed her shoulders, again trying to interest the group away from her womanly self.

  “Finding any gold?”

  The men split open up like a sack of beans then, spilling out tales of digging and finding just enough flecks to keep them fed. A few grumbled about luck being stingy, but Claude Chana bragged, saying he’d pulled a fortune from the river. Everyone listened as the Frenchman boasted on and on while she mended Mr. Colton’s shirt.

  As the sun hung low over the far ridge, she cut the thread with her teeth and tied the ends, then folded up Mr. Colton’s mended shirt, pressing the wrinkles flat against her chest. When she held out her hand for payment, Mr. Colton dropped two dollar coins in her palm, and she plopped the money into the cup with the rest of her earnings. She handed the shirt to Mr. Colton, who shook it out, admiring nothing at all.

  She’d never made so much money for so little effort. It had taken barely fifteen minutes, although she could’ve sewn it up in two. She was giddy at how easy she’d earned it, just sitting on a log sewing. Making as much sewing up Jim Colton’s shirt as she would’ve standing on her feet fourteen hours for six whole days back at the Lowell Mill, weaving her shuttle fast enough through the fabric to keep up, lest she lose a finger to the loom. Or worse, losing half her head like little Lucy.

  Sewing Colton’s shirt was the first time she’d earned money for herself. Not for her brother Samuel’s schooling at Amherst or for Nate and his books. She’d earned it for her own supper and a hot bath. She figured the whole setup too good to be true. A fluke. A single shot of luck. A woman earning money couldn’t be that easy. She half expected some law man to come out from behind a manzanita bush saying a woman making money like that was against the law. She couldn’t wait to count up all the coins back at their tent.

  Elisabeth looked down at the grass and saw a swarm of tiny black ants scurrying up her boots. She hated ants. Jumping up with a start, she kicked and stomped. The men on the grass jumped up, too, hooting along like they were all dancing together. Then she noticed a big group of diggers coming up the riverbank toward the commotion, lugging pans and picks, looking worn and tired, but still joking and jostling each other. Among the motley crew of Orientals and Americans and Californios in various states of dishevelment walked Nate, unshaven and bedraggled, his suit vest buttoned u
p uneven, his white shirt gone drab. His blond hair had grown out too long in the past months but still looked endearing, flopping bright in the late afternoon light, although she couldn’t get used to his beard, scraggly and unclean. In Lowell, he’d shaved meticulous and always wore natty clothes.

  Nate smiled easy, with his arm draped around the shoulder of another gold digger like they were old friends. She hadn’t seen him so lively since leaving Massachusetts so many months before. She pricked with envy. Catching his eye, she saw his brightness dim into a scowl, and his joyful smile leaked away like water from a cracked pail. As he diverged from the diggers and plodded in her direction, she dropped the coins from the cup into her skirt pocket and slipped a few down her boot, quick.

  2

  “The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

  “What the hell were you thinking, leaving the tent? Coming into town! What sort of addled-headed woman are you?”

  Nate wasn’t a man to curse, no matter how frustrated. His sharp tone gave her a fright.

  “You needn’t insult me.”

  “I told you not to mix with those men. It’s dangerous,” he said.

  They argued in the dark outside Shannon and Cady’s Store, a newly painted white clapboard building with real windows gleaming bright from lanterns inside. Nate gripped Elisabeth’s elbow, preventing her from going in.

  “You’re the one left me alone, getting sidetracked digging in the mud. I took care of things myself. Earned us a proper sit-down supper,” she said.

  “I was digging for gold!”

  “And?”

  “It isn’t as easy as all that . . . pulling up gold from the river in a hat. That’s a myth. It’s hard going and takes a strong man. I dug all day without stopping while teaching English to a man named Cho digging beside me. He gave me some rice in exchange,” he said.