She chose her words to Louisa May careful, ever mindful of not writing beneath the intellect she thought her friend required. The lies were temporary. Innocent musings set down until she could think of something more pleasant to write about than her current predicament. She needed Louisa May’s friendship. Even with the great distance spread between them, Elisabeth longed for Louisa May and still wanted her to think she was as clever and worthy of her friendship as when they were young.
She wrote to Samuel saying they’d arrived safely to Henry’s claim but he’d gone, which wasn’t exactly a lie. She couldn’t find the words to tell the truth about the Indian girl, knowing he’d respond with an I told you so about Henry.
To her mother, she wrote reassurances of love. She didn’t mention any particulars, knowing she’d not likely understand much. When she last visited her mother in Worcester to explain she’d married Nate and was going west to find Henry, she’d stared back blank with the gashes on her wrists healed to thick flopping scars as evidence of what she’d done to try to end her pain.
After posting the letters, Elisabeth had only three dollar coins left. She walked over to the doctor’s place, finding him inside pulling a man’s tooth. She interrupted, telling him forty-five dollars to cut off a man’s leg was criminal.
“I’ll settle up what I owe with these,” she said, flopping the sack of rabbits on his desk.
The doctor took off his spectacles and peered into the bag at two hefty jackrabbits.
“Shot through at the neck,” she said, so he’d know he was getting more meat.
When the doctor hesitated, she cocked her head cute, trying to act a little silly and stupid so he’d feel sorry for her.
“Awww, come on, Doc. It’s all I got, besides a bum husband. And you already did the cutting, so you ain’t losing nothin’,” she said, slow.
He pulled the sack behind the counter and lifted his chin, motioning her off. Giddy, she slipped out the door quick, feeling only a little sheepish at acting so lumpish to get what she needed.
She walked up the road past the livery to find a woman throwing piss water into the nearly dry ravine beside her tent. She wore a red calico dress with a once-white apron and her hair split into two messy buns on either side of her head. The skin on her face sagged with pockets hollowed around her mouth and under her eyes. Three grubby little boys ran around, teasing each other. A rough flat board sign painted above the tent read: Boarding, $10 a night. A dozen tents circled around a giant sugar pine. Elisabeth peeked inside one at four wide benches, each with a tattered blanket at the end, folded up neat.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked, from behind.
“Are you Mrs. Luenza Wilson?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Is this a hotel?”
The woman looked her up and down with a sneer.
“Not that sort! I run an honest business. Those other ladies work further down. Git on,” she said curtly, shooing at her like she was a fly.
Elisabeth furrowed her brow, looking down at her man boots and cut-short skirt poking out from below the dead man’s coat.
“Oh! No. No. I must I look a mess.”
“Most folks look a mess when they come rolling in here. You’re no exception.”
Admiring the woman’s frankness, Elisabeth put down the sack of powder and gun.
“I hold claim down on the river with my husband, Nate Parker. He told me to ask after Luenza. I assumed that was you,” she said, pointing at the sign.
“Nate Parker has a wife? Well, good for him!”
She extended her hand, introducing herself as Luenza Wilson. After seeing the woman handling chamber pots, Elisabeth hesitated slightly, then grabbed her hand.
“Luenza,” she said, pumping her arm up and down strong. “A misunderstanding, Mrs. Parker. I’m just trying to establish a respectable place. I don’t get many lady customers, is all. You won’t likely wanna be sleeping with the men. You can bunk with me and my boys for five dollars.”
“Five?” she said.
Elisabeth stepped back incredulous, shaking her head. At that price, she’d manage the walk back to down the canyon in the dark. After buying the powder and food, she wasn’t about to waste her last dollars sleeping in a tent with bratty boys.
“I’ve already turned away a dozen men. I take in forty boarders each night, and they behave or I kick ’em out in the cold. As it is, I’m giving you a discount. I charge those men ten a night, knowing they’d pay almost anything for a solid meal and a warm bed.”
Doing the math in her head, she figured Luenza a rich woman collecting nearly four hundred a night!
“Oh,” she said, disbelieving.
“My husband Stanley’s always out digging. Looking to get rich quick. I keep saying, nothing comes quick. You gotta work every day. Be patient. Put in your due. He never listens.”
Luenza explained how she started out in one day, buying two boards off a man, and with her own hands laid them up on some barrels for a table. She bought a few chickens over at the Stamps Store on credit, and when Stanley came back that night he’d found a dozen miners eating supper with his wife. As Luenza bragged on, Elisabeth’s mind flipped around on the particulars of a woman getting up and going all by herself.
“From that first day, diggers came to eat. So I got some tents, and there you go. I clear a fair bit of profit after my costs. Joseph Stamps charges me a fortune to get the chickens up here from Sacramento, but I plan to raise my prices even more once the snow starts falling. Grab an even bigger share. I’m saving up to build a real hotel.”
“Impressive,” Elisabeth said.
“Out here’s the only place I know a woman can get a fair dollar for her work. Of course, I took my husband into partnership anyway, just to keep him from griping on me.”
What a curious arrangement, a wife taking her husband into a business partnership. She peppered Luenza with questions about costs, supplies, and profits. Luenza offered her a chair and told of her success. She listened in as Yellow Dog sat nearby turning with mild interest at the youngest Wilson boy pulling his tail. The two other boys kept hitting each other with sticks and playing gunfight, making an awful racket. They acted like wild animals, smelly and grubby, but adorable, too, with not a care in the world. She envied them something awful. When Luenza turned to talk to a customer, she leaned down to the little Wilson boy.
“My dog’s gonna bite you bad, you keep that up,” she said, stern. “He’s meaner than he looks.”
The boy ran away toward the creek quick, and Luenza started up talking again.
“Stanley works around here only when it’s too cold to dig in the river. He’s framing up a house around back, when he gets a mind to it. I hired a cook yesterday, an old man from Georgia, with knees too achy for kneeling in the river.”
A woman getting a solid business going in California from nothing so quick seemed a marvel. If Massachusetts had that sort of opportunity for women, Elisabeth might not have been so hasty in marrying and coming west. She wanted to move up to town, get something going for herself. But she didn’t want to give up the claim, as she’d surely regret hearing about someone digging up a fortune after she’d left.
“How about I help out in exchange for you giving me a bed?”
“I don’t need help. I told you I just hired myself a cook.”
“How about I watch your boys?”
“Do they look like they need watching?”
She looked over at the boys running wild down at the creek. One threw a rock and hit a miner in the shoulder, who stood up and hollered. She realized that she didn’t at all take to children, especially unruly boys like the Wilsons. But she needed food and a warm place to sleep that didn’t cost five dollars.
“Damn it, Luenza! Control your hellion!” the miner yelled.
“I’ll tell them a story,” Elisabeth said.
“You get my boys washed clean and get some learning into their head tonight, and you pay only a dollar for a m
eal and a warm bedroll,” said Luenza.
“Deal,” she said.
Corralling the Wilson boys proved torturous. She pleaded and cajoled for them to wash in a bucket of water as they ran around and wrestled with Yellow Dog, hollering in a painful pitch that exhausted her. When the oldest Wilson boy jeered at her man boots and kicked at her toe, she grabbed his earlobe until he turned red and nearly cried, while his two brothers watched, stone-faced.
“Get clean with that bucket, then sit for a story, or you’ll get worse than pinched. I’ll paddle the lot of you . . . just you test me!”
After her show of force, they sat quiet, listening. She hooked the boys with a story of Odysseus battling the one-eyed monster, describing in great bloody detail how the Cyclops ate the men one by one until Odysseus blinded it with a wooden stake. The boys looked affright at the tale, but she kept on going, aiming to scare them into submission. After a while, they fell asleep, and she ate a whole chicken supper before climbing in a warm bedroll beside the boys, feeling thankful Nate hadn’t gotten her with a baby. She lacked the patient temperament for rising up a brood. She heard Luenza cleaning up the dishes and pots but didn’t offer to help, thinking she’d paid her dues watching that woman’s hellions. Elisabeth slept sound for the first time in months.
The next morning, she said goodbye to Luenza and walked back down the ridge into the river canyon below. Arriving back to the claim as it began to drizzle, she saw Nate on a rock near the river looking sweaty and pale. He clutched a rope set down into a deep pool near Split Rock while two muddy men loomed over him.
“They’re showing me how to fish with a basket. Damn if I didn’t think of that!” Nate said, giddy.
Tired and wet, she went into the cabin to dry. When Nate crowded in with the men, they all took off their wet boots, setting them by the hearth to dry. She stoked up the fire, noticing one of the men held a string of fish, cleaned and ready to fry. The other man wore a serape and waited near the door. Nate limped over to the rocking chair, removing his hat and slapping the water off against his stump.
“Isn’t this the luck, eating fish with our new partners,” said Nate.
“Partners?”
In the dim firelight, one of the men took off his hat and nodded.
“Good to see you, señora.”
She recognized Álvaro then, with a guitar strapped over his back.
“Álvaro!”
“We meet again,” he said, standing short and round and smiling, with his arms out wide.
“I expected you earlier. So I could pay you proper for your help,” she said.
She explained to Nate how Álvaro had run for the doctor the night of the snakebite. In a rush of gratitude, Nate jumped up from his chair and threw his arms around Álvaro.
“I would’ve died! It’s fate! Fate, I tell you! Fate you were kicked off your claim for being foreigners.”
Álvaro’s companion spoke up from the dim corner of the cabin.
“I’m no foreigner. I was born here.”
Recognizing his voice, Elisabeth dropped the fire poker on the dirt floor. Taking off his hat, Nemacio looked worn, with long whiskers grown out full like Nate. He wasn’t clean-shaven like she remembered, but she couldn’t mistake that curly black hair, even in the firelight. Or that thick voice, no matter how soft he spoke. He introduced himself, placing a hand on his chest and making a small bow. Then he looked directly into her eyes, as if boring a hole of desire right through her.
January 1851
My Dearest Friend Louisa May,
Your letter comes to me as Sunlight Incarnate, with your poem of the same name gracing my dark winter days, “piercing the depths of the forest dense.” I read your letter, savoring each word, and gaining strength from you, however far, as I must.
Our days took a terrible turn since summertime. A tragic accident befell Father and Nate, the details of which are too terrible to tell. Father is gone now, and Nate is left in a state from which he must now recover. He remains fortunate to have lived at all. I know he’ll regain strength soon and be a strong man once again. I blame myself for his current condition and suffer a terrible guilt, although he does not condemn or accuse with grievance. He holds up brave and without complaint, joyful at a second chance at living. I do admire his temperament, for I am not sure I’d manage as such under the same circumstances. At times the burden caring for such a man in this wild place leaves me unable to breathe. But I am not afraid. I simply follow his example and try not to think on it. I’ve come to understand the undue difficulties facing a prideful man such as Nate, who has always had me depending upon him for security. We now move forward with grace into a brighter future, including all the tender loving a wife desires. Holding up physical love as a manifestation of soulful love may seem silly. I understand you cannot miss what you’ve never had, Louisa May. But I do, oh, how I do! Never you mind. One day you will, God willing, know loving from a man. From my experience, I’ve found the secret to getting love lies in the not wanting. As you’ve said, wanting too much leads to disappointment. You should know, dear LM.
The good news is, I’ve become a hunter, shooting rabbits for dinner. Can you imagine? My growing contribution is quite satisfying. We’ve taken on two partners at the claim, and just in time, if you must know the truth, as Father’s claim holdings are too large for the two of us to work as winter comes upon us. I’m deeply grateful for the Californios, Nemacio and Álvaro, considering Nate’s contribution is somewhat limited, given his current condition, however temporary. The Californios know the land and show us new techniques for finding the gold, giving us a spectacular chance for greater success in our enterprise, and in other more delicate matters which I dare not expound upon presently.
It gives me great joy to know you are writing again, with your ambition mirroring mine out here at the far end of civilization. It pains me, however, to read of your complaints. I cannot believe you truly think your family pathetic. Perhaps you’re simply sodden down with the great weight of poverty, which clouds your current perceptions. I understand how your father tests your patience, pushing his radical ideas into an unaccepting world while sacrificing the comforts of his own wife and daughters. A touch grandiose perhaps, but pathetic he is not, as he shows a paternal constancy, be it in a form you still might disapprove. Am I wrong to think family is like a boat keeping you afloat, however rusted and filled with holes the hull might be? Your family comes with a safe keel for which I forever longed. Perhaps I over romanticize the value of kinfolk, with my understanding somewhat clouded in the unfamiliar fog of the West.
In the meantime, I anticipate great fortunes by the coming spring, with sunlight as my comfort, as you say, “in the light of an eternal home.” For now, I have more than adequate. More than I deserve. I’ve enclosed a sprig from a giant sugar pine growing tall and proud upriver from our claim, and hope the glorious smell sweetens up your city room while I await your next letter. I beg you humbly for more poems and stories, as well as your contemplations on my notions set down here on paper, however contrary or agreeable.
Your rabbit-hunting friend on the American River in California,
EP
15
“If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.”
Maybe Nemacio came looking for her. Or perhaps it was a coincidence. Either way, her tide turned when the Californios arrived down at the river claim that winter. Nemacio and Álvaro pitched their tent in the pine grove and joined in the tedious labor, hunching over dirt-filled pans in the river, digging and swirling. Working outside froze up their hands and sent shivers running through them cold as a knife blade, but they all endured with a collective hope a generous vein of gold might reward them. Nemacio and Álvaro used their own pans and fished at the same time, with clever reed baskets dropped into the deeper sections of the river. Nemacio showed Nate how to fry up the salmon with sage and garlic he kept in a tin. She savored the pink fish, picking every
last bit of flesh off the bones and feeling full for the first time in months. During the day, Álvaro smoked the extra salmon so they’d have a stash for the winter, hanging thin strips over a low smoldering fire near the river on a structure he’d fashioned with pine sticks. He stored the smoked strips in one of Henry’s Indian baskets, hanging high over a tree branch.
“To keep bears away,” said Álvaro.
The Californios suppered in the cabin, warming themselves while waiting for their soaked socks and shirts to dry out on a rope strung above the hearth. Elisabeth averted her eyes when they undressed, not wanting them to catch her staring at their bare chests, but it proved difficult in a single-room not to steal a few glimpses now and again. In the candlelight she spied Álvaro with his big brown belly, round and rolling like dough when he laughed. Nemacio was lighter and taller and more brawny, smooth like a piece of twisted madrone. She struggled to look away from his beautiful broad chest, forcing herself to stare instead at his face, that hard-angled jaw and heavy chin with a deep dimple, right in the middle. He kept his face shaved clean after that first day arriving at the Goodwin Claim, and every morning there after, kneeling by the river with a straight razor and a little round gilt mirror he kept in his knapsack. Even in the rain.
Whenever her insides got churning at seeing him without a shirt, she pretended to read in bed by candlelight. Thankfully, Nate always stayed up while their clothes dried, rubbing the MarJax salve on his stump, giving the whole no-shirt situation an air of innocence. When their clothes dried, Nemacio and Álvaro always dressed and returned to their tent outside to sleep.
At first, Nemacio acted so polite and formal, Elisabeth thought maybe he didn’t remember dancing with her outside the Fandango tent. But one night when the firelight dimmed in the cabin, and Álvaro shut his eyes with exhaustion and Nate snored in the rocker, a log tumbled and crackled in the hearth. She looked up from her book to see him with his back against the door, his knees up and his arms gathered around himself, his eyes fixed on her, black like river stones. No one had ever looked at her like that before, long, with bare honesty and a hint of expectation and desire that made her unfurl inside, like a blanket being shaken out fresh on a warm summer day. She looked back at him, holding his stare, and she knew. He remembered. Their dance. Lovely and romantic and fraught. After a long while, she couldn’t stand him staring anymore, couldn’t stand the honesty of it. She wanted to turn away but found she couldn’t. She sat transfixed, locked in his gaze, trapped. When another log dropped heavy on the hearth with a pop, Álvaro startled awake, and Nemacio stood up, putting on his shirt. Opening the door to go, he turned back, nodding with a wink, and her heart dropped down nearly to her toes, her whole body rearranging its particular parts without permission.
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