Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  “I’ve an idea for something here in town,” she said, steadying her shaking hands below the table so they couldn’t see.

  “That doesn’t make sense. The claim’s finally paying out,” said Nate. “We’ve gotta go bigger.”

  “Work it without me. I’m staying in Coyoteville,” she said.

  Nate’s mouth still hung slack.

  “You’re gonna stay up here?”

  “I aim to build a business.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Not like you want me down there anyhow. Either of you,” she said, glaring at Nemacio now. “You two can work the claim without me. Hire another man on.”

  “Oh, no! No. No,” Nate said, shaking his head vigorous. “You’ve got to come back to the claim.”

  She figured he wasn’t interested in her and only wanted her share of the money, and her hunting his food and washing his drawers.

  “My mind is all set,” she said, her face set firm.

  Nate’s face fell soft and his voice quieted, talking to her as if coaxing a wild horse to calm down.

  “I’ll build onto the cabin, ’Lizbeth. You can have your own room.”

  “And how will you do that, in your condition?”

  She looked under the table at his half leg.

  “You’re not being fair.”

  “I’ve been fair enough, given the circumstances.”

  “You know I pull my weight down there on the river, digging and cooking. Come on back and I’ll fix things up nice for you. We’ll hire more men. You won’t have to dig anymore. Right, Nemacio?”

  Nemacio didn’t try to smooth things over between husband and wife as he usually did; he just looked back and forth between them expressionless, which irritated her to no end.

  “Thank you all the same. I intend to stay here. Open my own business,” she said.

  “What about your share of the claim?” Nate asked.

  “The way I see it, I’m entitled to one-third share of all future earnings on the claim, even not working it. Less your future capital investments, of course. We’ll have to figure out those particulars, with receipts and such.”

  “One-third of my future finds!” Nate said, angry.

  “I’m letting you have Henry’s cabin, which is mine by California law,” she said.

  “Speak some sense to her, Nemacio; she listens to you,” said Nate, flopping back in his chair.

  “Sounds about right to me,” said Nemacio.

  “What the hell? This setup makes no sense,” said Nate, throwing his hands up in the air.

  “You don’t need me anymore, Nate. You said yourself, you’re strong now. Besides, you won’t be alone. You have Nemacio,” she said, more sarcastic than she meant.

  “I can’t believe you’re running off now, just as the claim’s paying up,” said Nate.

  “I’m not running off. I’ll be right here in town, and I’ll come visit, see how you’re getting on.”

  “Do not travel the trail alone,” said Nemacio.

  “Fine! You come visit me here,” she said, turning to look at Nemacio.

  She knew Nate wouldn’t likely make the effort to visit but hoped to heaven Nemacio might come. She looked at him clear and honest, hoping he understood she was talking to him, alone. Understood her wants floating below the surface. Understood she was asking him for it.

  “What’s your plan?” Nate asked.

  “To sell books, and maybe my engravings, as if it’s any of your business,” she said.

  In secret, she wondered how she’d get along alone. She’d seen no examples of how a woman might manage, except maybe Luenza, but she had her boys and her husband, Stanley, when he felt like coming around. And Nandy had her man Billy.

  “You’ve no books,” said Nate.

  “I’ve ordered three boxes from New York. While I’m waiting for them to arrive, I’ve employed a man to travel to Sacramento and San Francisco to buy up all the books he can find. He left yesterday. When he returns, I’ll have my store ready.”

  “What man?” Nemacio asked.

  She didn’t answer, just smirked, hoping to make him jealous.

  “Who’s gonna buy your prints out here?” Nate asked.

  “I’d buy one,” said Nemacio.

  “All right, Nemacio,” said Nate. “She’s made a few pretty little pictures, but she can’t make a living selling them.”

  “I suspect she can,” said Nemacio.

  “I’ve already secured a location for my shop, near the end of the main street, where the wooden buildings stop and the tents begin. In the center of activity. I purchased wood on credit from the sawyer to build my shop.”

  “You took out credit without asking me!”

  “I don’t need your permission. You forget. In California, I have the same rights married or not. I can hold property and sign contracts without a man,” she said, raising her voice.

  “Without your husband?” Nate asked.

  “I don’t need you on my contract.”

  “Who extended that sort of credit to a woman?”

  “Mr. Stamps at the Dry Goods. I put up my portion of the claim as collateral. My third, mind you. It doesn’t affect you or Nemacio. Only me. Besides, I plan to pay him back in a few months, once I get the store up and going.”

  “The claim as collateral! Are you crazy? What’s the interest?”

  “You don’t need to know the particulars,” she said.

  Amused at his anger, she grinned, enjoying her position of power.

  “What a goddam place, California! Giving a woman the right to make a contract without her husband’s knowledge!” he started, spreading his arm wide in a comic gesture. “Perhaps the whole of America will adopt these liberal laws, sending our society into ruin. What’s next? Giving women the vote?”

  “It’s against my shares alone. And I had every right. My father gave the claim to me,” she said, matter-of-fact.

  “That’s not how I remember it. As I recall, he left the claim to both of us, Nate and Elisabeth Parker. Husband and wife.”

  “Stop!” Nemacio raised his voice. “What does it matter, all this bickering, with both of your names registered on the claim? Move on. Let’s talk expansion. I’m trying to save my family’s ranch.”

  Hearing Nemacio mention his family made him feel distant and unfamiliar. But Nate smiled at hearing Nemacio say he needed more from the claim, smirking like he’d stolen Nemacio away from her.

  Nemacio ordered a bottle of fancy French champagne to toast dead Álvaro, holding up the glass with a confident familiarity at using such finery.

  “To Álvaro, a man who tasted the zest of life,” he said.

  They all sipped, and the bubbles tickled Elisabeth’s throat as she wondered if the bottle had come all the way from France. Nemacio held up his glass for another toast.

  “And to the fragile joy of life, which flashes so rare and fleeting,” he added.

  She looked at him, wondering if he was talking about their fragile joy on that rock in the middle of the Uva. But he didn’t look at her. Instead, he lowered his head and started praying right there at the table, out loud, in Spanish. In California, being Papist didn’t seem that different from being a Protestant, and Elisabeth couldn’t even remember what her objection had been to that religion in the first place. Siding with Protestants had seemed so important back at the mill. Blaming the Catholic girls from Ireland for lowering mill wages made sense. Out west, there was no room for that sort of blame; things needed doing.

  They ate a steak supper, and Elisabeth cut her meat into little pieces, savoring each bite. Nemacio took a knife out of his pocket, unfolded a blade from a bone handle, and polished it shiny with his kerchief. She listened as he and Nate discussed expanding the claim, diverting half the river, working the bed, then diverting it again and working the other half. It sounded like a herculean effort that would require many men and resources. She was glad to be done with the claim. She’d never go back now that Álvaro lay dead in th
e ground and Nemacio had rejected her so plain. She’d never go back to pretending to be a wife or waiting on love. She aimed to get away from them both. Make something of her own. Make Nemacio miss her.

  As the afternoon wore on, the El Dorado filled with rowdy fellas ordering drinks and supper and playing monte. She wouldn’t get drunk with them or wait around for Nemacio to pay her special attention. She craved quiet, with the solitude of her Emerson book.

  “I’m done here,” she said, standing up.

  Nemacio stood with her to be polite, nodding cool and distant. Somehow she’d expected more from him, although she didn’t know what. It’s not like he owed her something. He wasn’t obligated. They’d both stolen that loving from each other on the rock in the middle of the Uva, freely. Still, she was angry his loyalty fell with Nate and the claim. She’d thought the loving between them was special, like an invisible, magic string thrumming and vibrating, even at great distances. She thought he might take her upstairs, right in front of Nate. She was wrong. He didn’t move. Instead, Nate escorted her upstairs, hobbling slow up each step. At the door, he asked to come in.

  “I’d rather sleep,” she said.

  “I’ll only take a moment,” he said, crossing the threshold without her permission.

  He looked around the room, entirely at ease, with a confidence and power new money brings a man. Propping his crutch against the wall, he stood on one leg, facing her, balanced new.

  “I suspect you’d rather I didn’t replace your wedding ring,” he said.

  Elisabeth wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. She was about to ask when he presented her with a red velvet box. She opened it; inside lay a new pair of gray gloves.

  “More practical,” he said.

  “They’re lovely,” she said, slipping them on. “Thank you.”

  “Won’t you change your mind about coming back down to the claim? We can make a go of it again, you and me.”

  “I’m fixed on staying here.”

  “Awww, ’Lizbeth, won’t you reconsider? You’ve been the perfect wife, taking care of me.” He hesitated.

  “You’ve not been the perfect husband.”

  “I’ll try. If you gimme another chance.”

  “But . . . I’ll never be a man, Nate,” she said, quiet.

  Nate took her fingers and brushed his lips along the gloves, kissing her hand with sweetness. He looked at her the same way Tom the dog had when he put his head in her lap, pleading. Her anger at him slipped away slight, replaced by a bubbling of understanding. An understanding of Nate’s whole self, the fragility and the power pressing together like two sides of a liberty penny, head and tails, depending upon how it landed on any particular day. Whether she liked it or not, he remained the sum of his parts, just like her, with two sides, one shiny and one dull.

  “Come back down to the cabin when you run out of money,” he said, turning to leave. “Or when you want to see your Californio.”

  Ahh . . . so he knew.

  “Goodnight, Nate,” she said, closing the door, knowing she was done digging for scraps.

  24

  August 1851

  My Dearest Friend Louisa May,

  I write once again, begging you, please don’t be sore at my contrary opinions about your father. I only meant to say I admired his efforts at experimental thinking, even as I understand his meager financial contributions cause you great discomfort. Perhaps I find myself jealous, as you enjoy a family, whole and together and in one place, even as the proximity strangles your sensibilities. Please forgive me and write to me soon, as I am in great need of your friendship, evermore now, as our little family on the Goodwin river claim has broken up. Álvaro has moved back to Spain, bestowing riches upon his family, with pride. His leaving feels as if the hardened scab of pain over losing Lucy has been ripped open, my insides oozing out messy. I miss the sound of beauty coming from his guitar, my world now filled with bleak silence in its place, deafening me in the void of his favor. I’ve no choice but to bind myself back up, wrap the festering loss under a bandage of courageous living. After all, it’s not as if he’s dead.

  I value the importance of your friendship immeasurably, and am eternally grateful for the letters you have written, especially the last one with your Flower Fables, written as Flora Fairfield. You must know the ending poem from your Frost King fable lifts me up, with two lines in particular enlightening my spirit beyond measure. “Thus by Violet’s magic power, All dark shadows passed away . . .” If only I possessed half the magic of Violet, or had help from those clever little fairies. Although I do appreciate your faith in me, and am bathed in the wonder of the glorious world you’ve created with trees and flowers and birds and joy. It reminds me to love my haven here, in all its wild unpredictability. No doubt, Flower Fables gives little Ellen Emerson a great joy knowing you wrote them specifically for her. Surely, the sweet girl is yet of an age to understand the true importance of literature in a woman’s life. Dare I say, it is the life force that keeps us moving forward, blotting out our troubles with soothing words of imagination.

  I think often of your troubles going out to service. It must’ve been simply dreadful, and paid only four dollars working yourself to the quick for the hardly honorable James Richardson! Obviously, the promise of employment as his poor sister’s companion showed itself as a terrible ruse to harass your womanliness. Count yourself fortunate you had the wherewithal to escape without blackening the man’s boots. I fear what might’ve befallen you succumbing to such humiliation. You must now reflect upon the whole horrible experience as a trove of material from which to write. Fodder for Flora, as one might say.

  As for our situation, we’ve built a bookshop up in Coyoteville, named Split Rock Books and Prints, after my favorite spot along the American River. It will soon yield a tidy profit, as Split Rock Books is the only place to acquire literature in all of the placers. I plan to sell my engravings too, after improving my printing technique with diligent practice. It may seem as if I’m building a business at the ends of the earth, but Coyoteville is becoming the center of the universe with a tremendous amount of gold fueling a progressive society built on the merits of equality, effort, and ingenuity. The town draws in a spectacular collection of the most ambitious folks around America and the world looking to improve their fortunes. Despite the hordes of miners burrowing like coyotes into the banks of Deer Creek, it’s the prettiest little place in the placers, with water sauntering through the town slow and predictable like a proper lady walking to church on a Sunday, and nothing at all like the wild tempest of the American down in the ravine. Perhaps by Boston standards it’s not quite as sophisticated, but it vibrates with an energy I can’t quite describe. Buzzing, but more. Ambitious and urgent. There are now 150 homes and businesses in the two-mile radius surrounding the town. The streets are situated like spokes of a wheel with mule trails leading up to miners’ tents and cabins on seven surrounding hills, like in Rome, with aspiring names—Piety, Prospect, Boulder, Aristocracy, Lost, American, and Wet Hill. Lost Hill isn’t meant to be negative, like being lost physically, but meant to imply being lost in pursuit of a new sort of living with delight. At the center of town is Luenza’s El Dorado Hotel, and Split Rock Books and Prints lies up the road with a dozen other businesses: an assay office, a post office, two general stores, three blacksmiths, a wagon wheeler, two liveries, a barber, two bathhouses, a bakery, one shoemaker, two churches, eleven saloons and gambling houses, and four hotels. So you see, I’m not stuck out in the wilderness but am living in the center of new society full of possibility and potential.

  Nate continues to manage our affairs down on the river claim, with Nemacio at his side as his partner. I’ve come to understand Nate holds a great affection for the man, which I find charming in its brotherly fraternity. Our triangle is not at all like that tragic tale of yours, The Rival Painters. Two in love with one. I am not at all the self-denying Madeline in your story, banishing my heart in work, “with a woman’s st
rength, all thoughts of love were banished.” Rest assured, with Split Rock Books and Prints, I now live with purpose.

  Please post me in Coyoteville, as I’ve planted myself and intend to grow even stronger roots as I await your next letter with great expectation.

  Your friend pursuing possibility in California,

  EP

  25

  “That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do it has increased.”

  She wasn’t a liar, despite her letters to Louisa May. She simply couldn’t bring herself to write down whole words of truth. Every time she picked up a pen, her wishes and dreams dripped down from her heart onto the paper. Her little fibs didn’t hurt anyone, she told herself. They were simply imaginings that promoted a more positive position to her friend. She didn’t want Louisa May to worry. Or say I told you so. Or think less of her. Besides, it’s not like she’d actually lie to anyone when it really mattered. She knew right from wrong, and aimed to build herself up as a respectable businesswoman. Start new. Bury her affections for Nemacio in work.

  For a fair price, the sawyer, Mr. Lockwood, lent one of his men to construct her a simple two-room cabin with plank walls fitted tight together and upright with a real window next to the front door and an old Alamo wood burner with a stove pipe vented up through a sugar pine shingle roof. She had the man build a solid oak floor that she polished proud with wax until it gleamed. She herself added on a little front porch, hammering rough boards over a covered entry. In a second room in back, she fashioned herself a single bed using rough pine and rope, topping it with new ticking she overstuffed with pine needles and the rabbit pelt blanket she’d made during that long winter past. Over the bed, she hung the Split Rock print as a reminder of how she’d earned her due down on the American. Underneath she stored her personals: night clothes, a new hairbrush and mirror, the gray gloves from Nate, and that tattered copy of “Self-Reliance” she’d been carrying around everywhere since leaving Concord.