“Do you read?” Elisabeth asked.
“Of course I can read.”
Elisabeth ran to her store and came back with A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.
“An Irishman!” Ginny said, sighing heavy and wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve.
“You can keep the book if you’ll give me a whole pie. And coffee.”
Ginny flipped through the pages faster than Elisabeth thought her capable.
“That’s a good deal, I’ll have you know,” said Elisabeth.
“Shh! Be quiet, I’m reading,” said Ginny.
Elisabeth poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in the chair next to Ginny. Then she helped herself to a whole pie, digging in with a fork without even cutting it, savoring the taste of home.
After a rocky start, Elisabeth struck up an unlikely friendship with the Irishwoman. Conversations between the women always grew spirited, with Ginny poking until her Irish humor got rolling with fun and Elisabeth lightened up. She realized if Ginny didn’t poke fun at you, then she didn’t care much for you, either.
Keeping company with Luenza and Ginny and Millie staved off her loneliness for Nemacio, and she suggested they all meet at sunup each morning for coffee and pie. She didn’t go in for prattling meaningless gossip like her mother had with the neighbor ladies back in Concord; she wanted to hear about their businesses. Learn something. Millie agreed, telling Mr. Stamps Joe Junior needed an early morning constitutional to let off of his energy before the store opened. Millie dropped him off with the Wilton boys and their fancy English nanny so she could catch a breather from all the ’round the clock working and mothering. During their morning business meetings the women talked about their weekly profits and what the mule trains brought up into the foothills and what the miners were looking to buy. They shared news of strikes they’d gotten word of so they could keep up with their own supplies based on how much might be weighing down the miners’ pockets that week.
“It’s all the same whether it’s pie or pork or nails or books,” said Luenza. “We sell what those miners need and miss terrible. If we remind them of home, they’ll empty their pockets.”
They discussed equal rights for women set out in the California Constitution, and exactly what it meant for them.
“There’s a motive for men protecting the rights of women,” said Ginny.
“What’s that?” asked Millie.
“I heard it said a man name Halleck called upon all the bachelors at the convention to vote for our rights. Saying they could offer no greater inducement for women of fortune to come to California. They want wives,” said Ginny.
“Well, I can’t see how that helps me,” said Millie. “Seeing as I’ve already got Mr. Stamps.”
“It helps you, all right,” said Luenza. “For one, Mr. Stamps can’t go selling the store without your signature. And if you decide to leave him, on account some bad behavior he ain’t done yet, he can’t take Joe Junior away from you.”
“What?” Millie held her hand to her heart, shocked.
“It gives you options, Millie. If he treats you side-a-ways,” said Ginny.
“I’d never leave my husband. I love him,” said Millie.
“Well, you can use divorce as a threat . . . to keep him in line,” said Ginny.
Elisabeth listened, thinking if there’d been equal rights in Massachusetts Henry wouldn’t have been able to mortgage their family farm like he did, borrowing and borrowing until the bank took the lot of it, leaving Mother with nothing. Not without her mother’s signing on to his scheme. As it was, her mother had only been allowed to conduct orchard business while Henry traveled; she’d had no power to stop him from selling the land out from under them.
During those early days in Coyoteville, Elisabeth concentrated on building up her business without taking much relaxation. One evening, Ginny came knocking on Elisabeth’s cabin, saying she’d heard of an exciting bear baiting.
“With that baby bear. You killed its mama, right?”
Putting on the gloves Nate had given her, she followed Ginny to the ring. Seeing the little bear struggle against the rope tied around its neck to a post in the center of a ring, she realized her mistake in coming. Men placed bets and yelled and drank and spat in the dirt, frothing for a fight, as a group of ladies sat along the far side of the ring, posing luscious in fine red silk and low-cut bodices with breasts popping out. Luenza had told her a few ladies of the line were now working down the street at the Nugget House. They acted haughty like that gypsy woman dancing back at the claim, only raunchier. One lady put her leg up on the rail, and her skirt slid up her thigh, revealing a light blue garter; she was acting hardly a lady. Another flung her black feather scarf ’round and ’round above her head while whooping along with the men. The whole affair smelled savage and dirty and wrong, like Nate dancing with the lady-man at the Fandango.
One man shoved a huge dog twice the size of Tom into the ring with the little bear. The dog barked and nipped at little bear’s behind as it refused to fight, cowering up against the post and crying like that afternoon on the trail when it’d curled up with its dead mama. Someone jumped over the fence and let the little bear loose in the ring, prodding it with an iron rod. The men hollered and laughed. Another man led a full-grown bull in the ring. Seeing himself outnumbered, the little bear tried to climb over the fence, but the men pushed him back with sticks to face both the dog and the bull. When the bull horned little bear in the rump, making him screech something horrible, a mix of images flew around in Elisabeth’s head. The mama bear. Álvaro ripped up. Nate flopping around on one leg. The panther. The gypsy moaning lusty inside her tent. Nemacio sucking her tears and breasts, ripping her soul open. She fled, leaving Ginny and the bear ring behind, running away, until her lungs burned and she slowed to a walk in a fit of cold coughing. Feeling sorely alone, she stumbled and huffed as she meandered through miner tents up toward the graveyard on the hill, collecting the last fall blooms of mini lupine in the moonlight. A few grave mounds were marked with headstones, but Álvaro’s grave had only a wooden cross, tipped a little to the left. She straightened it, placing the lupines atop the mound. She sat in the cool lump of dirt, running her hands along bits of virgin grass poking up through Álvaro’s grave, humming “Malagueña.” Remembering.
Before that moment of loving in the middle of the Uva, she’d resigned herself to being stuck in a false marriage. She’d been so naive. After tasting real love, she’d never be satisfied. Now she understood. Even with her business, her friendships, her slice of life up on that hill. It wasn’t enough. What a fool she’d been.
An ant crawled up her boot, and she lifted the little creature onto her finger, studying it careful as it led with its tiny antennae, searching. A sadness slipped over her, and she placed the ant back on a blade of grass. It crawled away in the moonlight, relieved at not being crushed. She felt just like the ant, reaching out in the ever-elusive fog of being a woman, relieved at getting through another day without being crushed under waves of sore tragedies flowing on the tides of living without love.
26
“Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide.”
Elisabeth convinced herself he’d come back. Come see her progress with Split Rock Books and Prints. As a friend, if not a lover. She waited, drifting into the white haze of winter, wondering what kept him away. She almost went manic with want and the lack of loving, reliving that afternoon on the rock over and over when they’d moved together in love and he’d made her feel whole. She tried to forget, and help herself. She tried to concentrate on her work. Tried to push away thoughts of him. Of his loving. She poked maniacal on her temple like a crazy woman, feeling like a fool. Feeling like he’d ripped something vital out of her gut.
She pulled herself together as best she could and hunkered down during the day, losing herself in selling books and engraving new blocks until she could almost forget the loving ever happened. Consu
med, she cut block after block with lines and more lines, until she blistered up the sides of her finger from holding the bruin too tight carving adverts for customers. Her fingers blackened ugly with ink, but she didn’t care. She stashed away her hard-won earnings in the locked box under the floorboards in her back bedroom like a greedy mouse. She engraved pretty pictures of trees and rocks and flowers, and printed them up in simple blues and greens. Sometimes, she sold one. But her profits were mostly from the books and adverts.
At night, sleep couldn’t lie. Nemacio came to her in dreams, and she relived their loving all over. She agonized for his hands on her. He’d become her river, flowing through her blood, essential and pulsing. He’d become her religion. She prayed to him. Prayed he’d return. Prayed she could once again worship his flesh. With fervor over her new denomination, she continued to follow his false faith, blinded from reason. In her dreams, she waited.
Thankfully, her women friends kept her from feeling so alone. She relished the morning coffee ritual at Ginny’s pie shop, sharing stories and business tips. She’d taken to adding a drop of whiskey to her coffee to loosen her nerves and clear the cobwebs taking up residence in her heart after a rough night of bad dreams. A morning medicinal, she told herself, convinced the cup helped hide her want. Helped steel her for another day without Nemacio. Helped her dribble her soul back into work. Luenza and Mille and Ginny didn’t bat an eye at her medicinal, knowing getting started from nothing wasn’t easy for anyone in California, man or woman. She never leaned on her friends too hard. Never told them of Nemacio or her tragic family, out of fear of letting loose a ridiculous display of woman tears. And she didn’t want them thinking less of her. Didn’t want them knowing the truth: that she might really be just a weak woman, with too little virtue.
During the winter of 1852, Coyoteville burst open with a ruckus, riddled with thieves and shady characters crazed through by hard living in the diggings. A protective organization formed, headed by Moses F. Boyt. Vigilantes combed the muddy streets looking for signs of trouble when robberies flared up. One man named Bobby Barrett, starved mad, stole $357 in dust and coins from Arlo Corbyn’s tent. The vigilantes found Bobby lying naked with a lady at the Nugget, the stolen money stuffed in a bag under the bed. A miner’s court found him guilty, doling out a whipping as punishment. A fellow miner laid the stripes on unmerciful while Arlo watched, poor Bobby Barrett howling high for the whole town to hear. Two days later that stupid Bobby Barrett stole again, in the middle of the night slipping two pies off Ginny and the cow she’d finally purchased. The night patrol caught him soothing his bloody wounds in the bathhouse, with the damn cow tied up outside. This time the protective organization erected gallows, dispatching poor unfortunate Bobby in the presence of a large concourse of townsfolk.
Ginny went to the hanging, but Elisabeth didn’t, hating the ugliness of it. When she passed the gallows on her weekly visit to Álvaro’s grave, she thought she might get sick right there in the street. She didn’t look up, walking back to her shop fast. After the hanging incident, there wasn’t any more thieving going on. Even so, she took to sleeping with her Hawken, loaded.
Word floated around town about a few men having gone so insane as to hang their own selves without the help of gallows. Ginny heard old Gerald Farmer strung a rope over a pine branch himself, then climbed up the tree and jumped down to end his misery. Another man called Square Sam shot himself in the face with a twelve-gauge double barrel shotgun behind the El Dorado privy, leaving Luenza an awful bloody mess splattered all over her whitewash paint. Square Sam doing away with himself made her think of her mother. She struggled to understand the sort of pain that could bring a person to such despair. She missed Nemacio terrible; his lack of loving ripped a jagged hole through her middle. Even so, she wouldn’t end her living because of it.
The townsfolk finally agreed it unseemly for the town to still be called Coyoteville, after men digging like coyotes. Wanting to create a more sophisticated impression, they renamed it Manzanita City, after the Spanish name for all the little apple-like fruit on the red bushes covering surrounding hills. Giving the town a Spanish name slapped Elisabeth as a cruel irony, as the town assayer still refused to record Nemacio’s name on the Goodwin Claim for sounding too foreign.
That winter in Manzanita City came on mild, and Elisabeth found herself wholly prepared for the unpredictable fluctuations of cold and snow and sunshine and rain of a California winter. She settled into engraving when heavy snow fell, and opened up shop when snow melted clear away the very next day under the warm winter sunshine. Mr. Porter became an amusing distraction from Nemacio. He continued to stop by her shop regular, checking in on her throughout the winter. He brought her treasures he picked up in San Francisco that he wouldn’t let her pay for, like a piece of chocolate or a vial of fancy French perfume. She led him on, giggling silly and touching him lightly on the arm, hoping he’d keep coming. She liked getting any attention from a man, even though she wasn’t in the least bit drawn in by him with lusty pull. He was harmless, and simply ordinary compared to Nemacio. One afternoon, Mr. Porter came in, wanting a broadsheet to advertise a mine he bought.
“You’re a digger now? I thought you didn’t like getting dirty,” she said, wiping her inky hands on her apron.
“My partner Drew Mack does the digging. I stick to management,” he said, fingering a stack of botanical prints set out on the front shelf. “I don’t need nothing fancy printed up. Just a simple picture showing a hole in the ground that’s big and wide and deep.”
“How many you want printed up?”
“Maybe a couple dozen adverts to gain some investment interest around here, and in Sacramento and San Francisco. Maybe even in the East. The Porter Mine’s gonna pay off, over a hundred pounds in gold.”
“A hundred pounds! You’re fooling,” she said.
She put a hand on her side and stuck her hip out pretty, and he noticed, looking at her closer.
“Maybe thousands. You interested?”
“Maybe. How much have you got so far?”
“Oh, I got plenty,” said Mr. Porter, winking. “You want in?”
Elisabeth knew he wasn’t talking about the gold anymore, but she didn’t let on, ignoring his amateur advances. She wanted to play out the situation, see what she might gain from dragging out his affections.
“I’ve got plenty of my own, Mr. Porter.”
“Ahhh. It’s not what you’ve got now but what you could have. It’s all in the prospects,” he said, holding his arms open wide as if to advertise himself.
“Where’s the claim?”
“It’s over near Hangtown, east of Dry Diggins. You know the area?”
“No.”
“Well you will, Mrs. Parker. You will. It will be raining gold off that dry gulch any day now. Like Ophir Hill. I simply need more funds to dig deeper. If I sell stock, that’ll give me what I need to go bigger with my operation.”
“Perhaps I should visit the claim first,” she said, pressing him.
“What’s to see? It’s only a hole now. But it’s all in the potential. Make the advert look good. Mention the depth. The yield. The potential. Print me up some stock certificates too. Simple ones, with a border, and maybe add a letter P to match the advert. For Porter.”
“I only do simple printing.”
“I don’t need nothing fancy. And I want to buy the blocks after.”
She wasn’t comfortable selling her original blocks. They held enormous value to her, and she stored them on shelves in her back bedroom, categorized and labeled for when customers wanted more broadsheets printed.
“It’s all about the deep hard rock mining now,” he continued. “The rivers will be washed out soon. Some say they already are. The gold is still in there, but you gotta dig down deeper to get at it.”
Concerned about Nate and Nemacio, and her share of their claim, Elisabeth hoped talk of the rivers being all dried up was only a rumor.
“How much for a one p
ercent share?”
Mr. Porter explained his calculations were complicated, based on the most conservative prediction of gold yields. He set the value based on the depth, surrounding rock, water supply, and the estimated number of months he figured it’d take to bring up the pay dirt.
“The first twenty-five shares at ten dollars each. I won’t offer stock in more than a quarter of the mine’s worth. That’s plain bad business, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I do. I do,” she said, egging him on for more information.
“Once word gets out, I’ll offer buy-ins on the next twenty-five shares. Of course, those will cost more than the first shares. As the payload comes out and the value in the mine rises, so will the share value of early investors. So you need to add a line on the certificate so I can fill in the price. The stock price fluctuates, you understand?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said, acting like she didn’t quite, even though she understood completely.
She realized that investing in mining shares might be the ideal way to profit off the gold frenzy without digging herself. She wanted in but didn’t yet let on to Mr. Porter.
“The Porter Company Mine shares are backed by John Langley, the proprietor of the Pioneer Bank and Trust in San Francisco. Put his name on the certificate so investors will know who to contact for dividends once the gold starts comin’ up.”
“I normally charge twenty dollars for a woodcut, and an additional fifty cents per printing. I never sell my original blocks,” she said, flapping her eyelashes, waiting for her value to sink in with Mr. Porter.
“I see,” said Mr. Porter.
He took her hand in his sweaty palm and looked into her face, serious.
“I’m going big, Mrs. Parker. You want in?”
“Well, that depends,” she said, using her most seductive voice. “On what you’re offering.”
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