“Good boy. You’re a good Burrito. That’s right, good Burrito,” she said.
She felt silly saying nice nothings to the horse named Burrito, but he liked the gentle coaxing, and a springy stride replaced his lazy lumbering. When Burrito started galloping along smooth, she hugged his neck, wondering how life might’ve turned out different if she’d only learned to control a man that easy.
She led the way up along the river basin, eager to see her girlfriends in Manzanita, and Nandy in Culoma. But as they came up the North Fork, she turned Burrito onto the Brushy Creek trail and switchbacked up to the ridge to avoid the Goodwin Claim. She wasn’t quite ready to see Nate.
That afternoon they made camp high above the canyon, unsaddling the horses and giving them a lump of oats. Elisabeth performed her usual camp routine, clearing rocks and sticks and pine cones, and stamping the dirt flat with her boots. She refused Julie’s help, saying she knew how to set a camp right. In truth, she needed the ritual. It gave her a sense of control. Unsatisfied with some tiny pebble poking up from underneath the canvas roll, she ripped the tent down, starting all over again with her whole exacting flattening procedure, reworking the bedrolls, as Julie kept quiet at her fussing and set up her camera box. Frustrated, Elisabeth finally gave up on the tent altogether, setting up the bedrolls out in the open.
That warm summer twilight in the Sierras unfolded thick as Elisabeth’s favorite time of day, the in-between slice of possibilities and reflections, when the setting sun and trees and the granite and the sky blended together into a rich alpenglow. She looked down the ridge to the North Fork of the American River below twisting and bending through the narrow green valley. She reached out, touching the gloaming as an ever so slight breeze tickled her fingertips, reminding her of all the living she’d done down there. All the joy and suffering and loving and learning, and her heart reset itself, beating right again. She’d come out of it stronger, if alone, and wasn’t waiting on any man to make her whole anymore. She inhaled all that woodsy fragrance deep into her lungs, content to soak up the fresh living. Nandy had been right after all when she’d told Elisabeth that first day they met: The world is different out here. It presses into you . . . a gift you didn’t know you needed. Once you take it, you ain’t never gonna be the same.
Elisabeth was no longer that same woman, and felt lucky for it. And knew she was lucky, too, for knowing Nandy, and for traveling around in the company of such a solid woman as Julie.
“Come on over. I don’t want to miss this light,” said Julie.
“What do you aim to picture?”
“Myself. I want you to take it,” said Julie.
Julie showed her how to frame up the view and hold the shutter open, then walked to the edge of the ravine.
“I don’t know a better moment, Lizzy. I’m gonna do it right here,” she said.
Julie slipped out of her dress and dropped her pantaloons to the ground. Standing bare naked, her skin glowed creamy against the setting sun smearing red across the Sierra ridges and beyond.
“Dropping your drawers?”
“Not like you haven’t seen lady bits before,” said Julie.
It wasn’t true. She’d never seen a woman naked before. The only person she’d ever seen naked, out in the open, was Nemacio down on the Uva.
Julie laid herself out bare and long on a smooth granite slab cropping out over the steep ravine. She reclined as if on a plush divan, not a hard rock. The light danced behind her, casting a deep shadowy crevasse between her legs, and she pulled her braid free, flinging her long hair across one breast. The other breast poked up taut. Julie posed, looking over her shoulder off into the distance.
“Put me at the bottom of the frame. With that purple sky above. Like I’m floating up in heaven,” she said.
“How’s it feel bare naked out in the open like that?”
“Free,” said Julie.
Elisabeth looked through the viewfinder, seeing Julie not at all obscene but bold and at the same time vulnerable.
“Hold still now,” said Elisabeth.
Julie remained still as a Greek statue for two whole minutes, as the cricket song grew louder in the dusking. She looked deeply beautiful to Elisabeth, and full of extraordinary power.
“Finished,” said Elisabeth.
Julie slipped back into her clothes and grabbed the plate as the image appeared as a gauzy goddess under her thumb. She tilted the image back and forth, looking. Regarding herself lying out there naked in the wild like some California Lady Godiva.
As dark came on full, the women made a fire together and shared a pot of stew without talking, struck silent by the intimacy they’d shared. After, they lay beside each other in the open night, and Julie reached over for Elisabeth’s hand, threading her finger through hers. In the firelight, Elisabeth saw tears streaming down Julie’s cheeks. She didn’t pry, just held her hand tight, glad to give a spot of comfort to her friend.
“I think my daddy knew,” said Julie.
Elisabeth kept looking up at the stars, knowing, yet waiting for Julie to tell it.
“A man and babies, I just can’t go for having a man laying up on me,” said Julie. “My sisters, they enjoyed all that baking and washing and sewing, but I liked working in my father’s picture shop, silvering up the copper plates and mounting the pictures under glass. All my sisters grew tall and beautiful, attracting fine suitors. All of ’em married, even little Mary, at eight years younger than me. I’d a been happy staying a spinster like that, working in my father’s shop. But a man named Thomas Ward showed up looking for work. My daddy didn’t need an apprentice, of course. He had me. But Mr. Ward came around asking after me on three separate occasions, hoping to win my father’s favor. I knew he wasn’t interested in me. He just wanted my job. It worked. My daddy hired him. Gave him my position. When Mr. Ward asked to marry me, my daddy insisted I accept. I didn’t want that man or any other climbing all over me. I know what that gets you: six girls and a load of work wiping bottoms and washing drawers. I saw my momma under that weight, just wishing her daughters would marry and get out from under her roof. Not the life for me.”
Elisabeth understood the sentiment but wondered how Julie might fare if the right man showed her the right sort of loving. Someone who broke her open, melting her soft and weak like butter set out too long in the sun.
“I acted spiteful, telling my daddy he didn’t need me anymore, now that he had Thomas,” Julie said, her voice wobbling. “I said I wanted payment for working free all those years. In the end he agreed, giving me a camera and buying me passage on a wagon train going overland, sending me off with good wishes. I’m thankful for it every day,” she said.
“He just let you go?”
“Yup. He knew I’d never be happy in New York, with no prospects of my own. He understood I wanted something else, and I wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to picture the gold rush,” said Julie.
Elisabeth waited, knowing Julie wasn’t finished telling it. She waited through the long awkward pause, until Julie finally said it.
“Truth be told, I’d take any woman over a man,” said Julie.
Hearing Julie tell it, she thought of Nate. How he must’ve felt. His struggles and the choices he’d been forced to make. Nate hadn’t half the courage of Julie, who hadn’t given up herself in a lie of tradition, ruining another person’s life in the process. Instead, she chose swimming against the strong tide of what’s expected in a woman, to live honest and true, come what may of the consequences. She held a great admiration for Julie.
“I understand,” said Elisabeth.
Letting go of Julie’s hand, Elisabeth leaned up on her elbow, looking at her friend in the firelight. She took a deep breath and told her story. About Henry and the Indian girl, and Nate, and Nemacio. She left out the part about the tumbling, confident no good woman could look past that terrible sin. And they talked long into the night, sharing stories without judgment.
“What was it like, having th
at fella Nemacio move around inside you?”
“Like I’d cracked open and filled up with a juice of honey and whiskey. A sweet drunk. Leaving me barely able to breathe for the pleasure of it.”
“Honey and whiskey?”
“I couldn’t get my fill,” she said.
“And now?”
“Probably still,” she said.
“Do you get sad, being without him?”
“I got myself. And my women friends,” she said, meaning it.
She pulled the worn copy of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” from her saddlebag and handed it to Julie.
“I want you to have this,” she said. “I’m finished with it.”
Elisabeth lay down on her blanket roll as Julie thumbed through the pages of the book by the firelight.
“I love you, Lizzy,” said Julie, matter-of-fact, without looking up from the book.
Elisabeth stared up at the stars flickering bright in the sky overhead, understanding and gaining trust in her own bearings.
“I love you too, Jules,” she said.
42
The gypsy strain
Aiming to find some wild intensity, Elisabeth went looking for a man. They were in Auburn Town. She left Julie asleep in the tent and went looking. She wanted someone entirely opposite of Nemacio. Someone weak and shallow and empty. And younger than Nate.
She’d been freed. Freed from waiting on Nemacio. Freed from wondering if he’d ever come back. He wasn’t coming back. He’d gone and married someone else, so she went looking for some loving of her own. She found a man in the Auburn Town Store. He was younger, with an open face and blond hair, tousled sweet and careless. He was buying coffee beans and had large beautiful hands and he smelled like wild anise. She touched his arm light when the grocer turned around toward the shelves. He followed her away from the store out into the darkness. He followed her past the bathing house and the livery. He followed her deep into the forest where the bulbous moon cast shadowy excitement all around. He said he was a Dane, from Denmark. She couldn’t have picked that place out on a map, nor did she care. She didn’t want to know his name.
California peeled away her old New England self, shedding that meek skin of chastity, revealing a brighter hue of flesh underneath. Revealing her new self. Thrilling yet unnerving at the same time.
She untied her straw hat, letting it drop to the ground, while the Dane stared with blue eyes, light and watery like the river. She leaned up against a pine and unbuttoned her blouse, freeing her neck, her breasts. Cloaked in tenebrous light, she was anonymous. Enigmatic. Strong.
When the Dane fumbled her hair loose and sucked on her neck, she grew beautiful. When he kissed her shoulders, collarbone, nipples, she came alive, clawing at him savage, pulling his pants down, groping. Pawing. Opening her legs lusty with desire, taking what she wanted. Taking hold of his backside and pulling him up inside. Wrapping her legs around him, she let loose hungry moans as the Dane moved in and out delicious with passion. She writhed up against the tree trunk, taking the loving she wanted. Finding her true self, free and powerful, and it was enough.
43
Going where I please
The Manzanita City town center looked nearly unrecognizable to Elisabeth. From the ashes of that horrible fire, gleaming new shops of all sorts had risen up. She didn’t see any bookstores, but a water stand in the plaza held a dozen buckets full of water just in case of another fire. The El Dorado Hotel sat in the same spot as before, near the center of town, now rebuilt larger with a clever two-story outhouse attached in the back so guests wouldn’t have to make their way downstairs to take care of business on cold nights. Elisabeth walked inside to see Luenza at the bar, tallying up her books. At seeing Elisabeth, she ran out from behind the bar throwing her arms up in the air, hooting and jumping up and down.
“God, I’ve missed you, woman!” said Luenza, folding her into a huge hug.
Luenza had packed on more than a little weight in the year Elisabeth had been gone, with a blue silk dress pulling taut over rolls of tummy fat. Luenza seemed jollier than ever, not minding her middle one bit, patting it lovingly as if the extra bit were proof she’d done well for herself. Luenza sent her barman ’round to get Millie at the Stamps Store. Elisabeth gave them each a little square of Ghirardelli chocolate from San Francisco as a gift, and made introductions to Julie. They suppered in the dining room of the new El Dorado Hotel, which looked finer than the original, now with a piano man playing the main saloon room all day, a separate cardroom in the back, and a few tables in the front with lace table coverings for ladies who wanted tea in the afternoon. Elisabeth listened as Luenza and Millie told of Ginny not sticking around to rebuild after the fire.
“She set herself on a man who’d weaseled himself some land off a Californio in Stockton. Last I heard she sits around a hacienda all day with maids making her pies,” said Luenza.
“She’ll get bored,” said Millie.
“Come back to us, Elisabeth,” said Luenza. “Manzanita City doesn’t have a bookstore since you left.”
“That’s not true, Luenza! I have a whole shelf of books for sale over at our Stamps Store,” said Millie.
“Millie does whatever she wants now after living in Auburn Town for a few months after the fire,” said Luenza, nodding in the direction of Millie. “I don’t know what happened down there, but now her man treats her like a princess. I suspect he’s afraid she’ll hightail it with a better man.”
“Never!” Millie said. “Joseph is the best partner.”
“That’s ’cause of all that business in bed,” said Luenza. “I swear, I heard you yelling out all sorts of yummy from your open window last week.”
“Stop it!” Millie said, turning red and slapping at Luenza’s thick shoulder.
Elisabeth held deep affection for Millie and Luenza but had no interested in returning to Manzanita.
“I’m working in San Francisco for California Illustrated now. That’s what brought me out here. Reporting on the deep mine technology. The stamp mill. Hydraulic monitor. Riffle sluicing with quicksilver,” said Elisabeth.
“I make quite a bit on the side picturing men looking to send their likeness back home to family,” said Julie.
“We don’t have a picture shop yet. Why don’t you stay?” Luenza asked.
“I’m sticking with her,” said Julie, pointing to Elisabeth.
“I get it,” said Luenza.
“You gotta man?” Julie asked.
“Used to. More trouble than he was worth, sitting on his behind all day, spending all my hard-earned money. He up and left for good after the fire, saying I was too much trouble. Well, good riddance to him. I got plenty of other men interested. Good men, mind you. But I’m finding life easier not choosing,” said Luenza.
“That’s ’cause she prefers loving them all,” said Millie.
“Your man came looking for you,” Luenza said, turning to Elisabeth.
“I don’t have a man,” said Elisabeth.
“You know who I’m talking about. That Californio.”
“He’s not my man.”
“You don’t want to know?”
Of course she wanted to know. She stayed silent, holding her breath.
“He came a few months after the fire, when we were still hammering nails. I had a makeshift bar out in the open, and he walked up angry, asking where you’d gone. I said I didn’t know, which was true ’cause you hadn’t written me yet,” said Luenza, chiding. “He looked skinnier than I remembered. Carried a terrible worried look. I asked what he wanted with you. He said it was none of my damn business. He had the gall to swipe his arm along my bar, breaking four glasses. I told him to pay up, and he flung coins at me. More than the glasses worth, but still.”
She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to open the wound. Spill her sick soul out on the ground to rot. Besides, Nemacio was married now. It didn’t matter.
“I’m not interested,” she lied. “I’m too busy for a man now.”
>
“Too busy for loving?” Luenza asked, not believing.
“We found the Red Hill Mine,” Elisabeth said, moving away from the uncomfortable topic. “It looked like just a hole dug into the side of a hill, until we saw men hauling out barrelfuls of quartz chunks. They have this stamp mill contraption powered by a flume coming down off the Bear River smashing up the rocks. Noisy as all get out. They smooth the stamped pulp over wool blankets, getting more than half the gold, then push the rest into a cylinder with quicksilver to separate any leftover gold bits. Quite a sophisticated operation,” she said.
She went on and on with more exuberance than she’d meant, getting excited at the telling of it. Although she didn’t let on that she owned nearly a five percent share in the Red Hill Mine. Didn’t brag how she’d grabbed the opportunity to trade engraving certificates for shares in five more mines when she had the chance. She had no need to show up Luenza or Millie.
Leaving Luenza and Millie in the morning, they traveled down the Codfish Falls trail, which she remembered as less steep than Brushy Creek. When they reached the bottom of the canyon, Elisabeth stopped, sitting atop Burrito, soaking up the familiar beauty of the American rushing past. Powerful and pure. But she didn’t turn upriver to the Goodwin Claim, figuring that part of her life was gone now, having flowed out of her like a stream dried up. She saw no sense circling around to her past, and didn’t want to see Nate living in domestic bliss with Francis. Didn’t want to hear him tell how Nemacio came looking for her after the fire. And she didn’t want his money, either. Besides, he probably needed her share of the claim more than she did. Instead, she turned Burrito downriver toward Culoma to see Nandy.
It’d been over a year since she’d left Nandy’s bakery with a slice of Nemacio growing inside her. Many times she’d considered writing Nandy but never did. On account of guilt. And shame. Seeing Elisabeth walk up to her bakery, Nandy looked up and wiped her hands on her apron without a fuss.
Prospects of a Woman Page 30