Fools' Gold (34 page)

Finn made the short trip in less than half a day. It felt fine to be out of Nome again. In the few days since the election Ellen and Henriette had treated him gently, telling him that he had done well to get as many votes as he had. And indeed there was a moment after his speech when he'd thought he would win. Since the election he'd been called in twice for visits with Dr. Kingman. He was asked his opinion on certain subjects, and each time Hummel had been there scribbling silently, his scratch pad balanced on his bony knees.

Finn did not expect to find Phil and Kaneda in the village, and when he did he embraced them, turning them in the snow until only dirt remained under their feet. They broke into their three languages like strangers. Finn turned to Kaneda. “We are going to bury Fujino,” he said. “You must all come to Nome.”

“Yes, I have never forgotten,” said the old man. “I have been wondering again about the nature of his death.”

“Fujino,” said Finn again, looking at both men.

The reverend approached the trio from the direction of his house, walking on the spotted earth, avoiding stepping on the patches of snow, thinking of his mother.

“Finn!” he said.

The three unlocked arms, allowing the reverend to come into their circle, and together they turned the thawed earth to mud. “Winter is over and everyone is safe,” said the reverend. “Thank the Lord.”

“Can you come to help with the burial of Fujino?” Finn asked. “You've heard talk of his tragic death. Now it is time to bury him.”

“If he had only come to me with his problems I would have understood,” said Kaneda.

Late on the afternoon of Finn's arrival the villagers stretched the canvas hides across their lean-to poles while the children collected snow, rolled it into balls, and threw it far out onto the liquid surface of the bay. In an hour the view from the reverend's window changed. The reverend and Finn sat toasting springtime, toasting the village and the women they knew.

The reverend said, “I can see that winter has weathered the lines of your face. Was it hard on the women as well?”

Finn looked at him through his wine glass, laughing. “On Ellen it was,” he said. “And both of them have put their shoulders into the carrying of bath water a few more times than they should have. Ellen's the strongest but somehow it shows on her and does not on our Henriette.”

“Henriette's all right?”

“All right and untouchable,” said Finn. “She turns her thoughts inward a bit more than she used to but it's a habit that'll protect her complexion.”

Finn ran his fingers over the loosening skin below his own eyes. The top of his beard came very high up his face, giving him the feeling that his eyes were deeper than before, his sockets more sunken.

“You are an interesting man for one so religious,” he told the reverend. “I might have come to you if you'd been handy. Over the death of Fujino, I mean. I had a very stormy session over that.”

The reverend had been thinking of what he might say at Fujino's funeral. He'd never been very good at that particular service. He couldn't muster the resonance of voice, the massive seriousness.

“Oh well,” he said.

“I've always been quick to grab at guilt,” said Finn, “but this time there was no stopping me. I was eaten away with it. I had gone a little ‘round the bend.”

He told the reverend about the old man's prayers and the reverend said that there had been evidence of that ever since the old man had been in the village.

“Yet he does not seem unhappy,” said the reverend.

“Not unhappy, not guilty,” said Finn. “And the sheer power of his prayer knocked all my guilt away. I find it hard even to think about Fujino anymore.”

They sat quietly a moment and saw the old man walking among the lean-tos below them. He examined the way the leantos were built, climbing to the top of one and sitting with his heels bouncing against the door.

“With him at Fujino's funeral you'll have your work cut out for you,” said Finn.

The reverend nodded and stood. “I'm sure he'll want to say something,” he said. “I never knew the man, don't know what he was like, what kind of service might make him happy.”

They started down the ladder to join the village for a feast. They would leave for Nome in the morning, and since it was no longer freezing Phil was taking his entire family. It had been a long winter for the Eskimos, so there were others going as well. Word spread among the villagers that there would be a special outing. Tomorrow those who felt like it would be going to Nome.

Finn and the reverend walked under the pale sky, following the scent of seal. The reemergence of the neat rows of lean-tos had taken only the morning and now, in silence, the entire population of the village surrounded the still-standing coming-of-age hut of Nanoon. For weeks the hut had sat silent, its feathers graying, some of them plucked for fishing but most still stuck to its mud sides. Finn remembered shouting through it and hearing nothing for his trouble. Surely she'd not survived. He remembered seeing her fragile face as they'd dressed her that day. She was so young. He imagined a few sprouts of pubic hair, like spring vegetables, like the lovely tops of dark carrots, breaking the smooth surface of her skin. To each his own, he thought, but customs such as this one are barbaric.

When everyone was ready and the long seals were propped like sentinels at each side of the sewn-up door, Phil stepped forward. The sight of the dreary feathers made him want to turn and tell the owl story once more, but instead he drew his sharp knife up the side of the hut as smoothly as through any seal fat. Like a painful cesarean, thought Finn, but no sound came from the dark hole, no arms or legs kicking angrily out at the new world.

“Nanoon,” said Phil. “Wake up. Winter's gone and you're a woman.”

The light from the wound in her wall came hard into Nanoon's head. She pushed her eyes shut but it spread through her anyway, looking into all her corners, pushing her limbs out like flowers opening. Phil slit the wall further and found her far back among her blankets and pelts, frozen bits of all her winter meals still standing like sculptures around her. They took her arms and lifted her to the light like a captured mole, her nose sensing the seal, her knees still dug in under her chin. “Stand up,” said Phil. “It's all over.” With her arms Nanoon held her sisters and the entire crowd watched as her long legs inched toward the ground. Finn's heart flew to her as his guilt had flown to Fujino. She'd looked young before but now her face was furrowed, her color gone, her hair, like wisps of winter, making her look old. Finn stepped past the reverend and helped hold her, put his big hands under her arms while Phil pulled at her legs, massaged her muscles downward. She was a woman now, would soon be married, gone to Port Clarence or off toward the north.

When Nanoon's eyes opened Finn found himself their focus and freeing his hand pushed the crumbs from his beard and stood straight. The sun setting behind them was still strong, so the others moved in to darken the ground around her, letting their shadows shade her eyes. Lord, thought Finn, how can one so young look so old? Phil, beside him, bathed her face with seal oil, laid some salt slabs on her tongue. “She's a woman now,” he told Finn. “If you look at her long she'll mistake your meaning.”

When Nanoon was standing by herself, Phil pulled Finn back and the others too moved away, allowed her space to step in. She rubbed the wrinkles out of her face and pushed the hair from her eyes. “It's true, she's a woman,” said the reverend, shaking his head. “It was only a year ago that she was among my students.” Finn saw the look of old age fall from her like snake's skin, saw her former face return. She put one leg forward and then another, and by the time she could walk in small circles most of the villagers had turned their attention to the standing seals. Phil dug the dry heart of the smallest seal from its flat chest and breaking it into pieces gave half to Nanoon to eat. He found Finn and handed him the other half, and Finn was gone again, caught off balance, gouged once more by guilt and head over heels in love.

Though the ground was still hard the snow was nearly gone, and Ellen and Henriette had to carry bath buckets of it from as far as one hundred meters away. They dumped the wet snow on the dirty mule mound and waited for Finn and the reverend. They had not seen the dead man that they covered and they would not, they hoped, until the time came for burial. They'd hired a man to dig the deep grave next to the mound they protected, and though they did not know how far under the snow he sat, they were taking no chances. They worked continuously, carrying their buckets on the ends of long poles balanced across their shoulders. When they passed each other they did not speak. The weather was getting warmer. She with the empty buckets moved more easily than she with the full.

When the evening came the snow held, the temperature moved it to ice and let the women go back to the bath and sit around the stove, their heavy arms hanging. They had closed the bath until after the funeral for it was impossible to carry buckets for both purposes. Ellen wondered if the others would be surprised to know that she was thinking of leaving. She had made a business of the bath and could sell it. Of course she would not return to Ireland but she had seen the greenery of Washington state and would not mind an easier life. What surprised her, as the idea grew, was that she had not entertained it at all until the moment Finn lost the election. If he had won she would have stayed, she knew. If he had won, Nome would have grown in wider directions than it would now, and yet she believed that in almost every way Dr. Kingman would do a better job. Dr. Kingman moved for laws and civil codes. He was asking people to zone land, to section its use. He was organizing construction so that all would be finished before heavy winter came again. He was setting high penalties for claim jumping and low ones for street brawls as well. Ellen agreed with all and knew that Finn would have done none of it. Think of the way he'd laid his proposals before the community. Ditto. Dr. Kingman talks of laws and sectioning the land and Finn says ditto. Yet he was Irish and had made the lovely figure of Hugo Reily dance for the people. His ditto would have taken five years where Dr. Kingman was taking one. And now she was thinking of leaving. If Finn had won they would have moved forward ever so slowly, but with endless possibilities. Now the town's fate was sealed, and because it was, living in the deadening cold and with back-breaking work was no longer worth it. No, Nome would have had to remain a frontier for her to put up with all of that. Now that it wasn't she would leave.

Henriette stood to go for more firewood, startling Ellen. What a place it is where everyone sits through the winter staring, lost in some memory or sorry to God that she ever came. It is the end of winter. If spring is here can winter be far behind? Ellen was numbed by her decision, and as she watched the girl coming back in she stood. She would sell the bath and move away, let the others do what they might. As surely as the direction of the town was locked, so was hers away from it.

Ellen looked at her heavy red hands and told them there would be a few more buckets, only a few. She saw the thin-skinned end of her wounded finger and thought, If I leave them something let it be this, a bit of dead skin grafted to the top of a mule's foot. If she had left her family, she could leave this group whom she loved only with that part of her that was not consumed with daydreaming, with scenes from her unknown future and past. If Finn had won the election she would have stayed. She looked at Henriette, her nose all poked into her small drab diary again. Ellen would tell her grandchildren that she had been responsible for the very first building in Nome, Alaska. That she had been a frontier woman. Thank God for small defeats.

On clear days Nome smoked gray on the horizon, otherwise the Eskimo children had no real proof that it was there. Today they would find out. There would be no school because their teacher was going to Nome, and because many of them were going as well. Everyone dressed in finery for the occasion. Four years earlier when the reverend first walked into the village he wore a thick gray suit with wide lapels, and was the cause of one of the village's earliest crazes. The heads of families made formal requests, and by the beginning of his first winter the reverend had successfully ordered boxes of the gray flannel material complete with pattern paper. And now they all had suits. Everyone. In some cases the suits of growing children were passed down to others, but by the morning of their departure no one went without. It was formal dress for a formal occasion. The reverend hadn't had his own suit on in nearly three years, and as they marched out of the village even Finn had shed his winter clothes. It was still cold and the group walked quickly. They wore hide shirts and in place of neckties each wore a golden snowflake.

Only Phil took his entire family. His children walked in front, and behind him his sisters and his wife and Nanoon too. Nanoon still had not spoken, would not, they thought, until winter was really gone. But she'd fixed her gaze on Finn and stared at him constantly, aware of where he walked, sensing the strength of his own sentiment toward her. The excitement of the villagers was mixed with the knowledge that they were going to a funeral. They made Mr. Kaneda walk in the very center of the group. They were going to see the city, yes, but first they were escorting this man to the funeral of someone he loved. And as a gift to the old man the village had reserved the best gray suit for the corpse, the one that had been Phil's father's and had not been worn since his death. From Phil himself Fujino would receive the first of the golden snowflakes, the one that he had taken from the converted frypan the moment after Fujino had shown them how it was done.

Each member of the entourage had his own reasons for wanting to go to Nome. Only the old man was a little nervous. He did not know how he would react when he saw the poor body of Fujino. Certainly he would not look the same after so long, after slicing his abdomen open and letting the wind whistle through it. When the funeral ended Kaneda would talk to Phil about plans to leave for Japan. His idea was that they would work the strike until just before the freeze and then ride out on one of the last ships. He had an image of the sea icing in just behind them, and another of Phil arriving in Tokyo and needing to rely on him just as a son should rely on a father, just as he relied on Phil now. But though the old man thought of leaving he had not forgotten Fujino, nor had he forgotten that he was a carpenter. If he could find lumber his parting gift to the dead boy would be a fine handmade coffin. He could carve “Fujino” in deep Chinese characters on the coffin cover and he would not be satisfied until each joint fit together perfectly and was waterproof. He would see if it was not possible to take a photograph of the coffin, something that he could give to his daughter by way of explanation.