Fools' Gold Read Free

him.
    â€œLoneliness,” said the old man. “You are so proud of your loneliness that you yell at the mountains. You are a modern man but our water wheel could have been built in the same manner five hundred years ago.” The sake spun lightly on his lips and the old man laughed.
    â€œOnly the voice of the modern man…” he said. “Ha ha. I’ve got it.
    Only the voice of
    the modern man disturbs the
    peace of the river .
    â€œThat’s you. The modern man. Five-seven-five, too. Try to top it.”
    Kaneda stepped back to the tent and to his blanket, laughing and muttering his haiku. After Fujino drank the rest of the sake he poured the water over the fire, listening to it hiss and die. And soon he too went to sleep, counting on his fingers, trying to think of a retort.
    In a few days Finn was free of the women, though he didn’t much like what they’d decided to do. They had taken jobs, both of them, as day laborers in the New York Kitchen. Ellen was a scrapper, pushing dried eggs and beef bones into the waste pits, and Henriette moved among prospectors taking food orders. Finn was with them when they saw the notice, but he’d not said anything against it. It was his job to see them safely off the ship, nothing more. Though he’d enjoyed once again hearing the soft strains of an Irishwoman’s voice, he knew he’d be smartest not to get involved. They had cots to sleep on, those two, and that wasn’t bad. There were few enough women in Nome with their own beds.
    Finn was not a prospector. He’d heard what had happened half a century before in California, and he knew that the same thing would happen here. Oh, the wild fortunes would be made by the prospectors all right, but the moderate ones would be made by the others: the store owners, the builders, the publicans. Finn was good with his hands, and thought that, when the opportunity presented itself, he’d go into construction. He considered himself lucky, though at forty-five he hadn’t yet much to show for it. In the nineteen years he’d been out of Ireland he’d worked on the railroad and been a salesman. And though he’d been more than a little successful as a salesman—women thought of him as handsome—he was here now with the idea of building a town.
    For a month, ever since his arrival, Finn had drifted with the milling crowd, waiting for his opportunity. He listened to the accents and the different languages. There were other Irish, there were Asians, Indians, Frenchmen, there were Jews. He floated through the restaurants and bars, careful about the spending of his money. He watched men, hundreds of them, fanning over the tundra to work the mines during the day and closing in on the town in the evenings or on weekends. There was a sense of generosity, one toward the other, each man knowing he would strike. Finn adjusted himself to the mood easily. He discovered one night that the owner of the Gold Belt saloon was Irish, and from then on that was where he spent his time.
    This evening Finn pulled on his heavy boots and waded into the low surf for loose bark and driftwood. He leaned it against his tent to dry then stoked his stove with the previous day’s collection and sat alone in front of the fire’s red glow. At ten o’clock Finn changed his shirt and stepped out into the bright night. The Gold Belt would be full now and it would be proper for him to make his entrance. This pub had a wonderful game, a contest really, and though Finn had been signed up for days, tonight was the first time that he’d actually be allowed to play. There could be only one contestant at a time, and tonight, after the long wait, it would be Finn. He worked his way along the soft sand paths, two gold coins heavy in his pockets. He felt the heft of them, one to each side, like the weight and balance of his father’s gold watch.
    The Gold Belt stood opposite the New York Kitchen,