Fools' Gold Read Free Page A

and as Finn passed he saw Ellen and she saw him. She leaned against the handle of a long broom just at the entrance, her hair a shambles, her eyes gone tired. Finn slowed some and, looking in her direction, turned and stopped.
    â€œTop of the evening,” he said.
    â€œIt’s a different world here, I’d say,” said Ellen. “At home the pubs’d be closed by now.”
    â€œOh yes,” said Finn. “But the longer hours take away the tendency to gulp.”
    The weight of Finn’s two coins stood him evenly in front of her. It takes an Irishwoman to criticize the drinking habits of strangers, he thought. Finn asked after Henriette and inquired as to the difficulty of the work. He spoke politely, but he had the contest on his mind and in a moment excused himself and stepped toward the bar.
    From the cool path Ellen watched him go and watched the movement of the miners through the smoky tent flaps. Mouths were wide, heads were thrown back, but somehow no sound reached her. Strange that pubs were so open here. One could walk by and see directly in. At home they were always closed, political. At home men drank and talked darkly, their heads just off their pints. Ellen could remember her father coming in, always at ten after the closing hour, the gist of an argument still with him. He would stand in their narrow hallway looking down into the kitchen, but he’d not see her until his thoughts caught up with him. And then he’d throw back his head, his features turning fatherly once again and he’d laugh…. But not here, she thought. No serious talk here. She could see faces that she knew from the New York Kitchen, and she could see Finn, standing at the bar, holding a fistful of it. The first joke she could remember was her uncle quoting from the Bible: “As it says in the book of Guinnesses…” he’d said, and it had taken her years to understand.
    Ellen stood transfixed in the shadows. Now, after such a short time, she was beginning to say “prospectors” just as she used to say “farmers.” She laid slabs of beef or fish before them; she carried dozens of brimming mugs of coffee, placing one in front of each dull face. Ellen sighed and stepped back into the kitchen and began clearing the dirty plates away. She had to bend to get into the corners where the ceiling sloped to the wall. She guessed among her traveling companions it would be those two Asians who’d make it. The Japanese. They’d left for the unclaimed lands on the very first day. A people like that, shifty-eyed and small.
    When Ellen finished for the night she walked once more past the Gold Belt and saw Finn again, holding his black mug up timelessly. It would be a shame to go directly to bed but she’d not be going into one of these saloons. Saloons indeed. Pubs was what they were no matter what fancy name you gave them. She walked between several of the tents, her black shoes twisting on the soft ground. Here, as everywhere, there was a mixture of sand and moss. She left the path, popping from between two tents to walk on the beach for a while. The tents behind and beside her glowed pale and ghostly in the night, and she could hear voices from within them. Men were making plans, women laughing. Was it the same everywhere then, Ireland, America, Alaska? If it was, then what was there to gain anywhere in the world? Ellen looked at the water. She looked at herself standing there in her black dress, the waves stepping loudly toward her. She raised her arm and spun around in the wet sand until her hair pushed against her forehead, the ends of it flowing into the gray night. She pointed east and then south a little. Follow your finger to Ireland, she thought. Hullo, daddy, what time is it there? Are you home from the pub yet? She spun a little more and danced a little. The tents, the sea, the tents. Oh how she’d spun in the fields of Ireland: the house, the fields, the house.