Authors: Win Blevins
They strode briskly past every kind of business, saloon, general store, restaurant, outfitter, assayer, nearly all in tent buildings with false fronts. They turned up a steep street—everything was aslant here—architecture, engineering, business, and of course morals. The breathless climb stopped even Clemens from his tour spiel until they turned back onto a horizontal road. Then he began a history of the Comstock Lode.
Burton knew the story well enough. Three and a half years ago a bunch of miners panning for gold, doubtless the usual riffraff, discovered by accident that the ground was bursting with another metal entirely, silver. Even the muck they were throwing away to get at the gold was silver ore. Silver that assayed at unheard-of prices. Bonanza!
The California gold rush was old and tired, the easy pickings gone. So over the Sierra Nevada swept hordes of gold rushers. They set up a tent village. The first winter they came deuced close to starving to death—supplies packed here soon ran out, and snows closed the mountain passes. Then the diggings turned out to be demanding. Instead of panning and washing, the miners had to probe far into the earth. This required many men, much labor, expensive equipment, and, most of all, it necessitated capital. Thus did big money come to Washo. The more independent-minded miners went elsewhere, and the others became employees or …
“Do you know by what means most men live here, Captain?” Ever a showman, Clemens was determined not to let his audience’s attention wander far. “By our wits. You think by mining, or building, supplying lodging and meals, washing clothes, selling supplies, and it is so, for some people. John Chinaman concerns himself a good deal with woodcutting, laundering, cooking, and waiting on people. The Paiute devotes himself to physical labor. But the man of wit and enterprise, he casts his glance higher. If he starts by mining, he soon moves into high-grading. If gambling, he soon learns to play sharp. If prospecting, he learns to sell a worthless prospect. If investing in mining stocks, he develops sources of forbidden information. And if she came for love, naturally, she soon apprehends how to make love turn a profit. You never saw such a people for living by their wits.
“After all, we have money, money, money. Where there is plunder,
there will be pirates. No one really minds. Money is happiest, they say, when it is running from pocket to pocket to pocket.”
At this very moment an old codger approached Clemens and waved him into a doorway. Clemens went, smirking. The codger spoke, hesitantly, reluctantly, a look on his face that was a parody of secretiveness. After a few moments Clemens put on a very sincere look, indeed a falsely sincere look, and gave the man a few coins. The fellow gazed back into Clemens’s eyes with a regal countenance, as though he were dispensing boons to the newsman, not the other way. He slipped a ledger from within his raggedy coat, produced a nub of a pencil, and made a few marks in the ledger, surely in an impenetrable code. Then the codger looked about as though for enemies, hid the coins upon his filthy person, and slunk away.
“What was that about?” said Asie.
“That old prospector, name of Fitzgerald,” began Clemens in the way that indicated a delectable story was coming, “is one of our shrewder citizens at living by his wits. He sells shares in mines that don’t exist.”
Burton was tickled.
“Don’t exist?” said Asie. “How does he get away with it?”
“Originally, he bought a mine of some worth and sold it,” said Clemens, “establishing his bona fides, so to speak. Then he disappeared for a bit and came back with a story of a strike up in the Black Rock Desert. Naturally, he needed a good stake to develop this strike. He went about and gave a few of us the opportunity of coming in on the deal—just his special friends, except that we never saw him outside of bars. It was all very hush-hush, of course—if word got out, claim jumpers would be all over the place. He allowed us to invest twenty dollars each in his great enterprise.”
“Twenty dollars wouldn’t buy a fig,” said Burton.
“That’s why I was sure old Fitzgerald was running a blazer. Anyhow, when he’d raised enough, he headed out to do his proving-up work, so he said. No doubt he actually went to the pleasure palaces of San Francisco to reinvest our funds in personal delights. In a few weeks he returned with the sad news that the stake wasn’t enough, he’d misjudged a little, and he needed more. Again, hush-hush, we invested our twenty dollars a head, and he marked down in his ledger how much of his great strike we owned.
“In due time he disappeared and returned once more. The strike
was greater than even he had imagined. He had assays to prove it—why just look here at these papers, which of course he bribed from any assayer what needed money. Sixteen thousand dollars a ton! Eighteen! And the vein was much longer, three times, once he really got to working on it! He would need …
“Once again coins were exchanged for marks in a black ledger.
“On this climactic occasion, however, he has surpassed himself in imagination. Everything is in readiness, he says. When he goes back this time, he will finish the staking out and proving up and make an announcement. Why, this news will blow the lid right off Nevada!
“He has only one problem! Rumor threatens to undo him. If he leaves, he will be followed by gents who have heard of his bonanza, and rough gents, too! He must outwit them. So he must hire a man to wear his clothes and set out down the mountain with burros and wagons, to the northeast. He himself will buy a fast horse, disguise himself impeccably, and ride south to Carson City. When he’s sure the disguise has fooled everyone, he will ride like the wind to the Black Rock Desert …” Clemens held up both arms and shrugged. His eyes told how much fun he was having. “He needs an additional investment of only ten dollars!”
“Won’t you fellows catch him crooked?” said Asie.
“No, he’ll buy that fast horse, sure, and use it to make for San Francisco.”
“Why do you go along?” asked Burton.
“Actually,” said Clemens, “I am a special case, his smallest investor, his gesture of friendship. And he gives me something for my money. Old Fitzgerald knows more about who’s who in Virginia, and especially who’s well fixed, than any mortal.” Clemens looked brightly at Burton. “It was him that give me you, matter of fact. But he told me you was Richard Burton the explorer and author.”
“That is Captain Richard Burton.” He put a smile with the lie. “I am Captain Sir Richard Burton. It is a common name.”
We walked along in silence a while after that, me feeling sheepish.
But I was excited, too. Virginia was like no other place on earth, mainly because of the people. Businessmen dressed like going to their clubs in San Francisco. Miners in overalls, caps, shoes, and no shirts. Mexicans, Italians, Greeks, South Americans, all swarthy. Germans, Serbians, Russians. Irish, with their musical accents. John Bulls. Backwoods
Americans. Yankees. Gentlemen of the South, and riffraff of the same place. Even Mormons. Most exotic were the queued Chinamen leading donkeys humped with firewood for sale, and the Paiutes in face paint, claw necklaces, feathers, and white men’s shirts and trousers.
The streets were stuffed, and Sam said they were crowded in Virginia day and night alike. The mines worked in shifts, the miners wanted food, drink, gaming, and women when they emerged from the dark shafts, and the providers obliged, gladly, in return for coin.
The languages were babel. You never heard so many foreign ones, nor so many ways of talking English. Sam wrote a sketch of it in
Roughing It,
no need to repeat that here.
Physically, aside from the canvas buildings and the steep slant, its greatest peculiarity was that the village was tucked in among huge piles of rock debris—tailings from the mines, which made all human endeavor look dwarfish.
“Those who come to Washo,” Sam went back to his tour-guiding, “have no need of hell. The devil himself is affrighted of visiting here. We supply our own devils, who call themselves badmen. They dress like gallants, wear a sidearm on each hip and another in each boot, and walk with the swagger of giants. Until you’ve shot your man, you can’t be a badman, so many aspirants come belching flame. They kill the first man that annoys ’em, or strikes their fancy as a handsome corpse. That’s why ‘Dead man for breakfast’ is the rule. Ever’ day you wake up, there’s a body in the streets, holes in it, but otherwise unaccounted for.”
“Dead men for breakfast,” said Burton. “Washo is a very dangerous place.”
“Not just because of that,” said Sam. “There are three main diseases at this altitude. The one ever’body talks about, lead poisoning, which is a considerable hazard. The second one, more dangerous, is greed. I scarce need to elaborate on that one,” he commented, and then elaborated anyway. “I say the easiest mark in the world for a swindle is any man in Washo. Ever’ one has conned himself before he got there, and merely awaits confirmation.
“The third disease? Why, that is illusion. True, this malady grows as a native the world over, but Washo is a case so conspicuous a man can hardly credit it. Ever’ man here walks around imprisoned by his own dream of what he is about to become.” Sam gave us the big eye, and the bush on his lip twitched. “Why, sultans and caliphs have no vaults of treasure nor any concubines to compare. Why …” He fell silent for a
moment. “Boys,” he finally said, “I’m sorry to say I am defeated. The power of illusion in Washo, why, I can find no words big enough to serve it up true.”
So the party fell into a funk—defeat will do that. We walked along catching our breath for a little. Then Sam says, “Mebbe now that interview …”
“What could a traveler for pleasure like myself tell you?” says Sir Richard.
“Mebbe whether, like they say, the twenty-ninth language you speak is pornography.”
Sam grinned, and Sir Richard held out an arm that guided us into the Heritage.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As we clinked through the half doors of the saloon, I heard the fine upright piano opposite the bar, singing and singing. Felt like someone grabbed me by the ears.
I did what I do sometimes, circled away from what had hold of my mind, pretending to look at something else, anything else. I hadn’t seen anything like the Heritage before. It was a two-bit saloon, a place where everything—a beer, a whisky, a cigar—cost two bits. Ordinary saloons in Virginia, for workingmen, were bit places, where everything for sale cost one bit, twelve and half cents, or even a short bit, a dime. The Heritage was class, class, class: The front half of the room was small tables, the right side a polished bar with a grandly carved back bar. The whole rear was gaming—outfits for bucking the tiger, roulette wheels, chuck-a-luck layouts, and felt tables for poker, each manned by a tinhorn in a tuxedo. Oil lamps lit the house. The bar had a brass footrail. Brass spittoons served convenience everywhere. Mixologists—that’s really what they called them—served up drinks with ice. Can you imagine ice in your drink, hauled all the way from Lake Tahoe and stored all summer long, in a town where they near starved to death three years before?
I stood there for a minute, beholding the finery and listening to the music. Then I noticed one of the mixologists was beholding me. When he looked down, I knew I was OK. In America fine duds can make dark skin acceptable, lots of the time.
I walked toward the piano against the far wall, away from the bar. By now I was so mesmerized, I bumped into chairs as I went. The tune was one I knew, “Didn’t It Rain,” an old spiritual. The pianist was giving it a different feel, though. He sped the tempo up fast till it made your feet itchy—now it was actually too fast to dance to. Did things with the melody, too, notes to give it a mournful feel, mournful but really alive. Most of all, though, he was fooling with the rhythm, giving the tune an off-the-beat bounce. Instead of BAH-bah-BAH-bah it was b’BA-ah! b’-BA-ah. I can’t rightly tell you about it, but you would recognize that feel in a jiffy. What you would call it was colored people’s music.
The piano player wasn’t colored, though—alabaster white, with long, slick red-blond hair to his shoulders, skinny as a shovel handle. He didn’t wear a tuxedo, but a vanilla-ice-cream suit with a pleated shirt and a wine-colored, velvet cravat tied up at his neck like a blossom. Made those tuxedoed tinhorns look like they were his stableboys. There was a brass-engraved sign on top of the piano, says GENTLEMAN DAN.
I sat down at the nearest table and turned my chair toward the piano bench. He gave me half a hooded flicker with his eyes, put a flourish into the end of “Didn’t it Rain,” and without missing a beat eased into a slow tune. This one aimed at your chest instead of your feet, plucking at those heartstrings. Because of my sorrow around Sun Moon, this music came into me like rain into the parched desert. It was all heartache, too, but somehow it blew up my grieving big and eased it all at once, made it seem like it was right, the way of things. I’ve had call to play that tune many a time since—it’s called “Troubled in My Mind.”
Toward the end of this piece one of the fancy-dressed girls, a dance-hall honey, came and gave him a cocked hip, foot-tapping, eye-rolling kind of look.
The Gentleman didn’t pay her a bit of mind, for which I was grateful. Straight on he dived without a pause. His style this time was taking the tune apart and putting it together a new way. The right hand would say the melody up high kind of bright, and the left hand would echo it low and mournful—sounded like soloist and echoing chorus at church. The tune was the old reel “Uncle Joe.” Gentleman Dan opened it way up, made it twice as long, switched the tempo from quick to slow, and generally made a nice little song into a big show.
I felt so much like applauding I did. Even gave out one hoot.
Gentleman Dan turned nothing but his head and looked at me
measuring-like. He had a long face made longer by a goatee so blond it was nearly white. In the middle were the eyes of a hawk.
Suddenly he looked behind me. It was the dance-hall gal come back with one of the mixologists.
“You’re getting deep again, Dan,” says the mixologist.
“Thanks, Daisy,” says the Gentleman mockingly.
“Well, it hurts business,” says Daisy.
Gentleman Dan cast his eyes elaborately about the room. The few men in the place sat at the bar, their backs to us, or were engrossed in losing their money to the tinhorns. “I see so many prospects for dancing,” says he. His voice was Southern, in some how cultured, and almost too soft to hear.
“Fancy Dan,” says the mixologist.
“Deep Dan,” says Daisy.
“That’s what makes it music,” says the Gentleman.
I noticed now that Sir Richard and Sam had left. I guessed Sir Richard was negotiating for some way to keep Sam from writing about him.
“When you don’t keep it simple and foot-tapping, I have to tell Delilah,” says the mixologist. It was said matter-of-fact, and even friendly-like.
Gentleman Dan nodded like saying “I know,” and said, “I’m taking a break after this one.”
He put his fingers back to the keyboard. That was the first time I noticed them. The rest of his body was thin and weak-looking, like one of those lungers as comes to the desert to get healthy. His fingers, though gentlemanlike, were big and powerful. When I watched them play, they went after the notes fierce, like talons diving for fish.
This tune was a working song, a drivin’, totin’, haulin’ son of a gun. Gentleman Dan sang the words in a voice that seemed impossible after the way he spoke—raw, coarse, and savage. They told about a mining man working a double jack, and in other verses digging out that hole, mucking out that rock, loading up that ore. He brought it up to a grand finish. Made my body ache to hear it, and my heart break.
Then he slid off the bench and without any never mind sat down next to me. The Gentleman’s coming was that way, like a big old predator bird of a sudden lighting on your limb.
“Daniel,” he says, and stuck out his hand. Lots of men in Washo don’t tell their family names. Didn’t find out Daniel’s for a long while.
I took his hand. “Asie Taylor.”
“Care for music?” he says.
I nodded yes.
He waited. I felt like he was going to pounce. Instead he lit up a thin little cigarillo. “Do you know those pieces?”
“All ’cept the last one,” says I.
“‘John Henry,’” says he, and blew the smoke carefully away from me. “Miner’s special.”
Lots of times when he talked, Daniel spoke in a sort of short talk, words normal enough, but some meanings only he understood fully. Then he’d nod in a distracted sort of way, agreeing with himself. Listening to these self-talks, I learned a lot of what he was thinking, but not close to all.
“Where you from?” says I, making conversation.
He looked at me like I’d broken wind.
After a bit he says soft-like, “New Orleans.” He blew out a gout of smoke and let it sit. I was willing to bet he hailed from some rich plantation family. But then he wouldn’t be here, I told myself, not playing piano in a saloon.
“You?”
The question took me by surprise, made me remember I didn’t know where I came from. I blurted out, “Utah Territory.”
His eyes seemed lighter for a moment. I’d noticed people looked at you funny if they thought you were a Mormon, like you’d plugged every woman in the Territory. When as a matter of plain fact I was a virgin on leaving Salt Lake, and had good prospects for becoming one again. What he said was, “I was there. They have no music in Utah.”
I felt a little miffed. “Mormons sing,” I said, “particularly Welsh Mormons sing.”
He regarded me. “You don’t look Mormon,” he said.
“I’m not, not that they didn’t try. I’m half-Indian.”
Half—does that make sense?
He studied my half-dark face for a few beats. He blew smoke above our heads, and it hung like a dark cloud. Why don’t they ever ask what kind of Indian?
“I didn’t mean offense,” he said.
I lunged into it. “What was it you did to those tunes?” I probably sounded like I was about to bust.
He smiled smallish, which I learned was as big as he went. Slowly he
stubbed the cigarillo out in an ashtray. “Sit with me on the bench, and I’ll show you.”
I did. He strikes up “Troubled in My Mind” again. He says, “Key of E. This is the way you might hear white folks back home play it back.” He runs it straight through, couple of verses. “Now listen to this,” he says. He repeats it, and that feeling is back. “Flatted thirds and sevenths, diminished fifth chords,” he says. “Syncopated rhythms.” I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.
“Let’s try another.” He lit into “Bluetail Fly,” rolling and rollicking. “Harmonies just however they feel,” adding some notes in the left hand. How they felt was hip-slidin’, shoulder-slippin’, head-bobbin’ … Well, if words could say it, we wouldn’t have the music.
I stared at him. Then I said something completely out of line. “I got a banjo,” I says. “Can I sit here and pick along? I can pick this.”
He smiled with mouth and eyes at once, and that was surely the only time I saw that. “I’d be honored,” he says.
Heckahoy, didn’t I catch that brass ring this time!
“May I walk with you to get your instrument?” says he.
“Aren’t you working?”
He took my arm and led me toward the bar. To the mixologist he says, “I’m taking my supper break.”
“Just as well,” says the barkeep.
Sir Richard was back in the rooms. Said he’d promised Sam Clemens a real story in exchange for keeping his identity secret. “We’ll have to think of something,” he said.
When Daniel and I left, he wanted to go listen to us make music. Which meant us leaving Sun Moon alone again.
I sat on the edge of the bed and touched her head. It was hot but not real hot. I took her hand. She opened her eyes, but they were glazy. After a little she withdrew the hand. “Go,” she said. “I don’t need company. When I feel good, I go with, hear you play.” She waved us away, kind of, and the wave was the tiniest gesture you’ll ever see.
“I’m worried about her,” I said. “Can we get someone to sit with her?”
Sir Richard nodded, and on the way out arranged with the clerk for a companion for her.
I couldn’t do else than make music with Daniel.
“Who is she?” says he in the street.
I felt all flummoxed. “Just someone.”
Daniel pulled up short in the street. “Devil of a way to start a friendship,” he says.
Sir Richard pitched in with, “She’s my servingwoman.”
“No,” says I right quick. I knew what friendship required. “We’ve agreed to pass her and me off as servants, but we ain’t.”
“It’s delicate to explain,” Sir Richard says, “and perhaps dangerous.” At least he straightened out quick. “She is Asian. Not a prostitute. We are protecting her.”
Daniel nodded. I could see something in his hawk eyes about it, something big. He never said another word all the way back to the Heritage. I figured he was just fretting over how we got connected with an Asian woman, other than the one connection society accepted. Yes, accepted is the word. Turned out later I figured wrong.
The Heritage was slam-bang full of people now, after supper, and pandemonium reigned. We had to shove our way to the piano. While I was tuning, Sir Richard showed up with whiskys, three of ’em. Daniel flicked his eyes at Sir Richard in a way that said, “No, and hell no.” I started to reach for one, uncertain-like, and Daniel says, “May I introduce you to a drink? If you don’t especially care for strong spirits.” He came back in a jiffy with what he called a sherbet, in this case blueberry juice poured over crushed ice. (Yes, Virginia, even far from water, was big on crushed ice.)
“Best drink I ever tasted,” says I.
“It’s a Turkish treat. Any fruit juice over crushed ice.”
Meanwhile Sir Richard settled at a nearby table with a brilliant grin and whisky enough for a party. I began to wonder what kind of holiday Washo was going to be for him.
Daniel led the way with an oldie that would raise folks’ spirits up, “The Gospel Train,” now known as “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In.” This was a saloon, after all, and his job was to create good cheer. I was worried about being able to keep up my end, never having heard about those altered notes he’d mentioned. He came at it straight on, though, no flatting or diminishing, and I was able to join in strong. He loved big contrasts, high and loud echoed low and soft—WHEN THE SAINTS (when the saints) GO MARCHIN’ IN (marchin’ in). I hit the louds hard and laid all the way off the echoes. We grinned at each other like clowns (except Daniel never stretched those lips into a grin in his life). It sounded good.
Right off a bunch of folks jumped up and got to dancing.
For the next couple hours without a break we took a tour of country dance music, reels, gigs, schottisches, waltzes—you name it, we played it, and they danced it. All played straight, so as to lift those knees and inspire those feet. All the while we were getting acquainted, Daniel and I, learning each other’s little ways, supporting the other fellow, then borrowing his style for a minute and tossing it back. That’s how musicians do.
Though Daniel never looked at anything but the piano and me, I surveyed the room: gamblers, drinkers, and dancers. Felt funny sometimes to be helping people feel like doing such a bunch of rotten stuff (well, Brother Brigham called it rotten). In particular we were mating dancers together, and that was commerce, dance-hall girls and customers—the business of pushing ’em to drink or pullin’ ’em into a crib, depending on the girl. I thought of Sun Moon and got a peculiar feeling about that.
We were making it sing out, though, and folks were hopping up and down and having a good time.
Finally we took a break to make chin talk with Sir Richard. Daniel lit up—I hardly recall ever seeing him eat or drink a thing. I ordered a sherbet of kiwi fruit, sherbets now being my favored treat.
“Native-accented music, I gather,” starts Sir Richard.
“What do you mean, Sir?” inquires Daniel. I could whiff burned gunpowder already.