Into the Bright Unknown

  I have him in my sights. “Hey! Stop!”

  He glances over his shoulder, sees me gaining, and pumps his legs even faster, dodging carts and barrels. His head is cranked around, eyes wide with fear, when he careens into a young woman, maybe even younger than me. Her hair is dirty blond, her skin is darkened by the sun, and her secondhand calico dress—too loose on her by half—is dimmed by dust and wear. She clutches a small cloth bag to her waist like it contains all her possessions in the world. The boy bounces away and falls down.

  She snatches him by the collar, smacks him on the back of his head, and scolds him. He’s almost in my grasp when he tears free and darts around the corner into a warren of smaller streets and shanties. The young woman continues calmly toward the docks as if nothing has happened, clutching that bag tight.

  I tear after the boy. I’m around the corner and halfway down the street when I catch myself.

  The melody of Becky’s gold is moving in the other direction now. Away from me.

  The bump was a handoff.

  It was done so smoothly that I didn’t suspect a thing. Without my witchy powers, I’d have missed it, for sure and certain.

  I dust myself off and turn around as if I’ve reluctantly given up pursuit. My performance is wasted. The boy is long gone, and the young woman is headed away, oblivious to me.

  She walks at a normal pace, like a woman with nothing to fear, so it’s easy to extend my stride and catch up. Seeing as how she’s leading me right back to Becky and Jefferson and Hampton, I’m in no rush.

  I steadily close the distance and listen for the gold. The shape of it tells a story. She has a secret pocket sewn in the waist of her dress, which she hides by clutching the mostly empty bag in front of her. The pocket holds Becky’s purse and two others, plus several large nuggets of varying shapes and a few loose coins, including a half coin with a sheared edge.

  That last one’s call feels sad, like a song in minor key. The shape of it is so distinct and specific that it’s easy to single out from the rest. It becomes my beacon.

  As I approach her from behind, I focus all on my attention on that broken coin.

  When I first learned to call the gold to me, it was all or nothing. Every nugget, every flake, every piece of dust in range came flying and left me standing there like a statue covered in gold leaf. The first time, it happened when a few folks happened to be watching.

  It was dark and rainy, and no one knows for sure what they saw. Still, in the months since, the story spread faster than a summer wildfire. Even some of the miners in Glory have been telling tall tales of a Golden Goddess. They say she’s lucky. That if you catch a glimpse of her in the hills, you’ll be blessed by a straight week of pure color.

  There’s no stopping tall tales from spreading, but letting those stories get connected to me will draw a deadly kind of attention. So with Jefferson’s help, I’ve been figuring out how to control my power.

  Only a few steps behind the young woman now. The waist of her dress is cinched as tight as it can go, and it still hangs loose. In spite of the cool air, sweat curls the dirty blond strands at the nape of her neck.

  I think hard about that broken coin. Then I hold my hand out in front of me and close my fist.

  The jagged edge surges toward me, straining against the pocket seams.

  I unfold my hand and push the broken coin away.

  The gesture is unnecessary—I can control the gold just fine without it—but I’ve found it makes things a little easier, acting like a focus for my thoughts. So my fist clenches and releases, clenches and releases, as we walk down the street. I probably seem daft to anyone looking, but San Francisco is a busy place, and no one pays me any mind.

  My friends are waiting just ahead. Hampton has climbed down from the wagon. Jefferson stares at me with a worried frown. Becky seems distressed.

  I ignore my friends for the moment and work harder, pulling and pushing the rough edge of that coin like a saw against the seam of the hidden pocket. The young woman’s steps quicken; surely she has noticed something odd by now.

  She’s making her way around our wagon, and my friends are stepping toward me, when the seam breaks and the coin comes flying out of the dress.

  I mentally grab everything else in the pocket—the other purses, the nuggets, the coins—and imagine a sharp tug downward, just like milking a cow.

  A small fortune in gold tumbles from her dress and plops into the mud. She gasps, falling to her knees, ruining her skirt.

  “Ma’am,” I say, rushing forward before she can gather it all up herself. “Ma’am, you dropped something.”

  She faces me. Up close, she’s even younger than I expected. In spite of her light hair, her eyes are as brown and hard as acorns. An awful lot of thinking is going on in those hard brown eyes.

  “I reckon this is yours.” I pick up the broken coin and put it in her hand. It gleams like a half moon. Her palms are calloused, her fingernails ragged as if trimmed by teeth. She did hard labor before turning to thievery.

  Her fingers close around the coin, and she slips it quickly into the cheap cloth bag she carries. I squat beside her.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she says, quickly gathering nuggets and loose coins into her bag. “I must have tipped my bag when I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Just an accident, I’m sure,” I tell her. “My name’s Lee.”

  “Thank you, Lee. I’m Sonia. I can’t tell you how much your kindness means to me.”

  She reaches for Becky’s coin purse. I pin her wrist with one hand and snatch up the purse with the other.

  “Sonia, I’m afraid this one belongs to my friend. There’s an engraving on the inside of the clasp that says R.J., and I can tell you exactly how many coins are in it and what their weight comes to.”

  Her brows knit, and she stares at me with those hard eyes. She tries to jerk her hand free, but I’m not about to let go—I’ve spent my life doing hard labor too, on the farm at home, on the wagon train west, in the goldfields.

  Becky, Jefferson, and Hampton surround us. “What’s going on here?” Jefferson asks, genuinely mystified.

  “My new friend Sonia here dropped some things, and I’m helping her pick up,” I explain. I hand Becky’s purse to her. There’s a firm set to Becky’s mouth, and unlike Jeff, she knows exactly what we’re about.

  Sonia jerks her hand away, and this time I let go. Her face shows relief as she shoves the remaining items into her bag and stands. No one will be turning her in today.

  “Thank you for your help, Lee. Not everyone in this town would’ve been so kindly.”

  “That little blond-haired boy—is he your brother?” I ask.

  “Billy? No, ain’t many left as still got family. Just a few friends.”

  Maybe I’d be in her place, if I didn’t have Jefferson and Becky and Hampton and everyone else. “It’s important to have friends.”

  She holds my gaze. “Thanks again. Be careful here in San Francisco—this city is full of thieves.” She pauses, her stare unwavering. Then, carefully: “The biggest thieves, the real ones, will take everything you have, even the clothes off your back.”

  She rushes off before I can respond. Jefferson removes his hat and scratches his head. “What just happened here?”

  Hampton laughs, a deep rumbly sound. “That little slip of a girl just tried to rob Mrs. Joyner. Thought she had a sunfish on the line, but it turned out to be a shark.”

  I glare. “I’m the shark?”

  “Meant it as a flattery.”

  I turn to Jefferson, the question in my eyes, and yes, I’m not ashamed to admit I’m fishing for a compliment.

  “Well, you do have a dangerous smile.” Before I can follow up, he says, “But seriously, what just happened here?”

  I say, “She’s working with that group of children who bumped into us. I bet she walks down the street and identifies the targets—”

  “Marks,” says Becky. “Mr. Joyner always called th
em marks. Gullible gamblers. Different situation, same principle.”

  “So she walks down the street and identifies the marks—”

  “Probably while the two of you were staring all googly-eyed at one another,” Becky interrupts again. She’s clutching her purse tight in both hands, knuckles white as she comes to grips with the fact that she nearly got robbed.

  “And then she sends the little urchins out to play in the street and pick pockets. They bump into her coming back the other direction, but it’s really a handoff. That way, if anyone catches the children, they don’t have any evidence.”

  “Anything incriminating,” suggests Becky, who never heard a fancy word she didn’t want to flaunt. “There was a pack of orphan children back in Chattanooga that functioned much the same.”

  Maybe that’s what my life would have been like if my uncle Hiram had murdered Mama and Daddy and left me an orphan when I was five instead of when I was fifteen.

  “She almost got away with it,” Jefferson says.

  “Well, she didn’t,” Hampton says, climbing back onto the wagon bench. “Let’s get on with it. I want to check the post office when we’re done, see if there’s any word of my Adelaide.”

  Hampton started out his journey on the California Trail as a slave. When his master died, he followed the wagon train west, secretly aided by the Illinois college men. Once we got to California and found gold, he bought his own freedom, with Tom’s help.

  “What ship are we looking for?” Jefferson asks.

  “It’s supposed to be right here at Washington Pier,” Becky says. “It’s called the Charlotte.”

  “Then let’s have a look around.”

  Chapter Three

  Calling it Washington Pier is being optimistic. A long, muddy street winds down the marshy hill until it meets the bay. Toward the end, where the mud gets so bad it’s almost impossible to walk, a boardwalk begins, jutting well into the water. To either side of the boardwalk are abandoned ships run hard aground. People dump wheelbarrows of dirt into the soupy muck, turning it into land and trapping the ships right where they sit. On our right, a crew swarms over one of the hulks, stripping the wood like a pack of termites devouring a pine shack. On our left, a lonely twin seems to await a similar fate.

  At the end of the dock, men swing precariously over the water, hammering boards into an empty framework. An anchored ship waits to tie alongside, just as soon as the dock is ready. A foreman hollers at us to step aside as a group of workmen rumble past, carrying a huge log smeared with pitch on their shoulders—another pile to drive into the water and extend the dock even farther. The whole structure sways precariously from side to side as they go.

  “I think I’d rather stay here,” Hampton says, eyeing the dock with distrust.

  “Sure,” I reply.

  “I’m not sure those fellows know a single lick about building piers.”

  The workmen drop the new pile, and the dock shakes so hard one of the boards pops loose and falls into the water. “We need someone to watch that wagon and the horses anyway,” I assure him.

  Jefferson and Becky and I step onto the rickety dock, which feels more solid under my feet than I expect. I can’t help gawking at the ships as we go. Jefferson, never one for shyness, cups his hands to his mouth. “The Charlotte!” he hollers. “We’re looking for the Charlotte!”

  Sailors shake their heads. One rakish fellow leans over the side of his ship and shouts in an Australian accent. “Oi! If you find Charlotte, tell her I’m looking for her, too!”

  “Rude humor is a mark of low character,” Becky shouts back.

  “Of course I’ve got low character,” the sailor responds. “I come from down under!”

  His crewmates laugh. Jefferson looks to me as if to share a grin, but I shake my head. Becky Joyner is on a mission, and this is no time to cross her.

  The sailor wisely returns to work. We pass another ship and reach the end of the dock. Still no Charlotte.

  “Maybe this is the wrong place,” Jefferson says.

  “I’m sure this is it,” Becky says. “I reread the letter and checked the directions with people at the mission before we came down to the waterfront.”

  If Becky says she’s sure, she’s sure. “Maybe they left already?”

  “I made inquiries,” Becky says. “The Charlotte was expected to remain in port.”

  Her knowledge doesn’t surprise me one bit. Thanks to her restaurant regulars, Becky now has more connections and better information than anyone I know.

  “We must have missed it,” I say. “We just need to head back and start over.”

  We return to Hampton and the wagon. “Things got mighty precarious,” Jefferson tells him solemnly. “But the dock didn’t fall into the bay.”

  “But you didn’t find anything either, so I was better off waiting here, wasn’t I?” Hampton says.

  “I think this is the ship right here,” Becky says.

  “What?”

  She’s staring up at the abandoned hulk, the one that’s never setting sail again because the bay’s been filled in right around it. The faint outline of weathered letters appears on the bow, obscured by soot and mud. They might have once read the Charlotte. I’m almost certain of the A and the R.

  There’s no way to climb aboard, so I pound on the side, which I recognize for the long-shot hope it is. The hull echoes back at me like a giant kettledrum. “Hey! Anyone aboard?”

  A thump, like a body falling out of a hammock, then an apple-shaped face pops up over the side, surrounded by a rat’s nest of gray-black hair.

  “Whaddayawant?” he says.

  It comes out as one angry, messy word, but I reckon that’s a natural state of things, rather than any specific anger being directed at us. I’ve heard the same New York accent from other miners we’ve met.

  “We’re looking for the Charlotte,” Becky says. “It sailed out of Panama, carrying cargo that came across the isthmus, including my disassembled house.”

  As the stylish Southern lady addresses him, the New Yorker stands straighter and combs fingers through his hair, though without noticeable effect. “I have some good news and some bad news,” he says.

  He bends, and with a grunt and heave, he slides a gangplank down to the dock. It lands hard and sets the dock to swaying. The man puts hands to hips and says, “Well, come aboard. I’m not gonna shout at you from way up here.”

  I look to Hampton. “I volunteer to watch the horses,” he says.

  The gangplank is sturdier than it looks. Becky, Jefferson, and I make the steep climb single file and step onto the deck. It’s an old ship, and because of the faded paint and soot marks on the hull, I expect it to be in disrepair, perhaps even in the process of being scavenged. But everything is tidy and well stowed, the deck clean of debris and dirt.

  “Name’s Melancthon Jones,” the sailor says. “What can I do for you?”

  We introduce ourselves. “I have to ask,” I say. “What happened to . . . ?” I glance over the side at the faded lettering.

  He shrugs. “We made port, and the captain and the rest of the crew jumped ship to go find themselves a fortune.”

  “But not you?” I say.

  He shrugs. “I dug ditches to help build the Erie Canal. So much digging. A lifetime of digging. If I never touch another shovel in my life, it’ll be too soon.”

  “So you’re just . . .” Jefferson glances around the deck. “Here?”

  “I’m no sluggard, if that’s your implication,” Melancthon says with a glare. “Hoping for a chance to catch passage back east, but no one’s hiring. The ships keep coming in, but most never leave. The few that do leave don’t need crew.”

  Becky steps forward. “You said there was good news and bad news?”

  He slips his thumbs beneath his suspenders. “Good news first. This ship here is—or was—the Charlotte, and we had your cargo aboard. Loaded it myself down in Panama. I was the ship’s carpenter, and I admired the way everything had been
taken apart, labeled, and stored. A fine bit of work.”

  Becky nods. “My husband supervised everything himself. He was very particular. What’s the bad news?”

  “Because the ship has been abandoned, the Custom House holds claim to any cargo left behind. You’ll have to get permission from them to collect it, and you’ll need to hurry before they auction it off.”

  “They can’t do that!” Becky says.

  “Oh, they can and they will,” Melancthon says. “They’re going to auction off the ship, too—sell it right out from under me.”

  “Will they let you stay?” Jefferson asks.

  “Seems unlikely. Too much money to be had. If you have the means, you can buy a piece of property here for ten thousand dollars, then turn around two months later and sell it for twenty.” Jeff and I exchange a look of consternation. Back east, a body can just about buy a whole town for ten thousand dollars.

  “Where will you go?” I ask Jones.

  “Don’t know,” he says. “Been nice having a free roof over my head. Better quality than any boarding house in the city, too. Good thing, because the captain took off without paying my wages. I might have to look for work ashore soon.”

  Becky smoothes the front of her dress, adjusting the pleats. “So my cargo can be found at the Custom House?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m sure it’s stored in one of the warehouses. The folks at the Custom House are just the ones in charge.” A seagull lands on the railing, but Melancthon shoos it away.

  Jefferson is stiff in the space beside me, and I can practically sense his frown.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This whole state,” he grumbles, “no, this whole country—is based on stealing things from people, starting with their land. And if you don’t have land, they’ll take whatever you do have.”

  “I reckon you’re right.”

  He’s been dwelling on this a long time. Jefferson is the son of a poor white man and a Cherokee woman. His whole family on his mama’s side was forced to march west after their land was stolen out from under them. Jefferson was left behind with his good-for-nothing daddy; legally, his mama didn’t have options on that account. He hasn’t seen her since she left, and he doesn’t even know if she’s alive. Now the same thing is happening to the Indians here in California. We’ve watched their land get taken, watched them forced into slavery, even watched them die.