Behind the Masks Read online

  Gaiety and loud laughter from the saloon next door contrasted with the mood of the committee women. I hurried across Main Street, dodging a team of four mules that pulled a wagonload of vegetables.

  When I reached the sidewalk I found myself suddenly surrounded by a group of men, boxed in by them as if by accident. Not alarmed, for even at night Main Street is thronged with people, I began to stride faster so as to break away from this group. However, as much as I tried to dart to one side, or slow down, or speed up, I was corralled like a colt by some very skillful cowboys.

  And they surely smelled like cowboys! Their odor was as strong as if they’d smeared themselves with horse manure. Their dark hair and whiskers were (to put it politely) untrimmed, and with their black, wide-brimmed Stetson hats pulled low it was difficult to see any faces. In fact, they all looked the same, in stained blue denim pants, brown vests, homespun shirts, and hairy faces. And strangest of all, they herded me along without saying a single word, eight or nine men keeping in front, behind, and to the sides of me, walking in close formation and facing straight ahead—they could have been a marching band. But this was no band, there was no music, no talking, and no one looked directly at me.

  Just as I was about to try to make a break for the nearest door, I felt a smaller hand grasping mine. Ling Loi, appearing out of nowhere! I gripped her hand tightly, for I had begun to feel a kind of panic and was much relieved to see her.

  “Stop bolting,” she said, as if being abducted in plain sight by shaggy madmen was merely a lark. “Just walk with us.”

  “Ling Loi, I will not yield to this kidnapping, or whatever it is.” I stopped and they all stopped, too, but one of them moved to my other side and slipped an arm through mine. I tried to jerk it back, but he hung on.

  “My dear Miss Angeline,” he said in a deep gruff voice I did not at first recognize, “you are the special guest of the Horribles, and we will try our best to give you a Horrible experience. Just one request, please—no kicking. My shin is still sore from the first time.”

  I stared at him. The mocking smile … Though I could not see the scar running through his eyebrow, there could be no question who it was: Antoine Duval.

  A tall man at the back said, “It will be Horrible, but is she ready?”

  Someone to the side said, “Well, she ain’t Ned Reddy!”

  Someone else said, “And she sure ain’t Pat Reddy, neither!”

  “Ridiculous,” Antoine said. “She is Miss Reddy, you fools. Otherwise: our Miss Take.”

  Ling Loi snorted.

  “Let us go wherever we are going,” I said. “All I fear is more such Horrible puns.” We all began walking again, but I was no longer uneasy. Ling Loi and I were invisible, walled off on every side by our companions. We reached King Street, the Chinese quarter, and I wished we could have stayed there. The smell of foreign herbs and spices and cooking made my stomach clench with hunger. I heard the strains of a Chinese guitar mingled with the creaking of signboards that hung in front of shops. Bodie is full-to-bursting with people from all around the world, but here in Chinatown nearly every person I glimpsed beyond our escort was Chinese. It was like entering another country.

  “Ling Loi,” I said, “will we see your parents? Is this where you live?”

  “My parents are up there.” She gestured to our left, raising her arm toward the hill outside of town.

  “The cemetery?”

  She nodded and seemed to shiver.

  I did not know what to say to this, being ashamed that I had not, until then, thought to ask. It would have been exceedingly rude to inquire as to when and how her parents had died, though I wanted to know. Finally I asked, “Who takes care of you?”

  “I’m under the protection of Sam Chung. Do not ask further questions, Angie.”

  As I’d seen before, Ling Loi became agitated and almost angry when the conversation concerned her personally. I squeezed her hand. “Everyone in the world comes here trying to make their fortune—I mean not just to Bodie, but also to the other mining camps. Must be almighty sad to be far from home and missing your own people.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me as we walked. “It’s harder for the Chinese.”

  “Well, why don’t they learn English and dress like everyone else? Why do they live all together on King Street instead of in town like us? See, if I lived in China—”

  “What? You would turn yourself into a Chinese?” Her tone was disbelieving, and she was right—I would want to remain myself, not try to be like them. “Listen to me, Angie. We live on King Street because we are not wanted in town. Everyone here is trying to make enough money to pay back their credit ticket, or to pay for their relative’s ticket—the money they borrowed for the voyage to come here—or to send back to family in China who are starving. Chinese are not allowed to work in the mines. We wear our own clothes because we do not want to be like you. And no one wants to die here.”

  “But you were born here in Bodie, so is it not different? Truly, home, for you, must be not China—where you have never been—but California?”

  “I told you—no more questions.”

  Somehow, I wanted her to claim Bodie as her real home. It seemed important to me that Ling Loi feel she belonged here. “But you are not starving. You have work, and friends, and … your protector. Surely you must call Bodie your home.”

  “I call Chinatown and Bonanza Street my home,” she said.

  I shivered, remembering Miss Williams asking if Ling Loi were living “in squalor.” “Well, at least your poor parents are at peace,” I said.

  She wrenched her hand out of mine. “At peace! At peace! Buried here? All they wanted was to return home to Kwangtung. My father came like everyone else, to make his fortune. He never planned to stay. He and my mother would have wanted to be buried with their ancestors. Do not tell me they are at peace, for they are not!”

  Stunned by this outburst, I was silent. A driver hauling wood passed us. Men carried vegetables and dried fish in buckets suspended from long wooden poles they balanced on their shoulders. I tried to imagine what it was like to be Ling Loi. It seemed she had nothing, no one, no rich nugget of home to keep safe in her heart. Yet I’m certain it was not pity she wanted.

  Soon our troop turned onto Bonanza Street, which is also called Maiden Lane—the part of Bodie forbidden to me. The streets were lined with pleasure palaces and I thrilled to this new adventure. Yes, I could claim I was herded there against my will, but that is not the entire truth. In the midst of a street famous for sinfulness, I craned my head, hoping (in vain) to see something scandalous as we walked. “Where are we going?” I asked, shouting to be heard over the blaring sounds up and down the street: music spilling out of the saloons and dance halls, raucous drunken conversations, horses pulling carts and small coaches, and of course the booming from the mill.

  “Yes, where shall we take this arresting young lady?” the tallest one asked.

  “I am arresting? Clearly it is you who have arrested me,” I retorted.

  “Then we shall take you to jail, of course,” said Mr. Duval, and ever so slightly tightened his grip on my arm.

  The jail loomed at the farthest point on Bonanza Street, after all the pleasure palaces, the end of the line for many whose pursuit of amusement verged into lawlessness. Our little band swung around to the back of the jail, and Antoine Duval let out a low whistle.

  A man emerged from the shadows. He was dressed just like the others, and like them had a full beard—though his was reddish. He smiled at me. My escort melted away and I ran to Papa.

  Later

  I confess that the days of anxious concern, the work of the house that stole hours of sleep, caring for Momma, the terrible ghost child, worries about Ling Loi, poor Mr. Johl—well, all of it turned into tears and poured out of me. Papa held me tightly in his one arm and waited as I cried and cried. Suddenly aware of all the Horribles standing apart at a short distance, I mopped my face with a handkerchief, blew my nose as dis
creetly as possible, gulped air, and forced myself to calmness.

  “My darlin’ brave Angel,” Papa said, calling me by my pet name. “It’s almost over. Tell me quickly: How is your mother? Has her gum healed?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Well, surely you don’t think I would leave the two of you in a wee boat with no oars. I’ve been close by. You were as brave as a man the other evening, standin’ your ground out there on the porch with the old revolver.” He tugged my earlobe gently. “And as foolish.”

  “Papa! You were there!”

  “Yes, with Antoine.”

  “Can you not come home to us? We have no money and the apothecary is loath to extend more credit for her medicine, which she craves at times. Please, Papa, please come home.”

  “Soon,” he said. “Meanwhile I must remain dead and you must remain resolute. But Ling Loi should have warned you about the laudanum! Did she not explain that your mother would become dependent on it?”

  I thought back to that day after Dr. Rawbone lanced Momma’s gum, when Ling Loi first appeared. Looking around, I saw that she was gone again. “I did not pay any mind to her warning, Papa, though Momma realized lately that she wanted it too badly and is not taking much. But what does a girl like Ling Loi know about medicine?”

  “A great deal more than you, my dear Angie. The ingredient in laudanum that kills pain is opium. You know about the opium dens in Chinatown. Ling Loi has seen many people addicted to opium, and most of them die. What about Emma’s wound, my dear young nurse?”

  This made me cry anew, though not for the reason he must have thought. “Oh, Papa, truly I have no gift for nursing, though not through fear or squeamishness.” I could think of no way to tell him I’d rather play word games with the Horribles than become useful and practical like a nurse. I sighed and said, “I think her gum is improved yet her spirits are low. But how do you know Ling Loi? Did you know that her parents are dead and that she may be sent away?”

  He took the handkerchief and gently blotted my wet cheeks. “A remarkable child. I knew her father, Lee Wing, who accumulated heavy debts before he was killed in an accident hauling wood. He left a widow who died a few months later when their child, your friend Ling Loi, was born. That girl has had a most … unusual history. You should ask her about it.”

  “She’ll hardly tell me anything! She appears and then she suddenly disappears when you don’t expect it. I think she’s afraid and brave at the same time.”

  “With good reason.” Papa touched my singed bangs and said, “You must go. Tell your mother I will be with her soon. There is money—the scrip that was supposedly stolen when I was murdered. It should still be good at the shops and markets, same as regular currency.” He told me where it was hidden in his antechamber.

  “Papa,” I said hesitantly, leaning into him, “have you ever noticed anything … strange in your antechamber?”

  I felt him tighten, like someone preparing to receive a punch in the stomach. “Yes, I have, darlin’. A presence I can’t see. A small presence. And something else, something lunatic, and you would understand it no more than I do.”

  “I understand more than you know. You ask me to trust you, and I do with all my heart. Please trust me, too. Tell me, Papa.”

  He pulled on his beard and nodded. “Water,” he said. “A stream. A puddle. At first I only smelled it and then there it was, running through the antechamber.”

  “And though it touched your shoes, they did not get wet. I have seen it, too.”

  “I don’t know whether to be relieved that I’m not insane or worried that we both are,” he said. “We will speak no more of it.” I would have told him about the ghost child if he’d asked, but he did not. He seemed to want to shake it off, like a dog wet with real water. “Now tell me this: Did you find the sealed envelope?”

  I told him I had, and had guessed the significance of it. Papa looked around. No one was close by, but he leaned in and spoke right into my ear in a low voice. “Angel, never let that envelope leave my room; keep it safe until—” He whispered that I should bring it with me on a certain date that I dare not record in case anyone should find this diary.

  He hugged me again fiercely. “Now you have spent a little time with the Horribles. How was it?”

  “Horrible,” I said, smiling. I realized that the cowboy clothes and horse manure was a kind of costume, the beards or wigs and hats a kind of mask. “But I like them! They seem to make a joke of everything!”

  “In fact, not everything. They’ve kept an eye on you and your mother—oh yes, I know about both times you snuck into Ward’s back room.”

  “Papa, you have been spying on me!”

  “Darlin’, I need to know that you are safe, even while I myself am forced to stay hidden.”

  I looked around for Antoine Duval and saw him leaning against a corner of the jail. “Is that why Mr. Duval was outside Dr. Rawbone’s office with that giant man?”

  Papa nodded. “Yes, with Big Bill Monahan. Antoine is a detective, though he calls himself a clerk. Wells Fargo put him at the head of a special investigation of stage robberies, and his job at the bank gives him opportunities for running many sorts of errands in the streets of Bodie.”

  This news made me feel discouraged and disappointed. While it appeared that my encounters with Antoine Duval occurred by chance, I’d secretly hoped that he arranged them because he was fond of me. Now I knew that he was only keeping watch over me for Papa, as if I were a child.

  Papa pulled a cigar from his pocket and rolled it between his fingers. One of the Horribles strode forward as if to light it, but Papa waved him away. “Be careful, Angie. Because it is believed that I am dead, with Sheriff Pioche Kelley easily bribed, a few desperate men are probably going to try to take over the town. They believe, according to our spies, that no one will stand up to them. If you need to get a message to me, tell Ling Loi or Antoine, no one else. Do you understand?”

  I promised solemnly and threw my arms around his neck. “Papa, please try to finish being dead soon. Can we not just leave all this trouble and move to San Francisco? Surely you would find all the clients you need there, without the worry and lawlessness of Bodie. Please, Papa.”

  “Right you are, sweet Angel,” he said, and sighed, and kissed me. “But, darlin’, it’s your courage I’m counting on to see this through. Just to stir the pot a wee bit and see if justice rises to the top. Are you with me?”

  I dreaded putting my courage to the test, as it is something I sorely lack. And whatever little I did have was used up earlier at Mrs. O’Toole’s. Yet I could not deny Papa, who was living a furtive life in hiding. “I am,” I said to him, and added in what I hoped was a brave Shakespearean voice, “‘Once more unto the breach.’” He smiled at that.

  Ling Loi returned, carrying a large and lumpy flour sack. “Those scoundrels in jail got you to take their laundry, I see,” Papa said. “What’re they paying you?”

  She flashed a rare smile. “Plenty,” she said.

  Papa nodded, looking pleased. He kissed my wrist and the entourage returned, surrounding Ling Loi and me once again.

  We left her on King Street. As I was escorted the rest of the way home by the horrible-smelling Horribles, a light breeze lifted some of the manure scent.

  It also lifted a curtain in my mind, the curtain hiding a secret.

  I knew this was one secret I had to reveal.

  When Antoine Duval fell into step beside me, I spoke to him as if we were already in the middle of a conversation. I intended this as a witty and sophisticated mannerism that I hoped would show him I was not merely a child to be guarded. I said, “It’s called The Bold Bad Boys of Bodie.”

  “What is?”

  “A Horrible new skit.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s about the Authentic Life of a Western Mining Town,” I explained.

  “I see. It’s presumably written by someone with experience, insight, and firsthand knowledge.”


  This made me bristle, as he seemed to be mocking me. But I reminded myself that making fun is what the Horribles are about. “Yes, all that, plus punishing puns and devilish deeds.”

  “So it’s about boys playing at vigilantes? Is that what the play’s title signifies?”

  I blushed and did not reply, for I had indeed described an actor that holds his pants up with one hand and his gun with the other.

  “Miss Angeline,” he said, “we like to skewer the rich and mighty. It would not be suitable to poke fun at boys caught playing at dangerous games. That was a mistake they regret—or at least I know for certain Hank does.”

  I saw he was right and resolved to take that part out, though it would mean recopying everything once again. “What about a deputy who walks around with his palm out, demanding bribes from everyone he meets?” I had not realized the others might be listening to our conversation until one of them laughed.

  Antoine grinned. “That’s the idea,” he said. “What else? Is there a story to it? Audiences like stories.”

  “The playwright is not sure about the actual story yet,” I admitted.

  “Tell me this,” he said. “Three things about life in Bodie.”

  The breeze blew fine dust like a curse in our faces. I could feel grit collecting, as usual, behind the collar and under the cuffs of my calico. My other everyday dress needed mending, which I would have to do tonight in order to wash this one. “First,” I said, “work and dirt.”

  “Dirt!” echoed one of my escorts. “Oh, yes, Bodie is dirt, mud, muck, grime, and filth. But it’s, pardon me, more a concern of women than men.”

  “And it is not something funny,” Antoine added.

  “I think I can make it so,” I said, more confidently than I felt. “The deputy is dirty. Dirty clothes, dirty job, dirty conscience.”

  A giant man in front whom I knew to be Big Bill Monahan, Momma’s guardian angel, stopped and turned around. He said, “You got that tin badge with you, Butte?”

  The man called Butte pulled something out of a saddle bag and handed it to Mr. Monahan, who pinned it to Antoine’s shirt. It was an enormous sheriff’s badge, the size of a dinner plate. “You got the role, Duval.”