The Ballad of Lucy Whipple Read online

  Standing there was a miner, booted and flannel shirted and very dirty. In my imagination already back in Massachusetts, I just sat and stared at him.

  Mama shouted through the tent flap, "Get off that stump and dip some water for the poor man, you goose."

  I took the tin cup hanging from a string on the tent, dipped it into the rain barrel, which had more leaves in it than water, and gave it to the miner.

  He drank thirstily and handed me back the cup. "Thank you entirely for the water, little sister. Now maybe you could tell me what smells so durned good."

  "The dried-apple pies I made for supper," I said.

  "I think I might trade this whole bag of gold here for one of them pies."

  "Done," I said.

  The miner laughed. We settled on a bit of gold dust and I gave him a pie.

  "California, there must be ten dollars worth of gold here," Mama said. "For one pie!"

  The gold dust inspired me to bake another couple of pies. I sat on the stump with pies cooling beside me all afternoon, but lucky miners were rare, and lucky miners who would spend their dust on pies when the saloon was nearby were rarer still.

  "The secret," said Amos Frogge, who stopped by to sniff but didn't buy because he got pie free with his supper, "is to get them before they head to the saloon."

  So the next morning I got out of bed long before dawn to do my chores and bake my pies. I gathered enough chokecherries for six pies, put them in to bake, built a carrier out of the old straw basket we had come west with, and, not long after sunup, set out for the river to make my fortune. I didn't much relish the thought of talking all those strangers into buying pies, but I thought I could manage if it would get me away from this dirt pile called Lucky Diggins.

  I sold my first pie to a man and his scrawny wife who were passing through. I got a dollar, and that lady just stood there, leaning on the mule, and ate the whole pie, washing it down with cold river water.

  Pies two and three were bought by Jimmy Whiskers. It was late morning before pie four went to a group digging near the north bank.

  I began to worry about getting home to help Mama clean up from breakfast, feed Prairie and Sierra, and begin peeling and slicing and boiling for dinner. As I walked back along the north bank, I saw a stranger wearing not a flannel shirt and boots like most diggers but just a red union suit and a straw hat. Most peculiar, but I approached him. "Mister, could I int—"

  "Dag diggety!" shouted the miner in his underwear. "Git yer carcass off 'n my claim afore I bury my shovel in yer yella hair, you diggety dog. Spyin' on me! Waitin' to jump my claim and steal my gold, you diggety..." The miner continued mumbling while he pulled a pistol from the seat of his union suit and fired it in my direction.

  Horror! Bullets were hitting the ground all around my feet, so I dropped the basket of pies and took off for home, scrambling over the ground like a blind chicken with the fidgets. The remaining pies were eaten by a badger, who then curled up inside the basket to sleep and nearly scared me to death when I went back the next morning, causing me to holler so loud that the badger took off toward the mountains and is likely running still.

  Two things came of this encounter. "Dag diggety" began to creep into my vocabulary, especially on those occasions when the little girls were ill-humored or I was feeling unappreciated, though I never dared to let Mama hear it, lest it be judged blasphemous and forbidden. Second, I decided that a one-person pie business was too hard, too time-consuming, and just too dangerous, so I looked around for a partner.

  Of course. Butte.

  I called him to a business meeting out by the stump. "Listen, Butte, it's a great opportunity," I told him, feeding him bits of dried apple to keep him from wandering off. "I will make the pies, and you take them out to the river and the diggings and sell them. You'll earn a nickel for each pie you sell."

  "Nope."

  "Well, then, ten cents a pie. That's ten percent and it could add up to a lot of money. Why, there must be a thousand miners within a day's walk of here. If even half of them bought a pie, that would be five hundred dollars. Just think of it, Butte, five hundred dollars! A couple of weeks like that and we'd be on our way back to Massachusetts."

  "Massachusetts? Why'd I want to go back there?"

  "Surely you don't want to stay in this hot, dusty wilderness?"

  "I like it here."

  We had gotten off the original subject. "Well, stay then. I'll take the five hundred dollars and go home."

  "Good. Be sure to write."

  "All right, I yield. Fifteen percent."

  "Twenty."

  "You're joking!"

  "Twenty-five."

  "Listen, Butte, I—"

  "Thirty, and give my share to Mama."

  "Done," I said in a hurry. Dag diggety, I thought, if we don't cease negotiations, I'll see no profit at all.

  So Butte and I became partners in the pie business. Mr. Scatter let Butte go early on Tuesdays and Saturdays, so on those days I baked and he peddled pies up and down the river. Mr. Scatter gave us an old cracked pickle crock to keep our earnings in.

  I dreamed of making my fortune and getting home by next spring, but it seemed as though the more money we made, the more I had to pay to Mr. Scatter for flour and lard, and the more Mama took to keep us all in boots and beans and bad coffee. Everything had to be carted over the mountains by Bean Belly Thompson or someone like him, so prices were monstrously high. Apples and onions were two dollars each, beans a dollar a pound, and Mr. Scatter had a can of pickled beets on his shelf priced at eleven dollars, waiting for the right lucky miner who wanted to celebrate with pickled beets.

  Not too many miners made their fortunes either, and every week one or two boarders would leave to go back to farm or factory, a mite scrawnier but no richer than when they came. Every week one or two more young fellows would take their place, hopes running high. They came with picks and axes and tin pans, with lucky charms and holy medals, with magic machines called Goldometers and Nugget Finders, with secret maps and Indian legends. Few planned to stay in California after they made their fortunes, so there was no planting of crops, raising of cattle or pigs, or building of anything but the crudest temporary shelter. They just wanted to get rich, get out, and get home.

  Some were lucky, most were not. The work was hard and full of danger. Some died before ever putting pick to dirt, worn out by the long months of crossing the country, living on salt beef and stale biscuits. Jimmy Whiskers said those who stayed on were more greedy, more needy, more stubborn, or more hopeful than the rest or, like him, just had nowhere else to go.

  Tramping out to the goldfields every Tuesday and Saturday made Butte vulnerable to a bad case of gold fever. He started spending more and more time out at the diggings, even when he didn't have pies to sell, and at home he could only think gold and talk gold.

  "Listen, California..." he said one day.

  "Call me Lucy, will you?"

  "Why'd I want to do that?"

  "Because I want it to be my name."

  "Lucy? Makes you sound like some dainty showoff from the city. Lucy Belle. Lucy May. Lucy dearest." He snickered.

  "Never mind. What do you want?"

  "Want out of the pie business. Between working with the miners and cleaning up for Mr. Scatter, there's no time for pies."

  "You can't just quit. You're a partner," I grumbled. "You can't. I barely have time to make the pies; I'd never finish all my work around here if I had to sell, too. I'll give you an extra five percent."

  "No matter. I give it all to Mama anyway."

  So Butte quit, leaving me to try to keep the business going all by myself. Mama grumbled about having to do without Butte's profits, but she was the first one to understand itchy feet, so she let him have his adventure. He went out early every day but Sunday, when Mama made him stay home and take a bath. Otherwise he spent his mornings working for Mr. Scatter, sweeping, stacking boxes, emptying spittoons, and shoveling the mule droppings away from the sa
loon door. His days went to digging holes and carrying water and tending mules for the men who shoveled tons of dirt and gravel into the long cradles, hoping there were chunks of gold that would get caught in the riffles in the bottom and make their fortunes. He picked up tools, patched up cuts and bruises, and learned to fight. He was paid with bits of dust when his miners got lucky and a pat on the back when they didn't. Mostly he just came home with sore cirrus and a story to tell.

  "Heard tell of a prospector out Coyote Gulch who decided to turn tail and go home, his partner dying on him and no luck washing for color. So he burns his gear, digs a grave for his partner, and there in the hole turns up the biggest nugget ever seen in these parts. Living now in San Francisco, lightin' his cigars with dollar bills, not likely ever to go home. Seems to me there's no point in workin' steady if, with a little luck and a sharp pick, you can find fortunes lyin' on the ground."

  He took to swaggering and spitting and asking me every day if he had started a beard yet. He made the mistake of spitting where Mama could see him, and she frowned mightily. I wondered how much longer he'd be working in the diggings.

  Butte slept soundly each night, worn out from being a little boy doing a man's job. Sometimes when I was up late into the night baking pies, I watched him sleep, his eyelashes making half-circles on his cheeks and his breath whistling in the silence of the night, and tried to figure out just how I felt about him, he vexed me so. It was a long time before I knew.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AUTUMN/WINTER 1849-1850

  In which I try to tell Mama my name, write letters,

  and threaten to sigh myself to death

  I finally got up the courage to approach Mama about this Lucy matter. "Mama, can I ask you something?"

  "Depends on what," said Mama as she poured molasses and mustard powder into the pot of beans.

  "Will you ... umm..." I didn't quite know how to make Mama see that this was important to me and not joke or snort in irritation.

  "Spit it out, California." Mama stirred the beans once more and put them into the oven of the cookstove.

  "That's it, Mama. California. I don't want to be called California. California is a place, not a person. I want to be called Lucy."

  Mama stopped in the middle of licking the molasses spoon. "What are you talking about?"

  I could feel my cheeks grow hot as the cookstove. "About me, Mama. I want to be called Lucy, not California."

  "Lucy? Where did you come up with a name like that?"

  "In a book. But it doesn't matter—"

  "A book! I should have known. That's what makes you so notional, those books!"

  "Mama, please!"

  Mama looked at me twisting my hands in my apron and trying hard not to cry. She sighed. "After twelve years of calling you California, I don't see how I can suddenly say Lucy any more than I could Bossie or Nelly or Lady Jane."

  "Will you try, Mama?"

  "We'll see. Now go do something useful."

  I straightened my apron and took a deep breath. "I will go write some letters."

  "You will gather wood for the cookstove, beat the dust out of the bed quilts, put the sheets on to boil, rub salt and vinegar into the ink stains on your aprons and lay them in the sun, and set the table for supper. Then you can write some letters," said Mama, and that was that.

  Dear Gram and Grampop,

  Well, I told Mama about me being Lucy instead of California, and now she just calls me missy or chickie or sis or nothing at all. To her I'm not Lucy yet but I'm not California either, and that sits just fine with me. If I were the gambling sort, I'd bet a penny she will call me Lucy before too long. I think she'd be embarrassed to stand outside the tent and shout, "Oh chickie, come home and start supper." I will keep you informed.

  I liked writing letters. There wasn't much else to do for fun in Lucky Diggins if you didn't dig or drink. At first I wrote on pink writing paper, a going-away gift from Aunt Beulah, but was finally reduced to using the scraps of greasy paper that came wrapped around the bacon and cheese and lard from Mr. Scatter's store.

  Dear Cousin Batty,

  Do not let your father bring you here, for you would not like it and would most likely die. At the least you would get your hands dirty and mud on your pretty white shoes.

  I do not like it, and I do not mind mud nearly as much as you do.

  It is lonely here. I even almost miss you.

  Regards from your cousin who now calls herself

  Lucy

  It was a lot easier to write what I thought or felt than to say it out loud. I could write things I'd never say to someone's face, especially since I didn't quite believe those letters would ever get all the way around to Massachusetts. Snowshoe Ballou, who had the biggest feet in the Sierra, carried letters to San Francisco for mailing and brought mail back, for a dollar a letter. He walked up and down the mountains and valleys, on a trail when there was a trail or navigating by trees and peaks or stars when there wasn't. Lucky Diggins was all in a dither each month when Snowshoe Ballou showed up, bringing the promise of a letter or newspaper or a package from some faraway exotic place or, even better, from home.

  Dear Gram and Grampop,

  If ever you write, please enclose money so I can pay Snowshoe Ballou and continue to write you letters. Gold would he best, but I believe dollars would do.

  I am still selling a few pies, so I have been making a little money each day for my pickle crock, but most of the miners don't seem to care for pie much, preferring to spend their money on beans, whiskey, and tobacco. Mr. Scatter says all miners are vagabonds, scoundrels, and assassins, but that he's not leaving until he has "enough money to burn a wet mule." The miners, on the other hand, think Mr. Scatter is the scoundrel, taking all their precious gold to pay for flour and salt. "Hard as Scatters heart" is heard around here near as often as "pay dirt," "humbug," and "more whiskey, dang it."

  Snowshoe Ballou was my first real friend in California. He had a sweet smile and appreciated a slice or two of pie whenever he picked up letters. I didn't even know we were friends until his third or fourth visit, when he brought me an eagle feather, for he didn't talk much. I don't know if he got used to silence because of being alone in the mountains or if he took to the mountains because they were silent. And he never said.

  Dear Gram and Grampop,

  Mama said that we are all fine and healthy and if I cannot write nicer things than I usually do, I cannot write at all Expect to hear only good things from now on, whether they are true or not. You'll begin to think Lucky Diggins is as calm as a toad in the sunshine.

  Snowshoe's best friend was an Indian called Hennit, which meant Beaver, for his thick brown hair. Jimmy Whiskers told me Snowshoe and Hennit would sit in the big Indian sweathouse for hours, cleaning themselves of all human smell, and then go hunting for the deer Snowshoe used for making his shoes, his feet being too big for ready-mades. After hunting, Jimmy said, Snowshoe and Hennit would thank the spirit of the deer for sharing his hide and his meat with them. I thought it was a good idea and for a while thanked the prairie chickens and rabbits and squirrels I shot, but it never seemed quite enough.

  Dear Gram and Grampop,

  I dreamed last night of clam chowder and Gram's apple pandowdy with sweet yellow cream. Woke to a bean-and-biscuit breakfast again. We eat lots of beans and biscuits. Except for what I shoot, our meat is mostly the weevils in the flour or some moldy salt pork that traveled halfway around the world to find us and did not have an easy trip. I think such a diet cannot be as healthy for little children as wholesome Massachusetts food, but when I try to talk to Mama of this, she looks like she's going to spit.

  If you see my former teacher, Miss Charlotte Homer of Reedsville, kindly inquire if she might send me a book. I am sick to death of Ivanhoe and Mr. Scatter's Bible, and there is not another book in these mountains.

  Once when Snowshoe seemed more talkative than usual, I asked him why he took to the mountains and the mails. Snowshoe shrugged and said,
"Know many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe."

  "Don't you have family?" I asked.

  Snowshoe said he didn't recollect.

  Dear Gram and Grampop,

  You would not know me. I am so tall and almost fat. I think it is all the biscuits and gravy. I do the biscuits but Mama makes fine gravy. It is one reason her boarding house is full, that and the fact the miners like to look at her, her being the only woman in the camp except for Milly, who has come to work at the saloon, and Mr. Scatter's grown daughter, Belle, who has cross-eyes and bad skin and is as mean as a meat axe. Maybe she should marry Mr. Coogan and they can go into the meanness business: two bits a frown, a dollar a scowl, and a twenty-dollar gold piece would buy you flat-out savagerous rage.

  Mr. Scatter has hired Snoose McGrath to build an honest-to-gosh wooden boarding house behind the general store, so we are hoping to be out of this tent by winter. Mama works hard but sees only the mountains and big trees and clear blue sky and doesn't seem to see the dirt. I myself am knee deep in dirt.

  I am getting more used to boarders and even open my mouth now and then, but it seems just as I'm getting friendly, they leave, going home or to the city for the winter, except for Mr. Coogan, who gives every indication of becoming a permanent member of the Whipple family.

  We look never to get out of here. My heart is so sore with missing you and Pa and Golden and home, sometimes I think I'll sigh myself to death.

  I asked Jimmy why Snowshoe kept so quiet and alone all the time.