Now, up to the point, Jams was a perfect husband and father, industrious as an ant, and never gave her ought to complain, but a kind of idleness began creeping in once he no longer had to actually go out among the miners. And then his brother Ebenezer hired hisself a man to do the job they’d brought him west to do, and now the both of them together had little to occupy their time, and an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, so says the Bible. It were innocent enough at first to be there in that Gomorrah, to have a glass of the hard stuff with your dinner or a scupper of beer at supper, and it were understandable to go pass the time in converse with men your own age and like ye, forty-niners made good or dreaming of the luck to turn. Truth be told, Flo was glad to see them join their friends the first few times, for Jams always came back in a better mood than when he left, and when Jams was out carousing, at least he wasn’t pawing at her. Bad enough the babies kept coming one right on top of the other. And he never came back stinking drunk like her pap had done, and he never hit her neither, and he always said please and darling, so what harm in it? “Me and Eben are going out,” he told her one Christmas night, and she should’ve, could’ve asked him to stay, but instead just inquired where they would be going on the Lord’s own day. “To the hells,” Jams said, with a snort. “The hells?” The youngest baby started bawling. “What is the hells?”
Eben was at his side, hat in hand. “The hells is places where a man can be a man. Down in the plaza, there are places for a drink and a smoke and a game of chance. We like the Aguila de Oro, don’t we Jams, for there’s a band of Ethiops there every night can sing like your mammy putting ye to sleep. A game or two of monte, nothing at risk.”
They waited for her nod, which she gave reluctantly, and off the brothers went into the cool night to mingle with the Americans and Mexicans and Chiles and Chinee and Lord knows aught else, when a man should be at home with his family. Off they went for a game of cards.
The bathtub drain gurgled and sucked away the last of the water, as if waiting for her cue. With a grand flourish, she pulled back the shower curtain to reveal a tubful of gold dust and nuggets and bars and jewels and coins, a trove at least six inches deep. Despite the dim light, it twinkled ostentatiously. A sea of bling. We gathered around the bathtub as if gathering around a manger.
“Beautiful, ain’t it?” Flo prodded Alice and Dolly with her elbows. “Go ahead, girls, take something for yourself. I’ve no use for any of it anymore. Money is the root of all evil.”
From behind us, Beckett cleared his throat to draw our attention. The baby in his arms kept pawing, reaching for the wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of the old man’s long nose. Beckett had to cock his head just out of reach and thus spoke from the side of his face. “Not money, my dear. The correct adage is: ‘For the love of money is the root of evil.’ Timothy 6:10. Sometimes love is translated as ‘desire,’ which is my own preferred reading of the Greek original. For what are we but the sum of our desires?” The baby boy stuck his fingers between the old man’s lips and Beckett pretended to chew them like some rough beast. “Num, num, num,” he said, and the child squealed with laughter.
As I turned, I spied the three round bottoms of the women as they bent and dipped into the treasure. Only Marie resisted the temptation to further embangle her arms with bracelets or cram more rings upon her fingers or toes. Alice claimed a necklace of nuggets, and Jane wove a chain of gold into her hair. Worst of the three, Dolly emerged from her splurge with a rime of dust flecked upon her lips and staining her cheeks, as though she had tried to feast upon it. Like a magician, Flo pulled to the curtain and hid the glitter from our curious eyes.