The blanket over my head don’t block out the sound, a tapping at the window sharp as hailstones. I roll over and try to get on back to sleep, but the noise gets louder. Then a second sound starts in, this one soft and breathy.
“Jasper,” it says.
That ain’t a storm I hear.
The room’s dark, but a faint light glows outside, enough to see Pa’s bed is as jumbled as usual. No telling, though, if he’s in there or not.
“Come on, wake up,” the voice whispers.
Melvin? My brother’s on the porch? I listen close for that funny whistle Mel makes when he sleeps heavy, but don’t hear it. Mel ain’t in his bed like he should be.
A groan escapes Pa’s lumpy blanket as three sharp raps rattle the windowpane. Don’t know how I missed him earlier, blowing in how he does, loud and clumsy as a blind moose. Usually mad as one, too. I grab my glasses, race across them worn floorboards as quick as I can, and crack open the door. There’s my brother on the other side. He hoots and grins as he swings a newspaper over his head. The lantern he holds jitters, casting jagged shadows.
“You need to hush!” I slip out onto the porch, shut the door real gentle.
Mel quiets some, but he still dances around. If I didn’t know him better, the way he’s acting, pure crazy on his face, I’d think he’d got into Pa’s liquor. Any second now I expect Pa to fly out of bed, cussing like a kicked cat, and knock some sense into him.
“Where’ve you been?” I take the lantern from Mel’s hand, set it on the top step for safekeeping. “What’re you doing out here, anyhow?”
“I was talking with the men at the wool mill and lost track of time.” The lantern hardly gives off any light, but even so, Mel’s eyes shine unnatural-like. He smiles as though he can’t hardly help himself. “Then I had to get to Hansen’s for a newspaper before the others beat me to it.”
I don’t know what Melvin’s on about. “But it’s the middle of the night.”
“Jasper, there’s something I’ve got to tell you that can’t wait until morning. That’s why I called you out here.” Mel glances at the darkened window. “I didn’t want to wake Pa.”
Mel ain’t one to come home late, and he certainly don’t run around all hours. My hands feel funny, all hot and cold at once. “What is it?”
“Wait till you see this.” Mel smacks that newspaper he’s holding. “Mr. Hansen sold me one of the very last copies.”
We ain’t had a newspaper for years. It’s one of them luxuries we can’t afford.
“‘July 17, 1897,’” I read aloud. “‘Latest News from the Klondike. Nine O’Clock Edition.’” It’s this morning’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The words run bold across the middle:
GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!
SIXTY-EIGHT RICH MEN ON
THE STEAMER PORTLAND.
STACKS OF YELLOW METAL!
“Gold,” I say again. The word feels warm and round and strange on my tongue.
Below the story is a map, a spiderweb of wavy lines that lead to a river labeled Klondike. The paper says the whole place is called the Klondike for the river that passes through. It’s in some part of Canada far above Washington, right up against Alaska, about as distant as the moon.
A light breeze ruffles Mel’s sandy hair, sets the lantern flame to sputtering. “The paper says the Portland pulled into Seattle this morning,” he says. “Everyone on board was loaded down with gold.”
What I wouldn’t give to see some gold up close. Only got to once before, a couple years ago, when Mama showed me Pa’s pocket watch. “Think any of them fellows will come out to Kirkland and show us what they found?”
“No one will come to this nothing town.” Mel loses his gooney look and puts on the practical face he wears near about all the time, the one where his eyebrows pinch together and his lips flatten into a firm line. “Don’t know why I stay sometimes.”
“Well, I do,” I tell him. “You stick around because you’ve still got money to earn. You stay because of me.”
Mel gives half his pay from the mill to Pa. What Pa don’t know is that when he’s out carousing, my brother pries back the loose floorboard under his bed and hides the other half in the cigar box Mama once used for recipes. He’s saving for the two of us. As soon as he’s got enough, we’ll leave Kirkland together. Because here’s the thing: ever since Mama left, Pa’s gone from bad to worse.
Mel shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “I could save every penny I earn and come nowhere near what those men on the Portland have. A man in the Klondike makes more money in one week than I’ll ever have in my whole life.”
There’s a prickly feeling at the back of my neck as I think on what Mel said. Gold’s worth loads of money, and money’s what we need. I don’t know one family with enough, but even Cyril’s, with them five kids, knows how to make a paycheck last. Once Pa touches the money Mel gives him, it’s as good as gone. “There ain’t no reason for us to wait,” I say. “We could make it on our own right now. In the Klondike.” I ain’t ever been outside Kirkland, let alone Washington, and here’s our chance to go. Not somewhere close by, neither, but to Canada, on the top of the world.
“Listen, Jasper.” Mel steps away from me a bit. “About that.”
“We could leave next week. Or even tomorrow.” I can’t slow down what’s bubbling up inside. “Sure, I’d miss Cyril and fishing at the lake, and—”
“Jasper,” Mel says. “You’ve got to listen to me.”
That’s when the front door swings open. Pa stands in the frame, tall and terrible. His eyes are bloodshot slits, his wild hair points in all directions. “Shut your traps,” he says, “and put out that god-awful light! What’re you boys doing, anyhow? Get inside and go to bed.”
There ain’t nothing we can do but obey.
My mind don’t settle when I cross them floorboards that creak beneath me or when I climb in under my ragged quilt. Mel’s whistle says he’s drifted off long before that word quits echoing my heartbeat—gold, gold, gold.
• • •
Next morning, I’m extra quiet as I make my bed and boil the same coffee grounds I used yesterday. Second-day coffee ain’t much different than hot water, but it’s what I got to do to make the coffee stretch. There’s no sense rattling Pa again, if I can help it. The newspaper Mel carried on about last night is spread across the table. I wrap my hands around my warm tin cup and dig right into the story about the gold. It says that a few days ago, a steamboat arrived in San Francisco, full of men called prospectors and their Klondike treasure. Word got out that another Klondike steamer named the Portland was headed to Seattle right behind them. News reporters were so hungry for the story, they rode a tugboat to meet the Portland offshore.
The coffee burns as I swallow it down. Men struck it rich last summer, and the rest of the world knew nothing about it until now—a whole year later.
The map below the story is called The Land of Gold and nearly covers the whole bottom half of the page. I run my finger over its wiggly river lines. There’s so many of them. The biggest river, named the Yukon, starts in the mountains of Canada, then heads north and crosses into Alaska, which it cuts clear in half, then snakes west until it meets the sea. From the Yukon on the Canada side flows the Klondike River. The land south of it is where them men on the Portland made their fortunes, where me and Melvin are headed as soon as he says go.
Pa stumbles to the table and yanks the paper from me. I reach for my cup but can’t steady it in time. Coffee spills everywhere. Pa holds the paper before him like he didn’t just snatch it, like he’s been reading it all morning. “Don’t just sit there,” he says. “Clean up that dripping mess.”
That’s Pa. He makes problems of his own and tells others to fix them. Ain’t no way I’d answer back, though sometimes I sorely want to. Arguing with Pa leads to nothing but sorrow. That and the fire of his belt across my legs. Believe me, I don’t run my mouth no more. I’ve learned that lesson good.
I wipe the table, then kneel down to clean the floor.
Pa fans the paper open. “Where’d you get this?”
“Mel brought it home from Hansen’s yesterday.”
“Mel.” He shakes his head. “Throwing away money on a newspaper. And you. Don’t know what you two were up to out there on the porch. Loud enough to wake the dead.”
Pa’s eyes are as dull as they were last night. He’s got a stink like that mouse stuck in Miss Stapleton’s desk all summer long. But even so, he don’t seem too fierce this morning, not as riled as he could be. It’s best to keep him that way.
I wring out the rags, set them aside for the laundry I’ll have to get to soon.
“Bring me some coffee,” Pa says. “And don’t you leave a drop for that lazy brother of yours.”
Mel stirs in his bed, like he’s heard us talking. Ain’t no way he couldn’t in a house this small.
I hand Pa his cup as he hunches over the newspaper. He mutters to himself. “Klondike gold. Bunch of fools.”
Mel shuffles to the stove in his red underdrawers, a union suit that bags around his kneecaps and has worn clean through at the elbows, and reaches for the empty coffepot. He looks a sight. Probably didn’t sleep a wink.
Pa lowers the paper. “You read this newspaper yet?”
Mel nods.
“You mark my words,” Pa says. “Now that gold’s been discovered in Canada, a whole load of idiots will head up there and try to find some for themselves.”
I wonder what Pa will say when he learns me and Melvin plan to do exactly that.
Leave here. For good. To get us some gold.
“Them fellows are chumps,” I chime in for Pa’s sake. “Idiots.” The whole time I say it, I make eyes at Mel, try to catch his notice and figure out what he’s thinking. But all his attention’s on Pa.
“It’s the sort of man who ain’t worked an honest day in his life that would try something so stupid,” Pa says. “The type who wants things easy.”
Mel holds the coffeepot like he’s forgotten all about it. “What’s so easy about leaving everything you know?”
I want to swat my brother with a dishrag, step on his toes and make him holler, anything to draw him back, because this conversation ain’t headed nowhere good. Melvin should be quiet after last night’s hooting and dancing on the porch.
But he plows ahead. “Familiar is what’s easy. It’s brave to leave what you know behind.”
Pa’s lip curls. “You contradicting me, boy?”
I grab the broom, busy myself with the dust that’s crept in under the door, get as far as I can from whatever storm Mel’s stirring up with Pa. Of course I want to tell Pa exactly what I think, ask him straight out what he remembers about honest work when it’s surprising if he gets himself to his job at Hansen’s more than a few days a week. But I ain’t stupid, either.
Lay low and stay out of the way, that’s the rule around here. Melvin taught it to me when Pa lost his job at the mill six months before he got his own there. Mel’s always been the one to keep the peace, the one who slows Pa’s anger when my mouth runs on its own. So how come all of a sudden Mel’s acting like he’s forgotten everything?
Mel slams the empty pot on the stove.
“I said”—Pa’s words are sharp and loud—“are you contradicting me?”
Mel still don’t answer. He stomps straight from the kitchen, pulls out his crate of clothes from underneath his bed, yanks on his trousers, and shoves his arms through his shirtsleeves. The whole time he mumbles but don’t look once at Pa.
Oh, my heart thunders to see him act so reckless.
“Don’t you talk under your breath,” Pa says. “You got something to tell me, Melvin Johnson, you say it outright.”
That gets him to stop. Something about Mel looks almost grown, him who’s barely sixteen. “Who are you to judge the man who wants a better life?”
“Who am I?” Pa lunges forward. His hand flies out, strikes Melvin square on the cheek. “I’m your pa. Don’t you ever forget it.”
I duck behind the table, my fists balled up so tight, my fingernails cut through my skin. “Hush, Mel, hush. Just hush,” I say.
Mel’s face burns red where Pa hit him, but he don’t stop. “You want to know what they say about you at the mill, Pa? That you’re good-for-nothing. That once Mama died, you took to drinking like it was the only thing you remembered how to do.”
“Don’t you bring your mama into this!” Pa bellows. He moves in so close, Mel’s backed against the wall.
“You could have saved her.” Mel’s eyes flash. “You could have if you’d wanted to.”
I hold my hands against my ears, but it don’t keep their voices out.
Pa’s like a firecracker set to explode. “What do you mean, if I’d wanted to?”
“You could have taken help the first time it was offered. But you didn’t.” Mel’s jaw is clenched, and his head’s pressed hard on the wooden boards behind him. “Want to know what else the men at the mill told me?” He takes a breath and lets it out slow. “They say I’m the one who’s the real man around here.”
Pa storms across the room, grabs for the empty coffeepot, and lets it fly. It hits inches from Mel’s head. Brown streaks run down the wall. The pot clatters to the floor.
Mel’s face is a mix of fear and anger, but anger wins out quick. He jerks the door open and slams it from the other side.
Pa lowers himself into Mama’s rocker, still angled near the window the way she always liked it.
I stand on shaky legs. There’s too much sadness in this house. More ugliness than I can bear. How I itch to be anywhere else.
Pa looks past the window, unblinking. There ain’t no trace of the caring fellow he used to be.
• • •
The wool mill hisses and clatters the morning me and Cyril walk past, loud as Mel’s been quiet since last month’s fight with Pa.
Cyril peers again at the fish in my bucket. “You’ll eat fine tonight.” Three perch and a smallmouth bass, their sides splotched gray and yellow, flop against the bucket’s sides. Cyril grins. His chapped lips don’t fit too good around his crooked teeth. “Sure beats my scrawny trout.”
“Mel better be home before suppertime if he wants to eat tonight. Pa don’t let me keep food out for him no more.”
Since that awful morning him and Pa fought, Mel’s kept to himself. He leaves early for the mill and gets home long after I’m in bed. Every night I take Mel’s newspaper from under my pillow and read through the gold story one more time. I’m set to ask Mel about our Klondike plans—what we’ll bring and when we’ll leave and how we’ll work around Pa—just as soon as I catch him alone.
“Meet you at the lake tomorrow morning?” Cyril asks.
I nod. “See you then.”
Cyril swings his bucket as he goes.
The August sun ain’t reached its full height, but already it blazes like it means business. My footsteps ring hollow on the porch steps. The house is dark and still. Could be Pa’s already left to work at Hansen’s.
“Wondered where you were,” Pa says as I open the door. He tucks in his ragged shirt and pulls up his suspenders, like he’s just made a start to his morning when the day is pushing toward noon.
“I caught four fish for supper.” The water slops in the bucket as I lift it to the cupboard.
That’s when I see the letter propped against the empty flour jar. The letter’s in Mel’s hand. There ain’t no reason for him to write a note unless something’s wrong.
Pa leans in to study his supper. Quick as that, I push past to grab the letter.
“What was that for?” Pa growls. “You could have knocked over them fish.”
“Just checking to see if there’s enough flour for biscuits.” I reach for the empty jar and give it a shake. “Nope.” When Pa ain’t looking, I work Mel’s note into my pocket.
Pa starts in on how tired he is of perch, how any decent man deserves a bit of variety from time to time when it comes to his supper, but I don’t really listen. I’m thinking about that letter.
Pa grips my shoulder, squeezes awful hard. “You hear what I said? I want them fish fried up when I get home. No saving some for Melvin, either. If he wants to eat, he better get back at a regular hour.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
The place where Pa’s hand pressed aches long after he lets up.
Pa eases himself into a chair to lace his boots. That letter feels like it’s burning a hole clean through my trousers. Maybe I could hold it low behind the kitchen counter so Pa don’t notice.
I slip it from my pocket, try to smooth it across my leg to work the wrinkles out. Dear Pa, it begins, it’s time for me to go.
I don’t read no more. I can’t because my head don’t make sense of them words. It’s like each one’s been flipped over and turned around.
Time to go. The letter says.
For me. Not “me and Jasper.”
My name ain’t mentioned at all.
“Boy, have you listened to a word I said?” Pa’s on his feet again. He motions to my hand. “What’s that you got?”
“It ain’t nothing.” I cram Mel’s letter deep in my pocket. “What did you say?”
“I said you’d better see to them fish.” Pa chews the inside of his cheek, eyeing me. “Mind yourself, Jasper. I’m low on patience.” Pa tugs on his cap, and then he’s out the door.
I wait and wait to be sure Pa’s truly gone before I try Mel’s letter again.
Dear Pa,
It’s time for me to go.
Since I brought home that newspaper, all I’ve thought about is the gold that’s been found in Canada. This is my chance, and I’m going to take it.
I know a sixteen-year-old boy’s old enough to be on his own. You’ve said as much a hundred times. But I’ve stuck around to help out. Mainly I’ve kept on because of Jasper. He’s acted strong since he got over the influenza, but he’s eleven, Pa. A kid. Be good to him. That’s all I ask. If not for me, then for Mama.
Your son,
Melvin Johnson
An awful feeling squeezes my middle. Melvin’s gone. After that talk we had last month, after two years of promises we’d make our way together, he’s up and left without me.
What was he thinking to leave me like that?
This is his chance, Mel says. His alone. It don’t take long before my blood runs hot. I crumple up that letter, swing my arm hard as I can. The paper ball bounces off the door, rolls under Melvin’s bed.
So I’m just some little kid. Oh, that Melvin thinks he’s something special, how he holds a job and knows what’s happening in the world outside of Kirkland. Miss Stapleton still loves to talk about what a perfect student he was, but that don’t mean he knows everything.
I got more sense than ten Mels put together plus a couple more. He thinks he’s practically a man, can do what he pleases. But what kind of a man makes promises, then runs off the first chance he gets?
As I reach for Mel’s note, the loose floorboard beneath his bed jiggles. I pry it back, and there’s the cigar box, where it’s always been. Except it’s cleaned out. Empty. The crate of clothes Mel stores under there, that’s empty, too. His two books are missing. The knapsack he keeps on a hook is gone.
But there’s one real important thing he’s left behind.
His extra pair of underdrawers sits right on top of yesterday’s clean laundry, the red union suit with the worn-through elbows and the baggy knees. Serves him right to be stuck with only one set of underwear. Old Mel ain’t as clever as he thinks he is.
Up there in the Klondike in his one pair of underclothes, how’s he gonna get along? With the newspaper map under my pillow, he won’t be able to find his way.
And then I remember. Pa’s pocket watch.
Mama showed it to me and Mel one winter afternoon while rain streamed down the windows and thunder shivered the walls. It was a few months after Pa lost his job. Mama told us to sell the watch if ever me and Mel found ourselves in a tough spot. We didn’t ask how come she could decide about something that belonged to Pa. She knew how hard things were for us. I’m glad she ain’t seen how bad it’s gotten.
I lift the corner of the quilt on Pa’s bed, dig around beneath his straw-tick mattress until my hand closes on a lump of flannel. The gold watch is wrapped inside, all smooth and shiny.
So Mel didn’t take it. That was always the plan. When the two of us lit out, we’d take that watch with us in case we ever got in any trouble. We meant to sell it if we were in a pinch and needed money quick.
Mel’s heading to Canada on his own. Sure, he’s got some money, but he don’t got this. I’m the one who can bring it to him. The truth is Melvin needs me. And more than anything, I’m owed an explanation on why he up and left without me.
It don’t take long for me to pack. All I’ve got is a change of clothes, a coat, my green muffler, three pairs of Pa’s woolen socks, the fifty-seven cents I won from Cyril on a dare, my school pencil, the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the last hunk of bread from me and Mel’s secret stash. That red pair of underdrawers Mel’s forgotten sits folded up real nice on top of yesterday’s laundry. I can’t wait to see his face, all grateful and embarrassed, when I hand them over.
But it’s not the underdrawers my hand goes for first. It’s Mama’s washboard. Every time I hold it, I can’t help but run my fingers over its middle, which zings with a sound almost like music. This washboard’s one of the only things we still own that once belonged to her, and I ain’t got the heart to leave it behind. Pa ain’t partial to cleanliness. He won’t notice it’s missing, anyhow.
I drop Pa’s watch in my pocket, grab those underdrawers, and strap the washboard to my pack. Mel’s got a good head start on me. If I’m gonna catch up to him, I best be going myself. I’m halfway across the porch before I turn around. Pa may be a mess and is as mean as they come, but I took his watch. Sure, I got Mama’s blessing, but that don’t mean he knows it. The least I can do is tell him what’s going on.
The front page of the newspaper’s in my pocket folded around my pencil, but I’ve left the rest on the table. I write a note down one side.
Pa,
That gold up in Canada. Me and Mel are gone to get some.
Jasper
PS – I got the watch.
Then I hightail it out of there.