Rollin Ridge
San Francisco and Sacramento, California
September 1854
D
ressed in my best suit, I stood in the dying light beside San Francisco Bay for the second day in a row. Sun-soaked faces of dock workers rowed boats full of pale passengers from the newly arrived steamer, The Star of the West. Each small dingy clumped beside ten others, moving through the shallows en masse, heavy with the weight of new Californians or stacked deep with mail bags sent from Atlantic to Pacific.
Many newcomers passed through this “golden gate,” as it was called, eager to buy mules, load them heavy with sluice boxes, and head north. I’d read many an eastern paper declaring the locations from the latest gold rush; however, with the sixty days of travel from here to the New England states, too many men arrived, ready to pound through barren mountainsides and pan streams already stripped of their shining ore.
Passengers unloaded, and crews rowed back for another run. I waited on a bench under a tree and, in its shade, studied, for the millionth time, Lizzie’s portrait sent last December. Her image returned my stare. Her eyes had exchanged their brightness for tin-type gray. Frozen still, she held no smile.
Mother’s last letter said Lizzie planned to travel by coach with a local Fayetteville merchant, a friend of my in-laws, the Wilsons. From Chicago, she’d take a train to New York. After the second leg of her journey, my brave woman boarded a steamer and set sail through Vanderbilt’s Nicaraguan route to San Francisco. To get to the other side of the country, one must travel halfway around the globe. Steamer travel remained the safest and fastest means, albeit expensive. How she managed the expense to travel so far, she didn’t say. But having experienced the alternative route, the cost was a necessity for her safety.
Lizzie left our daughter with Mother. In her last letter, she told me Wacooli had taken my place and worked in the Missouri fields. Brother Herman had a farm to tend to but said living alone was too sad, so he spent most nights at Mama’s. It was probably because he’d rather eat her cooking than burnt cornmeal from his own skillet. Aeneas remained at home because he couldn’t decide what he wanted to do. Mama said he should learn medicine and do good. However, if Aeneas chose that road, he’d die a poor man. But, if he practiced law like my brother, Andrew Jackson Ridge, he’d do less good but earn a substantial living. My youngest sister, Flora, studied at the Women’s Seminary under Sophie Sawyer. Mother didn’t mention Susan’s family or my favorite sibling, Clarinda. She and Skili lived in a cabin in the Ozarks, among the forest’s medicinal plants. I wanted to inquire about each in my next correspondence. But I waited to write, hoping to deliver good news that Lizzie arrived in San Francisco, no worse for wear.
When I thought of Lizzie’s risk, I vacillated from anger at her for endangering herself to giddiness, anticipating holding her again. Lizzie’s initiative to come to me during my “illness,” reassured me no other man had taken my place. I couldn’t stop her, could say nothing if she’d already left. Knowing Lizzie as I did, she deferred my warnings by having Mother tell me of her plans. I could only pray for her safe passage and hope she’d met no single men traveling alone with unrighteous intentions.
Life had offered me few charms since I’d left her behind.1 Under Joaquín’s red canyons and bluffs, Lizzie appeared in my nightmares. Dressed in her shift, she left my side and walked away, never looking back. If a man were to believe his dreams, Lizzie had turned from me, despite my many unconscious calls for her return. I sat by his campfire for weeks, met his beloved Rosita, and listened to the tales of his quest to revive his starving people. I empathized. Had I stayed in Arkansas, I would have become the same duplicitous man, both vigilante and saint, and died in the same manner, trapped by the guns of Ross’ henchmen.
It wasn’t but a few weeks after I returned to civilization before Captain Love ambushed and killed Joaquín. Afterward, the acid revived the ulcerous pains in my stomach, seeing the noble bandolero’s head in a jar paraded across the state as if he were a carnival showpiece. After seeing such horror, I ended my novel with an image of Rosita, Murieta’s grieving widow. “Alas, how happy might she have been had man never learned to wrong his fellow man.”2 I couldn’t help but imagine Lizzie’s heart facing Rosita’s grief.
Salty air blew in my face when I looked across the bay to the ship, smoke still barreling from its stacks. The last tiny figures moved down the long plank and boarded dingy boats. Several flouncing dresses blew in the breeze, seated beside men in top hats. The distance remained too great for me to discern any recognizable face. One woman wore silver taffeta, a sheen against the blinding sunlight. Another dressed in homespun indigo blue, the same color as the seas they’d crossed. One tall woman wore mixed shades of brown, like a lucky copper penny found along the road. Once seated, the copper woman raised a parasol above her head when the afternoon’s daylight slipped behind the mountainside.
I timed my stroll to the oars’ pacing, a consistent plunge and pull by rolled, shirt-sleeved arms. My hand traveled along the smooth wooden rail when the last unloading passengers steadied themselves on the dock rail. Finally, after what must have been an unsteady trip around the continent, they were mere steps from California’s dry land.
The woman dressed in plaids of tarnished copper reached for the dock worker’s hand and turned her ribboned bonnet upward to step from the boat. All the saliva in my mouth turned dry. Everything I’d planned to say became an arid paste on my tongue. Lizzie’s plaid held every shade of soil I’d ever seen, russet brown, thin black stripes against golden seams, all lined with copper patina, the same color of her eyes.
“Excuse me,” I said, weaving through idling travelers, moving one man from my way with my hands on his arms. I reached the end of the plank when the ferryman grabbed her gloved hand, and she stepped off the boat. She took a steadying breath, gathered the folds of her skirt, and took the last step.
Would she recognize the man I’d become? Bearded, with hair reaching my shoulders? Thin? But perhaps less mercurial than when we last parted.
As more travelers took charge of their belongings, and porters heaved trunks on their shoulders, the space between us opened. I made my way behind her and cleared my throat. Then, as close to her ear as I dared speak, I said, “Ma’am, are you in need of assistance?”
She didn’t turn toward my voice, but stilled and closed her eyes. My voice touched her when my hands hadn’t.
Lizzie said, “I am but a stranger in a strange land, too calm to weep, too sad to smile.”3 She recited the first lines of my poem, written as I ached for her near the Sacramento River.
I said,
“The vows of love, its smiles and tears,
Hang o’er this harp of broken strings.
It speaks amidst her blushing fears
The beauteous one before me stands!”4
L
Very aware of the presence of our talkative carriage driver, we headed the last leg of the journey, through the square blocks of Sacramento to the Tremont House on Second Avenue, where I rented a room. Time grew dark.
Our carriage driver’s complaints were sufficient to give any aging or careworn man fodder for weeks. He’d recited them all: his popping knees, flat feet, back pain, heart palpitations, a cough that wouldn’t end. I wondered whether we’d make it home without him keeling over. I paid him little mind, other than the occasional acknowledgment of his sorrows, thinking of nothing but the fresh smell of her. I counted every second until I could close the door to cold years apart, and in illusive privacy, touch her warmth again.
By now, Lizzie was aware that my illness, the one that drove her to travel so many miles, was more in my mind than in my gut.
She asked, “Did you see a doctor, or are you like most men?”
“Guilty,” I said. “My constitution is much stronger now than when I last wrote.”
Lizzie looked at the landscape. “I read your book,” she said. “Heard your voice from every page. It surprised me to find it on a merchant’s shelf in New Orleans with another author’s name.” She retrieved the copy from her drawstring handbag and handed it to me.
“So many have stolen and published parts of my story, putting their names where mine should be. I expected to make a great deal of money. But after selling seven thousand copies, the publisher put the money in his pockets, and fled, busted up, teetotally smashed, and left me, and a hundred others, to whistle for our money!”5
She didn’t say much more when she put the copy back in her bag. When she pulled the strings closed, I watched her do so, feeling a similar tightness in my chest.
Lizzie rested her head on my shoulder and looped her hand through my arm. She said, “Then you’ve earned a fortune they will never have: a clear conscience.”
I looked at her over my shoulder and heaved a sigh. “You know me better. My conscience is molasses.”
The carriage driver hit a pothole and jostled us apart. Lizzie said, nearly inaudible, “Once, I did. Know you better.”
Before I could reassure her, our ailing driver pulled the reins and stopped the rig. Lizzie pulled her arm from mine. I immediately felt its absence, having spent the last hours wrapped like a cord. I watched her face as she took in the humble clapboard house with its lit front room and long front porch, complete with chained swing.
I said, “Let me help the driver with your trunk.”
She followed us as we carried it inside, past Mrs. Tremont knitting in the parlor.
Mrs. Tremont, a widow in her sixtieth year, didn’t look up from the twists of yarn around her fingers. “Mister Ridge, I hope you’ve dined elsewhere. I’ve already cleaned up supper for the night.”
“We did.” I made hasty introductions, which made the gossipy Mrs. Tremont rise in full attention.
“Your wife?” Mrs. Tremont remarked with a gasp. “But—” She closed her mouth and said, “I had no idea.”
“She just arrived.”
Kissing Lizzie’s cheek, I whispered, “Darlin’, you are my secret.”
After dropping her trunk in the darkness of my bedroom, I followed the driver back through the still parlor to retake Lizzie’s hand and rescue her from Mistress Tremont’s polite interrogation.
I pulled Lizzie through the bedroom doorway and, turning around, closed it, and caged her with my forearms. I took her lips with the hurry and passion of a deserted man dying of thirst, crawling toward what he thought was water.
We couldn’t see one another, so I listened my way to her skin. I hastily undid the tie of her bonnet and tossed it into the chair beside the door. She tasted like sugared meringue. Her lips responded to me as they always had, a weighty memory triggering my body and mind.
“Why am I your secret?” she asked.
I traced kisses down her neck. With shallow breaths, she pulled the lapels of my coat over my shoulders. I said, “So I can keep you all to myself.” I shook it free, letting it fall beside my feet.
Absent vision, she found no trouble unlacing my tie. She threw it behind me, returning her arms to my shoulders and gripping my hair. She took a breath. “Secret keepers—you and your mother both.” She unbuttoned my waistcoat, and I shrugged it off.
I pulled my shirt over my head, needing to feel her breasts against my chest. “Last person I want to think about right now.” My hands reached and fumbled with the hooks of her dress, distracted by the sound of her suckling my lower lip.
She only let it go long enough to say, “Easy to lose track when keeping so many.”
“You see me.” I unhooked the last eye. She shuffled her arms, so I could pull the bodice and her chemise over her shoulders and free her arms. Once her bodice wafted to the ground, she gathered my cheek to her breasts. I heard the pound of her heart.
Her chest rose with quickening breaths. She felt her way, gathering my face in her hands to reunite our lips. “No, I haven’t, for years. You haven’t asked how I afforded to find you.”
My hands undid the endless ties of her skirts. One billowed to the ground, followed by another, and another. Then, I knelt before her to untie her shoes.
She followed my movements with her hands on my head. I said, “Then you have a secret of your own… Raise the other.” She kicked one heeled shoe free, and balancing on the other foot, allowed me to pull away the second. “What did it cost you, three hundred?” The other shoe clapped against the floor.
I slid my hands behind her calves, behind her knees, and slid her stockings down. I continued trailing my hands behind the taut muscles of her thighs, across her buttocks until I reached the bones of her hips and let the last undergarment fall down her legs.
She slid her hands from my hair down my jaw to raise my head. “When I left Arkansas, I had four hundred hidden in my handbag. There’s five hundred more in the Bank of America in your name. There’s enough for me to go back.”
How could she ever think…? I lifted her, grabbing her thin waist, raising her to my height. Then, with her taste still on my lips, I said, “Answer enough for you?”
“Show me, then, all you’ve kept hidden.” She traced the lines of my belt and freed the buckle. When she didn’t hear it fall, she knelt in front of me and undid the ties of the bowie knife strapped to my thigh. She raised and whimpered in my ear before taking the lobe in her teeth. She said, “It’s no secret. I hate that knife.”
My pants thudded to the floor.
I stepped free of the pile and used both hands to pull my boots off. “No secret either that what money I sent home didn’t come close to that amount.” Barefoot, I swept away the pile of clothes and reached for her. “Right now, I don’t care how much it cost for you to come to me.”
She mumbled, “Ross finally released your father’s portion of the treaty money.” She shocked me, and I stepped back, hearing her disembodied words. “You and your mother’s secrets cost me nearly everything.”
I needed to touch her, to find her.
But her back hit the door. “For five years, Rollin, I grieved your loss. In my heart, and in this body, I felt the same agony as if you had died, unable to share my pain with anyone. It wasn’t true. Your letters kept coming, confirming you were alive.”
I tried to approach her again, hoping to kiss such honesty away. She only allowed me to stand in front of her in the dark, listening to her voice swell.
She said, “I’ve breathed without you for too long, living a separate life. I won’t live any longer without love. God knows I want you, but this love cannot live without trust.”
She took my hands, so I could feel her callouses. She confessed, “I’ve counted our days apart, like so many seeds of wheat chaff.”
She let me bring the rough edges of her fingers to my lips. “All alone, I’ve raised our child. Her joy is mine. Her smiles look like yours.”
I knelt at her feet and touched my lips to her womb.
“I’ve cried enough tears, slipping over steep rocks made slippery and smooth by pools I filled myself.”
Her words brought tears to my eyes when I raised and kissed hers.
But after, my every attempt at intimacy met with another turn, a withdrawal.
“Yes,” she said, her voice rising in anger. “I found the underworld and paid the ferryman enough. You’ve written letter after letter to me about your pain. You’ve inflicted it all on yourself. But know, you’re not the only one who’s suffered trials.”
I stumbled backward into the nightstand.
To keep her, if she would stay, I couldn’t leave us in the dark any longer. I fumbled with the light. I hunched over the nightstand. It blinded me. Naked, bare to her, I whispered, “I can’t show you my secrets because I inherited them. They’re here. Inside.” I raised my voice. “You want to know what secrets I’ve kept from you?” I opened the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out an empty whiskey bottle and sat it next to the light. Guilt reached in again and slammed another, half-full, against the wood.
She said nothing. She waited.
I looked toward her over my shoulder. “My secret is that I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever tried. I couldn’t support my mother and siblings; I was too young and too angry. I hated practicing law; I’m nothing like my father. I didn’t finish his intentions; Kell’s dead, but Ross is still alive. There wasn’t enough money in gold; there has never been enough money. I can write, but my book was stolen. I’m banished Cherokee, Lizzie, separated from my family, from you, from my people. I’ve authored my own tragedy. So, tell me what you want me to do, but don’t say I’m too late to love you. That’s the one thing I will never fail to do.”
She knelt among the pile of clothes and found her handbag, pulling Joaquín’s story from her bag.
She stood, flipping through pages, and walked toward the light and me. She read my words.
“She knew the secret history of his soul, his sufferings, and his struggles with an evil fate, and the long agony which rent up by the roots the original honesty of his high-born nature. More than this, he had told her that he would soon finish his dangerous career, when having completed his revenge, and having accumulated an equivalent for the fortune of which he had been robbed by the Americans, he would retire into a peaceful portion of the state, build him a pleasant home, and live alone for love and her. She believed him, for he spoke truly of his intentions… It mattered not how the world regarded him, to her, he was all that is noble, generous, and beautiful.”6
Lizzie dropped the book to the floor. She turned my face, so I could see her eyes. “Look at me. Rollin, I’ll stay. I can see all of you now.”