'That's the way it was. When you arrived, you were exploited by those who had come before you. Then, if you were clever and hard-working-and lucky! Don't forget lucky-you could become exploiters in your turn. That was the Great American Promise!' Mr. Kane poured himself another mug of coffee.
… the Great American Promise, Matthew repeated to himself, savoring the words.
'I remember the day my father put the sign in our window. Fancy lettering in red, white, and blue. The American High-Class Finishing Materials Company (Reliable Service at Competitive Prices). He was very proud of that sign, my father. Well, after all, he had paid two dollars for it. In cash!' He chuckled to himself and for a time looked into the lamp flame in silence. 'But then… ' he continued in the soft voice of a man fingering old memories, '… then, just when my parents could see a little daylight at the end of the tunnel, cholera swept through our neighborhood and my father… ' He shrugged. 'He died early one sunny morning-it's not right, somehow, to die on a sunny morning. People ought to die at night. Like my mother did, the very next night. And the morning after she died, while neighbors were dealing with the bodies, I… ' He looked into his mug, and his jaw muscles worked with the effort of reliving painful things. '… I went out and delivered their last order. Four boxes of buttons-imitation shell, four-hole, recessed. Funny that I remember those details after all these years. The order had been promised for that morning, you see, and my father prided himself on being reliable. 'Reliable service at competitive prices.' That was us.'
Ruth Lillian, who had been staring into the lamp, looked up and searched her father's face, trying to see past the dark spot that the lamp flame had printed on her vision. He had never before mentioned delivering the four boxes of buttons while his parents were lying at home, dead.
'Well!' Mr. Kane said gruffly, passing over the painful memories. 'When that autumn came, I was traveling with an old Yankee drummer who made the rounds of farms, selling needles, thimbles, pots and pans, ribbons, rush brooms, almanacs, pain remedies-whatever. He sold goods out of the back of his wagon. But mostly he sold himself: his gossip, his cheerfulness, his stories. These stories came in two flavors. Sweet for the women, salty for the men. People would buy things they didn't really need, just to have his company. 'There's thousands of drummers out there,' he told me. 'And they're all trying to figure out how to sell more. But it isn't how you sell, it's what you sell. If you try to sell a woman thread, you only make your sale if she happens to need thread at that moment. But if you sell her the dream of a fine new dress… ah! Or better yet, the image of her daughter wearing that dress at her wedding… a-ah! She'll buy your thread because it's all tangled in dreams of new dresses and weddings.' He told me how he started off by running a sausage stall at county fairs back in Vermont, but he didn't do very well until he learned that you don't sell the sausage, you sell the sizzle! 'You got to be a dream merchant,' he told me.'
A dream merchant. Matthew liked that. The Ringo Kid: Dream Merchant.
'The old peddler died of pneumonia after a downpour caught us on the road. And me? Well, I was about your age, young man. So naturally I went west to make my fortune. My fortune! Look around you.'
'Well, you have the treasure of Ruth Lillian.'
'True, true. Such a docile, obedient child! And what a cook!'
Ruth Lillian made a face across the table to Matthew, who smiled.
'Yes, I decided to go west and make my fortune in the gold rushes and silver bonanzas, but not by prospecting. The old Yankee peddler had once described how oceans of men were flowing towards the West, picks and shovels over their shoulders, and dreams of gold and silver in their heads. 'Out west! There's where a man can make his packet, boy,' he told me. 'Prospecting for gold?' I asked. 'Hell, no! Selling picks and shovels!' And he went on to explain that for every prospector who struck it rich, a hundred thousand ended up with nothing but blisters, chilblains, and a handful of stories to bore their grandchildren with. But every single one of them needed a pick and a shovel, and trousers, and beans, and tobacco. 'Yes,' he said, 'if I were younger, I'd be heading west myself.'
'With your wagon loaded up with picks and shovels,' I said. He was silent for a time, then he said, 'No. No, I'd probably be prospecting for gold along with all the others. Like everyone else, I'd be fool enough to imagine that I'd be that one in a hundred thousand to strike it rich. No, I'm afraid I'd be out there chasing the dream, because it really ain't the sausage that matters in this life. It's the sizzle.' '
Matthew's eyes narrowed as he nodded slowly to himself. That's what it is, all right. The sizzle.
After they finished the dishes, Matthew said goodnight to Mr. Kane, and Ruth Lillian lit a candle to accompany him down into the darkened store, where he picked up the food, soap, lamp, and lamp oil he had bought on credit.
'Just think, tonight I'll sleep in my new home. The marshal's office! Say! That sort of makes me marshal of Twenty-Mile.' He pushed out a laugh, to show that he was only joking.
'Twenty-Mile ain't had any call for a marshal for donkey's years, so…' She opened a drawer and felt around for something. 'If there's any spooks in the marshal's office, you can just arrest them and- Where is the darned thi-Oh, here it is.' She drew out a six-pointed star. Matthew took it and hefted it in his palm. It was heavier than he would have guessed, and each point of the ball-tipped star reflected a minute candle flame.
'I don't think it'd do much good to throw spooks in jail,' he said. 'They'd just ooze out through the bars.'
'We never had a jail in Twenty-Mile. When a miner got drunk and nasty, they'd lock him up in our storeroom until he sobered up.'
'So your pa used to be the marshal, eh?'
'Marshal? Can you imagine my pa with a gun hanging on his hip? No. But he was Twenty-Mile's mayor. Well- sort of. He wasn't voted in or anything. A bunch of men just got together at the Pair o' Dice Social Club and decided that the town needed a mayor, and that old Kane would do well enough.'
'The Pair o' Dice Social Club?'
'That burned-out building across from the Traveller's Welcome? That used to be the Pair o' Dice, where Mr. Delanny worked his table. There wasn't any competition between the two places, though. The one did gambling and the other did women. So the miners-and there were a couple hundred of them back then-they'd stagger out of one place and across the street into the other and shake hands as they was passing.'
'Who burned it down?'
'God.'
'… God?'
'It was struck by lightning during the worst rip-snorter that ever hit us. I won't forget that night if I live to be ninety-eight in the shade. The lightning came crashing down, four or five bolts, one right after the other! And the thunder shook the whole mountain! Mrs. Bjorkvist ran around in the rain screaming that the fury of God was descending on Sodom and Gomorrah! Pa was afraid the roof was going to be torn off the Mercantile so he was bundling me up in a blanket (I was just little) when there was this terrific crack! and next thing you know the Pair o' Dice was burning like sixty, and the wind was snatching sparks out of the flames, but they didn't set anything afire because the rain was pouring off roofs in sheets and running down the sides of the buildings. Pa carried me out onto the porch with blankets wrapped around me, and we watched the Pair o' Dice burn down. It was the most wonderful thing I ever saw. And scary! The walls finally caved in, but we couldn't hear a thing, what with the wind screaming and the rain drilling down on the porch roof, and you know how they say lightning never strikes twice in the same place? Well, that's a lie, because while we were watching, there was this crack! and lightning struck right in the midst of the flames, and sent sparks and tongues of fire flying in every direction! It was beautiful. Truly beautiful.'
'I can just see it from the way you describe it, Ruth Lillian. You describe it as good as in a book.'
'You think?'
'Hoo-birds! It sure sounds like God had it in for the Pair o' Dice, hitting it with lightning twice like that.'
'Guess so.'
'And they didn't bother to rebuild it?'
'No. Mr. Delanny just installed himself across the street. The boom was already beginning to peter out and most of the prospectors had gone west. Pretty soon there was nothing left but the weekly gang of miners from the Surprise Lode. And anyway,' she frowned heavily, and her voice dropped to an ominous note, 'it's not wise to try to rebuild something that God has reached down and destroyed.'
Matthew nodded slowly. 'Yeah, I guess you're- Hey, are you funning me?'
'Of course I'm funning! Jeez!'
He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke energetically to cover his embarrassment. 'So your pa was the mayor, was he? Well, look at me, everybody! Here I am, talking to the mayor's daughter.'
