1. Kei July 1871
Two ugly men with dirty clothes and loud voices rode up to the house today. One of them called "Frenchy" is said to be an "enforcer" from the placers. He is a man dressed in black with a wide-brimmed silver-spangled flat black hat and wearing a huge pistol on his belt. He shouted threats, angry that we are using so much water. "Too much water," he said.
Then he looked down at me. "Hello, Cutie," he said, and showed sharp teeth behind the mustache. He looked me all over, up and down. I felt a chill in the back of my neck from that look!
Schnell-dannasama had come out of the house and stood on the porch, his face serious but he said only a few words and pointed the way for Frenchy and his companion to leave, which they finally did, continuing to cast dark looks at Dannasama.
"Gunman," said Schnell-dannasama, making a sour face.
Until now, such men have not troubled us Japanese, probably because of Dannasama and his own pistol and Dannasama's friends whose farms are on either side of ours. And surely because of Matsunosuke and his fierce expression and his well-known skill with the great sword.
We arrived here during what our neighbors say is the worst drought in California's history. No rain at all in the rainy season. No rain since we arrived.
Water in the canal is lower every day, and our single well is no longer producing much, either. I worry that we have to be so careful with water that now we must scoop out our bathtubs every night and carry the water in bucket after bucket to the fields to irrigate the young trees and seedlings.
Dannasama is worried. The men are worried. They look at each other and shake their heads. It is not at all like home here. At home, one never had to worry about having enough water.
Even so, Mistress kindly allows me a little time to myself, time to climb the east-north hill and rest from my duties and read the book. And the cicadas sing the same here as they do at home, a high ming-ming-ming in the dry yellow grass that is knee-high on my hill. The sharp sweet odor of the grass and thistles is like the smell of hot tar on this seventh-month midday. A breeze from the south cools my head, but still I miss the sweet-grass smell of home.
The sky today is the palest blue, without clouds, like the sky in a Hiroshige print Mistress was fond of and had to leave behind. From here, I can see more yellow hills to the south and west where the trees have been cleared to make farms. To the north and east are at first more hills like this one, many with oaks and small brushy trees.
And then a bit farther to the north and east, the cedar trees begin and the pines. Those are the higher hills that look most like home and so bring tears when I gaze on them too long. The smell of cedar and pine would be welcome, but they are too far away to lend their perfume to us. And beyond the hills there are the highest mountains, still faintly peaked with a bit of snow.
People are living among the trees in the closer distances. White people and native people and Chinese people are there, in tents and houses made of logs and boards and sometimes brush. It must be a hard life to live in a brush house.
Near Hangtown there are rough, loud-voiced men in strange clothing who stare at us whenever we pass in the wagon. There are a few women not often to be seen, some of them ordinary modest wives and mothers, many others appear to be pleasure-women. But the people are not visible now from my place here on the hill.
Chinese men work the great water hoses that tear at the hills for gold. They do not show themselves much, either, as if they are not careful they are sometimes beaten with clubs by groups of drunken white men.
And the native people do not show themselves much. It is said that white men take guns sometimes and hunt the native people for sport, as if the native people were animals instead of shy quiet folk.
One of them, a young girl carrying a basket, often smiles at me when I catch sight of her flitting through the brush, like a lovely brown butterfly. She always appears to be lost in thought. Each sight of her reminds me of a sad poem in the beautiful book my mistress allows me to read.
Fallen sick on a journey
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor
I have called to the young girl, and made gestures of friendship, but she only smiles and disappears. It would be pleasant to have a friend near my age.
None of our neighbors lives in real cities. Gold Hill is not even a town, but a collection of tents and shacks. Hangtown is not a real city, even with its new name that I cannot yet pronounce easily. There are no real cities here of the kind we have at home, except for San Francisco, where our ship with the huge sidewheels brought us from our homeland. And except for Sacramento, a much smaller city at the side of a river.
Schnell-dannasama says that some day there will be large cities here, that this is a young country, and that we must bide our time and be patient. "Our fortune will come with hard work and patience," Dannasama says.
However, we can never go home to Aizu Wakamatsu, for our Lord Matsudaira was under sentence of death by the Meiji Emperor and may be dead by now. Our houses and property in Aizu have been destroyed. Our animals have been confiscated. Many of our friends and neighbors in Japan have been killed. I am sure my father is dead, and my mother, sister, and brother. All my family have perished. It is only through the influence and connections of Dannasama that we somehow survived. We cannot return.
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