The first time The Child appeared, I was eating sparks. My mouth hung open like a panting dog as I hacked away at the rock. The impact sent red streaking and the smell of it was seeping onto my tongue. It was blazing hot, the heat from the sun radiated through the mine, trapping it and burning the men to their very core.
I brought the pickaxe back, resting it on my shoulder, and dragging a dirt-caked hand across my forehead. As I wiped away the sweat, my eyes flicked to the side, trailing up the incline, and landing on the mine’s opening. Bathed in the pouring light, stood a small figure, its head uncommonly low under the wooden adit. The pickaxe slipped from my grip and I barely jumped away before it slammed onto the ground. But my eyes stayed stuck on the figure, realizing its frame was that of a child. It tilted its head slightly to the side, as if to show me that it was staring right back.
“What are you doing, kid? Get out of here,” I shouted up at the entrance, my voice gravelly from hours of silent work. But The Child stood rooted in its place. I thought I heard the light sound of the boy’s laughter, ringing through my skull, but The Child’s mouth was squeezed shut.
I rubbed at my eyes, blinking away the dirt that lingered, but when the figure at the mine’s entrance did not disappear with the motion, I turned my back to it. I grabbed the fallen pickaxe off the ground and resumed my work, grunting with each backbreaking swing. I could see The Child in the corner of my eye, but I ignored that blot of darkness against the light of the world outside.
“You sure it’s not just a bout of Gold Hysteria?” Kit asked as he tended to the fire. I listened to the sound of the embers’ snap and took the hat off my head, running my fingers through my matted hair.
“Gold Hysteria is nothing but some shit you made up,” I responded, a twinge of humor to my voice, and knocked him lightly with my shoulder. Kit scowled and tore off a bit of dried pork with his teeth.
“I made up the name, but not the ailment. How else do you explain all those men who lose their damn minds down there?” Kit replied as he chewed, jerking his chin back in gesture to the mines.
Kit and I had been living in the same mining camp with about 15 other men for nearly a month now, his idea of “Gold Hysteria” only came about eight days ago. Kit was always doing funny things, making up words, telling us stories honey-soaked in his Southern drawl, and taking men behind the rickety shed where we kept our tools. He would have us listen to his tales for hours on end, then cover our ears against the sound of scraping along the wood.
Another man sat down next to us on the rotting logs set up around the campfire. He held out a strip of dried pork to me while gnawing on his own. I shook my head to decline, grabbing a spoon to muddle through the murky beans and broth warming on the fire.
“Amos doesn’t eat anything off of the pig,” Kit told the man, shooting me a knowing look. There were few things I brought with me back from Illinois, but I’d been raised with a culture in my roots, roots that splintered so deep, I couldn’t pull them out if I tried.
Kit, however, came from a rye operation in Kentucky, spending his days working the field until his neck burned bright red, his skin blistering against the color of swirling wine. Kit’s old man was rich, hoarding enough money to employ half of the state, but he couldn’t help but take advantage of the free work his own kin could offer. The stories about him were stacked slim, leaving me only with the knowledge that he drank enough from the bottle to make his blood flow in whiskey clots and that he always reeked of domestic cigar smoke.
Kit had kept himself quiet, slowly grinding his bones down and losing a little bit more of himself with each cycle of the sun. He told me how his only solace was the spare moments he spent with the stable boy who watched over the horses and tired mules. The stable boy hadn’t talked much, but Kit always seemed to attach to the quiet ones. When his father finally found them out, hay sticking out from the stems woven within their curls, Kit described his fury as lighting. It didn’t burn, nor simmer, nor build. It struck, in single moments, single moments.
Kit lacked any choice, he sometimes said, for staying would’ve allowed a life left of only a few minutes. His old man, missing a certain level of remorse expected at losing an only son, ran Kit out of town, leaving the now wandering soul with only four dimes jangling in his pockets. His father had enough money to fill the Mississippi River to its brim in loose coins, but not enough to spare. Rich men crave money but they crave their most precious reputation more.
“But, truly, Amos,” Kit said, turning back to face me as I stirred the steaming pot of bean soup, “your mind’s just going a little loose. Must be all the dust or the heat. There isn’t any child watching.” I nodded my head and stared down at the spoon in my hand. I stayed there, keeping my eyes low as Kit and the man who offered me the pork stood, the sound of their footsteps fading. A step, a step, then came a silence.
When The Child visited again, I smacked my head with my palm and kept mining. None of us had found a fleck of gold in two weeks and I was determined to be the one. Every muscle in my body burned as I whacked my pickaxe over and over again, squinting against the dust and sparks that shot out with each blow.
“You’re not real, you’re not real, you’re not real,” I muttered under my breath. My vision blurred in and out but I kept going, breaking away at the rock with as much force as I could muster.
“Coleman’s gone wild, men!” I heard someone shout from down the line. I snarled in the voice’s direction at the sound of my surname and used that simmering anger as fuel, fuel to push myself even further.
“You’re not real, you’re not real, you’re not real,” I screamed, letting my voice grow so The Child and every single man in the mine could hear me. That’s when I heard it again, the echoing laugh, and all that was in me snapped in two.
I turned from the rock wall and took aim, extending my arm back, the pickaxe glinting in the streaming sunlight. And I threw, watching it soar carelessly in the air towards The Child. The tool landed pitifully at its feet and I watched as its face contorted, flickering between expression and stone. As my own vision went in and out, it stared down at me, standing still but looming over with the blazing sun in tow.
I went limp, my legs crumbling beneath the weight of my own body, and I tumbled to the ground. The dirt was so cool on my skin, I wanted to sink beneath and let it swallow me whole. I felt a hand reach out and cradle my neck, lifting my head up from the earth. I saw Kit’s blurring face above mine, his mouth moving frantically but no sound broke through. Then, a singular laugh from The Child rang out, and the darkness chewed and ripped the fading reality clean.
“You scared the shit out of me, Amos. Don’t ever do that again, you’ll work yourself straight to the grave,” Kit scolded as he handed me a tin cup filled with coffee. It was lukewarm by the time it reached my lips and I could feel the grit of the grounds along the edges of my teeth.
“I saw it again,” I murmured, keeping my eyes on anything but his, “I saw it again. I didn’t want to, but any control I got is slowly slipping. I don’t know if The Child will ever pass on.”
Kit breathed deeply, the sound reaching low in his throat. He brushed his hands through the dirt at our feet, collecting the flecks mixed with loose ash from the cooking flame, and joining them into a small pile. When he completed the motion, he stamped down on it with his boot, leaving the print of the sole. I fidgeted with the cuff of my sleeve as Kit looked back up at me, the cotton strap of his overalls drooping slightly down his shoulder.
“It will pass on, Amos. It will pass on because it has to,” he told me, his voice soft but entangled with a trace of forceful determination. It didn’t feel like a promise, those heavy words. When they fell from his lips, they felt like a prayer. A desperate prayer.
I sat still, my eyes trailing up with each ember, lulled by the crack of the flame. Night dripped into the valley, spilling darkness in streaks down the cliffs. I felt Kit’s stare on my neck, burning fiery holes into the skin, hot and blistering circles.
“Tell me one of your stories,” I asked, my voice barely above the faintness of a whisper. “Something, of you, of Kentucky. Something.” Kit shifted in his spot on the log, tugging the hat off his head and letting it drift down into the dirt. He sucked in a breath before releasing it, in and out. In and out.
“Why don’t you tell a story this time? All your ones from Illinois can’t be too far back in your mind, can they?” He asked, letting out a short and clipped laugh.
But, in truth, they couldn’t feel farther away. One month and I felt as if I’d been split in two, hacking with a pickaxe not to seek gold but to bust out a certain part of myself, leaving the gore and ruins in puddles at my feet. If Kit had only let in on tiny bits of his past, then I’d given nothing, an empty tin plate winking back a blurred reflection but not a crumb left in sight.
Drunk on the incoming midnight or bleary-minded from my unconsciousness, I didn’t think before I spoke. I simply let it flow freely, water flooding silver from the basin.
“The Coleman Family farm lay just about eight miles outside of Galena, Illinois, and Ezra and I would make the trek every week,” I began, the words raw and rough in my throat. “On a rickety wagon that could knock us clean off at even a pebble in the road. We’d pile the old thing up with corn and soybeans and set off early enough to be back by dusk. We weren’t a rich family, not in the slightest, never finding spare coins lodged in between the floorboard gaps or lost in jacket pockets hung up to dry in the stale wind. But we had each other, and that was a fine wealth.
“I wasn’t ever destined for much, I knew that well enough, but, Ezra, you see,” I flicked my gaze down and shook my head, a smile playing at the corners of my mouth, “Ezra was. He left about two years ago, to study the Tanakh over in Cincinnati. My folks were so proud of him, proud but not surprised. They always knew he’d make something of himself eventually. Ezra, the scholar, and Amos, the farmer, the family man. What a pair we were.
“Until we weren’t, and he was gone, and I was left with all my life ahead of me. I would take over the farm when my father kicked it and tend to it in the meantime. I’d be the next patriarch, keep the Coleman name tied with the land and have a couple of kids to keep the name tied with the family. That was always the way it was supposed to be, and I was alright with that, I swear I was. My abba, my father, he was all that I wanted to be. I watched him, traced his steps in the dust, and held my head up at the chin just as he did. I followed his life down to even those damned fine details and it should’ve been enough.
“But, suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I worked on the corn harvest, then the soybean, went to the market, sold it all away. I burned under the sun and writhed under the moon. All the time, I had no air left in my lungs.
“And then I was sitting with my feet dangling over a wagon axle. Galena to California, and I didn’t even have the spine to say goodbye. I left a note, to try my best to explain, and took off in the night while my folks slept. And then I was just gone, gone by morning, gone with no promise of return.”
My gaze had been locked on the cliffs, tracing the rock down and down through the valley. But, I finally allowed myself to look away, to meet Kit’s hesitant eyes, opened wide, showing the whites.
“Truthfully, I don’t have many stories to tell you, Kit, because I left them all with him.”
“With who?” Kit asked, breaking his long-held silence, “Your father?” I shook my head, choking out a bitter laugh.
“No, with the man I was supposed to become. The man I should’ve been.” The words slithered out through the air, joining together with the plumes of smoke. The gray swirled through the emptiness of the night, reaching out to take me in its grip. As I stood and began to walk from the fireside, every inch of my body burned, like hot whiskey trickling down the muscles of the throat. Ablaze and scorching fast, soon ash would be all that remained.
“Amos, wait,” Kit called after me, but I didn’t slow. I was already too far gone.
The next time The Child appeared, I was already bleeding from the mouth. My lips were chapped and slicked with crimson, teeth digging down into the skin. A drop of it slipped down, leaving a blossoming river of red, and I wiped it away with my sleeve cuff. I glanced to the side, eyes straining against the light, and was met with The Child’s familiar sight. My hands were a sickly white as they clenched around the stem of the pickaxe, the sweat seeping into the wood and mixing with the dirt on my fingers.
“Enough,” I grunted, stumbling out of the mining line and pointing up at the youth-like form that blocked out what little sun we had. I’d begun to catch attention, certain men pausing their work to swipe a hand across their reddened forehead and stare up at me. From the corner of my eye, I could see the top of Kit’s head, peaking out to watch as I slipped up the hill towards the adit.
“I’ve had enough,” I spat, sharpness and venom infecting my words. I flung my pickaxe to the ground, vengeful satisfaction coursing through me as the loud “thump” rang out and the men closest to it nearly jumped straight from their skin.
“Amos,” I heard Kit’s voice echoing from behind me, his calloused hand grasping onto my shoulder, the grip tight enough to stop me in my tracks. “Amos, I’m begging you,” he continued as he spun me around to face him, his eyes moving back and forth between mine in frantic circles.“There’s nothing there, you’ve got to realize that.” I looked down at his fingers clutching onto the fabric of my collar, nails caked with dirt, the skin rubbed raw.
“I… I don’t—” I choked out, struggling to take hold of any words that bubbled up. Kit leaned in closer, his arms bending at the elbows as he searched my eyes, trying to find meaning not damaged by the supposed “ailment” jangling around in my skull.
“Amos, please, let’s go. It’ll just be us, alright? Us. We can leave all this shit behind,” Kit breathed, the desperation wilting me beneath him with its clarity. He held me so tightly, as if any looser and I’d slip through the gaps of his knuckles in tiny grains of dust. He stood and he gripped, holding the weight of the two of us so neither one could just, simply, drift away. Drift and drift.
I could see it all through a foggy haze, Kit and I forming a new life built up from the rotten wood and busted stone, broken pieces melded together to be whole again. Lazy days and nights not spent pressed up against a tool shed that tilted on its foundation, threatening to crush us beneath, but in the open air, not fearing that each breath, each death would be our last. Kit couldn’t help but run further, his legs never tired, tendons never snapped, knees never buckled. His Kentucky wasn’t quite far enough just yet, and I could let him pull me into his stride.
I let my fingertips trace up, dancing against the point where the sleeve ended and his skin began. Kit sucked in a sharp breath as I let my hands rest in his, the clutch on my shoulder finally coming undone.
“Amos—” He began, looking up from our joined hands to let his eyes meet my own.
That’s when the voices came. Soft at first, soothing and light, lulling and tugging at the edges of my mind.
Amos, let’s go, Abba’s waiting for us by the gate.
“Ezra?” I called, whipping my head around, searching desperately for his familiar frame in the dark mine. “Ezra?” I yelled again, louder this time, waiting for his voice to come to me again.
“Amos, let’s do it, let’s go. Please. Me and you, like it’s always been,” Kit pleaded, his volume growing, but I shook from his grip, ripping my hands from his. I watched them fall pitifully at his sides, twitching in the emptiness of the open air.
I’m coming, Ezra, we haven’t kept him all that long.
I froze, feeling the sick rising up in my throat, swirling and churning with a bitter acidity. I began to swivel around, impossibly slow, anticipating the unchanged sight of The Child. That voice, that voice. Coming from behind, ringing in stark familiarity. That voice.
Hurry, Amos.
I’m going as fast as I can, Ezra.
I inched forward, eyes locked on the dark figure as I ran a hand across my lips, my wrist coming back a stained red. Each step and I felt the weight, the calamity of my decisive movements, breaking my soles beneath it. I was so close now, so close.
We’ll be with Abba soon.
The sun was trickling in, tearing through the shadows that wrapped around the form of The Child as I came to stand before it. The light soaked the dark edges, peeling back layers and layers, revealing black hair curled at the edge, blowing freely in the breeze. Then, snapping brown eyes, steeped and stewing with innocence, and freckles haloing around the forehead. A crooked grin, a tooth missing to the left, a head held up high at the chin.
How easy it was to forget the souls we left, clouded and caked with dust, stuck behind the glass of the mirror or at the bottom of the water basin.
And I crumpled, sagging down on my knees which could hold no weight anymore, not even a pound. My heart beat so violently within my chest, I had to place a hand over the spot, fearing it would burst straight through the skin. It was the only thing left, all my insides decayed and torn, like the soul had been ripped through the bones. My rib cage would crumble and reveal the hollow mass, emptiness found in the black, and they’d leave me like I did them, in the dirt as the Earth’s next meal.
Come on, Ezra, we’re almost there, the voice, my voice, rang through my head, sweet and child-like, not yet tainted by age or heavy cigar smoke. I watched The Child, hesitantly awaiting the sight of its lips moving, but they stayed sealed shut.
“Can’t you hear that, Kit? Can’t you see him? It’s me, Kit. It’s me,” I choked through salty tears, a smile creeping up on my lips.
“You’re frightening me, Amos. Please, let’s just go, please,” Kit begged, and I could hear the thickness in his throat, the wet sobs strangling to break free. I blinked, feeling the trails of water drizzling from my face and down my throat, welling at the collar.
“It’s me.”
It’s him, there he is.
The Child tilted its head and reached forward, the soft, uncalloused skin of its hand opening in invitation. Blood dripped into my mouth, staining the edges of my teeth and flooding my tongue with brine. I watched its pink lips part, cracking into a grin, before it opened its throat to speak.
“Come on, Abba, let’s go home,” it invited me with my former voice. Thought, hesitation, contemplation, it meant nothing. Nothing, anymore.
And I took The Child’s hand.
Out from my mouth burst a hoarse laugh, cool air inflating the desperation of my lungs as tears stung at my eyes. I found the buzz of strength regained and propped myself up to walk forward.
“Amos, please,” Kit sobbed, rushing to grab at my sleeves, my shoulders, my legs, anything he could clutch. But I could hardly feel him anymore, that touch grown so familiar. All that mattered was the hand wrapped in my own.
“Come on, Abba, let’s go home,” The Child repeated again and we began to move, as one entity, one being. Amos and his Abba, Amos and his child, as it was always supposed to be.
The Child led me, tugging at my hand as it skipped forwards. Kit’s screams, of my name, to come back, fell past my ringing ears, echoing and melting into nothingness across the ground. With one last step, we crossed out of the mines, rock turning to Earth, heat met with a bitter breeze. And I found the darkness too, a breathing thing that twisted in my core, and grabbed hold of it by the heart. I pulled it through, clean out, leaving it as a blot stain behind us.
“Amos, it’s time now, let’s go home,” I told The Child with a shaky breath, my voice cracking at the final word. And as a man unbroken, a father undeterred, I broke free from the mine’s deathly grip and watched, as sunlight flooded the world in gold.
Writer’s Statement: As someone who is both Jewish and queer, I strive to introduce both of these identities into my creative work. In particular, one time period of history hosted a freeing space for the expression of these identities, the California Gold Rush and American Frontier. There was an outpouring of both Jewish and queer identity exploration and expression that occurred within these environments, that is often left out of dominant historical representation. However, through “Gold Hysteria,” I hoped to bring both communities back into narrative to tell a story set within this time.
Editor’s Note: While we celebrate the telling of queer and Jewish narratives from the Gold Rush, we also recognize the violence inflicted upon indigenous populations during this period (and beyond). The Gold Rush was “a stage in the destruction of Northern California’s indigenous population, including the Bay Area’s Ohlone people.” Jewish activists are reckoning with the role of Jewish people in this genocide, and are standing in solidarity with indigenous people in California. You can learn more here.
Image: Gold, by Eitan Runyan
