The Ghost of the Gold Coin, Part II

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of four stories about the legend of the Gold Coin. The series will continue over the next two weeks.

The last we saw, our narrator was about to follow the outlaw biker on a ghost hunt in the Gold Coin bar.

From an opaque wall, Jerry pulled open an unmarked door and disappeared. He aimed a small flashlight on a set of old steps leading down. He swung the light around to illuminate my feet. “Loose board there. Careful.”

“Where we going?”

“Cellar. The underbelly of the bar. This is where the ghost hangs out.”

I looked behind me. Dark, of course. Unlit above. Black everywhere, except for the flashlight — that feeble, inadequate beam of narrow light that wimped out even before it found the walls.

“So. Have you seen this ghost?”

“Nope. Never.”

“How long you gonna keep looking?”

“I’m not looking. I’m smelling.”

“Huh?”

“I haven’t seen it. Or heard it. Or even felt it brush by me. But I have smelled it. Several times.”

“So. What does a ghost smell like?”

“She smells like … like … spice. Like Thanksgiving. Allspice? Cloves? Cinnamon, maybe?”

“ ‘She?’ So the ghost is Rosie. Er-r, Darlene.”

“No. Don’t you think Darlene is more a beer and sweat girl?”

I think you’ve been inhaling too many Harley fumes.

“Come look at this.”He, and more importantly, the flashlight, disappeared behind a wall of earth.

“Hey!” I yelled into the cobwebbed darkness.

The light flitted from behind the wall. “Over here,” he said. “This side hasn’t been used much over the years.”

“Can we go back up now?” I suggested. I was bored. Not nervous, bored. Really.

Then I tasted something. Something musty on my lips. I wiped at what I figured would be a cobweb. Nothing on my lips, except for a subtle taste. Grainy. Pungent. Familiar, but not identifiable. There was a hint of spice.

Imagination, I told myself.

“Can we go now, Jerry? I’m getting pretty thirsty.”

“Now back here, look at the wall. Rumor has it that John C. Fremont dug a tunnel. Under the street, up the hill, all the way to his mine. The Mariposa Mine. To sneak his gold into here. This place was first built as his assay office, you know. But no one has ever found any physical proof of such a tunnel. Just a rumor.”

“Like your ghost,” I said. “So, are we ready to go?”

“Anyway,” he continued, “look what I’ve found.”

His flashlight beam crouched down near the junction of earthen wall and earthen floor.

“It’s a different color dirt here in this area. And the dirt is looser. See? Easy to scrape away.” He began to pull dirt from the wall. Suddenly, my lips were ablaze with the pungent, spice-laden taste again, wrapped in hundred year old mold.

“I’m leaving. Gimme the flashlight.”

“Whoa!” He wrestled the flashlight back from my grip. “What’s your problem?”

“A little freaked out, I guess. By the darkness down here.”

The taste of chocolate — yeah, it was chocolate — flared intensely.

I sucked in my lips to protect them, like some old guy without his dentures.

“Okay. We’ll go back up.”

The gray cave of the bar upstairs felt almost normal by comparison. I wanted out — into the April sunshine, but figured I owed Jerry a beer.

“So,” I danced toward what I really wanted to ask. “Thanks for taking me down.”

“Sure. What I was trying to show you is … I wonder if I found something like a tunnel there, or, just some loose dirt.”

“Loose dirt,” I shot back. “But tell me, did you taste your ghost down there?”

“Taste?”

“I mean smell. Smell. Did you smell the ghost down there? Just now?”

“Uh-uh,” he gurgled within a mouthful of beer. “Doesn’t happen every time.”

“How do you know the smell is a ghost? Maybe it’s some stuff in the air from years of humidity down there. Maybe it’s mushrooms.”

“Well, not for me. It reminds me of my abuela — now gone, rest her soul. I’d actually forgotten this until I smelled it while poking around down there — she always gave off the fragrance of some kind of spice.”

“Your what?”

“Abuela, as they say it in Spanish. Grandmother.”

“So what’s your grandmother doing hanging out in the cellar of a run-down bar?”

“Don’t know. That’s why I keep coming back. It’s just that the smell reminds me.” He shrugged. “It’s probably not her.”

“It’s probably not cinnamon, either,” I blurted.

His eyes suddenly narrowed. “What’cha mean?”His lips squeezed together.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Nothing, my ass. I can see it in your face. What did you smell down there?”

He stared at me. I didn’t want to admit my freaked-out hallucination. But he wouldn’t stop staring.

“Didn’t smell anything,” I ventured, truthfully. “Just … “

“Yeah?” he coaxed.

“Tasted something. Tasted like — well, a little spice in it, yeah. A little spice. But mostly, I think, it was chocolate.”

“Chocolate?” He thought about it a lot harder than I believed it warranted. “Really? Chocolate. Hum-m.”

“Hey, J-man!” someone snarled. “You done wit’ yer expedition? ‘Cause yer up for this pool game.”

“Nice meeting you,” I said dropping from the barstool.

“Likewise,” he shook my hand, his thoughts still whirring. “Listen, I’ll be up next Saturday for more research. See you here?”

“Don’t know about that,” I weaseled. “What time?”

Computer search showed a couple of dozen cardiologists in Fresno. Five Jerrys or Geralds. But no photos. Jerry Karzanian, Jerry Smith, Gerald Weinstein, Geraldo Carrillo and Gerald Lee.

The next Saturday morning, I meandered downtown. I sat under the roof overhang of the Gold Coin, shielded from the April sun. I leaned back and watched tourists.

Into the random hum of traffic intruded a distant rumble, reverberating from behind the turn on Highway 49. The noise slowly grew louder, until it became the distinct steel gargle of a Harley.

He roared to a sudden stop in front of the Coin, his engine clanging.

“Hop on,” he said. “We’re going to Hornitos.”

“Why?”

“Tell you when we get there.”

He fitted his spare helmet on me and patted the leather seat behind him.

“Hold on tight!” he yelled. Explosions of steel and fire machine gunned beneath us.

The bike’s iron heart and lungs vibrated with life between my legs. Its throat snarled. The Old Toll Road streaked below our tires.

A stream ribboned alongside us, mirroring the sun like thousands of diamonds. Green hills undulated south with random smears of yellow flowers. The perfume of lupin in full bloom filled my nose.

He raised his left arm into the day, fist clenched in its glove. The leather tassels on his sleeves slapped wildly, making love to the wind like a horse’s mane. I heard him shout some unintelligible words drenched in euphoria.

He leaned the cycle to the right at a sign that declared “Hornitos” and throttled back. We rolled slowly, engine clanging, into what looked like a ghost town set from Universal Studios. He pulled up in front of a post office, and let the engine snort, then fall silent.

He dismounted. A hitching post in front of us.

“We’ll leave it here,” he said, pulling off his helmet and putting his hand on the post.

Gonna feed it some oats? I thought.

“Why’d you want to come here?”

“The ghost,” he answered.

“Wrong place,” I shrugged, trying to twist my head from the helmet without leaving my ears behind.

“Maybe not, thanks to your clue. Put the helmet on the saddle. No one will touch it.”

“What clue?”

“I’ll show you.”

We stood in a small square plaza. Decaying buildings surrounded us.

“Maybe it is a good place for ghosts,” I said aloud.

“This place was teeming,” he said as he sauntered across the plaza, “thousands of people. Some resources say nearly ten thousand.”

“When?” I swiveled my head, surveying the emptiness.

“During the Gold Rush,” he replied, “early 1850s. But I’m here for 1853.”

The year 1853 is not here, I thought. It disappeared a long time ago.

“Look,” he said, his left arm pointing. “Chocolate.”

All I saw was a crumbling building of stone and brick, three-quarters gone and nearly obscured by trees.

“Where’s chocolate?”

“Read the plaque.”

“ ‘Ghirardelli’” I read. “Some Ghirardelli was here?”

“Not ‘some’.” The Ghirardelli.”

“The chocolate guy?”

“Yep. Your clue led me here. I smelled spice; you tasted chocolate. Then I remembered my abuela’s Ibarra chocolate. From Mexico. It’s laced with cinnamon. There’s no Ibarra factory around here, but your clue led me to Ghirardelli. Ghirardelli, the Italian chocolate maker, led us to Hornitos. He came here from Peru during the gold rush, like lots of other Spanish-speaking people.”

He turned and fixed my eyes. “This was, you must remember, Mexico, after all.”

“What was Mexico?”

“California,” he retorted immediately. “From about Marin south. The Mexican state of Alta California, it was. The people living here — the Californios — were the original owners of this land. Until it was taken away by a flood of white miners and the Mexican War.”

I looked at him more closely, and saw the night-black eyes of Spanish blood.

“So,” I said. “Your last name is Carrillo?”

“How did you know?”

“I do my homework.”

“It’s time to see how well you do it. Come on.”

Dr. Charles Mosher, M.D., M.P.H., was Mariposa’s county health officer from 1988-2014. Prior to his work at Mariposa County, Mosher served in the Peace Corps, worked for the state of Georgia and served for 11 years with the Merced County Health Department. He can be reached at author@greaterstory.com.