In The Juliet, Lily Joy is the
working name of Becky Skinner, a tarot-reading prostitute from the
early 1900s who plies her trade in Centenary, a boomtown much like
Rhyolite. When Becky kills off her sex worker persona, she rings the
final bell on a short but golden era, and Centenary collapses just as
Rhyolite did. However, my version is a superstitious take on
Rhyolite’s socio-economic reality. At the time of Belle’s murder,
Rhyolite was reeling from a financial crash in 1907 that would soon
be followed by poor mine assessments in 1908, causing stocks to
plummet and citizens to flee. By 1920 there were virtually no
inhabitants left, and most of Rhyolite’s structures were picked
apart for building materials, leaving the town in ruins that made it
appear much more ancient than it actually was.
Today Rhyolite is one of the best
preserved of Death Valley’s ghost towns, and its remaining broken
walls, piles of square stones, and outlines of foundations make it
easy to imagine the city as it was in prime, when it was a testament
to prosperity and industry, owing to a huge investment in
infrastructure by the famed Charles Schwab. In its heyday, the town
boasted a rail depot, two banks, a stock exchange, a school, a
hospital, and an opera house.
Yet, civility has limits. Rhyolite was
not without its murders, suicides, and other violent crimes,
especially in its notorious Red Light District. A reminder of that
can be found all the way down past the ruins of the jailhouse where
there is a single gravesite marked by a white cross with the name
Isabella Haskins stenciled on the horizontal bar and Mona Belle on
the vertical. The grave is strewn with trinkets from visitors,
including booze bottles, high-heeled shoes, toys, beads, fans, and
artificial flowers. It’s a riveting sight, especially out there in
the desert. The only other time I had ever seen so many tributes was
at Saint Louis Cemetery in New Orleans as the purported tomb of Marie
Laveau.
Who was Mona Belle? Sadly, the 20 year
old hardly made a mark on the world during her short life. We do know
that she adopted several aliases, married young, and left her husband
to run off with a violent gambler named Fred Skinner. They lived in
Rhyolite for only a year, and their turbulent relationship ended when
he shot her to death during a drink-fueled argument. It was a
shocking crime, and Skinner was moved out of town to avoid a
lynching. Belle’s estranged husband claimed her body and took it
back to be buried in Washington State where her parents lived.
Blogger Osie Turner put together a great
post about Belle’s life and death, but if you want a
more thoroughly researched account, I strongly recommend Robin
Flinchum’s excellent book Red
Light Women of Death Valley.
The legend of Mona Belle focuses less
on her life than on what happened to her after death. Despite the
inconvenient detail that Belle’s body was claimed by her husband,
this particular story persists: as the casket of Mona Belle, AKA
Isabella Haskett was being carried to the Rhyolite/Bullfrog cemetery
by the grief-stricken men of Rhyolite, the women of Rhyolite stopped
the procession and successfully prevented the prostitute’s
interment with the rest of the Christian community. As an
alternative, Belle’s loyal customers buried her behind the
jailhouse. Alone but honored in a place of ignominy.
So, is the Belle story true?
No.
Then who is buried in her grave?
Probably no one.
Most people agree that both the site
and the story were fabrications concocted by a woman who ran a
souvenir shop out of the old depot in the 1950s. Post-collapse,
Rhyolite became a tourist stop, allowing a steady trickle of
entrepreneurs to trade on the more ghostly aspects of the ghost town.
And it should come as no surprise that Mona Belle, being Rhyolite’s
most notorious murder victim, is said to haunt its ruins.
That shopkeeper knew what she was
doing. The legend of Belle’s funeral procession being turned back
is very compelling, offering a twist on the story of Julia Bulette, a
beloved Virginia City madam whose funeral procession was attended by
thousands. Murdered in 1867, Bulette had become the symbol of
prosperous times, and her untimely passing united the community. That
Belle’s legend ends with a divided community is a troubling
correction, but one that resonates, especially with the mystically
inclined.
Blurb:
During
Death Valley’s great wildflower bloom of 2005, retired cowboy actor
Rigg Dexon gives a rootless woman a gift that will change her life
forever: the deed to The Mystery House, a century old shack long
thought to be the hiding place of a legendary emerald known as The
Juliet. Willie Judy remembers Dexon from cereal commercials she
watched as a kid, but now she’ll spend the next seven days
searching for the truth about him, the house, and herself, as the
history of The Juliet reveals the American Dream’s dark side—one
that is corrupt, bawdy, and half insane.
Excerpt:
February 1908: Centenary, NV
Becky made her
list for the week ahead. She was a list-maker now. Traveling up and
down the bluff was simple enough, but not with supplies in tow.
Before she made the journey to Centenary Mercantile she had to write
it all out, and be careful with her numbers. Gone were the days when
she could step outside her door and pick up a saddle of rabbit and
few turnips to improvise the evening meal.
Becky paused over
her work. It was too late to start a garden, wasn’t it? In the
basin, gunshots echoed, something that didn’t happen as often as it
used to.
The contest was
over, the results announced, and Hogg’s Bottle house was now called
the Skinner place. Though it was only the middle of the day, long
shadows kept the house a little too cold for Becky’s taste, but
Marcus reminded her how grateful she would be come summer.
She was grateful
already, quite glad to be out of common contact with the citizens of
Centenary, especially after Marcus’s report was made public. The
town’s collapse, which had begun as soon as the mines showed signs
of petering out, suddenly sped up. She watched it change from her
vantage point on the bluff. First the clusters of tent homes
disappeared, then construction stopped on the school. Some of the
burros that patrolled the weeds around their home seemed awfully thin
and confused. She assumed their owners had let them go in the hopes
that they would join a wild herd.
Then, one night,
the electric lights of High Street were not switched on, and they
remained unlit from that point onward. Centenary would no longer turn
night into day.
Becky put more
wood into the stove, but just enough to keep the embers going. Even
after unpacking all of their belongings there was still so much to
do. The Hogg children had managed to make a young house look old, and
one of the first things Becky wanted to do was plaster over the
bottles. It made her uneasy, feeling as if she lived in a glass
house.
A sharp whistle
from below the bluff meant a message had come for Marcus, but Marcus
was in town. He still went into the office on a daily basis. Becky
went out to the edge to tell the courier just that, but when she
looked down there was no one waiting.
“Boy?” she
called out. “Are you there?” There was no reply. If the kid was
still down there he was probably passed out drunk. A year ago she
would have climbed down to his aid, but a year ago he would have
delivered his news and received a tip before going off to drown in
the beer. Centenary was crumbling around the edges.
Becky returned to
the bottle house, pausing on the threshold. She could smell him. The
sweat, the filth, the alcohol. Someone was inside her new home, and
it wasn’t the courier, either.
