Auraria: A Novel (16 page)

“That is a private transaction,” said Holtzclaw, spinning around. “And I would thank you to keep it such.”

“You’ve bought many other properties too. Strickland. Bogan. Patterson. Walton. You’ve told them all lies about scrap metal. We both know there’s no money in that. Why are you really buying them?”

“My employer has his own motives.”

“Why, a creature like that is not going to share our interests. You ally yourself with those who are least likely to reward you. Tell me, Holtzclaw, have you thought of buying some of these lands yourself? Before your employer gets to them? You have money of your own, I presume, and so do I. If we were to find a few key parcels of land ahead of your employer, there would be a good profit in it. I’d perform the negotiations. He wouldn’t know about us.”

“I am not going to betray him.”

“We wouldn’t thwart his plans, just place ourselves to benefit from them. A little foreknowledge, a few hard bargains, and it adds up to a tidy profit for you and me.”

Holtzclaw said nothing. He looked at the nimbus around her face, searching for any tarnish.

“Should you decide that you have any information to share, Holtzclaw, I may be persuaded into a partnership.”

Holtzclaw watched her exaggerated ascent up the narrow staircase. Her motives, so transparent, made more sense than many of the things he’d seen in the Lost Creek Valley. At the top of the stairs, Lizzie Rathbun paused, as though considering a last word of parting, but she said nothing. Her blonde hair fell in loose waves against the midnight of her dress.

How clever she was, thought Holtzclaw, that in parting from her, his disgust had turned to dreams, and his righteous anger into revelry.

#

Holtzclaw had not found a carriage driver in the Grayson House, and now it was risky to inquire there. Secrets were already seeping out. He didn’t want to hasten the leak with his own questions. Abigail would be more discreet. He crossed to the Old Rock Falls and was enveloped by a jaunty piano tune.

There were no visible customers at the Old Rock Falls. Mr. Bad Thing played the piano. Abigail worked behind the counter. “Why, there’s our long-absent stranger. Need some supper, Mr. Holtzclaw? It’s the same as dinner—sweet potatoes. I’ll get you a bowl.”

“I’ve already eaten, Ms. Thompson, thanks.”

“Oh. Well, bully for you. Where?”

Holtzclaw threaded his way through the tables and leaned across the counter. “Actually, I’m in a bit of a predicament. I need to find a ride back to Dahlonega tonight. I must be there by morning. Do you know where I could find a driver?”

Abigail walked past Holtzclaw to fetch a broom. She started sweeping under the tables. “Folks here don’t like to drive at night. X.T. won’t go. Byers won’t go. Even the Sky Pilot won’t go.”

“Will anyone?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“Then I shall have to go by myself.”

“That’s a fool idea.”

“Why is that?” said Holtzclaw. “What dangers lurk out there?”

“There’s the plat-eye.”

“And what is a plat-eye?” There was bound to be some spirit on the roadway; he wondered how this one was peculiar.

“The shade of a man,” said Abigail. “This particular one was named Hulen Holmes. He used to have a farm in Hope Hollow. Hulen didn’t take to being dead, though. He doesn’t sleep sweetly.”

“So the road is haunted? It wouldn’t be the most unusual thing I’ve seen so far. I can endure it.”

“When a place is haunted, there’s no real worry,” said Abigail. “Furniture flies around. Footsteps, whispers, piano plays itself. It’s eerie when it starts, but then you get used to it. The ghosts are playful. They love a place so much they don’t want to leave it just because of death. Sometimes they had a bad time there at the end. That makes the ghost want to stay all the more. They want to fix their memories. A plat-eye, though, is wrathy. He feels alone, especially in death, and it fills him with despair. If you’re a stranger, a new face that he doesn’t know and love from his life, he’ll try to take your head off your shoulders.”

“I suppose it isn’t as simple as steering around Hulen’s old homestead,” said Holtzclaw.

“You could meet him a few miles up the road or at one of the springs if you stop to water your horse. If you’re resolved to go, I’ll have to take you.”

“Ms. Thompson, you’d venture out against this plat-eye?”

“Well, he likes me.”

“And how much will this cost?”

“Cost? If it were to cost something, then it would not be cheap. It’s the middle of the night, and we are alone on the road, excepting the ominous shade of the dead. And if you need a horse too, that’s extra.”

“I shall pay you, Ms. Thompson, as a professional courtesy.”

“Professional it is.” She quoted a price, and Holtzclaw did not think it outlandish, given the sudden departure and the late hour.

Abigail began putting her hair up. “I assume you’re not going with just the clothes on your back. You need your portmanteau or your proper hat. Go get what you need, and I’ll close up here.”

When Holtzclaw returned to the Old Rock Falls, he followed Abigail through the last steps of her closing routine. Certain regulars had to be appeased. On the counter, she laid out five bowls and filled each with a different substance. In the first, she poured an entire bottle of Dr. Pep. In the second, she poured a bottle of cream.

“For the cat?” asked Holtzclaw.

“She doesn’t drink cream. She wants butter because it’s easier to eat. Lazy thing.”

Abigail opened a small mahogany box and withdrew a geometric form wrapped in red silk. It was ice, of the quality that he’d seen at the Sky Pilot’s cabin. Abigail placed the blade of her kitchen knife above the smoldering ashes of the hearth fire; then she cut off a perfect slice, leaving all the edges as smooth as before.

In the last two bowls, she poured out the contents of two ewers. The liquids were colorless, but one gave off a distinct metallic odor, while the other reeked of sulfur. “Mineral waters,” said Abigail. “Some need the chalybeate, and others the yellow sulfur.”

After sweeping the kitchen and dining room, Abigail poured out a handful of Pharaoh’s Flour onto the floor around the counter. “This is the most important part because it shows all the guests who went to which bowl. No one can lie and say, ‘I never got any ice!’ There’s evidence.”

“Ah, that’s clever,” said Holtzclaw.

“The worst part of the profession,” said Abigail, “is dealing with disputes between the customers. When I was younger, there was more fighting. Now the wilder spirits have settled somewhat. Like gold at the bottom of a pan.”

Chapter Nine

They rode side by side toward Dahlonega under a splendid moon. The silver light rimed the leaves and lianas. An unseen stream and the voices of springs bubbled and sang. Nightbirds called. There was all the set-dressing of a romantic scene, and Byron himself could not have written a better—or more hackneyed—one. And the heart of a bachelor could not help but feel a little thrill at the prospect of riding beside an eligible lady, unchaperoned yet with an excellent excuse.

But Holtzclaw could not play his part in the moment. He was too oppressed by duties: the unbought land, the squandered money, the call from Shadburn that seemed to mean bad business. And there was the supposed threat of a plat-eye or some other marauder—the feeling that a marvel or wonder was about to leap from the shadows. It set him on edge and ruined his fine finish.

So instead of filling the silvery air with significant silence, Holtzclaw nattered about recent gala events held at the governor’s mansion, making special mention of ball gowns, dance forms, and musical selections. One gala had been a fund-raiser for the southern highlanders.

“The organizer made some claim about the squalid schoolhouses of the mountains,” said Holtzclaw, “and how one is as likely to find a bucketful of dung as a bucketful of coal for stoking the furnace and that snakes will come pouring out of the floor.”

“It’s poppycock,” said Abigail. It was the third time she’d used the word during their ride, and each time, it seemed to fall heavier. Holtzclaw wondered if there were such a creature as a poppycock in Auraria—that it was not merely a turn of phrase, but some kind of flowering chicken of particularly scant value. “The only time snakes will come pouring out of the floor,” she continued, “is if you build a home on top of their nest. It happens sometimes, which is why when you light the first fire in a new house, you make sure that the blankets are tucked in tight so nothing that’s woken up by the warmth will slither in. I suppose these organizers told their snake stories to make us mountain folk appear more pitiable. That’s poppycock too.”

“I’ve seen more first-rate claret here than in the restaurants of Savannah,” said Holtzclaw. This stirred a memory in him, and he described to Abigail many of the fine meals that he’d consumed over the years: various game birds, in assembled or disassembled forms, served roasted, chilled, raw, or stewed; organ meats cut thin or served as pates; turtles in broth; rare Oriental fruits served a single slice at a time from ancient porcelain. But he dedicated the most detail to a rustic meal that had been prepared for him by a troupe of Hungarian immigrants that had settled near the Alabama line. He prattled on about the meal; Holtzclaw didn’t even look to see if she was still listening, and it rather didn’t matter. Rabbits and sausages were roasted over a long open fire. A massive iron cauldron, transported with great effort into the wilderness, held a steaming goulash. Alas, the Hungarians did not stay long. The changing financial fortunes of the region, combined with political pressure relating to the manufacture of their native spirits, conspired to evict the Hungarians from their small territory. The families moved to the Ohio coal fields, leaving only a weedy cemetery with the name Budapest written in wrought iron above the gate.

“I picked up a few words in Hungarian from them,” said Holtzclaw. “Have you studied any foreign languages?”

“All the little girls in Auraria learn Chinese in between lessons in butter churning and gold panning.”

Holtzclaw waited for a moment to see if Abigail would say a word in Chinese. But when none came, he risked a brief chuckle; the moonlight on Abigail’s face revealed this to be the appropriate response.

“But I do believe that gold panning is part of your universal education here,” said Holtzclaw. “In my travels today, I met a young woman who was as practiced as any grizzled prospector.”

“Who was that?” said Abigail.

“Ms. Rathbun. In the old capital, that sort of woman would only know about gold in its final, highest form—the cufflinks of a lover or the necklace of a rival.”

Abigail’s face soured. “A lazy woman like her would only care about gold if it helped her judge people. Who’s worth her time, who’s not. Are cufflinks and necklaces really the highest form of gold?”

“That’s unfair,” said Holtzclaw. “I think her opinion is closer to the general one, and it has great merit. When men and women dream, do they dream of simply sitting upon piles of gold? No, they dream of what they’d buy. Fashionable clothing, a spread of land, fine cuisine, a life of leisure. They dream of using gold, not finding gold.”

“Those are dreams of rich idlers. In Auraria, we are miners, even in our dreams. When I’m asleep, I follow the hillside that leads up from the Five Forks Creek, and in Fowler’s Gully is a loose boulder, and underneath the boulder is an iron pot in which are buried fifty gold double eagles. Or I wade into Painter’s Creek until I step in an eddy, where there is a golden head with pearls for eyes and an emerald set in for a tongue. Or I’m following a tunnel that leads to an open cavern with a village of stone houses and a palace over them, gathered underneath a stone sky. I descend a staircase that falls straight down into the mountain and ends at an underground sea, and there is gold piled there in drifts, as though the river carried it down like waste. And when I press my fingers against the warm metal, I wake up.”

Perhaps Auraria could inspire prophetic dreams, or perhaps if one dreamed often enough in a place as rich as the Lost Creek Valley, then one of those dreams was bound to come true. “And do you then set out with your pick and shovel?” said Holtzclaw.

“I’ve never had the need,” said Abigail.

“We are very different people, Ms. Thompson.” Ms. Rathbun would have been digging at once, thought Holtzclaw—as would he.

#

A mile past midnight, when they were still not out of the Lost Creek Valley, Holtzclaw asked Abigail if they could stop for a drink. She nodded. They were following a road that paralleled the course of a running river; Holtzclaw could hear the flow somewhere in the darkness below. But they rode for several minutes before Abigail brought her horse to a stop.

“Here it’s easy enough to get down to the water,” she said. They left the horses on the road hitched to a post. A path led down to the water, and as they descended, Holtzclaw was surprised to find the path transformed into rough-hewn steps. The farther they descended, the colder the air became.

The path ended at a waist-high wall, likely the remnants of a millrace, and just on the other side of the wall was the river. Holtzclaw leaned over and found that the far side was rimed with frost. The wind was laden with ice, and when Holtzclaw put his cupped hands into the flow, they shivered. He tried to sip the water, but his lips recoiled.