Auraria: A Novel (36 page)

Flying leaps upset tables and chairs. China fell and shattered. The streak of green flashed across the dining room and vanished below the baseboard. This disappearance did not bring relief. Now the snake was inside the arteries of the Queen of the Mountains. Its vile green head could pop out anywhere—from below a pillow, from the spigot on the washbasin. Huddled masses evacuated to the lawn. What was the terrible creature doing to the food, the water, the alcohol? How would its oozes and essences affect the springs? Would supper be delayed; would the menu be changed?

Abigail banged at the baseboard with the end of a broom. Holtzclaw fetched her a crowbar to remove the wood paneling. They failed to find the intruder. The Sky Pilot was called to assist. Holtzclaw made sure to parade him past the huddled masses, who gave a heartened cheer. The Sky Pilot was laden with tools and weapons: a bow and stuffed quiver, a long rifle, an unsheathed bush knife. Little boys and girls, their faces screwed up in courage, broke away from the body and joined the Sky Pilot as his irregulars.

“A green snake is nothing to worry about,” said the Sky Pilot, and his irregulars nodded their assent. He stalked along a long corridor, stopping every ten feet. “What you need to worry about are the hoop snakes. They put their tails in their mouths and roll down the hill toward you, and they’ll clobber you so good!”

All the irregulars agreed that this snake was far worse than a green snake.

“That’s nothing compared to the coachwhip snake, though,” said the Sky Pilot, opening each drawer of a high boy. “The coachwhip snake is long and black, just like a carriage driver’s crop. If the coachwhip snake comes for you, it’ll put its tail down your throat so that you can’t scream, and then it thrashes you with its body, like you’re a disobedient horse.”

The irregulars shivered and squealed with fear and excitement; they rummaged through the linens in the laundry but found no sign of the green snake.

“There are snakes that have very powerful venom. They have poisons that make you swell up. One of those snakes bit on my walking stick, and it swelled up to the size of tree. I sold it for railroad ties, and they made a mile of track from my walking stick. But then the rains came, and all the poison got washed out, and the railroad ties shrank until they were toothpicks. I got to sell the toothpicks though.”

Abigail smiled over this story; the irregulars were fascinated.

“There are stronger venoms too. A snake bit on a watermelon, and when the watermelon broke open, it caused such a flood that the valley has never seen, before or since. It was such a gush of water. This lake is a puddle compared to that watermelon flood. The top of Sinking Mountain was gone under the pink juice. I would have been washed away, but I grabbed on to a black seed, which was as big as a house, and I set up a campfire and a cabin there.”

“We all had to ride on seeds for weeks,” said Abigail, “and if we wanted to visit our neighbors, we had to swim. We all got covered in sticky juice and some of us got carried away by ants.”

“The only good thing,” said the Sky Pilot, “was that the valley smelled like August for two whole years.”

The irregulars drank from the ewers of mineral water, pretending that it was a potent antidote. They administered rituals and poultices to each other. The Sky Pilot turned out comforters and duvets. Pillows were cast aside. He upended a fainting couch and used his knife to slice open a feather bed.

“The worst snake of them all,” said the Sky Pilot, “is the trance snake. Because it doesn’t matter how brave or strong you are—it will fascinate you to helplessness and tickle you to death. To meet one is to die.”

This made the irregulars pause. How would they deal with such a threat? Such a creature was not just. It took no notice of merit or talent; might and courage were futile. Death was only luck then. They shook with distress; their balance had been upset.

The Sky Pilot’s face broke into a wide smile, and he stretched his broad, powerful arms out to his distressed adherents. They curled up close to him, to his smell and his wisdom and his weapons, and they knew that there was no such thing as a trance snake. He had only been testing them. Their fear and doubt had brought them through.

“Since we can’t find that green snake, who in any case is not at all dangerous,” said the Sky Pilot, “what should we do?”

“We’ll take the hotel apart!” said one of the irregulars.

“Burn it with fire!”

“Set the dynamite!”

“Freeze the walls and smash them with a hammer!”

“Turn on all the taps and flood it out!”

“Electricity!”

“Falling stars!”

“All very good ideas,” said the Sky Pilot. “So good that we must try them all. But we can’t! There are people that live here. We can’t blow up Abigail’s house. We can’t wash Holtzclaw’s home down into the valley.”

The irregulars nodded. This made very good sense to them.

“So what we will do,” said the Sky Pilot, “is send out a second green snake, who in any case is not at all dangerous. The second snake must be just like the first one, the same kind and the same age and the same temper.”

“Then wherever the first one went, the second one will go, too,” said one of the irregulars.

“They’ll fight!” said another.

“When they fight, they’ll try to eat the other one up!”

“Who will win?” said the Sky Pilot.

“They are both alike, both will win and both will lose.”

“At the same time too!”

“Each one will start to eat the other, and then they’ll eat each other up, at just the same time!”

“Gulp, and both are gone!”

“No more snake!”

“No more snake,” agreed the Sky Pilot. He took from his belt a brown burlap sack; he untied the top and withdrew a green snake, about ten inches long. The snake tasted the air with its pink tongue and looked up sleepily at the assembled irregulars.

The Sky Pilot lowered his hand; the snake flashed away, a green streak, and vanished through a narrow fissure beside a water pipe. The irregulars burst into cheers.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Thus passed the two weeks that preceded the Day of the Evening Star, the holiday that commemorated nothing but an invented story. Despite the short lead time, the bookings at the hotel had increased in anticipation of the event. The banquet would cost far more than these additional bookings would bring in, but no matter. It was imperative that this nascent holiday succeed on its debut, or the first tourists, returning disappointed, would ensure that the hotel never lived to celebrate the day’s anniversary.

A special train arrived with refrigerated cars, disgorging ingredients into waiting pots and pans. Holtzclaw watched a troop of employees unfurl tablecloths in the dining room. A passing air current caught one end of a silver-spangled cloth, tugging it from the hands of its handlers. The middle of the cloth shot upward to the ceiling, and the cloth danced and played far out of reach.

“Now, Mr. Bad Thing, don’t you have some piano to play?” said Cannie. “Leave us alone to get our work done.”

The air began to come out of the tablecloth, and it descended slowly. Cannie grabbed the corner of it, and the tablecloth sprang to life again. It lifted Cannie off the ground; her toes skittered across tabletops.

“Abigail! Abigail!” called Cannie, clinging to the hem of the tablecloth.

Abigail appeared from the employees’ passage. “This is why you can’t get that melody in ‘Summer Afternoons,’” she scolded. “You’re always messing with the tablecloths instead of practicing. Get back to the piano, if you ever hope to get any better. Or do you want me to hire somebody new?”

The tablecloth deflated. Cannie tumbled to the tabletop; the cloth, inanimate, fluttered over her.

“It’s been this way all day, Holtzclaw,” said Abigail.

He followed her down the elevated employees’ passage into the kitchen outbuilding, where she issued orders to a team of white-aproned cooks. Copious helpings of paprika went into one pot; some sort of sea creature into the other. Holtzclaw was unable to count the number of tentacles per creature; they knotted together in a mass within the broth. A giant oven like a mouth consumed dough and expelled crusty bread. A lean boy stood knee-deep in feathers that he had stripped from game birds; the carcasses were stacked beside him like cordwood.

Abigail turned to a small stove that held a single large pan. Inside were flakes of color—green, yellow, and orange.

“Ms. Thompson, what’s this one?”

“Wild ramps, scrambled with eggs, and a sweet potato hash.”

“It’s not enough for a banquet portion.”

“The New Rock Falls will be open,” she said. “For any that have an appetite for its sort of food.”

“Do you think anyone will come?” said Holtzclaw.

“The regulars would like to be fed.”

From across the kitchen came a sharp snap and a yelp of pain. A cook did battle with the largest lobster that Holtzclaw had ever seen. It was four feet from head to tail, dark brown with pink spots. The cook held a colander in front of his face and had a long meat fork in the other hand. He lunged for the lobster, but the lobster blocked deftly and executed a perfect riposte.

“It’s only an old and ornery creature, and it wants compassion,” said Abigail. She gathered the creature in her arms. It looked up at her with its dark points that were its eyes. Its claws waved in the air but did not snap. Abigail drew it closer to her chest. Then she put a knife between its eyes and pressed until the shell cracked. Yellow goo oozed from the wound, and the lobster was still. She handed it back to the cook.

“The way you were holding it,” said Holtzclaw, “I thought you were going to spare its life. Release it into the lake.”

“You can’t put a saltwater lobster into a freshwater lake,” she said, “no matter how much mineral water you give it. Better to let its ghost flow freely away.”

A tall pot filled with water at a rolling boil began to rock back and forth, and peeled potatoes began to spring and leap from within. Each potato had a horrible face, with red eyes tilted inward and leering row of teeth.

One potato leapt from the pot and landed on Holtzclaw. It set into his tie with its starchy fangs. Instinctually, Holtzclaw struck at the attacker and smashed it against his chest. Now he was covered with particles of scalding potato. His wails were cut short by a second assault. Other potatoes were springing higher and higher from the water. Abigail found a cutting board and slammed it over the pot.

“Holtzclaw!” said Abigail. “Be useful for once and hold this down.”

Holtzclaw pressed his weight against the cutting board as Abigail ran to the larder and returned with a tin of Pharaoh’s Flour. It was still sealed. She put her fingernails under the lip and pulled; the seal pulled up with a sucking sound, and Holtzclaw caught a whiff of a desert breeze. The laughing face of Amenhotep winked at him—it was so much more pleasant than the grinning leers of the potatoes.

Abigail lifted a corner of the cutting board and tipped in a draught of Pharaoh’s Flour. Instantly the pot stopped rocking. The grinning mouths were gone. Inside were only peeled potatoes, boiling facelessly.

“All day, Holtzclaw,” said Abigail. “All day.”

#

Holtzclaw sat across the table from Shadburn, who occupied the central seat at the head table. To Shadburn’s right and left, following the custom of alternate seating by gender, were women. On one side was a railroad baroness, whose husband was on a late evening hunt with the Sky Pilot. On his other side was an actual baroness. Her title continued to be inherited even though the barony from which it derived had fallen into the sea during an earthquake four hundred years ago.

Holtzclaw too was flanked by women, or at least the idea of them. The chair to Holtzclaw’s left supported a frail form clad in a black dress. She was the owner and operator of a Carolina corundum mine.

The chair to Holtzclaw’s right should have been occupied by Lizzie Rathbun. He needed no introductions from the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society when he asked her a week ago for the pleasure of her company. She had assented then, but when Holtzclaw came to collect her, she gave her excuses. She said that a small party, like the one Holtzclaw had put together for this Evening Star trifle, demanded the same level of preparation and charm from Ms. Rathbun as a spectacular ball. She felt that, in this case, her investment would not be adequately rewarded. For a more spectacular event, she would be sure to appear in fine style.

Her rebuff wounded him, and he could not conceal his ill humor while he sat at the banquet table. He looked across her empty chair at an ovine man, a politician. He had tight white curls in his hair, and he bent low to consume salad by pressing it between his fat lips. The eighth seat, between the actual baroness and the corundum mine owner, was held by a wealthy newspaper magnate, who had risen from humble beginnings—owning only the five newspapers he’d inherited from his father—to control a printing empire of more than two dozen publications. Shadburn, with a certain pride, noted that Auraria’
s
Miner’s Record and Spy in the Wes
t
was not a part of that empire.