Auraria: A Novel (41 page)

“Raspberries, raspberries!” All the bathers made rude noises with their lips and then panted with paroxysms of laughter.

“Say, you’re not here to spy for those dusty women in the yellow hats, are you? What do they call themselves? The Cooing and Booing Society?”

“Billing and Cooing Society! Like birds.”

The youngsters danced around, each making an idiosyncratic impression of a bird: flapping arms like wings, jutting their necks back and forward, hopping from one foot to the other.

“Caw-caw! Ku-ku! Ka-ka-ka-chu!”

“That’s not what they do,” said Holtzclaw. “It’s not even a good impression. But I don’t mean to defend them; I’m no ally of theirs.”

“Well, say whatever you want to them,” said one of the women. “Doesn’t matter in the least to me.” She curled around the outstretched arm of an eligible bachelor in a striped bathing suit—one of the hotel’s standard issue, far off hotel grounds.

“Why are you even here, Holdcow?”

“It’s just … I thought you were someone else.”

“What, we’re not good enough? You wanted to peek at someone else? Wanted a better view than what you got?”

“That is not it,” said Holtzclaw. “That is not it at all.”

“You think we should leave?” said one of the young men. “You’ve got no right to tell us to leave. It’s going to take a lot more than some sad word to make us go. No one’s trespassing.”

“If you’re going to tell us it’s not right or not decent,” said one of the women, “then you can just eat a fig.”

“I don’t mean to spy on anyone,” said Holtzclaw, “or chase anyone away. You can stay. I had just wondered, when I heard you …”

One of the youngsters dashed out of the calf-high water and clambered onshore. “Brr! Sure got cold!” Others followed him, clustering for warmth.

“A powerful frost just then!”

“Like ice is coming down the river.”

The trees hissed with a sudden breeze that stung at damp hands and feet and faces. “Mr. Wholecloth, you brought some frosty winds with you.”

The youngsters scurried back along the shoreline path, leaving Holtzclaw shivering and alone. Flakes of gold curled at the edge of the water.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

At first, Mother Fresh-Roasted only had a wooden tray from which she sold interesting rocks to children: staurolite, also called a fairy cross; flat worry stones, with a depression made in them for the friction of concerned thumbs; arrow heads and petrified wood.

Then she bought a pushcart and expanded her selection to include devices and remedies for helping young girls dream of their future husbands. One popular set included a red wax candle and a polished metal bowl. The bowl was filled with mineral water and then the candle was lit, and after it had burned for some time with the girl’s thoughts fixed upon her future mate, she poured the wax into the water, and the resulting abstract shape was interpreted as a clue to the future mate’s profession. An additional guidebook helped to decipher these shapes, because not all of them resolved into well-known implements. Some were ancient forms, some purely symbolic, and a very few were outright unlucky. An adaptation was available for boys who wanted a hint as to how they would die, with most symbols pointing to violent misadventure.

On the strength of these sales, Mother Fresh-Roasted opened a sprawling emporium, to which Holtzclaw traveled to ask for her guidance for the upcoming gala. Her store consisted of three buildings connected by breezeways. Enormous porches provided ample rocking chairs where customers could enjoy a refreshing glass of Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught or a bottle of Dr. Pep. Children and adults gorged themselves on sticky-sweet confections: maple fudge, sugar crystals, whirly twists, and poppy rocks.

Holtzclaw envied Mother Fresh-Roasted. Her products were local—the glowing honey from her fire-bees, ice cream egg sundaes laid by snowball hens, daguerreotypes of tourists posing with her pet deer, from whose back grew a peach in full fruit. And Holtzclaw was certain that she had fewer problems with baronesses than he did. She needed no agents or partners, and her establishment was always humming with conversations and coins.

He looked for Mother Fresh-Roasted among the penny whistles, tins of stewed tomatoes, and corn-husk brooms. He paused in front of a rack of gold-prospecting supplies. A girl was trying to reach a tin pan on a high shelf. A pair of boys selected a full kit: picks, shovels, pans, leather pouches to hold collected flakes, and printed instructions.

Holtzclaw at last found Mother Fresh-Roasted in the produce section of her store, which had large wooden bins holding corn, beans, nuts, mushrooms, ramps, and sweet potatoes. In one bushel were just-picked sheep-fruit; they made soft bleating noises, as though in their sleep.

“Sweet potatoes!” said Holtzclaw. “You think you can sell sweet potatoes? We cannot give them away at the hotel.”

Mother Fresh-Roasted picked one up. “Then you must be doing something wrong. Why wouldn’t someone want a sweet potato like this?” It was a collection of several potatoes that had grown together. From a certain angle, it looked like a person: a body, two stumpy legs, and two arms, one considerably longer than the other. Mother Fresh-Roasted held it like a doll, rocked it in her arms, and the sweet potato wiggled its limbs and cooed. “What did you need, Holtzclaw? I’m very, very busy, you see. The snowball hens are running a fever, and unless I give them ice cubes to sit on, their ice cream chicks will just be puddles of milk.”

“We are planning a gala, you see, at the hotel. No expense spared.”

“That’s no way to run a profitable business.”

“It’s our only chance at it. We must plan something spectacular, something that will draw a great crowd from far away. You seem to have a knack for such things.”

“How about a quartet of self-playing instruments?” Mother Fresh-Roasted pointed to a throng of listeners crowded around a stage. Two auto-banjos, an auto-dulcimer, and an auto-autoharp broke into a lively rendition of “Leather Britches.” Some of the listeners, still in their traveling finery, linked arms and swung in rough, failed approximations of square-dance forms.

“Mechanical?” asked Holtzclaw. “Clockwork?”

“Mechanical!” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. “Of course not, Holtzclaw! This isn’t a factory. This is Auraria. We run on spirits, not steam.”

“Spirits can play the banjo and the dulcimer and the autoharp?”

“They can be taught. And anyone can play the autoharp.”

“Well, they are pleasant enough and crowd-pleasing. Let’s have them. What else?”

Holtzclaw placed his order for poppy rocks, which he had seen at the Grayson House. He ordered moon pies to be baked fresh the night before the gala, glowing with luminous fire honey. He requested a dozen spools of thread that would wind themselves around the ankles of true lovers, causing them to trip into each others’ arms.

“I thought you’d want an elegant gala, with waltzes and lobsters,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted.

“Waltzes! Lobsters! They are universal. I want a spectacle that only Auraria could make,” said Holtzclaw. “The gala-goers will carry the name of the Queen of the Mountains to every club and chowhouse in Milledgeville, and we’ll have a full booking for the very next week and every week thereafter. Where else could they go to see such wonders?”

“You can be certain of a spectacle,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted.

“That leaves only Dasha Pavlovski. We are trying to have him for the chief entertainment, and I imagine that his handlers will have special requirements. When I’m told what they are …”

“Dasha Pavlovski? Never heard of him. Not grand, not strange. You need to talk to a friend of mine, the singing tree. Oh, but the singing tree puts on a grand show! Unique in the world!”

“If he’s a tree, then how does he get on stage? Do we have to dig him up and repot him for each number?”

“He gets up on his root tips, and he can skitter wherever he would like,” said Mother Fresh-Roasted. “He knows all the old favorites: ‘Possum on a Rail,’ ‘Squirrel Heads and Gravy,’ ‘Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me.’”

“It’s just that the guests, you see, have their hearts set on a big star, like Dasha Pavlovski.”

“The Singing Tree is a big star! When I was a girl, I liked no one better. I saw his branches waving in the moonshine bowl. Then one night, I went to hear him sing, and there were wisteria vines, in purple bloom, creeping all over him. Oh I was heartbroken! But it was for the best. They are good together, the tree and the vine.”

“If Dasha Pavlovski is booked, then we’ll ask this tree friend of yours.”

“You will have to ask him soon; his schedule fills up. Just this afternoon, he’s playing two weddings and a wake.”

#

Abigail and Holtzclaw sat at a table in the New Rock Falls. Through the windows that opened back into the hotel, Holtzclaw could see a dozen people loitering on the front stoop. The feedings at the main hotel were running slowly, a consequence of a complicated table-side flambé that was being extinguished by inexplicable cold winds. Holtzclaw had called Abigail away for a planning session, and the dining room troubles had grown in her absence.

Meanwhile, the New Rock Falls, which had plenty of open tables, had no paying customers, but a full complement of spirits. Abigail ladled up bowls of stew and filled cups with a hot drink derived from roasted sweet potatoes, all while trying to formulate a menu.

Holtzclaw read off what they’d selected so far. “Groundhog, lobster tails, oysters on the half shell, squirrel brains, fresh-squeezed caviar, wild coney and wild venison, scalloped potatoes and sweet potatoes. If it grows here, put it on a plate; if it has to be shipped in refrigerated cars from across the country, put it on a plate. I want ramps so pungent that the paint comes off the wall. And honey like liquid gold.”

“And Shadburn is agreeable to this?”

“He practically insists,” said Holtzclaw, “as long as it benefits the hotel and thus brings in money that we can put into the dam. And I can think of no greater benefit, no bigger spectacle, than to invite all the local spirits and have them mingle with the most splendid elements we can find from outside the valley. I think that these tourists need to see a little of the real Auraria, with all its eccentricities. They need to appreciate the sweet potato as it is prepared here.”

Abigail smiled.

“Have you picked a costume yet?” said Holtzclaw.

“Won’t I be wearing hotel livery as part of the serving class?”

“Senior staff will be our guests, and no one is more senior than you. You are expected to attend and enjoy, in all your finery. If you need a stipend toward your wardrobe, it is available.”

“Not necessary. But if I am not in the kitchen, it will just fall apart. Grinning faces will get into the potatoes again. We’ll have a blizzard from the refrigerator.”

“It’s true,” said Holtzclaw, “but necessary. It will be a talking point.”

“Mr. Bad Thing will kick up a wind beneath the tablecloths. Ladies will be abashed.”

“I forgot about him!” said Holtzclaw. “A thousand pardons. He is most welcome. Where shall I deliver his invitation? Is ‘Mr. Bad Thing’ his full title, or is he an esquire?”

#

Only the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society was busier than Holtzclaw in the days leading up to the gala. They sought to ensure that no one of worth would attend the gala without proper accompaniment. Among their recent victories was the matching of a cross-eyed scion of a peppermint concern to an obese belle-dame of a New England dynasty. No less thrilling was the merger of two great houses that had, until recently, been set in a frosty war of words against another. Reconciliation was made in the betrothal of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed son to a blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter. Their union was commemorated with the signing of favorable railroad tariffs through the middle states.

An official dance card for the gala had been created in the shape of a fan. The obverse showed a picture of the Queen of the Mountains, bedecked in summer evening splendor, with the moon rising behind her; the reverse had twenty slots, where the lady could record her companion for twenty dances—three waltzes, four quadrilles, two square dances, a contra dance, an Old Country Stomp, a mazurka, a molasses boiling promenade, two serenades, a polka, two mixers, two lancers, and a big set. The Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society members hosted instructional opportunities for the formal dances. The rural ones, Holtzclaw promised, could be learned on site. He knew this was a lie: a contra dance is no less intricate than a mazurka, and the patterns of molasses boiling were distinguishable from a complete chaos only because its able dancers never collided.

Holtzclaw brought a dance card to Ms. Rathbun aboard the Maiden of the Lake. In her presence and by her leave, he put his name in every slot, for every dance. That was as official as any contract.

He was hastening back from this personal journey when he was intercepted by the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society. They caught him by the elbows and turned him onto the veranda.

“Walk with us, Holtzclaw,” said Almeda, the Reader of Mysteries.

“I have so much work to do,” he said. But the women would not hear of it. They boxed him in with the sweep of their dresses.