Crown of Dust (15 page)

“On credit?”

Micah reddens. “Now, Emaline, a man's gotta go with his gut instinct on these things. You just wouldn't understand.” Emaline's eyebrows raise. Micah blanches and changes the subject.

“The boys are wondering what you're gonna do about the Chinamen.”

“What?”

“The Chinamen. Already started building downstream of us …” Micah pauses. “I don't know if you'd noticed.”

“Of course I've noticed.”

Hadn't she noticed? She throws the divining rod back on the stack like a stick of firewood. With the new furnishings coming and the saloon filling up every night, and the liquor to be stocked and the floors to be cleaned …

“Panning Mordicai's old diggings downstream. Making good returns. Patient as hell, they are.”

She isn't one to be biased when it comes to color. No, sir. But Celestials can't be trusted; those strange clothes and long hair, and the slanted eyes God gave 'em to warn others of their dishonesty. A well-known fact. She's heard that the Chinese never smile. They are a small, hardy people, perfectly suited to a life of hard physical labor and are prone to murderous skirmishes between themselves. Just months before hundreds of Chinese had fought and killed each other over in Weaverville for no reason anyone could see. Not that most men need a reason, she thinks. But the Chinese bind and deform their women's feet, then sell them into slavery. And before long they'll open their opium dens, and she fears this more than the women they might bring. She's seen what that stuff does to a man. Makes him forget he's a man, dominates his mind
and
his body even more than a woman could, and holds on tighter. Drives a man insane with need, though it didn't seem to affect the Celestials. They pray to a round devil-god that makes them immune to the effects of their own drug. And they steal gold. And chickens.

Chickens. Emaline scratches the patch of fuzzy hair on her upper lip. Can't abide that, stealing chickens. No. Worked too hard setting up the Victoria to let a streak of good luck be ruined by a bunch of slope-eyed foreigners.

“You gotta sell to 'em, or someone else will,” she says with a sigh. “We'll figure something out. They can't stay.”

Micah hides a smile, but Emaline, still thinking, pays no attention. “John Thomas,” she says under her breath. “John Thomas,” she says again, this time addressing Micah. “Haven't seen him for a while now. You?”

Micah shrugs, shakes his head in ignorance. John Thomas always did have a way of disappearing and reappearing over the course of a year. You'd hardly know he was gone before he turned up again. Could use a man like him in getting rid of Chinamen.

“Might just need your help, then,” she tells Micah.

“Emaline!” It's David's voice echoing off the walls of the ravine. Emaline jerks her head in the direction of the call. “Emaline!” yells David again, even more frantic than the first time and Emaline rushes out the door.

The men hover, breathing heavy and hot on Emaline's neck as she kneels by Limpy's side. His head lies flush against the wall, but his feet hang off the end of the bed, jutting into the air in the same pigeon-toed manner in which he stands. Since carrying him through the saloon, up the narrow staircase to Alex's bed, no one has spoken. Their worry closes in around Emaline like the walls of this boxy, windowless room, and the air is stagnant in her lungs. She wipes sweat from her forehead and tries to ignore the silent petition of the men behind her. Make it better, they beg her. Make it better, they demand, and her shoulders tense. She stares down at Limpy's face, places her hand on his forehead, looking for signs of color to fill his ash blue cheeks. His breath is regular but shallow, and she's afraid to take her eyes off of him. She knows how gently death can come, how quickly, even to big men like Limpy. She stands up, bumping against the man behind her.

“Move,” she says, rolling up her sleeves. “Back, David,” she commands again, taking her eyes only briefly from her patient. She does not want this responsibility, would rather confront almost anything than do battle with death, a battle she's already lost once on the trail to California. But this is no time to be thinking about the past, and that's what Harold is now, bless his soul: part of her past. She waits for the tightening of her throat that his name always brings. She hasn't thought of him in weeks, months even. She clears her throat, purses her lips, but she can feel only the stress of the six men behind her, all sweating, breathing hard, wiping their eyes as if it's sweat they're dabbing away.

She grabs the lantern, lights it with a match from her pocket and leans in for a closer look. A cut oozes a steady trickle of blood down Limpy's cheek and a fist-sized lump is forming at his temple. His fingers are cool to the touch, but twitch slightly when she blows on them. What else can she do? What do they expect her to do? Bring him back with a touch, with some magic words? She hates not knowing what to do. But she's not a doctor, and there's no one else. Four lawyers, four merchants, even a clockmaker, for heaven's sake, have clattered up Victor Lane in the last month and a half, but not a single goddamned doctor. She bites her lip, knowing that Preacher John won't return with one from Grass Valley before the morning. If Limpy makes it until morning, then she imagines he'll pull through with or without a doctor. He'll pull through with or without her.

“Is he …?” David's question trails off and she suddenly needs them all out of the room. Fred and Harry stand to David's right, their contrasting features pinched in the same worried expression. Micah places a reassuring hand on Alex's shoulder as the boy edges ever closer to the bed, closer to David, who moved back all of an inch at Emaline's command. Jed stands as though holding up the doorframe, his arms outstretched, his features backlit and shadowed by the light from the hall.

Emaline's throat constricts. She doesn't like feeling helpless, likes it even less in public. Control is becoming as rare as gold once was, even within the walls of the Victoria, where she is accustomed to some measure of ascendancy.

“Out,” she says, drawing the word into two syllables. But the men remain. She turns on them, rising to her full height, nearly hitting Alex in the head with her elbow. Her eyes narrow as she squints at his smooth, muddy face in the lamplight. “Out! Out!” She points to the door this time, her eyes still focused on Alex, and he steps quickly back, knocking Micah toward the door. “All of you, out.”

They stumble backward over each other, out of the door. All but David, who lingers, his arms crossed in the hopeful, defiant manner of a small boy. His eyes meet hers briefly, then return to Limpy's prostrate figure.

“I told him yesterday. I told him it wouldn't hold,” says David, and Emaline closes her eyes. She breathes in fresh air from the hall.

“David,” she says, softly now, “I need water and a rag, and then I need you to leave.”

He brings water, a rag, a stool for Emaline to sit on, and a cup of steaming coffee. Then he stands again by the bed, arms crossed, chin lowered resolutely to his chest. Emaline can almost feel the unfinished question digging holes through his lips.

“He'll be fine, David,” says Emaline, hoping he doesn't hear the uncertainty in her voice. “Close the door behind you.” She looks back at him again, forcing eye contact, and he finally leaves her to the lamplight.

Her shadow flickers and sways on the bare walls, the rough-cut pine dotted with so many knotty eyes, each staring out at her. She works her way down Limpy's buttons, peels the soiled shirt off his shoulders, revealing the red wiry hairs on his chest and belly. She runs her hands up his arms, beginning at the fingertips, feels each digit, each knobby joint for breaks, shudders at the clammy chill of his skin. She wipes the blood from his cheek, presses a soft cloth to the cut and holds it there with one hand while scrubbing off the layer of dirt and mud with the other. The face that emerges is drawn and gray, but she can almost see the knot rising, a blue volcano of bruised flesh on his forehead, and this reassures her somehow—as if a dying man's body would not bother to bruise. She watches, hoping for a healthy pink to grace his cheeks. “Four bloody lawyers,” she mumbles under her breath, as though afraid to wake him. And their wives, she thinks. She might prefer lawyers, who at least reserve their self-righteous bullshit for the political arena.

She pulls a blanket up around his shoulders. She waits. She watches his breath make bubbles of spittle around his lips, and drops the rag back into the basin of water. Blood and grime loosen and bloom outward until the water is covered in a thin red-brown film. Downstairs she can hear none of the usual noises. No accordion, no swearing, no boots stomping.

They expect so much. Bring her their problems, big and small when, sometimes, the best she can do is clean up. She brushes the hair from Limpy's forehead, picks a lump of dried mud from his crown. Clean him up and wait for him to die. Clean him up and wait for him to live. There is no one else. She waits. Her eyes grow heavy in spite of the coffee. Her arms cross over her bosom. Her head nods forward then jolts up. The fresh air is all but exhausted and the lamp flickers. She adjusts the wick. She wipes the spittle from Limpy's mouth with the corner of her apron. She eases her head down and rests her ear upon his chest, testing the cadence of his heart against her own, and falls asleep.

“Emaline?” A hand upon her shoulder and her head jerks up. A small pool of drool darkens Limpy's chest hair. The door is open, but the hallway is now pitch dark and the air carries a midnight chill. She bends down again. Limpy's heart is beating. His lips are pink with blood and oxygen. His cheeks are flushed and his breath comes deep and even. The raised bump on his forehead is a healthy purple-black.

“I'll watch for a while.” Jed's voice is a whisper.

Emaline's eyes sting, but she does not cry. Her ears are filled with the silence of the room. She lets him ease her up by the shoulders and, as she stands, she regains herself, wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve, breathes in the blast of fresh air from the hall.

“They're still down there—Alex and David. I told them was no use in staying, but they're still down there.”

Emaline nods, looking down with a sad half smile at Limpy.

Alex wonders if it is a dream or memory that plays across David's face. His shoulders are straight as a scarecrow's. His foot taps out a quick, even rhythm as he runs his finger around the rim of his cup.

“Well,” says Jed from the bar. His back and neck crack like knuckles as he straightens. “I'm off to bed, y'all. Sure you don't want something? A drink—David?”

But David is answering only to his coffee cup.

“No. Thank you, Jed,” says Alex. She sips cold, stale coffee. “Wouldn't hurt to sleep some. Limpy ain't going nowhere.”

“Goodnight, Jed,” says Alex.

Jed takes a lamp, leaving the other one on the bar and climbs the stairs, skipping the creaking third. Without two lamps to cancel the shadows, Alex and David's dark shapes overlap on the saloon wall. Outside a coyote howls. The chickens squawk nervously, then all is quiet and objects in the room blur. Alex's eyes close. She's standing on the edge of Bobcat Creek, shin-deep in icy water, the gold pan in her hand filled nearly to the brim with glittering gold dust the consistency of ash. She holds her breath, afraid to upset the dust, afraid it will catch in the breeze and be gone forever. And then it is gone, swirling about her in the air, and scattering to nothing. A voice penetrates the clear sky, replacing it with the Victoria's wooden ceiling.

“He's not my cousin.”

Alex jerks awake. David is still looking in his coffee cup, his shoulders still rigid, and she wonders if he's really spoken. She stretches her back, rubs sleep from her eyes. David speaks again.

“I met him in Nevada City. Years ago—almost two years. He talked me out of a mess.”

He runs his finger along the rim of his cup.

“We came to Motherlode for the gold. Always knew it was here. I could feel it. I still do.”

“And now?” Alex says, and he looks her full in the face, his jaw clenched, his eyes hard. It's not so much his words but his tone and expression that feel like an accusation.

“Now? I'm staying. I'm staying for the gold, for Limpy, understand?”

Footsteps down the stairs. Emaline hovers on the fourth step, the upper half of her body still in shadows.

“Y'all may as well get some sleep.” From Jed it was a suggestion, from Emaline an order. “Got Limpy in your bed, Alex. Go on home with David.”

“No!” David blurts. He clears his throat, says softly. “Alex, you go. I'm staying.”

“Be fine, bump on the head and some bruises, David,” says Emaline. “There's no sense—”

“I'm staying here. Alex, go.”

12

Gathered around Alex is David's square-patterned quilt. Its softness enfolds her in a warm and unconditional embrace, and she imagines David's mother in a rocking chair or porch swing piecing the fabric together, discovering new patterns in the colors of old cloth. She is portly with soft inviting arms, David's wide gray eyes and straight red-brown hair, and a voice as soothing as owl song. Or perhaps she is an aunt, rigid and tough, but only in love, with David's long nose, his sloping shoulders and awkward, silent manner. A sister, an older sister, teasing him about the mustache that struggles to emerge from his pallid mine-boy complexion. They'd kiss him goodnight, each in turn, these women of Alex's imagination, and hold his baby-boy self against their chests so he can hear the beat of their hearts. Alex sinks within the rhythm of their tenderness, tracing the trochee cadence out of her imagination and back into memory, until the rhythm weakens and slows. The arms that hold her shorten and dehydrate. She recognizes this solitary embrace. The smell so familiar: candle wax and dead skin, chrysanthemums. Alex knows this is a memory from childhood, a memory from before. “You're not to see that boy again.”

She shakes free from Gran and Gran falls into a quilt on the bed, leaving Alex shivering. She pulls her knees to her chest, wraps her arms round her shoulders, closes her mind to thought, her ears to the self-important calls of the rooster.

She slides off the bed and the floorboards send a chilled shock from her toes to her fingertips. Goosebumps erupt on her arms. She pulls on her boots, and David's buckskin jacket, which swings just above her knees and completely covers her fingertips. She stands a moment, imagining that the leather is a body, that the sleeves are arms. A portable hug, and it didn't matter who you were or what you had done when you were someone else. Perhaps as close as she'll ever get to unconditional love exists here in the limp arms of someone else's jacket, or someone else's quilt. She tucks that thought away behind her ear with her hair and looks about.

Across the room lies Limpy's bed, a gnarled mass of flannel atop a cloth mattress. A deck of playing cards sits on a planed log table, the jack of spades face up. Alex pours some water from the bucket by the stove into a coffee-stained tin cup and sits lightly on the stool. Is there anything more intriguing than someone else's home? Her eyes touch on the long-barreled rifle resting on rungs above the door and the tanned deer hide taking pride of place on one wall like a fine piece of art. Next to the stove, a iron pot rusts, and on a shelf above the stove a small set of scales is balanced by two stones. She picks up one of the stones, upsetting the equilibrium. One of the two round copper plates clatters to the floor, and whatever small animal was sleeping on the roof scurries off. She rushes to right the scale, thankful nothing is bent or broken, but lingers with one stone in her hand.

It's like nothing she's ever seen. The same blue-green color of the seawater off the coast of Brazil, but spotted with black specks like the unsprouted eyes of a potato. She knows it to be David's from the careful way the two pieces were balanced just so on the scales. She wants nothing more than to drop the stone next to the nugget in the pouch between her legs. The exaggerated shadow of a bird darkens the canvas roof and in the chill of that shadow she feels David's anger. Still she holds his stone, warming it in the palm of her hand, running her fingers and thumb over the rounded edges until it gives heat back to her. She replaces the stone and shoves her hands into the pockets of her trousers.

They should put on a new roof, or build a new place, behind the Victoria, on Providence Street. She nearly thought “we,” we should replace the roof, but banishes the thought by easing out of David's jacket. She smiles, imagining Limpy with his high waders and muddy pant legs nodding good morning to sour-faced Mrs. Erkstine. Would probably invite himself over to Sunday lunch at the Douritys', talk too loud with his mouth open and eat all the meat from the stew. Someday. Someday, Alex thinks, I will build myself a great big house with a second-story balcony and carved lattice-work, and watch as Motherlode becomes a proper town. A town and then a city as famous as San Francisco, as rich as New York. I'll buy Emaline rows and rows of fancy chairs, and Limpy a top hat to make him even bigger, and David …? I'll buy David a long golden chain big enough to hold one of those green stones around his neck. The Golden Boy will disappear within the sprawling activity, changing her name like her clothes in perfect anonymity. One day this, another day that.

Alex hangs David's jacket by the door, shaking the sleeve in introduction. “Hello,” she says several times, trying out different tones of voice. “Hi. Hello. My name is Alex. Alexander. Alexandra. Rebecca. My name is Rebecca. David, Jamie, Sam, Henry. My name …” She catches her breath, surprised by a sudden wave of desolation. “My name is Alexandra,” she whispers, and again, louder: “Alexandra.”

*     *     *

The doctor has already come and gone by the time Alex steps through the door of her room. Apart from the purple knot on his temple, Limpy looks none the worse for wear. A smile lifts his face. His feet extend off the thin mattress of Alex's bed, and a straw-colored corn advertises his left big toe. David, however, with dark, half-moon circles beneath his eyes, his hair a matted tangle, his cleft chin invaded by two-day stubble, slumps upon the stool as if he lacks a backbone.

“Alex my boy, my hero!” Limpy booms. “Good thing Emaline been feeding you right. Might still be sucking soil.”

“You all right?” Alex asks David.

“Shit, nice to see you too. Just trying to give my thanks, boy.” Limpy sits up and the bedframe groans. His feet disappear beneath Alex's short blanket. “Takes more than a mountain to send Samson Limpkin to the great down under. I ever tell you about the time—”

“You feel good enough to be telling tales, you should be getting your own breakfast,” Emaline says from the hall. “Morning, Alex. Trust you got more sleep than the rest of us.” She hands David a cup of coffee and eggs to Limpy. “Damn, but it's dark in here.” She looks across the room to where the window should be, adjusts the lamp and opens the door wide. The brighter light of the hallway squeezes around her wide body. Outside a wagon rumbles by, a horse shakes its halter and a man's voice yells a greeting. The rooster still has not tired of his own voice.

“Lost another two chickens last night,” Emaline says. “Taking 'em off somewhere to kill 'em. No blood, few feathers.”

“Raccoon?” suggests Limpy.

“Or human. That buncha Orientals in the clearing across the creek. I've seen them sorts eat chicken feet raw.” She dismisses the worry with a wave of her hand. “You want breakfast, it's still hot,” she says to Alex and disappears down the hall, leaving a column of light in her place.

David arches and yawns.

“Is he okay?” Alex asks Limpy this time.

“David and I were just discussing business. The future. Wondered what you thought.”

The future. Motherlode the city. Streets and side streets radiating off Victor Lane. Refreshing thoughts. For months the present has been all her mind could handle. She wonders about this, listens to the empty ring of her own speculations, has trouble locating herself in this future place.

“What I'm, what we're thinking is, expand. Too much work for three people. With more help we could move more ore a day, wash more gold and be safer doing it. Keep it small, just Harry, Fred—maybe Jed, if he's interested. A regular core-pore-a-tion, what I'm thinking. Small, though, like David says. All equal shares but you, 'course, finding the vein, you keep the big chunks. Bound to be more of them the deeper we go.”

David sits up in his chair, attentive for the first time. “You don't really believe that, Alex? Do you? That there's likely to be nuggets of that size just lying around, waiting for you to find them?” He looks at Limpy with a strange tired grin on his face. “He really believes that?”

She looks to Limpy for reassurance.

“Now, Dave,” he says, but David leans back in his chair as if evading Limpy's words. He speaks up at the ceiling.

“This isn't acting like any lode I've ever seen. What gold we've found has been random. Scattered. I'm just not sure. No, no,” he says, shaking his head. He sits upright. “No, it's not stable. We haven't even hit bedrock yet.”

“Details, details, you understand.” Limpy waves dismissively. “Was his idea in the first place, about the extra help. Just likes to be disagreeable. So, what you think, Alex? 'Cause you got the final word, being the finder. Wouldn't want to step on your toes none by telling you how foolish it'd be to continue as we were. Could use the extra muscle.

“Now, don't be all offended. No offense meant. You're young yet,” Limpy says. “Who's to say there aren't a bushel of nuggets even bigger than the one you found, just a pick-swing away. Who's to say—well, he said himself, it wasn't acting like any lode he's seen. We just gotta use what we got. I'm thinking of you. Your best interest.”

Alex wants to believe that it is possible for Limpy—or anybody, for that matter—to act in her best interest. But she knows Limpy well enough now to understand that he'll say whatever he has to say to get his way. Progress is only measured in profit. And David? He folds his arms before him, looks at the wall as if there were a window there. He hasn't actually discounted Limpy's plan. Last night he'd said there was gold in the mountain. Last night, in the glow of that lamp, there'd been no doubt in his voice.

“You don't think we should do it then, get help?” she asks, and his head jerks up as if surprised she's asked him. His hand tugs at the twin tails of his mustache.

“I didn't say that,” he says after a time.

“What are you saying?” she asks. He sucks in his lower lip, spits it out again. “David?”

“I … we,” he says, and looks away from her. “We can't go on as we were.”

“HA! You stubborn son-of-a-bitch, couldn't just agree with me!” says Limpy, ignored by both Alex and David.

“Take us two weeks, by ourselves, just to dig back through the fall to where we were,” says David. “And then we don't know if we'd find enough to make the labor worth it.”

“And with more help?” she asks.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe we find a rich vein in the granite, maybe the gold is scattered throughout the topsoil, maybe we find nothing, maybe it caves in again …”

Maybe was better than quitting entirely, disbanding, moving on, the unsaid alternative dragging David's face to a frown. Beneath the growing pessimism of each of these statements, Alex is listening for and hears hope—the chance to continue the life that gold made possible, a life that depends upon the men in this little room, on Emaline, and the Victoria, on digging away in the gutted clearing. Cleaving any part would feel like an amputation. It had never been those nuggets Limpy promised that kept her digging in the first place.

“Maybe's good,” she says. “Maybe is worth a try.”

“Attaboy, Alex,” says Limpy. “Spoken like a true Californian. New England Mine Corporation, we'll call her.”

“No,” says Alex, growing weary of Limpy's presumptions. David's eyebrows rise and Limpy gathers himself to speak.

“No,” she says again, before he has the chance. “Victoria—I'll call it the Victoria Mine Corporation. Klein will make me a sign.”

Alex finds Klein in the blacksmith shop with Mexican Jack. The door is open. Hot air billows through with every puff of the bellows and her eyes water in the dry heat.

“What she want now?” says Klein, his German accent relaxed and difficult to decipher.

Alex steps over the threshold into the room, shakes her head to show she hadn't heard. Frightening ornaments litter the walls: iron clasps and hay hooks, bridle bits, chain links, tools of various sizes. A wheel axle lies broken in three parts against the wall and the dirt floor is gouged in places where steel has fallen. Apart from the open door, the red glow of the forge offers the only light in the room.

“Want, want—what does she want?” Klein says, his hands making circular movements with his words. When she doesn't answer quickly enough, he resumes his conversation with Mexican Jack, who studies his coals as if he could tell temperature by color alone.

Jack's bare arms are already streaked black and sweat beads along his forehead and collarbone. She's never said his name aloud; his eyes, beneath those thick black brows, seem, if not threatening, then at least intimidating. She's heard that his real name is Antonio and that he's from Valparaiso, but no one calls him anything but Mexican Jack and when she sees him on the street, this is the name that comes to her. The two men speak in a garbled mix of English, German and Spanish. She can't follow, but Mexican Jack finds something funny, roars with easy laughter. Klein stares straight ahead at the flame.

“I want—I need a sign,” says Alex, and Mexican Jack's laughter flutters.

“You want a sign, you ask your ancestors. Ask their bones, you want a sign,” he says, crossing himself once, twice and winking at Klein.

Alex recoils at the presence of Gran in the hot breath of coals, pushes the sensation aside. “A wooden sign. I'll pay you now,” she says, and this gains Klein's attention.

Mexican Jack's laughter follows her out the door with a blast of heat, and the pride she thought she'd feel in the transaction is lost.

Shopkeepers are sweeping the wooden sidewalks free of dust. Some smile, most ignore her. Even though the sound of building overwhelms all others, in her head Mexican Jack's laughter continues, and David's words come back:
I'm staying for the gold, for Limpy, understand?
She understands this now, and has no trouble understanding his tone this morning.
You don't really believe that, Alex
?
That there's likely to be nuggets of that size just lying around, waiting for
you
to find them?
It was the way he said “Alex,” the way he said “you,” the obvious pleasure he took in her gullibility that clutters her thoughts with indignation. The Victoria Mine Co., she'd told Klein, spelling each word in careful block lettering so there would be no mistake. It is my claim, after all, David. My name on some paper stating my rights. She walks past Sander's dry goods, and Heinrich's shoe store, past the musk of the cigar shop. It occurs to her that she's never actually seen any such paper. “Limpy took care of it for you,”—that's what Micah had said. And it was Limpy who'd gone to file in Nevada City …