Crown of Dust (20 page)

She points with the knife. “Fill the pot,” she says.

Alex's mouth opens and closes. She skims a pair of moths from the water bucket, one long dead and sinking, the other still fluttering. The dead moth sticks to her fingers, leaving a gray film of dust behind, while the living moth quivers on the ground, flutters and rests, flutters and rests. Alex places her foot over the struggling creature, changes her mind, leaves it to survive or die, and fills the cast-iron pot.

“On the stove,” Emaline commands, again pointing with the knife. Alex bends her knees, lifts the pot and sloshes water onto the floor. She looks around for a towel, but finds none. She'd been so eloquent in her head this morning, had Emaline convinced that the Golden Boy was no danger, that he should stay. Alex wants to stay, is happy to pretend this town, these people are all she's ever known, happy to live hidden within this body of new muscle, behind this crooked nose, guarding her secret forever in the pouch between her legs. But Emaline makes it so hard, consuming every ounce of confidence in a room until there is simply none left to go around. Alex wipes water and moth dust on her pants and knows she'll do whatever Emaline says.

“I'll leave,” says Alex and wraps her arms around her stomach. “If you want, I'll go.”

Emaline continues to work. Alex fidgets, tickled by the silence.

“You're not this Boy Bandit?” says Emaline finally.

Alex doesn't answer quickly enough. “No,” she says.

“If you're not guilty, no reason to go. And if you was … If you are this Boy Bandit,” she says, putting great emphasis on the word
boy
, “might not have a reason to go, either. Might be, here is as good as any place to be.”

Her tone is morose, without the force and conviction Alex is used to. Emaline rests her hands on the counter. Her head falls forward. A potato peel drops to the floor. She ignores it. She has deflated before Alex, her wide shoulders caving in upon themselves. Tears suddenly dampen Alex's eyes. She hears the front door of the inn open. Male voices are muffled by the yards of decorative fabric tacked over the saloon walls. The velvet settees, the cedar chairs, the dark wood tables, suddenly seem out of place next to the makeup-caked complexion of Queen Victoria hanging on the saloon wall; artificial next to this coarse, imposing woman who, until now, Alex had only ever dared to respect and to fear.

“Emaline …?” says Alex.

“Emaline?” Micah hollers through the kitchen door then bangs it open. Mr. James stands behind him. “Oh. Hi, Alex,” Micah says. Alex nods to Micah and glances back at Emaline, who has regained herself, shoulders wide, chest out.

“What, Micah?” says Emaline.

“Morning, Alex. Feeling better? You left so quickly yesterday …” says Mr. James, and gives Emaline a lustful grin. His perfect mustache twitches up, and his teeth click.

“I'm feeling fine.”

“Mr. James says he's going to stick around a few more days,” says Micah. “For the paper.”

Mr. James takes a notebook from his waistcoat pocket, looks Alex up and down, and turns an inquisitive eye to Emaline. Again his hair divides his face in half, the skin of his parting at least three shades whiter than his cheeks. His black shoes have managed to stay spotless.

“That right? Well, if you're sticking around, you can run and fetch me some water,” says Emaline, and turns her back. Mr. James's neck reddens at his collar. He clicks his teeth. Micah begins to laugh, conceals it with a cough.

“Excuse my leaving so quickly, Emaline. David said something about needing something, from the store. Alex, you recall what that was?” Micah says. Alex doesn't mask her confusion. “For the mine, from the store. Why don't you come with me, to the store, and we'll find what it was he wanted. For the mine.”

“At the store,” says Alex tentatively.

“Yes, for the mine.”

“The buckets are right over there,” Emaline says to Mr. James, pointing with her knife.

Mr. James puts his notebook away and slides his pencil behind his ear. Alex bites back a smile as Micah ushers her out the door, leaving Mr. James at the mercy of Emaline.

A small crowd is gathered in front of Sander's dry goods. Micah cranes his neck to see better and tips his hat to Lou Anne, who loiters on the outskirts of the crowd. Alex makes a point of ignoring both the girl and Micah's prim sideways glance, pretending to take greater interest than she feels in the voice issuing from the thick of the gathering.

“I didn't know, ladies and gentlemen …”

Through the forest of shoulders Alex catches sight of a diminutive fellow with a pencil-thin mustache. His voice carries like a circus host. She can just make out the words stenciled on the handcart before him, DR. VINCENT HASGLOW'S MIRACLE ELIXIR. The man repeats himself for effect: “No, I did not know how sick I was! Days, moments away from death's door. I stood upon the very welcome mat of death, until Dr. Vincent Hasglow cured me.”

Another man, presumably Dr. Hasglow, steps forward and distinguishes himself with a ponderous bow. He sweeps his top hat from his head and his coattails nearly touch the ground. The meager sputtering of applause brings him upright again, revealing a somber expression Alex could have mistaken for dignity, were it not for the barrel organ beneath his arm, the handle of which he suddenly feels the need to turn. Music, a sort of jig, resonates from the box.

“Step up, ladies and gentlemen, young and old, for a free diagnosis. Hasglow's Elixir will give women a shapely size and put hair on a man's chest! That's right, son …” He makes eye contact with Alex, winks, and plunges on. His partner continues his wordless accompaniment. Lou Anne giggles behind her hands and Alex glares.

It's not that she feels outright animosity toward the girl; Lou Anne has given no cause. Alex is actually a little flattered by the girl's attention.

“… will cure all ailments, from scurvy to dysentery,” the vendor continues. “It will ease the feet when mixed with warm water, lend a natural healthy shine to the teeth and gums, and prevent the ague. My friends, most people walk this world in a diseased haze, when health and happiness are but ten dollars away. Ten dollars, my friends, will—”

“Look at those two—” Micah says, nodding at the handcart duo. “Don't know if they're pharmacists, merchants, or jackasses pulling their own cart. Only a fool pulls his own cart, Alex, remember that. Come on.”

Micah moves on a step, slips his finger beneath the cloth eyepatch he's taken to wearing “in consideration of the delicate constitutions of the ladies of the town,” or so he said. But judging from his sudden conversion from miner's pants to black slacks, from flannel to white cuffs and waistcoat, Alex suspects that Micah is more concerned with keeping up appearances with the other storekeepers—the effortlessly elegant Gerald Sander, in particular—than he is about the six women in town. Five, if you don't count Lou Anne, and Alex doesn't.

“I was just wondering,” he says when Alex catches up, “what do you know about hydraulicking? I mean, what have you heard?”

She picks a chicken feather from the tip of her boot, finds a trail of them leading toward Bobcat Creek, some white with specks of red and brown, some amber with dark tips.

“Only what Fred says,” she replies, running her thumb against the grain of the feather. She'll take it to Emaline, though she has no idea what use she could possibly find for it. “Even if you was this Boy Bandit …” Emaline had said. Golden Boy, Boy Bandit … Just another name, Alex thinks, rolling the feather's quill between thumb and forefinger.

“That's what I thought. Well, never mind,” says Micah.

A lumber wagon rumbles by. The horses snort the morning air, toss their heads toward the smell of the livery stable, and the handcart merchant begins another variation of his speech. Perhaps this
is
as good a place as any. A better place. The thought surges through her, warm like hope. There has been talk of a courthouse, a theater and a lumber mill. And while no one disputes that a mill is needed, as much or more than a courthouse, the debate continues about where to build it so as not to upset someone's claim. An unofficial town meeting was held at the Victoria, but quickly deteriorated into an argument. Randall was the only one staunchly opposed to the building of a new mill, but then he
would
oppose it, given the amount of money he's making transporting the lumber with his new wagon. Living in Motherlode but two days a week, Alex doesn't consider him a proper citizen anyway.

She pauses a moment by the general store, suddenly struck by Micah's last question. Any conversations Fred began about hydraulicking quickly became fodder for ridicule. “Just piss on the mountain, there, Fred,” Harry told him once. “Might just move more earth than your shovel.” Alex knew Fred was in earnest, but it was hard not to view him through the eyes of his critics, it was easier than really looking.

“Hi, Alex.”

She looks up to find Lou Anne bustling down the sidewalk to meet them. The practiced smile spread across Lou Anne's face, her meager chest thrust outward, the hopeful upturn of her voice, makes Alex's insides clench. There is something Alex recognizes in the tone of the girl's voice and in the tilt of the girl's head, something that Alex wants to slap out of her, so that no one else would.

“Hi,” Alex replies, trying not to stare at that pink patterned dress, the billowing skirts, trying not to remember what it felt like to have to stand so straight, to take such small breaths.

The girl's shoulders droop and her smile sinks, with her skirt coming to rest like a quilt on a sleeping body. Alex thinks of David, sprawled out this morning on the floor of the cabin.

“Good morning, Miss Lou Anne,” says Micah. “You look very nice today. Doesn't she look nice, Alex?”

She'd watched David's breath tease the hairs of his arm. With her eyes, Alex had traced the lines of muscle and bone like a puzzle on David's back. It had been a chilly night, but David's blanket was gathered into a ball, which he hugged with his arms and legs. His boots were still on. It was painful for Alex to see him like this, in the way that beauty is painful when words come short of description. She wanted to touch him, to run her hands along the curve of his back, tracing each vertebra, to feel the coarse texture of his hair, the sandy stubble on his chin. Alex wanted to fold herself into a ball like that blanket, and feel David's body wrapped around her like another skin. Instead, she'd eased the quilt off the bed, draped it over him, and left the cabin. Golden Boys didn't think about men in this way, or ponder dresses. Her mind is growing heavier with the things she shouldn't think about.

“Alex?” says Micah.

“Nice,” Alex says, and pushes into the store past the tears springing to Lou Anne's eyes.

“Might have given her a word. A little compliment wouldn't hurt you.” Micah closes the door behind him, cutting the sound of the organ grinder and human traffic. “You feeling all right?” He places a hand on Alex's shoulder. Alex shrugs it off.

“I'm feeling fine,” she says, harsher than she intended, but Micah just grins. Over his shoulder, on the far shelf next to the calomel, a few bottles of Hasglow's Miracle Elixir stand ready to work their many wonders. Perhaps she should try some. Maybe it would order her thoughts, calm her stomach, help divorce the reassurance Emaline had given her this morning from the doubt that lingers. Perhaps she just needs some hair on her chest.

“Don't take it for granted, is all I'm saying. There's a shortage of beautiful girls around here—remember that. Now, I know you're shy … Untried. Am I right? Huh? Boy Bandit, my ass! Look at me, son.”

Alex finds herself holding one of the ready-made dresses. She sets it down. Micah chuckles, takes off his eyepatch and puts it on the counter, rubbing his empty socket with his knuckles. He scurries around the shop, organizing the merchandise. Mining equipment no longer litters the floor in dusty piles but is segregated into the new annex, while dry goods, foodstuffs, gilded silver brushes, skeins of fine cloth, and ready-made dresses dominate the main room. Alex edges toward the door, suddenly anxious to get to the mine, to get dirty, to sweat out her thoughts. Micah speaks up as she reaches for the door handle.

“Could ask Emaline,” he says. He picks up the dress Alex discarded, runs his fingers down the soft cotton seams. “You'd have to pay for it, no doubt. But … she's a good woman, Emaline. Remember that. Deserves a little gratitude. I'm sure she wouldn't mind, you know, teaching you a thing or two. You might even enjoy it.”

Alex opens the door and steps outside. “Think about it,” Micah yells after her.

15

The organ grinder is silent and at first Alex thinks the Hasglow Elixir crowd is staring at her. But when she looks toward Bobcat Creek, she finds herself in the path of Harry and five other miners dragging a grinning Chinese man. The man's hair is braided in a long raveled queue that falls limp and muddy over his slender shoulders. A bruise glows purple on his right cheek and blood drips from either side of his mouth. The seat of his loose blue pants is red with river mud, yet his eyes are full of mirth, apparently unconcerned with his captivity or treatment. His grin grows wider when he sees Alex, and his eyes narrow to slits. He bends as if to sit and Harry jerks him up again.

“Where's Emaline?” Harry asks Alex.

Where she always is, Alex thinks, but says, “At the Victoria,” and the men forge ahead, prodding the smiling Chinese man from behind with a shovel. Alex stumbles along after, overwhelmed and a bit embarrassed by her curiosity. She can feel the heavy presence of the crowd creeping close behind her.

“What did he—?” says Alex, before another voice, strained, heavily accented, interrupts.

“Wait! Wait, please, sir!” and another Chinese man, whose lucid eyes hold the desperation she expected from the captive, teases his way through the crowd. “Wait, sir,” he pleads. His voice cracks as if English forces his voice a half step higher than is comfortable. With his narrow shoulders and quick, light steps he looks diminutive next to the lumps of flesh and muscle that sit like cats on the white men's shoulders.

“Chicken thief,” Harry tells Alex, turning his back on the pleading man to pound on the door of the Victoria. “Emaline!”

“Innocent,” the Chinese man insists. And then, tugging on Alex's sleeve: “He simple man. Please, sir.” She pulls away, but in his eyes she can almost see the dammed-up lake of words that English will not allow him. She opens her hand and her feather flutters to the ground.

“Six chickens' necks broke. Sound innocent to you?” Harry directs his reply to Alex but glares at the Chinese man as he speaks. “Emaline!” he yells again just as Emaline opens the door. Her face is flushed from the heat of the kitchen. Damp hair swirls about her head and when she sees the smiling captive, her face hardens in a way Alex hasn't seen.

“What the hell is he smiling about?” Emaline says. She's no longer squinting, but gazing generally over the crowd, as if she has already determined the look of everyone present.

“Wait, please, sir—”

“Harry?” says Emaline.

Harry produces the body of a chicken, holding it high above his head by its broken neck like a trophy for all to see. In the doorway of the inn, Mr. James scribbles away in his notebook. The crowd bunches closer. Alex's stomach clenches like a fist. She can see Limpy's red head bobbing near the back of the pack and she knows David must be nearby. Across the road, Micah steps out of his store onto the porch where Mrs. Dourity, Erkstine, Waller and her sister Rose flank Lou Anne, two on each side. Lou Anne stretches to her tiptoes to see better and her mother tugs her down again.

“I Kwong Ting-lang. Kwong, sir.” The man bows, but Emaline's expression is unchanged. He motions to the captive. “Chang,” he says, bowing again for his companion. “His head. He simple man, he—”

“He thinks he can just go and kill my chickens?”

Kwong scowls at his feet. His lips move, but he says nothing and Alex bites her lip, willing the man to stay silent, sensing that, guilty or not, nothing he says will make a difference, except to make things worse. The other one won't quit smiling at her.

“I'm talking to you, Wong,” says Emaline.

On level ground Emaline would still stand a head taller than Kwong, and for a moment Alex is conflicted. For a moment she is the young woman who walked into town dressed as a boy. For a moment she too is standing helpless before a powerful stranger. At the same time she is the Golden Boy, Alex, who loves nothing more than to sweep in the stuffy heat of the kitchen, to watch Emaline move with the robust efficiency of a woman Alex has always known, or wanted to know. “Here is as good a place as any,” Emaline had said, and Alex loved her for that.

And Alex knew how much Emaline loved those chickens and if they
did
kill them—Chang picks up the feather Alex dropped, rubs it past his nose, holds it out to her as if to give it back. If they killed those chickens, then they deserve whatever they get. She's trying hard to believe this.

“He sleep all night,” Kwong says, and bats the feather from Chang's hand, says a sharp word to the man in his own language. “Chickens there in morning.”

“And I'm a Chinaman's squaw!” says a voice from the crowd.

“Hang 'em!” yells another and Alex's head jerks up with Kwong's.

“We pay!” Kwong says, and turns to Harry. “Gold we pay.”

“No. You'll leave,” says Emaline.

“I pay,” Kwong says again, this time to Emaline.

“Got that right,” says Harry, and shoves Kwong to the ground.

The crowd buzzes, squirms, and resettles like flies on a carcass. Kwong stays down on his knees, his head bowed.

“You will leave!” says Emaline to Kwong. “All of you—” She motions downstream to the colony of clustered huts. “
All
of you.”

Chang's smile vanishes. His mouth falls open. He edges between Harry and Kwong, holding his arms out like a barrier. He screams high and clear, shocking even the birds to silence. He runs out of breath, gulps air like a drowning man and screams again as six men on horseback appear on the edge of town.

Alex's mouth drops open. Breath comes in panting gasps. She should run, should have run weeks ago, or last night, or this morning. Now her legs fail her, each seems to have its own separate agenda. Her knees shake. Her hands lose feeling, but her head swings from Chang to the approaching posse, back to Chang again. The crowd, too, has frozen. Men swallow their sentences whole, and Chang's pure tenor howl echoes back and forth between the ravine walls.

Alex's mind closes and opens within itself to memory. A bouquet on the side table, white layered flowers interspersed with yellow buttercups and blue drooping lilies. The smell of fabric and rosemary and something bitter, metallic. Blood.

Alex lying flat. Pain clamping her stomach in a vice. Gran's finger pointing downward like an arrow to Alex's forehead. Warm, salty tears down Alex's cheeks.

“Just looking for death, just like your father and his father. Want to leave an old woman all alone to herself. All alone,” says Gran, so soft. “You're not to see that boy again.”

Emaline slaps Chang hard across the face. Chang takes a breath, the silence more deafening than the scream, and Alex finds movement. She backs up against the porch of the inn, ducks quickly around the corner. Tries to think. The road? Blocked. Hide.

Behind the Victoria, past the chopping block, the feather-strewn coop, its lone occupant ruffled and agitated, to the outhouse. The door slams shut and shards of light through the plank walls slice her into pieces. Her insides chew themselves. Flies bash their heads into the wall. Thick, warm moisture between her thighs. She unbuckles her trousers, edges her hand down. Her fingers return red.

Emaline's hand hovers in the air above Chang, but her attention is focused on the six riders approaching along Victor Lane. She steps back up on the porch, straining to see clearly. Behind her, Mr. James's furious scribbling is amplified and grating. Someone sneezes. A murmur passes through the crowd, rippling outward as the riders force their way through.

“Well,” says Hudson, leaning against his saddle horn, his wide-brim hat masking half his face in shadow. “Where is he?”

Emaline doesn't answer. He isn't speaking to her. He turns around, repeats his question and John Thomas spurs his jittery piebald mare forward, looking comically self-important in his filthy tattered trousers and sweat-stained shirt.

“We come for him, Emaline,” says John Thomas. Emaline tilts her head to the side, folds her arms in front of her. A smirk spreads across Hudson's face. “You might as well stand aside, 'cause … we've come for him.”

“You come for who?” Emaline says.

“You know who,” says Hudson. “Dangerous criminal in your midst. A fugitive. Show her, John.”

John Thomas pulls a paper from his shirt and a sly grin reveals dimples beneath the thick blond beard. When she first met him, he'd barely had enough facial hair to cover a flea's ass, and Hudson … Hudson was a bear-faced mountain man, and no better behaved for his pampered upbringing. Seeing the two of them now reminds her of men who put on masks for follies—except she finds neither one funny.

“Told you to get rid of him, told you nothing good would come,” says Hudson, and he lowers his voice, making the crowd lean in to hear. “I told you I'd give you everything—”

“Dangerous?” she says, shaking her head, acknowledging only what she chooses. She hadn't wanted the everything Hudson had offered. She'd never loved him. He was lonely, and he was rich, and she was only doing her job. Yet he had been so sure of her answer. So sure that he went down on his knees in that crowded Sacramento saloon. He'd humiliated himself. She simply said no. And when he didn't accept that, Jed had told him no with his fists.

“Chicken thieves is what I got,” she says.

Harry laughs, slaps Chang's face, leaving red marks on his cheeks and, strangely, another smile on Chang's face. The horses, always attuned to the changing moods of men, throw their heads and jingle their bridles. Harry slaps Chang again, harder, before Kwong rises up to grab Harry's hand with a strength that seems to surprise them both.

“Stop,” Kwong says.

A pick handle to his stomach. A fist to his face. Kwong slumps to knees, gasping for air and Emaline's attention strays for a moment to the anguished man at her feet, his queue circling his neck like a noose.

Ridiculous to pity, she thinks, but she does pity. “Enough, Harry,” she says, and Kwong slumps to the ground. The smiling one snarls at no one in particular then and bends to drape himself over Kwong and pat him stiffly on the head.

“Not talking chicken thieves,” says Hudson, and sits back in his saddle, one arm crossed lazily over the other, an amused twitch teasing his lips. Never did learn a thing, did he? thinks Emaline. Still reckons he's God's gift to California. And John Thomas, holding that paper in front of him as if he expects me to fetch. Shit. Standing on the porch, she remains taller than the men on horseback. On the porch she will stay.

“Show the lady,” says Hudson, his voice greasy with condescension, and John Thomas dismounts, becoming suddenly very small. His horse tosses its head, readjusts the bit in its mouth and bares its teeth as though laughing. The tall fellow riding next to Hudson does laugh, looks quite amused as he plays with the clasp of his gun holster.

Emaline ignores this, focuses all her attention down at John Thomas, scrutinizing him with squinted eyes until she makes him the size of a beetle she can step on. Presumptuous little shit, that silly look of righteous indignation on his face, squaring his shoulders, preening and strutting like a goddamned banty rooster. She suspected that leaving town hadn't been his idea this time, but she hadn't expected him to return with company, with Jackson Hudson. Before he climbs the second step, Emaline reaches down, rips the paper from his hands and holds it to her nose to read.

Emaline lets the paper fall, does an about-face and disappears into the Victoria. John Thomas's lips curl into something between a grin and a snarl. He steps on to the porch. He clears his throat. He holds the flier up like a prize, but Hudson speaks first.

“Looking for a fugitive slave, Jedediah Haversmith. Property of Mr. James Haversmith, deceased, and now the lawful inheritance of his brother, Amos Haversmith,” he says officiously. The crowd quiets its murmuring and swivels its many heads, searching for a Jedediah.

“He's there, back there!” John Thomas shouts and points to the back of the crowd where Limpy looks to David and David looks to Jed. One by one, the heads of the crowd turn to see Jed as though for the first time. A black man. A slave. Property. Jed holds his shoulders back, his head high, and folds one arm over the other. Even now, dignity comes naturally. Limpy places his big body in front of him.

“Now wait a minute …” he says, just as Emaline reemerges from the Victoria, her shotgun cocked, ready and trained at John Thomas's skull. The crowd becomes one eye, focused on Emaline.

“Emaline,” says Jed, edging forward, placing a hand on Limpy's shoulder as he goes.

“Stay put!” she commands without looking at him, and steps closer to John Thomas. The gun barrel kisses his ear. She's seen men die, slowly, battling their bodies for each moment of life, and fast, with a bullet to the brain. But she's never killed a man. John Thomas whimpers, like a dog, she thinks, hoping he'll continue. She could shoot a dog.

Hudson clears his throat and holds up his hand to silence the pistols behind him. He adopts a parental look of stern patience. “May I remind you—”

“No, you may not,” says Emaline, raising her voice above him as he finishes his sentence.

“—that harboring a fugitive slave is a federal offense.”

“Emaline,” says Jed again, parting the crowd. “'S all right.”

“I will decide when it's all right!” says Emaline, then bends to whisper in John Thomas's ear: “Now you just get back on that horse, turn and ride on out of here, and I may just forget all about this.”

She shoves him down the porch and he stumbles over Chang, landing hard on his backside. Chang giggles, then howls, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight. John Thomas thrusts himself to his feet, and kicks Chang in the mouth. The grinning man falls unconscious to the ground, so John Thomas gives Kwong a few solid kicks in the stomach.

“Enough,” says Emaline, and John Thomas straightens, out of breath and red in the face. Emaline levels her gun at Hudson; she's glad her eyes are too poor to see down the gun barrels pointing back at her. He sits up straight in his saddle, his hand on his holster. If it had been her, she'd already have drawn.