Crown of Dust (25 page)

“Sit down you son-of-a—” replies another on the right, and a bubble of drunk anger percolates through the crowd.

“Women present, y'all! Women present,” Limpy interjects, reclaiming his audience. He winks at Mrs. Erkstine, his most frequent dance partner. Her hand still covers her mouth as though afraid of the intemperate sounds that might escape. Alex wishes that she would yell or scream or belch, if only to release her from the obvious pain of holding back.

“I think Alex needs a round of applause for his damned dumb luck,” Limpy continues. “Come on up here, Alex … No?”

She's shaking her head no, but the attention warms her and she searches through the faces for Emaline. Hands and elbows give good-natured jabs as she passes through them.

“And where would we be,” says Limpy, “without my darlin' Emaline? Where—”

Her town. Buildings on either side stand as sentries in the darkness, welcoming her. The road's flat expanse is her marble courtyard. Silence in front of her. A constant fluctuation of white noise behind. Her eyes blur, dilate and open like a mouth too small for the bite.

She feels the kiss of a breeze in the heavy air. Drought or no drought, this will be a good year. Drought or no drought, Bobcat Creek will flow and she'll plaster the kitchen walls. The creek will flow and she'll install shutters, and cover even the stairwell in worsted damask, and hire one or two girls, add a few more rooms. She jumps at the movement up the road.

Jed with his shiny half-grin, his arms crossed before him, one hand to his chin as if trying to hide that grin. This is what she sees in the darkness. Coarse hair beneath her fingers, the calm, steady sound of his heart next to hers. This is what she feels as she stumbles forward, giggling like that silly Lou Anne. Jed in braces, tailored gray trousers, a top hat to make him tall. So hard to see the future … just versions of the present or the past dressed up in other clothes. She'd rather not think beyond the man beneath the tattered trousers, his soft voice as rich as strong coffee. She squints ahead in the darkness, ahead to the shape. Shapes.

Too many moving shapes, too solid for imagination.

“Jed?” she whispers, covers her mouth, and finds the forgotten weight of her shotgun in her hand. A horse whinnies and a man's voice follows, inaudible except for its tone: deep, sober, almost soothing. The warm buzz at the back of Emaline's neck quiets and cools. Her ears pick new sounds from the air, distinguishing them from accordions, fiddles and drunken laughter.

Alex pushes through the crowd and over the bridge to town. Behind her, Limpy's voice rises and falls; laughter breaks and sputters over the sound of the creek. Before her, the silence is thick with movement. Emaline is a dark smudge plodding toward the Victoria. Alex follows.

Sweat dries in cold streaks across her forehead. She's forgotten her hat at the bonfire. She feels naked without it, wonders if she should just leave Emaline be, when a man's voice, then another, freezes her in place.

She picks out the clink of bridles, the groan of leather on leather. An orange-red flash lingers as sight. A mass of horses with human voices. Someone falls squirming on the ground at the base of the inn.

“Jed?” Emaline screaming, and Alex's body stumbles on without her brain. Her heart pounds out her presence and, as the shapes become larger, her breath comes shorter. Men without faces, riding horses. Horses shaking bridles, dancing, nervous, foot to foot. Emaline rushing forward, stopping yards from the figure on the ground. Gunshots from the pig roast echo sharp staccato in the clearing, but when Emaline fires, Alex hears nothing and sees only the flash of light bursting from the mouth of her gun.

A faceless man falls.

White-hot gold explodes from the mass of men on horse-back. Alex hears herself scream. Emaline's shoulders give as if shoved. She stumbles back a step, then forward. A torch is lit and held aloft by a young man with wide frightened eyes.

“A fucking goddamn,” says the man in front: Jackson Hudson. His gun shakes in his hands, the barrel breathes. “For a nigger? Emaline?”

Alex bursts into the circle of torchlight. Pistols hold her in place. Jackson Hudson looks from Alex to Emaline to Alex. He points with the gun.

“You see this?” he says. Emaline slumps down next to Jed's prostrate form. Crimson circles bloom on her dress. Alex doesn't know if Emaline has seen her, doesn't know if Emaline is seeing anything but Jed as she hauls his limp weight toward her so that his head rests in the softness of her belly. Blood pumps from the holes in her chest, into his hair.

“See what she's done?” says Hudson. “Boy, look at me.”

But Alex hears only her own breath coming fast and weak. Sees only the squint of Emaline's eyes and the barrel of Emaline's shotgun pointing like a finger. The barrel belches powder, kicks back. Jackson Hudson falls head over heels from his saddle to the ground. A cackle of pistol fire from the men on horses. Hudson pulls himself to his knees. Emaline lies still.

Falling forward, past smoking guns and the gaping mouths of vigilantes, to the open arms of the porch steps, Alex sinks down beside the torn bodies. Her fingers close around the barrel of Emaline's shotgun, slick with blood and bits of hair. Hudson staggers to his feet. Alex pulls the trigger, pulls the trigger, pulls the trigger. Hudson sways, unaware he's just died three times. He stands above her. He clutches his bleeding shoulder with his good hand, a pistol with the other. His eyebrows furrow.

“Give me the gun,” says Hudson.

She shakes her head, no.

“Don't make me shoot you, too,” he says, and cocks the pistol.

She shakes her head again, closes her eyes when his finger tightens on the trigger, ready for the flash. She's not ready for his boot in her gut. He yanks the shotgun away, dismisses her with a backward glance. “Gave her the goddamned thing in the first place.” He motions to the wide-eyed young man with the torch.

“Burn it,” he says. “Burn it all.”

19

She tucks her mind in her pocket and lets muscle memory transform her movements into a thoughtless routine. She's just digging a coyote hole, six feet long, three feet wide. Just looking for gold. On her lips must be the salt of sweat. No one cries when looking for gold.

“That's enough.” Limpy's hand on her shoulder. “Alex, that's deep enough.”

Alex rubs red earth between her fingers and touches it to her tongue, wishing she could taste the hope David always seems to find there. She dusts her hands on her trousers, leaving fingerprints on her thighs, and leans on her shovel. Limpy's hand dangles before her. She grabs it and lets him haul her to the surface.

Behind her, the citizens of Motherlode, California, tiptoe around hot embers. The fire burned all night, sucking up the pine sap of the new wooden walls, and filling the air with a disgustingly pleasant cedar scent. Only by will and luck was the blaze stopped just short of Heinrich's shoe store on the south side of the road. The livery, David's flimsy cabin and the cigar shop stand apologetically untouched, while the Victoria Inn and the entire north quarter of town, including the chapel, have been reduced to smoldering ruins.

The flames dazzled her at first. The sight was the opposite of sobering, and, even when others arrived to help put out the flames and drag the bodies away from the Victoria's crumbling balcony, her throat was thick with a nauseous intoxication. She stood in a line of people as buckets of water passed hand to hand with ant-like sedulity. Wet blankets flapped up and down like one-winged birds. Had thought been possible, had her eyes seen anything but the flames, had she the perspective of the owl overhead, she might have recognized the surreal beauty of the night. A hundred forms, black against the red-yellow flames, gyrating in some elemental dance.

But now the sun has risen, the flames have been quelled, and three dead bodies lie blistering by the creek. Alex takes off her hat, places it over Emaline's face, and shoos the flies away. She stands to the side when Harry and Micah lift Emaline's body onto a clean white sheet that they wrap around her like a cocoon. They manage ten yards before stopping to rest her girth against their knees. David and Limpy arrive to help.

“What we do with Jed?” asks Harry. But for Alex there is no question. They all know what Emaline would want and, as improper as it seems, they lift Jed and carry him down Victor Lane, turning left at what was once the chapel, and lay him next to her. The other body remains creekside with a blue bandana covering the face and a bloody red hole through the heart. Of course Alex recognizes him. Few grown men have hair that fair or a frame that small and stocky. They will bury him later, behind the chicken coop, near the outhouse, but only because they feel they have to. A human being, after all, if a rotten one. David picks up his shovel and begins to dig another grave. Alex sits by Emaline's stiffening body. She is waiting for Emaline's mouth to open and orders to come out. Waits and waits as her eyes travel up and down with David's shovel.

By the time David is done, the whole town has gathered in a disorganized group, waiting for someone to take charge. Limpy's jaw juts outward and quivers with force enough to shake his whole body. Micah looks at his boots and chews a hole through his bottom lip. Harry's head tips skyward. His eyes are shallow flooded lakes, and Fred stands close to him, breathing through clenched teeth. Lou Anne grips her mother's skirts and cries. Above them, a single vulture is circling lower and lower, and in the chicken coop, behind the smoking remains of the Victoria Inn, the Rhode Island Red lays an egg.

Preacher John steps forward, parting the throng with touches on shoulders. He reaches down, brings Alex to her feet, helps David out of the second grave, and turns to face his congregation. He swipes his hat from his head. He digs in his pocket, finds his Bible, flips through. He purses his lips as though ready to speak, then shakes his head and mumbles something to himself. He closes the Bible, gazes out over the crowd.

“Well,” he says, “my mamma, she wouldn't have liked Miss Emaline none. Would have called her an unholy woman, the kind to stay away from, the kind that opens wide the gates of hell.”

He colors as if sensing he's gone too far. “But then, Mamma didn't want me coming here, neither. Said California would ruin me, as I was never inclined to virtue in the first place. Said I'd find gold at the price of my soul, and she was right, at first, I guess. I was heading to no good and know'd it, and, long story short, I decided 'bout time for a change, but didn't know quite how to go about it.”

He wrings his hat like a wet rag, his voice taking an upturn. “Emaline, she saw things different from most. Saw me different, better than I was, am. Saw the man I was trying to be. Think that's how she was with everyone.”

A murmur rumbles through the crowd and Alex takes a step to the side and presses back against the turned-soil smell of David. She imagines Emaline in the kitchen, the sound of her humming, the heady grace of her efficiency, each movement deliberate, controlled as she kneaded the bread, or peeled potatoes, or sewed a seam, never feeling the need to make a task harder than it was, never feeling the need to make an art out of a chore. As Alex swept, pushing the dirt around to settle in much the same place, she'd felt the vital energy of the woman surrounding her like a hug. She wishes now that it had been a hug, wishes she had felt those arms around her, holding her close until the systematic execution of small tasks surmounted all fear of larger troubles. But Emaline was not one to give away a hug, not even that night in her room with her hair undone around her shoulders. Her face had been passive, not bent on understanding, just accepting. In her nightshift, with her hair down, the full flush of her radiance had bubbled from within her, coating Alex in its afterglow. And if she wasn't before, she is now and forever in Alex's memory, a beautiful woman, a queen with a thick middle and bad eyesight. Emaline is gone, and Alex is again alone with her secrets. Her sinuses pulse with the pressure of tears, but she cannot cry. The urge to leave Motherlode comes sudden and violent.

“She just gave us time and didn't take no shit, no excuses, and never blamed you for failing—again and again, in some cases, in my case,” Preacher says. “Long as you tried like she tried, worked like she worked. A first-class inn she was building. The envy of the National Hotel, with the name of a queen, Victoria. You heard her talking. Gonna welcome everyone from President Pierce hisself to Jaquin Murietta, play no favorites. Everyone was her boys. And all she did every day was cook, clean, and take care of us piss-poor sons-a-bitches when all we had was mud in our pockets. Never made excuses. Knew what she was doing, and expected everyone, God included, to understand. And I think he did … does. I think he does.”

Preacher pauses and a memory presents itself as a smile on his lips. “Was her who taught me to read. Back in Sacramento. Paid my fifty dollars for her … well, her services, and mentioned that I was seeking a change in myself—into what, I didn't know—and after we was done, she give me this Bible.”

He holds up the tattered gray book. “Says she's only giving it me 'cause her eyes were going and she about had the damn thing memorized anyway. Then looks at me real stern, like she does, did, shit.”

He looks around as if in apology, but no one can meet his eye. It's not so important what he says, just as long as he says something.

Alex closes her eyes to the pressure building there. No tears, no release. David's breath warms her neck. She feels his hand on her shoulder and her body tenses, then relaxes into the contact. The ground, which had been bucking and rolling, stills. Preacher continues:

“She tells me how dangerous it is to read before thinking, before feeling, asks me if I done either or both lately. Tells me she was giving me the Bible only for learning, and when I was done learning, I should close it, and only open it when I come up empty of the right words. I come up empty a lot.” He looks down at the Bible, lets it fall open where it wants. He smiles.

“‘In my father's house are many dwelling places, I go to prepare a place for you.' I go and prepare a place for you,” he repeats. His voice rises clear and confident. The phrase echoes off the ravine. “She always had the right words, didn't she? Was her that named this town Motherlode, saying anything worth finding is worth digging for. Ain't that the truth?

“Now, I can't be sure she found all she was digging for. Can't say if it was worth what she lost. But I tell you what she told me—that this land don't settle for nobody who ain't both a dreamer and a worker. And she may not have got what she was looking for, but she died trying, and, hell, that's all anyone can ask. Let us … let us pray.”

One by one the citizens of Motherlode drift away to sift through their gutted businesses, leaving the Victoria Inn regulars to see Jed into the ground. Nothing is said, beyond a short prayer, and soon only Alex and David remain. The air around them is warm and still lacking in body and lift. Breathing takes effort. The cedars on the ridge stand like sentinels, overlooking the dusty ashes of a town they were helpless to protect. The sun has yet to reach nine o'clock.

The rest of the day Alex and David wander. They trudge through hot embers, salvaging what they can from where they can, but spend most of their time near the smoldering foundations of the Victoria. Here Emaline's presence is almost tangible. Her scent lingers, if only in Alex's imagination. Dust, baking bread, whiskey. The balcony has crumbled to the ground. Two stories have become one. Porcelain washbasins from the upstairs rooms lie in pieces; though one, with a painted vine of green ivy reaching out and over the rim, remains intact. Shards of reflective silver are all that remain of the mirrors. Scraps of clothing litter the ground. Alex recognizes a sleeve from one of her own flannels. A strip of Emaline's lavender dress has draped itself across what used to be the bar. Ceramic jugs and glass bottles, whose contents exploded in the heat, lie in a clumsy mosaic on the floor. Bits of tapestry float as red ash with every step.

The cast-iron stove is too heavy for David and Alex to lift. It stands on its four solid legs in defiance of flames, in scorn of wood's fragility. Its vents are two round staring eyes. The open oven door is a laughing mouth that Alex kicks closed. The clang bounces off the far valley wall, echoing back a softer version of itself. Down the road, vultures gather around John Thomas's body, picking at his eyes, nibbling his fingers, hopping into the air and resettling like sediment in a gold pan. The Rhode Island Red tiptoes around the grave mounds, flaps its wings, lets out a disgruntled series of clucks, each one louder, more frantic than the last.

Small piles of salvaged goods are forming all along the side of Victor Lane. Buckets and pots, pick and shovel heads missing their wooden handles. By Micah's shop sits a small iron safe and several barrels of whiskey. Limpy ambles past, taking a thirsty look at the barrels.

“I tell you,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “I sure could use a drink.”

David hands him a ladleful of water from a bucket. Limpy smirks, takes a sip, swirls it around his mouth, spits. “It's wet, all right.”

That night the regulars gather in the road near the remains of the Victoria Inn. David sets a lantern on the ground and they sit upon three-legged stools dipping tin cups into an open barrel of whiskey. The lantern light mushrooms up and outward, spreading a dim orange glow on black-streaked faces.

Micah says, slouching on his stool, “Sent an order today for wood, nails and such. I might rebuild in brick.”

No one speaks. It seems too soon to start rebuilding, David thinks, disrespectful. Off in the distance a coyote howls and David raises his hands to the moon and yawns. A glass of whiskey lays untouched near his boot. Alex sits within breathing distance to his right. The boy has been close all day and David hasn't discouraged him, doesn't feel guilty about it.

“Don't know,” says Harry. A dribble of whiskey dampens his beard. “Been hearing good things about Colorado.” He glances over at Fred, who studies the ground. “Don't know,” Harry says again.

“Well, y'all wanna know what I think?” slurs Limpy, already long past drunk. He lets out a giant puff of gas but is the only one who thinks this is funny. His hee-haws turn to hee-hees, then quiet all together.

Ash and grit scratch David's eyes. He doesn't know either. A stubborn core of him wants to stay, to dig and blast until his arms fall off from the effort. Maybe rebuild with a solid roof, something permanent. But another, larger part of him is hungry for more; more gold, yes, he thinks, but also to explore another part of the country, and perhaps gain something he's never had: land. He's sure there's still gold in these hills, sure that someone is going to get rich. Maybe Mr. James and those hydraulicking folks Fred is always talking about. David's father would think it ridiculous, washing whole mountainsides away. Half the pay dirt would be swept right down the creek. But that is the way things are going here in California. No one cares how much is wasted, so long as someone gets rich in the process. Could learn a lesson from those Chinamen who hunker down washing every last ounce of gold from the dirt before moving on.

A glow from the Chinese huts across the creek is just visible. Without those Chinamen, he knows the rest of the town would have been lost last night. They hauled buckets and blankets and fought the flames, even though their homes were well out of the fire's reach, then disappeared by morning. Probably afraid of being blamed for it. Probably smart to be afraid. Rumor around town held that those chickens weren't attacked by any raving Chinamen, though that was the convenient answer. David thinks there might be a greater significance to this observation, but is too tired to speculate what it might be. His mind leaps sideways to the coast of Cornwall. The year-long green of the cliffs competes in brightness with the blue of the sky, and a circle of standing stones vibrate and straighten to a regimental line.