Crown of Dust (6 page)

“See there?” says Limpy, pointing to Micah's table. “David thinks he's got some sort of talent for cards, but he only ever wins enough to keep him playing. Now what's that tell you?”

She's not sure that tells her anything, but she hears the word
boy
wafting from the table and smiles because boy means her, Alex, Golden Boy.

“You listening to me, son? Alex? Could be very important to your future. Partners, you understand, but not equal. No. I understand you was the one found the gold, and that's most important, no doubt. But can't do much on your own, can you? Wouldn't know where to begin, would yah? Thirds is what I'm thinking, with you keeping any nugget bigger than a chispa, as should be. Know what a chispa is? No? Anything bigger than your big toenail, in my book. Now, some will tell you big as the whole toe, but I'm a fair man. An honest man. Like you.

“Look at me when I'm talking to you, boy, 'cause some would have you sell the claim, see. Them over there—” He waves his hand in the general direction of Micah's table. “Give you pennies for it. Already planning to scoop up all the land on either side, which is yours by right, once you strike gold. And with me and David claiming side by side, sure to keep that gold in the family, you understand. That's how I think of you: family. David, too. Said himself you reminded him of his brother back in Cornwall.”

“Jed,” Micah hollers. “Jed, you send that boy over with a dram o' rum. And fill it good, too. Hell! Can you smell the luck, boys?”

“Here now, Alex—look here, Alex,” says Limpy. “Wouldn't have saved your ass in the clearing if we didn't think fondly of yah. It's what's important. Family. Trust.”

“Come on, boy! Don't have all night, and no telling when the luck runs out!” yells Micah. Alex finds the word
family
lingering between her ears and a fresh cup in her hand.

“You ain't saying no to it, then?” Limpy asks as she slips from the stool. She navigates toward Harry, edges between shoulders and around stools with the nugget pulling her down, making her bowlegged. The racket of the room pokes her with individual sticks of conversation, so unlike the solid mass of sound that met her on the stairwell during the rain.

“Likely to be nothing but pyrite from now on,” says Harry. She stops short of the table to listen, minding the cup.

“Way it goes, sometimes,” Harry continues. “Fate. Now don't look at me like that, Fred. You know it too. Get all excited for a hundred dollars of poverty and heartache. But, hell, that's life, right?”

“You done?” says Micah, and Alex takes a sip of his rum.

“Just an old wives' tale, Harry,” says Fred. “You can't kill luck with hopeful talk. Micah and I went back and it looked rich.”

“What you know about it?” John Thomas asks Fred.

Fred discards four. David folds.

“Fred here fancies himself an expert in all things
natural
,” says Harry. “Tell them the name of your book, Fred, tell them.”

“Hydraulicking,” says Fred, ignoring Harry, “would clear more earth in a week than a hundred shovels could in a year. You watch, if we don't do it, someone else will. I heard they just got a load of hydraulic tubing down there in Marys—”

“That is bull-sheeit,” says John Thomas. “Woulda been up there for yourself if you'd know'd there was gold.” He discards one, slams all five to the table when he sees his draw. Alex feels her lip curl. “Bullshit,” he says again.

“
A Geological and Floral Survey of the Greater Alta California
,” says Harry, holding his cards in front of his laughter, revealing to Alex a pair of sixes. “That's what he calls it, and that's all he's got, other than a bunch of weeds smashed between the pages.”

“I never said I could find it,” admits Fred. “Just recognize a find. Was me that told them Empire boys to stick it out, and look at them now.”

John Thomas slumps back in his chair. “Boy don't deserve it,” he says to no one in particular.

“Exactly why we need to buy the claim right up. Follow it to the quick,” says Fred.

“Jed!” Micah yells. “What about my … W'hell—Alex!” and suddenly the whole lot of them are looking her way.

“Sure!” booms Limpy behind her, and she nearly spills the drink. His great paw clamps down on her shoulder and she does spill some. “Just take the claim, fellas. Boy won't care, will he? Don't know jack about mining and can't work alone. He'll take his luck to some juanita in Grass Valley and be all the better for it. Am I right? Am I right? Alex?”

Limpy's words chatter back through her head. Alex finds the drink in her hand and a mush of words in her mouth and for some reason needs to deliver the drink first. She holds the cup in front of her, too intent on keeping the liquid level to notice that John Thomas has thrust his leg out.

Alex is falling, flailing her arms to stop herself. Fails. Collides with the card table. She feels her nose crack and blood pour into her mouth, warm and bitter after the rum. She opens her eyes to red splintered wood and whiskey-drenched playing cards spinning in a kaleidoscope of color. She gulps down blood, tries to rise. Fails.

“Clumsy son-of-a—” John Thomas begins, and Alex feels the strength of rage surge through her. She wants to stop it, the voice, the tone of the voice, the man speaking. She lunges, misjudges the location of the stool, lands hard on the ground. Laughter bounces off the inside of her head. She opens her eyes to silence, a frayed hemline, thick ankles. Emaline's cool hand on her forehead.

“Out,” says Emaline. Out of the Victoria, out of Motherlode, Alex thinks. Tries to rise. “No, no, now easy,” says Emaline, tipping Alex's head back.

“And Jesus came to the temple,” Preacher yells from somewhere above her. “He came and saw the sin of the Farsees and overturned the tables of wickedness …”

“Emaline, I—” says John Thomas.

“Out,” Emaline says, “before I decide you can't come back.”

“Out, out. Can't come back,” someone parrots in the corner.

“Forty years to build what was demolished in a day, the word of—”

“Preacher! Shut your mouth and get this boy outside 'fore he bleeds a river on my floor.”

“Your mouth, Preacher. Shut your mouth,” says the parrot, and the voice recedes into laughter.

Alex feels herself hefted. Her knees can only bend. Through the haze she sees Emaline float across the wreckage to John Thomas. Men step out of her way. Jed jumps over the bar and stands ready. The room is silent, listening, but Emaline has said all she will. She nods to Jed, and then to David. They hustle over to flank John Thomas. John Thomas opens his mouth to protest, shuts it as if he can think of nothing to say, yanks himself free from Jed.

“Get your nigger hands off me, boy,” he says, and Jed gives him a shove out the door, past Alex who stands bleeding on the porch planking.

“Stupid fool,” David mumbles from the doorway. “And you,” he says to Alex. “Told you to stay the hell away from him.”

Her eyes blur and she feels as if part of her is hovering there above the porch, watching John Thomas stumble down the road, watching herself bleed to a puddle on the floor.

5

“Your hands,” Alex says, as David helps the boy up the stairs. Below them, Limpy's tuneless baritone leads a round of “Turkey in the Straw,” a silly song that David has never liked.

“Turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay,” the men roar, with Emaline's voice raftering up an octave higher, just a bit more in tune. “Roll 'em up and twist 'em up a high tuckahaw …”

The boy joins in, obviously doesn't know the words, reverts back to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

“Shhhh,” David says as they near the top of the stairs. “Your voice is shrill.”

“Such big hands,” says Alex, making a fist, holding it up for David to see. “Gran says, she said, men have big hands.”

Alex erupts back into giggles, wrenches from David's grasp to totter and stare squint eyed down the hall. The boy's right hand inches down to adjust himself through his trousers. David looks away. If the boy would pass out, he'd make it easier on them both.

Instead he thrusts his chest out, pokes at the bloody liquor stain with one rigid finger, as though his own chest is foreign to him. And before David can react, the boy swivels and grabs the collar of David's flannel, pulls himself close. He lays his head over David's heart, breathes in and out to the beat.

David tenses. The boy smells of liquor and earth. His hair is fine and oily and his skin is flushed, emanating heat. David's arms hover just over the narrow shoulders, as if repelled.

“Terrible things,” Alex hisses, his body shaking now in dry sobs and David's arms lower themselves of their own accord until his fingertips touch the coarse flannel of Alex's shirt. Alex's shoulders go limp. He slips to the ground, wraps his arms around David's leg. He squeezes, as if David's leg were a ship's mast. He sways as if the floor were rocking.

Voices bounce up the stairs. Moonlight shines through the open hall window, painting Alex blue.

“Get up now,” David manages. “Get you to bed. Found gold today.”

He shakes his leg, but Alex holds tighter, presses his head into David's thigh. David's breath catches. He grits his teeth, focuses on those voices downstairs. Preacher sings a hymn about repentance and God's saving grace. “Three kings and a joker makes four,” yells Micah. Groans all round. Another layer of tobacco smoke and liquor fumes rise and settle and to David's tired senses, the moon-streaked hall takes on an orange-red glow. He closes his eyes and holds his breath. It's the time of night, the liquor in his veins. Only this.

Alex lets go and sits back on his hands, raising his eyebrows as if to keep his eyes open.

“Gold,” Alex says. His lips curl in a reluctant grin, then harden. “Golden Boy.”

David gathers himself, reaches down and pulls Alex to his feet, drags him a few yards, then scoops the boy up into his arms. Two doors down, he plops him on the bed, and flees the room with shaking hands.

Long after Limpy has stumbled back to their cabin, David sits at the bar, whiskey in one hand, rubbing the soft, worn rim of John Thomas's forgotten hat with the other. Besides Emaline, only Jed, Micah and Preacher John remain in the saloon. Stools are overturned with their legs wide in the air. Queen Victoria hangs crooked on the wall above Emaline, who sits staring off into nothing with an absent smile on her face, as if posed for a portrait.

She shakes from her stupor and makes eye contact, her smile now for him. David looks away. He hadn't realized he'd been staring.

“'Bout time, isn't it, boys?” she says and Jed jolts upright behind the bar.

Micah groans his agreement and stands up to stretch his back. Preacher continues scribbling notes in the margin of his Bible as though he hadn't heard.

“Lord, Emaline,” says Micah. “Think you could get some proper chairs in here? My bones feel near twenty years older than I am.”

Emaline ignores him. She maneuvers between tables, through shattered whiskey jugs, around the rust brown puddle of blood, to stand over David. She places her hand soft against his cheek as if checking for fever. He boosts himself to his feet, away from her.

“Yah all right, my dear? You look a little down,” says Emaline, squinting up at him. “Been playing with that hat an hour now. It's past midnight, I know …” Micah turns round with a questioning glance. “But if you need me …”

“No, thank you … no, Emaline,” David says, and Micah dismisses him with a disgusted wave of the hand, mumbles something under his breath.

“Well, won't bite yah, you know,” says Emaline, just a hint of hurt in her voice.

“Does, too,” says Micah from the first step. “But worth it, believe you me.”

Emaline gives a “humph” and Micah escapes up the stairs.

“Nevermind,” she tells David. “Appreciate you opening the chapel tomorrow, like usual. Sunday, and no work need be done before some thanksgiving, bonanza or no. And, David …” He waits, but she doesn't finish her sentence. “Goodnight,” she says.

He pushes out the door, into the night.

It isn't as though he wouldn't
like
to go upstairs with Emaline, though the reasons why still evade him. She is not a beautiful woman. Her hair is rarely, if ever, pulled from her face, and at night the fringe on her top lip glows in the candlelight. Her wide hips take the space of two women and make her pumpkin-sized breasts appear almost proportional. Her shoulders are too thick, her posture too straight. She struts around the saloon like the Queen herself, issuing orders as if she were born to it.

David has never fancied plump women. He isn't fond of facial hair, and has never reacted well to orders. Yet, even to David, Emaline exudes a salacious energy that moves before her like a second self, announcing her presence in any room. No man in Motherlode is immune to this energy. Only he has been strong enough to resist.

He was raised to know better, has abstained for too long to give in now. Sex is sacred to marriage alone, and prostitution—for that's what it is—is a sin, just as murder is a sin, and those who encourage Emaline by slipping into her bed every chance they get are paving paths to hell. David does respect her. Respects her in a way he'd only respected men before, in a business sense. He simply refuses to take part in her hypocrisy. Sunday service, giving thanks, saving the souls of men she soils week after week. The sign of a guilty conscience, if you ask him. Already he has sinned with her in his dreams. He blames her for this. He'd like very much to blame her for this new conceit lingering and polluting his mind.
Watch out for him,
sure. David can see the boy even now. Alex hugging his thigh. Alex clinging to his flannel.

He looks back at the Victoria. Emaline's lamp is lit and her body throws shadows on the curtain. He gulps a lungful of biting air, clears his mind on the exhale, and follows his steaming breath forward over hills and valleys of frozen mud, pauses in front of John Thomas's canvas tent.

At the card table tonight, John Thomas had been as agitated as David's ever seen him. He didn't think it
fair
that a boy found gold in the very spot he'd worked and found nothing. Didn't think it was fair that a boy had found gold after they'd
all
been working for years for broken backs and empty pouches.

He was right. It wasn't
fair
for a skinny, soft-handed boy to find gold where others failed. John Thomas was saying just what everyone else was thinking, or at least what David had been thinking. But that's the reality of the diggings. Stories like this brought David to California in the first place. Gold for the taking. Nuggets plucked from riverbeds and hillsides. Poor man to rich man in a day, if you were willing to work hard, willing to believe sulphur sweat would translate to solid gold. David had worked, suffering through snow-choked winters, mucking through spring mud, frying in summer heat, far away from his home and his family, his mum's rich clotted cream, her flaking pasties, her thick potato pancakes. Away from the happy chatter of his little sister and his cheeky younger brothers and their impromptu wrestling matches on Sunday afternoons. Away from his father's low rumbling voice reading the Bible each night by the fire. All of this seems so distant, part of another life that David yearns for, but to which he no longer belongs. He should write to his father, but he's afraid of the words that might come, afraid that in writing he will confirm his own failure and prove his father right.
A metal like any other
.

He places his cold hands under the waistband of his trousers, warming skin on skin. The night is still. The cedars make moonlit silhouettes at the tip of the ravine.

This new claim could play out in a few weeks. John Thomas is probably working himself up over a bit of color, nothing more. Speculation did no good. They wouldn't know anything definite about the ore content until the digging started. And the boy alone is sure to have slow goings, especially if this lode is as narrow and unpredictable as other California lodes have been and covered with the same thick layer of topsoil. Take him all summer just to dig through to the granite, if he doesn't bury himself first.

Limpy has forgotten to cut the lamp in the cabin again and the canvas roof glows like a luminary, attracting a colony of moths. Guttural snoring bounces off walls as though four men sleep instead of the one. He'll never wake Limpy, doesn't fancy turning him on his side. He puffs out the lamp, closes the door and ventures back into Victor Lane, pulled toward the Victoria like a moth. His thoughts veer stubbornly back to Alex; the boy's small body slung around his leg, the heat of the boy's breath on David's thigh.

All lights are out in the Victoria. The windows, like eyeless sockets, stare blindly into the night. Still David feels exposed in the moonlight, as though the eye of God were viewing his obdurate thoughts, judging his body's weakness. He steps into the shadows of the cedars just beyond the inn. He leans his head against the sweet-smelling bark, focuses on the sound of fieldmice foraging in the undergrowth, on the owl calling into silence, but cannot will his mind blank. He settles for a lesser evil, takes himself in hand. His breath quickens. His toes curl in his boots. He shudders and his shoulders reach for his ears, then sink. He is wiping his hand on a frosty patch of grass when a shadow slinks toward the Victoria.

David follows, guarding his step against snapping branches. The figure eases the door open, squeezes inside. David counts twenty breaths, and edges in after. He stands in the doorway as his eyes adjust to the darkness. The stools again stand right side up, the broken pieces of a whiskey jug have been swept to the corner and the blood has been mopped, leaving only a dark misshapen stain like spilled paint. Queen Victoria is still crooked on the wall, but it's the kitchen door, swinging softly on its hinges, that steals his attention.

David peeks his head in the kitchen, sees nothing. Floorboards creak above him. He tiptoes to the stairs. He grasps at his belt for the bowie knife he left in the cabin. He climbs the stairs, his hand against the wall for support.

The figure stands in front of Alex's room. A dagger glints in the weak window light. A hand reaches for the latch and David takes two giant steps forward. The body and blade swivel his direction. David steps forward again, wishing for a revolver, or a knife, something to give him authority.

“Forget your hat?” David says, his voice as flat and frigid as he can manage.

“Shit. Now, David … Shit. Somebody gotta do something about it. I'm gonna do something about it.”

Another step forward. John Thomas takes a sharp breath. His knuckles strain white around the knife handle. David hunches down, both hands in front of him.

“Not right. A boy. Ain't worked.”

Footsteps on the stairs behind them. A rifle is cocked. Jed's voice comes in a snarling whisper.

“Get out.”

“We share the gold. All of us, Jed. Equal. Boy don't deserve gold like we do.” John Thomas's words come fast but make no impact, and his hopeful face becomes scarred with hate. “No good fucking nigger, taking airs. I shoulda—”

Jed rushes forward, leveling the rifle at John Thomas's head. Jed's face is obsidian, his brow beaded with gleaming sweat. His hands tremble.

“Get out. Get out and never come back. I shoot yah. I see yah, I shoot yah.”

John Thomas pants shallow airless breaths. A puddle steams on the floor beneath him.

“I shoot yah, hear?”

John Thomas jerks a nod and eases forward as if to pass.

“Ah!” says Jed. “The knife.”

John Thomas nods again, places the knife on the floor beside the puddle of piss. He squeezes past David, down the stairs and into the night.