Two-Gun & Sun (7 page)

When my three brothers returned from the war they assumed the rest of the fruit business. It happened gradually. One crisp day I looked up to see that cutting the grass, picking the last of the fruit, and finally pruning the trees had all been done without me. Well fine. I had been absorbed in my own plans to teach even before my father's comment about finding a way to feed myself. I had decided that I would encourage learning and reading and the broadening of horizons, and embrace the very thing John's people had rejected. There would be satisfaction in that.

I didn't last a year.

I rolled out of bed and poked about the cupboards for food. I must be hungry to be thinking of home. I found the paper bag from Parker's and rummaged through it for the ingredients to pan fry bread. I couldn't find any large bowls in the cupboard for mixing, just a plate. A cup of flour, dash of salt, a few spoonfuls of lard. Knead well onto the plate. I fired up the pot-bellied stove from the bucket of coal beside it, rubbed a bit of lard into a skillet and set it on top. I dropped a big dollop of batter into the pan and it sizzled nicely, though when I flipped it over I found I'd scorched it. Less time on the other side, then. I had enough for two more dollops, setting each onto the plate when it was done.

I could poach a pear, put up preserves, boil up jars of jam. When you're raised on an orchard you can't help but learn to cook with fruit. I could also bake a fish or roast a leg of lamb. Those uncomplicated dishes simply required you to pull them out of the oven when they looked done, shove them back in if it turns out they weren't. But baking required a precision that escaped me, things full of air that wouldn't rise if you slammed the door too hard, crusts that fell apart with too little handling, or turned to shoe leather with too much. I bit into the first piece of fry bread. It tasted of cinders. The second had the consistency of glue in the middle, the last one, cement.

I should have added water, or milk. I would have to try again some other time.

I emptied the rest of the bag and settled on the corned beef. With my back against the wall I ate it cold from the tin, shovelled it really, great spoonfuls of it, my thoughts racing. I had to get things ready. I had to get me ready.

I dropped the empty tin and squatted beside the tub to drink water from the tap.

Running a bare arm over my mouth I moved to my heavy bags, at last unpacking. The bottle of whisky had already found its way out. Now came the clothing, family photographs, a bedspread of red patchwork and sheets I could have used last night, as well as a cranberry glass vase, cracked, most likely after the bags had been tossed from the ship onto the cargo pile. I turned it around and around, told myself it didn't matter, not when, until now, I hadn't even remembered packing it. But the crack in the glass wounded me, somehow, and I had to force myself to put the vase down. I hung my mother's beaded evening bag over my arm and reached for my greatest indulgence, filling the bottom of the larger of the leather bags, a table globe of the world, with my nightgowns and stockings stuffed around it.

It was only by studying this globe that I realized, with a flip of the stomach, that the place I would be moving to, and have now arrived at, was perched on the very edge of a continent washed by a body of water twice as wide, to my naked eye, as the mighty Atlantic. I gave the globe a spin and marvelled once more at the vast Pacific. I had come to the end of the world.

With the exception of the coveralls downstairs, I bundled up Uncle's things to send back home, and filled the shelves and hangers with my own. I flipped open Will's old watch, then clicked it shut.

Not even six o'clock in the morning.

All right, then. Get washed. Get going.

I plugged the tub, ran the taps, added a squirt of my coconut shampoo, then sat back hard on my heels. The soapy water foamed up grey as smoke. It was bad enough that I had to bathe in it. I had planned to toss in some linens, too, but this would ruin the whites, not something that normally concerned me. It was the unexpectedness of it. Under threat of tears I told myself to smarten up. What would stay white in this town, anyway? My eyes dried in an instant, seeing that Morris in his soiled white suit.

*

I found the press as I'd left it. Dusty, rusted, immobile. The wrench lay at the foot of the far wall where it had been sent flying when the bolt gave. Not far from the mirror, the clump of rag I'd used to scrub my knuckles and cheek. The pages of the instruction manual were bent open on the floor and my coveralls were puddled nearby as though I'd just stepped out of them. I grabbed them by the shoulders and gave two sharp snaps, then climbed in and buttoned them up while I walked about the shop, slid the wrench into a lower pocket, put the booklet on the shelf with a tray of metal bits on top to flatten the curling pages, and tossed the filthy rag with others I'd found in a bucket in the back of the shop. Above the sink was a stack of clean rags. I gathered several and headed back to the press where I began rubbing dust from every surface I could reach.

Up the ladder, next, swinging a leg over the machine to straddle the parts, just as Vincent Cruz had. The dust here was a greasy fuzz that mere rubbing could not remove. I tipped a tin of solvent onto a rag and soaked it, then watched my fingertips turn black as I cleaned. Again, I tried to loosen some bolts with the wrench. I felt the pull between my shoulder blades, then up my neck and into my teeth. Nothing, except that I'd managed to scrape a thick layer of sludge from the bolts and the works surrounding them. I climbed down.

The sky was lightening now. As I passed by the wall calendar I took up the pencil and stroked through Sunday, September 3.

A hammering at the door had me dropping the pencil. I stepped back to the metal mirror and called out, Just a minute! Fingers fussing to tuck strands into the knot. At least my eyes had returned to normal. I smoothed my collar and shirt front as I dashed to the door, remembering only as my palms skimmed the rough fabric that I was in my coveralls, not a dress. I wrenched the door open.

There stood a man in a vest and suit, with slicked hair and a trimmed beard. His shoulders were narrower than his chest, a shape I have always found unattractive in a man.

He gave his name but in my surprise I didn't catch it, though I know I introduced myself in return.

From San Francisco, he said, and then something about mining exploration. Only when he asked about advertising rates did I come to my senses and invite him in.

There is no paper just yet, I explained, but I can record your order.

I stood behind the counter and pulled out the ledger. A diamond ring on his baby finger, and, through the window, a man with a walrus mustache rocking on his heels and puffing pipe smoke into the fog.

As I scribbled I asked, Is he waiting for you?

My friend and business associate, he explained. Come all the way from Glasgow. Here to see about opening another vein of coal. We're looking to hire men to stake claims.

Another vein?

I stopped writing, interested in this bit of news.

He said with a wink that there could be more, many more.

Coal likes company, he explained. All ore does. Miners talk about silverleadzinc like it's one thing. And it is, to be certain, often found running in ribbons together. Coal with uranium. Copper next to cadmium. Moly in its own vein or mixed with copper and gold.

Molly?

Yes, Moly. Molybdenum, Miss Sinclair. It's like a layer cake down there. And in the streams above, pink quartz with gold nuggets clinging to it like caramel sauce on a sundae.

You mean there could be gold here?

I mean there's everything here if you dig far enough.

He leaned an elbow on the counter and studied my throat.

What a few gems wouldn't do for that neck, he said.

And dropped his eyes to my coverall-ed chest.

I let the ledger slam shut and he snatched back his baby finger.

I told him I would let him know when our first issue was on its way. I said it cheerfully. After all, his impertinence aside, here was my first advertisement, and another story idea.

The door closed and I took up a sheet of paper and wrote the letter home much as I had already composed it in my mind yesterday, leaving out all mention of Lousetown or Parker or this man just now. I don't know why. Because they might worry. Because they might comment. But as I watched his retreating back from my shop door I could see the headline: Coal likes company.

*

That afternoon, lavender outfit bundled under my arm, I plodded through the gloom to Parker next door. I sniffed the air for a hint of ocean but coughed on the grit kicked up by the motorcycles and their sidecars. An incessant whine. I wanted to smack them with a fly swatter.

Parker was up a ladder, stocking shelves.

Don't climb down, I called out. Just here to ask a question.

Done anyway, he said, stepping down and rolling the ladder to the corner. He rubbed his hands on his backside as he returned to the counter.

You survived your trip to Lousetown, I see.

I switched the lavender bundle from my right side to my left, wondering what he might have heard.

Yes, but all that walking took its toll on this suit. I need to take it to the laundry, if you can direct me. The post office, too.

Same place. The hotel.

They have a dining room, too, don't they? I might stop in.

They have a menu with a list of meals. Mouth-watering concoctions. Trouble is, they don't have 'em.

Then why list them?

Who'd go to a place that advertised tins of peas and ham? They might as well come here.

For the pleasure of a crowded room, perhaps.

Parker hooked his thumbs under his arms and rocked on his feet.

Nicest person there is the dark fella that runs the kitchen. The rest? Nothing but crooks, cowboys and idiots. There's your competition, if you can call him that. Runs
The
Bugle.
Named after the Boston newspaper that fired him. Head in his plate of food, usually. Never could decide if it's food or pomade that puts his hair in stripes. Like this.

He released his thumbs from under his arms and drew a set of bars across his head.

There's another newspaper? I asked.

I didn't like that. I didn't like it that
Bugle
was so close in lettering to
Bullet
, either.

Not much of a newspaper, he said. A sheet of mining figures and facts.

That was a relief, and I said so.

Silver Evans, he continued. What passes for a lawman in this town, hired out of New York City by the largest of the mining interests, The Black Mountain Coal Company. People call him the sheriff and he has taken to the title. Wears a uniform of his own making, postman's trousers and his father's jacket with badges from a bygone war.

Parker held up his thumbs and rubbed them against his fingertips.

Wears his moustaches twirled to points, he said.

His descriptions made me laugh, but Parker remained straight-faced.

One more thing, I asked, do you sell notebooks? This one's filling up.

I held it aloft, the pages between the two covers swollen with scribbling and folded corners.

He smacked one down on the counter.

You find yourself a printer?

I might have, I said. I'll let you know.

*

The fronds of the potted plant were not enough to hide me, but there was only one customer and his face was buried in the crook of his arm, an empty glass by his ear. Good. I had inadvertently entered by way of the bar, instead of via the dining room. Not my fault, when the sign in the window said simply
The Bombay Room
, which could be the name of a café. A happy mistake, though. I could use a drink.

I had never been in a drinking establishment before. Drank behind the barn with my brothers, yes. Still, it was easy to see that the polished, wood counter running the full length of the room was a bar, with a row of bar stools that looked suspiciously like motorcycle seats. I sat on one and was reminded of a saddle. A tiger skin was tacked to the rippled tin wall. A fan turned slowly, its wide blades taken from the snout of an airplane. Ebony elephants at each end of the counter. An oriental rug.

The tiger's head bared its fangs at me. The barman, black-haired, red-faced, was polishing glasses and looked up, then started.

Whisky, I said.

Women aren't allowed.

And he twisted his big head around as though he were about to be arrested over my presence.

I'm here to run the newspaper, I pressed, nodding down at my coveralls. Doesn't that make a difference?

His eyes shot over to the comatose customer, then back to me. Rules, he replied. This is
The Bombay Room
. A private club. No women.

What's your name? I asked.

Ed.

Ed. Lila Sinclair. Tell me: Is that man over there an esteemed member of your
Bombay Room
?

I watched his eyes flicker to something below the counter, then to an upper side shelf with three china teacups that rested sideways in their saucers to reveal their decorated insides, all blue flowers and garden gates.

Will you have a cup of tea? he asked.

No—I began, then realized he was arching an eyebrow. Yes, I added. I meant yes.

That a letter?

I hadn't realized I was still clutching it in my hand.

Yes, it is. I came here for the post office, actually.

That's me, he said. Postmaster. I keep the mail under the bar, too.

Too—how much is the, uh, tea?

Same as two beer. And you have to sit at a table.

Add the stamp to the bill, I said, and I slid the letter onto the counter along with the coins.

I'll take your laundry, too.

My head must have snapped up with surprise. Same place, Parker had told me, but I hadn't expected someone like Ed.

This here's the laundry chute for the hotel, he said.

He slapped a dirty hand onto the boxed wooden trough that ran vertically up the wall behind the bar and was, now that I stood on my toes to see, disgorging crumpled cotton.