“I’ll check on the horse now. No need to wait up.” The words, as always, are grace.
I nod, and he’s gone for nearly half an hour. When he returns, the smell of baking cake belies the late hour. I didn’t plan this timing very well. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. This is where he sleeps, on the floor near the fire. But he won’t do so with me here. Neither of us will have peace until I go upstairs, but I slide the kettle from the stove, fill two tin cups, and set them on the table. This isn’t a night for peace. We slide our chairs out at the same time. Sit with equal determination.
“The mine,” I simply say.
His hands that have been resting in his lap grip the edge of the table. He yanks his chair farther forward. He’s ready for this. Am I? “Do you want me to start at the beginning, or do you have specific questions?” he asks.
Questions have pummeled me for ages now.
Why did you bring me here? Place an ad for a wife in the newspaper all those years ago?
Why did you choose me?
And the hardest of all. Why did you deceive me?
But I slay them all, asking instead what is most relevant. “Why did you salt the mine?”
It’s a slow bleed—the way wetness fills his eyes. He looks around the room, and I give him time to assemble his words. He speaks, and it’s haunted and steady in equal measure. Like the midnight sky, pierced by countless stars and still refusing to fall. “Because it needed to be me.”
Wind stirs outside, rattling the tin cans hanging from the porch eaves.
“Explain that.”
The air grows sweet with rising cakes as he seems to gather his words with care. “I was young and foolish when I joined my cousins in these acts. We salted three mines together, all long before Kenworthy, and always, I was simply on watch. I’ve already said it, but it bears repeating: this was long before you. Long even before the dream of you.” Reaching up, he unfastens his flannel collar. “Why I joined up with them is something I will always regret. I was alone in the world. My parents were gone. I was young and impetuous and seeking purpose. But it was the wrong kind of purpose.” He shakes his head, frustration palpable.
I cross my ankles, too weary to sit upright and too desperate to move.
“As time went on, things quieted down. We had enough silver in our pockets from mine sales, and things settled some. I moved on. Started working at a logging company in Oregon. It was a few peaceful years. When the murders happened, I didn’t know of them at first, but my name was still linked to theirs.”
Rising, I step into the pantry, lift down an empty tea tin, and return to the table. The lid slides off with the clatter that is louder than the soft crinkle of newsprint as I unfold the article. “These are your cousins?” I slide it across the table to him, and John squints, seeming to glimpse this for the first time. His face is sheer agony as his eyes meet mine.
“Yes.” He touches the picture of one of the men. I do not know if this man was hanged or not. “They caught up with me soon after with the law on their tails. I didn’t want to join them, but June, there was a hold on me that I can’t describe. One that had me looking over my shoulder at the logging camp every moment. Waiting for someone to know. For someone to see my guilt. I felt like being with them was the only way I would truly be free. I can’t tell you how wrong that was.”
It’s so much to take in that more questions surface, but I silence them to let him speak.
“I was back in it then. Deeper than before. I didn’t want to die, but inside I was already a dead man walking because I was doing the bidding of those who held power over me. I was just a shadow of a man.” His hands rest on the table, only inches from my own. “When it came to the mine here in Kenworthy, yes, June. I pulled the trigger. It was me and me alone. I pulled the trigger of my own free will, and the whole town of Kenworthy came of it, and the whole town has been dying of it. Because of me. I don’t have an excuse.”
“And the hangings?”
“Three of them were hung for the killings that had taken place years before. At first, it looked like I might be, too, but I was spared.”
My eyes are transfixed on his own.
“Because of my work at the logging camp, I had an alibi against the crimes. It’s complicated, but I’ll explain everything you want to know.”
I don’t realize I’m worrying my wedding ring around my finger until his focus steadies there. “It took some time for the law to unravel the evidence, but my old foreman from Oregon testified in court that I was on payroll and working there at the time. Had documents to prove it as well as bank deposit slips that I had signed, confirming that I couldn’t have been anywhere else. My trial took four days, and for every one of those hours, I didn’t know if I would see you again or not.” His voice grows thick, eyes solely on me, his wife. “There’s more to say, June . . .” he adds, his voice weak now. “But may I continue tomorrow?”
Tenderness presses into the edges of my soul. A softness for his beseeching. “Of course. Thank you, John, for saying what you have.”
My rising is slow, and he simply watches. Watches from his chair as I pull two pans from the oven, center them on the stovetop for morning, and silently retreat upstairs. There, I curl up beside our sleeping daughter, listening to his sounds below. Of him stoking the fire. Of him sliding the bolt in the doorlatch. Of the way the boards softly creak with his quiet bootfalls until he finally stops just below. Everything goes silent, and I know he’s spread out his blanket and taken to his meager bed. One he neither complains about nor lingers in after the sun. He will be up before I am, and so will begin a new day. One of me wondering how to make a soul-deep sense of him. Him likely wondering the same about me.
Chapter 28
Johnny
April
Church ends with a hymn I’ve never sung before: “Lead, Kindly Light.” It’s one of those old songs that you don’t even realize exists until a worship leader places it up on the projector, finds the first notes, and the congregation lifts the words up high.
Standing in the back, I sing with the others—not loudly, granted, as my voice isn’t very good. Afterward, it’s handshakes and small talk with people I don’t know all that well, but should. The interaction is nice. The pastor calls it fellowship. I forget how often I’m alone these days until surrounded by a church full of people. Even a small country one like this. It’s good to be here.
Later, in my truck, I drive home thinking of the kids and what this week has in store. But first, Sonoma is coming by today at two o’clock. I’ve got just over an hour to change out of my collared shirt and grab a bite for lunch. I do both with plenty of time to spare, and she arrives shortly after, pulling in with a small, blue truck. She angles to park behind mine.
The driver’s-side door opens, and her long, dark ponytail nearly touches the ground as she bends out to look at something under the truck.
I step closer. “Everything okay?”
“It’s making a weird rattling noise. It didn’t start until I got gas back at that station around the corner. I have no idea what’s wrong. Just started out of the blue. I almost pulled over twice but figured I might as well just get here.”
Kneeling, I grip the bottom edge of the driver’s side and peer beneath the truck. There’s a small pine branch wedged up in the axel. It must have gotten lodged there from the highway. It takes a second to wiggle it loose, but it finally snaps free. I pick up the two ends of the stick and show her.
She laughs. “How much do I owe you?”
“Repairs are on the house.” I step back so she has room.
She climbs out wearing hiking boots and fitted jeans. Her T-shirt is faded and stamped with an LA Lakers logo near one shoulder. It’s too tempting not to ask what she thought of the last game. Sonoma snorts as she drags a petite backpack from her truck. “I don’t even want to talk about it.”
“There’s always next season.”
She smiles, and her teeth are white against
honeyed skin.
It’s been so long since I’ve stood alone with a woman who wasn’t my wife that it’s hard to know just what to say. “Uh, need anything before we head out? Bottle of water?”
She pats her backpack before sliding it on. “I’m all set, thanks.”
“Okay, great. I’m gonna fetch Rye, my Lab. Okay if he tags along?”
“Definitely.”
She waits by her truck while I call for Rye, who comes barreling out of the house to greet Sonoma. I shut the door, and the two are already fast friends by the time I reach them. Really, my presence is superfluous at this point. Sonoma ruffles his floppy, yellow ears, and he tries to lick her face.
“He’s a sweetie!” she says in dog voice, which only excites Rye further.
“He’s a pain in the butt, actually. Also, he likes you more than me at this point.”
She laughs as we start off toward the clearings near the farm. The bare spaces spread like patchwork, laced through with trees that might have been saplings a hundred years ago. Gravelly sand crunches beneath boot treads as we trek through this curious maze of bare earth where the buildings of Kenworthy once stood. In the hills beyond would have been miners’ shanties, but I still haven’t explored that way, nor have I searched out the location of the mine itself. One of these days, I’ll go on that adventure, but this one is more important. It’s good to know that there’s time. That this land is in no rush to tell its story.
We’re standing in the middle of a long, narrow clearing when Sonoma halts. “You know what puzzles me?”
“What?”
“That the town stood for nearly five years, and at one point there were several hundred people. Yet there is no mention anywhere of a graveyard.”
“Morbid, kind of,” I quip.
She smirks. “I’m saying that people would have passed away during those five years. But as far as I understand, there wasn’t a town cemetery. You’d think a place with a schoolhouse, hotel, and dozens of homes would have had a cemetery.”
It makes sense to see it the way she does. If genealogy is her gig, then headstones and death records would be a huge deal in figuring out family trees.
“Well, maybe . . .” I slow to a halt. “We could be standing on it right now.”
We each survey the clearing around us. If crosses were made of wood, they wouldn’t have lasted through the heat of California summers nor the winds of high-desert winters. After digging through her backpack, Sonoma consults a map that looks copied from one of the history books. She scans the earth around us.
I do the same. “Want a shovel?”
Her laugh sounds like it belongs here. “I think I’ll pass on that one.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Rye sniffs at a rabbit hole and immediately starts digging downward. We holler a panicked “No!” in unison, then she melts into giggles. I’m grinning so hard my face hurts.
“How about we move on from talk of a graveyard.” Her honey-hued cheeks are rosier.
“Agreed.”
We walk on, but slowly. She’s thinking still . . .
“Just say it,” I offer.
Her eyes lift to mine amusedly. They’re a dark brown with a soft slant that whispers of native blood. “It’s not so much that I need to find the exact graveyard, but I’m just . . .” She turns, looking across the valley. Her eyes lift to trees, scan boulders. Finally, they land on my face, and her expression is warm. “Just thinking, I guess. Seeing if something will click into place.”
I nod, though I don’t fully understand. I’m more of a lines-and-numbers kind of guy. This is all harder for me to wrap my brain around, which makes it intriguing. I can practically hear the cogs moving in her mind. It’s kind of cool.
We explore on, and with her gentle pace, I don’t lead us far into the hills. Instead, we take our time, and it’s focus she has, not hurry. I like that.
It’s late in the afternoon when we finally walk back to her truck. Rye, dusty and covered in twigs and bits of dirt, canters over to the porch, where he flops beside his water bowl. Sonoma sips the last drops from a plastic bottle.
I thumb toward the house. “Lemme go grab you another one for the road.”
“I appreciate it.”
In the cabin, I snatch two cold bottles from the fridge and return to her truck. She’s just tossing her backpack inside.
“Hopefully this has been a help somehow.” Droplets slide down the plastic as I hand over the bottle.
“It’s been amazing. Actually, can I show you one last thing?”
“Totally.” I am in no hurry.
“Do you remember the spot just down there?” She points to where we came from, the last clearing we explored, which is just out of sight but not far from here. “I think that’s where the mercantile might have once stood. And get this . . .” She tugs more historical documents from her backpack and unfolds another photograph. “This is the same one that’s hanging up at the historical society. Her name was Edith Manchester. There’s only a few accounts of her in the books, and they don’t indicate who she married, but that she did have two children who were recorded as stillborn.”
I glimpse the sorrow in Sonoma’s face.
“Much of what I’m researching is that it’s possible she married a Cahuilla man in secret. He’s linked to my family tree, which you might recall—Santiago Del Sol. Apparently, he had a wife in Kenworthy as opposed to within the tribe. So, it’s possible it was her. She was one of the last to live here, as was he, and so it makes sense.”
I nod, curious.
“It’s taken me nearly a year of searching, but I’ve unearthed two different accounts of her death. One source, an old county census, has no record of her in 1910, so she either passed away or left a few years after they were wed. Another source indicates that she didn’t pass away until 1946. So, I’m not sure. My great-great-grandfather, Santiago, was married until late in his life, but was it this woman?” Sonoma scans the splayed-out documents on the hood of her truck. “Did he remarry? I’ve found records of two additional deaths, which might have been his children. If there are no records of a living child and a second marriage, where did my family come from? That’s what has been the biggest riddle to solve.” Her water bottle sits forgotten, and there’s a crease to her brow that only this purpose can smooth away. “I need to do some more investigating. That seems to always be the way of it.”
I debate for less than a second. “Would you still like those letters? They’re from the original homesteader of the property here. It’s possible she might have even interacted with this woman who worked at the mercantile. I haven’t noticed any references, but you would see details I’m missing. Why don’t I go grab them, and you can take them home and see what you find?”
She gapes at me.
“If you want to, that is.”
“I found one letter in a book not too long ago, but there was no mention that there were more. I didn’t realize these were the letters you have.”
I set my water bottle beside her tire. I could invite her in to show her, but something about us being outside feels more casual. Sonoma seems most comfortable in the yard, and I mean to keep it that way for her. “The folder’s back in the house. Let me go grab it.” I haven’t finished the final letters, but it’s time they help someone else.
Hurrying inside one more time, I hustle upstairs to where the binder sits on the nightstand. I’m breathless when I reach Sonoma again, and surprisingly, it feels right to let go of the folder, placing it in her grasp instead.
“This is incredible.” She shakes her head, still looking in awe. “I promise I will take such good care of it and return everything as soon as possible.”
“Take your time and let me know what you find. I just hope there might be something in there that could help.”
She beams at me as if hoping the same. “I promise to.”
Chapter 29
Juniper
April 1903
A string of cloth penna
nts is stretched between the young oak tree and the eaves of the front porch. Their edges are ragged, but the colorful triangles have been cut from scraps of old garments, so they’re a playful display of taffy-yellow, indigo-blue, and a wash-worn violet that was once my favorite apron. Just right for a day of festivities. They catch the breeze just as much as the fringe on Edie’s leather breeches. Facing out toward the open yard, Edie aims her pistol, steadying it with both hands, and pulls the trigger. A hole blasts through the center of the paper target that John nailed to a fence post. Her bullet struck just shy of dead center.
Edie swears.
I remind her that one person in our midst just turned four.
Winking over at Bethany, Edie moves out of the way so that John can help Bethany take aim next. He kneels behind her, his hand holding the gun and trigger. Bethany braces her hands around his. Her tight braids are tied with one of the same patterns of cloth as blows in the breeze behind us.
Just beyond, we’ve set up a makeshift table that holds a pitcher of sweet tea and the two-layered ginger cake. A stack of plates and polished forks glint in the sunlight.
Even Oliver Conrad has joined us for the festivities. His dog, Trixie, lies in the shade of the cabin’s porch, far from the noise. Bethany wanted to invite the entire town so that everyone could have cake, but after explaining to her that most everyone else was gone, she agreed to the present guest list. It’s the first time Mr. Conrad and John have been side by side, and while they worked together in the mine over the years, it’s only fair to acknowledge that something has changed. In John’s absence, Oliver kept an eye on Bethany and me from afar.
“Let me know when you think we’ve found the target,” John says to our daughter.
Squinting one eye closed, Bethany helps him align the destination, and then she steps back and covers her ears. John glances to her, ensuring she’s good and clear, then pulls the trigger one moment after he tilts it even more in line with the target.
The Gold in These Hills Page 19
