by Mary Volmer
After a while, they switch; David totes the water and Limpy shovels and rocks. Their faces are pink. Little beads of sweat gather at their temples, mix with the mud and streak rust-brown tracks down their cheeks. Downstream, the steady clank of picks and shovels mixes with the noisy murmur of the creek. The sun is directly overhead, and most of the birds have muted their songs till evening time. On flat, worn rocks, winter-stiff lizards rouse themselves to bask.
“Wouldn’t hurt to have some help. Someone to shake the cradle,” Limpy says, as David pours a bucket into the hopper. The water splashes, speckling his trousers. “Been thinking ’bout a long tom or a sluice box. Need more men to work one of those.” He rocks the cradle until David returns with another bucket of water. “Said yourself he reminded you of your brother.”
“My brothers are in Cornwall.” David dumps the water. “That boy’s too scrawny to hold a shovel. He probably wouldn’t know gold from pyrite.”
“I don’t know. Got me a feeling about that boy.” Limpy stares off down the creek.
“You got a feeling about anyone you made money off,” says David.
Limpy only acknowledges this remark with a gesture. “’Sides,” he says, “bound to fill out working claims, ain’t he? What with Emaline feeding ’im.”
“I’d like to know how he’s paying for that.”
“City boy with a face for theatre,” Limpy says.
David glances at him, looks away. “Not that pretty.”
3
The saloon door squeals open and footsteps clump toward the stairs. Emaline sticks her head through the kitchen door.
“Alex,” she says. The boy stops but doesn’t turn. “Come on back a minute, have a seat at the table.”
It’s not a request, but when she returns from the kitchen with two cups of coffee, he’s still standing in the stairwell, bracing himself with a hand on the railing, a hand on the wall.
“Sit,” says Emaline, and he slinks to the stool across from her. “I don’t allow hats inside the saloon.” He sweeps it from his head and his hair falls forward into his face. He sits on his hands as though they were tied behind him.
She doesn’t mind the quiet ones, to a point. David is quiet, but the silence is natural on him. This one sits on his words same as he’s sitting on his hands, and she doesn’t like the way he won’t look at her. Up close, she can see his face is narrow, his nose and chin slender, his eyes, when he shows them, are the same black color as the hair hanging shaggy and jagged before his eyes. I’ve got more whiskers on my face, she thinks, and scratches at the patch above her lip. When she was living in the city, she’d pluck them out, the thick black ones bringing tears to her eyes. Shedding tears over a few silly hairs. But she was younger then. Not stupid, or even vain, so much as inexperienced. Maybe that’s what bothers her about this boy: that spooked look of experience.
She pushes a cup in his direction. His hands remain beneath him. She leans forward, places her forearms on the table closer to Alex. He looks up, down.
“I’m gonna ask you what you’re doing here,” she says.
“I’m looking for go—”
“That’s not an answer,” says Emaline, shaking her head. “Everybody’s looking for gold. What are you doing here, in Motherlode?”
But the boy clamps his mouth shut. Something close to defiance hangs there over his head, and his eyes look off beyond her.
“Listen,” she says. “You listening? You paid me enough for the week, and I understand you got a bit more stashed away. I ain’t even going ask how you got it. But let’s be clear right here and now … You listening?”
She slams her mug down, leaving an opaque ring of coffee on the table. She’s not used to being ignored. She never did like it much.
“Look at me. We don’t want no trouble around here. If you’re running from something, best just keep on running, hear?”
She can almost feel the tension in his shoulders, can see his jaw clenching. His feet cross at the ankles and he hunches down, as if trying to be even smaller than he already is. If she were the mothering type, she’d act on this impulse to hug him.
“I ain’t meaning to throw nobody out, ’less they give me reason. You give me reason, you’re gone. Understand? Out of the Victoria. Out of Motherlode. Understand?”
Alex nods once.
“Good. Now, if you got something to claim, I suggest you do it before John Thomas gets himself to the assay office. He’s already been here complaining like a son-of-a-bitch, but I know you wouldn’t jump nobody’s claim.” She lets the statement arc into a question. Alex doesn’t respond. “The back of Micah’s general store. Sign reads ‘Assay Office,’ though it ain’t much more than a counter.”
She drinks down her coffee in four gulps, leaves him sitting there.
When she returns, Alex’s full cup is blowing steam to the ceiling. Thankless little snot, she thinks, as she carries the cup back into the kitchen. She wishes she knew what he’s doing here. Spoiled little rich kid, running away from daddy’s expectations with daddy’s money, most likely. Yet she doesn’t detect the usual arrogance of the moneyed little pricks she’s known in the past. Cocky young things, strutting around like a bunch of banty roosters ’cause no one ever told them they shit out the same hole as everyone else. And why would any rich kid come to a canvas town like Motherlode when Grass Valley and Nevada City were only miles away and fit to burst with pretty girls, theaters, saloons, restaurants, hotels, brothels and countless other ways to spend money? No, silent Alex had to be running from something.
She glances out the window at Jed bringing the day’s water from the creek. He sets down the buckets just inside the kitchen door and gives her one of his big-toothed smiles. Emaline walks over, takes his head in both hands and kisses him on the lips. They linger, exchanging air, grinning so their teeth click together. He leaves without a word and Emaline props herself in the doorway to watch. We’re all running from something, she thinks, but she stops her thoughts there.
The kitchen is a pine-sided addition to the back of the inn and can get mighty cold in the winter before the stove is stoked, and mighty warm in the summer when the heat puckers its dry lips to suck the energy right out of you. It’s the heat that gets you, she thinks, rolling her sleeves to her elbows. There are only so many clothes a woman can take off, though she’s sure the boys wouldn’t mind a certain amount of flesh exposed on a hot day. They walk around with their trousers rolled to their knees and their shirts in hand and wonder, at the end of the day, why they’re burned to a crisp. Alex is bound to make that mistake as well. The new boys always do. A ball of gray fuzz scurries across the floor. Emaline stomps after it, misses. In the potatoes again. Just when she patches a hole in that barrel, the mice go and chew another one. With the raccoons getting into the beans and the mice in the ’taters, it’s a wonder there’s any food left at all. Must be feeding half the county’s critters.
She takes the lid from the flour barrel, pours a measure into a large ceramic bowl with a bit of sourdough starter, adds a generous dollop of lard, an egg, a pinch of precious salt, and begins to knead. Someday she’ll have a proper kitchen, free of mice, with walls that keep the heat in over the winter and out in the summer. A cast-iron stove with a smokestack that doesn’t leak blackness into the place, and doesn’t blow itself out the minute she turns her back. There’ll be a cellar to keep wine, apples, cabbages, root vegetables and the dairy, if she ever gets a cow, and her floor will be polished flagstone that a once-over with a broom will keep clean. She’ll have polished oak counters to replace the splintered pine planking, a great big larder and a separate scullery and, oh, an indoor pump, so they can stop toting water from the creek. She wipes a line of sweat with the back of her hand. Lord knows what’s in the water with all those filthy miners wallowing in it every day. She hefts the iron pot from the floor, fills it with a bucket and a half of water, and stokes the fire.
Outside she hears the steady thump of Jed’s axe and looks up from her
dough to watch. With his shirt rolled she can see his corded forearms ripple. A bead of sweat trickles down his cheek on to the chopping block. His muscled thighs press against the skin of his trousers and she imagines his back, hard and smooth under her touch, and his voice, a soft rumble in her ear. Who needs a nice kitchen when you have Jed? She smiles, adding water a trickle at a time to the bread bowl. Certain things in this life you can do without. She supposes running water is one of them.
The wind has come up on the ridge. The cedars brace themselves and Alex can hear the squeal of air through the crags and the branches. It sounds like an accusation; a noxious mix of guilt and indignation swirls within her. Who is that woman to throw her out of town? As if it were her right to do so, as if this muddy valley, that dark little room, is somewhere she wants to stay. There had been nothing to keep her from leaving, from following the direction of her gaze around the grove of manzanita and out of town. Nothing, that is, but the steepness of that trail, the blisters on her feet, the thought of shivering the night away in a thicket, and now she finds she wants to stay, for a while at least, until it’s her choice to leave.
The rain begins to fall, bringing men from the creek. She retreats within the general store—dank with layers of dust, dark for lack of a window.
Every square inch of wall space is covered with rows of empty plank shelves propped with metal rods. Piles of picks and shovels, barrels of black powder litter the floor, and scatterings of mateless boots lie prostrate like rotting carcasses. With the dust and the leather the place smells of a tack room and Alex holds her nose against a sneeze. Along the back wall, behind the counter, are tins of tobacco, bottles of large blue pills marked QUININE and CALOMEL, jars of brandied fruits, and a mound of clothing, heaped like boneless bodies.
Alex sits, resting her head in her hands. The gloom of the place is quickly turning angry determination to self-pity, when a blast of cold air and light rush into the room.
“Well, hello there, Alex. Heard you been claim jumping a claim jumper. No, no need to get up,” says Micah. He closes the door behind him and scratches at that empty eye socket. “Might as well make use of them clothes.”
She stands anyway as raindrops thwap one by one, each making its own indention in the canvas roof. Lightning flashes blue and the rain begins in earnest.
“Lordy, here we go,” says Micah, looking skeptically at his roof. He wears canvas pants like the other men, but he keeps a pencil in a pocket he’s stitched to his flannel. He stands with his hips thrust out as if his back hurts him. His brown hair hangs shaggy over his ears, and his low round forehead and bulbous nose wrinkle in a smile, friendly even with the one eye.
“John Thomas can be an ass—don’t I know it. Gave me hell my first week as well, so don’t take it personal. Challenged me to a duel for sitting in his chair at supper, and probably would have done me in, too, if Emaline hadn’t put a stop to it. Foolishness, she told us. Grown men going around killing each other when there are plenty other things in this country to do it for us. Makes sense, doesn’t it? That put us straight, of course. That and the double-barreled shotgun she likes to tote around with her. There is wisdom in women, boy. And pure hellfire. A frightening combination, to be sure, but effective. Remember that. Between you and me, I think ol’ John Thomas has got a thing for her. Not that most of us haven’t, had a thing, now and again—you know what I mean? No?”
Alex feels her cheeks flush. Colored women, Gran called them. A colored woman was threatening to kick her out of town? She certainly didn’t fit the description of bawdyhouse ladies Alex has heard about. Emaline’s cheeks were unpainted, and Alex doubts that her shoulders, or any other part of her, would fit into the dresses they wore.
“Of course you know,” says Micah, winking his one eye. “But John Thomas has got a thing for her.” Micah rummages for a match, but the lamp on the counter produces only a yellow light, feeble and sickly.
“Now, what can I do you for? You got yourself a pan, though if Limpy isn’t telling tales, you got some learning to go on how to use it. You’re gonna need a pick and shovel, no doubt, a bit of quicksilver … You got a hat, good. Every miner needs a good solid hat. Keeps off the rain, keeps off the sun. Though both are good in moderation. In moderation, son, like women and whiskey. Remember that. Lordy! If you paid any more than fifteen dollars for those boots you got had. Now, don’t go looking down, it happens to the best of us …”
Micah pauses as if he needs a moment to digest his own wisdom, then scuttles around the shop giving a verbal inventory.
“Limited variety, I know. But that’s what you get in a town full of men. All a man really wants is his tobacco, a little salt pork and flour, and a new shirt when the old one falls off his back.”
He hands Alex a pick. The wood is smooth and cool in her hands and heavier than she imagined from the way the men were swinging them this morning.
“Nice, huh? Try this one for size—” Micah takes the pick and hands her a shovel. “Man’s got to be comfortable with his equipment. Feel good, yeah? Yeah?”
She can see the muscles of the empty socket twitching beneath his skin, trying to focus. He rests his weight against the pick.
“Women, see—real, civilized, lacy women—they bring variety to a place. Soon you’re stocking fancy furniture and silk cloth and fancy plates and such. Women, son, the spice of life. Remember that. Should have seen my store in Grass Valley. Packed with trinkets and trifles from France, Chile, England, God knows where else. Barely had room for breeches.”
Micah sighs and quiets for a moment.
“Mr.…” Alex begins.
“Micah, son, call me Micah.”
“Micah. I suppose I’m meant to, well, a claim?”
“‘Meant to well a claim.’ Nearly got yourself a sentence there, boy. But the answer’s yes. Limpy came in here not ten minutes ago, made that claim for you, in your name. Took care of it, is what I’m saying, and not a minute before John Thomas came in here whining about it. Be thankful to him, if I were you, but not too thankful. Limpy’s got his ways of getting more than he gives out of folks, remember that.
“’Course, you got to go to Nevada City and file in the county court to make it official, but we like to keep our own selves straight. More of a formality till someone finds something worth claiming. I doubt the county even knows we’re up here.”
A shout sounds from the road outside, and another answers.
“Anyhow,” says Micah, “it’s typically done the other way round, see. Find the gold, then make the claim. I’d do my own staking, too, if I was you. Later. Right now it’s looking—” Lightning flashes again, the electric energy stands tiny hairs on Alex’s neck and arms on end. “I say it looks like the weather’s gonna keep us all in for a while. ’Bout time, too. Been a dry winter. Mark it clear, when you mark it. Each corner. Sell you some of these, if you want—” He brandishes four wooden stakes. “And a sign nearby stating your right. The law says one hundred feet by fifty, but no one really follows that round here. Just as long as it’s clearly marked and not overlapping anyone else, which shouldn’t be a problem up there. Nobody’s found enough gold to waste the water on, in truth. But, hell, luck’s no predictable animal. Remember that.”
He pauses and Alex fills the space with a nod. “This all you need? ’Cause I’m not usually open but two days a week, the other being day before last.”
Alex nods.
“Fine. Now, gotta ask for cash I’m afraid. Credit comes with a strike you understand. Only reasonable.”
It rains for three days, and for three days Alex sits on the staircase staring down into the saloon as if watching a Christmas pantomime. She has no part in it. She is above, looking down, finding it difficult to remain aloof and indignant with solitude’s cold hands curling around her, making the walls feel very close and the people below very far away. No one seems to see her there. No one says her name.
Rain, as it falls outside, traps old air in the saloon. She thinks, every br
eath I take is someone else’s breath discarded. I am eating other people’s air. She thinks, this should make me full and larger than I am. She thinks, if I stay in this place, I will eat enough man breath to become a man, and I will play cards and drink whiskey and they will never find me. She thinks, it would take two of Gran and two of me to equal one of Emaline, standing there with Jed behind the bar, now mending a sock, now bringing bread from the oven, everywhere at once, and occasionally she heads upstairs with a slack-jawed miner with money in hand. Alex moves over to let them pass.
She thinks, the smell of whiskey is sweeter than wine; but she’s only tasted wine, and then only sips. Nearly a week on her feet, nearly a week of constant movement and now no place to go but her thoughts. She tried to escape to the creek that first rainy day, stood cold and wet on the edge with her claim stakes and shovel as a liquid train of water crashed downstream, covering claims, filling coyote holes and toppling the windlasses into the gutted sink of soil.
Jed said, “You don’t play games with a river in heat—if you was thinking ’bout working today.” He shouted this over the water and over the rain, and she watched and shivered while he dipped a water bucket, holding on as the current gripped and yanked.
Now the road is a river, or many tiny rivers all running toward the creek, a thousand strands of motion, and Alex trapped inside on the stairwell thinking about the four gold coins left in her money pouch, how rich she’d felt with six coins.
Limpy is telling the same story he’d told two days ago, but with a few details added for variety. Three whores instead of the two, and he changed the place from Grass Valley to Nevada City. No one seems to notice or care, and Emaline just nods her appreciation. The jealousy takes Alex by surprise.
