by Mary Volmer
“I brought this. For you,” she adds, taking the calico from beneath her arm. She holds it before her as though judging fit. “The one you got’s a bit rank, you don’t mind me saying.”
Alex says nothing, but ventures cautiously forward, his feet very light on the floor. It strikes her just how small he seems now with his shoulders hunched, his arms tucked in as though his guts would otherwise spill out. He’d waltzed into town today like the crown prince himself, a trail of men following after him, practically falling at his feet. But she can’t recall anything about his expression. Her attention, as now, was fixated on the gold. The devil himself might as well have been carrying it. She lays the shirt flat upon the bed and smoothes the sleeves over the chest.
“Try it. Bound to fit you,” she says, and waits. His eyes flit from her to the shirt, as if either will bite him. Emaline shakes her head, waves away her disbelief, and turns to leave in one motion. She’s got better things to do than wait for a thank—“Emaline?”
Emaline turns round. “Thank you?”
She closes the door behind her, ignoring the heavy lump in her gut. He was forgettable before, without the gold. Safer for it.
Downstairs she finds David leaning against the wall on a stool and staring out at the foolery in the road. He’s lit the lamps and the fishy smell of the oil permeates the room. On the far wall, across from the kitchen, the portrait of Queen Victoria gazes out across the saloon, her complexion all the more pale in the yellow light. “Damn fools,” says Emaline, and the third leg of David’s stool thumps to the ground. “Don’t want to join them?”
“No, thank you,” he says. Emaline pauses, holding the kitchen door half open, looking back up the stairs.
“David?” she says. “Do me a favor?”
As she expects, he nods a quick agreement. She points to Alex’s room above them. “Watch out for him for me.” She doesn’t expect the ashen look that falls across his face. He sits up straight. “Yes?” Emaline asks. Before he can answer, the door of the saloon slams open and Limpy ducks beneath the doorframe holding two bottles by their glass necks.
“Rum!” says Limpy, an exclamation and a statement. Behind him, the street is a flurry of movement. The shadows of evening spread like fingers through town.
“Thank you, David,” Emaline says, and pushes through to the kitchen, leaving him with his mouth open.
Limpy met Alex at the stairwell, called her the Golden Boy, bought her a drink and whiskey isn’t nearly as sweet as she’d imagined.
“Drink it down, son,” says Limpy, leaning with his back to the bar. The taste lingers in her mouth like the fuzz of a peach. She squirms on her stool and readjusts the nugget where it hangs hidden in the pouch between her thighs.
Klein muscles the accordion to life and a man in the corner stands on his stool singing, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming …” in a wavering Scottish brogue. It takes a rag to his face to sit him down, but the song has caught here and there, and while none of the singers agree on a verse, all come together in time for the truth to go marching on.
“Whiskey,” Limpy says, “is not meant for sipping, am I right? Micah? Show the boy how it’s done.”
Micah tips his head back, barely swallowing. He orders two more drinks, offers one to Alex. She shakes her head. “No, Micah. Thank you.”
“Do well to accept gifts given you.” He sets the cup down anyway. “Remember that.”
“Women and whiskey, son, rarely come free,” says Limpy.
“Not that I blame you,” says Micah, “what with this rotgut-mule-piss whiskey Jed’s been serving. Jed? Jed, a cup of your best for the boy. New England rum.”
“And don’t tell us you ain’t got any,” says Limpy. “Carried two bottles in myself this very afternoon. Got the good stuff in your own glass—that’s what I thought.”
Jed is wiping a clean spot on the bar, but his eyes follow Emaline as she circles the room, talking, laughing, gathering cups as she goes. If Emaline feels eyes, she ignores them.
Alex adjusts herself. She takes another sip of the whiskey in her hand and finds it empty. The rum smells of sugar beets, but she doesn’t trust the sweetness until she tastes it, soft on her tongue, slipping down her throat so easy.
“Good, huh? What I tell you? New England rum,” says Micah, separating Eng and land. “You’re welcome.” He winks his eye and she watches him totter back to his poker game.
She’d practiced walking about her room, adjusting the knot around her waist to still the anchor-like swing. But as she watches the Scotsman approach the bar, she wonders if her nugget hangs a bit too low. She couldn’t leave it in the room, didn’t quite trust the heavy look in Emaline’s eye at the suggestion. Nor was Alex ready to part with the flannel, her adopted skin.
She ducks low over her drink, now, every time the woman passes.
The tobacco smoke rises layer upon layer to the ceiling and the room feels smaller, more cluttered even than it looked from the stairwell, as if each clump of bodies sections off its own living, breathing room. Man breath, she thinks. Men springing from rocks. What would Gran think of that? Men from rocks. She takes a sip. Water from wine. Her head feels very large. She pulls away from the hand tugging at her flannel. New. She feels new. The Golden Boy Alex. She turns to find Preacher John pointing at his Bible as if trying to spear the words with his fingernail.
“You read?”
Alex nods her head yes and Preacher says, “’Course not, no,” and begins pointing out every word as he reads, tugging on Alex’s arm now and then to regain her attention.
“Whoever sows sp-spar-sparingly,” Preacher reads, “will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows gener-ous generous-ly will also reap generously. God loves a cheerful giver.”
Preacher nods furiously and Alex finds her head bobbing right along. “A cheerful giver,” Preacher says again as Limpy leans over.
“Now, Preacher, you’re not bothering the boy, are you?” He takes the empty cup from Alex’s hand and gives her another rum. “Me and Alex have business, you understand. Business.”
“Business,” says Alex, and s’s tickle her tongue. “Generosity and righteousness,” Preacher says, still tugging on Alex’s sleeve. Limpy pulls her away. He drapes his great arm like a yoke across her shoulder.
“Generosity. All well and good,” he says. “But men like us have to look out for our own interests, Alex. Drink up now, attaboy. Been thinking real hard ’bout you, son, all night, real hard. Always had a good feeling ’bout-chah. It’s a gift. Always could tell an honest man by lookin’, and I liked the look of you. From day one, boy, ask anyone, ask David. ‘Got luck riding with him,’ I tells him. David’s got skill, but you need both.”
“I say I was feeling lucky tonight?” yells Micah, and a groan sounds from the men at his table, David, John Thomas, Harry and Fred among them.
“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 strik
e 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. F
ound 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.
