Crown of Dust

by Mary Volmer

  “Shave his belly with a rusty razor!” shouts Preacher, who stumbles through the crowd with a tumbler in hand while Rose frowns from a bench. She holds her hand up like a shield whenever a man asks her to dance. The music veers off to “The Drunken Sailor.”

  Shave his belly with a rusty razor,

  Earlye in the morning!

  Hooray, up she rises,

  Hooray, up she rises,

  Hooray, up she rises,

  Earlye in the morning!

  The words rise up to bounce back and forth across the ravine until hundreds of voices fill the valley.

  Emaline gulps her whiskey, pushes herself to her feet with her shotgun, leads Micah through a romping two-step and trades him for a dewy-faced young man—she grabs his crotch—yes, a young man. Then she bounds over to David, flings him around the cut-grass dance floor, ignoring the sweet-and-sour smell of herself as her armpits drip. Her mouth aches from smiling and she lets her head fall back, trusting David to support her. The stars are overpowered by the bonfire, which throws sparks to the sky, and the tangy mix of singed grass, charred meat, liquor and cedar pine thickens her tongue. She kisses David on the mouth and then discards him for Alex.

  Emaline in the lead. They whirl around, spinning, dipping and twirling as lantern light follows behind in blurred streaks of color. Small teeth, she thinks, squinting down at Alex, but a pretty smile. Dimples.

  “You’re still here,” she yells, and reaches for Alex’s crotch. Alex grimaces. Just checking. Just making sure. Brave young woman with trousers and a pretty smile. Ones to watch out for: brave ones with pretty smiles, she thinks, and the double warmth of pride and whiskey spreads through her, making her heart feel big enough to split.

  “Still here,” Emaline says again and stops dancing. Where is Jed? Her arms fall to her sides. She passes Alex off to another and waves Klein away. For a moment she stands, panting and swaying like a wind-blown cedar, then stumbles back over the bridge to town.

  Alex leans back. Hot breath on her shoulder. She turns to face David, his arms at his side as though weighted; his eyes cold, resistant.

  “Dance?” she asks, surprised at the pleading sound of her voice. David takes a step back as though to turn away. His hands form fists and, for a moment, Alex fights the urge to step away, afraid he will hit her. She should leave him alone, but she doesn’t. There is no reason he should act this way to her. She is “just Alex” to him, and what had stupid, helpless “just Alex” ever done to David? The boy doesn’t deserve to be treated like some kind of criminal when all the boy wants is to be held, to feel David’s arms around her. She means him. The boy. She’s not making sense to herself, and it’s his fault. She belches and tastes liquor and half-digested pork. She spits, aiming for his boots, but misses wide left. He’s jealous. Like John Thomas. Jealous that he didn’t find the gold.

  Alex holds her arms out in a dancing position. “Dance,” she says. A command this time.

  She knows he can—watched him bow to Lou Anne, kissing her hand like some kind of Cornish knight, if there were such things. Lou Anne’s petticoats swished across his legs as she batted her eyes at him and laughed too loud at nothing. What Alex wouldn’t give, right now, for a dress, for long hair in braids. No corset. What Alex wouldn’t give to be strong and loud and respected and beautiful, and she wouldn’t care if anyone approved of her, so long as they loved her and did what she said and never left her lonely.

  Couples swirl around them. Limpy with Micah, Klein with Mrs. Erkstine, Fred with Lou Anne, and Harry with Mason Dourity. Countless other bearded partners dance: Frenchmen with Germans, Englishmen with Irishmen, Northern boys with Southern. Even some of the uninvited Chinese are present, their queues swinging behind them with lives of their own. David’s eyes jump from couple to couple, as though dreaming wide awake, and Alex lifts her boot and slams it hard against his shin. No yelp of pain. No reaction. Nothing. She kicks him again, harder, and his hands fly to her shoulders.

  “Stop!” His face inches from hers.

  They begin to move together, swaying back and forth in one place until their mechanical movement becomes fluid. David’s grip on Alex’s shoulder relaxes and she can feel the blood rush back to the indentions left by his fingers. Bodies migrate around them in a random, self-absorbed disarray. David and Alex are alone, treading countercurrent in a human stew. He smells so familiar. Earth, tobacco, whiskey and sweat. Her head rests upon his shoulder; his hand warms the small of her back.

  The song ends and David pulls away. His breath comes heavy again and his eyes avoid hers. Words weigh on Alex’s tongue. If she told him, David would never tell, would he? Just David. No one else.

  Limpy clears his throat and stands astride the pig carcass with his hand in the air for attention. A giddy silence fills the valley and Alex snaps her mouth shut.

  “Now, it’s been a ’ventful couple months, boy, I tell you!” Limpy says. “And what I hear is most of you didn’t come to town for the gold, after all. Y’all heard about the pig roast—and let me tell you, there’d be a whole hell of a lot more pork to go around without you!”

  Laughter rumbles up in chorus. A high-pitched giggle squeals from the back and Mrs. Erkstine clamps her hand over her mouth, embarrassed.

  “I’m not complaining, mind. Hell, no! Good to have yah. Two pigs next year and three after that, all goes well. Now, there’s just a couple of people we might oughta be thanking, and while I no doubt deserve a large chunk of any credit in this town—”

  “Dear Loward!” bellows Preacher from the middle of the crowd. His hands rise to heaven. His face is bright red, his nose would be at home in a cherry tree. Rose tugs on his sleeve a few times but soon gives up to shrink back into the crowd. Alex grins. New clothes hadn’t changed Preacher so much.

  “Father God! Heavenly, Heavenly Father, we thank you for it all!”

  “Aaaaymen!” someone yells from the back.

  “For the gold, Lord, that brought us here …” His eyes are closed, but his eyeballs move beneath his lids, searching for words. His voice begins to crack and pinch. “And for this here pig that gave its life to feed us in your name, Lord God. Dear God …” A pause. Silence. Alex waits for him to speak again. Waits. And waits. Preacher’s face turns skyward. His mouth opens and his eyes close as though sleeping in place.

  “SIT DOWN!” comes a voice from Alex’s immediate left.

  “Sit down you son-of-a—” replies another on the right, and a bubble of drunk anger percolates through the crowd.

  “Women present, y’all! Women present,” Limpy interjects, reclaiming his audience. He winks at Mrs. Erkstine, his most frequent dance partner. Her hand still covers her mouth as though afraid of the intemperate sounds that might escape. Alex wishes that she would yell or scream or belch, if only to release her from the obvious pain of holding back.

  “I think Alex needs a round of applause for his damned dumb luck,” Limpy continues. “Come on up here, Alex … No?”

  She’s shaking her head no, but the attention warms her and she searches through the faces for Emaline. Hands and elbows give good-natured jabs as she passes through them.

  “And where would we be,” says Limpy, “without my darlin’ Emaline? Where—”

  Her town. Buildings on either side stand as sentries in the darkness, welcoming her. The road’s flat expanse is her marble courtyard. Silence in front of her. A constant fluctuation of white noise behind. Her eyes blur, dilate and open like a mouth too small for the bite.

  She feels the kiss of a breeze in the heavy air. Drought or no drought, this will be a good year. Drought or no drought, Bobcat Creek will flow and she’ll plaster the kitchen walls. The creek will flow and she’ll install shutters, and cover even the stairwell in worsted damask, and hire one or two girls, add a few more rooms. She jumps at the movement up the road.

  Jed with his shiny half-grin, his arms crossed before him, one hand to his chin as if trying to hide that grin. This is what she sees in the darknes
s. Coarse hair beneath her fingers, the calm, steady sound of his heart next to hers. This is what she feels as she stumbles forward, giggling like that silly Lou Anne. Jed in braces, tailored gray trousers, a top hat to make him tall. So hard to see the future … just versions of the present or the past dressed up in other clothes. She’d rather not think beyond the man beneath the tattered trousers, his soft voice as rich as strong coffee. She squints ahead in the darkness, ahead to the shape. Shapes.

  Too many moving shapes, too solid for imagination.

  “Jed?” she whispers, covers her mouth, and finds the forgotten weight of her shotgun in her hand. A horse whinnies and a man’s voice follows, inaudible except for its tone: deep, sober, almost soothing. The warm buzz at the back of Emaline’s neck quiets and cools. Her ears pick new sounds from the air, distinguishing them from accordions, fiddles and drunken laughter.

  Alex pushes through the crowd and over the bridge to town. Behind her, Limpy’s voice rises and falls; laughter breaks and sputters over the sound of the creek. Before her, the silence is thick with movement. Emaline is a dark smudge plodding toward the Victoria. Alex follows.

  Sweat dries in cold streaks across her forehead. She’s forgotten her hat at the bonfire. She feels naked without it, wonders if she should just leave Emaline be, when a man’s voice, then another, freezes her in place.

  She picks out the clink of bridles, the groan of leather on leather. An orange-red flash lingers as sight. A mass of horses with human voices. Someone falls squirming on the ground at the base of the inn.

  “Jed?” Emaline screaming, and Alex’s body stumbles on without her brain. Her heart pounds out her presence and, as the shapes become larger, her breath comes shorter. Men without faces, riding horses. Horses shaking bridles, dancing, nervous, foot to foot. Emaline rushing forward, stopping yards from the figure on the ground. Gunshots from the pig roast echo sharp staccato in the clearing, but when Emaline fires, Alex hears nothing and sees only the flash of light bursting from the mouth of her gun.

  A faceless man falls.

  White-hot gold explodes from the mass of men on horse-back. Alex hears herself scream. Emaline’s shoulders give as if shoved. She stumbles back a step, then forward. A torch is lit and held aloft by a young man with wide frightened eyes.

  “A fucking goddamn,” says the man in front: Jackson Hudson. His gun shakes in his hands, the barrel breathes. “For a nigger? Emaline?”

  Alex bursts into the circle of torchlight. Pistols hold her in place. Jackson Hudson looks from Alex to Emaline to Alex. He points with the gun.

  “You see this?” he says. Emaline slumps down next to Jed’s prostrate form. Crimson circles bloom on her dress. Alex doesn’t know if Emaline has seen her, doesn’t know if Emaline is seeing anything but Jed as she hauls his limp weight toward her so that his head rests in the softness of her belly. Blood pumps from the holes in her chest, into his hair.

  “See what she’s done?” says Hudson. “Boy, look at me.”

  But Alex hears only her own breath coming fast and weak. Sees only the squint of Emaline’s eyes and the barrel of Emaline’s shotgun pointing like a finger. The barrel belches powder, kicks back. Jackson Hudson falls head over heels from his saddle to the ground. A cackle of pistol fire from the men on horses. Hudson pulls himself to his knees. Emaline lies still.

  Falling forward, past smoking guns and the gaping mouths of vigilantes, to the open arms of the porch steps, Alex sinks down beside the torn bodies. Her fingers close around the barrel of Emaline’s shotgun, slick with blood and bits of hair. Hudson staggers to his feet. Alex pulls the trigger, pulls the trigger, pulls the trigger. Hudson sways, unaware he’s just died three times. He stands above her. He clutches his bleeding shoulder with his good hand, a pistol with the other. His eyebrows furrow.

  “Give me the gun,” says Hudson.

  She shakes her head, no.

  “Don’t make me shoot you, too,” he says, and cocks the pistol.

  She shakes her head again, closes her eyes when his finger tightens on the trigger, ready for the flash. She’s not ready for his boot in her gut. He yanks the shotgun away, dismisses her with a backward glance. “Gave her the goddamned thing in the first place.” He motions to the wide-eyed young man with the torch.

  “Burn it,” he says. “Burn it all.”

  19

  She tucks her mind in her pocket and lets muscle memory transform her movements into a thoughtless routine. She’s just digging a coyote hole, six feet long, three feet wide. Just looking for gold. On her lips must be the salt of sweat. No one cries when looking for gold.

  “That’s enough.” Limpy’s hand on her shoulder. “Alex, that’s deep enough.”

  Alex rubs red earth between her fingers and touches it to her tongue, wishing she could taste the hope David always seems to find there. She dusts her hands on her trousers, leaving fingerprints on her thighs, and leans on her shovel. Limpy’s hand dangles before her. She grabs it and lets him haul her to the surface.

  Behind her, the citizens of Motherlode, California, tiptoe around hot embers. The fire burned all night, sucking up the pine sap of the new wooden walls, and filling the air with a disgustingly pleasant cedar scent. Only by will and luck was the blaze stopped just short of Heinrich’s shoe store on the south side of the road. The livery, David’s flimsy cabin and the cigar shop stand apologetically untouched, while the Victoria Inn and the entire north quarter of town, including the chapel, have been reduced to smoldering ruins.

  The flames dazzled her at first. The sight was the opposite of sobering, and, even when others arrived to help put out the flames and drag the bodies away from the Victoria’s crumbling balcony, her throat was thick with a nauseous intoxication. She stood in a line of people as buckets of water passed hand to hand with ant-like sedulity. Wet blankets flapped up and down like one-winged birds. Had thought been possible, had her eyes seen anything but the flames, had she the perspective of the owl overhead, she might have recognized the surreal beauty of the night. A hundred forms, black against the red-yellow flames, gyrating in some elemental dance.

  But now the sun has risen, the flames have been quelled, and three dead bodies lie blistering by the creek. Alex takes off her hat, places it over Emaline’s face, and shoos the flies away. She stands to the side when Harry and Micah lift Emaline’s body onto a clean white sheet that they wrap around her like a cocoon. They manage ten yards before stopping to rest her girth against their knees. David and Limpy arrive to help.

  “What we do with Jed?” asks Harry. But for Alex there is no question. They all know what Emaline would want and, as improper as it seems, they lift Jed and carry him down Victor Lane, turning left at what was once the chapel, and lay him next to her. The other body remains creekside with a blue bandana covering the face and a bloody red hole through the heart. Of course Alex recognizes him. Few grown men have hair that fair or a frame that small and stocky. They will bury him later, behind the chicken coop, near the outhouse, but only because they feel they have to. A human being, after all, if a rotten one. David picks up his shovel and begins to dig another grave. Alex sits by Emaline’s stiffening body. She is waiting for Emaline’s mouth to open and orders to come out. Waits and waits as her eyes travel up and down with David’s shovel.

  By the time David is done, the whole town has gathered in a disorganized group, waiting for someone to take charge. Limpy’s jaw juts outward and quivers with force enough to shake his whole body. Micah looks at his boots and chews a hole through his bottom lip. Harry’s head tips skyward. His eyes are shallow flooded lakes, and Fred stands close to him, breathing through clenched teeth. Lou Anne grips her mother’s skirts and cries. Above them, a single vulture is circling lower and lower, and in the chicken coop, behind the smoking remains of the Victoria Inn, the Rhode Island Red lays an egg.

  Preacher John steps forward, parting the throng with touches on shoulders. He reaches down, brings Alex to her feet, helps David out of the second grave, and
turns to face his congregation. He swipes his hat from his head. He digs in his pocket, finds his Bible, flips through. He purses his lips as though ready to speak, then shakes his head and mumbles something to himself. He closes the Bible, gazes out over the crowd.

  “Well,” he says, “my mamma, she wouldn’t have liked Miss Emaline none. Would have called her an unholy woman, the kind to stay away from, the kind that opens wide the gates of hell.”

  He colors as if sensing he’s gone too far. “But then, Mamma didn’t want me coming here, neither. Said California would ruin me, as I was never inclined to virtue in the first place. Said I’d find gold at the price of my soul, and she was right, at first, I guess. I was heading to no good and know’d it, and, long story short, I decided ’bout time for a change, but didn’t know quite how to go about it.”

  He wrings his hat like a wet rag, his voice taking an upturn. “Emaline, she saw things different from most. Saw me different, better than I was, am. Saw the man I was trying to be. Think that’s how she was with everyone.”

  A murmur rumbles through the crowd and Alex takes a step to the side and presses back against the turned-soil smell of David. She imagines Emaline in the kitchen, the sound of her humming, the heady grace of her efficiency, each movement deliberate, controlled as she kneaded the bread, or peeled potatoes, or sewed a seam, never feeling the need to make a task harder than it was, never feeling the need to make an art out of a chore. As Alex swept, pushing the dirt around to settle in much the same place, she’d felt the vital energy of the woman surrounding her like a hug. She wishes now that it had been a hug, wishes she had felt those arms around her, holding her close until the systematic execution of small tasks surmounted all fear of larger troubles. But Emaline was not one to give away a hug, not even that night in her room with her hair undone around her shoulders. Her face had been passive, not bent on understanding, just accepting. In her nightshift, with her hair down, the full flush of her radiance had bubbled from within her, coating Alex in its afterglow. And if she wasn’t before, she is now and forever in Alex’s memory, a beautiful woman, a queen with a thick middle and bad eyesight. Emaline is gone, and Alex is again alone with her secrets. Her sinuses pulse with the pressure of tears, but she cannot cry. The urge to leave Motherlode comes sudden and violent.