Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel)

by Toni Dwiggins

I wondered if Dad put it that way to his sons. Robert, you’re the prize. Henry, you’re waste.

  I drifted over to the sluice box. I glimpsed something inside, caught between riffles. Something silvery. I thought, if that’s a drop of mercury in there right now, then Henry Shelburne AKA Quicksilver was playing some goddamn stupid game.

  I moved for a closer look. It had disappeared. I blinked. Glint of sunlight on a nailhead or something. Now you see it, now you don’t. Sunlight’s playing hide and seek.

  “Here’s more numbers for you,” Shelburne said. “The miners used ten pounds of mercury for every foot of sluice. Eighty thousand pounds a year. Thirty percent of it washed away. Poof! I’d never green-light a project with that level of waste.”

  I thought, he’s got a lot of numbers at the ready. Who remembers precise numbers like that? Especially when you learned this stuff as a kid. If it were me, I’d just say the miners put a shitload more mercury into the ground than they took out in gold.

  Shelburne turned to Walter. “Not Dogtown, hey?”

  “No,” Walter said. He shouldered his backpack. Zipped his parka. “Rather, the other extreme.”

  I felt I ought to say something to my partner. Yeah, you fell in love with a Hollywood facade and the reality is your grown-up hobby has a real dark history but I understand that you can love something in the whole and yet not love every part of it. I understand why you wanted to avoid this place. And I’m certainly no paragon of consistency. I’m an environmentalist who uses paper towels wantonly. Who lives the pure life?

  I said, “Who lives the pure life?”

  Both Shelburne and Walter looked at me in some surprise.

  I turned away. My field of view altered a smidge. Enough to get a fresh look into the sluice box, to see that the something silvery that had caught my eye wasn’t a nailhead. It was a dime.

  I said, “Somebody dropped a dime.”

  Shelburne was suddenly beside me, hands braced on the rough rim of the sluice box. Strong hands. Manicured. City-boy hands on rough wood. Fingers flexed. Knuckles white.

  Walter joined us. “Somebody dropped a number of dimes.”

  I looked further. Dimes scattered throughout the sluice box. All of them shiny. Innocent of dust. How long could a dime lay in a sluice box before acquiring at least a freckling of dust? Hours? If that.

  Shelburne picked up a dime.

  Walter said, “Is this significant?”

  Shelburne spun. Scanning the trees around the clearing. “Give me a minute,” he said. Voice hoarse. Choked. He jammed his water bottle into the pocket and shoved off. Just short of a run.

  Walter and I stood flatfooted. A minute to do what?

  “We don’t want to lose him,” Walter said.

  Hell no, we sure didn’t want to lose him, not down here in this jungle. We plunged back into the maze where Shelburne had disappeared.

  But we had already fallen behind. Although I could hear him rustling through the vegetation up ahead, I could not see him. No means of judging distance, no map to consult because quite clearly the way through the maze altered season by season as the underbrush crept this way and that. I shouted “wait” and Shelburne somewhere up ahead muttered something in reply but it did not matter because his voice was the clue and so I followed the bushwhacked path to the left instead of to the right. I heard Walter behind me, the rock hammer and trenching tool tied to his pack rattling like coins in a pocket. Like dropped dimes. Only they weren’t dropped, right? They were placed, scattered throughout the sluice box so as not to be missed. Henry placed them. Who else? And spooked his brother in the bargain.

  And now as I crashed through the woods my sense of smell kicked in. My nose stung. There was that odd odor, much stronger now than when I’d first sniffed it hiking up the ego-blazed trail into the Shelburne family neighborhood. It was a medicinal smell. It was like bitter greens I’d once boiled to oblivion. It had an undercurrent of rotting sweet fruit. I turned to Walter and said “what’s that stink?” but he was too far back to hear me or too short on breath to reply.

  And then I broke free of the willow jungle and waded hip-deep into cattails and I saw Shelburne ahead, on the far side of a stinking pond red with iron-rich silt.

  He was wading through a field of brush, peering into a thicket of pines beyond.

  I shouted.

  He stiffened. Turned. Lifted a hand to us.

  We skirted the pond and joined him.

  I expelled the words. “What. The. Hell?”

  “I thought....” He passed a hand across his eyes. “Thought I’d find Henry.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “But the dimes said he came this way?”

  “Yes.”

  Walter said, “Call for him.”

  “Haven’t I been? For the past three hours?” Shelburne lifted his palms. “Fine, I’ll shout my fool head off. Henry Henry Henry Henry!”

  There was no reply.

  Shelburne glanced up. Around.

  I followed suit, looking up to the rim of the pit. There were a dozen viewpoints. More. I looked around us. Jungle. Woods.

  Walter said, “And if he’s watching?”

  “Christ.” Shelburne flashed a grim smile. Shook his head. “Christ, Henry.” Shelburne suddenly shouted to the sky, “You want the dog and pony show?”

  There was no reply.

  Walter said, thinly, “Why don’t you give us the dog and pony show?”

  After a long moment Shelburne said, “Why not?”

  Walter folded his arms.

  “It starts with the dime,” Shelburne said. “Did you ever hear the expression you’re on my dime? Dad loved that expression. He wasn’t talking allowance, he was talking I own you.” Shelburne unbuckled his hip belt. “So of course Henry and I would challenge each other to do outrageous shit, betting a dime on it. In particular, there was the time I flicked the dime into the sluice box, making a particular outrageous bet.”

  “In what sense outrageous?”

  Shelburne slipped his pack off one shoulder and slid it around to access the stash pocket. He retrieved something. Shouldered the pack.

  I said, “What’s in your hand?”

  He displayed a box of matches.

  “Good God man,” Walter said, “you’re standing in mountain misery.”

  I looked at the brush, some kind of groundcover, low-lying ferns. My nose stung. It had not stopped stinging since I’d crashed through the maze. Now I realized I’d found the source of the odd odor. It came from the ferns.

  “That’s the point,” Shelburne said. “The thing about mountain misery is this time of year its leaves are coated with resin. Flammable as hell.”

  I said, “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Far from it. There’s a pond behind you. But it won’t be necessary. If I may?”

  Walter gave a brusque nod.

  “Here’s how it works. You’ve got two boys pretty much brought up in the wild. Daring each other to do the outrageous. You’ve got a father who leaves them alone with dangerous toys. Some dads give their boys boxing gloves to pound out the rivalry. Ours gave us all this. So we made bets. Always a dime.” He paused and made a slow survey of the jungle, of the rim. Then his focus snapped back to us. “Let’s pretend Henry is standing here with me in the misery. We’re facing each other. Use your imagination.”

  I didn’t need to. Henry was parked in my mind.

  “Here’s how it played,” Shelburne said. “We flipped the dime to see who went first. I chose heads. The dime landed heads-up. I went first.” Shelburne lit a match. He watched it burn down. When the flame neared his fingers he blew it out. He snapped the matchstick in half and put it in his pocket. He took another match from the box. “Henry’s turn.” Shelburne lit the second match. “I’m playing Henry here, of course.” Shelburne watched the match burn down. Blew it out. Snapped it, pocketed it.

  I watched, uneasy. If Henry was watching, what was he thinking?
r />   Shelburne took out a third match. “My turn again.” He lit the match. “Mind you, we went through a lot of matches before we got up the nerve to finish the game. But I’m going to fast forward to the last turn. My turn.” He watched the match burn down. Before the flame could lick his skin he opened his fingers and let the match drop. It fell onto a netting of fern. There was a tiny explosion, and then a tiny flame licked along the adjacent ferns in a delicate dance. Oily black smoke curled up.

  Reflexively, I reached for my water bottle.

  Before I could unscrew the cap, Shelburne stomped out the tiny conflagration.

  When the fire was fully extinguished, I said, “Just to be sure I’ve got this straight—which one of you tried to set the forest on fire?”

  “I did. Henry flinched. Blew out his match.”

  The smell of rotting overcooked ferns turned my stomach. I felt a bit like Alice navigating her inside-out world. Henry Shelburne was supposed to be the mercurial kid, the one who didn’t understand limits, but now Robert Shelburne was demonstrating the reverse.

  Robert Shelburne waded out of the mountain misery. His boots and pant cuffs were streaked with pitchy black resin. “By the way, the game wasn’t playing with fire. It was reclaiming the gold.”

  Walter leaned in. “What do you mean?”

  “Right around here was a remainder of the sluiceway system. Henry and I found it, nearly overgrown with mountain misery. Full of sediment, and the sediment was laced with amalgam.” He glanced at me. “The gold-mercury mix.”

  I remembered. Bonded like brothers.

  “You went after the gold,” Walter said.

  “We went after the gold,” Shelburne agreed. “Bled off the mercury with fire.”

  “You vaporized the mercury?”

  “We vaporized the mercury.”

  Walter shook his head.

  I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “We stayed upwind. No harm done.”

  “No harm? Does your brother not have mercury poisoning?”

  Shelburne shot me a hard look. “No harm that day.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning no harm that day but I put an idea in my brother’s head. He took it from there. He kept on messing around with mercury, on his own. Burning old riffle blocks impregnated with amalgam. Panning slugs of amalgam from the rivers and then cooking them over an open fire to separate out the gold. And Henry thought he could keep dancing away from the vapor. More like dancing with the devil.”

  I shook my head.

  “And now,” Shelburne said, “he leaves me the dimes. You asked about the message? Blame. Short and sweet. And I get it.” He shouted once again, to the sky, “I get it, Bro.”

  I said, suddenly chilled, “So what does he want?”

  “Fuck if I know. Apology? Admission of guilt?”

  First I’d heard Robert Shelburne use that particular expletive. First I’d seen him lose any manner of control. I took note.

  Walter said, “Is there a chance he wants revenge? To harm you?”

  “He’s had years to nurse that grudge. He could have sent me a bucket of dimes a hundred times over.”

  “Then why now?”

  “My best guess? Culmination. A lifetime of failures. Dad dies. Henry’s doing his last shot at finding the legacy. And maybe he’s tying up loose ends.” Shelburne suddenly grinned, tight. “Don’t worry. He’s not a violent man. If he wants to settle a grudge with me, it’ll be just that. The two of us. All I need from you is to get me to him. I’ll take it from there.”

  “Still,” I said, “you’re dealing with that chaotic mind.”

  Shelburne took a moment. “Let me ask you something. You told me your brother died. How did that happen?”

  “How is that relevant?”

  “If you’d rather not...”

  I said, “He had hemophilia—a blood-clotting disorder. He fell and hit his head. Bled into the brain.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “So was I. How is this relevant?”

  “What if you’d been able to ... catch him? What if you’d been there?”

  “I was there.”

  Walter put a hand on my arm.

  I added, “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Shelburne said, “What if you could go back in time, and pay attention?”

  “What a damn fool question.”

  “Maybe so. But I don’t want to be asking myself that damn fool question some day.”

  9

  We set off.

  We rounded the pond, giving the cattails and the spongy soil a wide berth, circling to the far sit of the great pit, passing the crumbling mouth of a dark tunnel. The little stream we’d crossed earlier appeared here, braiding with another little stream, ferrying muck and sediment into the tunnel.

  I peered inside. No light. The sound of flowing water. A blast of cold air. I shivered.

  “No,” Shelburne said, “he won’t be in there.”

  He doesn’t like enclosed spaces. I got it. Claustrophobic, among his other impairments.

  Shelburne led us around the tunnel and out of the giant mining pit and over the lip down into the canyon below.

  Still the Trail of Trial and Error, he said.

  And now, the fast way down to our next target.

  He took us by way of the bouldery outflow of the tunnel, the escape route of sludge and debris once washed out of the sluiceway and into the drainage tunnel, where the pit once and still disgorged its waste, where the father taught the boys to pan the tailings for pickings. Robert Shelburne shouted “Henry” and we listened for a moment to the hiss of water streaming out of the tunnel and boiling over the boulders as it picked up speed on the down slope.

  The debris stream fed into a larger creek that cut a channel into the canyon side.

  The canyon steepened.

  Waterfalls muscled down over boulders.

  The trail veered close to the tumbling creek and I thought, easy to lose your footing.

  Shelburne nimbly navigated the trail like he’d done it a thousand times before.

  We dropped until our trail bottomed out onto an oak-studded ledge overlooking a wide rocky river.

  The river ran like a boulevard through a high-rise canyon.

  I looked downriver, to the west, and then upriver, to the east. We were in the southern district of the Shelburne neighborhood.

  Walter said, “Which way would Henry have gone?”

  Shelburne said, “I’m sure he’s been all over this river canyon but which way now? I don’t know. From here, the trail goes east and west. From here, we follow the river. At least according to my grandfather’s letters, as interpreted by my father. The trail meets the waterway, at the southern grapes.”

  “Grapes?”

  “Early explorers found wild grapes growing along the banks and named the river for them. They spoke Spanish. Grapes in Spanish is uvas. My grandfather spoke Spanish. My father got a Spanish-English dictionary. Voila, the Yuba River. South fork.”

  “So from here,” I said, “Henry might go either direction.”

  Shelburne nodded. “Which way would you go?”

  ~ ~ ~

  We had studied the geologic maps back at the lab.

  Out in the field, it was show time.

  The Shelburne family blue lead offshoot splintered at the river. There were mapped outcrops west, and east. So the question became, in which direction lay the contact metamorphic zone with the chiastolite hornfels aureole? Because that was the landmark Henry Shelburne would have sought.

  Walter spread his hands, east and west. “In either direction we have a pluton invading metamorphic rock. A pluton, if you’ll recall Mr. Shelburne, is a large body of igneous rock that can cook the country rock to hornfels.”

  “Good, fine.” Shelburne looked ready to bolt. “Which way?”

  I jerked a thumb downriver. “South Yuba Rivers Pluton is thataway.”

  Walter jerked a thumb upriver. “Bowman Lake
Pluton is up yonder.”

  “Although,” I said, “we’re not necessarily looking for a large mapped pluton.”

  Walter nodded. “Could be a small and unmapped igneous dike.”

  “Which way do you like?” I asked my partner.

  Walter scratched his ear, considering. “I like the mapped rock unit up yonder.”

  As did I. The rock unit up yonder was known to have been intruded by numerous small igneous dikes. I said, “I tend to agree.”

  “Then let’s go.” Shelburne turned. “Upriver.”

  More like, above the river. The river was a good sixty feet below us.

  I paused to read a wooden interpretive sign staked into the ground. Once, the river had been level with the ground we now stood upon. And then debris had washed down from the mining pit above, elevating the river bed. And then, over time, the flowing water carved out its bed anew, leaving behind compacted-gravel benches like the one beneath our feet.

  As soon as possible we’d need access to the river.

  Meanwhile, we were at the mercy of the trail.

  Save for Shelburne occasionally shouting his brother’s name, we hiked in silence. It was a rollercoaster trail that took our breath away. The trail paralleled the river but the rugged rock of the canyon walls forced the route to climb, traversing the descending ridges and knife-gullied canyons. Now and again the trail dipped down steep rock benches to skirt the river but there was no way down to the gravel banks, save a dicey scramble.

  We pushed on.

  Finally we got lucky. The trail jacked hard right and switchbacked down to the river’s rocky bench.

  “What do you think?” Walter asked me.

  I took in the lay of the land. “I think it’s prime.”

  “I think,” Shelburne said, “we should keep moving.”

  Walter turned to Shelburne. “We need to establish a baseline. This appears to be a natural catch-basin for anything coming downriver. Sediment, debris, minerals. Including, perhaps, float from a metamorphic contact upriver.”

  Shelburne gave a brusque nod.

  I thought, something here doesn’t sit right with him. I wondered, what’s here?

  Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I could see. The river bank was paved in cobbles and pebbles, armored with boulders. A gravelly sandbar extended halfway across the water.