by D. J. Butler
Gus chased the children out and met Hiram at the counter again. “Forgive me.”
Hiram forced himself to smile. “Children. Nothing to forgive.”
“You don’t look like a miner,” Gus said. “Or a doctor, or a deputy sheriff.”
“Is that who usually visits Spring Canyon and the mines?”
Gus nodded. “Undertaker, once in a while. Peddlers. And I heard some of the miners talk about a union man, which I didn’t believe until I saw it with my own…eye.” He rolled his good eye in a circle, the inert one staying fixed on Hiram.
“Is that glass?”
Gus leaned forward, gripped the eyeball in question with the fingers of one hand, and popped it from its socket. Setting it on the countertop, he rolled it toward Hiram.
Hiram caught the eye. The sphere lay warm in his hand, staring up at him. It might have been a large marble. He handed it back to Gus. “Might want to wash that off.”
The shopkeeper laughed, his eye socket now a sunken pit with mostly-closed eyelids hanging loosely over it. He tucked the glass eye into a breast pocket. “Old injury. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Two dopes.” Hiram instantly regretted the word. “Cokes, I mean. From the icebox, if you have any.”
“Cold day outside, though. You sure you wouldn’t rather have a hot coffee?”
Hiram in fact would have preferred a hot coffee. Black, and if sweetened, then with a little beet syrup. The way Grandma Hettie had always taken it, and the way Hiram had grown up taking it, with bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes, before going out to work the farm. Food that filled your stomach, food you could work on.
But he’d promised John Wells he would give up coffee, and Hiram Woolley kept his promises. Wells had made it clear that Bishop Cannon felt strongly about the matter, and that as the bishop’s second counsellor, Wells would sustain the man.
“Two Cokes, please.” Hiram hesitated. The herbs, the strange windows, the poppet, all made him wonder if he should reveal himself to Gus Dollar.
Or had Gus already guessed?
“I’ve heard men say,” Gus said slowly, his accent becoming more German with each word, “that drinking Coca-Cola, instead of coffee and wine, helps a man keep a chaste and sober mind.”
“Hmm,” Hiram murmured.
“Or on the other hand,” Gus said, “you could just be one of these Mormons.”
Hiram smiled. “Maybe both things could be true.”
“Maybe.” Gus chuckled. “So, what are you doing, driving up to the coal mines, dressed like a farmer in those overalls, and your old soldier’s coat over the top?”
“I’m looking for the Kimball Mine. I didn’t see a sign.”
“Left fork,” Gus said. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m buying two Cokes. And I am a farmer.”
Gus retrieved two bottles from the icebox in the rear corner of the store. “Your business.”
The shopkeeper’s nonchalance embarrassed Hiram. Was he being rude because he envied the man? “I’m delivering food. To a man named William Sorenson. Food for the miners out of work.”
“That’s every miner at the Kimball Mine. Caring for the widows and the fatherless, eh? Pure religion and undefiled?” Gus set the Cokes on the counter. “Five cents. Bill Sorenson. The mine foreman. His real name is actually Vilhelm, but he insists on being called Bill.”
“Shouldn’t that be ten cents?” Hiram gestured at the price, clearly spelled out on the bright red door of the icebox. “Vilhelm Sorenson…is he a Swede, then?”
“A Dane. If you personally plan to drink both these bottles, the price is ten cents.” Gus Dollar smiled. “But if one of them is for the young man sitting in that truck outside, then I’ll accept a nickel.”
Hiram wanted to refuse the gift, insist on paying the full dime, but he didn’t. It would be an act of foolish pride to refuse another man the opportunity to do a kindness.
“And if I get a Snickers, too?”
“Then a dime in total.”
Hiram tendered a dull coin and took the Cokes and the candy, putting the cream-paper-wrapped square into his pocket. He wouldn’t eat it today, but Michael might need it later on. “Why would you…what would make you say that thing you said, about a chaste and sober mind?”
“You look like a man acquainted with fasting,” Gus said with a faint smile.
Hiram smiled back. “President Roosevelt might say we’ve all become better acquainted with fasting in recent years.”
Gus nodded. “White man and an Indian traveling together. Maybe he’s your teacher. Your master in the mysterious arts.”
“He’s my son.” Hiram felt his brow furrowing, against his will. “He was a baby when his mother died from the Spanish flu. I knew his father in the Great War, so I adopted him.”
“I’m joking.” The word sounded very German, like choking. “I saw the way you looked at my charm.”
Involuntarily, Hiram shot a glance at the poppet and blushed. “My grandmother raised me. She…read the almanac. Understood the true meanings of the Psalms.”
“A hexe. A cunning woman. Knew the properties of stones?”
Hiram nodded.
“Had a library of strange books?” Gus pressed.
Hiram rushed to change the subject. “The miners need food.” He gestured at the sign over the counter. “You could give them credit.”
“I do,” Gus said. “Despite what I wrote on the sign. But I’ve given just about all I can give now. A storekeeper who offers everyone credit starves to death. Or his children starve.”
“The mine will be open soon.” Hiram said it hopefully, willing it to be true.
Gus Dollar nodded. “The mine will be open soon. And if not, soon enough the men will take to the rails. The good thing about being so close to Helper is that there’s always a train to catch.”
“And if the men go hoboing, what happens to the families?”
Gus shrugged. “The good men send money back. But you can’t ride the blinds with a small child, or a pregnant woman.”
“Bad time to be looking for work.”
“Bad time.” Gus nodded. “And what food are you bringing the miners, then?”
“Ham,” Hiram said. “Flour. Tinned vegetables.”
Gus reached across the counter to clap Hiram’s shoulder. “You’ll do alright, cunning man. You’ll do alright.”
Hiram wasn’t so sure.
Chapter Four
Hiram and Michael continued up the left fork of Spring Canyon, the Double-A rattling on every stone. A sharp turn to the right brought them to a steep hill. Michael tried to take it in third gear and the engine protested.
“You’ll want to drop into second gear, son.”
“Just have to go faster is all,” Michael insisted.
Michael might damage the truck. Or worse, spill the pile of groceries strapped to the Double-A’s bed. Hiram kept those worries to himself. “You’re driving.”
Michael stomped on the accelerator pedal and the engine cycled faster.
Hiram’s thoughts lingered on Gus Dollar and his store, the wax poppet, the herbs in the windows, the curious lead shapes. Hiram was uncomfortable that the man was so open about his hexing, and yet he was…content. His business thrived and his family prospered.
The cab of the Double-A again grew chill, and Hiram shrugged down into his green overcoat as far as he could. No Model A or Double-A left Henry Ford’s factory with a heater, but there was a jobber you could install after the fact. Hiram kept meaning to get one, but it seemed just as easy to keep an extra coat and gloves in the truck.
Hiram glanced behind him to check that the crates of beets and groceries were okay, given the steepness and roughness of the road. Michael had done a good job roping them down to the wooden slats of the truck; knots were one of the things he’d mastered before dropping out of the Boy Scouts.
The engine sputtered and they lost speed, a little short of the top. Michael set his sweating Coke b
ottle between his legs to shift back into second. “You were right. Fortunately, you’re the kind of father not much given to rubbing my nose in my mistakes.”
“And you’re the kind of son who always holds his tongue.”
Michael laughed out loud. “Bullseye, Pap.”
Hiram smiled.
“Once again, you’ve taken me to the middle of nowhere.” Michael shook his head and grimaced. “I’m fairly certain that there are families in San Francisco that could use groceries. Los Angeles is also probably low on sugar beets.”
“What about Tooele?” Hiram grinned.
“We’ve already been there,” Michael said. “That was the time you were out all night, messing with the well on that one guy’s farm.”
“Abramović’s ranch.” Hiram had lied to Michael about the reason why he hadn’t slept that night. The farm had been plagued by the spirit of Mr. Abramović’s mother, who had been cruel in life and vengeful in death. Hiram had eased her transition with a charm, but he had a scar on his back from her cold fingernails.
He hated lying to Michael. Guilt filled his pockets like stones.
They turned another corner and Hiram got his first look at the Kimball mining camp.
“Stop for a second, son.” To the right was the camp itself, a city of irregular, leaning buildings. Hiram saw single-room houses and larger dormitories, all of their roofs and many of their walls tacked against the weather with tar paper. There were also tents and other larger buildings: a school maybe, or the company store, a church, a union hall. At the very top, pressed into the crack of a narrow stone-walled side canyon, was the mine entrance itself, surrounded by a handful of more solidly-built yellow stone buildings. Two tracks of rails led from the opening to the right and a long wooden structure with a metal chute, crouching above the canyon atop a skeletal tower of thick timbers like a giant mountain lion, ready to pounce; the tipple was where the coal would be sorted and dumped into big trucks to be driven down the canyon to the train.
Electric wire jostled up the canyon on low poles, but it only seemed to connect to the larger buildings. Outhouses sprang up among the houses like weeds in a neglected furrow. Cars—mostly Model Ts, battered, dirty, and rusting—squatted in front of the many of the houses on a track that was more a stream of mud than a road.
If the food on the back of Hiram’s truck had to feed all those people, it would be gone in forty-eight hours.
A gaggle of red-faced children ran past, waving carved sticks at each other. They were stick-thin and dirty, their coats too thin for winter. “Bang, bang, bang!” one group shouted.
“Bang, bang! You’re dead, Butch!” the others yelled.
“Nobody kills Butch Cassidy! Ain’t you heard? He’s still alive and living in Urgentina!”
The gang and pursuing posse both skidded through dirty snow and dropped out of sight down the hill.
The north-facing side of the canyon had far more plant life; below the camp were clusters of willows and cottonwoods, leafless and gray along the creek. Across the water and the road, the south-facing canyon cliffs collected big boulders and few plants. The Kimball house perched there, a shadowy red against the washed-out red rock cliffs like a vulture fresh from its feast. The house didn’t even flirt with trees, a lawn, or a garden. Someone had hammered the wood together in front of a dusty driveway, painted it red, and called it good. Telephone lines reached from the eaves to the rocks and wooden posts jammed into the rocks above.
That would have been the work of Teancum Kimball, the man who opened the mine some thirty-odd years ago. Teancum was gone now, and his children owned the mine.
“Know why those rocks are red, Pap?” Michael asked.
Hiram didn’t respond. The bishops had also said that Teancum had been a polygamist. How did a man with three wives end up building a house without a single tree or a garden?
“It’s the iron in rocks,” Michael said. “Hematite is a common mineral, an iron oxide, found in Utah. It comes from the Greek word ‘haema’ which means blood. Blood rocks.”
Blood rocks. In his pocket, Hiram carried a bloodstone.
He stepped out of the truck, feeling slightly ill.
“Are you listening to what I’m saying, Pap?”
“Yes.” Hiram stepped to the front of the truck and leaned on the hood. That red house surrounded by the blood rocks had dark windows the color of pitch.
Hiram’s ears started ringing. He blinked, trying to resist a sudden dizziness. A sweet smell with a hint of spice, like onions, garlic, and maybe horseradish, filled his nose. He was on the edge of falling into the smell, and the ringing grew harsher in his ears. Or was it the loud, sharp whistle that wasn’t the wind, wasn’t a train, might not even be anything outside of his own senses. His vision narrowed.
Hiram blinked. The cold bit his cheeks.
“Rupert and Giles,” he murmured. “Rupert and Giles…” He couldn’t remember the charm to stop fainting spells.
He couldn’t catch a breath. The ringing in his ears got louder, only it wasn’t a ringing, it was a buzzing. A fly a quarter-inch long, black as ink, hummed slowly through past Hiram’s face and then landed on his neck. He whipped his hand back to smack it.
And missed.
Suddenly, the phantom odor dissipated. Hiram’s knees buckled, but he caught himself, and his hearing returned to normal.
“Pap, are you okay?” Michael was leaning out of the truck.
Hiram squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes.”
He got back into the passenger seat, Michael squeaked the gears into first, and they trundled off.
Michael knocked Hiram’s thigh with the Coke bottle. “Were you having a spell, Pap?”
“Not quite. Almost.”
Michael sighed. “Jesus Christ, you’re lucky I’m here.”
Hiram took a deep breath. “I am lucky. No need to cuss.”
“I tried saying cripes, and you objected to that, too.”
“Yes, well. I’m not crazy about that word.”
“‘Cripes’? It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means the same thing as the curse word you’re pretending not to say.”
Michael snorted; that might be as close to an acknowledgement as Hiram would get. “I might sing some blues while you unload.”
Michael was trying to get his goat. “That jazz music is dangerous.” Hiram grinned to lighten the mood. Jazz music didn’t really bother him, though some jazz musicians did.
“Pap, I’m seventeen years old. I’m in my prime. I’m supposed to be rowdy, and engaged in all manner of unwise behavior.”
“Not your prime,” Hiram said. “You’re just starting out.”
“Mahonri says you’re giving me good guidance, and that you’re just trying to save me heartache later. That does nothing to soothe me, I can tell you.”
“Mahonri Young is a smart man,” Hiram muttered. “It’s why he works in a library. Slow down, son, to save on the dust.”
“The dust is behind us. What do you care?”
“Butch Cassidy’s behind us, too.”
They reached the camp. Men sat on rough wooden stools beside a long leaning building. It must be a boarding house, but it looked more like a poorly-built chicken coop. Coal dust blackened both the men and the buildings.
On the opposite side of the track, a row of houses leaned against each other to remain standing.
An orange streak—a cat—flashed across the road. Michael slammed on the brakes and the Double-A bounced to a halt. The tabby sped under the steps leading up into a little shack, leaning hard to the right.
Michael exhaled and pushed himself back from the wheel. The car seat springs squeaked. “Well, that was a close one.”
Five kids ran across the road, following the cat. They all looked to be under ten, wearing patched clothes and shoes that were too big or held together with twine. The oldest was a girl in a formless dress that might once have been white but was now a sooty gray. The dress’s lace looked like a spider
web torn apart by a rainstorm. She carried a long cottonwood stick, the end sharpened to a point.
The other children followed the girl. She yelled something in a foreign tongue; the children fanned out. A pair of young greasy-faced boys crouched on either side of the house’s steps. The girl calmly carried her spear forward.
Hiram clambered out of the truck. “Hey, girl, easy there. Let’s not hurt the cat.”
She glared to him, shouted something he didn’t understand, and waved her spear. Then she pointed at the steps.
The cat yowled and hissed.
“You don’t want to torture that animal,” Hiram said.
One of littlest children in the group wiped at his mouth. He might be five years old, and the whites of his eyes were bright pink. He was stick-thin.
They all were.
The door swung open and a lean woman emerged, muscular arms busting out of a gray dress with dull red flowers printed on it. Her thick black hair was held back in a red bandana. Gray cotton long john pants peeped out below her dress, and her feet were bare. She glanced at Hiram and the truck behind him, and then shouted to her children.
Her shouts didn’t make the cat any calmer.
“Mister,” the woman said, “what is it you want?” She had furious brown eyes and her mouth slanted downward to the left.
Hiram swept off his hat and smoothed down the sparse hairs on his head. “I’m Hiram Woolley. I just don’t want anyone to hurt that cat.”
The woman’s frowned jammed further down her face, slanting like her home. “What business is it of yours? Are you the sheriff?”
“No,” Hiram said. “I have groceries. I’m taking it to Bill Sorenson, but…I’ll happily give you some now.”
The girl with the spear went on a run of foreign jabber, pointing at Hiram, at the cat, and then at the woman.
The woman must be her mother; they had the same eyes.
She squinted at Hiram for a long time.
“Medea Markopoulos,” she finally said. “My warrior daughter is Callista. Most of these others are my children, too. Park. We’ll take the food.”
The daughter wouldn’t stop talking. Medea plucked the spear out of Callista’s hand and used it to shoo her sons away from the steps.
