Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  I watched, uneasy. If Henry was watching, what was he thinking?

  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 Rive
rs 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.

  Shelburne sat on a boulder and folded his arms.

  Walter and I turned to our work. We shed backpacks and took out field kits. Walter claimed the rocky bank and I headed out on the gravel bar to sample the geology mid-river.

  I found a promising spot, a submerged bedrock hump that bridged the water and slowed its flow. A group of boulders gathered, forming deep crevices, a natural hydraulic trap on the river bottom where material coming downstream was likely to get lodged.

  I knelt to sample.

  The water was low. I wondered how much of a rainstorm was needed to saturate the watershed feeding this river. Right now, shafts of late afternoon sunlight glassed the surface. Where clouds shadowed, the river turned inky. A rainbow trout nosed the bottom, the fish multicolored as the gravel. I scanned the riverbed, noting how the rocks and sand acted as riffles, thinking geologically speaking this was an eminently likely site to find grains of gold. Gold is heavy. Water needs a brute-force flow to suspend gold and move it along, and the moment the water slows, the heaviest grains bail out and settle into pockets and crevices. I peered into a large crack. Looking, I abruptly realized, for the telltale metallic flash. I shifted position and did see a flash but it was silver—muscovite mica. Still, my mouth had gone a little dry. I moved on to the next crevice, the next little hollow. The gravel here was mostly buried under silt and sand that had settled out of the river flow. I bent lower and plunged my hands into the water, wetting my sleeves, running my fingers through the sandy bed, unearthing grains of quartz and chert and mica and every other freaking mineral that lived in this micro-niche but no gold.

  Hold on. What are you looking for again, lady? You’re looking for float. Diorite. Hornfels. That’s what should make your mouth go dry.

  Not gold.

  I glanced at Walter, who was examining a specimen under his hand lens, and then I glanced at Shelburne, who was still in that strange funk on his boulder, staring into the distance.

  They were paying me no attention.

  I recovered my dignity and paid heed to the little pool and riffle pocket where, in my professional opinion, something worth examination might be lodged. Upon closer examination I noticed a ledge. It was recessed, in shadow, and the riffling water was silty, but nevertheless I could make out the shape of a cobble in there. Hard to tell the texture and color but it was worth a closer look.

  I reached.

  My fingers closed on the cobble.

  I yelped.

  I’m not afraid of snakes but for a moment I thought this must be the hump of a coiled water snake, clammy and cold. But if it were a snake it would have moved, would have recoiled from my touch, would have slunk out from the crevice and skedaddled or, worse, and wrapped itself onto my hand and given me a bite. This was no snake. This did not recoil. It simply pushed my fingers aside.

  Walter was suddenly beside me. “Cassie?”

  I let go of the thing and sat back on my haunches. Heart pounding.

  Shelburne sprinted across the gravel bar to flank me on the other side. “What is it?”

  It was a moment before I could speak. “Something’s down there.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a snake.” I cast about, to explain my reaction. “But it felt…soft. It fit in my hand. About the size of my fist. It felt like…” The word came to me from some primitive zone in a dark corner of my mind. “Like a heart.”

  Shelburne went white.

  I bent back to the water, leaning farther, angling for a better view of the ledge down there, and now I got a straight-on look and saw the thing for what it was. It sat cupped on its ledge in the crevice. I understood my earlier confusion. It was indeed rounded as a river cobble, but not solid. It was big as a heart and it quivered slightly, fanned by the riffling water.

  “Cassie,” Walter said, “what the devil is down there?”

  I straightened. “Mercury.” A quivering heart of liquid mercury.

  Shelburne sucked in a deep breath, let it escape.

  “Well that’s not surprising,” Walter said.

  “It sure surprised me.”

  Walter said, “Millions of pounds were lost from the sluices. You’ll find it in the rivers and soils. You’ll certainly find droplets in catch-basins like this.”

  “Not droplets.” I held my hands apart, to demonstrate the size. A heart.

  His eyebrows lifted.

  I turned to Shelburne. “Did Henry put this here?”

  Shelburne looked taken aback. “Why would he do that?”

  “Why would he leave the dimes? His games.”

  “No no, he didn’t know I’d hired you—at least not until he saw you on the trail with me. And if he did, how would he have time to set this up? And if he did, how could he possibly know you would look down there?”

  I acknowledged the unlikelihood of the scenario but my heart rate had not yet gotten the message.

  “Look,” Shelburne said, “you get enough droplets caught in a hotspot, they coalesce. You can thank Mother Nature for that. I’ve heard of guys finding puddles big as pillows. When my dad brought us here panning, we sucked up mercury with a turkey baster. It’s all the hell over the place.”

  Big as pillows? Holy hell. A heart was big enough for me. I said, “You know a lot about it.”

  “Yes I do. As I’ve explained, Dad marched me and Henry up and down his trail.”

  “Here too?” I asked.

  “Sure. Here.” Shelburne got to his feet. “As you geologists point out, it’s a natural catch-basin. Good place for panning.”

 
“Been here recently?”

  “Last time I panned for gold I was twelve years old.” Shelburne started to retreat across the gravel bar.

  “Hang on,” I said. He’d been on edge from the moment the trail brought us here, even before I’d said heart and freaked him out. “Anything else going on here?”

  Shelburne paused. “Like what?”

  “Like whatever’s been making you so edgy.”

  He turned. “Aside from the fact that my brother is missing?”

  “If there’s something else, yeah. Aside from that.”

  A shadow passed over his face. “It’s not relevant.”

  “I would like to be the judge of that,” Walter said. “Before we proceed.”

  Shelburne took a long moment and then he said, “My father died here.”

  Walter and I got to our feet. Scrambling to catch up.

  “This is news,” Walter said.

  “No kidding,” I said, “I thought your father died of a heart attack.”

  “Yes. Here. In fact, it wasn’t the heart attack that killed him. It was falling into the water and drowning.” He grimaced. “Animals got to him before the rangers found him.”

  I flinched. “That’s awful.”

  “Now you understand why this place gives me the creeps.”

  I nodded. That made two of us, now.

  “What was he doing here?” Walter asked. “Panning?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “It’s not relevant.”

  “Indulge me,” Walter said.

  Shelburne shrugged. “He was sampling the water.”

  “Why?”

  “All right.” Shelburne looked at us squarely. “It’s irrelevant but let’s get it out of the way. My father, the auto mechanic, was a handy guy. He developed a piece of technology and brought it to me, looking for funding for a startup. Venture capital, it’s what I do. Dad had a plan to build a super-dredge to suck up mercury, clean up the gold country riverbeds.” He shot me a look. “You saw for yourself what’s down there.”

  I nodded. Seen, and felt.