Her first week in Bisbee, Chelsea had put up flyers around town in the hope of attracting art students. Several people responded; she had enough for one adult class and several private students.
She had encountered Sunshine a few times. The waitress seemed determined to befriend her, calling Chelsea almost daily. Chelsea had finally gone out and bought an answering machine, but politeness decreed that she’d have to talk to Sunshine sometime.
Sunshine was in love. She’d met this man at a horse show and had turned her considerable energy to pursuing him. Chelsea couldn’t help feeling sorry for the guy, although she’d never met him. Sunshine never did anything halfway. Her calls were not conversations; they were progress reports.
But even Sunshine could offer a respite from the thoughts that still deviled Chelsea.
Was she really safe here? Would Jason accept the divorce and leave her alone?
He needed money. His lifestyle was lavish. And she’d heard that his reliance on cocaine had accelerated in the last year. He’d always told her it helped his creativity, but the facts belied that claim. He had risen so quickly in the ranks of promising artists, but if all reports were true, he had burned out just as quickly. Like Icarus, Jason had soared too close to the sun.
Chelsea saw in her mind’s eye the apartment in San Diego, saw the figure looming over her bed. What had he been planning to do? Rape her?
If she had remained asleep, if she hadn’t mustered her courage and spoken so forcefully, what might have happened?
She had rejected him. And worse still, she had the power to destroy his lifestyle.
Chelsea had no doubt that her decision to leave Jason had been the right one. But there were still times when she wanted to pick up the phone and try to patch things up—even now, after being separated from him for a year. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her that her desire wasn’t healthy.
What was it about love that turned thinking people into quivering piles of jelly?
After settling in at the Copper Queen Hotel, Lucas had the driver take him to the mine. The claim was not a rich one—the Brag Hill Shaft (so named because old-timers swore that bragging was all that would come of it) produced low-grade ore and little of that. Lucas’s father’s partner, Maurice Selby, headed the project until his death from typhoid. He left behind the Brag Hill mine and another uncompleted shaft, called the Jessie Nolan, named for a girl Maurice had hoped would be his wife.
Lucas spent the afternoon talking to the workers, taking samples of the earth and rocks, referring to his own copious notes. The stiffs at the mine weren’t impressed with this serious-faced boy fresh out of mining engineering school. After years of jobs throughout the west, they had seen their share of “remittance men”; offspring of wealthy parents, usually unsuitable for anything requiring hard work or common sense. These misfits were usually given harmless jobs to keep them out of trouble. Unfortunately, they worked alongside men who had to make a living, and sometimes their stupidity endangered other workers.
Harry Bright, acting head of operations on the Brag Hill mine, had turned livid when he received the telegram from Lucas’s father, telling him to train the boy to take over the management of the mine. Harry decided to ignore the order. The day Lucas was due to arrive, he called the shift boss into his office, an airless tin shack near the Brag Hill.
“The McCord kid is coming in today,” Harry said. Put him up at the Copper Queen and make sure they give him the red carpet treatment. See that he gets whatever he wants, but be discreet. Keep his nose clean. I don’t want his old man breathing down my neck.”
“Where should I put him to work?”
Bright waved his cigar in the shift boss’s face. “You crazy?” he asked. “This ain’t a society picnic. If that kid gets into a scrape down there he could get himself killed and maybe some other stiff. Just give him an office in town and keep him out of my hair.”
Harry Bright would soon discover that Lucas McCord wasn’t content with a passive role. When Bright heard that Lucas was out at the mine within an hour of his arrival in Bisbee, he knew there would be problems. “Let him take his samples, if it makes him feel important,” Bright growled. “But make sure he doesn’t get in the way.”
Lucas spent all day, every day, at the mine, studying the topography of the region, assaying mineral samples, asking questions. He refused the office Harry Bright had secured for him in town, choosing instead to be “with the fellows.” Lucas’s enthusiasm remained undampened (although his clothes were soaked) when he was given a desk in the wettest part of the tunnel. Constant dripping from above fell into his collar and trickled down his back, despite several efforts by the crew to contain the water. Lucas suspected they didn’t try very hard.
He was the butt of many practical jokes. He had commissioned a bicycle fitted with special wheels for the ore cart tracks and could pedal anywhere on the third level. One day, when the men on the morning shift were assembled for a safety lecture, Sam Watts ran in, obviously distressed. “Some officials from the Denver office are at the train station and no one’s there to meet them.”
Lucas jumped onto his bicycle. He lunged forward, feet shoving down on the pedals—and crashed headfirst over the handlebars. The crew laughed uproariously.
The bicycle was frozen to the tracks, chained to three heavy ore cars.
Lucas never complained about the jokes. He tackled each job with enthusiasm, starting as a mucker and graduating to miner in the space of a year. In a system where promotion was based on seniority, his rapid rise through the ranks generated resentment among the men, but even the toughest hard-rock miners, the Cousin Jacks, had to admit he worked hard.
Harry Bright was worried. He didn’t want to lose his newfound power, not to a jug-eared college kid. A confrontation was inevitable. Young McCord was taking on more and more responsibility, testing his authority. He was even issuing orders, and what was worse, the crew obeyed him. Of course the men knew Lucas’s father owned the company, but Harry wasn’t fool enough to think that hard-rock miners would respect anyone for his family connections. There was a more troubling reason the men obeyed Lucas—the kid was a born leader.
Harry wasn’t surprised when he discovered some of his workers drilling experimental holes far from the mine. "What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled. “Get back to your regular work.”
A short time later, Lucas burst into Bright’s office. “Why did you call off those men?” he demanded, his voice shaking with rage.
It wasn’t their job,” Harry replied curtly.
Lucas stepped up to the desk. “They were doing what I told them to do. You had no right to countermand my order!”
Your order!” Bright stood up, his face red. “Who the hell do you think you are? I’m doin’ you a favor bringing you along, teaching you the ropes, but that doesn’t give you the right to call the shots around here. I’ve had enough playing nursemaid to a rich man’s kid!”
Lucas drew himself to his full height. His eyes were like steel rivets, and even Harry Bright, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and reputed to be the toughest fighter on the Gulch, felt his legs weaken beneath him. Harry Bright had seen that look in men’s eyes before. And every last man jack of them had been a killer, a religious zealot, or a powerful man.
“I’ll take that as your resignation,” Lucas said through tight lips. “If you don’t think I have the authority, think again.” He strode to the door, then turned back. Try C and A. I think they’re hiring.” And he was gone.
Harry called the home office and was told that Lucas indeed had the authority; in fact, he’d had the power to run the mine as he liked for some time.
An hour later, the drillers were back at work.
Harry took Lucas’s advice and hired on at Calumet and Arizona at a cut in pay. There was talk on the Gulch that Harry Bright wasn’t through with the rich kid from the fancy eastern school.
A few clouds wheeled across the blue sky, their shadows skimmin
g over the red brick buildings on the Gulch. Bisbee’s brothels had long ago succumbed to wind, rain, and vandals, but the dilapidated steps remained, tilting eerily toward the sky from a bed of broken foundations and bitter-smelling weeds. Chelsea set down her sketchbook and pulled the box camera out of her pack.
After breakfast at the Sacred Cow Cafe and another installment of Sunshine’s life story, Chelsea had been on her way out to sketch the cribs, where the soiled doves had plied their trade, when she remembered the box camera in the trunk. She’d gone home to get it. What did she have to lose? The pictures didn’t have to be that good. They were only an aid.
Chelsea turned the Brownie over, trying to remember what to do first. Great-grandfather McCord had owned one just like it; a rectangular box about six inches tall, three inches across, and six inches deep. Pretty big by today’s standards. The principle was simple. Wind the pull down the lever to take the picture, wind the key again, and push the lever in the opposite direction for the next shot. When the Brownie made its advent on the scene at the turn of the century, Kodak had advertised it as a camera anyone could use.
Chelsea wondered what kind of pictures the box camera would take. Logically, she knew the prints would probably look like any others taken by a cheap camera, but she couldn’t help thinking that the Brownie might carry a bit of the past inside its works. Maybe the pictures would be brownish and a little blurred like an old daguerreotype . . .
Chelsea smiled at this fantasy. Holding the old Kodak chest level, she peered into the viewfinder, trying to focus on the steps. The viewfinder was maybe an inch by one-half inch, almost opaque with age. She could barely make out the shapes of the steps in the wavy glass.
An early seventies Ford LTD rocked into view, its big engine choppy, suspension squeaking as the car negotiated the potholed road. An elbow was cocked in the passenger window.
Chelsea lowered the camera. As the car passed, she heard kissing noises.
Chelsea silently condemned the car and its occupants to an even hotter place than Arizona, then turned her attention once more to the viewfinder.
By the steps’ proximity to each other, the cribs must have been little more than cubicles, barely big enough to hold a bed. But what else did they need? A delicious shudder passed through Chelsea as she tried to imagine the life of a soiled dove in a rough mining camp.
She caught a flick of movement in the viewfinder. A man in a derby strolled down the middle of the road.
She glanced up. The street was empty.
Chelsea looked up and down the street. Not a soul anywhere. Had the man already gained the curve in the road? But the figure she’d seen had been walking. He would have had to run to get to the curve before she looked up.
And how many people wore derbies in the 1980s?
A white butterfly hovered above the weed-choked foundation of the cottages. Chelsea noticed a crumpled Pabst can at the foot of the steps, liquid trailing toward the center of the street. She could smell it: flat beer mingling with the steamy smell of the weeds. The sun beat down on her shoulders.
She bent forward and blew at the layer of dust covering the viewfinder, a faint odor drifting upward. It was a smell she associated with some of her father’s old schoolbooks. Dust. Age. But underneath that musty odor was something else. A sweet, cloying smell. Chelsea had smelled it before, but where?
Another strand of hair fell into her face, and she was aware of the perspiration condensing on her cheeks and forehead. The camera slipped in her hands.
What was that stench?
A rustle came from behind her. A large rat scuttled across the road. He had been hiding in a pile of boards and bricks near a tin shed.
Pigeons flew off the roof of Central School and strung across the sky like a kite tail, heading north.
The canyon became eerily quiet.
Chelsea looked into the viewfinder again. She could almost imagine Brewery Gulch in its heyday, bustling and dirty. The women might be on the porch, calling and gesturing to prospective clients. She could hear their voices, the creaking wagons, the sounds of the smelter machinery on the hill; she could see the dust churned up under the horses’ hooves . . . it was almost real.
As she squinted into the wavy glass, her eyes adjusting to the dark shapes in the tiny rectangle, Chelsea realized she was looking at a house.
A house, where only steps should be. A long, one-story clapboard house painted dark green. Tin cans overflowing with roses had been placed at intervals along the porch. Below, the dirt road was scored by cracks and seamed together with loose rocks, as if a flood had eroded the earth.
Chelsea looked up. Nothing but a series of steps to nowhere, a beer can, some weeds.
Was it a trick of the light or her imagination gone wild? The shapes in the viewfinder were hopelessly fuzzy. She could have been mistaken.
I saw a house.
The car returned. Chelsea stepped back involuntarily, feigning concentration on her camera.
“Que bonita!” a voice called. The car kept on going.
Chelsea looked into the viewfinder again. The house remained. A woman crossed into the frame. She wore a dark, high-collared dress, floor-length, nipped in to an impossibly tiny waist. She lifted her skirts slightly, stepping daintily through the dust. Pinpoints of light danced up and down her ankle. Button shoes!
Chelsea aimed the camera. She’d have to get a picture of this, if only to prove to herself it was real. She pushed at the lever, but it froze. Jammed.
A cloud covered the sun.
Heart thumping in her ears, Chelsea realized she was holding the Brownie in a death grip. She set the camera down and wiped the sweat out of her eyes.
Had she been hallucinating? Her mouth was dry, and when she tried to swallow, she could feel a big lump in her throat like a ball of silly putty.
Chelsea picked up the camera. The stupid thing didn’t work. She’d figured as much. But what had she seen?
Chelsea peered into the viewfinder again and saw just a bunch of old steps.
Had she been fantasizing so much about the good old days that her eyes had somehow translated them into literal visions?
You’re letting your imagination run away with you. The brothels are gone, she told herself firmly. And so are the prostitutes.
Dead and gone.
After lunch, Chelsea headed out to sketch a deserted cottage at the end of Tombstone Canyon.
As she slipped behind the wheel of her Thunderbird, she remembered the camera in her pack. Maybe dust had gotten into the works, jamming it just that once. Might as well bring it along.
The ruined cottage stood in a field at the foot of a long hill. Chelsea sat cross-legged in the tall grass several feet away and roughed out a sketch.
It was a spooky old place. The bungalow’s corrugated tin roof, whole sections rusted red, slumped over a porch choked with ivy. Wind keened through the house’s eaves and open windows; desolation emanated from the doorway on dank breath.
Grass rustled furtively. The sun branded her shoulder blades through her blouse. Clouds, trailing across the sun like a herd of wayward sheep, intermittently shadowed the oak-covered hills. Every time Chelsea looked up from her drawing, the stand of oak on the hill behind the cottage loomed closer. The buzzing of the cicadas became unbearably loud. She felt the urge to leave and leave soon.
The air became heavy. Her drawing wasn’t going well. She tore off a page, crumpled it up, stuffed it into the pack at her feet. Abandoned the next sketch as quickly and started again.
A sickly-sweet odor lay on the air. Perhaps a small animal had died nearby. A decomposing body in the sun . . . that would do it. Chelsea breathed through her mouth.
The cicadas buzzed louder, if that was possible. The lonely house moldered in the noonday sun, its emptiness touching her with chill fingers. Ivy crept out of the open maw like a fungus.
The odor of death hung palpably in the air.
It was no use. Her concentration was nil. I might as well see
if I can get a picture of it at least.
She reached for the camera.
Eight
1911
Like the monsoon clouds building up daily over the Mexican border in the summer of their first year in Arizona, Mary McCord’s apprehension had begun as a puffy white cloud on the horizon. Lucas's family did not like her
As Mother McCord had told her on the eve of their wedding, Mary must take full responsibility for the success—or failure—of their marriage. “Explain to him how hard it will be, the heartache that will surely result from such a match. You are so very much . . . older.”
Mary opened her mouth to speak, though she hadn’t yet formed her thoughts. Lucas interrupted.
“My mind is made up, Mother. She is the woman I want to marry,” he said, his face a stubborn mask. “I love her.”
Now, two years into her marriage, the little cloud had grown and been joined by others, racing quickly to cover the sun. By the time Lucas McCord and his wife reached Bisbee, the tension between them was palpable.
Lucas had made a mistake—that much was plain. It was evident in the way he addressed her, in the line of his body when she spoke to him, in the way he kept his distance, especially at night when they were alone. If she had any doubts this was true, they were dispelled the day she first saw the house in Bisbee.
The house fronted Vista Park in the Warren district, near the homes of other company executives. It had been built for Maurice Selby—or rather, for the woman he had hoped would be his bride. To that end, the house catered to the feminine, inside and out. Cupolas and turrets, scalloped and ginger-breaded eaves, wrought-iron detailing, and stained-glass windows set the house apart from the predominantly foursquare homes in Warren. The grounds were impressive; there were stables, tennis courts, and a graceful lawn stretching to a duck pond ringed by trees.
Mary was charmed by Maurice Selby’s creation, charmed utterly. She could see herself ensconced there, making a home, having children, hostess to dinners and parties for her husband and his business associates. She didn’t have to go inside. She knew the house would be perfect. But the clouds were there, nudging at Mary’s subconscious, gently reminding her that things weren’t right.
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