Darkscope
Page 9
“What about the photographs?”
“What about them?”
“I can’t figure out how you colored them.”
“Are you on that subject again?”
Mr. Chips sauntered in and jumped onto Ben’s lap. Ben stroked the cat absently. He seemed to know all the pleasure points of the average house cat. Mr. Chips actually drooled, something he only did for Chelsea.
Chelsea opened her mouth to compliment Ben on his way with animals when he said, “The washing machine guy thought you were having a fit.”
“You told him I was having a nightmare, didn’t you?”
“I told him if he thought you were nuts now, he should wait until you see the bill.”
“Ha ha. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“No.”
“Well, I want to go to bed, so if you don’t mind . . .”
“Your style’s not too subtle, but I’ll bet it’s effective.”
Chelsea sighed. “I know I’ll be missing a great comedy act, but I can barely keep my eyes open. Can’t you just leave me alone?”
Ben put the cat down. “Okay.” He stood up. “By the way, I paid the repairman. It came to $75.23.”
Chelsea found her purse and wrote him a check. “Here,” she said curtly.
“Thanks.” He paused at the door. “If it’s any consolation, you don’t look crazy to me. Mean maybe, but not crazy.”
“You wouldn’t win any Mr. Congeniality awards yourself,” Chelsea muttered, but she knew Ben didn’t hear her; he was already out the door.
Fifteen
1914-1929
More than once in the early years, Lucas came dangerously close to losing his mine and his dream. Because of the mounting costs of retrieving and separating the ore, the stockholders of the McCord company had made a marginal profit in the nine years the Brag Hill Mine had produced. They were doubtful that the area would ever yield anything more than low-grade ore and trace minerals. It was no surprise when, in 1914, they came to a unanimous decision: sell their holdings in Arizona.
Fate stepped in. A rival company’s mine, the Higgins Shaft, hit big. Bisbee had not been played out yet. The investors in Colorado, cheered by this latest development, took a new look at the Brag Hill Mine. Lucas asked for money to drill another shaft. The surface area looked promising, but finding copper was tricky. Lucas received the money to drill, but he could not go as deeply as he wished. He had no way of knowing that his men stopped drilling only one hundred feet above the copper he sought.
The following year, Mary McCord presented Lucas with his first son, whom they named John.
As time passed, Bisbee’s newfound enthusiasm died away to a flicker. Higgins Shaft was surely the last great mine in the area. The stockholders of the McCord and Selby Mining Company sent out feelers to see if any other companies might make a bid for their mine. Calumet and Arizona was interested. They could afford to be.
Lucas went back over his calculations. He was in a quandary. Unwilling to be rushed, he was eighty percent certain that a new shaft, to be sunk northeast of the Brag Hill, would cross right through a plume of pure copper. Pressed for time, running out of money and equipment, Lucas was reluctant to commit his resources at this stage of the game. There was still a great deal of leeway for failure. And failure was not an option for Lucas McCord.
Calumet and Arizona upped its offer. Any reasonable person would take it. Lucas McCord said he would consider it.
Time was running out. Pressured from all sides, Lucas ordered one more adit to be drilled.
A single-word telegram came across the wires from his father’s firm in Colorado: sell.
Lucas managed to evade the heads of the other companies. “For God’s sake,” said a disgruntled lawyer who had been waiting for days to see Lucas, "we’re not going to wait forever.”
Meanwhile, the results of the adit were promising, and in December of 1915, Lucas gave permission to sink the Manzanita Shaft. He used his own money, and when that ran out, borrowed from one of his competitors.
Another telegram arrived. The old man himself was coming out. If Lucas couldn’t handle things, his father would. Work on the shaft was stepped up; Lucas hired more men and had shifts going night and day.
On June 8, 1916, the Manzanita Mine struck high-grade copper ore. Three days before the elder McCord was to arrive in Bisbee.
When Teddy O'Flaherty ran up to the Copper Queen Hotel with the news, Lucas, who was lunching with two prominent Bisbee citizens, barely cracked a smile. It was as if he had known all along.
Jack Greenway, at another table, came over to congratulate Lucas. He had bid for the mine himself on behalf of the Calumet and Arizona Company.
“You were right, Lucas,” said Jim Morgan, a columnist for the Bisbee Daily Review. He motioned to the white-aproned waiter. “A bottle of your best champagne,” he said.
Lucas’s eyes were already fixed on a faraway spot in the air. His mouth hardened into a line, as it did when he was deep in thought, and one fist pummeled the other open hand. “Thank you, no,” he said. “I have work to do.”
What Lucas McCord was thinking of that day at the Copper Queen Hotel: way haulage. How to improve the system that conveyed the ore to the smelter. He developed such a good system of underground tunnels and speedier ore cars that soon all the mines were using them.
The Manzanita Mine produced for fifteen years.
In 1920, Mary gave birth to another son, a smaller, sicklier version of five-year-old Johnny. Mary was grateful for the unexpected dividend; it was good to be appreciated, even for a short while. Lucas named the boy Robert.
By the mid-twenties, Lucas had already developed several innovations, techniques in mining safety and efficiency, which would help keep the copper industry from failing during the Depression. He also met his mistress around that time.
McCord-Arizona Company merged with Copper Queen Consolidated, owned by Phelps Dodge. Lucas invested in South American copper interests, which he claimed were the coming thing. His instincts paid off; he became a millionaire many times over. He divested himself of most of his stocks in 1928 (rumor had it that Lucas’s wife, long held to be psychic, had something to do with that decision), coming through the Crash relatively unscathed.
Next, he turned his considerable energy to politics. He would run for public office.
True to form, Lucas prepared thoroughly for his new career. He got rid of the mistress and reconciled with his wife. Meticulous plans were made for his children. The right schools, the right sports, the right people must be brought into play.
Lucas McCord set about plotting the future of his sons.
Sixteen
Like a serrated edge, the high-pitched shrieks knifed across Chelsea’s consciousness, flinging her against the headboard into instant wakefulness. Her blood froze.
The tortured scream rose in frequency, almost driving Chelsea out of her mind. Then the siren was joined by others, the bone-chilling avidity setting her teeth on edge. A shrill, manic chorus—
Coyotes, in pursuit of prey.
Mr. Chips, at the foot of the bed, paused in his ablutions. He looked up briefly, then continued, apparently unconcerned.
Coyotes. Chelsea tried to relax, too, but the squealing, yipping pack affected her despite the logical explanation. Her heart hammered in her chest. She thought that the sound of a pack of coyotes was the most unsettling and soulless sound on earth.
As one voice, the screams stopped. The coyotes had caught their prey.
Chelsea shivered, staring at the dark mountain beyond her window, listening to her heartbeat slow to normal. Only then did she remember the events of the day, far stranger than a pack of coyotes.
Magic. The camera is magic.
She reached over to the bedside table, touching the stack of photographs to reassure herself that they were in fact real.
Real.
After Ben left, Chelsea had tried to make sense of the photographs. After hours of thinking in circles
, she had not come up with any answers. Only more questions.
If she’d taken photographs of other places—Uncle Bob’s ranch in Tucson, for instance—would the woman still have appeared in them? Or did the camera only work when she was in the right place? The Brownie had jammed when she tried to photograph the brothel steps. Could that be because the dark-haired woman had never been there?
Chelsea put on her robe, walked to the kitchen, and heated up some milk. It might help her sleep.
Why had this happened to her? Had she just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? The notion that the camera had been sitting in that musty old trunk for decades, smelling like a moldering carcass, waiting to be discovered and used, didn’t bear thinking about.
Or had it been waiting for me alone? Goosebumps fanned up her arms. Chelsea sipped her milk, staring out into the moon-washed yard without really seeing it. If that were the case . . . She shuddered.
On the road above town, a semi rig shifted down, dual exhausts blatting. Chips flattened his tail industriously with a rough, pink tongue.
Monday, Chelsea thought, I’m going to the library and see if this phenomenon has ever happened before. There had to be books—parapsychology and occult books—that could explain what had happened.
This resolve comforted her momentarily, but then her thoughts whirled away again, like tiny bits of paper before a strong wind.
Free.
Flying high over the desert, side-slipping the stars, threading like dust through cracks in the rocks.
Lighter than air, breasting the currents and the first dark swells of the mountains that rush underneath. Mule Pass. The old Hargis Tourist Camp. The once-neat bungalow is a ruin now, all alone at the end of Tombstone Canyon. The filling station is gone; the cottages, once neat and white and cozy, obliterated by ugly trees.
Whistling through the cracks of splintered wood, sending chaff and deadfall litter fluttering across the road, spattering against the blank faced row of newer houses on the other side.
Wind where there is no wind. Laughter; music like bells.
Down the road from the abandoned tourist camp, Wayne Folger awakes, thinking he heard wind chimes. That is impossible. His wife left him last year, mercifully taking every last damn one of them with her. Not to mention the camper and his brand new Bass Buggy . . .
Dust skirts the gray cement foundation along Upper Main past St. Patrick’s Church, the church school, all along Higgins Hill. Past the once-colorful murals: Arizona Bakery Co., Lowell, and Pepsi-Cola. Now the walls are weathered, the murals faded. Past the site of the bottling works, past the laundry . . . in its place a Circle K crouches under darkly whispering Cottonwood trees . . . past the old Meadow Dairy.
An alien world now. Long-ago ghosts are ranked along the canyon like badges of a battle fought and lost: old filling stations, groceries, ramshackle houses, the pool above the waterworks.
Over to the Gulch, following blocks of buildings like rows of rotten teeth, the missing buildings conspicuous by their absence. The Hermitage, gone. The depot, gone. The newspaper office a bed of weeds. Cresting an air current over the facade of the Muheim Brewery, where long ago the Muheim’s “watch bear,” chained to a tree at the entrance, had gotten drunk on beer, slipped from the roof, and hanged itself.
A stroll down memory lane.
Back over Queen Hill and down Quarry Canyon, back to the little house on Higgins Hill.
The night is hushed with waiting as the breeze eddies across the moon-dappled yard and flirts with the steps by the garage.
She is in there sleeping. In the house. Chelsea. The word rolls off the fleshless tongue, cold and silvery. The wind snatches the sound and mingles it with the clamoring coyote voices.
Part Two: Kathleen
Seventeen
Los Angeles, California
June 1978
Everything had been going so well until now. He had registered for summer school, even made it to his classes for two weeks. Not that there had been a great deal of headway yet. But he was patient.
And now, this.
Jack sat on the single-width mattress, his back to the wall, feet crossed at the ankles and jutting over the bed. An oblong of sunshine clipped the side of his face, making it difficult to see the girl next to him. She was at the very edge of the bed, her feet on the floor, and her back bowed, like a bird protecting its young.
Jack licked his lips. When he spoke, the roof of his mouth felt like paper. “It’ll be all right,” he said.
“I knew you’d understand,” she cried, shifting slightly to face him. Anger and disgust welled up in Jack as he looked at her red, tear-blotched face, now beaming with joy.
Why had he ever gotten involved with her? He remembered Golf and You on television last night. The important thing was the follow-through. Keep your eye on the ball. A cliché, but weren’t clichés clichés because they were true? If Jack had followed advice like that, he wouldn’t be here now, listening to Marie prattle on and on about the baby. But no. Jack Perrault had simply not kept his eye on the ball.
“We should have the wedding soon,” the stupid bitch was saying. She dipped her head coquettishly. “Before I start to show.”
Abortion was out; she was a Roman Catholic. She’d already explained that, her big eyes hurt and reproachful. That he would even think . . .
Jack forced himself to take her hand in his. Fear, like metal filings, filled his mouth. He would always associate that galloping, gut-wrenching fear with this cheap walk-up in Venice, with the bed pushed up against the wall, and the thin East Indian bedspread pulled shapelessly over the pillows.
She was looking at him, waiting for an answer. Her hair was neatly scalloped back from her face—the result of hours with the curling iron, trying (and failing) to emulate Farrah Fawcett-Majors’ hairstyle. She’d break down again any minute, and he didn’t want that.
“Soon,” he promised. “But let’s not tell anyone yet.”
“What do you mean?” Marie looked suddenly scared. Tears brimmed over her puffy lower lids.
His mind raced. How do I get out of this? How? Then it came to him. “Soon everyone will know. The whole world. But for now, let’s keep it our little secret.” The words started to come. He was on a roll. “You know how it is, everyone wanting to put their two cents in. Pretty soon it won’t be our wedding at all.” He laughed ruefully. “I guess I’m selfish that way. I want it to be our wedding, done the way we want it.”
Marie’s face screwed up in teary gratitude. “I thought . . . I thought maybe you didn’t want . . .” She balled up the Kleenex in her hand and started to cry.
God, how he hated her then.
“Tell you what.” Jack stroked her cheek. “Let’s really plan it, right down to the tiniest detail. You want a formal wedding, don’t you?” Buy some time. No way he’d marry her, but the damage was done. He’d have to leave now. No two ways about it. What a goddamn mess!
“I'll have to call my mom—”
“All in good time. First we have to talk it over.”
“But she doesn’t even know about us. I haven’t had time to write. Looking for a job, settling in and all.”
Jack was hardly listening. He was trying to think. Think! How to get out of this?
“Just my mom. I promise. No one else.”
“No!” Jack said a trifle sharply. Adjusting his tone, he continued. “Think about it. If you tell her now, she’ll have a whole bunch of questions. Where are we going to live? How are we going to support the baby? I want your folks to know we’re going into this thing with our eyes wide open. We have to talk about school, finances . . .” Thoughts buzzed furiously in his head. “What about your friends?”
“What about them?”
“Do they know? About us?”
“I just got into town, silly. You . . .” Again, the modest dip of her head. “You’re the best friend I have. Except for Danielle, no one even knows I exist. Why?”
No one knows I exist.
“Yes.”
“How come I never see her?” he asked.
“She’s practically living with a guy,” Marie said. “She only shows up once a week to water her plants or pick up more clothes.”
Better and better. Still, Jack wanted to get out of here. As remote as the possibility was, he didn’t want to run into Danielle now. He couldn’t chance it, not now, because—
What was he thinking?
“She’s moving out at the end of the month,” Marie was saying. “The timing couldn’t be more perfect, could it?”
Jack took inventory. No one at school could link them together as a couple. Jack had met Marie at a bar. She was working a summer job to get money for school this fall. He’d been lucky, all the way around. Chalk it up to being careful. Now he could—
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Why don’t we meet at Griffith Park? We can plan our wedding.”
Marie nodded, her eyes shining. “We went there that first night, didn’t we?”
“It’s where it all began,” Jack said gravely.
They met at Griffith Park a little after six o’clock in the evening.
“Come on,” Jack said. “Let’s take a walk.” Hand in hand. Jack and Marie passed the bar gate and walked up the dirt road between eucalyptus trees and dry, rustling grasses. The darkness dropped like a cloak. By the time they reached the remains of the zoo, the cages loomed above them, fuzzy and indistinct. Below, the lights were coming on in the San Fernando Valley. Jack and Marie stopped for a moment by the cracked cement foundation of something that might have been a lion’s cage. Broken shards of glass carpeted the cage floor, sparkling in the weak light, catching the first glimmers from the round, white, clown face peering over the darkening ridge. A wind rippled through the cage bars: a ghostly, reedy sound. It was cool up here tonight, and lonely.