I stood on the fringes and watched for a moment, wondering what it must be like to be Rav. To be surrounded at all times by people who wanted something, expected something, needed something, who were just waiting for you to notice them.
Did he thrive on it? Feed on it? Was he ever just . . . exhausted by it? How difficult would it be, never knowing if the people around you were real? How did my father deal with the culture of this business? Was I ready for it? Would I ever be?
What if, after all this, I found out that my father’s passion, his ability to bring stories to film, had died with him—that I really didn’t have it? What if my mother and Lloyd were right all along? What if I was just . . . nothing out of the ordinary? Not remarkably smart like Lloyd’s kids. Not remarkably athletic like my half siblings.
Just unremarkable.
Insecurity nipped. Before it could take out a hunk of flesh, I wandered off to find Nick and his mother, so I could give them the firefly jar. Unlike Wren, Nick was delighted with creation and thrilled that his friend Birdie had brought it for him.
“Nick and Birdie adore each other,” Mallory explained. “She’s a couple years older, so it really works. She tells him what they’re going to do, and he does it. She’s like the big sister he never had. On top of that, she knows everything about bugs, fish, and little squirmy animals, as well as mules, chickens, and all the doodads boys like. Living up here, she’s got a wealth of experience. Even though we’re on a ranch, it’s a whole different kind of life for these families in Chinquapin Peaks. I’m sure Len and Birdie didn’t mean any harm by coming to take a peek at the village, by the way. The hill people don’t quite recognize private property rights, especially for something so foreign as a film project like Wildwood Creek.”
Since we’d come around to the subject, I took advantage of the opportunity to tell her about the song Len and Birdie had mentioned and to discreetly ask if she could find out any more about it. “But if you’d keep it quiet, I’d appreciate it. I mean, I don’t want to get you in any trouble, so if you’d prefer not to, I understand.”
Mallory tucked her hair behind her ear, giving me a wry look. “Are you kidding? I love a good mystery, and it sounds like something I might want to do a story on, eventually. I’ll see what I can turn up. My friend Andrea counsels for the Department of Human Services here. She could ask some of her older clients about it. If Len’s grandmother knew the song, maybe other people do too. Folk music tends to be passed down. I’ll see if I can find anything.”
“There you are!” Kim was headed my way, hiking up her simple cotton skirt. “I haven’t seen you in forever! That’s the worst thing about this place—there’s no time for girl talk. Okay, well, I take that back. The outhouse is the worst thing, my boss at the bathhouse is the second worst thing, but you’re third. I miss you.” She tackled me with a hug.
Mallory headed off to take pictures of the giant hog spitted over the fire pit, which I myself had been trying to avoid looking at. Something about seeing a roasting carcass nearby was . . . well . . . icky. But it did smell good.
Kim and I walked the other way, watching the kids participate in hoop-rolling contests and try their skill at walking on stilts, weaving potholders, bobbing for apples, and tossing little bags of river gravel into a cut-off barrel.
By the time the dinner bell rang, calling us to the serving line, I was warming to the idea of eating hog carcass. My mouth had started watering and my stomach sounded like a badger coming out of hibernation. With the go-live about to begin and our foodstuffs and incomes set to match that of our historic counterparts, the feasts were over after tonight, and everyone seemed to be aware of it.
Kim and I ended up seated near the end of a table with Genie and Netta. Tova and Rav wandered by with their plates, and I held my breath, hoping they wouldn’t fill the last two empty seats at our table. Fortunately, they moved on, and the dinner slipped into a relaxed, friendly mode. Thanks to Kim, the conversation quickly turned to discussion of 1860s outhouses, chamber pots, and underwear. Not the usual table talk, but before long, we were all red-faced, laughing about each others’ mishaps. Of course, my stuck-in-the-window story came up. Something that ridiculous doesn’t happen just any day.
“Okay, okay. It wasn’t one of my brighter ideas. It’s hard to get used to needing a six-foot berth everywhere you go.” I cleverly omitted the fact that it was Blake Fulton who had come to the rescue. What was there to say, anyway? The man had the most annoying habit of popping in and out of my life without explanation.
Kim frowned across the table, sensing something hidden. The girl could practically read my mind sometimes. “But what were you doing, exactly, climbing out the window?”
Leave it to her to home in on the obvious. I didn’t have a great answer for that, but I came up with the best one I could. “Well, I just . . . was thinking about the fact that there’s no rear door on my room and . . . what if there was a . . . a fire or something? I wanted to make sure I could get . . .”
“Hey, neighbor!” Of all people, Blake Fulton slid into a chair next to me without bothering to ask whether it was empty or not. As usual, he came out of nowhere. “You recover from that little wrestling match with the window yet? Heard you’re famous up in the tech trailer now. I’ll tack that facing back on for you tomorrow.”
Across the table, Kim blinked, her eyes dropping open like the jaws on a steam shovel, ready to rake in the facts. Genie and Netta looked back and forth between Blake and me, brows rising speculatively.
“Yes, I did. Recover. Thank you.” Neighbor. That’s what he’d said. So, he was staying in the room next to mine? And if he was . . . where was he all morning during the photo shoots? I hadn’t seen a sign of him, and I’d been looking.
To my complete horror, Kim requested the details of the window incident, and Blake Fulton obliged. My stupidity quickly became the stuff of amusing dinner conversation. He shoulder-butted me when he was finished, adding, “She was a good sport about it, for a girl with her head caught in a ringer. By the time the camera went on, she was laughing so hard, she didn’t even notice.”
Netta passed a playful look my way. “Well, you know, back in my day, if a gal wanted to get a young fella’s attention, she just piled a few extra schoolbooks into her bundle, so it would look like it was more than she could handle. Then she’d stroll by the fella’s house, a’course, and walk rea-ul slow.”
A blush heated the upper half of my body. This conversation was taking a most disturbing turn. “I really don’t understand why my room doesn’t have a door to the back porch.” To change the subject just a little. “It’d make it so much easier to go down to the springhouse for water, for one thing.”
“And to practice fire drills,” Blake offered. He was so helpful.
Genie threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, mercy! That was how I got the attention of my very first beau, back in the day—lugging a water bucket. He worked for a dairy up the road, so every day, just about the time I knew he’d be passing by on his bicycle, well, I’d be waiting there by Daddy’s barn with a big ol’ bucket of water to carry. Now, I was a farm gal, so I could heft that thing and lug it a mile. But as soon as I’d see that boy passing by, I’d start dragging it like my arm was gonna fall off. ’Course, when that boy stopped to rescue me, I’d invite him in for some fruit pie as a fair reward for all that rescuin’, see?” She winked across the table at me.
Blake let his fork settle against his plate. “I didn’t get any fruit pie when I rescued her.” He turned an incredulous expression my way, as in, What’s wrong with this picture?
The blush raced up my neck and suddenly the tips of my ears were burning. I probably could’ve shot a blood pressure meter completely off the charts. Seriously, who was this guy, really? And was he always this . . . this . . . flirty? Clearly, Netta and Genie were thoroughly charmed, much like the deli girl in the grocery store down the street from the Berman.
Across the table, Kim’s eyes were like big blue
baseballs.
Netta stuck her hand out and introduced herself properly, then smiled adoringly at Blake and added, “Hon’, you come on up to the big house any ol’ day and there’ll be a pie there waiting on you.”
Blake grinned, and I had to admit, the effect of it was dazzling. “Miss Netta, you can expect me for a visit.”
Kim gave me another pointed look. She was obviously about to explode, the questions no doubt jamming up like commuter cars at rush hour. I want details, that look said. What in the world have you been doing while I’m slaving away, learning the bathhouse-and-laundry trade?
She’d just leaned across to introduce herself to Blake when the fiddle-and-guitar duo who’d been entertaining us suddenly stopped playing, and the sound system let out an ear-piercing screech. I looked up just in time to see Rav Singh step onto an old hay wagon, microphone in hand. He moved like a rock star taking the stage, lithe and confident, his head tipped back and his arms splayed out. A breeze whirled down the street and lifted the filmy black fabric of his shirt, swirling it in the amber light of lanterns and torches. Behind him, Chinquapin Peaks drew a dark, jagged line against a spill of stars and a full moon.
“Greetings, cast and crew of Wildwood Creek!” he said, and a hush fell over the crowd, the silence pregnant with expectation. “Welcome to the final night of the modern age. When you awaken in the morning, you will have stepped through time and been transported into Mysterious History, ready and willing . . . or not.”
He paused, scanned the crowd. I felt as if the last part of that sentence might be aimed directly at me. He seemed to be looking my way, waiting for me to flinch as reality set in. Instead, I straightened in my chair. All my life I’d doubted my own abilities, and Wildwood was no exception, but I was going to do this or die trying. My dream, and my ticket into the business, depended on it. This was my chance to prove how much I wanted it.
Rav strode to the other end of the wagon, cutting a dramatic figure against the lamplight, the tails of his shirt dancing loose over his smooth brown skin, his long, sleek hair fluttering around his head like a curtain, parting and closing, then parting again.
“There is one detail I’ve not revealed until now. Many of you may have been wondering, what will be the secret mystery in this newest Mysterious History journey? What awaits you here beyond assuming the lives of those who came to Wildwood trusting their futures, their very survival, to the promise of gold?”
He paused, seeming to contemplate his own question as a murmur circled the tables. “There are so many questions about Wildwood, some of which you’ve already considered yourselves. Where did the people go? How can an entire community vanish with no record left behind? Did the people of Wildwood flee? Were they taken? Do they lie somewhere near here still, their resting places unmarked? Do they yet walk these hills and valleys, as the locals say?”
In the trees, the cicadas suddenly grew impossibly loud, their throbbing song rising to a deafening crescendo, then stopping all at once. Kim glanced over her shoulder, slanted a nervous look my way as the eerie speech continued.
“And what of the gold? A vast deposit that was, as we now know, never to be found. The vein that yielded the ore found near Wildwood was later determined to have been volcanic in nature. The mother lode that brought gold fever to these hills lay far beneath the surface, unreachable. But in 1861, it was the stuff of dreams and dreamers. A reason to leave behind all that was safe, all that was familiar, and to risk . . . all. It was the impetus of hope and courage . . . but was it also the spark that ignited the darker traits of human nature? Greed? Envy? Money lust? Perhaps murder? Mass hysteria? Madness? Does this explain the disintegration of Wildwood?”
Again, the cicadas lifted their song, and Singh waited, his shirt swirling around his waist. “We’ve no way of knowing, but perhaps through Mysterious History, we will learn. And so, my question now—your question as you become Wildwood—is how do we accurately re-create the emotions, the decisions, the driving forces—the beauty and the hideousness of that time in this place?”
An uneasy hum traveled the tables. A chill walked over me, and I rubbed away gooseflesh.
Across the table, Netta whispered, “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Beside me, Blake calmly ate another spoonful of purple-hulled peas and took a swig of lemonade, as if he hadn’t the slightest concern.
Singh paced back to the middle of the wagon, stopped there, gazed over the tops of the buildings into the night sky, then slowly scanned the crowd, commanding a snap of instant and rapt attention. All side conversations stopped abruptly. “How . . . indeed?”
He ushered someone onto the platform, and I quickly recognized the woman who’d guided me through the dark halls of the Berman on the day of my initial interview. I’d seen her only occasionally during my months at the Berman. My suspicion was that she traveled with Singh. She handed him a sheet of paper, then stood behind him and to the right, statue-still, motionless, her hair bound so tightly that even the breeze couldn’t tease it.
Singh held up the sheet of paper. “In the centers of your tables, you will each find a box. The box contains information needed for staking claims in and around Wildwood, and the price that will be required, in terms of your 1861 funding. Various sites along the river have been individually seeded with over one million dollars in ore—only fool’s gold by the world’s standards, but here in Wildwood, those with the fortitude and good fortune to choose their claims wisely may profit beyond their wildest dreams. In Wildwood, all that glitters is worth its weight in gold at the Miners Exchange. The locations of paying claims are not known to any among the cast and crew. And they will not be known . . . unless and until they are discovered by you, the residents of this town. The Claims Office will open in the morning for filing. I and Razor Point Productions wish you good luck and good hunting as you re-create not only the time period of Wildwood, but its mysterious history as well.”
The crowd held silent in a moment of collective shock, heads turning slowly side-to-side, wives whispering to husbands, new neighbors looking across tables at one another, suddenly seeing something completely different. Potential competitors.
Singh descended from the wagon with his assistant in tow, seeming unconcerned by the murmur rippling through the crowd. Across the table, Kim was already wondering how much a claim might cost, and whether she could take her salary from the bathhouse and go into mining instead. “If I’m stuck here all summer, I want a chance at the gold.”
“I knew that man had something up his sleeve!” Netta struck a palm against the table. “I can always tell. This isn’t what we signed up for at all. We were supposed to spend two and a half months living like pioneers, not fighting each other tooth and nail for gold. It’s not . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest. I was busy watching Blake Fulton scoop up another spoonful of peas. One thing was clear enough. This news did not come as any surprise to him.
Chapter 18
BONNIE ROSE
JUNE 1861
Dear Ms. Rose,
I’d not thought, upon your departure from the New Ila, to inquire as to your permission that I might address you by your given name. I hope, in light of the distance between us now, that you will forgive my taking this familiar liberty. Many’s the hour since watching you disappear into the distance, that I have cursed my lack of courage in not saying more. Indeed, were that scene to play itself out again, Bonnie, I would have committed whatever egregious breach of etiquette might have been necessary to prevent your leaving altogether.
It is my belief that trouble may befall you in Wildwood. I pray that I am quite mistaken. I pray that this letter reaches your hands, finding you unharmed and at the very least somewhat contented in your new position there. I pray that your gentle spirit and bold, independent nature are not dimmed by the realities of life in such a town as Wildwood.
I have long held concerns as to the nature of our in-common employer and his intentions for his holdings, as well as
for those who are bound financially to his employment. With shots fired this spring at Fort Sumter, and the entry of Texas into the conflict as a Confederate state, animosities draw to a boil all around us. It may well be that I will soon be forced to scuttle the New Ila to prevent her from being conscripted as a tool in the Confederate cause. While I may not own her lock, stock, and title, she is my boat, and I will not see her used against the union of these United States.
If our employer should intercept this letter, if you should find it with the wax seal broken, it may be that I am already deceased, or otherwise detained. If so, my greatest regret, other than allowing you to disappear from my sight on that last day, is that I will not be capable of coming to your aid, as I had promised on our parting.
But know this, Bonnie. If it is a man’s heart and his prayers that can preserve him and rejoin him again with another human soul, I will find you. Know also, that there is another in Wildwood who watches over you. If you recall our final conversation onboard the New Ila, you will and do know the identity of this person. Should the need of your rescue from Wildwood become imminent, go to him. He will help you to find a way.
Please, Bonnie, forgive my impetuous declaration of love in these words as I write. I have, many nights, struggled to reason myself from them. But there are times when a man’s soul knows what his mind cannot yet comprehend.
If there is a possibility that I may find you again in this world, I will do it, if only you would bid it of me.
Could you ever love me, Bonnie Rose?
Yours affectionately,
James
I sit lookin’ at the letter, touching my finger to the stroke of the pen, and inside, my heart flutters like a shore bird bound in a fisherman’s net. I’m feeling I must escape and I must surrender, all at once. Alone in the darkness with Maggie asleep nearby, I read it again and again, hoping with one breath and fearin’ with the next.
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