Ghost Town

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  His eyes seemed to grow darker and deeper. “The Hollywood people who make films don't think about the deeper issues. They probably don't know or care that this land once belonged to many tribes—like the Shoshones and the Paiutes.”

  As he spoke, Luke's voice grew angrier. “The land the Mormon settlers named Zion has been a hallowed place for centuries, rich with spirits. For many years young warriors and wise elders came into the mountains to meditate and talk to the gods. Then white settlers arrived and claimed the land, which was not theirs to take.”

  Luke stopped speaking for a moment. Then he went on, his anger seemingly under control. “You've seen the rugged peak of Mount Kinesava, which towers over the town of Grafton?”

  Ashley nodded. “It's part of Zion.”

  “It's part of a temple. That land was mystical. It still is, even though the settlers interfered.”

  “But the settlers left.”

  “Those who were still alive.” Luke's voice dropped so low that Ashley could scarcely hear it. “Many of them are still there. The tombstones in the cemetery at Grafton mark countless graves of settlers who died in the tribal raids and who tried to flee the Blackhawk War.”

  Ashley pictured the cemetery and the jagged red-and-gold peaks that rose above it, the town and mountain separated only by the Virgin River, which twisted between them. “The mystical land, the spirits, are they still there, too?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Luke nodded. “Let me try to explain. There are certain places in this world that are attuned to both the inner and outer forces of the earth. The Zion peaks are among them. They're a channel through which great magic can take place.”

  “What kind of magic?”

  An impatient voice shouted down the hallway, “Ashley Banks! Where are you? Report at once to Makeup!”

  “Don't go,” Luke said. “Come with me. I'll show you.”

  Reluctantly Ashley answered, “I wish I could, but I have to report to Makeup.”

  She ran into the hallway, almost colliding with an older woman, who pressed against the wall to get out of Ashley's way.

  “Ooops! I'm sorry,” Ashley said. She put out a hand to steady the woman.

  Stepping away from the wall, the woman shook her head. She was short and small-boned, with deeply tanned skin, and her long gray hair was fastened at the nape of her neck with a rubber band. “Young people are so impatient,” she said. “Where were you rushing off to so fast?”

  “To Makeup,” Ashley answered. “I'm in this movie—uh, film—they're making. Oh, I'm sorry. I suppose you are, too.”

  “Me? Oh, no,” the woman said. “I'm Maria Blanton. I own this motel, but my son, Anthony, runs it. Why I rented it out to a movie company, I don't know. Well, I do know. A full house means money in the bank.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Blanton,” Ashley said. She tried to edge past the woman, but Mrs. Blanton didn't seem to be finished with what she had to say.

  “Those Hollywood people film around Grafton every so often. Sometimes people in the movie companies stay here. Robert Redford and Paul Newman once made a movie here. Big stars. It's different now. I don't know the Hollywood people in this movie. I never go to the movies anymore.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” Ashley said. She managed to squeeze around Mrs. Blanton and hurry into the room with the Makeup sign tacked to the door.

  Half an hour later Ashley gave her name to a woman with a clipboard and climbed on the bus that would take the extras to the set. She checked the seats carefully and realized, to her disappointment, that Luke Danvers wasn't aboard.

  But when the bus reached the set, lumbering to a stop behind a line of buses already parked, Ashley saw Luke from the window. He was standing near the river, with Mount Kinesava rising up like a hovering giant behind him. Let him be waiting for me, Ashley hoped. I wish I could get to know him better.

  With a start, Ashley saw that Luke's eyes were fixed on hers. He smiled and raised a hand, beckoning.

  Ashley scrambled out of her seat and hurried to get off the bus.

  Luke approached her, holding out a hand. “Come with me,” he said.

  Ashley glanced around the parking lot. The other extras were making their way toward the set. “Come where?” she asked.

  Luke grinned. “To the magical mountains,” he said.

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “Ashley!” a voice called.

  Ashley glanced over her shoulder and saw the studio teacher, Ms. Dunn, motioning to her.

  “This way, please. They've set up a trailer for our classroom. The others are already there.”

  “Later,” Ashley quickly told Luke. She ran to catch up with Ms. Dunn.

  Ms. Dunn smiled pleasantly, but she said, “Each morning you're supposed to report to me. Where were you off to?”

  “To the magic—to the mountains,” Ashley answered.

  Ms. Dunn looked concerned. “Haven't you been given the warnings?” she asked.

  “What warnings?” A shiver trembled along Ashley's spine. Putting her hands in her pockets, she reached for the comfort of her magic stone, but it felt so cold and hard that she quickly pulled her fingers away.

  “It's easy to get lost in those mountains,” Ms. Dunn said. “No one should hike into them alone. People have disappeared and never been found.”

  But I'd be with Luke, Ashley thought. I'd be perfectly safe.

  However, she did as she was told. The day was taken up with classroom work, rehearsal, and a lot of waiting. Lights were set up. Lights were taken down. Props were arranged and rearranged. Moviemaking was incredibly boring, Ashley decided.

  During the afternoon, gray clouds gathered, and the mountain peaks darkened in their shadow. Now and then Sam, the director, squinted up at the sky. “The clouds look good,” he said to one of his assistants. “They're just what we want, as long as they don't turn into rainstorms, delay filming, and wreck the budget.”

  “Don't worry so much,” the assistant answered. “The TV weatherman said it's not going to rain. You wanted clouds, and that's what you got.”

  Ashley looked for Luke, but he was nowhere in sight.

  It wasn't until she was back at the motel, walking down the hallway toward the room she shared with her mother, that she heard Luke's voice. He called to her from the storeroom, where once again he was perched on the pile of boxes.

  Ashley glanced through the open doorway at Luke's handsome face, and her heart jumped with happiness.

  “You didn't come with me,” he said.

  He wasn't scolding. His smile was soft and warm, so Ashley relaxed and smiled back. “You know I couldn't.”

  “You could have if you'd wanted to. You made a wish. Wishes, once granted, must be carried out.”

  Ashley was puzzled. She couldn't remember making any wishes out loud. And he couldn't know about the wishes she'd made in her mind.

  Again her face grew warm as she thought of her wish to kiss Luke.

  “The mountains are beautiful—shades of red and gold in the sunlight, blue black in the moonlight. Wasn't it moonlight you were wishing for?”

  Ashley was positive she hadn't wished aloud. “How do you know what I wished for?” she asked.

  “I told you.

  The mountains have magical powers.” “The mountains, maybe. But not you.”

  Luke leaned forward. His eyes were deep and compelling. “Come with me into the mountains, Ashley.”

  Ashley closed her eyes and took a step closer to him.

  Suddenly she heard her mother out in the hallway. “Have any of you seen Ashley?” Her voice was tight with anxiety. “She was supposed to have been on that last bus.”

  Ashley ran toward the doorway. She stopped and gave a last look over her shoulder at Luke. “I'm sorry. I wish I could go with you, but…”

  Luke grinned and gave Ashley a mock salute. “That wish is good enough for me,” he said.

  That night Ashley went to sleep clutching her lucky stone. As she slept, she dreamed s
he was walking into the mountains with Luke, climbing the jagged rocks, clinging to rough, broken walls. But when she looked around, Luke wasn't there. She was alone with the mountains, tall and dark, looming overhead and slowly closing in on her. She woke up gasping with fear, her heart racing.

  Ashley didn't see Luke before she left for the set, and he wasn't waiting for the bus when she arrived. Where was he? As the thickening clouds grew darker, Ashley's spirits did, too. Why hadn't he come to see her?

  “Good sky,” the director said.

  “Yeah,” his assistant answered. “Just right.”

  But Ashley shivered when she looked up at the clouds. Dark streaks of shadow spread up and down the rocky outcrops of Mount Kinesava, reds and golds suddenly deepening to maroons and grays. The quickly changing light seemed to make faces appear and disappear in the rocks, all of them scowling down at the people who had invaded their valley.

  Dusk came quickly, and with it Luke. He suddenly appeared at Ashley's side and took her hand.

  “Board your buses,” someone called. Actors, extras, and crew began tiredly walking toward the buses.

  “Come with me,” Luke said to Ashley.

  She tried to say no, but the word wouldn't form. Instead she began to walk beside him toward the mountains. But glancing back at the buses, she hesitated. “I can't miss the bus,” Ashley said. “There's no other way to get back to St. George.”

  “You wished to come with me. Remember? Now your wish is coming true,” Luke said.

  Ashley wanted to tell him that she couldn't, that she really didn't want to. She wanted to ask how he knew about wishes she had never spoken aloud, but she said nothing. His voice was so commanding she followed without complaint.

  Luke led her to a rise behind the scraggly-limbed mulberry trees near the small cemetery she had visited before. He stopped under the dark shadows of one of the mulberries and rested one arm around Ashley's shoulders. “We'll stop here for a moment,” he said. “It's time for your first wish to come true.”

  Ashley gulped. She remembered her first wish— that Luke would put an arm around her shoulders and lightly kiss her lips. But how did he know? Her heart pounded. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  Frightened by what she didn't understand, she strained to see his face in the growing darkness. Gripping her magic stone, she blurted out, “I wish I knew all about you.”

  “No!” Luke shouted. He seemed upset. “No more wishes, Ashley!”

  “Yes, I need to know!” Ashley cried. “I wish I could see you exactly as you are.”

  A stream of moonlight burst through the clouds, and Ashley lifted her face.

  There, directly in front of her, was a bleached skull with dead hollows where the eyes should have been. A few patches of dark hair still clung to what remained of the scalp.

  “As…I… am,” a scratchy voice echoed.

  A bony hand clutched her shoulder as the skull came closer.

  Too terrified to scream, Ashley jerked away. She tried to run but tripped over tangled tree roots.

  The skeleton came forward. It bent over her. “Wishes can come true,” the voice rasped.

  Whimpering, trying to scramble away, Ashley reached into her pocket for the stone. It had performed magic, but not the kind she wanted. Even though the stone burned her fingers, she clung to it, holding it up so that the skeleton could see it. “I wish I had never met you!” she shouted at the skull.

  With all her strength Ashley threw the stone into the darkness.

  With a thump that knocked her breath away, she suddenly found herself in the hallway of the St. George Motel. Mrs. Blanton stood beside her, peering into her face.

  “Are you all right, girl?” Mrs. Blanton asked. “I didn't mean to run right into you.”

  Ashley leaned against the door frame of the prop room and breathed deeply, trying to steady herself. “I'm all right,” she said.

  “Which way are you heading?”

  For a moment Ashley struggled to remember. “I—I saw the open door and all the movie props inside the room. I think I was going inside to take a look.”

  “Not everything in there belongs to the movie folk,” Mrs. Blanton said. She squeezed into the doorway next to Ashley and pointed to the photo on the far wall. “That's a picture of my little brother, Luke. It's about all I have left to remind me of him. He was a wild boy, always playing pranks that upset some of the neighbors around here. He wasn't a mean kid. He just liked to have fun. He liked excitement and always wanted something going on. And he liked to share the fun because he hated to be by himself. But one day when he was seventeen, he came home with a weird-looking stone. Looked just like an eye, it did. He told us he had discovered ancient mysticism.”

  She sighed. “Soon after that, Luke went into the mountains alone and didn't return. His body was never found.”

  “I'm sorry,” Ashley said.

  “I still ache for him,” Mrs. Blanton went on. “To be alone, to die alone. Luke hated to be alone.”

  Mrs. Blanton cleared her throat and dabbed at her eyes. With a last look at Luke's photograph, she turned and walked toward the motel office.

  Ashley stood in the doorway a moment, staring at the boy in the photograph. High cheekbones, a strong, square chin, dark eyes that seemed to stare right into her own. Too bad he had disappeared. He was certainly good-looking enough to have been a movie star.

  As she shoved her hands into her pockets, Ashley was surprised that her new magic stone was no longer there. What had she done with it? She must have dropped it somewhere.

  Oh well, it doesn't matter, Ashley decided. After all, it wasn't really magic; it was only a stone.

  In 1861 Mormon colonists left Salt Lake City to settle in southern Utah. Some of them established their homes on land close to the Virgin River under a rugged, majestic mountain known as Kinesava. The leader of the Mormon church, Brigham Young, told the settlers this would be Zion, their homeland. This is how Kinesava and more than 146,000 acres of wild, colorful, massive rock formations received the name they have today. Zion was established as a national park in 1919.

  Nothing has been recorded to tell us how the town of Grafton was named, but some believe it was named after one of the original settlers.

  The settlers brought with them flocks of sheep and planted cotton. One colonist, hoping to take part in a new venture—the raising of silkworms— brought mulberry seeds and cuttings to her new home and established a small orchard. The silkworm eggs, imported from Asia, were sprinkled on shredded mulberry leaves from the orchard.

  Silk production succeeded in the nearby colonies, but not in Grafton. The settlers were too busy defending themselves against Indian raids and the frequent flooding of the Virgin River to make a success of any of their projects. Even rebuilding the town on higher ground and building levees and canals didn't protect it from the heavy spring floods. Family after family left, until by 1930, Grafton was entirely deserted.

  Films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, have been shot in Grafton, but now the remains of the town and its cemetery are inhabited only by memories and ghosts.

  The town is privately owned, but it is open to those who wish to explore it.

  To reach Grafton, from Highway 15 out of St. George, drive approximately thirty miles on Highway 9 to Rockville. Then take the old bridge road in Rockville and drive about four miles until you reach the town of Grafton.

  To learn more about Grafton, contact the Washington County Travel Bureau, 1835 Convention Center Drive, St. George, Utah 84790, and ask for a copy of its tourist guide.

  Web sites:

  “Wind in the Sage: A Story of Utah Ghost Towns”: www.kbyu.org/tv/cover-march97.html

  “Destinations Utah, Great Ghost Towns of the West”: www.azcentral.com/travel/destinations/ utah/ghostutah.shtml

  Publications:

  Ghost Towns of the West, by Lambert Florin, Promontory Press, New York, 1992, pages 366–369.


  Historical Guide to Utah Ghost Towns, by Stephen L. Carr, Zion Books, Salt Lake City, 1972.

  BAD MAN

  FROM BODIE

  “I've been hoping you'd soon discover the direction your life might take,” Dr. Randall Nelson said to his son, Mike. “When I was your age I had already developed a strong interest in history. You can see where it led me.”

  Mike took his eyes from the pine forests that bordered the mountain road and looked at his father. He slid down in the passenger seat of his dad's car and groaned. “I'm only eleven, Dad. I've got lots of time to decide what I'm going to be when I grow up.”

  “Of course you have,” Dr. Nelson said, and Mike winced at the deliberate patience in his father's voice. “But these are the years to explore ideas, Mike. That's what you should be doing, instead of spending so much time on television and computer games. Discover new pathways. Search for new thoughts. Look for your purpose and goals in life.”

  “I thought this was going to be a camping trip— for fun,” Mike grumbled.

  Dr. Nelson threw Mike a quick glance before he looked back at the road. “Oh, it is, son. It is. I only thought, since we'd be alone for a while without distractions, we'd have a good chance to discuss your future.”

  Mike edged up in his seat. His dad had switched to the defensive. Now was the time to get his mind going on a completely different track. “Tell me about this ghost town where we're going to stop,” he said.

  Dr. Nelson's eyes brightened, and he smiled. “Bodie,” he answered. “What an exciting history Bodie has. Legend has it that in 1859 a Dutchman from New York state, who had come to California looking for gold, shot and wounded a rabbit. The rabbit dropped into a hole, and Mr. Body— Waterman Bill Body—dug into the hole to get the rabbit. What do you suppose he found?”

  “The rabbit,” Mike answered. He wished his dad would get to the point.

  “Gold!” Dr. Nelson said. “He discovered flakes of gold. However, Mr. Body died a short time later in a snowstorm, so it wasn't until the mid-1870s that gold and silver mining became successful in Bodie.”