Gold Dust

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Neal Box stepped outside and crossed his lot. “Well, I guess it’s over.”

  “It is, that.” Cody reached in and clicked off his lights.

  “It was good while it lasted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I made a buttload of money these past few days. Now it’s back to carryin’ most of these folks on credit till the end of the month.”

  Cody laughed and drove home to spend some long hours with his redhead for the first time in weeks.

  Chapter Ninety-one

  I still had a dry cough that came and went a full two weeks after Uncle Cody’s gunfight with the cattle rustler. We were between cold fronts, and I was finally back at school. The day was warm and sunny. I thought it was gonna be a good day until I saw Harlan Ketchum twist a quarter from the hand of another kid.

  His toady Frankie laughed when he saw me and pointed. The look in Harlan’s eye told me nothing had changed while I was in the hospital.

  I was sitting with my back against a tree, an open math book in my lap, trying to figure out some problems the rest of the class had already learned. Kids of all sizes screamed and played chase, or swung, or did what Pepper and Mark were doing, wandering around the trees at the edge of the playground like lost cows, talking and not paying any attention to anything going on around them.

  Harlan stuck the quarter in his pocket and moseyed in my direction. He steered shy of me for a while, but I wasn’t dumb enough to think it was because he was afraid. He just didn’t want to tangle with Mark, who’d already seen a lot of life and was tough to boot. Harlan was afraid of Pepper, too. We all knew she wouldn’t think twice about punching him in his big ol’ nose.

  He kicked the sole of my tenny shoe. “Hey, Mouse.”

  I marked my place in the textbook and looked up. “Don’t call me that.” Mouse is what Cale called me when he wanted to get my goat and Harlan remembered. I never let on it bothered me, but I’d about decided that I was tired of people calling me names.

  “I’ll call you anything I want.”

  My heart started pounding when I realized Harlan had that look in his eye. It was the same glassy expression he got when he tried to stick my head in the commode. “I’m just trying to study here.”

  “How much money you got on you?”

  “Look, all I have in my pocket is a buckeye, a pocket knife, and two dimes.”

  Frankie giggled down at me. “Turn ’em out, like he said.”

  For the first time in my life, I hit the wall. I’d almost died and come back, and now here was some stupid kid who spent most of his time terrorizing people littler than him. I’d had it. “Nope. Go bother somebody else.”

  He kicked the side of my shoe with his steel-toed work boot and it hurt like the dickens. “Give it here.”

  “Ain’t got nothing to give. Go on and leave me alone, bonehead.”

  The look in Harlan’s eyes was frightening. “Get up, Mouse. I think you got that coin Pepper’s been talking about. Thom Batch told it to me for the truth.”

  I didn’t like the fact that he was standing over me, and was getting tired of looking up at him, so I stood. He was a head taller, but the tree had pushed the ground up around the base of the trunk and that gave me enough height that we were close to eye level.

  “That’ll be after the fight.”

  It must have startled him. He stepped back and angled his body so one shoulder was pointed in my direction. He doubled both fists and raised them like one of them old-time boxers. It was all scary at first, but then he thumbed his nose at me.

  I’d read that old school boxers thumbed their noses to be sure their hands were high enough to protect their faces in a fight. At the same time it was a sign of disrespect. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone do that, and I got tickled.

  “What are you grinning about, Mouse? Come on!”

  He thumbed it again with his right hand, and I busted out laughing. “What are you doing?”

  He thumbed again. “I’m waiting.”

  “I’m not fighting both of you.”

  Harlan jerked his head toward Frankie. “He can have what’s left when I’m finished.”

  Frankie set his feet to get ready. That familiar sinking feeling dropped the bottom out of my stomach. I remembered Uncle Cody telling me one time that if you know you’re gonna get in a fight, throw the first punch and make it a good one. I dug in with my right foot and jabbed straight out with my left fist. We were both surprised when Harlan’s nose exploded in a gout of blood.

  Instinct kicked in and I hit him with a right in the same place. Harlan rocked back. Frankie stepped up to hit me and that’s when a mane of black hair flashed by. The meaty sound of a punch was followed by a wail and I knew then that it was just me and Harlan.

  “Take him, Top!”

  Mark’s voice made my chest swell and I threw a left jab that missed, but I followed it with a hard right in the eye and Harlan’s legs went all loose and rubbery. The next thing I knew, I’d thrown myself at him and we were on the ground. Harlan covered his bloody face and tried to twist away, but I was finally mad. I hit him half a dozen times, but couldn’t tell you where they landed if my life depended on it.

  He finally rolled away and got up running. I was almost out of gas and knew better than to chase after him. A coughing spell caught up with me and I doubled over until it passed. When I straightened up, Mark was straddling Frankie, who was rolled up in a ball, crying and holding the side of his head. It was a shock to see we were in the middle of a ring of kids who were laughing and clapping like they’d just seen a magician pull a rabbit out of his hat.

  Mark kicked Frankie in the side. “Get up and get on outta here.”

  Frankie rolled over and got up. He ran toward the gym without looking back and passed Miss Russell who was steaming in our direction. That little redheaded teacher pushed through the ring of kids and planted both fists on her hips.

  “Y’all get to class now.” The ring scattered and she turned to Mark. “Mr. Lightfoot, do you want to tell me what’s going on out here?”

  I didn’t want him to get into trouble, so I spoke up. “It was me, Miss Russell.”

  Her pale eyebrow rose. “Fine then, Mr. Parker. What would your granddaddy say about you fighting at school?”

  “He wouldn’t say nothing if I didn’t start it.”

  The eyebrow rose higher. “You trying to be smart, mister?”

  “No, ma’am. Just telling you truth.”

  She knew good and well that it wasn’t my fault. I felt like I was on stage and everything was scripted. It made me feel good, though, because I’d never been on the winning end of a fight.

  “Harlan started it, and I finished it. Mark didn’t do nothing but keep Frankie off of me.”

  “Didn’t do anything,” she corrected, but I saw the corners of her mouth lift. “So I take it you were just sitting here studying and he was the instigator?”

  “Yessum. I was minding my own business. He wanted something I didn’t have…and, well…he’s been taking the little kids’ lunch money and I got tired of it.”

  Miss Russell crossed her arms like she did when we were reading our oral reports. “Go on. You’re suddenly Lancelot, protecting Camelot?”

  I must have grown another inch. “Well, I didn’t intend for it to be like that, but I guess that’s how it turned out.”

  “Umm, humm.” Miss Russell’s attention shifted. “And you, Miss Beatrice Parker. What’s your role here?”

  Pepper’s face reddened. She hated her real name and for anyone to use it. “I didn’t do nothin’. I just came over here to watch.” She couldn’t keep her mouth closed, though. “But I’da knocked the snot out of both of ’em if I’d got here in time.”

  Miss Russell wet her lips and whistled loud and long, louder than any man I’ve ever known. “All righ
t, students. Everyone inside and right now.” She nodded as if it were all settled. “I’ll have to call your granddaddy, but it won’t be too bad. I’ll make sure he understands, but you have to serve penance, Mr. Lancelot.”

  “Yes, ma’am. What’s that?”

  She gave me a wink that only I saw. “I want a twenty-page report on whatever library book you’re reading, and I expect it in two days.”

  I was grinning ear from ear, especially when Pepper spoke up just loud enough that Miss Russell couldn’t hear. “Well, shit. You’d do that anyhow if you wanted to.”

  Mark held out his closed fist. “Open your hand.”

  I did, and he dropped a quarter in my hand. He grinned. “Spoils of war. I guess it fell out of Harlan’s pocket.”

  I collected my math book, and went looking for the little kid to return his quarter.

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Dinner at Ned and Miss Becky’s house was over and the sun chased most of the cold away. It was one of those Texas winter days that started in the low forties and warmed into the seventies by the afternoon.

  Fresh air flowed through the open windows and the adults gathered in the living room. Us kids were sitting on the floor, listening to their conversation about the past few weeks.

  Tom Bell chuckled at Cody’s description of Ike Reader’s escaped deer. “And that happened in the middle of a gold rush and all those other troubles.”

  “Just goes to show that the good Lord’s got a sense of humor.” Miss Becky laughed.

  I wanted to keep the discussion going. I always loved to hear their stories. “Nobody ever found anything, either.”

  “Yeah, they did.” Uncle Cody patted Norma Faye’s leg. “That’s how the Prestons wound up with that big old house overlooking the river.”

  She picked up his hand and put it back in his own lap. “I thought they inherited some money while the house was going up.”

  “They got some money, all right.” Grandpa rocked back and forth. “While they were digging for fill dirt on that draw not far from the house, they dug into a bunch of Indian burial mounds. It’s against federal law to rob graves, but he didn’t care. Cody found out the rest.”

  Tom Bell cleared his throat and stood. “Well, kids, this so-called gold rush ain’t quite over.” He picked up his hat.

  Pepper perked up. “What’s that?”

  “Come go with me to find out. You boys get a couple of shovels out of the smokehouse.”

  Grandpa stopped rocking. “What fer?”

  “I know where there’s some gold buried.”

  Pepper couldn’t understand it. “Where? We going to Palmer Lake?”

  Mr. Tom smoothed his mustache. “You know where you kids burned scraps in Cody’s yard, back when I was working on the house?”

  “The one we pass every time anybody comes down the drive and the grass is thick and green?”

  “Yep. Remember what I told y’all about hunting for gold?”

  “You said to look for landmarks, places that people could remember after a few years.”

  “Yep.”

  I got caught up in the conversation. “What’s there?”

  “About twenty thousand in gold double-eagles.”

  Norma Faye put a hand over her mouth. “In our yard?”

  “It was the best place I could think of at the time where it wouldn’t be found.”

  Grandpa started rocking again. “It would have been lost, then, if you’d stayed dead down in Mexico.”

  Tom Bell’s smile twitched his mustache. “Not really. I wrote to you about it in one of those envelopes I told you not to open.”

  “I’ll be dog.”

  Tom Bell put on his hat. “It was for y’all, for later, but now I think you’re gonna need it at some point soon for these kids’ college, Ned. Now let’s all go over there and dig up some gold, but Pepper, you say a word about it….”

  “I know. I know. You’ll blister my butt.”

  His eyes flashed with that light that made me shiver. “And you know I would.”

  “And I’d hold you while he did it,” Grandpa said as we left to dig up a treasure. “Even though I wouldn’t take for her.”

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