Sweetwater

by Lisa Henry

  He crouched beside it. He took a piece of quartz from the ground and turned it over in his palm. He held it up to the sunlight, wondering if he would see any flecks of gold. Nothing but gray quartz. Elijah set it on the grave.

  He looked down over the camp, catching glimpses of it through the trees. He wondered what Dr. Carter and the McCreedy boys were talking about, what anyone talked about. Elijah hadn’t had enough conversations in his life to put them together in his mind. Words were stretched over the frame of friendly greetings and woven together in ways that he didn’t understand; people made patterns of weather, and news, and remembrances and speculations, but Elijah didn’t know the secret. He had always been excluded from conversation and never learned the skill. Talking to people he knew was difficult enough. He hated talking with strangers and could never imagine that he would be able to do it with a smile on his face. Most people thought his smile meant idiocy anyhow. He felt more comfortable here, crouched over a grave in silence, than down in the camp where Dr. Carter and the McCreedy boys talked.

  He tried to see if he could spot the South Pass from here, that tiny dip in the range above South Pass City, but he couldn’t. The ground was too hilly, the mountains hidden by the closer peaks and troughs of the rough landscape. He felt strangely closed in, even on the exposed ridge.

  He tilted the brim of his hat back and squinted at the sky. To the south, at least a few miles away, he saw a narrow column of rising smoke turning on the wind. Another mine, possibly. Or maybe the Shoshone or the Arapaho or the Sioux. Those names still fell into conversations as sharp as bitten-off curses, sharp enough to snag on Elijah’s dull hearing every time.

  He breathed through a sudden chill. He looked at Harry McCreedy’s grave for a moment longer, then, suddenly afraid to be alone except for a dead man, he scrambled back down the ridge to the camp.

  On the way home, Dulcie got a stone in her hoof. Elijah dug it out, but she limped a little and skittered awkwardly when he tried to remount her, so he walked instead. Dulcie snuffled the back of his neck, and he batted her snout away firmly.

  “Do you think the McCreedys are going to find any gold?” he asked.

  Dr. Carter looked down at him. “I doubt that very much.”

  “Would have been better to get paid in chickens,” Elijah said.

  Dr. Carter laughed. “Very likely, yes, but don’t tell them that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Adavale is probably worthless, but they don’t see that.”

  Elijah wrinkled his nose. “They really want a stamp mill, sir?”

  On that worthless piece of dirt?

  Dr. Carter smiled. “Apparently so, and Francis can’t understand why the bank won’t put the money up. He can’t understand why I won’t either.”

  “They don’t have much at their camp,” Elijah said. “Not even a cabin. Aren’t they supposed to build something so they don’t lose their claim?”

  They probably wanted Dr. Carter to pay for that as well, now that they’d made him a part owner. Like a grubstake but done all backward. Dr. Carter didn’t have any capital to prop up a mining operation. He was no investor, and it wasn’t right to ask him since he’d only accepted the part stake as payment when the McCreedy boys had nothing else to offer. Elijah hadn’t been joking about the chickens.

  “I don’t think they’ll be there much longer,” Dr. Carter said.

  Elijah hoped it was true.

  Dr. Carter’s smile turned into something almost wistful. “Men like that, Elijah, they put their dreams into a piece of dirt. It takes more than most men have in them to admit their dream is worthless.”

  Elijah thought of the wagon trains climbing west and wondered what dreams fueled them. Then he wondered what dreams his family had clung to before they had disintegrated into dust and vanished on the wind. Before the Trail took everything.

  “They aren’t a bad bunch,” Dr. Carter said.

  He thought the best of everyone.

  “Will they really leave?” Elijah’s feet were starting to ache.

  “I think so.” Dr. Carter reached for his canteen. “I think the only reason they haven’t left yet is they can’t agree on where to go.”

  “The Bighorn Mountains?” Elijah asked. Since the discovery of gold there, a trickle of men had left South Pass City to try their luck. It would become a flood soon, according to pessimists like Cleaver.

  “Maybe so.”

  What sort of life was that? Chasing rumors of gold from one end of the wide land to the other. Some struck it rich, surely, but most didn’t. Elijah had met enough miners to know that. Mining gold was hard work, with no guarantee of a return on your capital, but the newspapers never told the stories of the men who were ruined over it.

  The smart ones were the men like Harlan Crane who made their money from the miners, not the mines.

  “Gold is finite,” Crane had said the night before. “Every boom has its bust, and any man with eyes in his head can see it coming.”

  Elijah hadn’t answered. Just rested there, in the quiet, in the stillness, wanting to know what he was to Crane, and what these strange moments meant.

  “No gold, hardly any wagon trains now the railroad is built, and folks will trip over themselves in a rush to get out.” Crane had carded his fingers through Elijah’s hair. “Like rats leaving a sinking ship.”

  “What about you?”

  Crane had grinned at him. “King of the rats, boy.”

  “Come on,” Dr. Carter said, swinging out of his saddle. “Let an old man stretch his legs awhile, and you can ride.”

  “I’m all right, sir,” he protested.

  “I’m walking for a bit anyway,” Dr. Carter replied. “So it’s your choice if you ride or not.”

  Elijah rode.

  They took turns, all the way back.

  Elijah winced as Dr. Carter pierced the blisters on his heels, and fought not to pull away when he swiped carbolic acid over them. Elijah hissed.

  “We ought to ask Bowman for a refund on your horse,” Dr. Carter commented, closing his medical bag.

  “Wasn’t her fault, sir,” he said.

  Dr. Carter patted him on the shoulder, then pulled his watch out of his pocket and flipped the lid open. “It’s too late now to go to the Empire.”

  Elijah started. “The Empire?”

  Dr. Carter looked at him sideways. “To check the girls.”

  Elijah flushed. Of course.

  “Crane is a stickler for cleanliness, which is just about the only thing he and I see eye to eye on,” Dr. Carter said. “The man is a viper, but he keeps his girls clean, the poor things.”

  Poor things, Elijah thought, and wondered if he was a poor thing, as well, or if he was something different.

  “I’ll go in the morning.”

  Elijah lay back on his cot, his heels burning.

  He watched as Dr. Carter got ready for bed. He checked the stove, then turned down the lamp. He unbuttoned his shirt and folded it over the back of the chair. His trousers followed it. He stretched, a skinny-legged man in long drawers with a potbelly, and Elijah warmed with affection for him.

  Dr. Carter crossed to the closed lowboy, his fingers tapping the surface of the wood in the same way that Thomas Spicer tapped the cover of his Bible: absently, seeking unconscious comfort.

  Elijah thought of the wedding portrait inside the lid, of the blue-glass bracelet, and of little Hannah’s christening gown folded between layers of brown paper. He wondered if Dr. Carter even realized that he did it: said his silent good-night to the dead before going to sleep.

  Elijah turned onto his side and squeezed his eyes shut.

  That night he dreamed he was a miner, hacking his way underground, the sweat streaming off him like blood, except that every piece of rock he found wasn’t quartz shot through with gold after all. Everything he found was bone.

  Elijah liked to watch the wagon trains arrive. He could see them coming for miles, shrouded in dust. Sometimes it looked like
they weren’t moving at all. They crossed the Sweetwater River nine times as it snaked over the plain. It took hours from the time the first wagon rolled into town to the time the last one did. They would stay several days in South Pass City, lined up in formation on the outskirts, before following the winding track up toward South Pass itself, then west. For a few days, South Pass City would be full of people—their optimism blunted by weariness, the journey weighing them down—as they made repairs and restocked their supplies.

  It was always busy for Dr. Carter. When he wasn’t working, Elijah helped him make the wagon rounds. Whole families were packed into those narrow spaces, all their worldly possessions with them. Some of them wouldn’t make it west. The Trail would take more than its fair share of the sick, the old, and the too young.

  Once, his family must have been like this. Shuddering their way west, the canvas creaking and snapping in the wind. Fretting about bandits and Indians and illness and death, and dreaming of the new lives that were waiting for them. The promise of gold stopped some families at South Pass City, but most of them would continue the climb over the mountains, into the hopeful unknown.

  Elijah sometimes followed them as far as the graveyard, watching and wondering.

  In his mind, the dream version of himself laughed and talked with his family.

  When the wagon trains came to town, the shops were full during the day and the saloons at night. The Empire was the busiest of them all. It drew men like a magnet, with the light and the laughter and the music.

  It drew Elijah, as well.

  “You give your pa the slip?” Crane asked him.

  Elijah lingered in the doorway of Crane’s room at the Empire, like he always did, like a part of him still didn’t know what was expected.

  “He’s not my pa, sir.”

  Crane raised his eyebrows. “Ain’t he? Raised you up, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir.” Elijah watched as Crane began to unbutton his waistcoat. His heart beat a little faster.

  “Look at you, boy. You still blush like a twelve-year-old virgin!” Crane shrugged off his waistcoat. “Get over here.”

  Elijah crossed the Turkish carpet and sank to his knees. He looked up at Crane and waited.

  He could spend his whole life like this, just waiting, caught by the other man’s gaze.

  Crane fumbled with the buttons on his trousers. “Does the doc know you come here?”

  “No, sir.”

  Crane smiled. “You mean you hope not.”

  “I hope not, sir.” Elijah almost smiled as well, and it felt like a betrayal of Dr. Carter’s trust in him. His misplaced trust.

  Crane reached down and ran his fingers through Elijah’s scruffy hair. “You’re a smart boy, Elijah. People don’t give you much credit, do they?”

  “No, sir.” He wet his lips.

  “Can you tell me why a smart boy like you gets on his knees for a man like me?” Crane’s eyes glittered in the lamplight.

  “No,” Elijah breathed. “I don’t know.”

  “Because it’s in your nature.” Crane unfastened his trousers at last and pulled Elijah’s head toward him. “You’re like a dog, boy, that goes belly up when it meets the biggest fucking mongrel in the pack.”

  Elijah moaned as the tip of Crane’s cock pushed against his lips and opened his mouth.

  He could feel the floor underneath him vibrating to the sounds of music and laughter below. He kept his hands behind his back, just how Crane liked it. Crane’s fist in his hair dictated the rhythm.

  At first, Elijah had hated this more than being fucked. He didn’t like the taste, but mostly he’d been scared that Crane would suffocate him. Now he knew better. He knew how to work his tongue around Crane’s cock, how to take every breath he could, and how to try to relax his throat when Crane went deep. The first time, he’d been certain he’d choke or vomit. When it was over, he’d retched, but nothing came out except strings of spit and cum. He’d thought it was an ugly act, leaving him red-faced and gasping for breath, tears streaming out of his eyes. Didn’t seem to bother Crane.

  “Good boy,” Crane said now. “Take it.”

  The taste didn’t turn his stomach anymore. It wasn’t that he’d learned to like it so much as he’d learned to like the promise it held. First he would suck Crane’s cock, then Crane would fuck him, then he’d come. And every time he came, whatever had gone before, it was worth the price. The longer Crane used him, the more it hurt, the better it was in the end.

  It was nothing like using his own hand. Elijah felt like he’d earned it when Crane made him come.

  It felt like a reward.

  It was Crane’s turn first though. Grunting and swearing, he came hard in Elijah’s mouth, and Elijah swallowed it down. Crane released his hair, and Elijah sat back on his heels. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and breathed heavily.

  Crane walked over to his desk and poured himself a drink. He held the bottle up. “Want one?”

  Elijah shook his head. He might be able to stomach the taste of cum, but he still hated whiskey.

  Crane moved over to sit on his bed. He took off his shirt and pulled down his trousers and drawers. “Get undressed, boy, and get over here.”

  Elijah stood up. The French doors to the balcony were open, the breeze making the curtains dance. Half-afraid that he would be seen from the street, he began to undress. He didn’t rush. He knew that Crane would take a little time to get hard again.

  “Look at you,” Crane said. “You’re about as smooth as a girl.”

  Elijah held his hands in front of his aching cock.

  “Get the strap.”

  Elijah crossed to Crane’s desk. There were several leather straps coiled there. The thin ones that Crane used to bind him, and the wider ones that caused his balls to draw up just by looking at them. “Which one, sir?”

  “You want me to stripe your ass, boy?”

  Elijah told himself that pain was the price he paid for giving in to his sinful urges. But he knew it wasn’t so simple. There was something about being bound, about being hurt, that made the pleasure sharper, deeper, and last longer. He wasn’t sure he even understood it, but he didn’t have to understand. Because Crane did. Crane knew.

  Elijah’s breath shuddered out of him. He was scared of hurting, but he ached for it all the same. His voice croaked when he spoke. “I don’t know, sir.”

  Not a refusal. Never a refusal.

  “Clever boy.” Crane smiled. “Bring them all. And the whiskey.”

  He obeyed.

  Crane set the whiskey on the low table beside his bed. “Hands.”

  He turned and put his hands behind his back. His breath caught as Crane began to wind the leather around his crossed wrists. He closed his eyes and wondered if he could come just from that. Just from the promise of being bound for Crane.

  Crane kept a bottle of hair oil on his table. The scent of it filled the night air.

  Crane put his hands on Elijah’s hips. “Come on. Move back.”

  Elijah twisted slightly. “Sir?”

  Usually Crane wanted him on his knees on the bed, his face jammed into the sheets.

  “Move back, boy,” Crane growled.

  Elijah shuffled back, not understanding what Crane wanted until suddenly Crane’s legs were between his, forcing them apart, and Crane’s hands on his hips were pulling him down.

  Oh God.

  Elijah whimpered as the oily head of Crane’s cock breached him. He was off-balance, and without his hands to steady him, had no choice but to sink down onto Crane’s cock. Too much pressure and then pain, and he couldn’t fucking move. He tried to rock forward a little, but Crane held him there until his own weight impaled him.

  “Hurts, sir,” he groaned.

  Crane only laughed and reached for this bottle of whiskey. “You want to ride, boy, you go right ahead.”

  Elijah did. Three times, four maybe, but the position was too awkward. He couldn’t get any leverage. He slumped back do
wn, whimpering as pain stabbed him. “Please untie me, sir.”

  “Hush up.”

  It hurt. Elijah squirmed, but that only made it worse.

  “Show me your belly, dog.”

  For a moment, he thought he’d misheard, then Crane’s mouth was right by his ear.

  “Show me your belly.”

  He closed his eyes and willed himself to relax. His bound hands rubbed against Crane’s hairy stomach. He arched his back, exposed his neck to Crane, and slowed his breathing. “Yes, sir. Anything you want.”

  Crane reached around and stroked his abdomen. “Good boy.”

  That light touch sparked his nerves and promised more than just the pain. Promised there was pleasure too, if only Elijah could bear the hurt a while longer. If only he could take it, and use it, and transform it.

  Elijah felt tears welling. Please please please.

  “What will your pa say if he sees the marks on your belly?”

  Marks?

  Elijah didn’t even have time to tense before the wide leather strap cracked against his skin. He cried out, his feet scrabbling on the floor for purchase, but Crane shifted back and took Elijah with him. “Just a few more, boy, then you’ll get the fucking you need.”

  Elijah sobbed. “Please don’t, sir!”

  “Hush.” Crane rubbed the stinging welt gently. “We’re just gonna sit here, real quiet, until you ask for the next one.”

  Elijah opened his eyes and stared toward the balcony. Tears blurred his vision. His shoulders ached, his ass hurt, and the welt across his abdomen felt like fucking fire. He figured he could struggle, but it wouldn’t do any good.

  “How many?” he choked out.

  “Three more,” Crane said in his ear. His breath was hot and smelled like whiskey.

  Elijah forced himself to relax despite the pain, leaning his head back onto Crane’s shoulder. He closed his eyes, his voice unsteady with tears. Three. Yes, he could take three. He could twist that pain into something different, if only he didn’t fight it. “Please.”