Auraria: A Novel

by Tim Westover

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Emmett, the apothecary, mounted a stage that he had built onto the rear of a mule-drawn cart. From here, he declaimed his cure in a sonorous voice punctuated by chords strummed on a fretless banjo. His white suit was gleaming and spotless in the midmorning sun. He had already attracted a crowd; Holtzclaw stood at the edge of the assembled mass.

  “Step right up, step up, please don’t be shy, you’ll want the best view, the very best view, for what promises to be a sellout wonder. Those of you hanging near the back may not get a chance to buy—the happy folks up front will snap up all I have!”

  Emmett took a deep breath.

  “Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught! It’s a mouthful, but if we put into its name all the wonders and works, every healing herb and efficacious effervescence that the good Professor W puts into his elixir, we’d be here half the afternoon just to say it once!

  “Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught! It goes down cool and smooth but warms your belly from within! A pleasing drink served warm with honey or over ice in a mint julep glass. Yes, every season is a fine one for this drink.

  “Drink Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught at breakfast time to oil the mechanism of your body and lubricate it to run its best! Pour it at night to still the thrumming activity of the day and replace the buzzing whine of gears with the hum of nightingales.

  “Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught is known to medical science to benefit the sufferers of diphtheria, scrofula, explosive dysentery, suspended rickets, mountaineer’s bends, Elder’s tremblers, catarrh, athlete’s catarrh, meretricious vapors, chronic and acute bubo, Picket worms, ice mites, accreted detritus, and any other disease or disorder that gnaws at the human condition. Yes, one draught treats them all—even the ones we don’t know about yet! How many diseases will never be discovered, thanks to Professor W’s powerful creation?

  “Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught treats all female complaints better than Andrew’s Cold Sarsaparilla Tea—pour that swill out the window! Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught treats male complaints better than General Tamlin’s Gunpowder Thunderbolt and Strawberry Cordial—feed that useless powder to your dogs!

  “Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught has a thousand uses in the marriage bed—but you already know that, clever girl!

  “Now folks here at this hotel think that they have a monopoly on cures. But what have they got? Water! Some of it smells bad. Some of it is hot; some is cold. But it’s all water! See, there’s Mr. Holtzclaw right now. Jimmy, it’s nothing but water, is it? Your silence, sir, is deafening. Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught is an actual medicine! There are chemicals, ingredients, natural herbs, formulated cordials, and extracted essences. For the easing of your pains and the curing of your infirmities, which will you choose? A glass of water or a potent potable?

  “Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught has thirty scruples of anvil shavings to every bottle, and we activate it with a grain each of silver, gold, and lithium. What for? Why, metal magnetism! You’ll gain a harmonic vibration with all the metals of the world. Know how many coins you have in your pocket without counting! Never lose an earring again! Feel which pips on the dice are heaviest—which ones want to come up in the next roll! Find a mineral spring in your own garden, and stop paying Jimmy Holtzclaw here his outrageous prices.

  “And did you know that Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught will heighten your sense of smell? Food tastes better; the musk of men and the perfumes of women are more beguiling. Gold too—gold has a smell. It is a pungent spice that comes up from the wet earth and can be smelled miles and miles away. And after a regular course of treatment with Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught, when it has filled your body and sweetened your blood, you too can follow your nose. Your only care in life will be sharing with your fellows the benefits that you have enjoyed—long life, good taste, and prosperity—thanks to Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught. It is your elixir of full potential, your portal to a new and better life. Who will buy, and who will be left behind, a sub-human on this new, wonder-filled world?”

  Emmett strummed the banjo—it was close enough to being in tune—and lit into a rough rendition of the medicine show standard “I Heard the Voice of a Pork Chop.” All the while, his assistants, dusty-faced boys, collected money by the fistful and handed out bottles of Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught. The elaborate, lithographed label folded out into a length of paper as long as a man’s arm, where the whole of Emmett’s speech was printed, word for word.

  Emmett reached the end of his song and then threw his banjo up into the air; it twirled twice before he caught it and strummed the final, resolving chord. The crowd clapped approvingly. Emmett stepped off the platform and reached for a bottle of his draught.

  Holtzclaw threaded through the crowd and addressed himself to Emmett. “Do you think we could have a brief word?”

  “Why sure, Jimmy!” Emmett patted him on the back. “Let’s head over there for a minute.” They’d gone ten steps toward the indicated spot when Emmett turned back over his shoulder and cried, “Jimmy Holtzclaw wants to silence me! What can he be afraid of? That no one will need to buy his bath tickets? That no one will need to stay at his pricey hotel?”

  The crowd pressed closer to the vending wagon, eager to rid themselves of dollar bills. More cases of Professor W’s Pleasant Potation and Universal Panacea Wine Draught were unloaded from the wagon. Money flew everywhere, and Holtzclaw’s innards rumbled with anger.

  “Now, Jimmy,” said Emmett, when they were out of earshot of the crowd, “what can I do for you?”

  “You can stop sullying my name in your pitch.”

  “You can’t take it personally; it’s just business,” said Emmett. “You’re a good patsy, so stuffy and fussy. We’re still friends, Jimmy!”

  “Then at least stop peddling your dangerous wares to these people, some of whom are already ill.”

  “There’s nothing dangerous about it. It’s Pharaoh’s Flour, Effervescent Brain Salts, and plenty of alcohol—a mash of whatever’s just out of season. A scruple of this, some grains of that. I stir it up in Mrs. McTavish’s bathtub, water it down with some of your spring water. There’s nothing dangerous about any of that.”

  “If not in the ingredients, there is danger in your sales pitch,” said Holtzclaw. “You promise the moon, but what do you deliver?”

  “These people are betting a dollar that somewhere in here is an aid for their infirmities. Maybe there is, after all. And if nothing comes of it, well, at least there is a lot of liquor in every bottle.”

  “You can’t sell a panacea in one bottle!” said Holtzclaw, throwing his hat to the dirt.

  “Oh, can’t you? Then what’s this lake?” said Emmett. “Solve our gold fever and our livelihoods! New neighbors and new things to buy! Some pumpkins! We don’t need your help to turn out all right. Look at those people, throwing their money at me. All they want is a song and dance, a little liquor, and a fancy label.”

  •

  Holtzclaw was still seething when his stormed into the New Rock Falls, looking for supper or succor. He had been insulted, but insults had rolled off him before. More infuriating was that Emmett’s business was more profitable than his own, and with so little effort.

  Inside of the New Rock Falls, all was dark and still. The piano was silent; Hulen the plat-eye was abroad. Holtzclaw’s anger felt too hot for this dim, cool place. A single bulb illuminated two bowls that were already waiting on a table. Shadburn hovered over his own, picking out the mushrooms and eating them first.

  “They are best enjoyed alone,” said Sha
dburn. “They have a complicated flavor; it isn’t right to bury it with too many other tastes, you see.”

  Holtzclaw would have preferred to eat by himself, letting his sour thoughts run out, but propriety did not permit it. He joined Shadburn at his table and tucked in to a bowl of sweet potato stew. There was a heartening power in Abigail’s recipe—perhaps it could be mixed with a little liquor and poured into bottles with a fancy label: Ms. Thompson’s Local Restorative. It sounded simpler than pleasure boats and moon maidens.

  Holtzclaw told Shadburn about Emmett’s universal panacea. “Do you think that we can force him to stop his medicine show? He’s on our land; we can move him off.”

  “If you trim the weed in one place, he will sprout in another.”

  “He’s not our only weed,” said Holtzclaw. “The golf course is drowning in them. The gardeners cannot tame the grass. Scrub pines sprout overnight on the fairway. Ivy gets into the sand traps.”

  “It’s a ridiculous sport,” said Shadburn, “and we don’t have the weather for it. If you were fishing instead of playing golf, at the end of the day, you’d have a fish or two for supper. What do you have after an afternoon of golf? Fewer golf balls.”

  “So, should I let the land go fallow?” said Holtzclaw. “Or try to turn it to some higher and better use?”

  “Why not put in a sawmill?” said Johnston or Carter, emerging from the shadows at the far side of the restaurant.

  “Or a tannery?” said the other, pulling himself into the light.

  “This is a private establishment, gentlemen,” said Shadburn, upstarting. “If you want to speak with me or my associate, you may make an appointment.”

  “You have a poor history of keeping your promises,” said Johnston or Carter.

  “We’d prefer to talk now,” said the other. “Settle matters, as they stand.”

  “You promised us industry.”

  “You promised us busy trains three times per day.”

  “And we have a growing hotel,” said Shadburn. “A great gala planned that will stuff your trains with money-laden people.”

  “Yet there are hills of virgin timber,” said Johnston or Carter.

  “Many furred creatures that scamper below them,” said the other.

  “So why will you not build a sawmill?”

  “Or a tannery?”

  “None of those things need a lake,” said Shadburn. “Any money we put into them would not reinforce the dam. Thus, they have only secondary value, and we have not cared to trouble ourselves with them.”

  “That is nonsense,” said Johnston or Carter.

  “You’ve broken your word to us.”

  “We may be forced to take legal recourse.”

  “Unless recompense is offered.”

  The railroad twins paused.

  “There is gold, of course,” said Johnston or Carter.

  “Gold is the best industry of them all,” said the other.

  “If we had mineral rights to certain places, we could overlook the matter of broken promises.”

  “There would be more than enough to repay our patience and expenses.”

  “It is not about sawmills or tanneries then,” said Holtzclaw.

  “Where there is gold, all other pursuits become unimportant,” said Johnston or Carter.

  “Even sawmills and tanneries,” said the other.

  “Even railroads. Even hotels and mineral springs.”

  “Gold is the best industry of them all.”

  “You see, Holtzclaw?” said Shadburn. “You see how gold has destroyed these people. They could have been sharp businessmen, but their lust for gold has distracted them, blinded their business sense. They’ll trust a man’s promises—build him a railroad, even—while knowing nothing of his character or his motives, and they will not even insist on a contract. And for all of their work, what have they gotten?”

  “A tidy profit on the dam,” said Johnston or Carter.

  “Paid in gold.”

  “That’s a paltry sum,” said Shadburn. “They could have done so much better, couldn’t they, Holtzclaw? I tried to turn them to honest work—I tried to improve them just like the rest of this town. But they have sold it all for eight colors of gold. A macule floating upon my wonderful work.”

  Johnston or Carter donned their hats in perfect synchronization. In the great sea of silence that had formed between Holtzclaw and Shadburn, their departure made only a ripple.

  Two bowls of sweet potato stew cooled on the table; spoons lay idle. Holtzclaw studied each floating morsel. Finally, he scooped up a spoonful and swallowed. What use was there to storm and rage, to crash against the bulwark of his circumstances? His fortunes were inseparable from the dam, the lake, the Queen of the Mountains, the Maiden of the Lake. They would all flourish or flounder together.

  Holtzclaw reached the end of his bowl without looking up, and he saw that Shadburn too had finished; he leaned back in his chair and emitted a satisfied belch.

  “Do you think that they’ll sue?” Holtzclaw asked Shadburn at last.

  “It would be foolish. What would they seize?”

  “Money, land, the hotel …”

  “All impermanent things. They hardly even count as possessions. You can’t carry them with you, and thus, they fall out of your possession. Besides, they cannot seize what no one owns.”

  “So, who does the land belong to?” said Holtzclaw. “The moon maidens? The singing tree? Mr. Bad Thing?”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t belong to anyone,” said Shadburn. “Perhaps it only belongs to whoever is squatting on it at the moment.”

  Holtzclaw reddened. All that fuss over land deeds! Holtzclaw had treasured them more than money, more than gold. But Shadburn evidently hadn’t cared for any of it.

  “People think that a piece of land has a character, a spirit,” continued Shadburn. “They are wrong. The spirit of the land comes from those who live upon it. And that spirit changes with its inhabitants. Auraria was once a place for moon maidens. And then it was a place where poor miners scratched away at the soil. And now it is a place for the rich to repose and bathe.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” said Holtzclaw. “What about those natives who’ve settled in deeply, drunk the water, and made their peace with the spirits?”

  “Why, squatters have no rights, and we are all squatters. Even that terrapin, even Trahlyta. The tourists will settle in too, in time. In a generation or two, no one will be able to tell who is native, who is foreign, who is new, who is old.”

  •

  Aboard the Maiden of the Lake, Holtzclaw mused into his claret. He’d told the whole story of the railroad twins to Ms. Rathbun, and she listened with her characteristic disinterest in any narrative. “It was a fantastically complicated scheme,” said Holtzclaw. “I’m still not sure of what to make of it—if Shadburn has hoodwinked the railroad twins, or if they have hoodwinked us.”

  “You are an easily hoodwinked lot,” said Ms. Rathbun, “if it only takes some promises to fool you.”

  Holtzclaw frowned. When he looked around him, he wondered if he wasn’t the real victim of the hoodwinking, whether it was done by Shadburn or the railroad twins or Lizzie Rathbun. The Maiden of the Lake was no nearer to completion than it had been during his prior inspections. Ms. Rathbun seemed to have lost all the spirit of the work, if not for spending their capital. She was clever, Ms. Rathbun—if she was not progressing, then it was because she did not mean to progress. She had piloted him into some scheme, the currents and sandbars of which he could not see from his wheelhouse.

  “Lizzie, how can we … how can we finish here? Finish, so that we can start?”

  Ms. Rathbun waved her hand like she was shooing away a bug. She took a long sip of her claret.

  “How can I help?” he said, more directly. “What must I do?”

  “It really doesn’t matter, Holtzclaw. I think the affair is out of your hands entirely.”

  “Please do not be so glib, Lizzie. Tell me.
Should I quit my position at the Queen of the Mountains and put all my efforts toward the Maiden of the Lake? But that would do us no good. We cannot survive without the hotel, and I am needed there, especially with this gala. We are touting to be the wonder of the age. Who else can make it succeed? Surely not Shadburn. Perhaps after the gala, when the hotel’s success is assured, I can do more for us …”

  Ms. Rathbun said nothing. She only glimmered in her red silk. If she only meant to scheme, surely she would have aimed at some richer, grander person than him. Then she must, with her practiced eye, have seen some gold in him. He’d been digging for years and never found such a nugget inside himself. Yet like Moss, he could not stop digging. That he had yet to find his golden vein meant only that he was getting nearer and nearer.

  “Lizzie, say something. It’s for us, don’t you see? What we’ve made so far. And I just cannot, in good conscience, or with any respect …”

  “Holtzclaw, you are dithering. Cease to dither. It ruins the effect.” Ms. Rathbun took his hands and held them in her own. The gesture caught Holtzclaw’s mind by the hem, and all the flapping and swirling went out of it. He leaned forward, and his lips encountered Ms. Rathbun’s. A snap of static electricity punctuated the moment—the worried friction of Holtzclaw’s wool suit had built up a charge.

  Ms. Rathbun leaned back, but she kept hold of Holtzclaw’s hands. “All is well. Don’t worry yourself. It will only give you wrinkles. For my part, I refrain from worry entirely.”

  Holtzclaw tried to give a wry smile, but he was sure it came out as a besotted grin instead.

  “Now, Holtzclaw, will you tell me about this gala? You know that I am fond of parties—the more spectacular, the better.”

  “Lizzie, it will be a triumph! We will have all the best, all the best. Spare no expense. And all will be invited. The native, the tourist, the ghost. Come one, come all.”

  “Are you expecting a good crowd to come in from Milledgeville? Have you sent invitations to your seasonal guests?”

  “I have to send invitations to the guests that are already here?”

  “Oh yes, they demand it. Who will be the entertainment?”

  “I am exchanging letters with the impresario for Dasha Pavlovski.”

  “Dasha Pavlovski!”

  “I had half decided to give up on him and get some local entertainment instead. You can see Dasha anywhere.”

  “Oh no, you must strive for Dasha. He only appears at the best venues. They did not even get him at Saratoga. What will you do for refreshments?”

  “We’ll have bottle after bottle of wines,” said Holtzclaw. “I have booked a train car full of them. Some rare and ancient clarets. Since it is a special occasion, there will be moonshine too.”

  “No one will be interested in such a rural drink,” said Ms. Rathbun.

  “I mean, the shimmering bowls that knock a grown man flat with his dreams. A unique experience, to be sure.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what would you serve instead?”

  “Mint juleps,” said Ms. Rathbun.

  “In all my time here in the valley,” said Holtzclaw, “I have never been offered a mint julep.”

  “Well, we shouldn’t want to continue the disappointment. And it is a costume ball, yes? What will you wear?”

  “A costume ball! What a splendid suggestion. How about a paired costume for the two of us?”

  “Not the front and rear ends of a horse,” said Ms. Rathbun.

  “How about lord and lady? Shepherd and shepherdess? Knight and damsel? Pharaoh and …”

  “I think I shall be Queen of the Mountains,” said Ms. Rathbun. “Do you think anyone else will pretend to that title? I have a splendid dress in mind.”

  “And I would be the King of the Mountains?”

  “Why yes, if you would like to think so. I would not object at all.”

  Ms. Rathbun tilted her head. Candlelight caught her profile, and her beautiful face was framed in fire. Then she stood up, with her hands clasped before her. Holtzclaw stood involuntarily, a social reflex. It was the end of their meeting, and Holtzclaw bade her goodnight with two kisses, in the air, to each side of her ears, and she returned them in the same ethereal way.

  And then he was outside of her chamber, and she was within, and nothing had progressed, nothing had been solved. Her able command of the Asheville Attitude had compelled him to leave unsatisfied. The splendid doors were shut fast behind him.

  •

  As Holtzclaw waltzed down the gangplank, one of the hotel’s steam launches raced past, turning the calm lake into a foaming sea. Its paddle wheel threw a high tail of water into the air behind it. Holtzclaw heard happy laughter—a man’s and a woman’s, intertwined. When the boat passed, Holtzclaw was courageous enough to whisper a few naughty words of annoyance toward the fading vessel, but they were lost in the engine noise and the spray.

  Then the steam launch exploded.

  A high-pitched whine preceded the main blast, and then a tremendous force burst in every direction. A percussive wave rocked the Maiden of the Lake. Holtzclaw ran back aboard and lowered the ship’s dinghy. Within a minute, he was on the oars, pulling with full strength toward the disaster.

  Twisted shards of metal and splinters of wood bobbed on the waves; among them, a man and a woman climbed over each other, trying to stay afloat. Holtzclaw held out an oar and pulled the two grasping survivors to the dinghy. He retrieved the man first and then the woman. To land her and her sodden skirts, Holtzclaw had to grab her beneath the armpits. Were it not an emergency, it would have been indecorous.

  “Was there anyone else? Any others with you?” said Holtzclaw to the dazed pair.

  “No, just the two of us,” said the man.

  “Out for an evening stroll, just a stroll,” said the woman.

  “We’ll get you back to the hotel,” said Holtzclaw. “You’re very lucky. It’s a wonder the flesh wasn’t scalded from your bones. Why were you going flat out?”

  “We had to go fast,” said the man, “to keep up with such a lovely moon.”

  “Such a lovely evening,” said the woman, “and such a lovely light.”

  Holtzclaw rowed toward the lights of the hotel, where a crowd had gathered at the lakeshore. No other launch had come up to meet him—they didn’t expect survivors. When the crowd saw the two rescued guests, dazed and damp but largely unharmed, they gave a smattering of halfhearted applause and dispersed. But the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society members were ashen and aghast, as though they’d seen two corpses. They saw the reputations of one of their finest matches in ruins.

  “So the two of you were out, alone, in that boat?” said Almeda, the Reader of Mysteries of the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society.

  “There was the moon,” said the man. “Isn’t that enough of a chaperone?”

  “Not at all,” said Vera, the Tender of the Entwined Rose and Briar.

  “Not at all,” said Luella, the Poetess of the Stirring Heart.

  “We rescind our approval,” said Almeda. The three yellow-hatted women made gestures with their hands like a bird flying away. “The birds of happiness will coo no more for you.”

  The Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society fluttered away. The rescued couple, leaning on each other, hobbled back to the hotel. Holtzclaw stood alone, rubbing his aching shoulders. One by one, the electric lights ringing the lawn were ignited. Each one, as it burst into brilliance, erased a constellation from the evening sky.