by Mary Volmer
“Yah all right, my dear? You look a little down,” says Emaline, squinting up at him. “Been playing with that hat an hour now. It’s past midnight, I know …” Micah turns round with a questioning glance. “But if you need me …”
“No, thank you … no, Emaline,” David says, and Micah dismisses him with a disgusted wave of the hand, mumbles something under his breath.
“Well, won’t bite yah, you know,” says Emaline, just a hint of hurt in her voice.
“Does, too,” says Micah from the first step. “But worth it, believe you me.”
Emaline gives a “humph” and Micah escapes up the stairs.
“Nevermind,” she tells David. “Appreciate you opening the chapel tomorrow, like usual. Sunday, and no work need be done before some thanksgiving, bonanza or no. And, David …” He waits, but she doesn’t finish her sentence. “Goodnight,” she says.
He pushes out the door, into the night.
It isn’t as though he wouldn’t like to go upstairs with Emaline, though the reasons why still evade him. She is not a beautiful woman. Her hair is rarely, if ever, pulled from her face, and at night the fringe on her top lip glows in the candlelight. Her wide hips take the space of two women and make her pumpkin-sized breasts appear almost proportional. Her shoulders are too thick, her posture too straight. She struts around the saloon like the Queen herself, issuing orders as if she were born to it.
David has never fancied plump women. He isn’t fond of facial hair, and has never reacted well to orders. Yet, even to David, Emaline exudes a salacious energy that moves before her like a second self, announcing her presence in any room. No man in Motherlode is immune to this energy. Only he has been strong enough to resist.
He was raised to know better, has abstained for too long to give in now. Sex is sacred to marriage alone, and prostitution—for that’s what it is—is a sin, just as murder is a sin, and those who encourage Emaline by slipping into her bed every chance they get are paving paths to hell. David does respect her. Respects her in a way he’d only respected men before, in a business sense. He simply refuses to take part in her hypocrisy. Sunday service, giving thanks, saving the souls of men she soils week after week. The sign of a guilty conscience, if you ask him. Already he has sinned with her in his dreams. He blames her for this. He’d like very much to blame her for this new conceit lingering and polluting his mind. Watch out for him, sure. David can see the boy even now. Alex hugging his thigh. Alex clinging to his flannel.
He looks back at the Victoria. Emaline’s lamp is lit and her body throws shadows on the curtain. He gulps a lungful of biting air, clears his mind on the exhale, and follows his steaming breath forward over hills and valleys of frozen mud, pauses in front of John Thomas’s canvas tent.
At the card table tonight, John Thomas had been as agitated as David’s ever seen him. He didn’t think it fair that a boy found gold in the very spot he’d worked and found nothing. Didn’t think it was fair that a boy had found gold after they’d all been working for years for broken backs and empty pouches.
He was right. It wasn’t fair for a skinny, soft-handed boy to find gold where others failed. John Thomas was saying just what everyone else was thinking, or at least what David had been thinking. But that’s the reality of the diggings. Stories like this brought David to California in the first place. Gold for the taking. Nuggets plucked from riverbeds and hillsides. Poor man to rich man in a day, if you were willing to work hard, willing to believe sulphur sweat would translate to solid gold. David had worked, suffering through snow-choked winters, mucking through spring mud, frying in summer heat, far away from his home and his family, his mum’s rich clotted cream, her flaking pasties, her thick potato pancakes. Away from the happy chatter of his little sister and his cheeky younger brothers and their impromptu wrestling matches on Sunday afternoons. Away from his father’s low rumbling voice reading the Bible each night by the fire. All of this seems so distant, part of another life that David yearns for, but to which he no longer belongs. He should write to his father, but he’s afraid of the words that might come, afraid that in writing he will confirm his own failure and prove his father right. A metal like any other.
He places his cold hands under the waistband of his trousers, warming skin on skin. The night is still. The cedars make moonlit silhouettes at the tip of the ravine.
This new claim could play out in a few weeks. John Thomas is probably working himself up over a bit of color, nothing more. Speculation did no good. They wouldn’t know anything definite about the ore content until the digging started. And the boy alone is sure to have slow goings, especially if this lode is as narrow and unpredictable as other California lodes have been and covered with the same thick layer of topsoil. Take him all summer just to dig through to the granite, if he doesn’t bury himself first.
Limpy has forgotten to cut the lamp in the cabin again and the canvas roof glows like a luminary, attracting a colony of moths. Guttural snoring bounces off walls as though four men sleep instead of the one. He’ll never wake Limpy, doesn’t fancy turning him on his side. He puffs out the lamp, closes the door and ventures back into Victor Lane, pulled toward the Victoria like a moth. His thoughts veer stubbornly back to Alex; the boy’s small body slung around his leg, the heat of the boy’s breath on David’s thigh.
All lights are out in the Victoria. The windows, like eyeless sockets, stare blindly into the night. Still David feels exposed in the moonlight, as though the eye of God were viewing his obdurate thoughts, judging his body’s weakness. He steps into the shadows of the cedars just beyond the inn. He leans his head against the sweet-smelling bark, focuses on the sound of fieldmice foraging in the undergrowth, on the owl calling into silence, but cannot will his mind blank. He settles for a lesser evil, takes himself in hand. His breath quickens. His toes curl in his boots. He shudders and his shoulders reach for his ears, then sink. He is wiping his hand on a frosty patch of grass when a shadow slinks toward the Victoria.
David follows, guarding his step against snapping branches. The figure eases the door open, squeezes inside. David counts twenty breaths, and edges in after. He stands in the doorway as his eyes adjust to the darkness. The stools again stand right side up, the broken pieces of a whiskey jug have been swept to the corner and the blood has been mopped, leaving only a dark misshapen stain like spilled paint. Queen Victoria is still crooked on the wall, but it’s the kitchen door, swinging softly on its hinges, that steals his attention.
David peeks his head in the kitchen, sees nothing. Floorboards creak above him. He tiptoes to the stairs. He grasps at his belt for the bowie knife he left in the cabin. He climbs the stairs, his hand against the wall for support.
The figure stands in front of Alex’s room. A dagger glints in the weak window light. A hand reaches for the latch and David takes two giant steps forward. The body and blade swivel his direction. David steps forward again, wishing for a revolver, or a knife, something to give him authority.
“Forget your hat?” David says, his voice as flat and frigid as he can manage.
“Shit. Now, David … Shit. Somebody gotta do something about it. I’m gonna do something about it.”
Another step forward. John Thomas takes a sharp breath. His knuckles strain white around the knife handle. David hunches down, both hands in front of him.
“Not right. A boy. Ain’t worked.”
Footsteps on the stairs behind them. A rifle is cocked. Jed’s voice comes in a snarling whisper.
“Get out.”
“We share the gold. All of us, Jed. Equal. Boy don’t deserve gold like we do.” John Thomas’s words come fast but make no impact, and his hopeful face becomes scarred with hate. “No good fucking nigger, taking airs. I shoulda—”
Jed rushes forward, leveling the rifle at John Thomas’s head. Jed’s face is obsidian, his brow beaded with gleaming sweat. His hands tremble.
“Get out. Get out and never come back. I shoot yah. I see yah, I shoot yah.”
&
nbsp; John Thomas pants shallow airless breaths. A puddle steams on the floor beneath him.
“I shoot yah, hear?”
John Thomas jerks a nod and eases forward as if to pass.
“Ah!” says Jed. “The knife.”
John Thomas nods again, places the knife on the floor beside the puddle of piss. He squeezes past David, down the stairs and into the night.
6
Emaline opens the shutters to a sharp March chill and fills her lungs. The road below is a bustle of chicken banter and she squints toward the mass of feathered streaks clamoring after a hen-pecked Rhode Island Red. The poor thing’s rump is already a balding mass of blood sores where feathers used to be. Half plucked already, Emaline thinks. If the ground were thawed enough for earthworms, they’d leave the old girl well enough alone. Funny, how boredom in chickens breeds cruelty, just as in men. Might as well put the old bird out of her misery. They won’t stop pecking until she’s dead, and Emaline hasn’t made chicken and dumplings in a while. That makes ten chickens down from twenty last May, and spring is just beginning. A hungry coyote or mountain lion could take the rest in a matter of weeks, might have already if she’d kept the hens fenced like a damn city fool. No fence gonna keep out a coyote or mountain lion. Gathering all the victims in one enclosed space just makes the job of killing easier. Weren’t too smart, chickens. But given room to run and roost high they had a better chance than penned. What’s a little chickenshit splattered around town when fresh eggs and the occasional chicken dinner were at stake? She’ll tell Randall to bring a rooster next time he makes the trip up. Chicks do well in the summer months.
She turns from the window, leaving the shutters open to vent the stale air. On the bed, Jed’s head is nestled to the nose beneath the patchwork quilt and she’s tempted to snuggle back into his warmth. She doesn’t know when he came in last night. Either he couldn’t wake her, or didn’t care to, which was just as well for Emaline who finds no greater comfort than his closeness. Closeness, even without the urgency of desire. Closeness in the delicious exhaustion of Saturday nights.
Jed groans. His eyes open in tiny downward slits and are met by the upward curve of his smile.
“Morning,” he croaks and clears his throat. “Morning.” Emaline says nothing. He shouldn’t still be in the room, but then no one is likely to be up early on a Sunday, even after yesterday’s find, especially after yesterday’s drinking. “Emaline?” She shakes herself, focuses on Jed.
“Just thinking. That’s all. People start coming in here, we gonna have to pen them chickens. People start coming, things are gonna change.”
“Not everything.”
“No? I hope. I was waiting for a strike, same as all the rest of ’em. Got plans, you know, but …”
In the room down the hall she hears Micah retching into his chamber pot. A long wet belch resounds on the street below.
“Best get on outta here,” she says, “’fore the whole town wakes.”
“Ain’t no secret no more.”
“Ain’t common knowledge, neither.”
Jed looks dubious. He scratches his scalp through his tight curly hair and runs both hands down his face, wiping sleep away.
“Get on up and rouse that boy down the hall,” she says, hoping the task will give him motivation. In the daylight, in Jed’s company, this room has never felt safe. Regardless of what people knew and what they pretended not to. Free state, sure, but no one ever looked kindly on mixing. There were plenty who’d string Jed up just for that, even in this town, her town, and Jed is no longer someone she can live without. She clutches her nightgown tighter to her chest and tries to warm herself against the chill that is creeping into her mind.
She and Jed had stumbled on this valley on the road from Sacramento. They were traveling light, heading north to the gold fields, aiming for Rough and Ready, or a camp outside one of the more populated towns like Grass Valley or Nevada City. She meant to set up her own establishment where city laws and the men who made them had yet to take hold of everyone’s business.
The June heat pressed down on them from all angles and the sound of running water called them down from the lip of the ravine. There was no way of knowing what manner of men had made the camp they found. Two canvas tents squatted in the sun-scorched grass. The bedding was rolled, and a pair of tattered underclothes hung on a line to dry. A neat circle of stone marked their campfire; but the tidiest of men could still own the most wretched of souls.
Jed didn’t think it safe to stay, but Emaline had no desire to climb back out of the valley in the June heat. Besides, she knew she could handle a few wretched souls. Setting her bundles down, she dug into her satchel for the breathing terry cloth of sourdough starter, flour, lard, and water; mixed them all in the pan she found by the fire. While the dough rose, she scrounged with Jed for long flat rocks and built them into a precarious little oven. By the time the miners tramped up from the creek at dusk, a steaming loaf of bread, a pot of coffee, and fried salt pork awaited them.
There were just three of them: Mordicai, the lanky singer; a scurvy-stricken fellow named Jake who’s long since gone his own way; and a solitary German who took his plate and ate outside the reach of the fire’s glow. “That there’s Klein, he calls hisself,” Mordicai told her by way of apology. “He doesn’t say much of anything to anybody, but I ’spect he’s ’bout as grateful as me and Jake.”
Already the place felt like home.
When the men offered to pay her, she didn’t think twice about taking their little bit of gold. For this Emaline knew to be true: gold don’t ease a belly’s hunger, calm a man’s urges, or know how much he’s afraid to miss his mamma. These boys were getting far more than they were giving. She didn’t think a thing about changing the name of the place to something more hopeful, accommodating. “Destitution Valley” implied a pessimism she couldn’t live with, and it certainly didn’t do justice to the beauty of the place. Motherlode filled her whole mouth with hope, and she wasn’t at all surprised by the steady stream of miners who found their way into and out of her valley. The walls of the Victoria rose even as the level of the creek and the number of men fluctuated and has stood much as it does now for a good year and a half. She likes to think she’d foreseen this particular future from the ridge above, likes to think she had looked down and seen a town sprouting like a sapling from the valley floor and gold oozing like pine pitch from the ravine wall.
And here she is, crushing a good thing by letting a few bad what if’s get in the way. Silly. A gold strike is just what her town needs, what the Victoria needs. More people, more customers, fancy fixings.
Jed throws the quilt from his body and his legs over the side of the bed, wiggles his bare toes on the chilled wood floor. He slips on his trousers, tucks in his shirt. He kisses Emaline gently on the forehead and tiptoes down the hall to Alex’s room.
Emaline forces her thoughts to follow him out the door and strips to wash.
Stale water in the washbasin. She’d meant to freshen it yesterday. She dips a rag, watching the fabric expand, places the rag on her face, tips her head back and lets the moisture seep into her skin. Her skin. So much drier than it used to be. In the mirror, she can see lines invading, making her look older than her thirty-five years, older than she feels. Lines. Signs of wisdom, experience, character. Lines gave personality to a face. Wrinkles, she knows, are something else entirely. Emaline has no wrinkles. She breathes slowly in and out through fabric and moisture, runs the rag along her neck, behind her ears, enjoys the chilling tingle of evaporating water on bare skin. Then down her front, encircles one breast, then the other, and her nipples perk in the damp cold; scrubs the dark mats of hair growing full and free under her arms. She dips the rag again, wrings it, scrubs her legs, beginning with her right calf, working her way up to her groin, pauses at the pleasure of cloth friction between her legs.
A knock on the door.
“Emaline, Emaline, he dead to the world, that’s the truth. He breathin
g, but I can’t wake him for nothing. Won’t hurt to let him sleep, yah think?”
“If he’s gonna sleep under this roof, he’s going to Sunday service. Try again, and if he don’t get up, you tell him I’ll come in and wake him good.”
Jed’s steps recede down the hallway. Emaline plaits her hair into a manageable rope and pulls on her Sunday best, a faded yellow dress with one small torn patch in the sleeve and a strip of off-color lace at the neck. Nothing compared to the silk fantasies worn by rich men’s wives. Nothing to be proud of, but she is. The dress defined the day, setting Sunday apart from the drudgery of every other day, with a splash of color, a bit of lace. She fastens the buttons, holding in her gut. She’d already let out the waist seam when she threw her corset away. Be damned if she’d extend it again. Another knock on the door.
“I’m on my way,” she says. She’s halfway down the hall when inspiration strikes. She leaves Jed waiting, bustles back into her room, hefts the washbasin, careful not to slosh water on her front. She nods at Alex’s door, waits while Jed opens it.
Alex is curled into a fetal ball, his arms around his head to shield the light. He doesn’t stir as Emaline approaches.
“Gold or no gold, I make the rules in this place and everyone goes to Sunday service. Give you one more chance to get up on your own.”
He doesn’t stir and she feels a smile warm her ears. Jed waits, biting his lower lip, his eyebrows raised. She dips her hand in the water and flicks her fingers at his face, turns back to Alex and dumps the whole basin, washrag and all.
Alex leaps from the bed, his eyes wild and his filthy flannel drenched. Emaline’s whole self shakes with laughter, and she’s trying very hard not to pop her buttons. She doesn’t notice how green his face becomes, how his cheeks puff. She isn’t prepared for his eyes to roll back in his head, or his body to lurch forward. He seizes the empty washbasin and sloshes the liquid contents of his stomach up over the rim, and down Emaline’s yellow dress.