Crown of Dust

by Mary Volmer

  Mason was tolerant of his wife’s charitable activities, even after she suggested he take lawful action against houses of ill repute, especially those established next to the finer hotels and galleries in town. But he wasn’t entirely comfortable with his young wife’s constant activity.

  “Next,” her husband teased, slipping into bed one night, “you’ll want to take to the polls yourself.” She slapped him for his silliness, then pushed him away. The noises from the couple one door down slipped embarrassingly through the thin walls and she would not return the indignity. “I have no interest,” she said, “in the public sphere of men.”

  Mrs. Dourity was thankful Mason never suggested that her constant involvement might have something to do with their son’s death. If he had, she might have given in to the pessimism she tried to keep from sullying the tone of her correspondence home.

  Her mother had not been happy when her son-in-law stole her daughter a whole world away from her, and so Mrs. Dourity made an effort to focus on the positive aspects of her adventure. “Really, Mother,” she wrote, “the variety overwhelms the senses. In the dead of winter I eat apples and squash, tomatoes fresh from the vine, all floating up from Chile and the Hawaiian islands. Lou Anne is growing into, shall I say, a wild flower. I fear the effect of this country on an unshaped constitution. But the civilized among us here have, under the wisdom of God, banded together against a plethora of vice, and I have no doubt that she will emerge of stronger moral character than a sheltered and untested Eastern schoolgirl.

  “Still, I wonder if you might inquire at the seminary about boarding situations. Your loving daughter, A.D.”

  She’d meant these last lines to convey a more confident tone, but her mother knew her better than that. When Mason informed her that they would be moving to the gold fields, her optimism had faded further.

  From Nevada City to Sacramento. From Sacramento back to Nevada City. From Nevada City to Motherlode. Motherlode—she doesn’t know why the name bothers her so. She does not fully understand her husband’s business here. His law practice had failed in Nevada City. Surely, this town is not the place to further a political career?

  She sits up in bed, chilled from the loss of Mason’s heat. His snoring is muted tonight, and she knows from the smoky smell of him that he’s been in that woman’s place. She wishes the morning would bring a bracing fog, that the bay would open up before her eyes and Mrs. Fareweather would be waiting at four for tea. The women here are well intentioned, but Mrs. Erkstine speaks loudly on all manner of subjects she does not understand, while Mrs. Waller and her sister are intolerably reticent—Rose to the point of impudence. Still, she finds hope in the very presence of these women, hope that had nearly been dashed upon finding her daughter in the clutches of that boy.

  How could you? she’d asked her daughter. How could you let that boy kiss you? “I didn’t let him,” Lou Anne replied. And yet Mrs. Dourity had seen it with her own eyes.

  Rats scuttling through the walls send pinpricks down her spine. An owl’s call strikes the exact tone of her melancholy. Lou Anne traipses about any new place, flush faced, pulling her skirts up to run. She talks as fast as words come to her, exhibits none of the restraint Mrs. Dourity has tried so desperately to instill. Perhaps she has been a fool to think this restraint would come with womanhood, like a mantle or a crown. She is no longer sure what to think. Lou Anne’s sudden admiration for that woman frightens her nearly as much as catching her daughter kissing—catching that boy kissing her daughter.

  Mason snuffs, rolls over. He raises his head. “Up again?” he asks, but is soon back to sleep. She watches the small of his back rise with his breath. His scalp shows bright through his thinning hair. She wonders if love is a duty for everyone.

  Too many nights she has lain awake. Too many nights of prayers. Dear God for guidance, perseverance, deliverance for every soul spare one, she prays. She will not share heaven with a woman who sells the very gift God gave her. Corruption—this, too, was woman’s power, if she used it such.

  She cannot shake the image of her daughter, bent over that boy. That boy? Her breath catches and she holds it.

  She eases herself from the bed, steps over her snoring daughter to stare out into the night.

  In the morning, she informs her husband of her plan for Alex Ford.

  11

  Even after a sleepless night, Alex prefers mornings. It is one of the few solitary times in her day and lends itself to a strange beauty that dissipates with the heat. The scrub oaks manage to look sleek in the morning, the flaking bark a shade darker, nearly black beneath the vivid green of their spring leaves. The mineshafts gaping from the side of the mountain, and the slag heaps piling up like giant gopher mounds, seem almost natural before the miners arrive in force to grunt and swear the illusion away.

  But this morning she feels as if she’s being watched.

  Her trousers make a swishing sound as she picks her way upstream. She stops to listen.

  She’d lain awake last night rehearsing an apology she’s not sure is warranted. She did nothing but stand in his way. She should be apologizing to herself. Dear Alex, sorry for putting you in front of a man angry enough to relieve you of your life. But even as she thinks this, she knows David would not touch her. She flinched out of reflex alone.

  For all his ready criticism, David seems intent on never touching Alex. Limpy will lay his hand on her shoulder, nudge her with his elbow, slap her on the back, but David maintains a distance, avoiding contact. If Alex is working to Limpy’s right, David will work to Limpy’s left. When Alex sits down at the dinner table, David sits down two chairs over where she can’t even see him. If she didn’t sense that his avoidance was intentional, it might not bother her so much. She’s not sure why it bothers her at all.

  She continues, slower now, making an effort to look at ease—which is difficult in the India rubber boots she’d bought the day before from Heinrich’s store. “A pinch more,” Heinrich demanded, which meant he wanted another dollar of gold for the boots. He was a Prussian man with a short, stubby mustache and long, flat fingernails that were sure to gather more than a dollar of gold from her pouch in one pinch. He grumbled only a little when she demanded he weigh the pinch with the dust already resting on the scale, which likely meant he’d doctored his scale as well. She should have gone to Micah’s store. He grew his nails long like the rest of them, but at least he didn’t lie about cheating you. She feels disloyal for having gone across the street in the first place, drawn by the smell of the leather, the variety.

  She runs her fingers over a tough, heart-shaped manzanita leaf, considers humming, but doesn’t. The few miners already at work pay no attention to her, and she tells herself that it’s her imagination making her skittish. Even so, she’s relieved to hear Limpy’s tuneless whistle growing louder behind her. She stops to wait, nods good morning. David is not with him.

  Harry and Fred are already hard at work, showing no sign of continuing last night’s argument. Harry is smiling even, and Fred hums his own nasal rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Harry raises his hand in welcome as Fred sets off the first charge of the day, sending a red-brown cloud of dust into the air. On the ravine above Alex’s claim, two small rocks dislodge and tumble harmlessly to the ground near the sluice. Alex picks them up, hoping for hints of gold. Nothing. She flings the pieces one at a time into the creek where Limpy splashes icy water on his face and neck. There is still no sign of David.

  “I tell you,” Limpy says, unbuttoning his trousers. Alex studies his shadow until he hikes them back up again. “Ain’t nothing in the world like springtime in California. We had our seasons in New York, you know—couldn’t beat the fall for color, but spring? Hell. Sun’s warm enough to heat yah, but not so hot as to burn yah. Ground is still nice and soft, and the air, can almost taste it.” He spits, rubs his toe in it. “Where the hell is David?”

  Alex is wondering the same thing. She shouldn’t have confronted him. She wasn’t drunk or
even close, but there she was doing a foolish thing she didn’t understand.

  “Didn’t come home last night,” Limpy says. “Does that once in a while. Not your fault. Moody son-of-a-bitch, I tell you. Always was.”

  She dips her hands into the creek, splashes her face. She should have let well enough alone. She’s done nothing but draw the wrong kind of attention to herself. She remembers Emaline squinting down at her, the crooked angle of her mouth.

  “The water is going through here too fast, isn’t it, washing some of the gold out?” she says for something to say.

  “Bound to lose some to the creek. We move enough ore, won’t have to worry,” says Limpy. He’s a believer in quantity over quality. If David were here, Alex would bet he’d agree with her assessment, even if he wouldn’t acknowledge it at first.

  The flume was David’s idea. They’d spent two days away from the mineshaft, digging this artificial watercourse, diverting some of the creek into a narrow trough that runs right past the mine. They no longer needed to lug buckets of ore down to the creek to wash.

  Limpy and Alex both glance down the path, stalling. It doesn’t seem right to start without him. Alex hears the open-mouthed cry of baby starlings and in the forked pine on the ridge a woodpecker knocks. She shades her eyes and looks up but sees only the glare of the sun shunting around the branches.

  “Well,” says Limpy, slapping dust off his legs.

  Alex grabs her pick and pulls her hat tight on her head. Another explosion shakes the ground. Limpy bends and walks into the mine.

  Fifteen feet deep and already Alex can smell the change in the earth, from fermenting vegetation to a metallic odor, like axle grease and rust. The air, too, is dense, tasting of mud and mold. The walls are slick and black. They work in silence, picking away at the soft red clay and chipping at the larger pieces of granite embedded within. The wooden supports above them stand at attention like soldiers at the mouth of a mausoleum. They have yet to hit solid granite and, until they do, the black powder David bought from Micah sits unused on the floor of his cabin. An hour passes and Alex’s arms cramp, her back strains. She glances sideways at Limpy, still uncharacteristically quiet, his face streaked with red clay and the black carbon of fermented root stems.

  “I’m going to load the sluice,” Alex says.

  Limpy sets his pick on the ground, squats on his haunches, the ceiling too low for him to stand upright. “Not like him,” he says, and the concern in his voice unsettles Alex. “Ten minutes, I’m going to town. Emaline will know, if anyone will.”

  It never occurred to her to be worried about David. Annoyed, yes, for it’s David who is constantly preaching a full day’s work, the more ore to grass, the more gold in their pockets. It’s as if he’s two different men: one who works the mine, rubbing ore between his fingers, tasting for richness, so confident of his movements as to be connected to the soil itself; and the other, the brooding, nervous man in the saloon, flashing irritated glances. She prefers the man at the mine, driven by the habit of hard work, and by hope. Alex needs that hope, feeds upon it. And there were times when David’s silence proved a hundredfold more comfortable than Limpy’s chatter.

  Alex steps outside with a bucket of ore in each hand. The sun is at eleven o’clock and the moisture in the air has all but evaporated. Alex squints in the brightness, staring off across the creek. The grass of the valley leans away from an imperceptible breeze. She pours the first load of ore into the sluice. Downstream, Harry is waving and mouthing something Alex can’t hear. Alex waves back, used to responding without comprehension, but the hairs on her neck rise. Someone is behind her. She turns to find David staring toward the mine.

  “David?” says Alex.

  “Is Limpy in the shaft?”

  Alex looks toward the mine and David grabs her shoulders, then yanks his hands away again, fixing Alex’s attention on the stubble beneath his mustache and the bitter stench of his breath.

  “The mine—is Limpy inside?”

  An explosion shakes the ground. Alex and David turn as one to see a cloud of red earth billow from the tunnel entrance. For a moment, neither moves, their eyes fixed upon the spitting dragonhead of the mine. Then David is sprinting to the shaft, shouting Limpy’s name. Alex follows. No sound from the tunnel. No movement beyond the swirling suspension of dust in the air. The entrance is blocked with a wall of earth. Together, they claw at the dirt, afraid to swing a pick.

  “Limpy!” David screams, his voice filling Alex’s head. Alex digs faster, scraping at the earth with numb intensity, the tips of her fingers bleeding, her fingernails clogged with mud. Her pulse slows and every heartbeat feels like a fist to her chest. A figure, dark against the rust-red background, stands above her. Its arms reach out and with them comes the thick warm smell of bourbon. She flails, striking, clawing, stabbing the figure with her empty fists until blood warms her hands and moistens her upper arms. She gasps like one who’s been trapped underwater. And then the figure is gone. The only moisture on Alex’s hands is sweat. Her heartbeat quickens and her ears perk to a frantic intonation.

  “Help me!” David yells. “Alex!” An arm is exposed like a tree root. Alex digs, flinging dirt behind her. Another arm. A head, pale and alien next to chunks of red rock.

  “Pull!” David screams, pushing with his legs against the wall of fallen earth for leverage.

  Alex pulls. A torso is revealed, then legs, and Limpy squirts from the cave, red clay enveloping his body like a birth sac. They drag him to the grass just as Harry and Fred come sprinting up. They lean over the body.

  “Limpy!” says David, slapping at Limpy’s face, harder and harder until the pale skin reddens to match the clay.

  “Stop,” Harry says, grabbing David’s hand. “David stop, he’s breathing. Look. He’s breathing. Stop.”

  Between them they are able to pick Limpy up. David and Harry heft his shoulders, Alex and Fred each take a leg, and they struggle down the trail to Motherlode.

  “Ladies,” Emaline says curtly. She passes Mrs. Dourity, Mrs. Waller and her sister Rose, with long purposeful strides. Their skirts billow around them like protective cocoons that will never hatch to butterflies. If they, too, were heading to Micah’s store, they decide against it now, stopping in the middle of the road, putting their heads together and chattering like squirrels. Only Rose is silent, her expressionless eyes making contact with Emaline’s, betraying little in the way of emotion or opinion. Her hair is pulled back into a bun so severe that it seems to reflect the light. Her small mouth looks inadequate for anything other than taking dainty bites of food. She seems a creature devoid of passions, perfectly suited to be her sister’s lapdog. A pitiful waste of a woman, thinks Emaline. She climbs the steps of the store and tugs the door. It swings halfway open, catches, and springs back, nearly slamming Emaline in the face. She steps back, startled.

  “Micah, what the hell?”

  “Hold on, sorry, hold on,” says Micah from inside. “Just let me get this out of …” His grunts are accompanied by the sound of wood against wood. “There,” he says breathlessly. “Come in.”

  Emaline steps through the door but can go no further. The floor is a shambles of boxes, barrels, and sacks, in no recognizable order. Cider, dry goods, tobacco, potatoes, molasses, pork beans, hatchets, a stack of ten or so axes … The shelves are cluttered with bottles, copper doorhandles, layer upon layer of starched trousers and flannel shirts, earthen bowls, tin pans, two giant porcelain wash bowls. Emaline’s eyes sweep over the bountiful disarray, and come to rest on the skeins of calico, cotton and muslin cloth leaning like robed royalty against the wall.

  “I ordered it, just like you said,” says Micah, following her gaze. “Even wrote it down. Look here—” He retreats to the counter, rummages through a scattering of loose papers. “Iron lanterns, quicksilver, window glass, wool ticking, ah, wall velvet—tapestries, if you like. Red with green foliage and yellow chrysanthemums. Right here, see? Ordered it three weeks ago. Bound to be on
the next wagon. I ordered it three weeks ago. Look.”

  He flashes the paper in front of her face, and she snatches it away, scowling and squinting at his illegible scrawl. She runs her fingers over a skein of calico, relishing the inter-woven softness against her work-roughened hands. Micah fidgets. He steps behind the counter, putting a physical barrier between Emaline and himself. She hands the paper back.

  “Micah, how on earth you afford all this stock? And don’t tell me you’re buying on credit.”

  “Now, Emaline, my word’s as good as any man’s, and I don’t appreciate …”

  “You selling on credit too, then? Are you?”

  A squirrel scampers noisily across the roof and leaps into a nearby pine. Needles fall, tapping the ceiling like a shower of cut fingernails.

  “I ain’t one to scold, Micah,” Emaline says, ignoring his humph, “but isn’t this exactly how you got yourself thrown out of Grass Valley? Damn lucky they didn’t jail your ass. Can’t be buying on credit, and if you are buying on credit, sure as hell can’t be selling on credit. Pay outright, or don’t pay at all. And no sense ordering so goddamn much at one time, neither. Only a few claims producing like they should, and no telling how long it’ll last.”