Crown of Dust

by Mary Volmer

  “She just gave us time and didn’t take no shit, no excuses, and never blamed you for failing—again and again, in some cases, in my case,” Preacher says. “Long as you tried like she tried, worked like she worked. A first-class inn she was building. The envy of the National Hotel, with the name of a queen, Victoria. You heard her talking. Gonna welcome everyone from President Pierce hisself to Jaquin Murietta, play no favorites. Everyone was her boys. And all she did every day was cook, clean, and take care of us piss-poor sons-a-bitches when all we had was mud in our pockets. Never made excuses. Knew what she was doing, and expected everyone, God included, to understand. And I think he did … does. I think he does.”

  Preacher pauses and a memory presents itself as a smile on his lips. “Was her who taught me to read. Back in Sacramento. Paid my fifty dollars for her … well, her services, and mentioned that I was seeking a change in myself—into what, I didn’t know—and after we was done, she give me this Bible.”

  He holds up the tattered gray book. “Says she’s only giving it me ’cause her eyes were going and she about had the damn thing memorized anyway. Then looks at me real stern, like she does, did, shit.”

  He looks around as if in apology, but no one can meet his eye. It’s not so important what he says, just as long as he says something.

  Alex closes her eyes to the pressure building there. No tears, no release. David’s breath warms her neck. She feels his hand on her shoulder and her body tenses, then relaxes into the contact. The ground, which had been bucking and rolling, stills. Preacher continues:

  “She tells me how dangerous it is to read before thinking, before feeling, asks me if I done either or both lately. Tells me she was giving me the Bible only for learning, and when I was done learning, I should close it, and only open it when I come up empty of the right words. I come up empty a lot.” He looks down at the Bible, lets it fall open where it wants. He smiles.

  “‘In my father’s house are many dwelling places, I go to prepare a place for you.’ I go and prepare a place for you,” he repeats. His voice rises clear and confident. The phrase echoes off the ravine. “She always had the right words, didn’t she? Was her that named this town Motherlode, saying anything worth finding is worth digging for. Ain’t that the truth?

  “Now, I can’t be sure she found all she was digging for. Can’t say if it was worth what she lost. But I tell you what she told me—that this land don’t settle for nobody who ain’t both a dreamer and a worker. And she may not have got what she was looking for, but she died trying, and, hell, that’s all anyone can ask. Let us … let us pray.”

  One by one the citizens of Motherlode drift away to sift through their gutted businesses, leaving the Victoria Inn regulars to see Jed into the ground. Nothing is said, beyond a short prayer, and soon only Alex and David remain. The air around them is warm and still lacking in body and lift. Breathing takes effort. The cedars on the ridge stand like sentinels, overlooking the dusty ashes of a town they were helpless to protect. The sun has yet to reach nine o’clock.

  The rest of the day Alex and David wander. They trudge through hot embers, salvaging what they can from where they can, but spend most of their time near the smoldering foundations of the Victoria. Here Emaline’s presence is almost tangible. Her scent lingers, if only in Alex’s imagination. Dust, baking bread, whiskey. The balcony has crumbled to the ground. Two stories have become one. Porcelain washbasins from the upstairs rooms lie in pieces; though one, with a painted vine of green ivy reaching out and over the rim, remains intact. Shards of reflective silver are all that remain of the mirrors. Scraps of clothing litter the ground. Alex recognizes a sleeve from one of her own flannels. A strip of Emaline’s lavender dress has draped itself across what used to be the bar. Ceramic jugs and glass bottles, whose contents exploded in the heat, lie in a clumsy mosaic on the floor. Bits of tapestry float as red ash with every step.

  The cast-iron stove is too heavy for David and Alex to lift. It stands on its four solid legs in defiance of flames, in scorn of wood’s fragility. Its vents are two round staring eyes. The open oven door is a laughing mouth that Alex kicks closed. The clang bounces off the far valley wall, echoing back a softer version of itself. Down the road, vultures gather around John Thomas’s body, picking at his eyes, nibbling his fingers, hopping into the air and resettling like sediment in a gold pan. The Rhode Island Red tiptoes around the grave mounds, flaps its wings, lets out a disgruntled series of clucks, each one louder, more frantic than the last.

  Small piles of salvaged goods are forming all along the side of Victor Lane. Buckets and pots, pick and shovel heads missing their wooden handles. By Micah’s shop sits a small iron safe and several barrels of whiskey. Limpy ambles past, taking a thirsty look at the barrels.

  “I tell you,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “I sure could use a drink.”

  David hands him a ladleful of water from a bucket. Limpy smirks, takes a sip, swirls it around his mouth, spits. “It’s wet, all right.”

  That night the regulars gather in the road near the remains of the Victoria Inn. David sets a lantern on the ground and they sit upon three-legged stools dipping tin cups into an open barrel of whiskey. The lantern light mushrooms up and outward, spreading a dim orange glow on black-streaked faces.

  Micah says, slouching on his stool, “Sent an order today for wood, nails and such. I might rebuild in brick.”

  No one speaks. It seems too soon to start rebuilding, David thinks, disrespectful. Off in the distance a coyote howls and David raises his hands to the moon and yawns. A glass of whiskey lays untouched near his boot. Alex sits within breathing distance to his right. The boy has been close all day and David hasn’t discouraged him, doesn’t feel guilty about it.

  “Don’t know,” says Harry. A dribble of whiskey dampens his beard. “Been hearing good things about Colorado.” He glances over at Fred, who studies the ground. “Don’t know,” Harry says again.

  “Well, y’all wanna know what I think?” slurs Limpy, already long past drunk. He lets out a giant puff of gas but is the only one who thinks this is funny. His hee-haws turn to hee-hees, then quiet all together.

  Ash and grit scratch David’s eyes. He doesn’t know either. A stubborn core of him wants to stay, to dig and blast until his arms fall off from the effort. Maybe rebuild with a solid roof, something permanent. But another, larger part of him is hungry for more; more gold, yes, he thinks, but also to explore another part of the country, and perhaps gain something he’s never had: land. He’s sure there’s still gold in these hills, sure that someone is going to get rich. Maybe Mr. James and those hydraulicking folks Fred is always talking about. David’s father would think it ridiculous, washing whole mountainsides away. Half the pay dirt would be swept right down the creek. But that is the way things are going here in California. No one cares how much is wasted, so long as someone gets rich in the process. Could learn a lesson from those Chinamen who hunker down washing every last ounce of gold from the dirt before moving on.

  A glow from the Chinese huts across the creek is just visible. Without those Chinamen, he knows the rest of the town would have been lost last night. They hauled buckets and blankets and fought the flames, even though their homes were well out of the fire’s reach, then disappeared by morning. Probably afraid of being blamed for it. Probably smart to be afraid. Rumor around town held that those chickens weren’t attacked by any raving Chinamen, though that was the convenient answer. David thinks there might be a greater significance to this observation, but is too tired to speculate what it might be. His mind leaps sideways to the coast of Cornwall. The year-long green of the cliffs competes in brightness with the blue of the sky, and a circle of standing stones vibrate and straighten to a regimental line.

  “We need gravestones,” he says. “For both of them. Jed was a good ol’ guy.”

  Silent nods all round. He was a good ol’ guy. The fact that he was black hadn’t made much of a difference until today, un
til they dug his grave and, in broad daylight, laid him next to the white woman with whom he spent most of his nights.

  Limpy giggles again and David rises. Best get him home. He’ll never get him to bed if he passes out here. As if on cue, the others stand and the circle disperses. David helps Limpy zigzag toward the cabin and Alex hustles ahead to open the door, then follows them in uninvited.

  “Close the door,” says David, letting Limpy fall unconscious into bed. His convictions, his fears and reservations, slip like raw ore through hopper holes. He’s tired of fighting himself. Alex closes the door and stands in the darkness, breathing as one asleep.

  “Go on,” David tells Alex, motioning to his own bed. “I’m not tired.” He takes a seat on the stool in the corner, crosses his arms at his chest and falls asleep.

  Alex’s mother died when memory was only strong enough to grasp and hold misted images. A face so close as to consist only of a nose, a limitless warmth of skin on skin, a heartbeat slower and counter to her own, a dangled brightness, swinging back and forth like a pendulum in a golden blur, and a flaking, powdered-skin smell, corrupted by tobacco and peppermint. Alex coveted these memories, called them Mother, and kept them separate from all others until they assumed their own context, their own identity. And later they became her definition for something equally abstruse, became her definition for love.

  Now, lying in the warmth of David’s bed, with his quilt wrapped around her, she again hears a heartbeat, and a doubt enters her cache of coveted memories. The smell of skin, a sun-splotched hand with large knobbly knuckles like a living skeleton, a pipe smoked only in private, the tobacco tamped, lit and relit until the odor escaped underneath the bedroom door to the kitchen where Alexandra dressed her doll. Lips, cracked and abrasive as wool, kiss her forehead as she pretends to sleep, and suddenly the intangible blur of her wordless definition of love breaks apart into visions of a tired old woman with arthritic hands. And though she didn’t at Gran’s funeral, though she couldn’t at Emaline’s, Alex begins to cry. Tears ooze from the corners of her eyes like water from cracks in granite, building in intensity until her shoulders shake. The blanket only buffers the sound.

  Then her grandmother’s arms, like corrugated wires, wind around her, holding her, rocking her, squeezing her unexpected guilt into a manageable shape, a cylinder to tuck away in a closet corner. The old woman’s hissing breath softens, her voice deepens. “Shhh. It’s all right. Shhh.”

  Fingers augment to match gout-swollen joints. Palms grow leather-tough calluses. Legs elongate. Shoulders and chest widen, becoming dense and heavy. Lips make warm indents on Alex’s temple, on her cheek, her neck, her lips. Hands roam, cupping her buttocks, sliding up to her neck and down to her breasts, then pull away, leaving behind a heat signature and a chill.

  Alex shivers and opens her eyes to David staring at his hands. He’s barely breathing. Moonlight penetrates the canvas roof. Alex can see the whites of his eyes as his mind works through exhausted confusion. Too much thinking. She lunges for his legs, wraps her arms around him and holds on until his knees bend and hairy knuckles skim the back of her neck.

  “Please,” she says.

  She healed, and then she bled, and she could not change this. But the blood was still someone else’s blood, the return of someone else’s cycle. The curse of Alexandra of Pennsylvania. Alex is finished with curses, she’s finished with lies. She was ready to bury herself with Emaline, to jump into the grave and close her eyes, letting roots and worms take what was left. But she knew then, and she knows now, that this is not what Emaline would want. It’s not what Alex wants, though at this moment her desire stretches no further than David.

  Ash thickens the stale air. Across the room, Limpy snores. Alex pulls off her flannel. David opens his mouth to speak. No words come. Alex rises to her knees, kisses his open mouth, runs her hands behind his head where hair gives way to the nape of his neck. Her fingers tingle. The sensation spreads, giving weight to empty muscles, and density to hollow bones. Her tongue dampens his chapped lips. She guides his hand to her chest and her hands roam, discovering in the length of his back, the arch of her own. Discovering in the hollow of his neck, the voice of her own. She moans, lets her head fall back, lets his tongue redefine her collarbone and color in her ears. His tongue meets hers. The quilt is cast to the floor. They lie back. The bed frame groans. His hands make circles around small breasts and edge downward, finding the nugget in its pouch. He follows the leather cord, easing his hands behind her to the knot. The pouch falls with a thump to the floor. She scrapes her cheek against the stubble of his chin, arches when he twists black hairs between his fingers. She tastes the salt of his navel, runs her tongue to the top of his trousers. He shivers. “Alex,” he says.

  20

  She stands above him. His chest is bare and the thin fuzz of blond hair curls this way and that. His right arm is slung to the side where the imprint of her body remains.

  There is, Alex thinks, only conditional love. Or if unconditional love were possible it could only arise if one could manage unconditional faith. Alex never has. So many things larger than she, stronger than she, have shaken her faith like sand from a pair of boots, and yet she marvels as she stands there, watching David’s breath tease the hairs of his arm, something like faith always seems to reappear at the least predictable of moments. She wishes he would wake, and hopes that he will not. She wants to bend, to trace her hands along the contours of his chest, to hide there in the warmth of him, to hear only the beat of his heart. Instead, she reaches down for the leather pouch, frees the nugget into the palm of her hand, marvels at the density. In her other hand, a green stone from the scales above the stove, the polished skin so smooth.

  Across the room, Limpy’s snoring changes cadence from the even rumble of deep sleep to short choppy snorts. Alex tucks the green stone into her pouch and lets the nugget fall into the open mouth of David’s boot, sitting as if placed by his bed for that purpose. The gold is not a gift. An invitation to forget her, or to remember her only as the Golden Boy? To follow her? She doesn’t know and she wishes she didn’t care. David gave Alex her body back, and she won’t ask any more of him. Already, the lonely road is weight enough on her shoulders. Already she can feel the heat of blisters, her tongue parched with thirst. She can’t remain in this town that knows her only as the Golden Boy, cannot watch as Emaline slips away beneath the walls of new buildings, or rots with the remains of the Victoria. There is no Motherlode without Emaline. There is no Golden Boy without Motherlode.

  Outside, the ash has settled, and a thin layer of dew masks the smell of the embers. Smoldering serpents of smoke hiss softly, and it feels as if she’s looking through a movable fog, a haze on the inside instead of out. She blows cabin air from her chest and rubs the crust of tears and sleep from her eyes. She scuffs her feet through the damp ash, unearthing the dry underlayer, making a cloud about her. The birds are just now waking. The morning light loosens the darkness to shadows, and on the lip of the ravine cedars sway against a breeze. Two seagulls rise on an air current and disappear to the west.

  She picks up her feet now, a tentative optimism filling her, and tiptoes past a makeshift tent filled with sleeping men, past the debris of Micah’s store and Sander’s dry goods, past the charred chapel ruins to stand in the spot where the Victoria should be. The Rhode Island Red rouses itself from the singed blanket where it slept the night, looks sideways at Alex before scampering off. The hen’s feet make three-pronged tracks as it goes. Alex looks back, following her own tracks through the soot to the cabin where David sleeps. No one stirs. Limpy’s snoring is barely audible next to the murmur of the creek and, as she turns back, her feet brush something hard. The broken fragment of a frame.

  From a mirror, she thinks at first, but looks closer to find a corner of parchment sticking out under the ash. She shakes the parchment free of char and coal, finds Queen Victoria’s gray-blue eyes squinting off into the distance. Apart from one scorched corner, the
painting is undamaged. The queen’s full cheeks droop into a double chin, and her ears are heavy with jewels. When Alex squints she can almost see the shadow of a mustache darkening her upper lip. On her head is a veiled crown, but neither this, nor the jeweled pendant around her neck, nor the baby blue sash draped across her frock, can match the regal image of Emaline descending the stairs in that lavender dress nearly three weeks ago. She sees the set of Emaline’s broad shoulders; her breasts, a burden all on their own; her hair, a cascading crown around her head. Alex holds the portrait before her, wishing there was a body to fill the space between the parchment and the ground.

  Beyond the chapel where the twin mounds point north up Victor Lane, Alex kneels, smoothes the earth and lays the portrait of the queen like a mantle over the grave.

  “Emaline,” she says and places her hand flat on her stomach. She looks about for the presence she feels but sees no one and nothing but the hesitant movements of the chicken picking its way back through the ashes of the Victoria across the street.

  She wishes it were Jackson Hudson lying there instead of Emaline. Some men, Emaline said, some men just need killing; she can see his face, the wide set of his eyes, his beard trimmed and clipped to a square on his pointed chin, the set of his shoulders. She can see him as clearly as the portrait, and if they meet again … If they meet again, there will be bullets in her gun.