Crown of Dust
Page 27
She leans down, touches her lips to the cheek of the paper face, whispers “thank you” into the paper ear.
The town is stirring now. Loud pneumatic coughing makes her anxious. If she sees the sun come up over the lip of the ravine, she might just stay. She stands, dusts off her knees, and turns to find David standing in her path. He says nothing, but offers the lump of gold in the palm of his outstretched hand. She shakes her head and reaches into her pocket for the green stone she took in exchange.
“Serpentine,” he says. His eyes bore into her, searching for the woman, searching for the boy, or a combination of the two; she doesn’t know. His hair is disheveled, his feet bare and covered in a film of dust and ash.
“Emaline,” is all she can say, and even this word catches thick in her throat. They stand close, without touching.
“You’re leaving?” he says.
“Yes.”
A few resilient miners are making their way to their claims, as if by digging they can tunnel away from the charred remains of town. Alex yearns for a pick, a shovel, for the repetitive, mindless exertion of the mine.
“If they dam the creek, for the water,” says David, shifting his weight, “they’ll flood this valley.”
Alex doesn’t answer, but she can see the water rising, drowning the summer grass, lapping at the foundations of deserted buildings, reflecting in flashes of white when the sun rises above the ravine wall. It feels like another death, a death she’s glad she won’t be here to see. She looks back at David, but he is elsewhere, perhaps envisioning a similar landscape.
She can feel his breath brush the top of her head as she moves past him. She closes her eyes against the impulse to stop, to stand there before him for a few moments more, warding off the loneliness already clutching at her pant legs. She can feel him watching as she walks up the road. No pack, no pan. Only the clothes on her back, and a pouch of gold dust. She’s leaving with less than when she arrived.
She walks past the high grasses, tall enough now to brush the lowest branches of the scrub oaks skirting the ravine. She keeps to the hard-packed earth between the wagon ruts until the road becomes steep and the sounds of the creek are hushed. She slows her pace, not waiting, she tells herself, afraid even to hope, just easing into the journey, one foot in front of the other. When she hears footsteps behind her, she doesn’t stop to wait, but keeps the same steady rhythm, swinging her arms, careful to avoid tripping in the ruts and holes, until their elbows brush and his heavy breath is the only thing she hears.
He carries a large canvas pack, a bedroll strapped to one side, an iron pot on the other. A pick and a shovel extend over one shoulder like tree branches, and he lugs the big rifle from the wall of his cabin in his free hand. She takes the rifle, balances the muzzle like a yoke across her shoulders, and continues on, weaving back and forth along the switch-backs of the road until the wind brushes cold on her face.
“I couldn’t stay,” she says. He doesn’t ask why.
“Where are we going?”
She stares off into the valley. The wind weaves between the cedars on the opposite ridge, and the smoke curls of a campfire rise from the valley floor. She leans in closer to David. His arm finds its way round her shoulders and she feels his body relax and his breath ease, as if this simple embrace had confirmed something his mind could not. She shades her eyes from the sun, and points to the parallel path cutting its way eastward into the Sierra Nevadas, to what, to where, she doesn’t know.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20