by R. R. Irvine
“You talk to them,” Martin said. “I’m going inside for a cold beer.”
As Traveler squatted, Bill reached into the tepee behind him, brought out another book, and handed it over. The History of Utah Art felt cool to the touch. Traveler slid it under him and sat down.
“Books have many uses,” Charlie said.
Traveler, half blinded by the sunlight bouncing off the gravel, couldn’t read the Indian’s expression. “What the hell are you two doing out here?”
“God sent us into the desert to burn away our sins and seek truth through visions,” Bill said. “Like he does with all his prophets.”
“The police dumped you at the border.”
“God has his own ways.”
“We came to take you home.”
Bill shook his head. “We’ve been sent here to help Bob in his time of need. We are his main attraction.”
Traveler shifted to a crouch in order to retrieve his book. When he turned it over he saw a sale sticker with a price of $25. “That’s a bit expensive, isn’t it?”
Bill shrugged. “Bob set up business here to bring enlightenment to tourists and locals alike.”
“And he provides the books?”
“God provides them.”
“A man from the church brought them to us,” Charlie said.
“He was God’s messenger,” Bill clarified. “Bob only priced them.”
“Who are you talking about?” Traveler said.
“It’s never wise to question God or his messengers.”
Traveler looked around the parking lot, empty except for Martin’s Jeep and the pickup that had BOB’S BIG INDIAN stenciled on the door.
“Tourists come here to take our pictures sometimes,” Charlie said.
“Bob used to be a writer,” Bill went on. “He gave it up to act as a Good Samaritan to people crossing the desert. If he’d been here when the Donner party came through, who knows how many lives would have been saved. He tells us he dreams about them every night.”
Charlie gripped the new medicine bag that hung around his neck, a cloth one that looked as if it had once contained marbles. It also looked empty. “We all dream,” the Indian said.
Bill laid a hand on the gravel. “Feel the heat, Moroni. Feel God’s cleansing power.”
With a creaking of knee cartilage, Traveler rose to his feet. “You must have sunstroke. Now come on. I’ve got work to do back in the city.”
Bill reached into the tepee again and retrieved another book, a thinner, paperbound volume entitled Utah’s Historic Architecture. “We have our own work here, Moroni. You would be wise to join us.”
“It’s a long walk back to the Chester Building.”
“God will show us the way,” Bill said.
“When you run out of faith,” Traveler said, “phone us and we’ll come get you.” He leaned over and dropped the amulet and leather medicine pouch in Charlie’s lap.
“You see how God provides,” Bill observed. “Donations to our church, the Church of the True Prophet.”
Charlie turned over his drum, revealing a hollow side, which he held out toward Traveler.
“I’ll be in Bingham for a day or two.” Traveler dropped in two twenties. “If you can’t reach me or Martin, leave a message with Barney.”
16
MARTIN INSISTED on fixing a big breakfast the next morning, stacking hotcakes four-high on Traveler’s plate and surrounding them with strips of crisp bacon. The maple syrup was hot, with the butter melted right into it.
The smell took Traveler back to leisurely Sunday mornings when Kary was still alive, though the taste reminded him that Martin had always been the cook in the family.
“I want you at your best when you go looking for my grandson,” Martin announced. “I also want you to watch yourself out there in Bingham.”
His tone of voice made elaboration unnecessary. They both knew that Bingham was a rough, company-dominated mining town and had been that way for more than a hundred years. Over that time it had been settled in waves by Serbs, Croatians, Mexicans, Italians, Greeks, Japanese, French, Germans, all of whom fought constantly with one another, but would be certain to close ranks against an outsider like Traveler.
“Come to think of it,” Martin added, “maybe I’d better come with you.”
“One stranger in town will be bad enough. Two would be impossible. On top of that, you’ve got the Chester Building to worry about.”
“This may be the only chance I get at a grandson.”
“All I’m going to do is look around, not steal him for you.”
“The least you can do is bring me back a snapshot of the boy,” Martin said.
“I don’t want to be too conspicuous.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. It might be best if you called yourself Martin like I do. There’s no use calling attention to the similarity in the first names. One Moroni Traveler looking for another would be sure to raise eyebrows.”
“You’re assuming that Claire’s story was true, that she gave him up only on condition that his name never be changed.”
“The Traveler part must have been dropped by now. But why take chances? Call yourself Martin and be done with it. I’ve found it helpful over the years, even soothing at times.” He pushed his half-eaten hotcakes aside. “You’d better take my Jeep, too. I don’t think your old Ford will make it on those mountain roads.”
Traveler accepted the car keys. “I should be back for dinner. If something comes up, I’ll call and let you know.”
“Just keep Kennecott in mind. Their damned election is only three days away.”
“If the boy’s there, I’ll find him.”
“Maybe I’ll get a sign painter while you’re gone. I’ll have him add an S to ‘Moroni Traveler and Son.’ ”
******
Fifteen minutes later, with the pancakes lumped in his stomach, Traveler picked up the old Bingham highway and headed southwest toward the Oquirrh Mountains twenty-five miles away. Because they were the first mountains in the Great Salt Lake Basin to reflect the sunrise, the Paiute Indians called them the shining mountains, the Oquirrhs. They were said to be the richest ore-bearing range on the continent.
They were blue-gray at the moment, with smoke from the smelters hanging motionless in their ravines. As the highway rose, climbing out of old Lake Bonneville, it entered the small canyon town of Copperton, which hadn’t changed since the 1930s when the Utah Copper Company, now Kennecott, built it as a company town.
Beyond Copperton, near the ghost town of Lead Mine, late-summer rains had nurtured a second crop of yellow sunflowers and lavender skunkweed on the hillsides, along with straggly thickets of elderberries and chokecherries.
After Lead Mine, the road wound its way through Dry Fork, past the abandoned remains of the English Dairy, and across Damphaol Gulch. At that point a dirt track, known as Damn Fool Road, branched to the left. Traveler resisted the temptation to follow it and continued ahead until the two-lane asphalt narrowed before entering the short tunnel that led to the town of Bingham Canyon itself. He checked the rearview mirror, saw no traffic, and stopped in the middle of the road. He hadn’t seen another car since leaving the floor of the basin.
With the engine running, he got out to study the deep, narrow canyon that had once been home to red pine, maple, and oak. Now there was nothing but scrub, and in places even that had been burned away by old mine tailings that had spilled down the steep banks like blood from a wound.
Traveler hadn’t been in Bingham since the night of his high school graduation, when he and some friends had been attracted by the town’s reputation—saloons where no one asked for IDs and a notorious red-light district unthinkable anywhere else in Utah. Four of them had made the drive that night: Traveler, Walt Kilbourn, Gordy Christensen, and Willis Tanner; they all talked big on the first part of the drive, but grew quiet the closer they got to the town. That night, too, they’d stopped just short of Bingham’s landmark tunnel because Walt, t
heir driver, got cold feet.
“Dad’ll kill me,” he’d said, “if we get picked up in his car.”
“Stay sober, then,” Willis said. “Play old maid while we raise a little hell.”
“We could just drive around and take a look, then go back to town for something to eat.”
“We came here to celebrate,” Tanner said. “Who knows when we’ll get another chance like this.”
“We could get into trouble.”
“Nobody gives a damn out here in Bingham.” Tanner smacked his lips. “They say the whores are something. I’ve got the address memorized—520 Main Street.”
“We could get a disease.”
“You brought rubbers, didn’t you?”
“I forgot.” Walt sounded relieved.
“Relax. I’ve got plenty to go around.” Tanner handed out sealed packs to everyone.
“We could get rolled,” Walt pleaded.
“He’s got a point,” Gordy chimed in.
“So we’ll all stick close to Moroni. Nobody’s going to pick on someone his size.”
“Is that why you brought me along?”
Willis had grinned then. “Just do as I do, Moroni.”
Traveler smiled at the memory and drove into the tunnel. On the other side, the road became Main Street and was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It would stay that way, running along the bottom of the steep V-shaped canyon, as it ascended toward Kennecott Copper’s enormous, ever-expanding open-pit mine. Every so often, gulches crisscrossed Main Street, each leading to ancillary mining camps: Carr Fork, Highland Boy, Lark, Copperfield, Dinkeyville, Jap Camp, and Frogtown. There were no trees, no flowers either, nothing but blackened hillsides and blackening buildings.
Traveler bypassed Frogtown’s Amicone Bar, Christ Apostles Grocery, and the Liberty Bell Bakery, and continued on up Main Street, intending to begin his quest in the center of Bingham Canyon, at the crossroads known as the Bingham Mercantile Corner, Bingham Merc for short.
Along the way, most places were closed, either by the Kennecott buyout or hard times. The old Yampa Smelter had outlived its usefulness, as had the Bourgard Slaughterhouse, though it had left a lingering smell behind.
So steep was the canyon, that miners’ shacks, boarding-houses, and businesses alike had been squeezed up against the narrow roadway. Sidewalks were afterthoughts and backyards were forty-five-degree slopes. In places, the canyon wall had been gouged out to accommodate a second row of shacks, squeezed so close that one man’s roof became another’s front porch.
At a point where the canyon widened slightly, Traveler parked in front of city hall, a two-story brick building across from the Bingham Merc. The slaughterhouse smell had given way to a metallic taste in his mouth, as if he’d been sucking on a penny. He swallowed grimly and climbed the stone steps that matched the building’s dingy windowsills and cornices.
He half expected to find the door locked. When it opened he felt compelled to knock and call out, “Is anyone here?”
“I’ll be right with you,” a woman answered from deeper inside the building.
He waited in the hallway, next to a scarred wooden desk, a teacher’s model old enough to have a disappearing typewriter well. A stack of newspapers, the Bingham Bulletin, lay on the desktop. A map of Bingham Canyon, a good ten feet long, with crease marks indicating that it had originally been some kind of fold-out, was taped to the plaster wall behind the desk. Traveler was trying to locate himself on it when a door across the hall opened and a woman said, “I hope you’re not another reporter here about the election?”
He was tempted to lie. Newsmen were more palatable to most people than private detectives, even one on a personal mission. But when he looked at her, a thin, bony woman wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a severe look that reminded him of his English teacher, Miss Tregagle, all he could say was, “No, ma’am.”
“Reporters have been coming and going around here for the last week, pestering everybody in town,” she said. “Every time you say anything to them, they change your words, put them in the paper, and stir up trouble.”
She gave him a once-over worthy of Miss Tregagle. “Thanks to all the publicity, our volunteer help has dried up. The mayor has had to go into hiding to get any work done. Not that I blame people for taking precautions, or taking inventory of their belongings in case we all have to move out. In any case, young man, I don’t know who it is you want to see, but you’re going to have to settle for me. I’m Ida Odegaard and I’m the only one here.”
“My name’s Martin,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow before tucking a stray hair back into place.
“I’m looking for someone,” he went on, “and thought I’d better do it before the election.”
“You may have missed them already. Kennecott’s been at it for years, buying up properties and tearing them down. Most of my friends are long gone, sold out or evicted. In its heyday, Bingham Canyon had nearly three thousand souls. Now I figure we’re only a tenth of that. It makes you want to cry sometimes, seeing places you love close down one after the other. My husband’s family, the Odegaards, are third generation, though some old-timers around here can trace their families all the way back to the beginning, when Brigham Young sent settlers into the Oquirrhs to farm and cut timber. He didn’t know the half of it, though, did he? That his people were sitting on a fortune out here, on mountains of copper. They say our town is standing on top of ten million tons of ore.”
Traveler nodded to keep her talking.
“The joke is,” she said, nodding back, “old Brigham didn’t believe in mining. A man’s duty was to till the land and raise a family, not to get rich quick. Now Kennecott says it has to expand the mine or die. If you ask me, we need another Brigham Young to stand up against the company.”
She stared at Traveler as if measuring his chances against such an opponent. “You never did say who it is you’re looking for.”
“The Tempest family,” he said.
“In the old days, the company used paid informers to ferret out troublemakers. Some say they still have spies, though these days union men don’t get beaten to death or disappear. They just get leaned on until they sell out. A man your size could do a lot of damage if he leaned on somebody.”
“I don’t work for Kennecott, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m looking for a lost relative and was told the Tempests might be able to help me.”
She rose up on tiptoe to look him in the eye. What she saw made her purse her lips. “Leaving reporters out of it, you’re not the first to come around here snooping, what with my husband’s leading the opposition against Kennecott. Are you for or against selling out to the company?”
“It’s not my fight.”
She stared at him so hard the loose flesh beneath her eyes quivered.
“Maybe I’d better try the newspaper office,” he said.
She pointed to the stack of Bulletins on the desk. “That’s the last issue you’re likely to see. Even if we win the election, there isn’t enough of us left to make this town a worthwhile proposition.”
He thanked her and started for the door.
“I heard the Tempests were renting a place up in Copperfield,” she called after him.
He hesitated at the threshold.
“To get there you go through the long tunnel.”
“Do you have an address?” he asked.
“Come to think of it, Kennecott has closed down most of Copperfield already. They were just powder-box cabins anyway. The best you can do is ask around when you get there. With the town shrinking the way it is, just about anybody ought to be able to tell you where to find the Tempests.”
Mrs. Odegaard could, too, he thought, if she had the inclination. Sending him to Copperfield was probably a ruse so she could alert the Tempests. If that was true, his search could be over quickly, or develop complications.
“Is there someplace in town I could stay overnight?” he asked, in case the search took him longer
than expected.
“We used to have some fine places in the canyon, the Seminole Hotel up in Carr Fork, and the Belmont. They’re both gone now, so’s the Elmerton down near the mouth of Markham Gulch. We had some good boardinghouses, too, in the old days.”
“And now?”
“You take my advice and try Emma Dugan’s place. It used to be a boardinghouse, when there were any boarders. She’s all but closed up now. You tell her I sent you and she’ll open up a room for you.”
Traveler must have looked skeptical, because she added, “There’s no place else, young man, not safe anyway. Stay away from the blind pigs. But you do what you want. You look like the kind who would anyway.”
“Where do I find Emma Dugan?”
“You keep going up Main Street. When you see the old Bingham Mortuary, that’s the ground floor of the Bourgard Apartments, you’ll know you’ve gone half a block too far.”
“Is there a bishop in town I could talk to?”
She smiled for the first time. “There never were that many Mormons in the canyon, though we did have a ward house once. These days there aren’t enough of the Saints left to make it worthwhile. The fact is, none of our churches will be open much longer. It’s a shame. We don’t even have services on a regular basis. Old Papa Joe is still around, though. He’s a retired priest, an Orthodox Croat, who was born here and whose father was a miner before him. You can usually find him at the Bingham Merc, telling tales and talking about the good old days. What he’s going to do if we sell out to Kennecott, I don’t know. Our other priest, Father Bannon, I’d stay away from.”
17
ONCE OUTSIDE city hall, Traveler hesitated. Although conscious that Mrs. Odegaard was still watching him, he made no move to cross the street to the Bingham Merc, where Papa Joe could be found. Once he started asking questions nothing would be the same again, not for him, not for Martin, and probably not the boy. If he walked away now, chances were Ida Odegaard might not even tell the Tempests about him. Even if she did, they wouldn’t know where to find him, and probably wouldn’t want to.