Death Pans Out

by Ashna Graves

  Back in the car, she headed toward the center of town but within three blocks she was stopped in a line of vehicles waiting their turn to get through the single narrow lane left while road repairs were underway. All four windows were down but the air in the car rapidly grew hot and heavy. The nearest street tree was half a block away. She could use the air conditioning—if it worked. Preferring fresh air, no matter how hot, and living most of the time in the cool Willamette Valley, she had never used the air conditioning in this car, and as she fiddled with various knobs it struck her that she didn’t want to begin now.

  Cars had lined up behind her, the nearest idling so close that she could not back up to turn around. A broad driveway on the other side of the street offered a lovely tunnel of shade. She pulled into it and found herself on a curving drive that circled past a large and elaborate Victorian house with multiple gables, porches, small balconies, and gingerbread, fronted by a perfect lawn and shrubs. A sign announced Garden of Eternal Peace. Why is that the best old houses in so many towns end up as funeral homes?

  Emerald lawns require plenty of water. Neva’s scrutiny switched from the house itself to what she could see of the foundation at the back of the flower border, and immediately she spotted a plain faucet with good clearance for filling jugs. As she was considering whether to venture onto the immaculate porch in search of someone to ask for permission, a man appeared from the back of the building, walking slowly up the walkway that ran along the flower border, his thin shoulders hunched. For a moment she wondered whether he might be drunk even though it was not yet noon, but then it struck her that his uncertain step suggested a recent illness or psychological or emotional setback. He looked up, returned her scrutiny for several seconds without a change of expression, and then approached the car.

  “May I help you?” he said without real interest, though not in an unfriendly tone. His long-sleeved yellow shirt was buttoned to the collar despite the July heat, and his face and hands had the pale cast of an indoor worker, a denizen of air-conditioned rooms with shaded windows.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said. “I was stuck in that line of cars and got too hot, so I pulled in here to turn around.”

  “No problem. The drive circles right back to the street.” As he spoke he was already turning away.

  “One more thing, please. I’m traveling, and I was heading into town to fill some water bottles, but it’s very hot and slow waiting in line. Would you mind if I filled them from your faucet over there behind the oleander or whatever that shrub is with the pink flowers? I don’t need much. And I’d be glad to pay for the water.”

  “Water?” He looked back at her with a frown, but his words were neighborly. “I don’t see any problem with that. There’s nobody here anyway.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but he was walking away again. This really was a stroke of luck. She had lost interest in seeing Elkhorn today, and with full water bottles she could head straight back to the mine and possibly catch Andy Sylvester.

  Squatting by the spigot, she was filling the last bottle when the man returned along the walkway. Looking up with a smile, she said, “I really appreciate this. It’s much more pleasant than a gas station.”

  “Not everybody likes a funeral home,” he said without slowing down.

  “I don’t care one way or the other. It’s a beautiful old house, and the grounds are like a park. Do you happen to know whether this is a ladybug? It looks like a ladybug, but I’ve never seen one that was green with black spots. They’re usually red.”

  The change in the man was instant. He stopped, turned, and regarded her with interest, as though really noticing her presence for the first time. Without having to look where she was pointing, he said, “Diabrotica undecimpunctata undecimpunctata. Western spotted cucumber beetle. Not a ladybug. Most people kill them but that’s because their cousin, the striped cucumber beetle, is a serious agricultural pest in California. Up here they don’t bother much except corn and peas. I don’t mind them myself, not being a farmer.”

  “Say that again, please, the taxonomic name.”

  “Diabrotica undecimpunctata undecimpunctata.”

  “What a wonderful name for such a humble little bug.” Neva stood up, the full bottle hanging heavy in her left hand, and crossed the flower border to the walkway. “Are you an entomologist?”

  He shook his head. “I guess you’re new in Elkhorn.”

  “This is my first visit. I’m from the Willamette Valley.”

  “I’ll just give you a hand with those so you can be on your way.”

  “Thank you again,” she said when the bottles were in the trunk. “I’m Jeneva.”

  He met her proffered hand with his own thin hand without clasping hers. “Darrell,” he said. “Have a nice trip.”

  Puzzled, she watched him go down the walk and out of sight around the rear corner of the house. A nice trip? Ah, she had said she was traveling. She should have asked whether she could fill the bottles at the Garden of Eternal Peace as needed in the future. She started the car and followed the drive around behind the house hoping to catch him, but Darrell was not to be seen.

  ***

  It was a fine day, with one small white cloud floating high in an otherwise intense blue sky. As usual on the minor highways of the West, there were more hawks and ground squirrels than cars, though only one rattlesnake sunned itself today on the lower stretch of Billie Creek Road before it entered the canyon. About a mile beyond Gene’s cabin, Neva rounded a bend and saw a green truck heading down the road. It rolled to within a few feet of her front bumper, stopped, and was engulfed in its own dust. A young man in a short-sleeved khaki shirt and jeans emerged from the cloud.

  Skipper had referred to Andy Sylvester as a punk kid but still Neva was struck by his youth. She found it hard to believe that someone who looked younger than her own son had the power, or maybe gall was a better word, to order her to leave the mine. As she got out to meet him she didn’t know whether to be cordial, indignant or motherly.

  “Andy Sylvester,” he said. “I’ve just been up at the mine looking for you.”

  His grip was firm and his manner businesslike despite the smooth cheeks that looked as though they had yet to see a razor. “You got my note?”

  “I did. It was quite a shock. I was hoping we could talk over coffee.”

  “I’d intended to tell you in person. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

  “It’s more than a cookie to me, a lot more,” she snapped, and then took a breath and tried for a more diplomatic tone. “Are you in a hurry? I could have coffee ready in short order.”

  “I have to be somewhere this afternoon, but I don’t see why we couldn’t have a little talk right here.” Sylvester half-sat against the hood of the truck, his arms folded. “So, what’s up?”

  “What’s up?” Neva took an identical stance against her own hood, but with her hands in her shorts pockets. “You’ve told me to move out of a cabin that’s been in my family for forty-five years, that’s what’s up. You may not have understood that I’m here for the summer recovering from surgery and doing a bit of writing. I plan to stay until the end of August.”

  “Sorry, can’t do. Squatting isn’t allowed on the national forest.”

  “Who’s squatting?”

  “Are you mining?”

  “Nothing but ideas.”

  “Nice try, but no gold medal.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Are you the ranger?”

  “I’m the mining technician. I handle all the mine-related business for this forest.”

  “How long have you been on the job?”

  “Two years.” His self-confidence appearing only slightly ruffled, Sylvester straightened, opened the door of the truck, took out a small cooler, and offered her a Coke.

  “No thanks. I picked up a quart of orange juice on the way out of Elkhorn and drank the whole thing.”

  “Elkhorn? You’v
e just been to Elkhorn?” Andy peeled off the pop-top, dropped it into the cooler, returned the cooler to the cab, and again leaned on the hood.

  “I went in to find you, as it happens.”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “So I noticed. Listen, Andy,” she said with an effort at patience, “I’ve been here for just about three weeks and my health gets better every day. In fact, at this rate I’ll soon feel better than I have since my twenties. I really can’t go back to town yet. This is what I need. I’m not bothering anything, and I have no intention of staying beyond August. I’ve been cleaning up around the cabin.”

  “So I noticed. Looks great. But it can’t be allowed. You’d be amazed at the people we get trying to live in the national forest. Anything with four walls, and they move right in like it was private property.”

  “It is public land.”

  “Public means for everybody, not individual squatters. Look, it’s not up to me. I’m sure you’re very nice and everything, but I’m just following orders.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “It’s federal policy.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “It’s no secret, if that’s what you think.” He grinned. “You aren’t exactly inconspicuous in a place like this.”

  “Don’t you see any irony in the fact that the Barlow Mine crew can tear up the creek with backhoes and road graders because they have a permit, while I’m not allowed to sit quietly writing a few miles upstream?”

  “I don’t make the rules. Believe me, if we didn’t have rules this place would be torn to pieces. You talk about the Barlow Mine, well, that’s a model project right now. We’re working with them on a plan that will put the creek in better shape than when they started.”

  “I understand they moved the creek from one side of the canyon to the other.”

  “That’s right.”

  “They can move a creek and I can’t walk along it for the sake of my health?”

  “You can walk along it until you’re blue in the face, or whatever. You can even camp on it. You just can’t occupy a permanent structure unless you’re actively mining.”

  “I’m about to begin panning on a regular basis.”

  “Again, nice try, but you’re no miner.”

  “Says who?”

  He smiled and drank from the Coke.

  “What happens if I refuse to leave?”

  “The owner could lose the claim.”

  “The owner has been in a nursing home for years.” As the words left her mouth, Neva was struck by a puzzling thought—how could Orson have kept the claim all these years without actively mining it, or paying the yearly fee of a hundred dollars per twenty-acre claim? As far as she knew, you couldn’t keep mineral rights indefinitely, without any investment of time or money. Strange that she hadn’t wondered about this before. There was no way her uncle’s old partner could have continued to send in fees or arrange for improvements to the mine. “Orson is still the owner of the mine?”

  “In part, yes.”

  “Who owns the other part?”

  “That’s not my area of responsibility.”

  “Do you know?”

  “Look, this is all beside the point. I have to get back to Elkhorn. I’ll be up in the next few days to see that you’re out. I hate to put it that way, but that’s the way it is. If you want to camp on the creek, that’s fine, but I want the cabin shut up the way it was.”

  “You want?” Neva raised an eyebrow.

  Appearing uncomfortable at last, he said, “That’s just an expression. It’s the law. Of course I can see you aren’t hurting anything, but the government can’t make exceptions.”

  ***

  That she had handled the meeting clumsily was only too apparent to Neva as she drove on, her blood racing with unaccustomed anger and frustration. Andy Sylvester was an over-zealous, inexperienced, rule-bound brat. The whole thing was ridiculous, and a tremendous nuisance. She would have to go over his head, which would mean another trip to Elkhorn and another day lost in her already too-brief life in the canyon.

  As she approached the Barlow Mine she met yet another vehicle in the road, this one a great lumbering yellow beast of a bulldozer—lumbering, that is, had it been moving. Not only was it stopped, but it appeared to have blown apart, scattering bits of itself across the road so there was no way to pass. Wondering how Andy had got by, she opened the car door as a man came around the side of the bulldozer, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore no shirt under his grimy overalls, leaving his lean brown arms bare to the shoulders. Built more like an athlete than a laborer, he appeared strong without bulk, his movements simultaneously controlled and easy.

  “Reese Cotter,” he said, gripping her hand and smiling with white teeth.

  “Jeneva Leopold.” That Reese Cotter was a man rather than the boy she had expected made Neva suddenly aware of her flat chest under the T-shirt. It was not that he attracted her—for one thing, he was younger by a good ten years—but his confident maleness made her wish suddenly to look like a proper woman. Surprised at herself, she added crisply, “I’m generally known as Neva.”

  “Sorry about the roadblock,” he said, releasing her hand after a good squeeze. “We’ll have her moving in a couple minutes.”

  “There’s no rush on my account. How’s the mining business?”

  “I wouldn’t say great, but in the last week we’ve started paying expenses at least. It takes a lot of money to get an operation running.”

  “I thought this was an old mine. Hasn’t it been running for years?”

  “Yes and no. There’s been mining here off and on since the first gold rush, but nothing like this size operation. It changed owners a while back, and they hired me to run the show, but I had to finish a job over at Mormon Basin. We’ve only been putting this together since the snow went. And just about everything that could break did break. In this business you get so you feel lucky if the sun comes up.”

  Neva listened with interest and also some perplexity. Skipper had gone on at length last night about the Cotter brothers’ escapades, leading her to expect rowdies from the wrong side of the tracks. They were regulars in the Elkhorn county drunk tank, and had totaled enough pickups between them for a demolition derby. “They’re the kind of characters that have real skinny girl friends,” he’d summed up. “Like going to bed with a bicycle.”

  The description didn’t seem to fit. Reese appeared more talkative and at ease with her than Darla, Tony Briggs, Bernice Pangle, Gene Holland, or even Skipper himself on first meeting. Reese’s pleasant expression made it easy to say, “Would it be any problem for me to go down and look at the mine?”

  He considered her quizzically for a moment with his arms crossed. “You want to see the operation?”

  “If I’d be in the way, then never mind, but I am interested. You can’t see down in there from the road.”

  “Well, hell, if I knew anybody was interested, I’d put up a sign and sell tickets.”

  Was he suggesting that she pay to tour the mine? Before Neva could think of a response that felt right, he grinned and said, “Don’t look so serious. I’m kidding. It’s just that nobody ever asked to see the place before, or any other mine I worked on. Most people couldn’t care less about mines. In fact, most people hate us. Are you an environmentalist? You have any hidden cameras or anything?”

  Again she found it difficult to tell whether he was in earnest or teasing, and decided to risk on the side of playfulness. “Actually, I’m a Greenpeace robot and I’m filming everything through my eyeballs.”

  His grin widened though he didn’t laugh. “Well, I never saw a robot with such a good tan.” He turned and called out to a young man who squatted by the front blade of the broken-down bulldozer with a box of tools open at his side. “Ho, Roy, I’m going to show this little lady around. I got that pump replaced, so you may as well put her back together and give her a try.” And then to Neva, “I hope you don’t get heat stroke easy.
It’s a cooker down there.”

  They descended into the pit by walking down a heavily graveled road as though into a huge, dry sauna. The excavation was deeper and longer than Neva had expected, the bottom an uninviting expanse of gravel mounds. To the right of the entry road a huge, cartoon-like apparatus stood against the earth wall below the road bank. It seemed a random jumble of conveyor belts, pipes, sieving tables, and sorting troughs, topped by a truck-size drum like a cement mixer full of holes, but the complexity took on visual logic as Reese explained. The ore is scooped out of the ground by backhoe and dumped into a giant funnel called a hopper. The hopper feeds into the rotating drum, or trommel, where the rocks get sorted by tumbling out through holes of graduated sizes. The big rocks fall onto a conveyor belt that dumps them in a heap to be replaced in the ground.

  “If we don’t put it back the Feds have a shit fit,” he said cheerfully. The small rock gets sorted again and yet again, until only fine gravel and black sand remain. The sand and gravel are mixed with water that flows over a sorting table ridged to catch flakes and grains of the precious metal. They had to process tons of rock to produce ounces of gold, but still turned up enough nuggets to make it fun.

  “We like to pick out the big stuff by hand,” he concluded.

  Reese led the way up a ladder to the sorting table, which was about fifteen feet above the ground and enclosed by a protective railing. Leaning over the table, he riffled a patch of fine black sand with his fingers and exposed a yellow bit. Reaching into his back pocket, he drew out a knife, opened a blade in the shape of tweezers, and plucked the small nugget. Neva noted the gold, but she was far more interested in the tool in his hand.