The Threshold

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Oh, that’s a much better idea.” Callie skipped beside them. “Bram can carry you home.”

  Miss Heisinger fitted nicely in his arms and he drew in a breath of power. This was the first he’d seen her so dangerously discomposed and in possession of not one iota of authority. When her hat had gone askew it left her hair untidied and his carrying her that way put a shocking amount of ankle and petticoat on display. “Thank you, Bram.” Her bones relaxed against him trustingly. “But we mustn’t go this way. What will people think? If you could just help me back to my secret path.”

  “That’s right, Bram, and it would be shorter too.” Callie screwed up her forehead. “What would people think?”

  But Bram kept on course, actually felt the smile as it spread across his face. He tightened his hold. Mrs. Fisherdicks, who lived next to Aunt Lilly and Uncle Henry, stopped shaking the loose flour out of her bread cloth and stared from her doorway. She didn’t even answer Callie’s bright “hello.”

  “Brambaugh O’Connell, did you hear what I said?” Miss Heisinger whispered between her teeth. Her face had gone red and her bones stiff again. “Turn around this instant!”

  “Bram, don’t you hear her? Oh, hello, Mr. Crowe. The teacher twisted her ankle and Bram’s carrying her home.” Cyrus Crowe, the mill foreman, tipped his cap and forgot to replace it, just stood with it half on and half off and watched them pass. Bram nodded manfully.

  “Not past the boardinghouse. You must be mad.” Miss Heisinger struggled and kicked and her hat came off, causing more of her hair to come down. She was beginning to look as if a horse had run away with her.

  Callie picked up the hat and found the long hat pin that had pulled out of it. She ran ahead so she could study his face while walking backward. “Are you just being mean to her?”

  Bram would have given his soul to have never had to see that disappointed look. But he couldn’t stop now. Even with all the practice he’d had on Callie, it was difficult to tickle the teacher while carrying her. Finally one hand managed to find the spaces between her stays and he surprised a squeal and a giggle from her. Miners standing in line to get into the cookhouse turned to follow them instead. They picked up more from the boardinghouse porch.

  “Need any help there, boy? Be glad to give you a hand.”

  “What’d she do? Meet up with a bear?”

  Bram pretended not to see John O’Connell coming out of the changehouse as they turned at the commissary and he led the procession up the road toward the fancy houses on the hill.

  “He did it to be mean. She told him to not go through the camp. When we took her into Bertha’s house she even started crying.”

  “Can’t go back to school now. It’s all anybody’s talking about. Some say they even heard her laughing,” John O’Connell said cheerfully, and slapped Bram on the shoulder. “Looks like you outsmarted the teacher and Ma’am too.”

  “I can’t believe you’d be so cruel as to purposely endanger the reputation of a schoolteacher just to go back to the mine. She might never find work again.” Ma’am looked to be on the verge of tears herself. She set down her fork and left the table. Callie couldn’t eat her dinner either. She refused to speak or even look at Bram. Finally he stomped out to sit on a cold stump and brood. But not before he’d finished up two plates of chicken and dumplings.

  While she washed dishes, Luella peered out the window over the dishpan as if she could see him in the dark. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t insisted on his going to school—”

  “He knew exactly what he was doing and he wanted to do it. I saw it in his eyes. I’ll never forgive him.”

  “What can we do for that poor teacher?” She handed Callie a cup to dry. “I’m afraid Mrs. Traub is already set against her.”

  Bram turned fifteen and stopped brooding on his misdeeds. Luella and Callie soon forgave him because he was theirs. He went to work in the mine and seemed to lose his clean, sun-browned look overnight.

  Mrs. Traub delighted in nursing her captive schoolmarm. Mildred Heisinger was forced to be off a swollen ankle for two weeks and she limped for another two after she opened the school again.

  The snows came early and heavy that year. Even before Christmas the roads were impassable and the only way in or out was the tram buckets. No lady would ride on the dirty concentrates down to the Loop. And riding the empty, swaying buckets back up was too dangerous for children. Only the men could get out of Alta.

  Every day before and after work in the mine John and Bram shoveled out the path to the privy. In between shovelings, falling or drifting snow filled it up again. Callie walked in cold white tunnels with only a band of sky above. When the sky was clear it formed a blue ribbon overhead that contrasted sharply with her snow canyons and made her squint her eyes to slits. When the sky was overcast or snowing it sometimes seemed to blend with the walls of snow and put a gray ceiling on a gray prison. Where paths were not shoveled but packed hard by heavy traffic she had to walk a careful line on top of the drifts. One step off a packed trail and she’d flounder in a snow morass. Bram cut steps in the snowbank that separated them from the mill so Callie could climb up out of the house to go to school.

  Miss Heisinger had grown distant. She seemed to have lost enthusiasm for her teaching. Callie felt miserable when she remembered how much more they’d all enjoyed school before Bram had humbled the teacher. It seemed to Callie that her own happy world had been changing for the worse since she’d given Charles away to the lady in pants.

  One evening while she knitted on the neck scarf in the blue glow of the sitting room, the winter wind shrieked and howled around the house, causing the cloth lining of the room to puff in and out where it wasn’t held down by furniture or nails, and made the stovepipe rattle against the wires that fastened it to the wall. A coal fire was banked for breakfast in the cook stove in the kitchen and the little heating stove in the sitting room burned crackling aspen. It gave off so much heat Callie’s forehead felt scorched, yet shivers tingled up between her shoulder blades as winter seeped through the wall behind her. Bram and Pa lay out on the floor half-dozing. A wild pounding at the door startled them all and when Bram roused to answer it, Uncle Henry fell into his arms.

  “You didn’t ride the tram up in this storm,” John said as Bram tried to hold the man and close the door on the gale at the same time.

  Henry Ostrander was short and stocky with heavy brows and bright blue eyes. The dark brows were coated white now, and so was his mustache. His whole face looked frosted over. He stared speechlessly as John and Luella fussed about, helping to remove his snowy outer clothes. Finally Luella stepped back and said softly, “Henry? It’s Lilly, isn’t it?”

  And Uncle Henry began to sob like a woman. Callie had never seen anything like it and it was the saddest sound she’d ever heard. She moved closer to Bram. When he could control his voice, Henry asked, “Would you please send the children upstairs?”

  “Would you please send the children upstairs?” Bram mimicked. He was on his hands and knees trying to slap the snow off the coverlet on the big bed. “I’m not a child.”

  Ma’am had let them bring up a coal-oil lamp and they’d set it on the floor at the end of the beds. Callie shook the snow from her quilt and crawled under it. She could remember when she and Bram shared a bed, and nights like this they’d huddle together. Then one day Ma’am had decreed mysteriously, “Bram’s too big.” Ever since then winter nights had been cramped because Callie had to curl up so tight to keep warm. He lay out on her parents’ bed now with his hands behind his head and his feet hanging over the end.

  “Bram, Aunt Lilly’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “Either that or terrible sick, Callie girl, to cause a grown man to break down that way.”

  “But why couldn’t we hear about it?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want us to see him embarrass himself any more or he wants to spare us the sadness of the details of it.”

  “Remember how she used to laugh and tease
us before she grew all fat? And she was so pretty and always saying surprising things. I don’t want her to be dead.” They watched the shadows twitch around on the low ceiling as the drafts pried and dipped into the lamp’s glass chimney. Grains of snow sifted down like fine white flour when the wind shook the house. The salty smell of frying bacon drifted up to them as Ma’am prepared Uncle Henry a supper. “Tell me what it’s like down in the stopes again.”

  “Not tonight, Callie. I’m feeling too tired and sad for Aunt Lilly.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the cave-in the lady’s husband warned you about?”

  “If it was going to happen, it would have happened before now.”

  “You know what the Bible says, ‘As ye sow so shall ye reap’?” Charles was gone and baby Henry and now Aunt Lilly. Bram must not leave her too. “Bram, you don’t suppose you’ll reap a cave-in because of what you did to Miss Heisinger?”

  13

  “I think that big kid was Bram, don’t you? I mean, the way he looked at me when I said his name …” Cree lay spread out on the ground on his stomach, pitching rocks under Callie’s house in an attempt to dislodge Charles.

  “We’re terrifying him. But he can’t stay here. There’s no town left. No one to feed him.” Aletha had found a long stick to poke and prod with. Charles spat and hissed and backed himself into a corner where some of the flooring had caved in.

  “He’s an animal. He might make out all right.”

  “He’s a domestic animal and he’s Callie’s cat. We’re not leaving without him. Your mission can wait, McCree.” Aletha slid on her belly over the rocky, disturbed earth beneath the shack and tried not to think of what kind of creatures might have been digging here, perhaps have homes under her. She had to pull her souvenir pendant out of her sweatshirt to keep it from cutting into her. Just as she reached for a handful of cat tail, Charles broke and scooted past her face, made a wrong turn, and Cree had him by a hind leg an instant before he would have been free.

  “Poor kitty, he’s out of time and out of place,” Aletha said when she drove them down the mountain. Charles lay across Cree’s lap, hiding his face in the darkness of the crook of Cree’s elbow. When Aletha stopped before pulling out onto the highway, he raised his head and panted with terror as a dog would with the heat.

  “He’s caught in time. What if we’d been caught last night?” Cree stroked a dirty spot on Charles’s white coat. “Last night when it happened, the old times were all around us. And when it stopped we sort of fell back into our own time. This morning we merely glimpsed Callie’s world through a hole. And when it closed, old Charlie here stayed with us instead of falling back into his own time.” It sounded like he was peeling a carrot when he scratched his unshaven chin. “It must be the place. Or you and the place.”

  “And Callie.”

  “Callie wasn’t at that roadblock. We didn’t hear her when we heard the tram and those voices. It’s you. And if I hadn’t met you I’d be worrying over my own life. Not wondering if that Bram kid went into the mine.”

  “What if we changed history by warning them? Maybe Callie didn’t go to the Senate. You know, if her teacher’s still alive, she could be too.”

  She held Charles while Cree went into Rose’s Market in Telluride for cat food and kitty litter. They discovered their new Victorian friend was not housebroken shortly after they turned him loose to sniff around the condo. Cree put him in a bathroom with food, water, and the kitty box and closed the door. “Could be why Ma’am threatened to poison him.”

  “Shouldn’t we talk to him, soothe him down? This is all so strange to him.”

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do with Charlie.” He turned her away from the bathroom door. “But there is something we can do for you.”

  Cree walked Aletha out to Lone Tree Cemetery. The toe of her tennis shoe nudged the flat stone in the grass. “It might not be our Callie.” Her voice was husky with tears that weren’t in her eyes. “Could have been a very popular name years ago.”

  Cree wished he hadn’t been so abrupt, had warned her on the walk out. He turned away feeling like an ass because he didn’t know how to comfort her. Instead he poked around in the grass nearby for other buried markers and found one almost completely grown over. He pulled away grass and weeds, dug out dirt with bare fingers, wiped repeatedly at the inscription, hoped it wasn’t somebody named “Bram.” This marker was larger than Callie’s and looked as if it could once have sat upright. Some of the inscription was indecipherable but he did make out the words “Beloved Husband and Father” and “Haskell Gibson” and the birth and death years—1880 and 1900.

  He brushed off his hands and quelled an urge to look for more stones. That boy, even with his funny haircut and big ears, had struck a chord in Cree. Perhaps it was just that the kid was the healthy type, that if a man ever wanted a son … well, this Bram was the kind you’d want to show off to other men. Cree snorted self-derision and found Aletha watching him.

  “Do you know you talk to yourself? I think that’s kind of nice.”

  He knew he talked to himself, but he never realized he’d been doing it until the conversation was over. It had embarrassed him more than once. “So what did I say?”

  “I don’t know. You just move your lips. Hey, there’s nothing the matter with being human.”

  Cree kissed her to make her shut up and took her to the Floradora for lunch. A barn had been stripped of its weathered wood to line an old building on the main street. The Floradora boasted the requisite bar, stained glass, hanging plants, and prints of Telluride’s mining days, but it also had a soup-and-salad bar worth the price.

  Aletha’s honey-colored hair usually hung smooth to her shoulders and turned under at the ends, but now it was mussed by wind and tucked behind an ear on one side. Her cheeks were flushed with the outdoor activity and with sadness over Callie. Cree could well imagine her in a Caribbean tan and a nifty bikini surrounded by palm fronds and sand. He could not imagine her in a federal prison. She was too trusting.

  “Are you married?” she asked him suddenly.

  “Eat your salad.”

  “Least you could do is talk some about yourself. Especially after taking advantage of me that way last night.”

  “Advantage? I was practically attacked!”

  “Are you married?” She lifted amber-colored eyebrows that matched her eyes.

  “Was. Didn’t work out.” That wasn’t all that hadn’t worked out.

  “‘It didn’t work out’—that’s become a cliché for a sick society.” She waved her fork as if directing the sixties music playing from the speakers in the corners and originating at the local radio station.

  “You’re not only old-fashioned, you’re a prude.”

  Aletha laughed, then whispered, “I wish I’d never gotten involved with Callie. All I can think about is her. I walk around jumpy-like, not knowing where or when a hole into another world will open up.”

  “And possibly swallow you like it did Charlie. You might get stuck in Callie’s world sometime. Ever think of that?”

  “I don’t ask for these things to happen. What can I do?”

  “Get out of Telluride, maybe even out of Colorado. I’ve got a Cessna at the Montrose airport. Take you anywhere you want to go.”

  “You’re a pilot. I knew you must have done something before you were unemployed. You certainly don’t seem to lack for funds.” She contemplated a cucumber slice on the end of her fork and then pointed it at him instead of putting it in her mouth. “I’ve got to know what happened to Callie. And there’s only one person who can tell me. Mildred Heisinger.”

  “What about Mildred Heisinger?” Renata Winslow slid in beside Cree. “And where have you been? You missed a shift at the San Juan Bordello but Barry wants you at the Senate by four.” Cree chose to ignore the raised eyebrow and questioning glance she turned on Aletha and then on him.

  They stayed to have coffee while Renata picked at a lunch and regaled them with
stories of the incompetents she’d been known to hire, and then softened it all with a coating of wry sophistication that passed for charm. She was one very smooth lady but she didn’t seem like Dutch Massey’s type. Renata had moved to Aspen from the West Coast, she’d told Cree, looking for reality. She’d owned a boutique there for a few years and moved on to Telluride, he supposed because she hadn’t found reality in Aspen. He couldn’t believe she’d found it here either.

  “Cree and I have been seeing people and things happening in the past,” Aletha said. “They even gave us a cat this morning.”

  “Oh, are you into the occult?” Renata’s pause was minuscule. “They’re talking about having a workshop on that next year between the hang-gliding conference and the film festival. There’re already a few loons in town trying to drum up business.”

  “She didn’t turn a hair,” Aletha complained when they walked back to the Pick and Gad. “I don’t understand this world even when I’m not in prison.”

  Cree had been assured that locks were unnecessary in Telluride but he’d always locked up the condo. That’s why he noticed his key locked the door instead of unlocked it. He drew Aletha back and entered carefully, pushing aside the contents of the coat closet to gain entrance. Everything in the place had been tipped over, pulled apart, or dumped on the floor. He headed for the bedroom. The dresser in the corner angled out into the room, the carpet pulled back to expose the pad and the tack strip and the absence of the folder. How had they found that one section of loose carpeting in the whole place? And why today in daylight when the condo had been empty all night?

  “Charles is gone.” The fear and suspicion in Aletha’s voice had nothing to do with the cat. “I don’t know if whoever did this took him or just let him out.”