Gold Dust

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Ned straightened. “Sure. We all do. Curtis lives in Powderly. He’s sprayed my crops for years. He got it too?”

  “I believe so. He came in with a urinary tract infection. I ought not be telling y’all his business, but I guess it doesn’t make any difference now. Curtis had some minor surgery down in his privates a while back. I’d released him to fly again, but then he got to feeling worse and worse with an infection in his kidneys. He was bad enough I put him in the hospital a couple of days ago and, despite everything we could do, the infection dug in down there and went to his heart and he passed away yesterday.”

  The news hit Ned hard. He pitched his hat onto an empty chair and rubbed his head. “Curtis was a young man!”

  “He was too young to die, and that’s a fact. I only for sure found out what it was after he’d passed, and that’s why I’ve loaded Top up on antibiotics, so it won’t do the same thing to him.”

  “He most likely caught it here, right?” Tom Bell looked surprised that he’d said anything. He cleared his throat. “I’ve had some experience with hospitals and secondary infections.”

  “No, Mr. Bell. We’ve never had a case of it before. The worse we’ve ever had is staph, and damn near every hospital I’ve ever been around has that. He picked it up somewhere, though. Have y’all heard of anybody else in Center Springs with these symptoms? Coughing, secondary infections from other illnesses? How about folks with lung problems, smokers?”

  “Nobody that I know about.” Ned worried at his bald scalp. “But folks don’t usually come around when they’re sick.”

  Miss Becky’s cracked thumbs rubbed the leather cover on her Bible. “How long will it take for that medicine to start working?”

  “That depends on Top. Besides his lungs and the asthma, he’s healthy, so we should start seeing some improvement tomorrow at the earliest, the day after, for sure. Mark here’ll be better tomorrow when the antibiotics kick in, and for her, it’s preventative.”

  A young nun with smiling eyes appeared at Dr. Heinz’s elbow. “Doctor, the Parker boy is back in his room.”

  “Fine. Y’all can go in there with him, but leave the kids out here.”

  Miss Becky followed the nun to Top’s room while the rest of the Parkers and Tom Bell waited where they were.

  Ned paused in the hallway. An enormous dread weighed on him. He walked to the window in the silent room and stared down at the dark parking lot, feeling he was falling down a deep well with no way out. His throat was tight and a swelling pain ballooned in his chest.

  Overcome with emotion, the muscles in his arms and legs twitched. He slipped his hands in his pockets to keep them from shaking and blinked away a rising flood of tears.

  I’ve done a lot of things in my life. If something happens and that boy was to need help from this damned Gift I have, I can’t do it. I won’t hold that boy in my arms as he dies, no matter if Becky believes he’s going somewhere better or not.

  Losing him’s one thing. Helping’s another.

  There was a thickness in his throat and that balloon in his chest swelled even larger. Weak with fear, he stepped inside and dropped heavily onto a vinyl chair to gather himself.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I wasn’t feelin’ much punkin when they brought me back into the hospital room after the X-rays. Miss Becky, Aunt Ida Belle, and Aunt Norma Faye popped through the door not five minutes after the nuns got me off the gurney and into the bed.

  They were wearing masks over their mouths and noses, and that scared the pee-waddlin’ out of me. If they were afraid they’d catch what I had, then I was in trouble. The room was small and full of people, crowding in around my bed and the hospital table. Besides that, there was nothing in there but a thin cabinet that reminded me of a chifforobe, a built-in sink, and one uncomfortable-looking chair.

  “Can you get me another pillow? I can breathe easier if I’m propped up.”

  A young nun with kind eyes who didn’t look much older than me grinned over the mask and came back with two pillows. She and Miss Becky propped me up while Grandpa came in and sat on a chair in the corner and studied his hands. That’s how he always thought when he was worried. Some folks might have got the idea he was just sitting there and doing nothing, but I knew he was working something over in his mind.

  The nurses left and he looked up. “The doctor asked if any of the kids at school have this.”

  “Nossir.” I chuffed deep in my chest, trying to keep from coughing.

  “You been around Curtis Gaines lately?”

  “Nossir. He said he’d take me up sometime, but I haven’t seen him on the ground in a month or so.” I coughed again and gagged on the lump that caught in my goozle.

  Miss Becky pulled me forward by a shoulder and beat on my back. I’m not sure it helped any, but it made her feel better. “He must have took sick after he flew over the other day.”

  Grandpa looked up when I said that. “You saw him?”

  “He went over the house last Saturday while we were camping out. He was flying low.” My chest rattled deep inside, crackling like newspaper. “He usually comes over the house and wags his wings. He likes me, because he said he had asthma when he was a kid and knows how it feels when you can’t breathe.”

  Miss Becky picked up her Bible and ran her hands over the leather. “I wish we’d-a known it was more’n just the croup. I’d-a got you in to see the doctor right quick, if I’d known that.”

  A tickle built in my chest and swelled. The back of my throat picked it up and almost itched. “Miss Becky, you don’t think that stuff he was spraying made me sick, do you?”

  Grandpa took his glasses off. “What stuff?”

  I could tell Miss Becky didn’t know what I was talking about. “We were standing by the gate when he went over and water was coming out of his sprayer.”

  “He didn’t spray y’all with no cotton poison, did he?”

  I knew what that stuff smelled like. I choked down a cough. “Nossir. It was just water, and there wasn’t much of it.”

  Grandpa’s face tightened. “It wasn’t water. A man don’t waste gas spraying water.”

  I started to answer, but that itch in my lungs and throat that’d been building broke loose and I got to coughing so hard I thought my insides were going to tear loose. The nurse came in and checked on me, then she went out when I settled down.

  Grandpa left with a look in his eye, and I dozed for a while, but when I woke up, ever’body was gone except for Miss Becky. I was still hacking up green stuff, but it was turning red. I tried to tell her, but the next thing I knew I couldn’t draw any air.

  Miss Becky hollered for help. Doctors and nurses filled the room as my head spun and I struggled to get a breath. It had been too long and I was suffocating. Panic took over and lights sparkled behind my eyes.

  The Poisoned Gift exploded in my head.

  Dark people in suits were surrounded by white marble, and buildings with columns like those Roman ruins we’d been studying, only it was all fresh and white. Other people walking around them were coughing out great clouds of red vapor and Grandpa and Mr. Tom were running in slow motion towards them. The dark people hid behind the columns and I tried to warn Grandpa, but he couldn’t hear me.

  A giant hand yanked me into a cold operating room. Everything was white, the floors, walls, and equipment. A big gray rat popped out of nowhere, running along the baseboards, following a dusting of fine gold powder that trailed toward a white door.

  I sat up on the operating table. “You need to get out of here, Mister Gray Rat. It’s too clean in here for you to be running around, dropping turds on all that pretty gold dust.”

  It turned its head toward the sound of my voice and grinned at me with them nasty rat teeth, then scurried along the edge of the room to the door that swung open to the outside. The rat ran through and stood on its hind legs and
waded into a clear-water creek and ran up a hill.

  Golden dust filled the air and my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. I heard people hollering and praying before everything went dark.

  Chapter Thirty

  Deputy Anna Sloan, dressed in jeans and a western shirt, sat in one of the tiered wooden chairs surrounding the show ring at the Round Rock sale barn. Saturdays were always busy for cattle buyers and the auction was running on all eight cylinders. Her boots rested on the back of the empty chair in front and she leaned back in a comfortable slouch.

  The odor of cowshit mixed with dirt and perspiration filled the noisy interior of the metal building that echoed with the bawling of cattle and hum of male customers. Twenty rows of creaky tiered seats, most of them filled, rose in a semicircle around a system of gates and steel corrals that funneled livestock into the center ring, and out again. The auctioneer on the raised podium at the opposite side of the ring rattled away with his machine-gun sales pitch.

  “This one taken?”

  She glanced up to see Stan Ewing standing behind the empty seat beside her. A small piece of toilet paper was stuck to his chin where he’d cut himself shaving. “It is now.”

  Stan stepped over and down, his long legs making the task look easy. Sand crunched under his boots as he folded himself the chair next to her. “I had fun last night.”

  “Me too.”

  “Didn’t think you’d really be here.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I told you I was looking to buy some cattle.”

  “Well, pretty gals in honky-tonks on Friday nights sometimes don’t tell the whole truth.”

  “Like what I’m doing there?”

  “Yep, and if you’re really single.”

  She held up her left hand. “No ring. Not even a tan line.”

  He mimicked her action. “Me neither. So we’re honest with one another.”

  Anna’s chest sank dark and empty at the comment. “Looks that way.”

  Snapping short whips, the “ring men” opened the gate into the sale ring and pushed a herd of numbered and tagged heifers through the chute. The auctioneer called the price based on the animal’s type, age, and weight in his rapid-fire cadence as they circled the ring.

  Anna watched the cattlemen bid in ways others couldn’t see. “You know the brand inspector back there?”

  Stan tilted his head back and glanced toward the pens out back. “Known him for years, why?”

  “I’m not from around here and want to be sure I’m not buying stole cattle.”

  He grinned. “He’s a state inspector.”

  “I know it, but anyone can be bought.”

  “He’s as honest as the day is long.”

  “And you know that for a fact.”

  “Sure do, as much of a fact as we had fun last night.”

  Anna fell silent, watching the stock move through the ring.

  “Your daddy sure must trust you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “To send you down here with a wad of cash to buy cattle.”

  Her face reddened. She was playing a part, but it always got her goat when men looked down on a woman. “You don’t think I know enough to do this by myself?”

  Stan held up a hand. “Easy, gal, I was just staying that you don’t see many women in a sale barn. Look around you. You’re the only single girl in the place.”

  “I’ve done this before.”

  Stan crossed an ankle over the opposite knee. “You’re not bidding.”

  “I don’t see anything I want.”

  “So what is it you’re after?”

  “Cheaper stock than this. The prices are higher here than back home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Chisum.” She wanted to kick herself for spouting out where she was really from.

  “Never been there.”

  “You haven’t missed much.”

  He laughed. “Why’re you here, then?”

  “Daddy sends me out for good stock to replace what he’s sold. That’s all.”

  “Cow-calf operation?”

  “Yep. He never did like stockers.”

  “So the market value’s higher than back home? What is it there?”

  She was getting into dangerous waters. She’d read half a dozen stock magazines at the Chisum Library before leaving, but knew that his experience would quickly reveal that she was a fraud. “You know any local folks that might sell?”

  “Naw. Most of ’em bring their cattle and horses here.”

  “How about someone who’s getting out of the business, or in trouble?”

  Stan cut his eyes at her. “So that’s how you and your daddy do business?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You take advantage of them who’re in trouble. They sell cheap to cut out the middleman and take what they can get. Cash on the barrelhead.”

  Though her cover story was a complete lie, she didn’t like the way she sounded in his estimation. “It’s not like that at all.”

  “Yes it is. I know people who’ve had to sell out before. What y’all do ain’t crooked, but it’s not right either.”

  Anna watched the ring clear again. “That doesn’t make us bad people.”

  Stan straightened. “I’m hungry. Didn’t eat breakfast. Let’s you and me go to the café. I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “It’s not a date.”

  “No, but I want to eat. There might be a fellow or two in there you can talk to.”

  Knowing that as much business was conducted around the tables of a sale barn restaurant as was in the ring, she stood. “Lead the way, cowboy.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Seven days after Mr. Brown hired Curtis Gaines to spray Gold Dust on Center Springs, he paced his nicotine-permeated motel room in Austin. He’d done a lot of things in the past that he wasn’t proud of, but this mission was weighing on his mind.

  The depressing room in the St. Elmo Motel advertised “Color TV by RCA, for only $12 per night.” Instead of watching, he sat at the small round table beside the window, peeking through a narrow crack in the thick gray curtains. One of the two double beds was still made. The other contained a valise. Inside, a snub-nosed .38 in a shoulder holster rested on packets of money. Half was his part of the split from the skimmed cash. The other was Mr. Green’s.

  Outside, a boy and girl played on a swing set without enthusiasm. Surrounded by the horseshoe-shaped motel, the grassy area was an oasis in the middle of pavement and parked cars.

  His co-worker, Mr. Green was gone and there wouldn’t be a funeral. It went against his small-town raising, where people took care of each other and paid their respects when a friend or relative passed on.

  He’d lost a lot through the years with the Company. Sneaking around and lying had become second nature, making him a ghost to most people, but the wall of indifference he’d built over time crumbled a little more with every new falsehood.

  Operating in Texas was just wrong, and he knew it from the outset. Some things you didn’t do, and as his grandfather used to say, you don’t shit in your own nest. The whole thing had a sour taste from the moment he was briefed, and he wished he’d done more to get out of the entire operation.

  The jangling phone startled him. Heart racing, he answered. “Hello.”

  It was Mr. Gray. “We need to talk. Find a phone booth and call within the next ten minutes.”

  Mr. Brown hung up and slipped into the shoulder holster, covering the thirty-eight with his suit coat. Five minutes later, he dialed Mr. Gray from inside a glass phone booth outside of a Woolworth’s. “I’m secure.”

  “The team that is collecting the Gold Dust data there in Texas notified me of more issues with the material.”

  “And they are?”

  “Your pilot died. In addition, an elderl
y man is also dead, and a kid with a strange first name is in...” Papers rustled in the receiver. “…St. Joseph Hospital in Chisum. Top Parker.”

  Mr. Brown’s stomach sank. “This doesn’t look good. How did they get this information?”

  Mr. Gray was silent on the other end and Mr. Brown could have kicked himself for the sophomoric question. He’d been in the business long enough to know Mr. Gray wouldn’t release those details. “All right. Orders?”

  “Come in. We need to determine where the failure occurred.”

  “It sounds to me like it was on the eggheads’ end. We did everything right.”

  “My office. Tomorrow at the latest.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mr. Brown hung up the phone and walked back to the silent motel room, smoking and thinking. Half a pack later, he came to a decision.

  He was heading back to Chisum.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The Parker family gathered in the hospital’s stark waiting area to gather strength from one another until the attendants brought Top back to his room on Saturday morning. A bad copy of Madonna and Child hung on one wall above uncomfortable vinyl chairs and bench seats. Reproduction prints of the Seven Patron Saints for Healing and Comfort graced the remaining walls.

  Dr. Heinz joined them, looking as if he hadn’t slept in days. “It was a long night, but even though we got him back, he’s in bad shape, Ned.”

  “Well, get back in there.”

  “We’ve done all we can do. Like I told you before, the infection was spreading and I think we caught it in time. If we hadn’t, we might have lost Top already. It’s touch and go from here on out. We just need to wait and let his body do the rest.”

  Miss Becky laid both hands on her Bible. “And pray.”

  Heinz nodded. “That’ll help.”

  “I shouldn’t oughta tell you,” Heinz fiddled with the stethoscope around his neck, thinking, “but there’s one more dead with this stuff.”