Rising Waters

by Chloe Garner

  She changed, going to lay in her bed and looking up at a full, blue moon.

  They were both of them too hard and too well-armed to make anything out of themselves, together.

  She’d known it.

  Hadn’t she?

  She’d so much as told him.

  And yet.

  And. Yet.

  He’d been in her bedroom, that night, at her daddy’s house.

  He’d proposed. On one knee.

  She wouldn’t go upstairs.

  That wasn’t what he wanted from her.

  He didn’t want her to break.

  But neither could he break, just ‘cause she pushed him ‘round like she did.

  She closed her eyes and slept.

  --------

  Dawn the next mornin’, she pushed the door to his room open. He was sitting on the bed, puttin’ on his socks.

  “I’m goin’ ‘round the homesteads, today,” she said. “Gotta see what work there is left to do, and need to find volunteers for foremen.”

  “I never did look at the bids you got,” Jimmy said. “Were they as good as you hoped?”

  “More money than one of the families’d see in a year,” she nodded. “I’ll get takers, ‘till they remember why they ain’t miners.”

  Jimmy smiled.

  “Good luck.”

  She went back downstairs and out to the barn, checking Flower’s feed and water, then whistling to Dog and tacking up Gremlin for a full day out. She tossed bits of jerky to the canine, then swung a leg up over the saddle and set out at a trot toward the nearest homestead.

  The Hunters were between the Lawson house and her pa’s house, and she’d paid their boy to watch over Dog more times ‘n she could remember, goin’ out huntin’ bandits, so she started there. Their barn was up - hadn’t been, right after the last flood - but it weren’t in the condition they needed, long term. Sarah walked ‘round the main house, then the barn with Silas Hunter, then gave him the numbers for foremen.

  “We ain’t much for diggin’,” Silas said. She nodded.

  “What we need is a man with a strong voice, a strong mind, and the knowledge to get stuff done,” she said. “Gotta watch the workers, make sure they’re outfitted right, and send the needs back up to the claim owner when things run short.”

  He looked at the piece of paper she’d handed him. It wasn’t the top bid, but it was high enough she reckoned she’d find someone to take it.

  “Could be more, could be less, dependin’,” Sarah said of it. “But it’s a goin’ price.”

  He shook his head, then scratched just under his hair line in the back.

  “I’ll talk to Calvin,” he said. “He poked around up there some, once, didn’t he?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Still got a claim to his name,” she said, and Silas nodded again.

  “It’s a lot ‘a money,” he said.

  “It is.”

  “And you’d help ‘im, if he needed it.”

  “Apex and Thor are the men for it,” Sarah said. “You catch ‘em at Grangers on supply runs, go buy ‘em a beer. They ain’t gonna see you as competitors no more. They got more absenta comin’ out of the ground than either of them could exhaust in a lifetime.”

  Silas nodded.

  “You know when they come down?”

  “Nope,” Sarah said. “But Granger will. This town’s got an interest in keepin’ the knowledge local and in gettin’ the mines started up right.”

  “You think?” Silas asked. “Looks to me like they’re gonna overrun the town as it is. Ain’t gonna be room for us, no more.”

  She shrugged.

  “If it happens, it’s gonna happen either way,” she said. “You gotta take the money where they’re offerin’ it, and Granger is gonna back y’all over anybody else, I guarantee that.”

  He nodded, and handed her the piece of paper back when she motioned for it.

  “I’ll be auctionin’ off the jobs,” she said. “First at the Lawson house to take ‘em gets the highest bid from the claimers. Fair is fair; y’all looked out for me a lotta years while they was gone, so you get the head start.”

  He snorted.

  “You want us to jump.”

  “I do,” she said. “Lotta work to be done, ‘round here, and the less time I invest in the mines - the more y’all do for me - the better for me and the better for everyone. I ain’t gonna be shy about it.”

  “Naw,” he said. “You never have been. Thanks, Sarah.”

  She nodded, going to collect Gremlin again and whistling for Dog. The animal came scrambling for her, muzzle bloody. Sarah took it in, and so did Silas.

  “We got vermin under the barn,” he said. “New dog’s no good. You thinkin’ about breedin’ that one?”

  “If he breeds, it’s on his own time,” Sarah answered, getting back up into the saddle. “Don’t waste no more time than you have to.”

  She touched her hat and set off again.

  She went to a number of homesteads, heading across the outskirts of the region of Lawrence until she ended up at the Joiner home. She knew the Joiners would be hurting as much as any of the homesteads, on account of losin’ three men not long before the last floods, and Sarah had a relationship with Nina going back a long ways.

  Nina answered Sarah’s knock at the front door herself, looking back into the house and then stepping up onto the front porch.

  “Sarah,” the woman said.

  “Nina.”

  “Weren’t sure you were comin’ back.”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  “You thought I was gonna run away with Jimmy Lawson?”

  Nina shrugged.

  “Wouldn’t be no one who blamed you.”

  Sarah snorted.

  “Everyone would blame me,” Sarah said. “You always blame the person you need for not turnin’ up when you’re countin’ on ‘em.”

  Nina nodded, adjusting her hat and going to lean against the porch railing.

  “Well, you came to us,” she said. “Speak your piece.”

  “Here to hear what you need,” Sarah said. “You had one of the newest barns. How’s it lookin’ like it held up?”

  Nina snorted.

  “Avoidin’ talkin’ about the house,” Nina said. Sarah shrugged.

  “Starin’ at a place. You wanna talk about the house, tell me what you need.”

  “Props are goin’,” Nina said. “Ain’t got the men to put ‘em right.” She squinted at Sarah. “Heard you were givin’ up your pa’s place.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Weren’t no savin’ it after the last flood,” she said.

  “Well, we ain’t gonna let the sand have it,” Nina said. “Been four generations of Joiners in this house, and we’re gonna keep it.”

  “Didn’t say weren’t right,” Sarah said. “Asked you what you need.”

  “What were you and Jimmy doin’, while you were gone?” Nina asked.

  “What business is that of yours, Nina Joiner?” Sarah answered.

  “We know you’re more interested in keepin’ the claim owners happy,” Nina said. “It’s where the money is.”

  “It’s where the future is,” Sarah said. “And anyone sayin’ otherwise is a fool.”

  “What does that mean for us?” Nina asked.

  “Why does it have to mean anything for you?” Sarah asked. “Ain’t nobody walkin’ up and threatenin’ to take your land from you by force. They ain’t shuttin’ down Granger, and the train ain’t ever been nothin’ but good for all of us.”

  “Jimmy bought up part of the Kirk farm,” Nina said.

  “Kirks have had more land than the men to work it for six years,” Sarah said. “He offered ‘em a price, and they took it. Ain’t none of your business, either.”

  “When the town cares more for diggin’ than growin’, we know where your priorities are gonna be.”

  “I’m here, Nina,” Sarah said. “Don’t gotta be, but I am.”

  “
I don’t rightly agree,” Nina said. “You need to know that we’ve got your back when things go bad, with or without the Lawsons. Way we see it, the crowd millin’ around town these days ain’t got much hope for anything but mayhem, and you’re gonna need guns same as you always have.”

  Sarah thought of the great big shipment of guns heading this way in the near future, but she didn’t mention it.

  “Nina, I always been the type to express gratitude where it’s due, and you been a real ally to me for a long time. I ain’t walkin’ away from that no sooner than you do. But mark it now, Lawrence ain’t stayin’ the way it’s been. Y’all can do whatever suits you best, but it ain’t stayin’ like it was, and there ain’t no changin’ that. The young men need a lot of watchin’ over, just now, but we need ‘em as bad as they need us.”

  “You been by to see the monstrosity Willie and Paulie put up?” Nina asked. Sarah sighed.

  “Ain’t got to it yet,” Sarah said. “How bad?”

  Nina shook her head.

  “Ain’t gonna hold up to more’n a flood or two, and they’s chargin’ more rent than anybody can right afford.”

  Sarah closed her eyes.

  “I ain’t gonna let ‘em get away with it.”

  “Can’t shut down the tavern again,” Nina said. “Nobody’ll stand for it that long, again.”

  “Don’t rightly care what they’ll stand for,” Sarah said. “Tavern causes most ‘a my problems, and I ain’t feedin’ those boys while they spend what bit ‘o shine comes to their pockets on booze.”

  Nina pursed her lips.

  “I see where you’re comin’ from, and I do ‘preciate you keepin’ them from droppin’ in the street. We both know what happens to a group of men what can’t feed themselves no more.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “You gonna tell me what you need, ‘cept the house foundations, or you gonna keep tellin’ me what you think I ought be doin’?”

  “Barn needs seein’ to,” Nina said. “Back wall of the house is shifted and needs to be shored up. And the boys you stashed here last flood left a mess we ain’t put right yet.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “I can work ‘round that. You got any men you’d be willin’ to send up into the mountains to run a claim for a spell, for the right money?”

  Nina sniffed.

  “Ain’t got men for nothin’ but farmin’, round here,” she said. “Bumper crop ‘a calves, this year, looks like.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Glad to hear it. I’m tellin’ everyone the same. Claim owners ain’t got the sense of a storm-shocked varmint, and they can’t figure out how to run a mine. I told ‘em I’d go round the homesteads and see if there weren’t some what might be interested. They’re offerin’ good money for it, but I won’t twist your arm. You ain’t interested, you ain’t interested.”

  Nina shook her head.

  “Look, Sarah. I know you’re doin’ your best to do right by us, ‘spite what Jimmy Lawson’s after, comin’ back round. Truth is truth. We ain’t got the hands we need to pull the gremlin outta the ground every season. Maybe after the next harvest we could look at it, but we can’t take on work right now at any price.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Can’t promise it’ll be around when you come to it,” Sarah said, and Nina nodded.

  “I can accept it.”

  Sarah touched her hat and whistled for Dog, starting off once more.

  --------

  The housing that Willie and Paulie had put up for the young men wasn’t far away from the shantytown at the head of Main Street where they’d all settled, and the outside didn’t look half bad. Sarah wondered if Little Peter had so much as gone in the front door.

  Which, it turned out, was locked.

  Sarah snagged the collar of a young man as he went by.

  “You know anybody what lives in here?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “It’s too expensive.”

  She nodded.

  “Anybody even been in?”

  “Dunno.”

  She twisted her mouth to the side and the man continued on his way. She wondered what it was he had to do.

  “I got a key,” Jimmy said. She turned, finding him tying off a horse and walking toward her. “Doesn’t seem to have changed things here at all.”

  “Nina says can’t nobody afford what they’re askin’.”

  Jimmy smiled.

  “They will, once the mines start,” he said. “We just have to get them bringing down absenta, and everything down here works itself out.”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t like Willie and Paulie actin’ like this is what I told ‘em to do,” Sarah said as Jimmy unlocked the front door and let her in.

  The hallway was barely two men wide and dark. There was a window at the far end that let in daylight, but come dusk, it was going to be completely impossible to see anything at all. Sarah walked the length of the hall, going up a one-man wide stairway and turning into complete darkness to go up to the second story.

  “They haven’t got power,” Jimmy observed from behind her. “Maybe they’re saving on fuel while nobody’s living here.”

  “No wall fixtures, Jimmy,” Sarah growled. “They put together a buildin’ what would get past Peter and failed entirely to finish the place.”

  “Can’t argue that,” Jimmy said. There was a sound behind her as one of the doors opened, and she turned back, going to stand next to Jimmy to look in at an unfurnished ten-foot-by-ten-foot cell with a small glass window. She went and knocked on the glass and shook her head.

  “First real sandstorm we get, that’s gonna break,” Sarah said. Jimmy tapped the wall.

  “Construction here is a little better,” he said. “Big sandstorm… don’t know.”

  She nodded.

  “This ain’t what I meant when I told ‘em to build somethin’ up. I’m shuttin’ the tavern down again.”

  “Sarah, you can’t house everyone by force of will.”

  “Damned if I can’t,” Sarah said.

  “They need work. How did your survey for foremen go?”

  She nodded at the darkness, putting her hat back on and starting for the front door again.

  “Told everyone to meet me back at the house,” she said. “First one there gets top bid.”

  Jimmy whistled, low.

  “You do play rough.”

  She tromped down the stairs and back out into the sunshine.

  “I talked to Petey,” Jimmy said. “He said there’s a couple of claims that brought in pro prospectors while we were gone. You should probably check in on them soon enough.”

  “You ain’t comin’?” Sarah asked. “Your territory.”

  “I’ll go when you do,” he said. “I’m just reminding you that the fifteen families you care about aren’t the only things you need to be involved with.”

  “Gettin’ tired of both sides thinkin’ I’m neglectin’ ‘em,” she said. “Ain’t my job to see to it that your sheets are smooth.”

  “You telling me to go my own damned self?” he asked, his eyebrows up.

  “No, I wanna see what they got up to,” Sarah said. “Lotta those claims, you could dig the wrong way a decade and not find an ounce of nothin’. Need to set ‘em in the right direction.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “I figured. Just reminding you.”

  “Don’t need your remindin’,” she said, looking around the red-hued camp. It hadn’t survived the sandstorm, but the pieces they’d recovered had all been sanded and dusted and there wasn’t anyone or anything to clean them off. The men themselves were all various shades of red.

  “I’m going to keep making things worse for a while yet,” Jimmy said. She opened her mouth to say something to that, but Jimmy put two fingers into his mouth and whistled, running to a likely-looking building and hopping up on top of it to stand where the men could all see him.

  There was a silence as the black-colored spot in their red exist
ence caught there attention, and then the men congregated as they recognized who he was in larger numbers.

  “All right,” Jimmy yelled. “You guys want work. You want shelter. You want food and you want drink and you want a better life. We all know that’s why you came out here, and we all know that you aren’t finding it, the way you’d hoped. I’m not going to tell you that it’s coming, but I will tell you what you have to do to get closer.

  “I’m going to tell the claim owners, as they start hiring men to work up at the mining sites, that I want them to give preference to men who are registered residents of Lawrence. You do that by having a fixed place to live, and, no,” he said, scuffing his toe on the wood underneath him, “this does not count. We’ll be investigating this,” he indicated the building Willie and Paulie had put up, “and it may both improve in quality and go down in price, but you should be looking for other building owners who will give you lodging. You should not expect that lodging to be free. If you want to stay here, you need to be quick, you need to be clever, and you need to make it work for yourself. Sarah’s doing everything she can to keep you boys alive, but getting you settled in and building a life for yourselves is going to be your problem. Figure it out.”

  “Why do we need a place to live if we’re just going to be up at the mines?” someone called.

  It was a fair point, in Sarah’s estimate.

  “Because I want to see that you can actually make an effort for yourselves, and I’m only going to help the ones who can. This isn’t a candy shop. Luck, effort, wealth, whatever, the ones who get themselves to the top of the heap are going to be the ones who make it, here.”

  Jimmy looked out over the men’s faces as they looked up at him, all hope and despair, nothing and potential.

  Jimmy was an inspiring figure.

  Some of them would do it just because he told them to try.

  Jimmy hopped down and looked at Sarah, the devil in him daring her to argue with him, tell him that he was wrong, but then he was past and gone, untying his horse, mounting up, and starting off for whatever project was up next.

  She needed supplies from Granger’s, if she was gonna go up and do a tour of the occupied claims.

  She whistled, and Dog materialized from the crowd of men, scrabbling to the side as they walked around him without care for their feet. He nipped at someone and Sarah smiled, looking for Gremlin. The horse was off to the side, listening to something only he could hear, off on the unoccupied plain outside of Lawrence.