by Chloe Garner
“Damn,” Wade said.
Jimmy laughed.
“I’ll put it on the list.”
“Jimmy, that’s a good idea,” Rhoda said. “If they didn’t know which way we were going…”
“He meant it,” Sarah said quietly, giving Rhoda a very small nod, and Rhoda shut her mouth.
“How were the other mines?” Rich asked after a short silence.
“And when are the others going to start up?” Wade added.
“Sarah is arranging local men to act as overseers for a time,” Jimmy said. “So we’ll have people up there who know us.”
“Less chance we get shot for doing our jobs,” Peter said, and Jimmy nodded.
“I told the man who was here representing Kayla’s uncle that my men would either be Lawsons or they would carry a mark that was secret between myself and the overseers. Whenever a new man shows up at town intending to go up into the mountains, I need all of us to know him on sight. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to deal with claim jumpers when everything gets going.”
“You need to open the tavern again,” Lise said. “It makes us look bad if we don’t agree on things.”
“You ain’t ate your dinner,” Sarah said.
“I ain’t so happy about Jimmy second-guessing me, either,” Little Peter said.
“Weren’t him that done it,” Sarah said. “That building is nowhere near livable, and that you thought it was…” Sarah paused. “Ought make you two live there and see just how livable you think it is.”
“You asked for a lodging, and it exists,” Peter said. “You can’t keep telling them that what they done ain’t good enough, just ‘cause you don’t like ‘em.”
Sarah felt her head turn all on its own to stare at him.
“Is this ‘cause you miss gettin’ drunk enough in a crowd that you end up killin’ a man for sayin’ nasty things to you, or is this ‘cause you’re identifyin’ more with Willie and Paulie than Jimmy and me?”
“You’re the one pickin’ sides against business owners and sidin’ with a bunch of men who ain’t got nothin’,” Little Peter said.
“That what Paulie told you to say?” Sarah asked. “Or is it Jezzie you’re listenin’ to?”
The table went silent.
Suspiciously silent.
She didn’t blink, but she took note.
“You’re on the wrong side, Sarah,” Peter finally said.
“You know that the two of them are the reason your ma died when we was little,” Sarah said. “You know that.”
“Is that what this is about?” Lise asked. Sarah ignored her.
“She shouldn’t’a been there that night,” Peter said. “And she shouldn’t’a done what she done.”
“Enough,” Jimmy said. “The tavern is closed and will remain closed until Sarah says. The concerns of the existing town are hers, and I won’t undermine her. I will come up with a new solution to get absenta to Preston, one that does not involve me going personally. And you will all take responsibility for building on a plot of ground to be identified by me, or you will accept whatever housing I provide for you as your permanent new home. Is that everything?”
“How are we doing for money?” Thomas asked.
“I split the family money evenly among all of us,” Jimmy said. “Your finances are your concern.”
“I mean you,” Thomas said. “How are you doing for money? You take on so much of the responsibility.”
“Buildin’ a rail up to Magnum is gonna be expensive,” Rhoda said. “I think that the brothers should split the cost.”
Sarah couldn’t see how laying a pair of rails across open desert was going to be that dear, but she kept this to herself.
“I won’t come to you and ask for money,” Jimmy said. “Should you choose to contribute to the cost of supporting the family’s projects, that’s your decision.”
Rhoda nodded, and Sarah wondered how many of the brothers would volunteer to part with that kind of money. She genuinely didn’t know.
“Beer,” Sarah said, standing. “Business is done for tonight. Beer in the front room, and then everyone gets out.”
Rhoda chuckled, standing, and Sarah found Kayla standing next to her.
“This was fun,” the woman said. “I’ve got all kinds of ideas for new Lawrence fashion. I hadn’t ever thought about it, before, trying to make something that’s like what everyone already wears, but that’s my design.”
Sarah chuckled, then Kayla turned her face toward Sarah, changed.
“How did Hansen do?” she asked.
“You know him?” Sarah asked. “He didn’t let on.”
Kayla shrugged.
“I knew Uncle William would send him. He talked about him a lot. Talked about the life he didn’t choose.”
Sarah looked at the woman for several seconds, then started for the front room.
“Do you want me to answer that truthfully, or tell you something vague and positive to make you feel better?”
Kayla paused, taking Sarah’s elbows in her hands as the room emptied around them.
“I want the truth, Sarah.”
Sarah nodded.
“I’m only gonna tell you on account of him being kin, and I’m leavin’ it up to you who you tell, but I’d keep it to yourself if you care about your uncle at all. It looks like Hansen hit some absenta in one of his test digs.”
Kayla nodded, serious.
“He put money on the line because of me,” she said. “It’s important to me that it pays off.”
Sarah nodded.
“Not every mine is going to pay off,” she said. “That’s the nature of minin’. But there’s a better-than-average chance he makes money on this.”
Kayla gave her a quick little smile and turned, her hair floating out behind her as she skipped into the front room, sitting down on a couch next to Wade, who already had a beer.
Sarah took the opposite side of the doorway from Jimmy, letting Rhoda hand her a beer, but not actually opening it or drinking it. It was fine enough, when there weren’t no clean water to be had, but other than that, she preferred her tea, and after a few minutes, Jimmy eased off of his door post and passed her to sit on the couch next to Rich, switching the empty bottle in his hands out deftly for the full one Sarah still held.
“Need you up at the mine,” Jimmy said to Rich.
“Sure,” Rich answered, and Jimmy nodded, looking around the room. There were a few quiet conversations to this side or that, but mostly the Lawsons really did just drink their beers and leave. Jimmy and Sarah went to stand on the porch, watching as the family loaded up and started back down the hill.
“Well, that was instructive,” Jimmy said, sipping Sarah’s beer and leaning against the wall.
“How is that?” Sarah asked, reaching back inside for her rifle and going to sit on her rocking chair. He smiled.
“I didn’t know how you would do it, but that was it.”
She looked back at him, and he took another sip of beer.
“The new Elaine Lawson,” he said. “She just showed up.”
Sarah shook her head.
“You’re so damned set on keeping your thoughts to yourself, expectin’ unquestioning obedience,” she said. “Rhoda ain’t that kind, and it’s lookin’ like Thomas ain’t so much, neither.”
“My brothers,” he said, pointing. “They’re always going to do what I say. Even Thomas. Even when he doesn’t like it. But the wives.” He shook his head, going and taking his seat, rocking for a moment as he watched the dark shadows disappear into the night. “The wives, I hold less power with. Somehow by marrying a Lawson, they become more powerful than a Lawson.”
“If you’re hopin’ I’m gonna rope them into goin’ along…” Sarah warned.
“No,” he said. “But you give me the freedom to do what I’ve always done, without trying something new, trying to be something else. You can be something else, act a different way, and you keep me from having to compromise to pleas
e them.”
Sarah blinked.
“Hadn’t looked at it like that.”
The door behind them opened, and the cook came out with a tray.
“I thought you might like another cup of tea,” the woman said. “I’m going to bed, now.”
“You did very well tonight, Tania,” Jimmy said. She put her hand on his shoulder, then nodded to Sarah and left.
“You know her,” Sarah said, turning to look at him.
“Of course I do,” he said. “How on earth do you think I would trust someone to make my food sight-unseen if I didn’t know her?”
“You know the rest of the staff?”
He looked at her with even, steady eyes.
“Most of them,” he said. “And they know me.” He sipped his beer, looking out at the night. “Perhaps better than my own family.”
Sarah shook her head, pouring tea and settling into her chair again.
“I made you send them all away.”
He laughed quietly.
“They’re working for Lise and Kayla now.”
“And Rhoda and Sunny,” Sarah said.
“No,” Jimmy said. “Rhoda is like you. So much, she’s like you. And Sunny won’t let anyone else touch her things. She couldn’t stand living with us.”
“None of them could,” Sarah said. “’Cept Lise. And she had her own agenda on that.”
“That she did,” Jimmy murmured.
“Peter likes whores?” Sarah asked. Jimmy glanced at her without moving his head.
“Always has.”
“Always…”
“You wouldn’t have seen it, before. You changed.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Jezzie?”
“Who else?”
“You slept with the same whore as your brother,” Sarah said. “Just when I thought we’d hit the end of the reasons you disgust me.”
He stared at the horizon, now obscured, only the stars showing the difference between land and sky. There was no moon tonight.
“Going to be a hard ride back in,” he said. “I’ll be glad when they don’t have to do it again.”
Sarah poured the last of the tea into her cup and stood.
“Good night, Jimmy.”
He looked at her as she went by.
“Nowhere to hide, now, Sarah. Just you and me.”
“That supposed to be a threat?” she asked.
“No,” he answered, turning his face away again. She looked down at him for another moment, then went in without him.
He slept somewhere else.
--------
At breakfast, he wasn’t at the table. Sarah took her tea as was her habit, then went looking for him.
She found him in the office, sitting behind Peter’s ridiculous desk, a mostly-eaten plate of food next to his elbow as he wrote. Papers were scattered across the surface of the usually-clear desk.
“I trust you slept well,” he said without looking up.
“Was expectin’ you at breakfast,” she said. He glanced at her.
“You know we’re both very busy. I figured,” he said, looking back down, “why waste the morning if there wasn’t any reason to be there.”
“I see,” she said. He looked up again.
“Did you want something?”
She stood, angry and undirected, for several seconds as he looked at her with his eyebrows up.
“It ain’t over ‘till you say it is,” she said.
“I thought,” he said as she turned away. She turned back around, finding he was looking at his papers again. “I thought you would put a day to good use getting work done at the homesteads.”
“Day ain’t gonna cut it,” Sarah said.
“And if I gave you use of a crane and any other heavy equipment you might need?”
“The reservoir’s done?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Clarence insists that it’s falling hopelessly behind schedule. I’m meeting with him today to figure out what he needs to meet my timeline.”
She should have been there.
It was her right. It was a big change to the fabric of Lawrence, and she had contractual say in how those went.
On the other hand, Clarence had a big, open, happy face that reminded her painfully of Pete, and she didn’t like to be in a room with him if she could help it.
And Jimmy knew it, because she’d told him herself.
“Ain’t what I meant when I told you to find work for him,” Sarah said.
“Isn’t my fault that he’s the best resource in the entire town for getting complex projects done,” Jimmy said. “Do you want the crane or not?”
He sounded tired. Put upon. It was an act, designed to get under her skin, to make her act rashly. It was working. She could feel the brewing storm in her gut, the desire to tell him what was what.
“That’ll do fine,” she said, turning.
“Sarah,” he said. She simply stopped walking. She heard the pause as he waited for her to turn around, but she wasn’t going to do that. “This is me investing in the town. I need you to make this pay dividends. We don’t have many days.”
“Never do,” she said dryly, leaving.
She went out to get Gremlin, but switched to Flower, figuring he could use the day out in the heat and the sun and the sand, experiencing the real life that was Lawrence. She whistled for Dog, who came out of nowhere, his entire back end wagging at her, and she fed him, rubbing his muzzle with her fingers, then she loaded up her rifle and mounted, heading for the road. Clarence was getting down from a buckboard in the yard, and Sarah realized she had no idea where to find the machinery.
“Sarah,” Clarence called happily. “I’ve been so busy. Haven’t seen you around much.”
“Heard you been doin’ good work for Jimmy,” she said. He shrugged.
“Can’t seem to keep up with his deadlines. Working everyone around the clock. You know he brought in overhead lights with generators to power them, to keep us working overnight?”
“Sounds like him,” Sarah said. “He said the crane’s got the day off.”
“Yeah, I sent it to the Joiners’,” Clarence said. “Along with a dozer and an excavator. The operators know where they’re going, but Jimmy said you’d want to be there to help… deal with?… the Joiners.”
Sarah nodded.
“That’ll be the plan, then. Good luck.”
He flashed her a quick, stressed smile.
“He’s doing amazing work. I never dreamed, when I was in school…” He shook his head, starting toward the house, and Sarah frowned.
“Clarence?” she called. He turned, walking backwards. “What brought you to Lawrence?”
“Something new,” he said with a grin, then turned and jogged up the steps. Sarah shook her head, checking that Dog was with her and putting Flower into a long canter, cutting across the wide open stretch of desert between the Lawsons and the Joiners. It would cut as much as a quarter hour off of her ride. She realized, as she was going, that that was probably going to be the hardest part of getting work out of the crane: getting it from place to place in less than a day.
She got to the Joiners’ homestead, tying Flower at a post a ways from the house and whistling Dog to stay. He’d need water, running that far, but she’d see to it second. First, it appeared there were three hefty men in a standoff with Nina Joiner on her front porch.
“I ain’t told you you can do nothin’ with those… things,” Nina was saying. “I want you to keep ‘em away from the house and away from the barn and away from my land.”
“Nina,” Sarah said, approaching. “They work for Jimmy.”
Nina motioned with her shotgun.
“All the more reason,” she said. “Like as not, he’s gonna try to knock everythin’ down so he can buy cheap.”
Sarah motioned with her hand at the three men, stepping in front of them.
“Nina, he can afford to buy your land at any price you’d ask for it. What he can’t do is replace
you for feedin’ and housin’ the town.”
Nina narrowed her eyes.
“He just orders more off the train, don’t he?”
“You had men approach you, offerin’ to rent lodgin’?” Sarah asked.
“We did,” Nina said. “Turned ‘em all down. Don’t trust the lot of ‘em any more than sandsquat.”
Filthy little beetles that gorged on gremlin root. Things were bad.
“Jimmy told ‘em all they can’t work, if they don’t have residence with Granger.”
“Why in hell would he do that?” Nina asked.
“Because we only want to keep the ones what can figure it out,” Sarah said. “They ain’t lookin’ to live with you. They’re lookin’ to have a place to put their boots up when they come down to town to spend their minin’ shine.”
“They ain’t welcome,” Nina said. “Don’t need ‘em.”
“That’s fine,” Sarah said. “Don’t matter. You and I go back, and I’m seein’ to you best I know how.”
“This is how you see to us, now?” Nina asked, motioning with her shotgun at the three men again.
“It is if you want your house to stand straight again,” Sarah said.
“They come in here with pushers and rams and you think they’re gonna fix stuff?” Nina asked. “He’s got you twisted up fearsome if you believe that.”
“Rams?” Sarah asked.
“Lady, it’s a crane,” one of the men said. “I keep telling you that. It’s packed.”
Sarah turned.
“Show me.”
She looked back at Nina, pointing a finger at her.
“And you get someone to see to my horse and my dog.”
Nina shouted something back into the house, then came out, following Sarah and the men around the side of the house where Sarah found three machines that did look like so much siegeworks.
“See?” Nina asked.
“Get set up,” Sarah said to the men, turning and putting her hands up for Nina. “I ain’t sayin’ they can work. I’m sayin’ we’ll see what they look like they do when they’re set to do it, and if we don’t think they’re gonna do what they say, we’ll send ‘em back where they came from, and I’ll personally beat Jimmy Lawson ‘round his house for the lie he told me.”
Nina was still angry, and mistrustful, but she let the three men work for about ten minutes, in which space the three machines went from compact blocks of metal on giant metal treads to elegant - if dirty - pieces of construction equipment.