Black Pine Creek

by David Haynes

  In the background, the sound of vehicles starting up and the generator kicking in echoed around the valley. It was a low, menacing rattle.

  Draper went along the cupboards and shelves. It didn’t take long, the camper was empty. Could he detect the faint aroma of cigars?

  “Borrowed it from a buddy of mine back home. He doesn’t know how to take care of his gear.”

  Draper lifted the mattress. It was so old and thin that the padding it gave Vinson must have been minimal. Nothing.

  The blankets were threadbare and smelled of stale sweat. It made him cringe to touch them but he did anyway, making sure to shake everything down. When he found nothing, the feeling was a mix of relief and frustration.

  “Want to pat me down?” Vinson stood up. He was smiling.

  Draper looked him over. “Sure.” As he patted the other man’s pockets, he looked down at the locker. The camper was the same model as his own, albeit twenty years older. They all came with the little storage lockers as standard.

  “I’ll just have a check in there.”

  Vinson shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Could be nerves, thought Draper. Could be nothing.

  “Can you just move back? Out of the light?” he said and dropped to one knee. In truth Vinson wasn’t blocking the light but he was too close for comfort. Particularly if he decided to put a boot into Draper’s face.

  Vinson stepped away but not far; still close enough to do some damage if he chose. Draper was relieved to feel the camper vibrate beneath him as Mercer stepped up inside.

  “God alone knows what’s down there. Probably some porn, knowing my buddy.” Vinson made a strange shrill sound that was clearly supposed to be a laugh. He shifted about nervously.

  Got you, thought Draper.

  The catch on the locker was stiff but it squeaked open with a bit of pressure. Draper peered inside. A couple of bottle caps, a receipt. What was expecting to find? The treasure displayed on a pedestal like something out of an Indiana Jones movie?

  “What you got down there?” Vinson asked. He had moved closer again, trying to peer over Draper’s shoulder. “Has he left anything? Like I said, I didn’t even know it was there. If I’d known I might have...”

  “Guys! Boss!” Puckett came bawling up behind Mercer. “You’ve got to come see this. You won’t believe it.” He peered around Mercer’s shoulder. “Come on, what you waiting for?” He jumped up and down, yelling and whooping. He sounded like an excited schoolboy.

  “Better go see,” Mercer said and jumped down.

  Draper looked back into the locker again. Something wasn’t right. Something was...

  “Sounds like something big,” Vinson said to give him a nudge.

  Draper replaced the locker’s cover and stood up. Vinson’s cheeks were blooming.

  “It sure does.” He pushed past him and ran after Mercer. So where the hell was the missing nugget?

  Even as he ran across the bridge toward the plant, Draper could see the gold sparkling in the sluice boxes. Gold didn’t need the sun to shine, it generated its own dazzling radiance. Particularly to miners who hadn’t seen much to get excited about over the last few months.

  His eyes widened when he saw the extent of the find. Nuggets were scattered all over the boxes, not sporadically but in clumps like a field of flowering buttercups. Puckett was springing around, trying to entice someone into performing an old-time jig with him.

  Mercer was standing on the lower gantry looking over the gold. Draper jumped up and joined him.

  “Well, this is something else!” Draper patted him on the back. The last half an hour forgotten in an instant.

  “Never seen anything like it,” Mercer answered but his voice wasn’t full of the excitement Draper expected.

  “What’s up? Don’t like gold all of a sudden?”

  “It’s not that. I’ve just never seen anything to match this. There’s got to be sixty, seventy ounces here alone.” He turned to Draper. “You ever seen anything like this?”

  It was obvious that Mercer was genuinely shocked. Draper just felt ecstatic. “No. Never have.”

  “Must be a glory-hole.” Flynn spoke from the foot of the steps. “Bedrock drops away pretty steeply up at the far end. I’ve been digging there for the last two days but this is the first dirt I’ve processed.” He removed his cap and scratched at his thick, steel-gray hair. “Didn’t think I was deep enough yet though.”

  “Who the hell cares!” shouted Puckett. “Just keep digging!”

  Draper looked down at him. Vinson had joined Puckett but his expression was just like Mercer’s – confused.

  Draper turned back to Mercer who was still staring at the sluice boxes. “We deserve a bit of luck. For once Puckett’s right. We have to keep digging in the same place now.”

  Mercer nodded. “For it to fill up like that in just a few minutes...”

  “We deserve it,” Draper interrupted. He was already thinking how long they could extend the season if this was a rich pay-streak, or even a glory-hole. Another two weeks? Maybe more. He looked out into the distance. Gray clouds clung to the top of the mountains in the Brooks Range and the snow was creeping lower down their razor-edged flanks. It was cold now but soon the icy hooks of the Alaskan winter would reach beneath their clothes, beneath their skin and start tugging at their souls.

  He turned around and shouted, “Let’s get to it then! Mike, you stay here and manage the plant. Everyone else, we’ll go and help Flynn dig this hole.” He jumped down and patted Mike on the shoulder as he passed. “Won’t need to worry about one little nugget now we’ve got this lot.”

  He said it to sound off-handed but it was also to let Vinson know he hadn’t forgotten, nor would he.

  *

  Vinson watched them rumble off into the distance then took the steps onto the gantry in a single leap. It was with a sinking inevitability that he looked into his own nugget trap and found it empty. He knew it would be. It wasn’t designed to cope with the quantity of gold that had been pushed through it in the last twenty-four hours. Especially since he had been given no opportunity to empty it from the previous day. Not with Mercer seeming to watch his every move all night long.

  He pushed his hand inside the gap and righted the tray. If he had more time, he would have liked to strengthen and lengthen the trap slightly. Judging by what was in the sluice boxes and everyone’s reaction, they were onto something special. And because of that, so was he.

  A sudden and spiteful thought came to him. Had someone deliberately tipped his trap over, causing the gold to spill out? The only people who would do that were Draper and Mercer. So why hadn’t he been called out on it? What were they waiting for? God knew, Mercer wanted to do more than just push him over. He looked like he wanted to rip him apart. Let him try. Vinson had a nice sharp knife that had tasted blood once already. It was eager for more.

  Back in the camper, when Draper had been crouching down by the locker, the knife felt like it was twitching against his hip. Pulsing in time with the beat of his heart, trying to get free and plunge itself into Draper’s back. It was a surprise neither Mercer nor Draper could hear his heart as it pounded against his ribs back there. It was deafening, almost loud enough to drown out his own words.

  Not that the nugget was in the camper anymore. It was under it, buried in the dirt with the jar. He knew they thought he was responsible for stealing it. But they couldn’t prove it. They never would, not now.

  Mercer had his head so far up Draper’s ass that his nose had turned brown. Those two had clearly been through a lot together and that had bred a fierce loyalty. How did it feel to have something like that? He’d never experienced a close relationship with anybody, man or woman. Not that he yearned for it. He had at one time in his life but not now. As far as he was concerned you helped yourself first, last and always. There was nobody else you could trust. Maybe it was time Draper and Mercer experienced that for themselves.

  He finished rearranging the trap
and secured it with a length of chain from his toolbox. He yanked it a few times to make sure it wouldn’t tip over again. He’d lost a lot of gold today. He couldn’t afford to let it happen again.

  Vinson jumped down and walked around the front of the plant. If Draper believed him to be the thief, why had they left him here alone? A trap? He spun around and stared at where the others were mining. He couldn’t see who was who from this distance but two of them looked to be standing there, looking directly at him. Did they have binoculars trained on him too? He squinted but saw nothing except for the rising steam of his sour breath on the cold air. He wouldn’t put it past either of those two to try and set him up like this. He almost reached down and stuffed handfuls of gold, his gold, into his pockets. He laughed and carried on walking to the mound of dirt and his bulldozer.

  The engine drummed into life at the first time of asking. All the vehicles started first time, he was proud of that. Never let it be said that Mike Vinson’s dad raised a fool where engines were concerned. He could strip down any engine from any vehicle, and put it back together with one hand and a blindfold. He knew how to do a lot more too. None of them legal and more than just a few potentially fatal; in the right car, with the right driver of course.

  He blew on his gloveless hands and reversed the vehicle. It was going to get much colder soon. He’d felt the snow on his cheeks just the same as everyone else had. But it was something nobody liked to talk about. Not when they were about to go home with nothing to show for their season except sore bones. Well, that wouldn’t be him. Even with this last setback, he was going home a rich man.

  He lowered the bucket and scooped up a mound of dirt which was placed precariously near the churning creek. He watched the bloated corpse of a deer roll past. Its doe-eyed stare now vacant and black. It bobbed under the water for a few seconds and then bounced back up with all four legs pointing rigidly into the air. Then it was gone, through the pine trees, farther downstream where it would be smashed to bits or devoured.

  In the days after he’d disposed of Burgess’s truck, some strange things had happened on the claim. Things, he suspected, only he could see and hear. At least, none of the others mentioned anything out of the ordinary.

  There were the noises. Strange rumbling, guttural grunts like someone clearing their throat with a bad case of bronchitis. At times it seemed to be all around him. In the earth, in the dirt beneath his boots and then away in the distance like an approaching thunderstorm. It always came with a smell too. Rancid and sweet at the same time. Like... like the body Rashid had shown him bound up in his trunk. It had been to make a point, to show him Rashid wasn’t a man who liked to be fucked about with. But all Vinson took away from the experience was the smell. The cloying stench as it slithered off a bruised and swollen corpse had stayed with him for days. It made him sick to his stomach. Rashid needn’t have shown him the body. All he needed to do was bottle some of that smell and stick it under Vinson’s nose. That was enough to scare him half to death.

  The air was cold and clear and yet beneath that freshness there was decay. Rotting, filthy, spoiled Black Pine Creek air. How could the others not smell it? Maybe it was Burgess turning to mush somewhere close by? Maybe whatever it was that took him had thought better of eating his disgusting, obese body and left it to rot?

  There was scratching too. A thin scratching that twisted itself through his dreams and woke him with the images still flickering across his eyes. Beautiful images of Draper, Mercer, Flynn, Puckett and Meg all standing naked before him. All with glittering lengths of steel running through their bodies where bone should be. He’d turned them into his gold wash-plant. Broken their bones, their wills and their souls and made them into a mechanical masterpiece which would dig gold out of the ground faster than anything known before. And instead of the steady whine and rumble usually made by a machine, his creation screamed and wailed with agony.

  He’d glimpsed it in the treeline. Three or four times a night he sensed it there, watching from beneath the shadowy canopy of the black pine. Scrutinizing him, examining him, licking at the air, tasting his essence, devouring the badness inside him like soup. But he wasn’t afraid of it. Its blazing scarlet eyes were prettier than gold, more precious. Besides, it hadn’t come for him. It had come for them, all of them, and they would work together when the time came. His dreams told him that.

  And yet he felt a curious depression. It was dark, always dark. Except for today, his life had been spent in the gloom. He worked all night, he went to bed before it got light and when he awoke, whatever daylight had been in the day was giving way to the black shroud of night. Although calling this daylight would be wrong. It was a grim half-light under a sky the color of lead sheet.

  Away from the buzzing sodium floodlights, the darkness had levels. He never realized it before but the depths of the black were not absolute. It moved, it weaved itself around the trees like a November fog in Chicago. Sometimes it shimmered. It shone black on black, which he hadn’t known was possible until this last week.

  He dropped another load, the rocks grinding against the grizzly-bars, threatening to bend and snap the steel as easily as bone. Anything larger than a skull was deflected away and would be hand-washed later. He smiled. What would Mercer’s head look like after it had been through the plant? It would probably come through unmarked, his head looked to be as thick and heavy as a rock.

  He laughed at the thought of it. And when the guttural rumbling echoed in agreement along the bank of the creek, he smiled at that too. It was almost like a lullaby.

  25

  Draper had started working through the night again. He had to keep going for another week and then they might just have enough. Everyone would go home happy. Even Mercer might smile for once. He had wanted to go at the end of last week when the first real snow of the season covered Black Pine Creek in a beautiful crisp sheet.

  They were on a streak. There was no way they could leave in the middle of a streak, especially since the previous months had been so dire. Nothing had come close to that first day but every day was better than the corresponding one in the previous month. They couldn’t leave yet. It was that simple. It was a rule.

  None of them were particularly eager to extend their stay but as long as they carried on finding gold, they just got on with it. Vinson had been the only enthusiastic member of the team, but he didn’t understand how quickly the winter could lock them up here.

  Draper watched the snow fall in a constant haze through the sodium floodlights. Their bulbs made grotesque shadows writhe like snakes from one side of the claim to the other. If you stared at them long enough, you could almost see their tongues licking at the freezing air, tasting the ice crystals. Devouring them.

  In the last week, they had managed to process nearly two hundred ounces of gold. Admittedly most of that had come on the first day of the streak but it was more than the rest of the season combined had managed to produce.

  Two nights ago, when the sky had been clear, the Northern Lights had been visible above the pine. He’d turned off the floodlights and dragged everyone out of bed to watch the display. They had all seen it countless times before, and Draper suspected it was only him who was excited to watch it again. But Meg had stood by his side, linking one arm through his and the other through Puckett’s. At that moment he wished it was just him and Meg there; just the two of them standing side by side in awed silence.

  Ethereal, gossamer threads wound and danced through the sky. The ghostly specters of green flame filtering the silver sliver of moon across the valley, making it feel like the whole world was turned up too bright. Almost too intense for humanity to look on it.

  It was mystifying. It was beautiful.

  “Anyone else freezing their ass off?” Puckett had interrupted the spectacle, but Draper had stood there even after Meg kissed his cheek and everyone had left. He’d watched it until his skin tingled with ice and his toes went numb.

  He finished piling the dirt beside the
wash-plant and turned off the ignition. In order to keep the status quo and to prevent any further incidents, he’d changed the times for Vinson and Mercer to start work. It meant that the mine could continue to work for twenty-four hours a day but Vinson wouldn’t be left alone at any time.

  There was some crossover though. It was inevitable with such a small crew. Mercer and Vinson would be the only people working between four and six-thirty in the morning.

  “Good night, champ?” Mercer was waiting by the plant. His face was barely visible under his hood and heavy beard.

  Draper eased himself out of the cab. A layer of dirty snow had been compacted into an icy path all around the plant. His back ached enough already without taking a fall.

  He sighed, breath streaming from his mouth in a thick silky ribbon. “Hard going. The ground’s freezing up quicker than I can get through it.”

  Mercer shrugged.

  “I know what you’re gonna say but it’s illegal to leave a streak before it’s done. You know that.”

  “You’re the boss.” There was no humor in his voice. It wasn’t like Mercer to be so downbeat.

  “Hey, come on. Give it a week and you’ll be back in some dive talking your way into some lucky lady’s pants.”

  Mercer shook his head. “It just feels wrong, man. I don’t know why but something just isn’t sitting right with me.”

  “Vinson?” Draper asked.

  Mercer moved his head from side to side slowly. “Kind of. But not limited to.” He looked around, over his shoulder and down the creek. “Ever feel like someone’s watching us? At night I mean, and that smell, what the hell is that all about?” He stopped and pulled his hood down so Draper could see his eyes. Snow fell from the back of his hood and landed without a sound on the ground.

  “Listen to me. I sound like some pathetic kid in a horror movie. I’m just tired, don’t remember the last time I got more than ten minutes sleep. They just keep coming, all night they just keep coming...” He paused and closed his eyes.