20
“A gem concealed . . . a burning ray revealed.”
Coming out of the secret path into a small clearing on a ridge, Elisabeth gasped. Down below lay a narrow ravine with a river altogether different from the American, drifting deep and calm, surrounded by giant granite slabs and boulders with a vertical wall on the far side. The water meandered so slow and peaceful that it appeared not to move at all, like a piece of clean glass.
“It’s called the Uva. After the grapes growing wild,” said Nemacio.
They were supposedly out hunting together again. They’d spent the last month digging, with no time for rest, moving their Long Tom production upriver to Split Rock, hacking up the base where the thin quartz vein widened into a white mass of sparkling ground. Elisabeth felt sorry for breaking up Split Rock but needed more than they’d found to get her freedom from Nate. Start over on her own. So she hacked and hacked at the base with the men until her back ached and her hands blistered and bled. Come Sunday, she took off hunting, and Nemacio insisted on coming along again.
“I’d rather go alone.”
“I can help get another deer,” he said.
“I don’t need help!”
“You can carry it down the mountain yourself?” he asked.
“She’s in a mood, Nemacio. I’d steer clear of . . .” Nate started.
“Save your back, Elisabeth. Take my cousin,” said Álvaro, cutting Nate off.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
Before Nate could object again, they were off in the woods. She soon realized he hadn’t come along to help her shoot something for supper. He led her across the river and up and over the ridge for nearly an hour.
“No one will see us way over here,” he said.
He threaded his fingers through hers as they looked down from the narrow ridge, seeing through the clear water to the gravel on the river bottom. His hand felt warm and strong and safe.
“I thought you wanted to help me get a deer,” she said, sassy.
“Later,” he said.
He made himself comfortable, sitting down in the grass on the ridge and pulling a bunch of red grapes out of his knapsack. Her mouth watered.
“Have some,” he said, holding out the grapes.
Sitting down beside him, she took a bunch, savoring the sweet fruit. She wondered why he’d brought her here and told herself to calm down, breathe steady. Told herself it was innocent. Just two folks by a river, enjoying a picnic of grapes.
“It’s the Uva. Let’s swim. You’ll love it,” he said with a familiar playfulness.
He grabbed her hand and led her down the ridge to the edge of the water. On a boulder beside the Uva, she watched him unlace his boots and take off his shirt. When he dropped his pants she didn’t turn away but gawked at his naked backside as he dove deep into the water, gliding under, graceful. He came up treading water, smiling in that way of his.
“Come on. It’s perfect,” he said, tossing his head to fling wet curls away from his face.
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ll turn around.”
She hadn’t swum in deep water since she was a little girl back in Concord, and she’d always stayed in the shallows close to Split Rock when washing in the American for fear she’d be swept into oblivion.
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head.
He swam to the other side and climbed out, sitting naked on a long slab with his back turned, water dripping down his brown shoulders.
“I won’t look,” he called out from the far bank, his voice echoing off the granite walls.
The calm waters of the Uva tempted her, and she looked up and down the ravine to make sure they were alone. Feeling reckless, she took off her boots and slipped out of her dress. She sunk into the water still wearing her pantaloons and camisole, shocked at her indiscretion but thrilled too. The cold stole her breath. Gulping in short bursts, she swam around clumsy, grabbing at the water. Putting her face down, she opened her eyes, looking around the crystalline pool with the sand and rocks at the bottom, and tiny see-through fish swimming around her bare feet. She came to the surface and floated on her back, looking up in awe at the blue-gray granite surrounding the river. Gliding downstream, she relished the respite of the Uva away from the claim and all that feverish energy clawing and digging, desperate and dirty in the American for gold.
He slid naked into the water beside her, and they floated on their backs together, holding hands. This surely wasn’t an innocent picnic any more, she thought, as the current pulled them toward the river’s edge, slow, then unmoving.
“We’ve stopped,” she said.
“We caught an eddy.”
“What a hoot!” she said, jumping out of the water onto a flat rock like a wet frog. “I want to do it again.”
She bounded upriver, hopping from rock to rock barefoot with her thin underclothes clinging wet, while he watched. She jumped back into the water with a splash, feeling her deep loneliness wash away as she floated down with the current, cradled in the arms of the river. She caught the swirling eddy again, gliding tranquil. Flipping over, she swam clumsy to a flat rock sticking halfway out of the water at the center of the pool. She scrambled out onto the smooth granite and folded her knees up to cover her breasts sticking out taut in her wet camisole.
“What an extraordinary place,” she said.
Nemacio treaded in the water close and closer, watching.
“I see you,” he said.
“You said you wouldn’t look,” she said, nervous.
“I can’t help myself,” he said, swimming closer.
“Liar,” she said.
As the sun slipped behind the ravine, the gloaming grew around the Uva. Even in the dimness, the granite and grass and trees, even the needles on the pines swelled more vibrant, as if dusk revealed secrets blinded by the California sun. As he reached the slab, his face looked like a truer picture of itself, the outline of his shoulders sticking out of the water more broad. His cleft deeper. His eyes richer. When he touched her feet dangling off the rock into the water, she shivered even though a warm breeze drifted through the secret canyon. When Nemacio traced his hand up the inside of her calf, she sucked in her breath. He climbed out naked and dripping wet, leaning over her.
“You’ve got hold of my soul,” he whispered in her ear.
She didn’t resist when he sucked her lips, draining her weak and delicious. When he pulled her knees open and touched the place between her legs through her wet pantaloons, she sank back into the soft rock like she was drunk, lightheaded and dark together, wanting him to touch her more. This was the touch she was missing. This was the loving she’d never gotten from Nate.
She should have stopped him when he unbuttoned her camisole and licked her breasts, but instead she held the back of his neck, coaxing him for more. Curious how far he’d go.
“I’m desperate for you,” he said, tugging off her pantaloons.
She dragged her hands up through his wet curls as he found her, sliding his fingers in. Touching her softness inside, higher. Curling and coaxing her along, longer, making her want, until she was writhing her naked bottom against the smooth granite in the middle of the Uva. Dizzy, she closed her eyes.
He stopped.
She panicked, grabbing at his shoulders.
“Please, don’t stop,” she said.
“Open your eyes,” he said.
And she did, finding herself inside his inky eyes, newly born, as he moved over her, pushing himself in, slow. Filling her whole. Deep and deeper inside, back and forth, until they moved together, as if no light, no dark, no empty ever existed. Only blueness and fullness. He pushed her past the point of reason, unspooling and reverberating beyond, into a primal creature, until she stirred and rippled, bursting open, elemental and raw.
21
“Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.”
The next morning Nemacio thrust a cup at her as she came out of the cabin
.
“Thistle tea,” he said.
She drank it down, not able to look at him, feeling shamed. She shouldn’t have gone swimming with him. Shouldn’t have let him love her like that. Shown her what loving she’d been missing. Pull her down, spill his soul into her.
“There’s a pot steeping over by my tent. Drink it all day. We’ve gotta be careful,” he said, winking.
He didn’t seem ashamed, just concerned she didn’t get with a baby. He ran off to join Álvaro and Nate at the morning dig, looking energized as he swung and hacked with glee at the quartz floor. Sheepishly, Elisabeth took her place in the middle of the Long Tom, sifting through the piles in the rocker box, looking for gold. Down by the end of the tom, Nate collected the smaller bits.
Nemacio walked back and forth, dumping bucket after bucket of crushed quartz and water and mud in front of her. She tried ignoring him, but she could smell the sweat and dirt and love on him every time he came over to dump a bucket, and it made her want him something powerful. Turning away, she concentrated on the work of sifting through the rock for what seemed like hours without stopping. Her hands cramped up and her back started aching as she worked through the gloppy pile, sliding the slag down the sluice toward Nate at the end who looked like a little ant, swirling a pan, looking for flakes, hunched-over back and too-thin arms. With his odd-shaped head and pointy chin he could actually be an ant. An ant with one leg, hobbling along to his little anthill. He was turning into a disgusting ant right before her eyes. A hairy ant man, with a straggled blond beard crawling around a stinky pile of leftovers. Oh, God! She was losing it. Losing her senses. Her grounding.
When Nemacio dumped another bucket into the Long Tom, he leaned down and whispered.
“I can still taste you,” he said.
His hot breath in her ear sent a rush of heat through her body, like she’d been set on fire.
“Get away,” she said, serious.
He leaned in closer as if he was telling her something about the sluice, talking below the river’s roar.
“I can’t. You’ve got hold of me, in those gorgeous eyes, and your . . .” he said.
“Stop! He’ll hear you,” she said, looking over at Nate.
But Nate was looking down into the pan, lost in the swirling dirt like he was examining his future in a crystal ball. Nemacio grabbed her arm, speaking with an anger under his breath that frightened her.
“This isn’t a game! I want to throw you down in the mud, right here beside the river. In front of your husband. Make him watch as I love you. Make you scream with pleasure. Beg for more.”
Elisabeth blinked, wide-eyed.
“Pero me resisto,” he said, dropping her arm. “For the sake of your honor.”
When he walked back over to Split Rock, she let out a huge sigh, releasing all her pent-up energy and frustration and want, and smashed the pile of rock in front of her with the back of a shovel, sending mud flying onto her dress, her hair, her face, her eyes, up her nose, even in her ears. She almost had a fit right then, flipping over the entire idiotic Long Tom contraption in frustration, when she saw it. A nugget. No, not a nugget. A hunk. A big yellow hunk shining bright out from under the brown glop. She reached her hand out, digging into the mud, not believing.
It was considerable, heavy and uneven. It was gold, and far more than a nugget. A whole lot more.
22
“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
A rumbling in the manzanita up the trail struck her with terror. She gripped the Hawken and stopped. They were walking up to Coyoteville to weigh their find, Álvaro out front carrying his guitar, Elisabeth in the middle with Tom loping alongside, and Nemacio behind holding the gold stone in a sack slung over his shoulder.
After almost a year digging down in the river, they’d found something extraordinary. Seeing the thing sparkling in the sluice, she had squealed. Nate had stood up and Nemacio came running. It was nearly a foot long, embedded in a mass of crystalized quartz, with a clear-cut corner and sides poking out shiny with great brilliance. They cleaned it and passed it around, testing its weight, examining the uneven contours. Nate guessed it weighed nearly five pounds. Álvaro bet Nate it weighed nine, saying he’d been eyeing Nate’s crutch and wanted to lop off the pad to make it a fancy walking stick for lolling around San Francisco, now that he was a rich man. They all laughed, delirious at their luck.
Holding the gold, she thought Álvaro was most likely right at nine pounds, giving them a near fortune in one go, on top of what they’d already dug up. After finding the hunk of gold, they’d kept digging through the Split Rock vein another two weeks, cutting out a channel up toward the ridge fifteen feet wide, draining and washing out the ore. The work was like pulling money out of a bank, giving them two thousand more. When the vein slowed up to flakes, they agreed it was time to head to the assayer up in Coyoteville to weigh the gold and file proper claim papers. Nate told them to go on ahead, come back with a donkey to haul up the other sacks hidden under the cabin floorboards. Álvaro had no opinion, just lounged on a rock strumming his guitar as Nate and Nemacio discussed the logistics of expanding their operation.
With her take of the gold, Elisabeth planned to leave the diggings, move up to Coyoteville. She was done digging in the river like a dog. Done caring for Nate. Done sneaking around like a hussy with Nemacio, hoping on proper loving. She’d figure out a way to make a decent living in town. Maybe start a book business of her own. Selling, not lending. Perhaps offer woodcut prints too.
As they headed out of the canyon at dawn that morning, she looked back at what a sight to see: Nate hobbling around, moving quicker than a man with both legs, doing the job of four, still dumping, sifting, and swishing all by himself, hoping to find more.
“I’ll have more luck when you return. God willing,” he called out, pumping his snake stick high above his head.
It wasn’t luck at all. Or God’s work. It was human work, picking through rocks all day, never stopping, no matter how cold or wet or hot or hungry or uncomfortable. Never stopping except to hunt and eat and sleep. That’s what got them the gold. Hard work. Not divine providence.
Finished with that life of mud and rocks, she carried the Hawken, along with all her meager belongings in a satchel, including the engraving tools and “Self-Reliance,” knowing she wouldn’t return back to Nate or the claim. She’d stay up in town. Reward herself with a real bath in a tub of warm water. Buy a proper dress, in fancy yellow silk taffeta with a bow and maybe a new ribbon for her hair, and some fine lady boots with no holes. She’d finished walking around in Henry’s man boots.
In a sudden moment the sound grew deafening, and before they could back up, a massive grizzly charged out of the bushes from twenty yards up the trail. It happened in a whirl. The bear stood up tall on its hind legs, growling hideous with massive teeth. As it ran toward them, Elisabeth got off a quick shot with her Hawken, hitting the bear in the shoulder, but that didn’t stop it from coming. It leapt on Álvaro, swiping with daggerlike claws, nearly taking his face clean off. The bear clawed and bit as she started reloading, pouring more powder in the barrel with shaking hands, and Tom ran barking frantic and fierce, launching himself onto the grizzly’s shoulders, and Nemacio pulled out a pistol she didn’t know he kept under his coat. The bear swatted at Tom, flinging him ripped open to the ground with a yelp, then turned back to crunching on Álvaro, who’d rolled up like a pill bug. She put another ball in the barrel and tamped it down as fast as she could while Nemacio plugged the bear in the neck with his pistol in rapid succession six times. The bear flinched with each slug but didn’t stop tearing into Álvaro, grabbing his whole head in its jaws. As Nemacio reloaded, she walked right up to the bear, placing the barrel against its head, and pulled the trigger. It let loose poor Álvaro then, staggering back, weaving and roaring with bloody slobber dribbling from its mouth. She backed up as Nemacio shot his pistol again, hitting the bear in the head and face six more times. Heaving, it fell
dead. He reloaded and ran to Álvaro.
The forest rang silent. No birds chirped. No squirrels scuttled. The late summer breeze fell flat. The pine trees stilled as angry dead bear stank wafted up evil. Nemacio cradled his friend, rocking him, speaking in Spanish, soothing. Álvaro looked a sight, torn up beyond man, his nose gone, scalp laid open, neck strung out. She fell to her knees. In moments, Álvaro was done, his breath disappeared into a heap of blood and bones and flesh and soul.
Nearby, Tom lay whimpering, his left hip splintered, guts dangling out raw and red pooling around his beautiful yellow coat. His tongue hung loose in the dirt as he panted painful. She reloaded the gun again, pouring and tamping the powder and ball down, slow this time. Tom looked up at her with warm eyes, giving love to her even in his last moments. She placed the barrel to his head and closed her eyes, pulling the trigger with a flinch.
When a low murmur came from the bushes, she turned to see a little bear stumbling out from a hiding place beneath a huckleberry bush, confused. He wobbled over, pouncing on his mama, shaking her shoulders and licking her nose, and crying and crying something awful. When the baby bear curled up beside its dead mama, Elisabeth hunched over and threw up on her pants.
Nemacio and Elisabeth slumped there among the ruin on the trail, the sun reaching high and hot, with the baby bear curled up beside its dead mama, whining. Time folded back upon itself, and she fell into dazed devastation at losing dear Álvaro. When a shadow crossed in front of the sun, she looked up to see two, then four birds circling in the sky, a mass of wings blotting out the light with each pass. One landed on the trail with a thud, standing over four feet tall. Then another landed, and another, with no fear or regard for her or Nemacio or the baby bear. These were no ordinary vultures but grotesque beasts straight from the depths of Hades, with feathers black as a starless sky and bald wrinkled heads, pink and blotchy, and long beaks sharpened to a hook, and bulging necks ringed with a frill of spiky feathers. One stretched its wings, nearly nine feet across, and hopped toward Tom, cocking its head and staring sinister with evil eyes, unblinking. She’d never seen such a bird, so massive, so bold and unafraid. Another hopped closer, kicking up dust with each stamp of its huge clawed feet. She felt trapped crumpled in a heap with all those tall birds towering around. Nemacio still cradled dead Álvaro, staring into a void. When the bird lurched closer, she kicked at it, but it didn’t startle. When it pecked at Tom’s paw, a screech came out of her in a voice she didn’t recognize. Nemacio leapt up, throttling the bird by the neck and flinging it down and pounding its chest while it flopped and flapped until its heart stopped and its eyes rolled back into that bulging head and it went limp. The other birds looked on, unmoved by their brethren’s fate. She stared at Nemacio, horrified.
Prospects of a Woman Page 16