the shop giving a verbal inventory.
‘Limited variety, I know. But that’s what you get in a town full of men. All a man really wants is his tobacco, a little salt pork and flour, and a new shirt when the old one falls off his back.’
He hands Alex a pick. The wood is smooth and cool in her hands and heavier than she imagined from the way the men were swinging them this morning.
‘Nice, huh? Try this one for size—’ Micah takes the pick and hands her a shovel. ‘Man’s got to be comfortable with his equipment. Feel good, yeah? Yeah?’
She can see the muscles of the empty socket twitching beneath his skin, trying to focus. He rests his weight against the pick.
‘Women, see—real, civilized, lacy women—they bring variety to a place. Soon you’re stocking fancy furniture and silk cloth and fancy plates and such. Women, son, the spice of life. Remember that. Should have seen my store in Grass Valley. Packed with trinkets and trifles from France, Chile, England, God knows where else. Barely had room for breeches.’
Micah sighs and quiets for a moment.
‘Mr…’ Alex begins.
‘Micah, son, call me Micah.’
‘Micah. I suppose I’m meant to, well, a claim?’
‘“Meant to well a claim.” Nearly got yourself a sentence there, boy. But the answer’s yes. Limpy came in here not ten minutes ago, made that claim for you, in your name. Took care of it, is what I’m saying, and not a minute before John Thomas came in here whining about it. Be thankful to him, if I were you, but not too thankful. Limpy’s got his ways of getting more than he gives out of folks, remember that.
‘’Course, you got to go to Nevada City and file in the county court to make it official, but we like to keep our own selves straight. More of a formality till someone finds something worth claiming. I doubt the county even knows we’re up here.’
A shout sounds from the road outside, and another answers.
‘Anyhow,’ says Micah, ‘it’s typically done the other way round, see. Find the gold, then make the claim. I’d do my own staking, too, if I was you. Later. Right now it’s looking—’ Lightning flashes again, the electric energy stands tiny hairs on Alex’s neck and arms on end. ‘I say it looks like the weather’s gonna keep us all in for a while. ‘Bout time, too. Been a dry winter. Mark it clear, when you mark it. Each corner. Sell you some of these, if you want—’ He brandishes four wooden stakes. ‘And a sign nearby stating your right. The law says one hundred feet by fifty, but no one really follows that round here. Just as long as it’s clearly marked and not overlapping anyone else, which shouldn’t be a problem up there. Nobody’s found enough gold to waste the water on, in truth. But, hell, luck’s no predictable animal. Remember that.’
He pauses and Alex fills the space with a nod. ‘This all you need? ‘Cause I’m not usually open but two days a week, the other being day before last.’
Alex nods.
‘Fine. Now, gotta ask for cash I’m afraid. Credit comes with a strike you understand. Only reasonable.’
It rains for three days, and for three days Alex sits on the staircase staring down into the saloon as if watching a Christmas pantomime. She has no part in it. She is above, looking down, finding it difficult to remain aloof and indignant with solitude’s cold hands curling around her, making the walls feel very close and the people below very far away. No one seems to see her there. No one says her name.
Rain, as it falls outside, traps old air in the saloon. She thinks, every breath I take is someone else’s breath discarded. I am eating other people’s air. She thinks, this should make me full and larger than I am. She thinks, if I stay in this place, I will eat enough man breath to become a man, and I will play cards and drink whisky and they will never find me. She thinks, it would take two of Gran and two of me to equal one of Emaline, standing there with Jed behind the bar, now mending a sock, now bringing bread from the oven, everywhere at once, and occasionally she heads upstairs with a slack-jawed miner with money in hand. Alex moves over to let them pass.
She thinks, the smell of whisky is sweeter than wine; but she’s only tasted wine, and then only sips. Nearly a week on her feet, nearly a week of constant movement and now no place to go but her thoughts. She tried to escape to the creek that first rainy day, stood cold and wet on the edge with her claim stakes and shovel as a liquid train of water crashed downstream, covering claims, filling coyote holes and toppling the windlasses into the gutted sink of soil.
Jed said, ‘You don’t play games with a river in heat—if you was thinking ‘bout working today.’ He shouted this over the water and over the rain, and she watched and shivered while he dipped a water bucket, holding on as the current gripped and yanked.
Now the road is a river, or many tiny rivers all running towards the creek, a thousand strands of motion, and Alex trapped inside on the stairwell thinking about the four gold coins left in her money pouch, how rich she’d felt with six coins.
Limpy is telling the same story he’d told two days ago, but with a few details added for variety. Three whores instead of the two, and he changed the place from Grass Valley to Nevada City. No one seems to notice or care, and Emaline just nods her appreciation. The jealousy takes Alex by surprise.
She thinks, if I were a man I would be loud like Limpy, and tell stories and everyone would laugh; or I would be very quiet like David, with everyone listening real hard those times I did speak.
She notices the way David moves from his stool to the bar and back again, filling space, not taking it like Limpy. His legs bow outward a bit and he walks on the outside of his feet. He looks it next to Limpy, but David is not a small man. He’s at least six feet tall with broad shoulders that angle from his neck. His drooping moustache calls attention to a small lipless mouth and cleft chin. His hands are always folded or at his side, different hands altogether than the ones straining white against the handle of his pick a few days ago. ‘Stay out of his way next time,’ he’d said, and now she sits alone on the stairwell, out of everyone’s way. She thinks, I would become a man who fills space and I would not be afraid to leave this step. And sometimes, when she loses focus, loses herself in the yellow smoke of the room, her thoughts turn into memories.
The hemlock grove and apple trees of the Hollinger orchards back home. She’s climbing as high as the apple branches will bear with Peter on the ground looking up. ‘Not so high,’ he says. And Gran poking a knobby knuckle through a tear in Alex’s petticoat. ‘Natural,’ Gran says, shaking her head. ‘Natural inclinations.’ Klein heaves the accordion into another song, and a lanky miner with the ears of a much larger man stands near the bar to sing a sad song about lovers and loss. As his voice trails off from a soft, flat tenor to a forced vibrato, the room is silent.
‘Uplifting as always, Mordicai,’ says Limpy. A clap of thunder takes his voice and the day outside flashes bright, and dulls as quickly. ‘Who’s next then? Bible verses allowed, but not recommended till twilight, ballads are capital and stories divine.’
The one called Harry folds a hand of cards, pushes his stool back, and sweeps down in a dramatic bow all but lost on his audience. He’s a stocky man, with thick coarse hair and fleshy cheeks. She’s never seen him without Fred, the gaunt-faced fellow to his right. Captain Fred. Captain Fred Henderson, if the cavalry cap he wears is his own. She’s heard stories of cavalrymen, and Fred looks anything but broad-chested and daring.
‘A poem…’
