gets himself to the assay office. He’s already been here complaining like a son-of-a-bitch, but I know you wouldn’t jump nobody’s claim.’ She lets the statement arc into a question. Alex doesn’t respond. ‘The back of Micah’s general store. Sign reads “Assay Office”, though it ain’t much more than a counter.’
She drinks down her coffee in four gulps, leaves him sitting there.
When she returns, Alex’s full cup is blowing steam to the ceiling. Thankless little snot, she thinks, as she carries the cup back into the kitchen. She wishes she knew what he’s doing here. Spoiled little rich kid, running away from daddy’s expectations with daddy’s money, most likely. Yet she doesn’t detect the usual arrogance of the moneyed little pricks she’s known in the past. Cocky young things, strutting around like a bunch of banty roosters ‘cause no one ever told them they shit out the same hole as everyone else. And why would any rich kid come to a canvas town like Motherlode when Grass Valley and Nevada City were only miles away and fit to burst with pretty girls, theatres, saloons, restaurants, hotels, brothels and countless other ways to spend money? No, silent Alex had to be running from something.
She glances out the window at Jed bringing the day’s water from the creek. He sets down the buckets just inside the kitchen door and gives her one of his big-toothed smiles. Emaline walks over, takes his head in both hands and kisses him on the lips. They linger, exchanging air, grinning so their teeth click together. He leaves without a word and Emaline props herself in the doorway to watch. We’re all running from something, she thinks, but she stops her thoughts there.
The kitchen is a pine-sided addition to the back of the inn and can get mighty cold in the winter before the stove is stoked, and mighty warm in the summer when the heat puckers its dry lips to suck the energy right out of you. It’s the heat that gets you, she thinks, rolling her sleeves to her elbows. There are only so many clothes a woman can take off, though she’s sure the boys wouldn’t mind a certain amount of flesh exposed on a hot day. They walk around with their trousers rolled to their knees and their shirts in hand and wonder, at the end of the day, why they’re burnt to a crisp. Alex is bound to make that mistake as well. The new boys always do. A ball of grey fuzz scurries across the floor. Emaline stomps after it, misses. In the potatoes again. Just when she patches a hole in that barrel, the mice go and chew another one. With the raccoons getting into the beans and the mice in the ‘taters, it’s a wonder there’s any food left at all. Must be feeding half the county’s critters.
She takes the lid from the flour barrel, pours a measure into a large ceramic bowl with a bit of sourdough starter, adds a generous dollop of lard, an egg, a pinch of precious salt, and begins to knead. Someday she’ll have a proper kitchen, free of mice, with walls that keep the heat in over the winter and out in the summer. A cast-iron stove with a smokestack that doesn’t leak blackness into the place, and doesn’t blow itself out the minute she turns her back. There’ll be a cellar to keep wine, apples, cabbages, root vegetables and the dairy, if she ever gets a cow, and her floor will be polished flagstone that a once-over with a broom will keep clean. She’ll have polished oak counters to replace the splintered pine planking, a great big larder and a separate scullery and, oh, an indoor pump, so they can stop toting water from the creek. She wipes a line of sweat with the back of her hand. Lord knows what’s in the water with all those filthy miners wallowing in it every day. She hefts the iron pot from the floor, fills it with a bucket and a half of water, and stokes the fire.
Outside she hears the steady thump of Jed’s axe and looks up from her dough to watch. With his shirt rolled she can see his corded forearms ripple. A bead of sweat trickles down his cheek on to the chopping block. His muscled thighs press against the skin of his trousers and she imagines his back, hard and smooth under her touch, and his voice, a soft rumble in her ear. Who needs a nice kitchen when you have Jed? She smiles, adding water a trickle at a time to the bread bowl. Certain things in this life you can do without. She supposes running water is one of them.
The wind has come up on the ridge. The cedars brace themselves and Alex can hear the squeal of air through the crags and the branches. It sounds like an accusation; a noxious mix of guilt and indignation swirls within her. Who is that woman to throw her out of town? As if it were her right to do so, as if this muddy valley, that dark little room, is somewhere she wants to stay. There had been nothing to keep her from leaving, from following the direction of her gaze around the grove of manzanita and out of town. Nothing, that is, but the steepness of that trail, the blisters on her feet, the thought of shivering the night away in a thicket, and now she finds she wants to stay, for a while at least, until it’s her choice to leave.
The rain begins to fall, bringing men from the creek. She retreats within the general store—dank with layers of dust, dark for lack of a window.
Every square inch of wall space is covered with rows of empty plank shelves propped with metal rods. Piles of picks and shovels, barrels of black powder litter the floor, and scatterings of mateless boots lie prostrate like rotting carcasses. With the dust and the leather the place smells of a tack room and Alex holds her nose against a sneeze. Along the back wall, behind the counter, are tins of tobacco, bottles of large blue pills marked QUININE and CALOMEL, jars of brandied fruits, and a mound of clothing, heaped like boneless bodies.
Alex sits, resting her head in her hands. The gloom of the place is quickly turning angry determination to self-pity, when a blast of cold air and light rush into the room.
‘Well, hello there, Alex. Heard you been claim jumping a claim jumper. No, no need to get up,’ says Micah. He closes the door behind him and scratches at that empty eye socket. ‘Might as well make use of them clothes.’
She stands anyway as raindrops thwap one by one, each making its own indention in the canvas roof. Lightning flashes blue and the rain begins in earnest.
‘Lordy, here we go,’ says Micah, looking sceptically at his roof. He wears canvas pants like the other men, but he keeps a pencil in a pocket he’s stitched to his flannel. He stands with his hips thrust out as if his back hurts him. His brown hair hangs shaggy over his ears, and his low round forehead and bulbous nose wrinkle in a smile, friendly even with the one eye.
‘John Thomas can be an ass—don’t I know it. Gave me hell my first week as well, so don’t take it personal. Challenged me to a duel for sitting in his chair at supper, and probably would have done me in, too, if Emaline hadn’t put a stop to it. Foolishness, she told us. Grown men going around killing each other when there are plenty other things in this country to do it for us. Makes sense, doesn’t it? That put us straight, of course. That and the double-barrelled shotgun she likes to tote around with her. There is wisdom in women, boy. And pure hell fire. A frightening combination, to be sure, but effective. Remember that. Between you and me, I think ol’ John Thomas has got a thing for her. Not that most of us haven’t, had a thing, now and again—you know what I mean? No?’
Alex feels her cheeks flush. Coloured women, Gran called them. A coloured woman was threatening to kick her out of town? She certainly didn’t fit the description of bawdyhouse ladies Alex has heard about. Emaline’s cheeks were unpainted, and Alex doubts that her shoulders, or any other part of her, would fit into the dresses they wore.
‘Of course you know,’ says Micah, winking his one eye. ‘But John Thomas has got a thing for her.’ Micah rummages for a match, but the lamp on the counter produces only a yellow light, feeble and sickly.
‘Now, what can I do you for? You got yourself a pan, though if Limpy isn’t telling tales, you got some learning to go on how to use it. You’re gonna need a pick and shovel, no doubt, a bit of quicksilver…You got a hat, good. Every miner needs a good solid hat. Keeps off the rain, keeps off the sun. Though both are good in moderation. In moderation, son, like women and whisky. Remember that. Lordy! If you paid any more than fifteen dollars for those boots you got had. Now, don’t go looking down,
