PART ONE
XX62
Gold
Ba dies in the night, prompting them to seek two silver dollars.
Sam’s tapping an angry beat come morning, but Lucy, before they go, feels a need to speak. Silence weighs harder on her, pushes till she gives way.
“Sorry,” she says to Ba in his bed. The sheet that tucks him is the only clean stretch in this dim and dusty shack, every surface black with coal. Ba didn’t heed the mess while living and in death his mean squint goes right past it. Past Lucy. Straight to Sam. Sam the favorite, round bundle of impatience circling the doorway in too-big boots. Sam clung to Ba’s every word while living and now won’t meet the man’s gaze. That’s when it hits Lucy: Ba really is gone.
She digs a bare toe into dirt floor, rooting for words to make Sam listen. To spread benediction over years of hurt. Dust hangs ghostly in the light from the lone window. No wind to stir it.
Something prods Lucy’s spine.
“Pow,” Sam says. Eleven to Lucy’s twelve, wood to her water as Ma liked to say, Sam is nonetheless shorter by a full foot. Looks young, deceptively soft. “Too slow. You’re dead.” Sam cocks fingers back on pudgy fists and blows on the muzzle of an imagined gun. The way Ba used to. Proper way to do things, Ba said, and when Lucy said Teacher Leigh said these new guns didn’t clog and didn’t need blowing, Ba judged the proper way was to slap her. Stars burst behind her eyes, a flint of pain sharp in her nose.
Lucy’s nose never did grow back straight. She thumbs it, thinking. Proper way, Ba said, was to let it heal itself. When he looked at Lucy’s face after the bloom of bruise faded, he nodded right quick. Like he’d planned it all along. Proper that you should have something to rememory you for sassing.
There’s dirt on Sam’s brown face, sure, and gunpowder rubbed on to look (Sam thinks) like Indian war paint, but beneath it all, Sam’s face is unblemished.
Just this once, because Ba’s fists are helpless under the blanket—and maybe she is good, is smart, thinks in some small part that riling Ba might make him rise to swing at her—Lucy does what she never does. She cocks her hands, points her fingers. Prods Sam’s chin where paint gives way to baby fat. The jaw another might call delicate, if not for Sam’s way of jutting it.
“Pow yourself,” Lucy says. She pushes Sam like an outlaw to the door.
Sun sucks them dry. Middle of the dry season, rain by now a distant memory. Their valley is bare dirt, halved by a wriggle of creek. On this side are the miners’ flimsy shacks, on the other the moneyed buildings with proper walls, glass windows. And all around, circumscribing, the endless hills seared gold; and hidden within their tall, parched grasses, ragtag camps of prospectors and Indians, knots of vaqueros and travelers and outlaws, and the mine, and more mines, and beyond, and beyond.
Sam squares small shoulders and sets out across the creek, red shirt a shout in the barrenness.
When they first arrived there was still long yellow grass in this valley, and scrub oaks on the ridge, and poppies after rain. The flood three and a half years back rooted up those oaks, drowned or chased away half the people. Yet their family stayed, set alone at the valley’s far edge. Ba like one of those lightning-split trees: dead down the center, roots still gripping on.
And now that Ba’s gone?
Lucy fits her bare feet to Sam’s prints and keeps quiet, saving spit. The water’s long gone, the world after the flood left somehow thirstier.
And long gone, Ma.
* * *
—
Across the creek the main street stretches wide, shimmering and dusty as snakeskin. False fronts loom: saloon and blacksmith, trading post and bank and hotel. People lounge in the shadows like lizards.
Jim sits in the general store, scritching in his ledger. It’s wide as him and half as heavy. They say he keeps accounts of what’s owed from every man in the territory.
“Excuse us,” Lucy murmurs, weaving through the kids who loiter near the candy, eyes hungering for a solution to their boredom. “Sorry. Pardon me.” She shrinks herself small. The kids part lazily, arms knocking her shoulders. At least today they don’t reach out to pinch.
Jim’s still fixed on his ledger.
Louder now: “Excuse me, sir?”
A dozen eyes prick Lucy, but still Jim ignores her. Knowing already that the idea’s a bad one, Lucy edges her hand onto the counter to flag his attention.
Jim’s eyes snap up. Red eyes, flesh raw at the rims. “Off,” he says. His voice flicks, steel wire. His hands go on writing. “Washed that counter this morning.”
Jagged laughter from behind. That doesn’t bother Lucy, who after years lived in towns like this has no more tender parts to tear. What scoops her stomach hollow, the way it was when Ma died, is the look in Sam’s eyes. Sam squints mean as Ba.
Ha! Lucy says because Sam won’t. Ha! Ha! Her laughter shields them, makes them part of the pack.
“Only whole chickens today,” Jim says. “No feet for you. Come back tomorrow.”
“We don’t need provisions,” Lucy lies, already tasting the melt of chicken skin on her tongue. She forces herself taller, clenches hands at her sides. And she speaks her need.
I’ll tell you the only magic words that matter, Ba said when he threw Ma’s books in the storm-born lake. He slapped Lucy to stop her crying, but his hand was slow. Almost gentle. He squatted to watch Lucy wipe snot across her face. Ting wo, Lucy girl: On credit.
Ba’s words work some sort of magic, sure enough. Jim pauses his pen.
“Say that again, girl?”
“Two silver dollars. On credit.” Ba’s voice booming at her back, in her ear. Lucy can smell his whiskey breath. Daren’t turn. Should his shovel hands clap her shoulders, she doesn’t know if she’ll scream or laugh, run or hug him round the neck so hard she won’t come loose no matter how he cusses. Ba’s words tumble out the tunnel of her throat like a ghost clambering from the dark: “Payday’s Monday. All we need’s a little stretch. Honest.”
She spits on her hand and extends it.
Jim’s no doubt heard this refrain from miners, from their dry wives and hollow children. Poor like Lucy. Dirty like Lucy. Jim’s been known to grunt, push the needed item over, and charge double interest come payday. Didn’t he once give out bandages on credit after a mine accident? To people desperate like Lucy.
But none of them quite like Lucy. Jim’s gaze measures her. Bare feet. Sweat-stained dress in ill-fitting navy, made from scraps of Ba’s shirt fabric. Gangly arms, hair rough as chicken wire. And her face.
“Grain I’ll give your pa on credit,” Jim says. “And whatever animal parts you find fit to eat.” His lip curls up, flashes a strip of wet gum. On someone else it might be called a smile. “For money, get him to the bank.”