Auraria: A Novel (24 page)

In the mirror, Holtzclaw could see her ablutions. Ms. Rathbun lifted a hand and unfastened the top two buttons on her collar, which fell open to reveal the flesh at the base of her neck. She applied a dampened cloth across her forehead and down her cheeks.

“I can step outside, Ms. Rathbun …”

“Do you think you could see fit to calling me Lizzie?”

“I suppose I could try,” said Holtzclaw, who was feeling flush from the intimacy “And please call me James.”

“I don’t believe that I will, Holtzclaw. It does not hang on you well. Some people simply do not suit their given names. Neither you nor your employer.”

“He’s not a Hiram, is he?” said Holtzclaw. “It was suitable for his boyhood in Auraria, but it’s not a name for a businessman.”

Ms. Rathbun patted her throat and re-fixed her buttons, then joined Holtzclaw at the cluster of furniture designed for conversation. She collapsed into an overstuffed club chair, reclining as though it were a fainting couch, and exhaled deeply.

“Tell me, Holtzclaw, how large is your share in your employer’s company? Thirty percent? Forty?”

“There is no share,” said Holtzclaw. “I have a salary.”

“Do you mean that he doesn’t include you in the profits? Holtzclaw, that’s unconscionable!”

“It is an excellent employment that has kept me in good stead, professionally and financially.”

“With all his rhetoric about giving better jobs to the people of this town! You’re the one scampering through the valley while he stays tucked up in his office. The rich are the laziest of men. They pay others to do the hard work.”

“That is not Shadburn’s philosophy,” said Holtzclaw.

“Of course he says that it’s not his philosophy,” said Ms. Rathbun. “But what is his practice? Who is drafting contracts or pleading with widows to surrender their family homesteads or driving away sweet potato farmers? And he pockets the profits, of course. You get your … salary.” She made the word a small and contemptible thing. “And why do you care if it’s profitable if you are not owed a portion of the profits? Because success is its own reward? Because you enjoy the beaming glow of completion and the pat on the back of a job well done? Are they redeemable in coin, Holtzclaw? Can you cash them in for comfort in your old age?”

“I suppose not,” said Holtzclaw.

“He’s buying respectability. He’s buying eminence. Happiness. And he’s getting them. But who makes it possible? Why, you do, Holtzclaw. You are doing these … chores … for a man who thinks he’s above them. You are running your feet raw. You are going hungry while Shadburn gorges himself on the foods of his childhood. I know all about it, Holtzclaw. Sampson sends up platter after platter to his offices.”

She lifted herself from the reclined position and leaned forward, arms crossed, elbows on her knees. Her voice dropped to a whisper; Holtzclaw, despite himself, leaned forward too. “We have an opportunity to earn our own riches. And you can be a full partner. All we need is a little land of our own, right on the shore.”

Holtzclaw knew this was a ploy, a manipulation. But Ms. Rathbun—Lizzie—did not seem strange or desperate. She was not a ghost, or troubled by ghosts. Rather, she seemed to be the most reasonable person he’d found in Auraria. The one most like him, or most like what he wished to be.

“I can’t work against my employer,” he finally said, because he could find nothing better. “I couldn’t do anything that would harm him.”

“Ah, loyal Holtzclaw. Well, loyalty isn’t a bad trait. You’re right. His failure would be a loss to everyone, but you can make a side bet on his success. The men down there at the chuck-luck wheel sometimes put down money on numbers that aren’t their own. And what’s the harm in that?”

Indeed, where was the harm in that? And it was better that Holtzclaw explore this avenue a little, see where Ms. Rathbun thought she had found an opportunity. If Holtzclaw did not at least feign an interest, she might turn to the railroad men or to outside investors, and that could prove a much greater danger to Shadburn’s plans. “And what will you do with this land? Sell it? Hold it?”

“No, Holtzclaw. We’ll build. Something useful. Something of our own.” There was money in her voice.

Holtzclaw nodded. “Shadburn wants to own it all.”

“Would his plans be harmed if he owned only ninety-nine percent of the lakeshore, rather than a stifling hundred?”

A bit of competition would benefit everyone, conceded Holtzclaw. It may whet Shadburn’s appetite for profits again, make him more of a Shadburn and less of a Hiram.

“Find me a piece of shorefront,” said Ms. Rathbun. “I would be happy with even the smallest slice. There is plenty of profit, even in that.”

She held out her hand, not horizontally to kiss, but vertically, as for business agreements. A clock in the room counted three seconds. Her hand trembled slightly from the exertion of extending it over the chasm between them. It was a trick known as the Toledo Tremble—a splendid tool because it exploits the social compunction to take any hand that is offered. Impossible agreements have been reached because a single hand looks lonely. Holtzclaw recognized that this trick was being employed against him, and his esteem for Ms. Rathbun rose.

When Holtzclaw’s hand met hers, he was surprised to feel an exhilaration within him, a new animating purpose. If the dice came up for Shadburn, as they always did—then for once, after so much honest work, he would profit, too.

Chapter Fifteen

The hydrocannon filled an entire boxcar, and Holtzclaw spent much of the day supervising its unloading, transport, and installation for its first test. The bulk of the cannon was canvas hose, carefully sewn into a long tapered shape. At the river end, where the water was collected, the opening was as wide as a man’s shoulders; a thousand feet later, at the end where the cannon nozzle was fitted, the hose diameter was only a palm span.

The cannon nozzle was made of twenty feet of brass. Its operation was simple: a large lever controlled an internal valve, and eight handles allowed four men to lift and aim the cannon. The only adornment was “Lawson Foundry,” stamped in raised letters along one fitting. The catalog from which Holtzclaw had ordered this cannon offered various decorated forms, the most fanciful of which was a dragon maw that bellowed water, not fire. The operators held on to various spikes, wings, and horns. Perhaps some tyrant might order the dragon’s maw edition to obliterate the ancestral terrain of his enemies—wash their homeland into the sea.

The target for their hydrocannon was a knobby outcropping called the Hag’s Head. From certain angles, the rock did resemble an old woman’s profile. A smooth wall, peaked at the top, was her cowl. Craggy ledges formed her cheekbones and nose. A peculiar jut, high enough that a trail could run underneath, represented her chin, and a tuft of hanging roots were the hairs of her wart. Holtzclaw felt a tickle of joy at being able to reduce the ugly image to gravel.

Johnston and Carter, the twin railroad men, had come out to see the operation of the hydrocannon. They had recommended this device to clear the valley, extolling its cost efficiency and reputation for rapidity. If all went well with these tests, the hydrocannon could be turned to general cleaning work. Swaths of small trees, brush and bracken, and even fences, sheds, and springhouses could be washed away.

A runner took the message down the length of hose that the operation was ready to start, and soon the hose began to plump with water. The four men at the brass nozzle braced themselves. The weight of water behind the canvas tubing bucked and swayed, and the operators struggled to hold on to the device. Inside, it was ready to explode. Holtzclaw gave the order to open fire.

The force of the water cleanly decapitated the Hag. Her nose, eyes, and the top of her cowl came down as one piece, then were shattered by a second blast from the hydrocannon. Holtzclaw was stunned that the formation fractured so neatly. He wondered if it had been solid rock after all. The hydrocannon filleted the mountain face, cutting like a chef’s best knife. Granite boulders tumbled through the valley. Trees, severed at the trunk, rolled down the mucky hills. Geysers of mud splashed back to drench the hose operators, spattering even Holtzclaw and the railroad twins standing at a distance. Gravel like grapeshot ricocheted around their ears.

Then, like someone turning off a spigot, the jet of water ceased, and the operators stumbled forwards.

With the creek powering the cannon at a constant rate, the pressure shouldn’t have dropped. The only explanation was a leak, then, or the sudden disappearance of the creek. Holtzclaw was relieved to see water pouring forth from a tear in the hose a few hundred feet away; it was simpler to repair a rip than appease an angry water princess.

“You’ve sprung a leak, Holtzclaw,” said Johnston or Carter, who followed his gaze.

“Quite a mess,” said the other.

Holtzclaw excused himself from the presence of the railroad twins and went to investigate. The flaw in the hose was total and catastrophic, beyond repair, and strengthening this patch would only transfer the next rupture to another place on the line. The hydrocannon was worthless here. Auraria’s water was too powerful; it was naturally resistant to being bent and worked. Holtzclaw hadn’t seen any water wheels or mill races anywhere—perhaps they had been rejected as well.

He’d washed away time and money—both scarce resources—to no avail, for now he’d have to go back to the old ways of men and shovels, as though nothing had been improved upon since the days of the pharaohs. He ground the ends of the hydrocannon into the mud beneath his boot. That this incident was not sabotage made him feel even worse. People can be bribed or cajoled. Nature has no real master.

Holtzclaw turned to walk back up toward the former site of the Hag’s Head, where the railroad twins and their men were waiting. From this slight distance back, he could see how completely the hydrocannon had transformed the place. The Hag’s Head had been inverted into a three-story grotto. Men stood inside of it, chatting. Holtzclaw heard their voices as though they were right at his ear. His first thought was that some new spirit had gotten loose, but then he realized that the hydrocannon by chance had carved a perfect acoustic resonator. The men’s voices echoed forth, magnified by the shape of the rock.

To the railroad twins he confessed the failure of the experiment. There was much agitated grumbling about unnecessary expense, unforeseen delays, and Holtzclaw was entirely sympathetic to their plight.

The hydrocannon was carted back to the workers’ camp in Asbestos Hollow. The hose was a nasty tangle. Holtzclaw hated the sight of it, a good tool ruined, and he excused himself while the men were still trying to wrestle some of the slippery loops out of the tracks made by the coal wagons.

Then Holtzclaw turned to look downhill, and a wondrous vision awaited him. Large boulders had been trapped against a harder ridge of granite. Small stones, gravel, and mud had caught in this jam and formed a promontory. It was large and flat, at least a quarter acre.

New land had been made! No survey map showed it and no deeds yet described it. It had no owner, and thus, it belonged to Holtzclaw as the first to discover it. He had no flag to plant, but in his office, he had the paper to draw up a deed, which was the surer way.

Holtzclaw had come to believe in wondrous signs while here in Auraria, but none was more wondrous than this happy accident of water, destruction, agglutination, accretion. A soothing peace filled Holtzclaw. Now he was not only working for Shadburn. He was working for a new vision—his own. He could see it: a grand structure of some kind, with his own name. He should have pressed Ms. Rathbun for more details. The form arising in his mind’s eye, upon the little promontory, was hazy.

#

Holtzclaw’s intended route back into town—a well-trod path descending from the Brightwater Creek to the Needle’s Eye—was blocked by less felicitous tailings from the hydrocannon. He picked his way instead down the valley slopes, to the Lost Creek.

At the riverbank, Bogan and Moss were working a rocker box. Bogan, using a shovel, loaded muddy runoff into a hopper. Moss operated a wooden handle that agitated the hopper, forcing the heavier material into a series of baffles. Periodically, one man would fetch a pail of water from the river and pour it over the ridged surface. Most material was washed over the edge of each subsequent terrace. But some—a heavy, rich, black sand—was caught against the terrace edges. When the washing was done, Bogan and Moss scraped the recovered sand into their pans and took it to the river, where they panned out a star field of gold.

“Looks like a good pan,” said Holtzclaw.

“Yeah, it’s been good panning all afternoon,” said Bogan. “Whatever you were exploding up there had plenty of metal in it.”

“We were clearing a ridge for the railroad line under the Hag’s Head,” said Holtzclaw.

“Aw, the Hag’s Head?” said Moss. “I used to go courting up there. She makes every other girl look better.”

“Is that what you told them, Moss?” said Bogan. “‘You’re not as ugly as that hag?’ Is that why no one wants to go courting with you nowadays?”

“No one’s courting with me. I’m too busy working before Mr. Moneybags drowns all the good spots.”

“Flakes like this are just chips off the big block,” said Bogan. “No one is going to get rich on this runoff. There’s no nuggets, no coins, no ingots. We’ll have some good eating and drinking tonight, for sure, but we’ll be so weary that we’ll hardly be able to enjoy it.”