The Fellowship for Alien Detection (21 page)

And now they could hear why through their open windows: the dinging of slot machines. Though it still appeared to be an antiquated pioneer town on the outside, every building on the short, S-shaped strip of Main Street had been gutted and turned into a single giant casino. A banner over the street read “Lucky Springs: Where the Gold Rush Lives On!”

They parked among the buses and walked up the hill into town. Dodger still had the shard with him. He'd thought about getting it into his backpack, but didn't want Harry to notice.

Crowds of pastel-outfitted people milled in the street. The metallic plinking sound was everywhere. At each door they passed, they were met by a cloud of sour-smelling cigarette smoke.

They passed the High Stakes Saloon, a wooden building ringed with porches, swinging bar doors, and a sign that read “Bar fight every hour, featuring the Rough & Tumblers.” Dodger glanced inside and saw the neon blur of slot machines around an antique bar. Next was the First National Bank Buffet and Black Jack's General Store, a room full of card tables.

Harry peered inside. “I don't suppose that fellowship debit card will work on those.”

Dodger saw a half-smile on his dad's face and knew he was making an attempt at a joke. “Probably not.”

“One lucky spin in there and say good-bye to
Viva Value!
,” Harry mused. “We could double our money this trip.”

“Why don't you head in there?” Dodger suggested, thinking this might be the perfect excuse to get rid of Harry and his suspicious glances. “This map place will be boring.”

They stopped. Harry seemed to be considering it, but he also flashed a strange look at Dodger. “You'll be okay, on your own?”

“Yeah,” said Dodger. Wasn't he always on his own?

“Well . . .” Harry glanced into the card room again. Dodger thought he could see Harry fighting between some notion of his responsibility as “a good dad” and what he really wanted to do, which was fulfill his dream to “Double Down and Hit It Big,” like he did sitting on the couch with the little handheld casino game he'd gotten a few Christmases ago. Against that feeling, the dad instinct didn't seem to stand a chance. “All right, let's meet out here in . . . how long?”

Dodger checked his meBox. “Maybe half an hour?”

“Okay, sounds good.”

Dodger turned and started up the street.

“Don't fall asleep in any forests.”

Dodger glanced back. “I won't,” he muttered. He saw Harry staring at him with a look that seemed . . . concerned? Dodger felt a little rush of nerves and almost asked
What?
but then Harry shrugged and lumbered into the card room.

Dodger continued up the street. The museum was another block up, just after the road turned back to rocky dirt from the fresh pavement in the casino section. That change was enough to draw an imaginary border, and the street in front of the museum was nearly deserted.

It was a crooked wooden building set into the base of a perilous rock wall. Gold letters painted on its wide, dusty window read “Aunt Violet's Gold Mine Museum.”

Dodger climbed a rickety porch, pushed through a creaking screen door, and entered a dark, dusty shop crammed with trinkets. The warped floorboards creaked, but otherwise, the shop was silent. The tingling chorus of hundreds of slot machines echoed discordantly behind him.

Above one aisle, a sign with an arrow read “Maps.” Another aisle had a sign that read “Mine Tours.” Dodger started down the map aisle. He passed shelves of fool's gold, cowboy hats, and turquoise beadwork. All the souvenirs were coated in a thin film of dust. He squeezed between two racks of fringed leather jackets and reached a narrow, dimly lit doorway. There was a heavy wooden door with a worn wooden handle. The door had no latch, and with a hard push, it slowly creaked inward.

Dodger entered a large room. He'd expected something like a library. Shelving with narrow drawers, maps laid flat inside. High windows, large flat tables with lamps, lots of dust, a brown smell, but this room was nothing like that. It was hexagonal, the walls made of loosely fitted vertical boards. Every few feet, a huge railroad spike stuck out of the wall. There were maybe twenty in all. Tied to each was a thick frayed rope. These ropes ascended diagonally to the center of the high, wooden ceiling. Here, each rope wound over a pulley, then dropped straight down into a wide, dark hole in the center of the room. The wood plank floor made a hexagon around this chasm. A mine shaft, Dodger guessed. He stepped to the edge and peered gingerly over. Cool air met his face. The ropes groaned, twisting in the slight breeze from the depths. Whatever they led to was hidden in darkness.

Dodger wondered about them, but his more pressing thought was one of disappointment. There were only six maps in the room, one per wall, each set in a shabby frame with cloudy glass. That was it? Some museum. Even he had to admit this was starting to look like a classic Royal Rip-off.

Dodger shuffled over to the nearest map. It was drawn in black ink, its edges tattered and brown with a parchment-like quality and a coffee stain in the right corner. Among rounded sketches of mountain chains, towns were drawn as clusters of miniature buildings. The script writing was difficult to read, but Dodger saw Lucky Springs tucked in the left corner, and the larger grid of Boulder to the northeast. Rivers were drawn in squiggly lines, and small symbols—two pickaxes crossed like an X— dotted the map, indicating mines. A legend in the corner dated the map at 1868. There was no Juliette on this map, but Dodger found himself transfixed by it anyway. Modern maps were always so complete, every area accounted for and organized, but this map was unbound, the land unfinished and wide-open with possibility. Dodger tried to imagine living somewhere in that map, back in the time of tiny towns connected by rail and wagon track, traveling with your wooden trunk containing all your worldly possessions, over wide, blank swaths of country yet-to-be-drawn. Out there, you could draw your own town, find your own place.

Lost in the brown wrinkles of the map as he was, Dodger barely heard a rusty squealing sound. Suddenly a voice spoke: “That one's not for sale.”

Dodger spun around to find a hunched little woman standing in a waist-high box, dangling at the rim of the mine shaft. Ropes at each corner of the box connected to a large double-pulley system, just above the woman's head. She held a rope in her hand for controlling the makeshift elevator. It swung back and forth lightly.

The woman wore faded overalls with a ragged wool sweater underneath. Her gray hair was tied in two braids that fell down over her shoulders. She peered at Dodger, her eyes squinted deep within tan folds. “D'you hear me, boy?” she said. “You took a wrong turn. This isn't part of the shop.”

“I—” Dodger stammered.

The woman huffed and reached down by her side. “Come on now, kid. You got something to say for yourself, then say it. Can't stand a body that doesn't know what to say for itself.” She pulled a long wooden cane out of the elevator. Reaching out with the hooked end, she snared one of the angled ropes and pulled the elevator over to the edge of the shaft.

“I'm . . .” Dodger felt a familiar hesitation. Like he couldn't say who or what he was. “I'm Dodger, and—”

“So? You got a name. So does everybody.” The woman swung a stocky leg over the side of the box and planted a scuffed cowboy boot on the edge of the floor.

“I came here to look at maps,” Dodger finally said. “Is this it?” he asked, indicating the walls.

“It?” The woman finished exiting the elevator, letting it swing free over the shaft, then brushed off her overalls with a heavy sigh. When she looked up at Dodger, she squinted even harder. Her weathered face seemed like it might fold over on itself. “This isn't enough for you?”

“No, well . . .” Dodger glanced meekly at the maps on the walls. “It's just—”

“What, did you think it was going to look like a department store?”

“I—”

The woman waved a hand at him. “Relax, kid, I'm giving you a hard time. Now, you say you came to look at maps?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that a question?”

“No? I mean, no.”

“How old are you, Dodger?” the woman asked skeptically.

“Thirteen.”

“Lord!” She took a step forward and raised her cane at him. “What's the matter with you, anyway? Why aren't you playing video games or asking out girls?”

“I—”

“Man alive.” The woman shook her head.

“I like maps,” Dodger mumbled. “But I'm looking for something. On a map.”

“Hmm . . .” The woman peered at him. “By the look of ya, I thought you were another one of those moron kids that youth is wasted on.”

“Um,” said Dodger.

The woman stuck out her wrinkled hand. “Name's Violet. Call me Vee. So, what are you looking for?”

Dodger shook her hand. It was very dry, coarse. “I need maps of the Southwest, but not new ones. More like from—”

Vee shook her head violently. “No no, not what
maps
. What
thing
are you looking for?”

“Oh, like, a town.”

“A town? And you need old maps because it's . . . what? Ghost town or something?”

“Sort of. I don't know that it's abandoned. It's more like a missing town.”

Dodger expected Vee to think this was a weird thing to say, and yet she nodded her head. Her eyes seemed to widen with interest. “Missing how long?”

“I don't really know,” said Dodger. “At least nineteen years, but maybe more.”

Vee chuckled. “That's not that old. Well, maybe to you it is.”

“Do you have any maps from back then?”

Vee turned and leaned dangerously far out over the mine shaft, snaring the elevator rope with the end of her cane. “Of course I do. Come on.”

She swung back into the little elevator box. The ropes whined. Dodger was amazed by how she could move.

“Where are we going?” Dodger asked.

“You want to see the maps. Well, they're down here.” She looked back at him crossly. “Come on, boy, quit your rubber-legging and let's go.”

Dodger stepped up to the edge of the mine shaft, then took a queasy look down into the blackness. He was not a big fan of dark bottomless holes, or being this close to one, or the idea of going down
into
one in a rickety wooden box.

But Vee grabbed his sleeve and he stumbled out into space, grabbing the rope and sliding into the box.

Vee pulled in her cane and they swung out to the center of the shaft with an unnerving whine from the ropes. The pulleys squealed as she let out the rope, and they began to descend into darkness.

The air was cool. Dodger could barely see his hand in front of his face. Above, the entrance to the shaft was slowly shrinking. Below, there was only more black.

“Hang on, boy,” Vee advised through gritted teeth. The pulleys shrieked and they lurched to a halt. The elevator swung lightly. “Welcome to the permanent collection.”

Dodger couldn't see a thing. A match ripped to life. Vee held up a greasy, red metal oil lamp and lit the wick. Warm light bloomed out through the lamp's soot-stained glass belly.

Now Dodger could see what Vee meant. He also understood what those ropes hanging down into the mine shaft were for. All around them, at various heights, beginning just above and stretching down out of the reach of their meager light, hung tall, skinny wooden boxes, like crates stood on end. Each box was open at the top, with the ends of rolled maps sticking out.

“Cool and dark,” Vee was saying, holding the lamp out and peering at the boxes. “Up at the surface, too many temperature changes. Go down any lower, and the moisture becomes an issue. This depth is perfect for keeping maps fresh.”

Dodger wasn't really listening. He was busy gazing around and below them, wanting to unroll each old map. Even if it took days, years. He'd move here. Sleep in a tent. Pay rent cleaning the slot machines. Whatever. And yet, the shiver of anticipation returned. Juliette was here; he knew it.

Dodger peered over the edge of the elevator, into the darkness below. “What's down there?” he asked.

“This is an old shaft from the gold mine. There's a whole tunnel system down there, but those wretched UCA people blocked off most of it.”

“The who?” Dodger asked.

“UCA is the company that owns the mine. They walled off sections for safety a couple years ago. My mine tour business has never been the same. If I still owed payments on this building, I'd have lost it. Bastards.”

As Dodger looked down, he noticed the crystal getting warmer against his back. Almost as if the crystal was responding to the idea of this mine shaft. Dodger had this weird sense from the crystal, almost as if it wanted to go down there. Maybe he was imagining it.

Dodger looked back around at the hanging map boxes. “How many do you have?” he asked.

“I don't keep count,” Vee was saying, “Keep count, and you might start to think you have enough. Numbers are outlaws—bandits. They make rules in your mind.” Each box had a label marked with jagged handwriting in charcoal pencil. Violet leaned from one to the next. “My rule is: You can never have too many maps. I collect every old one I can get my hands on. Ahh, here we go.”