Crown of Dust by Mary Volmer Page B

“Be a soldier.”
    â€œPa says I’m meant to be a pastor.”
    It must have been spring. The wind was colder than the air and the smell of mountain laurel and apple blossom made her eyes water. She wiped her nose and rubbed the snot across Peter’s leg.
    â€œStop.” He punched her in the arm and fought to stay balanced. She’d begun to enjoy teasing him like this. She didn’t know why.
    Alex dropped to the ground, scanned the rows of apple trees for Farmer Hollinger, who hated children in his orchard even more than birds. “My Pa was a soldier,” she said, and Peter swung upside down by his legs. His hair fell on end and she could see up his nostrils. “My Pa’s dead.”
    Peter knew both of these facts, but she often dangled the death of her parents above him like a prize gem, though she never understood his fascination.
    â€œYou can be anything,” Peter said once in explanation. “Anything you want to be.” They both knew it wasn’t true.
    She swings the pick, ducks as metal rebounds off rock. Chunks of granite and shale cascade around her. She swings again.
    She used to lie in bed wondering what it would be like to be Peter. What would it be like to call someone mother and someone father, to wake each morning to organ music and hymns, for as a small child this was how Alex imagined Peter starting every day. Alex held no such illusions now.
    Down comes a satisfying clump of red clay and a chunk of granite, speckled black like dirty rock salt. Again and again she swings, finding a haunting satisfaction in the crumbling mountainside, as if she were tearing away pieces of herself with the chunks of rock and sand, as if digging far enough would bring her face to face with … Who? What? She doesn’t know any more. Perhaps digging is enough; to make a small indention in an unknown mountain. She digs until her breath comes hard, and her shoulders and back burn. She sucks in cold damp air, rubbing rough stones back and forth in her hands. Drops them. Olive-colored plants with velvet lobes nearly a foot long grow out from the hillside. Root stems, some thick as a man’s arm, course the wall as if holding it together or clawing to get out. And there, wedged in the crook of a wooden elbow where bits of rock and dirt have gathered, is an egg-sized stone. Lusterless yellow and much heavier than it looks, she thinks, rolling it back and forth in the palm of her hand.
    â€œAlex?”
    A shadow drapes itself across her. She whips around, but it’s only David, squinting up at the crater, down at her hand. He’d come up so silent.
    â€œWhat is it you have there?”
    David steps closer. Alex backs away a bit, opens her mouth to answer, then looks down at the rock in her hand. She holds the solid mass out to David.
    â€œGold?”

4
    Of course, as soon as she says the word gold she begins to doubt, and while David does not deny her statement, he does not confirm it either. He drops to his knees and bows his head as if in prayer, rubbing ore between his fingers. He touches his fingers to his tongue, and his eyes grow round. His eyes track the angle of the ravine from base to skyline.
    â€œDavid?” says Alex, but he’s up now and striding out of the clearing. He looks back once, a gesture she receives as an invitation to follow.
    Men attach, like links in a chain, as they weave down the trail. The only sound is the sucking of boots in the mud; even the birds are silent, watching this strange migration. The afternoon sun, magnified and reflected through drops of water beading from tree leaves and rooftops, creates a million shimmering lights dripping to the ground. Alex jogs to keep up with David and ahead of those boots behind her. She’s surprised to find a small knot of men already waiting outside the general store.
    â€œWhat in the Sam Hill is going on? Back in ten minutes, you said. What is everyone …?”
    Limpy pushes