Foxfire Page 4

  “Is this all?” she whispered. “They look so deserted.”

  “Some of them are,” said Dart, “though the real ghost town’s up the canyon towards the mine. But we’ll run down Creek Street so you can get the lay of the place. It straggles, you know; no room in the gulch for neat city planning.”

  Amanda was silent as Dart drove slowly down the main street. Here there were a dozen buildings, slightly larger than the cabins they had passed but exhibiting the same air of dilapidated impermanence. There was one two-story building which said “Miner’s Union Hall” in black letters across the front of a false gable, next to this a smaller frame box labeled “Pottner’s General Store,” then a dimly lit saloon unlabeled in deference to Prohibition, but from the back room there came the only sounds in Lodestone. Men’s voices uplifted in argument, the ping of slot machines, and the feeble jangle of a piano playing “The Sheik.” Then another string of dark fronts and another saloon, whereupon the road ended in the mountainside and a thicket of cholla cactus.

  “Thriving metropolis,” said Amanda, trying to laugh. “I guess I won’t get lost. And where is our particular mansion?”

  “Up the mine road a bit—we’ll take a short cut through Back Lane.” Dart turned the car and they jounced over some well-worn ruts on the desert floor, then climbed a sharp rise. “This lane’s not respectable, by the way,” said Dart laughing suddenly. “Don’t ever walk through it alone, you might get contaminated.”

  “Why?” she said, staring at four tiny cabins set in a prim row like toy houses; above each miniature doorway there hung a red bulb.

  “Cribs,” said Dart. “Where the ladies of the town take care of the miner’s needs.”

  She stared at the four little cabins with the fascinated interest harlotry arouses in the purest female breast and, momentarily diverted from her growing dismay, she said, “But their lights are all dark, too.”

  Dart shrugged. “Miners mostly don’t have any money except on pay nights.” The Ford turned west and climbed a block. He waved his hand toward another huddle of grayish shapes. “Bosses’ Row—Town society lives in these. That bigger one on the corner is the Mabletts’—mine superintendent.”

  She registered a change in his voice as he mentioned this name but her entire intelligence was marshaled to combat an engulfing bleakness. It was not precisely because the town and these “best houses” were so small and starkly unpainted, dwarfed not only by the mountain wall behind them but even by the giant saguaro cacti which towered above them like menacing fingers pointing to the blacker sky.

  It was more of a loneliness, a forlorn helplessness to withstand the vast impersonality about her. Lodestone, from which she had hoped so much, had not withstood. This huddle of puny shacks and silence did not constitute even a toe hold against the encroachments of the alien force. I’m too tired, she thought, and hungry. This terror, this loneliness, is physical. Things always look worse at night.

  “Buck up, Andy—” Dart said, putting his hand on her knee. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Yes. Yes,” she said, comforted at once, for how could she be lonely when she had Dart, who understood sometimes when you least expected it.

  “The place was much bigger, of course, during the boom before 1900”—he went on half apologetically—“up the road another half a mile there’s lots of big houses still, all falling to pieces. That’s the ghost town where Madame Cunningham lives in her thirty-room mansion.”

  “Oh?” said Amanda.

  “I wrote you about her. She’s been a good friend to me. Strange old lady, used to be a Creole singer. Her husband, Red Bill Cunningham, struck it rich here, located this mine. He built her a palace in the wilderness. She won’t leave it. She’s not really so strange though—” he added thoughtfully. “She has vision.”

  Amanda sighed. “Dart, dear—aren’t we nearly to our place?”

  “Yes. Right beyond the Company hospital there.”

  She looked at the Company hospital and saw a two-story, unpainted six-room house, with a light in an unshaded downstairs window. A man was sitting by the window in an armchair. His head was thrown back and he seemed to be asleep.

  “That’s the doctor. Hugh Slater. Probably drunk,” said Dart indifferently. “He often is. But a swell guy when he’s sober.”

  “That’s nice,” said Amanda. She saw the little square wooden shanty with a slanting stovepipe that was the only dwelling beyond the hospital and prayed that it wasn’t theirs. Dart stopped the car in front of the shanty and opened the door.

  “You’re supposed to”—she said—“carry the bride over the doorstep——” She heard her voice rise high and shut her mouth tight. Dart grinned, picked her up and carried her up the path. He kicked open the door and set her down on a linoleum-covered floor. Then he lit a kerosene lamp. “Electricity doesn’t run past the hospital yet, but it’s a strong, wellbuilt little shack, only decent one I could find for the money. Someday I hope we can get some plumbing in.”

  “There isn’t any plumbing?” she asked in a small careful voice.

  “Oh, there’s a sink with a hand pump in the kitchen, but I’m afraid there’s also a Chic Sales in the back.” He looked at her ruefully.

  “That’s all right—” she said, “I’ve used those camping in Maine. I hope it has a crescent in the door.” She walked very slowly around the two rooms, while Dart held the lamp. In the kitchen there was an iron sink, a kerosene two-burner stove, and a chipped enamel table. In the other room there was a bureau, a red overstuffed rocker with a tattered antimacassar, an enamel chair from which the paint had peeled in leprous scars, a round table, and the bed. The bedstead was of brass with one knob missing from the headboard. The mattress lay exposed in all its nakedness of lumps and stained ticking.

  Amanda sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Dart. He put the lamp on the table and sat beside her. “It does look pretty bad. I’m sorry.” He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

  She caught her breath and gave him a wan smile. She was thinking of the embroidered table linens her mother had given her, of the three pairs of monogrammed sheets Mrs. Lawrence had insisted on including in the trousseau. Suddenly she stiffened, peering at the walls by the flickering light of the lamp. “What’re those, Dart?” she cried, “those pictures on the walls. It looks like a girl with bloomers, and a woman in corsets.”

  Dart examined the wall. He came and sat beside her again. “I’m afraid, my child, that our house is papered with pages from the Sears Roebuck catalogue.”

  She stared at his rueful face, then at the walls again, then she fell over on the bed shaking with laughter. “It’s all right, darling—” she choked. “It’ll be all right tomorrow, we’ll transform the place. It just needs paint, and some new furniture ... I know.”

  Dart looked down at the flushed face and wet eyes under the childish tousle of short gold hair, and neither his love nor his keen sense of justice prevented a flash of misgiving. So she was disappointed in Lodestone and in the home he had provided for her, she did not know how scarce was any decent housing in a mining camp where uncertainty and impermanence pervade every act and thought. She had no appreciation of the importance of his job, or his luck in finding one so challenging now when most of the mines were shutting down. She did not know that no matter how much one does oneself, paint and furniture still cost money, and that a salary of $160 a month will not cover extras, when there is a loan to be repaid and living costs are so high in isolated mining towns.

  He had told her these things and she had agreed with the enthusiastic charm which was one of her greatest attractions, but she did not know. She would learn, of course. He sighed, regretting that a creature so delightfully compounded of emotion and romantic illusions must be tethered. The word “tethered” echoed unpleasantly in his mind. He put his arms around her, holding her close to him. Her little hysteria had passed and they were both silent, pressed against each other for a long moment. Then he went back to the car t
o start the hauling in of their luggage.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AMANDA AWOKE to crisp sunlight, the chill of the mountain air, and a feeling of buoyancy which soon evaporated.

  She had expected Dart to prolong his vacation another day so as to help her with the heaviest unpacking, and explain to her the idiosyncrasies of the hand pump and kerosene stove.

  Dart, however, was dressed and ready to leave when she awoke at seven. He had made coffee and he stood by the bed with a cup in his hand looking down at her. “Good-bye,” he said gently. “Take it easy today, I’ll be down off the hill by six. Never mind about fixing supper, we can get something at Mrs. Zuchowski’s hotel. Here’s ten bucks for supplies. You remember I showed you the General Store on Creek Street?”

  “I guess so,” she murmured, reaching her arms up around his neck and pulling him down to her, “but surely you don’t have to go to the mine today, they can manage without you one more day.”

  “I hope not,” said Dart, kissing her warm, sleepy mouth, then straightening. “I fear I’m not indispensable, but there was plenty trouble when I left and I think I can deal with it better than the shift boss who’s been pinch-hitting for me.”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  “Discontented men, bad timbering, too much water seepage.” He grinned at her expression and put the coffee cup down on the dusty table. “Normal mining troubles, my child, and fun to lick ’em....By the way, if Mrs. Mablett turns up don’t let her get your goat; she’s the mine superintendent’s wife, and Mablett hates my guts.”

  “Why?” asked Amanda sitting up and staring at him.

  “Because we don’t see eye to eye on anything.” Dart frowned and started buttoning his battered leather jacket, but seeing her worried eyes, he reluctantly explained further. “He’s lousing up the mine and the men too, and poor old Tyson’s not strong enough to stop him.”

  Tyson’s was the only name Amanda knew in Lodestone. Alexander Tyson, general manager of the Shamrock Mine, was an elderly widower who lived alone near the mine and suffered from a heart condition, but whose reputation, gained from forty years of mining engineering, had been so outstanding that Amanda had actually heard him mentioned by one of George and Jean’s Greenwich friends. It was also Mr. Tyson who had lent Dart two hundred dollars for his trip East to marry her.

  “Could Mr. Mablett fire you?” she asked nervously.

  “Not without Tyson’s okay. He would if he could I dare say. ’Bye, Andy love, I’ve got to hurry. See you tonight.”

  Amanda jumped out of bed, and in one of her bridal nightgowns of rose crepe de chine and Chantilly lace, she peered through the dirty window watching Dart get into the car. It was then that she realized what had puzzled her about his appearance. He was dressed to go underground, knowing that he would not have time to change today before the shift began. He was wearing stained blue jeans and short rubber boots. The ancient leather jacket which he would discard in the mine had matted into oilv patches. He looked taller than ever and more boyish, his dark wavy hair glistening with an almost reddish cast in the bright sun. She was conscious of slight shock, for he did not look like the Dart she knew, he looked like a hired man her family had employed one summer in Vermont when they had thought farming might be fun.

  She watched while the Lizzie balked as usual, then coughed and finally bumped off up the dirt road toward the mine three miles away.

  He forgot to wave, she thought.

  She looked across and up the dry, stony creek bed toward a low red-brown mountain tufted with the dark green of creosote bush, prickly pear, and cholla. The mountain had a limestone cap, faintly rosy under the slanting rays of the sun. I suppose that’s pretty, she thought, but there was no thrill of awareness. The mountain cast a shadow black as a cave across the canyon, and the saguaros towering above the pebbly desert floor seemed to her as hostile and distorted as they had by night.

  She turned back into the cluttered cabin. She looked at the rumpled bed. So close they had been there together in each other’s arms last night, and yet this morning he had hardly been aware of her, had shut her off into a separate compartment, not thinking that she might be appalled by unfamiliar chores, by his totally unexpected hints of “trouble,” by people she had never heard of—by homesickness.

  Amanda sat down on the bed and stared at the fitted leather dressing case Mrs. Lawrence had given her. “I know, darling, it’s an extravagance but I want you to have it.” The dressing case lay on the linoleum floor, its open cover resting on a rough two-by-four riser. The gilt and tortoise-shell fittings sparkled from their blue satin pockets. She looked at the crystal bottle which her mother had so carefully filled, drop by drop with Chanel No. 5 toilet water for her, and burst into tears.

  After ten minutes her sense of proportion began to return and because certain truths which fitted her repentant heart had been much better formulated by others, quotations gleaned from years of English classes flitted more or less appropriately through her mind.

  Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;

  ’Tis woman’s whole existence.

  Byron ... always smugly patronizing about women, but maybe he had something there. “Men must work and women must weep...” Who said that? But it doesn’t matter. Stop wallowing, Amanda. She got off the bed, knotted a blue silk negligee firmly around her waist, and carried Dart’s coffee cup back to the kitchen. Think of the pioneer mothers, she said to herself. You wanted to pioneer. Her spirits recovered after a cup of Dart’s leftover coffee and some dry bread. She sat down and made a list of supplies to be bought, feeling matronly and efficient. The mess in the cabin must wait, had to wait until she got soap powder and—and—ammonia? she thought, trying to remember what her mother’s cleaning women had used.

  Anxious to make a good impression on Lodestone, she dressed herself in a flecked mauve heather wool suit and a pink cashmere pullover, both products of the trip to Scotland last summer, and sallied forth onto the road. It was dusty and hard walking on the myriads of small stones, in her thin oxfords. And I thought there’d be sidewalks, she thought, laughing at herself.

  As she passed the Company hospital she examined it with determined indulgence. What if it was only a rickety unpainted cottage reminding her of shacks along the railroad tracks outside of New Haven? They were lucky to have a “hospital” at all. And there were always the big towns, Phoenix or Tucson for anything serious, of course. Only seven hours drive to Tucson, Dart said, not much more to Phoenix. As she started on past the hospital, the door opened and a man came down the two wooden steps. He sauntered up to her. “Hello,” he said, without enthusiasm, “I suppose you’re Dartland’s bride.—I’m Hugh Slater.”

  “The doctor?” she asked uncertainly, her eager smile dying as it met no response. His small, greenish eyes stared at her with disapproval. He was a stocky man in his late thirties—only an inch or two taller than Amanda. From his sandy hair, sharply receding at the temples, to his blunt-toed leather boots, he gave an impression of squareness. He wore a small clipped mustache, like an English subaltern, and it looked like dry straw against his freckled skin.

  “Well, I’ve got a degree—” he said sourly, answering her question. “What I actually am here is a goddam combine of midwife, bonesetter, and veterinarian.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders and lit himself a cigarette without offering her one. As he did this she noticed his hands; square, freckled, and covered with coppery hairs. They shook with a faint tremor.

  Hangover! she thought, enlightened. Of course. And she smiled vaguely, preparing to walk on.

  “Lodestone society’ll be charmed by all that lipstick and those bloody fingernails...” said Hugh. “Just like Big Ruby’s, in No. 3 crib.”

  Crib? thought Amanda, then she remembered the four little cabins with the red lamps. She raised her eyebrows and then she laughed. “You can’t be true,” she said. “I’ve read you in a hundred stories; the surly woman-hater, the embittered doctor, drowning his troubl
es in bad temper and drink. Underneath there beats a heart of gold.” She saluted him and walked on.

  Hugh opened his mouth and shut it again, staring after her.

  Amanda continued down the road towards Pottner’s Store, where she encountered more hostilities so foreign to her experience that she had trouble in recognizing them.

  Her shopping expedition was unsatisfactory for several reasons. In the General Store, she was at once confused by the absence of brand names she knew, the scarcity of fresh vegetables and any meat but pork, uncertain what to buy and appalled by the high prices. The ten dollars, it soon developed, would cover only the dullest staples. And in all innocence she offended Mrs. Pottner, the owner, who was serving behind the counter in a white butcher apron. Amanda responded pleasantly to Mrs. Pottner’s greeting, smiled at jocular remarks about newlyweds, but she treated the lady with no more warmth or intimacy than she would have one of the clerks in the corner grocery at home. Pearl Pottner, however, was one of Lodestone’s social arbiters and instantly resentful. It was some time before Amanda came to understand, first, the democracy of a Western mining camp and, second, the wariness which the label “New Yorker” aroused in the female bosoms.

  Amanda, intent on her difficult purchases, did not notice the disappearance of Mrs. Pottner’s smiles, nor guessed that her exclamation “Heavens, I had no idea butter would be so dreadfully expensive” grated on her hearer in its entirety. The clipped Eastern voice, the “lah-di-dah” choice of words, the complete unconsciousness of Mrs. Pottner as a person, above all the implied criticism, induced a mottled purple to spread across Pearl’s fat face.