Crown of Dust. Mary Volmer

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       5

      ‘Your hands,’ Alex says, as David helps the boy up the stairs. Below them, Limpy’s tuneless baritone leads a round of ‘Turkey in the Straw’, a silly song that David has never liked.

      ‘Turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay,’ the men roar, with Emaline’s voice raftering up an octave higher, just a bit more in tune. ‘Roll ‘em up and twist ‘em up a high tuckahaw…’

      The boy joins in, obviously doesn’t know the words, reverts back to the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’.

      ‘Shhhh,’ David says as they near the top of the stairs. ‘Your voice is shrill.’

      ‘Such big hands,’ says Alex, making a fist, holding it up for David to see. ‘Gran says, she said, men have big hands.’

      Alex erupts back into giggles, wrenches from David’s grasp to totter and stare squint-eyed down the hall. The boy’s right hand inches down to adjust himself through his trousers. David looks away. If the boy would pass out, he’d make it easier on them both.

      Instead he thrusts his chest out, pokes at the bloody liquor stain with one rigid finger, as though his own chest is foreign to him. And before David can react, the boy swivels and grabs the collar of David’s flannel, pulls himself close. He lays his head over David’s heart, breathes in and out to the beat.

      David tenses. The boy smells of liquor and earth. His hair is fine and oily and his skin is flushed, emanating heat. David’s arms hover just over the narrow shoulders, as if repelled.

      ‘Terrible things,’ Alex hisses, his body shaking now in dry sobs and David’s arms lower themselves of their own accord until his fingertips touch the coarse flannel of Alex’s shirt. Alex’s shoulders go limp. He slips to the ground, wraps his arms around David’s leg. He squeezes, as if David’s leg were a ship’s mast. He sways as if the floor were rocking.

      Voices bounce up the stairs. Moonlight shines through the open hall window, painting Alex blue.

      ‘Get up now,’ David manages. ‘Get you to bed. Found gold today.’

      He shakes his leg, but Alex holds tighter, presses his head into David’s thigh. David’s breath catches. He grits his teeth, focuses on those voices downstairs. Preacher sings a hymn about repentance and God’s saving grace. ‘Three kings and a joker makes four,’ yells Micah. Groans all round. Another layer of tobacco smoke and liquor fumes rise and settle and to David’s tired senses, the moon-streaked hall takes on an orange-red glow. He closes his eyes and holds his breath. It’s the time of night, the liquor in his veins. Only this.

      Alex lets go and sits back on his hands, raising his eyebrows as if to keep his eyes open.

      ‘Gold,’ Alex says. His lips curl in a reluctant grin, then harden. ‘Golden Boy.’

      David gathers himself, reaches down and pulls Alex to his feet, drags him a few yards, then scoops the boy up into his arms. Two doors down, he plops him on the bed, and flees the room with shaking hands.

      Long after Limpy has stumbled back to their cabin, David sits at the bar, whisky in one hand, rubbing the soft, worn rim of John Thomas’s forgotten hat with the other. Besides Emaline, only Jed, Micah and Preacher John remain in the saloon. Stools are overturned with their legs wide in the air. Queen Victoria hangs crooked on the wall above Emaline, who sits staring off into nothing with an absent smile on her face, as if posed for a portrait.

      She shakes from her stupor and makes eye contact, her smile now for him. David looks away. He hadn’t realized he’d been staring.

      ‘’Bout time, isn’t it, boys?’ she says and Jed jolts upright behind the bar.

      Micah groans his agreement and stands up to stretch his back. Preacher continues scribbling notes in the margin of his Bible as though he hadn’t heard.

      ‘Lord, Emaline,’ says Micah. ‘Think you could get some proper chairs in here? My bones feel near twenty years older than I am.’

      Emaline ignores him. She manoeuvres between tables, through shattered whisky jugs, around the rust-brown puddle of blood, to stand over David. She places her hand soft against his cheek as if checking for fever. He boosts himself to his feet, away from her.

      ‘Yah all right, my dear? You look a little down,’ says Emaline, squinting up at him. ‘Been playing with that hat an hour now. It’s past midnight, I know…’ Micah turns round with a questioning glance. ‘But if you need me…’

      ‘No, thank you…no, Emaline,’ David says, and Micah dismisses him with a disgusted wave of the hand, mumbles something under his breath.

      ‘Well, won’t bite yah, you know,’ says Emaline, just a hint of hurt in her voice.

      ‘Does, too,’ says Micah from the first step. ‘But worth it, believe you me.’

      Emaline gives a ‘humph’ and Micah escapes up the stairs.

      ‘Never mind,’ she tells David. ‘Appreciate you opening the chapel tomorrow, like usual. Sunday, and no work need be done before some thanksgiving, bonanza or no. And, David…’ He waits, but she doesn’t finish her sentence. ‘Goodnight,’ she says.

      He pushes out the door, into the night.

      It isn’t as though he wouldn’t like to go upstairs with Emaline, though the reasons why still evade him. She is not a beautiful woman. Her hair is rarely, if ever, pulled from her face, and at night the fringe on her top lip glows in the candlelight. Her wide hips take the space of two women and make her pumpkin-sized breasts appear almost proportional. Her shoulders are too thick, her posture too straight. She struts around the saloon like the Queen herself, issuing orders as if she were born to it.

      David has never fancied plump women. He isn’t fond of facial hair, and has never reacted well to orders. Yet, even to David, Emaline exudes a salacious energy that moves before her like a second self, announcing her presence in any room. No man in Motherlode is immune to this energy. Only he has been strong enough to resist.

      He was raised to know better, has abstained for too long to give in now. Sex is sacred to marriage alone, and prostitution—for that’s what it was—is a sin, just as murder is a sin, and those who encourage Emaline by slipping into her bed every chance they get are paving paths to hell. David does respect her. Respects her in a way he’d only respected men before, in a business sense. He simply refuses to take part in her hypocrisy. Sunday service, giving thanks, saving the souls of men she soils week after week. The sign of a guilty conscience, if you ask him. Already he has sinned with her in his dreams. He blames her for this. He’d like very much to blame her for this new conceit lingering and polluting his mind. Watch out for him, sure. David can see the boy even now. Alex hugging his thigh. Alex clinging to his flannel.

      He looks back at the Victoria. Emaline’s lamp is lit and her body throws shadows on СКАЧАТЬ