lines of toner.
“Copy of a letter sent back home by a miner to his wife. Part of a document collection they have at Berkeley. He mentions Empty Mile by name. Earliest reference to it anyone’s found.”
He nodded for me to read it.
The writing was rough, as though the man who’d written it had had only his knees to rest the paper against. It wasn’t flowery or poetic, and it wasn’t as carefully put together as Nathanial Bletcher’s journal, but it must have meant more than gold to the woman it was written for-news from a husband thousands of miles away, perhaps the only confirmation he was still alive. As I read through the endearments, the report on his health, his hopes that he and his wife would be together again before another year passed, I couldn’t help feeling how intensely lonely life must have been for so many of the men who went looking for gold.
I found the reference Reynolds had mentioned in the last third of the letter. Just a couple of lines at the end of a brief description of the man’s most recent journeying.
The letter was dated May 29, 1849, almost two months after Nathaniel Bletcher had reached the same stretch of river.
Bletcher’s journal would be an important find for Chris Reynolds, I knew. But until I had either solved the mystery of Empty Mile or discounted the land as worthless I wasn’t about to share the one thing I’d discovered about its history with anyone. I handed him back the miner’s letter.
“Chinese?”
“The Chinese were known in those days for taking over claims that ostensibly had already been worked out and abandoned. Essentially, they reprocessed tailings. Tailings are what’s thrown away at the end of the panning or washing process-soil, gravel, sand, etcetera. Poor in gold. But the Chinese were able to make it pay. They tended to work in larger groups, so they could get through more dirt in a given time. But also they were content to settle for earning a living rather than chasing the idea of a golden jackpot.” Reynolds tapped the miner’s letter. “What this guy is saying is that if a group of Chinese had been the first to get to Empty Mile they would have worked it with the same kind of thoroughness they applied to working tailings. Consequently, the river would have been left far emptier of gold than if anyone else had worked it.”
“Do you think that’s what happened?”
“I don’t think it was more likely to be the Chinese than anyone else. The miners who got there too late were just pissed off.” He looked at his watch. “You know, Ray asked me about Empty Mile too. Maybe four, five months ago.”
“What did he want to know?”
“When it had first been prospected. He was really quite insistent about it, as though he absolutely had to tie down when the first miners got there. Came in here after a meeting one night with Gareth Rogers.”
“Really? With Gareth?”
“I know what you mean, bit of a strange combination. Your father had been coming for years but Gareth was a rather short-lived member. I think he joined about six months ago, came for a while, then stopped. I haven’t seen him here for about three months. Ray kept coming, though, until…” Chris looked embarrassed that he’d raised the issue of my father’s disappearance and continued quickly. “They seemed to share an interest in Empty Mile. The Swallow River is, after all, Oakridge’s claim to Gold Rush fame.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Showed them that letter.” Reynolds looked at his watch again and stood. “Time for the meeting. You’re going to stay?”
I could tell Marla wanted to go, and I had no great desire to sit on a hard seat and listen to a bunch of eccentrics discuss how to find gold, so I made an excuse and said we had to leave. Reynolds looked a little disappointed, as though perhaps the Elephant Society was suffering a dwindling membership and he had hoped I might sign up.
As Marla and I were preparing to leave, Reynolds pulled open a draw in his desk and took out a diary with hard blue covers. He flipped pages for a moment and then made a sound as he came to what he was looking for.
“I don’t know if it’s of any use but the only other thing I remember Ray-and Gareth too-showing more interest in than usual was a particular lecture we had here around that time. We have it on again at next week’s meeting if you’re interested. ‘Geological Reengineering Through Topographical Catastrophe.’”
I must have looked a somewhat disbelieving because he smiled a little.
“Randolph Morris, the man who gives the lecture, is, ah, serious about his subject. He repeats it every six months.”
I couldn’t see how a lecture with such a title would reveal anything to me about Empty Mile, but it was an opportunity to leave with a little grace, so I said I’d attend. Reynolds looked happier and shook my hand.
It was just after eight p.m. when Marla and I stepped out onto the street. The sky was a milky phosphorescence, not yet fully dark, and the air smelled of the still-warm bricks the buildings on that block were built from.
“Did you know my father and Gareth were friends?”
“Being interested in the same thing doesn’t make them friends. I can’t see Ray wanting to spend much time with Gareth.”
“Gareth says they were. He told me they used to go panning together. Did my father ever say anything about that?”
“No.”
“How about at the meetings you went to? Did you see them together?”
“I went for a few months about a year ago. According to Chris, Gareth didn’t start going until six months later.”
“But you saw my father there?”
“Yeah. And no, he didn’t say anything about Empty Mile.”
Marla came back to stay the night at my place. I was hoping I’d be able to turn off, to put Stan to bed then climb into my own with Marla and for a few hours at least not worry about Empty Mile, or losing the house, or Plantasaurus going down the drain. But when we got home Stan was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor stripped to the waist, the front of his body dotted with moths. He was holding his arms straight out from his sides and staring intently at the black mirror of the kitchen window. When he heard us enter the room he dropped his arms with a groan of relief, as though he’d been holding them that way a long time.
He’d used adhesive tape to attach the moths to his chest and stomach and arms. I counted sixteen of them. One or two moved a leg or wing where their bodies stuck out beyond the tape, but most were still. There were smudges of moth-down around some of the larger ones. Under the hard light of the kitchen Stan’s body looked pale against the dark marks of the insects. He seemed dazed.
Marla sat down and just stared at him. I peeled a moth from his chest.
“These have to come off.”
“I imagined the window was the barrier, the edge of the world. I tried to make the power come across. I used to be a super-brain.”
“You’re still a smart guy.”
“Do you feel anything, Johnny? Do you think some power came across for Plantasaurus?”
“Come on, Stan, take them off.”
I reached for another moth but Stan took a quick step away. “No, Johnny! I want to leave them on. I might have to be asleep for the power to come.”
“Stan, we talked about this. A bunch of moths aren’t going to make a damned bit of difference to Plantasaurus.”
“That’s what you think but you’re not always right.”
He stood and glared at me, clenching his jaw to stop his lips trembling. The silence dragged between us as I tried to figure out what to say next. Eventually I gave up.
“You look tired, you should go to bed.”
After a moment he nodded and walked out of the room without saying anything else. As he passed Marla he
