I nodded. And added, “And you found the gold.”
Walter smiled.
“Didn’t you?”
Up at Notch Valley, in the confusion of events, Walter had lost the conglomerate pebble he’d found in the trough. Never got the chance to bring it back to the lab and put it under the stereoscopic microscope. Certainly never got the chance to put the hand lens to it at the scene. Still, in my estimation, Walter should know. If anyone could eyeball a grain in a pebble and ID it as gold, or not gold, Walter Shaws was the man.
In any case, for Walter, it was a moot point whether or not there was a hidden pocket of gold in that hillside. The land, Walter discovered, was leased. A widow in Burbank California held the mineral rights. Inherited from her late husband, who’d himself inherited the rights, several generations of rights holders who didn’t have the capital to do exploratory drilling. Walter had paid the widow a visit. She’d served him a good whiskey and thanked him for the information and said she’d consult with her financial advisor. The widow, Walter said, had played her cards close to the chest.
So when I asked, not for the first time, if Walter judged that grain in the pebble to be gold, he said, to stop me asking, “I might take a jaunt one of these days back to the gold country. Find the blue lead somewhere, in situ. Somewhere fresh.” He winked. “While I’m still able.”
Old man, my ass.
The next day I asked, “And if there is gold?”
“Ah.”
I got the coffee and donuts and we sat at the map table.
When he didn’t speak, I asked, “How does it feel to want something that people have crippled the land to obtain?”
He shot me a quartz-eyed look. “Conflicted.”
I said, again, “And if there is gold?”
He blew on his steaming brew. Circled the mug on the table, creating cooling air currents. “Let us say that I come across a sizeable grain embedded in the blue gravel.” He sampled his coffee, nodded his approval. “I would get out my rock pick.”
“Just the one grain?”
“In this scenario.”
I sipped my coffee.
He asked, “And you, Cassie? If you came across that grain of gold?”
A vision rose, along with the steam from my coffee. Me, walking the bedrock tunnel up at Notch Valley, the tunnel walls changing to cemented gravel. Me, entering the lost river channel. And then stopping in my tracks, chiseling my way to the virgin blue, the bright blue indigo wings of a jay. I shivered, feeling again the chill of the tunnel, the thrill of the blue. And now I envisioned another color, a bright sunrise. I envisioned a grain of gold in that gravel. A coarse grain, water-worn from its rough travels in the ancient river. About the size of a kernel of wheat — a description I’d found and liked while reading Lindgren. I saw it now clearly. That one grain. Shining gold.
“And you?” Walter repeated. “Would you get out your rock pick?”
I nodded. Who wouldn’t?
About the Author
Bestselling author Toni Dwiggins is a third-generation Californian who migrated from southern Cal to northern Cal. What she likes most about her state is that one can go from the ocean to the mountains in one day, with a lunch stop in the desert. She likes it so much she has chosen those settings for her forensic geology books.