“I fear it does. I know my brother.” Shelburne’s eyes seemed to take on a metallic glow. “We’re a pair. We’re like gold and mercury — numbers seventy-nine and eighty on the periodic table of the elements. Side by side, brothers and fundamental opposites. But when they come into contact, they mix.”
I said, “Please put the mercury away, Mr. Shelburne.”
“It’s not toxic, in the elemental state.”
I said, “It oxidizes upon exposure to air. In its vapor phase, it’s very toxic.”
“Not quickly. In a small overheated room, yes.”
“Nevertheless, please put it away.”
“Certainly.” He took a large eyedropper from the lunchbox. He suctioned up the puddle and expelled it into the vial. He screwed the cap back on, tight. He returned the vial and the dish and the dropper to the small box.
Two metal lunchboxes, side by side.
“Gold and mercury,” Shelburne said. “One precious. One poison.”
3
Walter said, “Tell us why your brother is suicidal.”
“Let me introduce him first.” Shelburne took yet one more object from his satchel. It was a padded envelope. He removed a photograph and laid it on the table beside the lunchboxes.
The photo was an eight-by-ten studio portrait. Black and white with a faux burnt border, clearly meant to evoke an Old West vibe. The subject sat in a saloon chair with a rough planked wall as backdrop.
The subject was a very young man. Slender as a quill. Left thigh tied to a low-slung holster holding a six-shooter, hands resting on thighs, fingers loose, ready to outdraw you. He wore a high-collared white shirt, too short in the sleeves, thin wrists sticking out, looking breakable. Over the shirt he wore a pickaxe bolo tie and a vest with shiny stripes in silver and black and a folded silver bandana tucked into the vest pocket. He wore baggy woolen pants and cracked leather boots. He stared somberly at the camera. He was a smooth-faced wet-combed teenager whose only marks of experience were two sculpted lines beneath his eyes, as if he were squinting at the far horizon.
“That photo was taken ten years ago,” Shelburne said. “I have nothing more recent.”
The subject in the photo had dark brown hair, same color that my little brother Henry had. My Henry was reed-thin, too. Thin-blooded. He’d worn a red cowboy hat just about every waking moment, at least during that last year. If my Henry had lived into his teens, he might have gone to a studio to have an Old West photo taken. He would have tried for a squint like that.
“Something wrong?” Shelburne said.
I looked up. Both Shelburne and Walter were watching me. Walter, with curbed concern. Shelburne, puzzled. I blinked. Eyes dry, no tears. What, then? Maybe I’m just that readable. I considered shrugging off Shelburne’s question but that would have made this too consequential, something that couldn’t be spoken. I said, “I’m just reminded of my own brother. Another Henry. He died very young. End of story.”
“Another Henry,” Shelburne repeated, softly. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” I returned my attention to the photo, looking this time at the tooled leather belt holding up Henry Shelburne’s woolen pants. A big silver buckle anchored the belt.
Robert Shelburne noticed me noticing. “Dad gave him the belt.”
Something was written on the buckle, in thin curlicue lettering. I took up my hand lens.
“It says quicksilver. Dad gave him the nickname, too.”
I put down the lens.
“Quicksilver is what miners called liquid mercury, back in the day. For the color and the volatility.” Shelburne gave a sad smile. “Henry liked to play with the stuff.”
“Yeah, who doesn’t?” I glanced at the lunchbox containing the vial of mercury. “Not very smart, though.”
“No, he wasn’t. He knows better now but it’s too late. Which is why he left his mercury kit along with the note.”
Walter said, “Are you saying he intends to poison himself?”
“He already has. But the coup de grace… I don’t know what he intends. His mind is at times chaotic.” Shelburne touched his temple with his forefinger. “Even as a kid, he was uncontainable. Quicksilver was the right name for him — mercurial as hell when he didn’t get his way. And he never did, with our father. Whatever he did to impress Dad turned into a flop. And then he’d regroup and try again.”
I glanced again at the photo, at Henry’s cool-guy squint. I wondered if he practiced it in front of a mirror before posing for the camera. Quicksilver: bright and shiny, squint-worthy, but difficult to contain. I turned to Robert Shelburne. “And you?”
“The opposite. In fact, I’d say Dad was always trying to impress me.”
“I mean, did you have a nickname?”
“Oh. Yes. Henry gave it to me.” Shelburne shrugged. “Golden Boy.”
“I don’t yet understand,” I said, “why Henry is suicidal now.”
“Deep depression,” Shelburne said. “One of the many symptoms of mercury poisoning. And that’s on top of Dad poisoning. Dad spoon-feeds him the family legacy, berates him, Dad dies, Henry finds the legacy rock. All of sudden Henry’s the man. The mission, which he chooses to accept, is to find the source of the rock.”
“Might he not succeed?”
“What if he doesn’t? The final flop. Can’t even impress a dead man.”
My heart squeezed.
“Either way, he sees himself as executor of the legacy.”
“Meaning, find the gold?”
“Not just that.”
“Then what?”
“Finding what our father was after, for most of his adult life.”
“Not gold?”
“Gold, sure. But in the context of something more fundamental.”
Walter, at my side, stirred.
“I’m going to have to go in-depth here. Another backgrounder. Our grandfather — known as the great bullshitter — claimed to have found a hidden ore deposit, from whence this rock presumably came. There’s a letter, flowery, vague as hell, teasing. Full of boasts. My father ended up in possession of the letter. And he signed on big-time. Keep in mind, this had become the family legend.”
“There’s no need to warn me about legends,” Walter said.
Shelburne tipped his head. “So my dad started looking for this deposit, dragging Henry and me along, preaching the letter. When we weren’t out hunting, Dad was feeding us the bullshit along with our breakfast cereal. Fast-forward twenty years. Dad dies — heart attack. We find the rock, Henry takes possession and finds the bullshit letter in Dad’s files.” Shelburne eyed us. “Maybe not bullshit, after all. You geologists will know, right? Is this rock from the… Well, you have a look and tell me.”
Shelburne took the ore specimen out of the lunchbox. He walked over to Walter’s workbench and placed it there.
Walter followed.
“Like I said, Henry split the original chunk of ore and left me this half. And let me tell you, when I saw the fresh-cut face it was damned dramatic.”
The fresh-cut face didn’t show on Walter’s workbench because Shelburne had placed the rock cut-face down.
“Go ahead,” Shelburne said. “See for yourself.”
Walter turned the rock over. He sucked in his breath.
I might have made a noise, myself. The cut face was blue, the blue of glacial ice.
Walter spoke. “I never expected to see this. It’s simply not to be seen, today.”
“That’s right,” Shelburne said. “At least that’s what Dad always said. The blue is buried.”
I turned to Shelburne. “It’s chemistry. Your rock, where the old surface shows, has been exposed to oxygen and so the iron minerals in the matrix have changed to an oxide. That’s why the color is reddish. But there, on the fresh face, which by definition hasn’t been exposed for long, the iron is not oxidized. That’s why it’s blue.”