‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘We will dump them all,’ he said, grunting as he wrenched back the top of the keg.
Warm took notice and shouted across the river: ‘Leave off with that!’
‘We will dump them all and be done with it!’ said Charlie.
‘Leave off!’ Warm cried. ‘Eli, stop him!’
I came closer but Charlie was already lifting the keg on his own. He took several weighted steps before misplacing his balance and stumbling; the thick fluid crested the lip and ran down the front of the barrel, covering and coating his right hand over the knuckles. This began in a matter of seconds to attack his flesh and he dropped the keg at the waterline, where the current pulled the formula out and to the dam.
Charlie was bent over in pain, his jaw clenched and locked, and I took up his wrist to study his injury. There were blooming blisters across the knuckles and upward to the wrist—I could actually see the blisters rising and falling, as though they were breathing, the way a bullfrog takes air into its throat. He was not frightened, but angry, his nostrils flaring like a bull’s, with spit running down his chin in a long, elastic ribbon. His eyes, I thought, were magnificent; their reflection in the firelight revealed the very embodiment of defiance, of clarified hatred. I took up the heated water from the fire and doused his hand to rinse it, afterward fetching a shirt to wrap him. Warm did not know what we were doing, or that Charlie had had an accident. ‘Hurry, you men!’ he called. ‘Can’t you see? Hurry up over there!’
‘Can you hold a bucket with it?’ I asked Charlie.
He attempted to close his hand and his forehead folded in sheer pain. The tips of his fingers, sticking from the dressing, were already bloating and it occurred to me this was his shooting hand—something I imagine he had thought of the moment the formula had been spilled. ‘I can’t close it,’ he said.
‘But can you still work?’
He said he believed he could and I fetched a bucket, sliding the handle past his hand and onto his forearm. He nodded, and now I took up a bucket for myself, and we turned to face the river.
In the time we had been distracted with Charlie’s injury the formula had taken hold, its glow so bright I had to shield my eyes. The river bottom was illuminated completely, so that every pebble and mossy rock was visible. The flakes and fragments of gold, which moments earlier were cold and mute, were now points of the purest yellow-and-orange light, and just as distinct as the stars in the sky. Warm was working away, his hand dipping into the river, his head darting up and back in search of the larger pieces. He was methodical about it, working intelligently, efficiently, but his face and eyes, lit from the river glow, revealed the highest, most supreme type of joy. Morris had exhausted himself and could no longer stir; he planted his long stick into the dam and leaned against it, gazing over the waters with an expression of calm, almost narcotic satisfaction. I looked at Charlie. His face had softened, gone slack, his pain and anger removed, forgotten, and I saw his throat drop as he swallowed. My brother was overwhelmed. He looked into my eyes. He smiled at me.
Chapter 53
In the static world of hard facts and figures it was approximately twenty-five minutes before the gold ceased glowing, but the moments that passed while we worked the river were neither brief nor long, were in fact somehow removed from the very restriction or notion of time—we were outside of time, is how it felt to me; our experience was so uncommon we were elevated to a place where such concerns as minutes and seconds were not only irrelevant but did not exist. This feeling, speaking personally, was brought on not only by the wealth our ever-growing piles of gold represented, but also from the thought that this experience was born of one man’s unique mind, and though I had never before pondered the notion of humanity, or whether I was happy or unhappy to be human, I now felt a sense of pride at the human mind, its curiosity and perseverance; I was obstinately glad to be alive, and glad to be myself. The gold from our buckets shone in dense shafts of light, and the branches and limbs of the surrounding trees were bathed in the glow of the river. There was a warm wind pushing down through the valley and off the surface of the water; it kissed my face and caused my hair to dance over my eyes. This moment, this one position in time, was the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living. I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction; certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since. At any rate, and perhaps this is just, it was not something we could hold on to for very long. Everything immediately after this went just as black and wrong as could be imagined. Everything after this was death in one or the other way.
Chapter 54
Traveling back across the dam, Morris made a misstep and tumbled into the deepest part of the river. He fell fully under the water and did not come up. The gold had by then ceased glowing and my brother and I were sitting in the sand beside the fire, hurriedly cleaning ourselves with the water and soap Warm had laid out. My discomfort from direct contact, I should say, had been minimal at first; between the coldness of the river, which tingled the flesh, and also my own excitement and fast-moving blood, I was not aware of any untoward sensation. But by the time the gold once again went mute I felt an expanding heat which became my total concern and focus. Now I was moving just as quickly as I could, dousing and scrubbing my hands and legs and feet. Charlie could only work half as fast and I came to his aid once I had washed myself. I had just finished with his legs when I heard Morris shout out. When I looked up he was dropping through the air.
Charlie and I ran to the shore, by which time Warm had moved to the center of the dam, his heavy bucket pulling at his right side. He stared helplessly at the river and Charlie called to him that he should use Morris’s stick, still wedged in the dam, to pull him clear, but Warm did not seem to hear this. He set his bucket beside his feet, and his face was grim. He took a broad step and leapt from the dam into the poisoned waters. He resurfaced with Morris under his arm. Morris was limp but breathing, his eyes closed, mouth hung open, water lapping into his mouth over his tongue.
As they cleared the river, Charlie and I came nearer to help them but Warm shouted that we must not touch them, and we did not. They lay on the sand, panting and spent, and I ran for the water pot, hefting it to the shore. First I doused Morris, who moaned, and then Warm, who thanked me, but with the pot soon empty and the men in need of a more thorough washing, Charlie and I dragged the two upriver, beyond the formula waters, and laid them in the shallows. I fetched the raw soap and we knelt at their sides, scrubbing the men and splashing them and telling them all would soon be well, but their discomfort only grew and they became increasingly vocal about their pain. Now they were writhing and tensing and shuddering as though they were being slowly immolated, and indeed I suppose that is just what they were being.
We pulled them clear of the water. I took the last of the numbing medicine and covered their faces and scalps with it. Their eyes were coated in a gray-white film, and Morris said he could not see. Then Warm said he could not see. Morris began to weep, and Warm searched out his hand. They lay together holding hands and crying and moaning and drifting away and then suddenly, alertly screaming—both of them at once as though their pains were synchronized. I gave Charlie a secret look that asked: What should we do? His secret response: Nothing. And he was right. Short of killing the men, there was not a thing in the world we might do for them.