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Cutter thought a bit facetiously of the big house in town and the one he figured to be just as big in Boston. He thought about the car and the fine leather wallet, the money Eugene had taken out of that wallet and the money that no doubt remained. “You sure didn’t do that.”

Eugene turned a sharp eye his way. “I worked hard for what I got. I took those stones out, as many as I could, and cleaned them up, then went looking around for the best buyers. And when I had all that arranged, I came right back up here and went looking for more.”

“Why wasn’t half the county lookin’ along with you?” Cutter asked. He sure as hell would have been. If he’d been living at the time of the gold rush, he’d have been on his way to California as soon as word of the first lode came in.

“Because I had the sense that they didn’t. I had the organization. I knew about tourmaline, knew how it was formed and where it was goin’ to be found. By that time, I also had the chain set up to get the stones to market for top dollar. Tourmaline isn’t as valuable as diamond. One stone won’t make a fellow rich. The odd stone that’s picked up may make someone a little money, but it’s only on the larger scale of keeping a steady supply flowing into the market that the money comes. So I hired all my friends to work for me, and I guaranteed them the living they couldn’t be guaranteed anywhere else.”

“You were that sure you’d keep finding the stones?”

“No. But I figured that a week’s wages was better than nothing, so I went week to week. And I’m still around.” He straightened in his seat, overlapping his hands on the top of the wheel. “We’re just about to open Lampett Peak. That dirt is from the start of the mine. We’ve got to dig a whole lot deeper if we want to come up with much. I’m looking for help.” His hands slipped down. One closed around the keys, starting the engine again. The other steered the car around and back toward the main road.

Cutter watched him cautiously. He wondered if he’d been offered a job. He wasn’t sure he’d take it if it was.

As though anticipating the argument, Eugene said, “Your daddy worked for me for a while, but that wasn’t what killed him. What killed him was the booze. It rotted his mind so he couldn’t see straight or think straight. He started drinkin’ long before he went to work for me, long before he married your mama, long before they had you.” He paused, then said almost casually, “I didn’t see any bottles lying around your place. Were they stashed under all the mess?”

“You think I have to drink because my daddy did?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“If I don’t have money for food, how would I get money for booze?”

“People who want it find it.” Eugene darted him a look. “Don’t you want to tell me what a big man you are and how well you hold your liquor?”

Cutter turned his face to the window. “What’s the point?” he muttered. “You’ve seen me with my pants down.”

“You got some problem in that department, too?”

“I got no problem!”

“Lots of women?”

Cutter snorted. “Sure.”

“Clean yourself up a little, and you will. You’re not a bad-looking guy. Eat some, and you’ll fill out. Put on a little weight. Give your body a chance to grow into itself.”

Cutter snorted again. He was getting uncomfortable with talk about his body. Coming from Eugene, it had a ring of truth. “Look, are you goin’ to drive me over to the jail, or aren’t you?”

“Haven’t you figured that one out yet, boy?”

“You’re not?”

Eugene didn’t answer. Without another word, he drove back to Cutter’s place. Only when he’d stopped the car did he speak again. “Do you want a job?”

“I don’t know.”

“?‘I don’t know’ ain’t gonna get you anywhere in this life. You want to go places besides courthouses and prisons?”

“I suppose.”

“Then you want a job. Be at Lampett’s Peak tomorrow morning at seven. We start early. Eat well before you come or you’ll be hungry long before lunch. And clean up that pigsty in there. It’s a disgrace.”

Cutter wanted to argue. There were a number of pithy things on the tip of his tongue, the most immediate being, “Up yours,” but he didn’t say it. What he said was, “How are you going to swing it with Verne?”

“Verne isn’t the problem. He’s happy to have you off his hands. The problem is Judd. I’ll have to give him a good talking to. But so help me, boy, if you ever go back to that station for anything but to buy gas with your own money, you won’t be working for me anymore. My men don’t steal. They got a problem and need money, they come to me.” He barely paused for breath. “Do you know how to cook?”

“I can make do.”

“There’s a bundle of wood in the trunk. See that you get the stove going. There’s also a jug of gasoline back there for your cycle. You’ll need it to get to the Peak.”

Cutter was confused. “Why are you doing this?”

Eugene gave him a droll look. “Because I’m a sucker. Isn’t that what you said?”

“You didn’t get to where you are by being a sucker,” Cutter conceded. He felt he owed it to Eugene, after all he was doing. “So why are you takin’ the risk?”

“Maybe ’cause I want to. Maybe ’cause I think you’d’a had a better start if I’d been able to help your daddy. Maybe ’cause I liked the guy, and he ain’t here to set you straight.”

Things were getting too sentimental for Cutter. “You know what this town thinks of me. Anything goes wrong at that mine, I’m goin’ to be the one blamed, and then they’ll blame you for takin’ me on.”

“That’ll be my worry. You just see that you’re not responsible for anything going wrong at the mine, and you’ll do fine.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’m sure. No one will accuse you of something you didn’t do, not at my mine. I place value on honesty. And loyalty. I’m loyal to my men and they’re loyal to me.”

“I don’t know nuthin’ about loyalty.”

“Then it’s about time you learned. Unless you don’t think you can. Is that it, boy? Are you worried you can’t hack it?”

“I can hack it.”

“Then get the hell out of my car and start putting your house in order. You got a lot to do before morning.”

Chapter 7

W
HEN CUTTER FIRST WENT ON
the payroll at St. George Mining, he worked hard out of sheer defiance. No one, not Eugene St. George or anyone else, was going to tell him he couldn’t hack it. They thought he was good for nothing. It became his mission in life to prove them wrong. The more suspicious the looks people shot him or the more derogatory the mumblings, the harder he worked. After a week, then a month, the looks grew less suspicious and the mumblings died down. There wasn’t exactly a warming to him, but in fairness, Cutter couldn’t fully blame the miners for that. He kept to himself. Years of living alone emotionally and physically hadn’t prepared him for the camaraderie that the others shared. Cutter put in his time, as much as the mine foreman would allow, and went home at the end of the day to his shack in the woods and his books.

Although he never quite lost that element of defiance, in time he became interested in what he did. It wasn’t the everyday work that intrigued him; there was nothing fascinating about hacking away at walls of earth or chipping around stone. But when a new pocket was found, or a special crystal, the hacking and chipping were forgotten.

Cutter had Eugene to thank for that. From the start—though subtly, so that the other miners wouldn’t take offense—Eugene taught him more than the simple mechanics of mining. At the end of a day, when most of the others had left, he took him aside to show him the stones they had unearthed that day. He explained how the crystals evolved over millions of years from liquid caught in pockets in the center of lithium-rich pegmatites. He showed him stones of different colors and explained what caused the milky steaks in some, like the cat’s eye tourmaline, and the two-colored effect of others, like the watermelon tourmaline. He gave him books on the geologic history of the earth, with those parts that had to do with tourmaline underlined.

In large part, Cutter’s interest evolved because Eugene treated him as an intelligent adult. He had faith in Cutter before Cutter had it in himself. He seemed to enjoy the time they spent together, and little by little Cutter relaxed and began to enjoy it too. Eugene was the first person he’d ever been able to trust, and not once was the trust betrayed. Days could go by without their seeing each other, yet Cutter always had the feeling that Eugene was looking out for him. In return, Cutter gave his work his all. He was as determined and dedicated as any employee St. George Mining had ever had.

Away from the mine, his metamorphosis was slower. Cutter’s bad-boy image lingered, and he did nothing to discourage it. Mindful of Eugene’s warning, he gave up anything that could be considered criminal. But he was a dark and somber presence on Main Street. He answered deprecatory comments with lewd hand gestures, and drove his cycle through town as though the devil were in pursuit. For years, the townsfolk had thought the worst of him. He saw no reason to change their opinion. Not the most forgiving sort, he saw no need to start treating them like friends. He didn’t owe them a thing.

Eugene was the one he owed. Well beyond anything to do with the mine, Eugene gave him more than his parents ever had. Within days of his starting work, Eugene had the electricity turned on at his place, had the roof fixed where it leaked, had the plumbing updated. He had food delivered. He bought Cutter an ax to chop wood. Even before his first paycheck came, Cutter was living more comfortably than he ever had, and when that first paycheck did come, Eugene put it into the bank in an account in Cutter’s name. It was a full three months before Cutter had access to the account, but not once in the course of that time was he wanting for life’s necessities.

For the very first time, Cutter had a taste of security. He had clothes to fit his still-growing frame, food to fill the endless pit of his stomach, money to earn him interest at the bank. He put on some weight, stood taller and straighter, and spoke with less of the backwoods twang he had often deliberately deployed. The pride he took in being self-sufficient was profound.

Eugene was his role model, an example of a man who’d made it in life through common sense and determination. Cutter gave him the loyalty he asked, and then some. He found that it wasn’t so awful to visit the laundromat once a week, that food lasted longer if it was wrapped and refrigerated, that the lights stayed on as long as he paid his bill.

Eugene was right about women, too. The taller and broader he got, the darker the beard that he shaved, and the more often he washed, the more they looked at him. He let them look. He wasn’t in a rush to tangle with any and disturb the privacy of his life. Then came the day when, at the librarian’s request, he helped carry some books to her small house behind Main Street, and found himself backed against her parlor wall while her hands slipped over his body. She was a pretty woman in her late twenties, and she knew what she was doing. Her mouth was warm and wet by his ear, her fingers warm and seeking inside his shirt. They dealt easily with the snap of his jeans and his zipper, and were inside his pants, taking hold of his erection without any hesitation at all.

Over the next hour, she did for him things he’d only dreamed of, and in the subsequent days and weeks she taught him all she knew. It was an ideal relationship. She was as private a person as he was, had no wish for ties, was perfectly happy to service him in exchange for those few moments of hard, fierce loving that her agile body and knowing tongue inevitably brought to him. He knew that she took others to her bed, but that only made him feel more the man than the boy he really was.

He didn’t tell anyone about Lenore. He figured the town knew, but he didn’t care. What happened between them was his business. She was like the money in his pocket, tucked away where no one could see but where he could feel it and know the pleasure of its presence.

She was one of the many secrets he had. Another was that he wished Eugene were his father. Another was that he was grateful he wasn’t, since that would have made him a brother to John St. George, and if there was a single ogre at the mine, it was John.

Word was that John had an office in Boston and hated coming to Timiny Cove, and Cutter believed it. The man was stiff-backed and somber-faced. His concern was with tourmaline as a commodity rather than a gem, and he viewed the men the same way. Whereas Eugene was demanding when something displeased him, John was caustic whether he was displeased or not. He never had a good word for the miners and found fault where neither the foreman nor Eugene did. When he was around, the atmosphere in the mine was more tense than usual.

Likewise, when John was around, Cutter saw less of Eugene than usual. John came north only when Eugene ordered him there, either when Eugene couldn’t be there himself or when his little girl was visiting. But it made things hard for Cutter. John didn’t like him. Whether it was his age, or the fact that he was a reliable worker, or the fact that Eugene liked him, Cutter didn’t know, but John went out of his way to hassle him in front of the others. If ever Cutter’s self-control was tested, it was at those times when he’d have liked nothing more than to haul back and smack John in the face. But Eugene would never have approved of that, so Cutter didn’t risk it. Self-control, too, became a matter of pride.

Cutter was amazed that someone like John could be Eugene’s son. On the other hand, Eugene’s little girl, Pamela, was as friendly as her father and ten times cuter. Cutter had been charmed the very first time he’d seen her at the mine. He stopped work, helpless to do anything but watch while she greeted all the men she knew with hugs. When she reached him, Eugene introduced them. There wasn’t any hug, of course, and she suddenly grew quiet, but the shy smile she gave him when Eugene nudged her had stolen his heart.