Sin City (50 page)

“Like to see Keane Wonder Mine?” he asks. He keeps asking would I like things. No one has before.

“Yes, please,” I say. I don't know what it is.

We drive along together. I'm sitting in the front. George is in the back. Important people always sit in front. I think the ranger likes me. He passes me a sweet. “Take two,” he says, and smiles. George gets one.

The mountains follow us. They're always there, however far you drive. They have shadows on them now. But the sky is very blue still.

We turn off the road onto a rough and stony track. The van bounces on the stones. George shakes like a sack. It's only four o'clock, but the moon is out. Just a tiny moon, a young one, newly born. It's shining one side and the sun the other. You don't see that in England, so it may be a miracle. That Reverend said expect a miracle.

The rocks are bare and dry. Some of them have fallen, broken into pieces on the road. There's not one blade of grass, not one patch of shade. I'm glad it's not the summer. Bernie said it's so hot here in summer that if you eat a jelly, it melts on your spoon before you've even got it to your mouth. He called it jello with an o. I'd like to eat a jello with an o. The dry rocks make me thirsty.

Bernie stops the car. “We have to walk the last bit. It's kinda steep. Can you manage, Norah?”

“Yes,” I say. “Of course.” He didn't even ask George. George stays in the jeep.

Back home, I never walk much, except up and down the corridors, but Bernie said I'm good at it. He said I had strong legs. He talks to me a lot. Not many people bother.

We climb the stony path. I can't see anything except more brown rock and a lot of rusty iron and rotting wood.

Bernie shades his eyes, looks round. “This is where the mill was. See the old machinery? The mine is further up. Eighty years ago, they were crushing eighteen thousand tons of rock a month. Imagine the noise! Twenty huge machines grinding great jagged lumps of gold ore into powder.”

I listen. It's so silent now I can hear a lizard chewing. Powdered gold. I'd rather have the sand.

“WONDER,” says the sign. Underneath is a pile of broken bottles, an empty oil can, a piece of twisted piping. Perhaps people danced here once, barefoot in the gold-dust.

We climb some more. The mountains climb with us, always higher.

“They're the Funerals,” says Bernie.

“Pardon?”

“The Funeral Mountains.”

I shiver in the sun. Everything has died here. Gold and men. Machines.

Bernie stops, turns round. “It's too far to the mine, Norah, and we ought to check on George. Anyway, there's nothing much to see – just a heap of wood left, half a rotting bedstead and a pile of rusty cans.”

His face looks sad. He says men lived there once. Men with dreams, who lived on cans of beans.

We stand in silence. Dreams are always sad.

Bernie helps me down. “All gold mines in Death Valley had short lives. I guess it's like Las Vegas. You pour cash in, in the hope you'll get more out. But mostly you go bust.”

He bends down, picks up something glinting at his feet. An empty sardine tin. “Some sharp guys sold mining stock when all they had was a few holes in the ground without a trace of ore in them.” He drops the tin, steers me down the slope again. My feet keep sliding. Everything is brown.

I trip on something – half a broken chamber pot without its handle, blue roses round the rim. I pick it up, wipe the dirt off with my handkerchief. Someone rich owned that, used it every night. Las Vegas may be ruined soon, the Gold Rush just a pile of marble toilets, broken into bits. Golden taps shining in the rubble. It's desert underneath the Strip. I saw it pushing through. Just a patch of it where they'd pulled a building down. Sand and stones instead of gold. No meadows. No casinos.

I look back to the mill. Bare brown rock, a few grey thorny bushes. Bare brown silence.

The jeep disturbs the silence. Bernie starts the engine, slams the doors. We bump off down the track. It's cooler now, much cooler. The light is fading. The hills are stony, seem to close us in. Some are shaped like faces, faces without noses or with empty holes for eyes. All are pale. And tired.

We drive in silence. There are no cars on the road, no birds in the sky. The little thorny bushes look like hedgehogs. Sleeping hedgehogs. The mountains have dark rings around their necks, as if a giant has tried to strangle them.

The road begins to struggle. The hills are steeper now, and it's panting up and down them. We've reached the snow, small patches of it, icing on the brown. Suddenly, everything is high. And very grand. The mountains spread right out each side, so far my eyes can't reach. I've never seen such space before. I can feel the space inside me, huge and clean.

The sun is going down. It's like an orange ball, balanced on the mountains. The sky is gold behind it. On the other side, it's pink. Soft pink on the snow. It's time to eat again; eat pink and gold and orange. I can feel them slipping down my throat, shining through my body. I'm licking the gold sky, spooning in pink snow. I start to sing, silently, inside.

George is just a bundle. I think he's gone to sleep. He sleeps a lot. Many patients do. I'm not a patient any more. I haven't any germs left. There are no germs in Death Valley.

The road is flatter now and very straight. Bernie swings sharp left. The sign says “Rhyolite”.

“This was the real big strike, Norah. A guy called Shorty Harris first found gold here. Know how he celebrated? With the world's greatest eggnog. Yeah – no kidding. He wired the LA railroad for a carload of whisky and another full of eggs. When the train steamed in, he and his buddies smashed the whisky barrels open with their axes, threw in the eggs, shells and all, stirred it with their shovels – and – whoopee!”

Everyone drinks whisky here. I've never tried it. I'd like an egg, though. Soft-boiled in an egg cup. You can get egg cups in Las Vegas with your name on, or with legs. We don't have eggs at Beechgrove, and we've missed most of our free breakfasts at the Gold Rush. Carole likes to sleep late. She's sleeping now. I miss her. I hope she hasn't forgotten who I am. I've got some things for her. A stone which shines. A beetle. A piece of pickleweed. I'd like to save this sky for her, put it in a matchbox.

We drive along an empty pitted road. Half a house has fallen down. An old car has split open and is showing its insides. Bernie slows.

“This was a real fine city, can you believe, a wonder in its day, a boom town of ten thousand people where there hadn't been a white man within fifty miles. They built to last, Norah, in stone and concrete – big three-storey offices, banks and churches, a school, a fancy opera house. There were twenty-four hotels, fifty bars, a stock exchange and dance halls …”

I shut my eyes to try and picture it. I can't see anything. Just black. I strain to hear the dance tunes, but the gramophone's wound down.

Bernie points through the window to a pile of crumbling stones. “That was once the biggest bank of all – in Golden Street. The walls were thirty inches thick and each vault-door weighed a good four tons at least.” We drive on slowly past. I see a rat dart across the stones. “By 1922, there was just one person left. The millionaires were lining up for hand-outs someplace else, or begging for free soup. They'd spent some seven million dollars winkling out three millions-worth of gold. Crazy, isn't it? The biggest boom-and-bust that ever was.”

He pulls up with a jerk, lets me out. An old mattress is lying in the ditch. I pick my way through rusting tins and pipes.

“I'll have to leave you, Norah. There's this guy I got to visit. He's ninety-three years old, but still a real live wire. He remembers Golden Street when it was crowded with prospectors who ate, talked, breathed and sweated gold. He found some real old snapshots when he was going through a drawer, and I'm hoping I can buy them for our records. Can you amuse yourself? I won't be long. Why not go see the Bottle House? It's built of fifty thousand beer bottles. And there's a heap of stuff to look at. They've made it into a museum.”

He checks on George who's still asleep, tucks a rug around his legs. It's getting cold. I walk across a little patch of snow. It scrunches. The land is mostly brown again, just a few white rags of snow. The sun has disappeared.

Sad grey clouds are lying on the mountains with twists of golden ribbon threaded through them. There is soon more grey than gold. All the colours fade. I'm fading with them.

This is called a ghost town. Bernie said. I can hear the ghosts, thin and very pale, limping after me. They don't speak. Nor do I. There is no one else, no one still alive. Or maybe only one. The one he's gone to see. He's ninety-three. He'll die soon. Bernie said families still live here; live in the museum, run a coffee shop. I think he was just joking.

I pass some ruined houses. The windows are blind eyes. One last ray of sun pokes its finger through an open door. The houses have no roofs. The stones are gardens.

I walk on, down the hill, find the Bottle House. There is rubbish all around it, bits of car, dead and cold machines, overflowing dustbins. It can't be a museum. Museums are neat and clean with lots of rules and men in uniform who take your money, let you in and out.

“Hallo,” I call. “Hallo-o.” I make it louder.

“Oo-oo,” the mountains copy.

The door is open, so I walk inside. There are three small rooms, all dark and very poky. Things are jumbled on the floor, or pinned up on the walls. They're grey with dust, and mostly very old. Old clothes. Old snakes. Old furniture. The floor itself feels gritty and is covered with little bits of different coloured lino, with gaps where they don't meet. A broken drum is cooking on an old iron stove. It's rusty. Everything is rusty. Rusty saucepans. Rusty guns.

I jump. I've seen a skeleton. A whole one in a coffin with its lid up. The skull is smiling at me. The photos smile as well. Dead and smiling photos all around me, asking who I am.

I go a little closer. A dry black bat is pinned beside a women's white lace glove. My mother wore white gloves like that. These could be her things.

Better not to have things. They only rust and die.

I touch a rocking-horse. It whines and starts to move, bumps into a sailor-doll which falls onto its face. I leave it there, creep out again. The pale ghosts point their fingers. The mountains move a little further in.

I'm cold. I'd like a cup of tea. I walk down to the coffee shop. It doesn't look like one. It's all alone in the middle of a wasteland. A sign says “Open”, so I push the door. It's locked. I knock. A dog barks. On and on. It may be a ghost dog. No one comes.

I walk on down the track. I'm thinking of my mother. Her white lace gloves. Her skull.

I come to a wire fence. I don't know why it's there. There's nothing much inside it. Only stony ground and a few brown and thorny bushes.

I squeeze in through the fence, find some wooden graves. They're very old. Just piles of stones, or humps, with pieces of plain wood sticking up each end. The wood is rough and stained. No gothic script, or lilies, like that funeral place I read about. No beautiful Memorial Park. No grass at all. No flowers. Poor men's graves. Men who lived on beans.

Some of them have wooden cages round them. The cages are all broken, falling into bits. Millionaires begging for free soup, locked for ever in broken wooden cages.

I walk back the way I've come, stand outside the coffee shop again. I knock, I call hallo. Oo-oo-ooooo. Still nobody. Just the tiny frightened rustle of a ghost-rat. I don't think God wants people in the desert. They'd only spoil it. It belongs to Him. It says so in the Bible. God is very big and needs the space. If men lived there, they'd fill it up with buildings, make a lot of noise. God likes quiet brown peace, not coloured lights. He doesn't eat or drink, so He wouldn't waste the food or mind salt water.

God made sky and mountains before He made us. I think we're less important. That's why I like it here. It's so dark now, I can hardly see the path. The blue mountains have dissolved into blue night. I'd like to be a mountain. Then God would climb me, St Joseph lie on me.

I find a rock, look up. The sky is full of stars. They're very special stars here, much bigger and much brighter than in England. There are no windows in the ward, so I hardly ever see them back in England, but when I do, they're tiny, just small dots.

Bernie said there are ten thousand billion stars. That's more than two hundred million. Much much more, he said. He told me there were whole worlds in the sky. Cold and shining worlds, so far away you could spend your whole life getting there and still be nowhere near them when you die. They don't look far away. They look quite close. I think they can see me.

The stars have names, like plants have names, or mountains. The names were very hard. I remember one, just one. Pegasus. That's a horse with wings. I'd like to be a horse with wings. Flying with the stars.

I keep looking at the sky, trying to find the horse. The sky is shiny black as if somebody's been polishing it all day. The stars look polished too. Polished with that very special silver-polish which the nuns used for holy things like chalices, not common things like forks.

My neck is aching, but I keep on looking up. That Reverend told us to. He said: “This New Year will be your year of miracles; your year of holding up your head and seeing all the stars.”

Year of miracles. I'd like a miracle. To stay on in Death Valley. Live here with St Joseph and with Carole. Have her as my friend. Joined for ever. I don't want Angelique.

I close my eyes and wish. A star jumps in the sky. Horses jump. It must be Pegasus. I think he heard me, heard my wish.

I smile.

“There's the sign,” says Angelique, as she turns left off the highway, following the arrow. The party's over, Death Valley just a haze of gin and headache.