My head throbs all evening, even though I can’t find so much as a bump or scratch on it, and then when I think about the pain it seems to be almost elsewhere, at the back of my mind. This doesn’t improve my usually dour mood and gives me extra cause to confine myself to my tent for the evening. The camp’s young negress cook brought me beans earlier but I leave them to cool and thicken in the bowl, unable to shake the days events from my mind; not just all the upset around the claim and the camp, but Walt’s plans.
I can still manage to sip whiskey from a tin cup, enjoying the sting as it slides down my throat. He is being unreasonable. Why can’t he see? Gold first, above all; then silver; then copper and other metals; then the filthy muck below can be summoned. But Walt has never cared for our product as much for what it can be exchanged for. People would laugh in my face if I tried to tell them I felt the opposite; that the joy is in bringing in a claim – no, the claim.
How can I retire now? With so much gold still out there in this New World; the very thought of someone else blowing holes in the earth and stumbling like a newborn into something tantamount to El Dorado makes me seethe with envy almost to the point of rage, or hernia. Perhaps I am ill. Perhaps Walt is right; it’s just gold, Hank, he’d say.
I reach across the table and pick out a chunk of the yellow metal from among a few samples, holding it up to catch the lamp light, letting the dull glow caress the mottled surface before tightening my grip around it so that the same surface digs into my skin. Gold is forever, you see, you can’t burn it up, its value isn’t in its use – its very uselessness and permanence has made men slaughter each other more than almost anything else. The allure is primal and ancient, like a sparkling fire we contain all to ourselves. Just gold, I release my grip. Just gold, I drop it to the table.
I push away from the table, rise up and, swiping my hat and the whiskey bottle, leave the tent. I’ve weighed my options. Done the calculations.
----------------
I stir from a deep, fitful sleep, confused, with the sun in my eyes and many voices in my ears. My eyes focus abruptly upon the round, corpulent face of Sergeant Laurence; ‘Sir?’ he asks, his voice carrying above the others. I blink.
‘Sir?’ he repeats as I swing my legs up from my cot, still fully clothed, and, pulling my body into a sitting position, I ask what the commotion is about.
‘Mr. Burke, it’s Mr. Haines, sir, he’s gone and fallen into the oil well. Sir, he’s dead.’
I blink again, taking in a sharp and unexpected breath as malignant dread wells up inside my stomach with flashes of memory. I stand up, anxiety giving unrest to my limbs, which the Sergeant takes for light-headedness arising from the news and tries to steady me. I shake him away and push through the onlookers out into the air and then on towards the well.
When I arrive at the scene Walt’s body has been fished out by some of the men, I ask who found him; an albino raises his hand sheepishly and tells me, after further prompting, that he had been told by Walt the night before to meet him at dawn with some of the others to begin repairs to the shaft, stabilising it, readying it. He tells me he was lucky to catch site of the body at the bottom of the shaft, just a patch of arm showing against the blackened rock and settled oil.
I inspect Walt’s body; he almost looks like a burns victim and I am directed to the back of his head, which is caved in like a broken egg, by the albino who offers unlooked for speculation that it was probably from the fall down the shaft. I ignore his prattling as my mind flashes with dread again – I remember arguing with Walt about the oil, Standard and, of course, the gold; but where, here at the shaft? I can’t remember.
‘Probably drunk again and came up here to boast to very the oil itself,’ says the Sergeant. I look up at him expressionlessly and get up from my knees. I nod gravely, ‘That must’ve been it.’
‘At least now,’ says the Sergeant with a pause, ‘you don’t have to sell to Standard, I guess.’ Both his tone and expression are entirely inscrutable.
I turn away from the scene, glancing back for another moment at Walt’s bludgeoned head. Was it a nasty fall; against a rock, perhaps a strut; or was it a pickaxe?
Three men dead and counting.
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