“Jesus!” Patrick cried, kicking and dancing with a fury. A scorpion sailed past me, hit a nearby rock with the faint scritch of a dried leaf, and, having slid to the desert floor, clambered on its way in no more hurry than before.
“Aw, you found another pet,” Jesse teased. His chuckle caught in his throat, and he spent some time clearing it before continuing. “Must be your sweet temper that draws the little critters to ya.”
Patrick shuddered and shook his head. “I can’t abide anything with more than four legs—or less than two. Give me snow and cold and eight months of winter in the mountains, but keep your dang desert scorpions and snakes and such to yourself.” Retrieving his shovel, he stabbed the hard-baked ground. The blade made only a faint imprint. He scanned the horizon and shook his head again. “What a godforsaken land.”
“Well, let’s get on with it,” Jesse said. “Must be only another hundred miles or so to the end of this hell.” He dug his shovel into the grade we were building, and the effort set him to coughing again. It was that chesty, raggedy sort that presses a knife to your own throat and makes you swallow hard. Spittle dappled his shirtfront, and when he wiped his sleeve across his nose, the fabric came away streaked with red.
An echoing cough sounded on the opposite side of the grade and, farther back, another one. It was only morning, sometime in the fall of 1868, and the desert sky was still a pearly gray. But the air was thin and dry, and the invisible breath of the desert exhaled the promise of unseasonable heat. The dust that would kick up—pure alkali—would soon cake us in white. Hat brims, shoulders, fingernails, belt buckles—all would be rimed with white before time was called. Noses and mouths and lungs would suck in the stuff; the alkali would burn holes through tissue and send blood spurting out noses and sometimes mouths.
The railroad was pushing us—all of us, man as well as animal—brutally. For months now we’d been tramping across this Nevada wasteland. Track was being laid at three to four miles a day, an impressive pace to my way of thinking. But not to the kingfish. They wanted more, always more. Earlier, at the height of the season’s heat, one of the railroad bigwigs had seen fit to wire these encouraging words: “So work on as though Heaven was before you and Hell behind you.”
He must have been speaking from the velvet cushion of his almighty throne, probably having to set aside his cigar to send those words of wisdom. Like hell was behind us? We lived in hell. We camped in hell, walked over hell, slept, ate, and crapped in hell. The sun—on its fieriest days—seared our skin like the Devil himself was stubbing out his cigar on us. It burned right through our clothes, even. And the dust of that great sinkhole—a fine, acrid powder—got in our lungs to burn through from the other side. That’s what accounted for all the coughing.
Water was the answer, but the farther we got into the desert, the farther we got from the liquid relief. Some days, it had to be hauled in wooden barrels as much as thirty or forty miles, and by the time it arrived it tasted hot and a little brackish. Then, even though our tongues were swollen and sticky with our own breathing, we had to force ourselves to swallow it.
That barrel water sloshed around your gut like it was inside a cave, and you could smell the stagnant air in your nose and taste the slime on the back of your throat. It didn’t even cool you; rather, it seemed to evaporate right through your pores, leaving a salty skim you could flick off with your fingernail. It was like one of those desert mirages: you saw the water, and you felt it going down your throat, but never once did you stop being thirsty and never did you have to take a whiz. The stuff simply disappeared, like every drop of water that chanced to fall on this stingy desert. The land was so dry, the joke was that even the jackrabbits shouldered canteens. Brina herself had given up following me out to the work site and spent her days panting beneath the shade of the meal car.
Yes, day-to-day living here whittled you down to the bone, thin and hard. The work either broke you or honed you.
I let it hone me. I actually sort of liked this harsh land. It demanded grit to survive in it, and when I looked around, I saw that only a few plants and animals succeeded at it. I was going to be one of them. The desert—along with the railroad bosses—were throwing calculated punches, but I was punching back.
“Hey!” One of the men working farther along the grade called to us. “Come take a look at this.”
Jesse and Patrick and I exchanged glances, shouldered our picks and shovels, and hiked ahead. Curious, other workers followed, and for a moment there in the desert, the building of the Central Pacific Railroad came to a halt.
As a group we encircled a tall, weathered cross pole bearing the plainly lettered name LUCINDA DUNCAN. A few small boulders had been arranged at the base of the pole, to protect the grave from wandering wolves, I suppose, and these were dusted with windblown grit and seed hulls. Obviously poor Lucinda had spent many a year out here alone in the desert.
“What do you suppose happened to her?” a man named Eli said, removing his hat.
“Probably traveling with her family on one of them wagon trains,” another replied. He, too, removed his hat, prompting the rest of us to pay our respects. “Probably got sick and died.”
“Or killed by Indians.”
“Or bit by a scorpion,” said Patrick.
“Nah, scorpion won’t kill you,” Eli said.
“How do you know? You been bit by one?”
“No, but I know. They won’t kill you. Just make you sick.”
“So maybe a scorpion bit her and she got sick and then she died.”
Eli considered that. “Maybe. I’ll bet she was a pretty thing, though. Pretty name: Lucinda.”
“How come they didn’t put any dates on it?” I asked, nodding up at the pole. “We don’t know how long she’s been dead or even how old she was.” For some reason, that really bothered me.
“I put her at fifteen,” Eli said with authority, “or maybe sixteen. Lucinda sounds like a girl about fifteen. With golden hair gathered into a ribbon.” He stared at the bleak grave with such a long face that it might have been his own sister. “Hope she didn’t have to suffer.”
Silence.
One of the workers measured the sight line to the eastern horizon. “The way the railroad’s got this staked, the tracks are going to run right through here. I don’t cotton to the idea of poor Lucinda being rattled by locomotives day and night.”
Our bowed heads shook in unison.
Jesse looked over his shoulder. “Boss won’t be out this way for a while. If we all join in the digging, shouldn’t take too much of the railroad’s time to relocate her.” He pointed to higher ground a short distance away. “That little hill would do; it’s got a nice view of the valley. Patrick, Malachy, you take some others and start digging a new grave up there. We’ll dig here.”
Spurred on by purpose, we divided into two teams and in under an hour poor stiff Lucinda, wrapped in her sheet, was reburied a peaceful distance south of the railway with a nice view of the wide valley. The old cross pole traveled with her. And a pile of rocks protected the freshly turned soil.
“She needs a proper headstone,” Eli said, frowning.
“Where are we going to get a headstone? Besides, there’s no time for that.”
“And a little white fence would be nice. So people know it’s a graveyard.”
“It’s not a graveyard,” argued Patrick gently, “it’s one grave.”
“It’s Lucinda’s graveyard.”
More silence followed, and I became aware of the number of Celestials who’d gathered. Without our asking it, they’d quietly joined in the reburial, scouring the desert for rock and lugging it in wheelbarrows back to the new gravesite. I suspected they questioned why Lucinda’s family would abandon her to the desert—though nothing showed on their faces—because I’d seen how stubborn they were about returning their own dead to San Francisco, or even all the way to China, to rejoin family. Honoring the dead seemed to be of high importance to them. Ducks had certainly burned enough strips of paper and set out enough rice bowls over the seasons, remembering his eight friends killed in the snow slide as well as his own ancestors. But whatever their criticism of our burial practices, the Celestials said nothing.
As we headed back to the grading I turned to have a last look at the pole jutting from the hill. It gave me a churchy feeling—the hill, the cross, the great expanse of blue sky stretching up to the heavens—and I got filled up with the good deed we’d done. Lucinda could rest easy now, watching the trains go by; maybe they’d even sound their whistles for her.
I felt lighter too. Exactly one gold coin lighter, because I’d slipped one into the shovelful of dirt I was adding to her grave. That made about as much sense as Ducks burning his paper money because, really, how could the dead spend it? I suppose I was doing it for me, trying to unburden myself in some small way.
We worked the rest of the morning in relative silence, lost in our own thoughts (and I’m guessing here) of life and death and far-off family. Then, when the sun peaked in the sky, we set down our picks and shovels and hiked back for a break. Brina always crawled out from under the meal car to greet me, stretching her limbs and grinning sheepishly. Or maybe she crawled out to beg scraps from dinner plates; food had always been high on her list of priorities. The horses took their break, too, and back by the feed car I noticed Blind Thomas standing alone and swinging his head back and forth like a pendulum. He was fretting, as was his nature.
Obviously the kid working him had gone off for his own meal without watering the poor horse or strapping on the noon feed bag. Feeling my neck grow hot—and not because of the sun—I hurried over.
“Easy, there, Thomas,” I said, announcing my presence. He didn’t seem to hear me, because he kept to his swaying. “Thomas,” I said again, and one ear swiveled in my direction. I saw then that his bridle had been fastened too tight, drawing his lips back in an unnatural grimace. Laying a hand on his sweaty neck and working my way up to his head, I managed to loosen the buckles. Then I ran my fingers beneath the bridle straps, rubbing at the sticky patches, and scratched the tips of his scabby ears where the biting insects tormented him. Eventually he started to relax. Since the lazybones kid was nowhere in sight, I took the responsibility of leading Thomas over to the watering barrel.
He smelled it before we got there, of course, and began stretching his neck, blindly testing for the water’s surface. His busy lips wriggled in anticipation. When he made contact with the water, he splashed playfully at first, soaking the ground and my boots, before drinking deeply. His long throat muscles expanded and contracted like a glistening black snake. When he was finished drinking—and this was his habit—he plunged his head deep into the barrel all the way to his ears and swished it around with animal glee. I’d never in my life seen a horse enjoy water the way he did, and I laughed out loud.
“I was gonna do that, you know.” The good-for-nothing kid stood with his hands in his pockets, his fat lower lip bunched in a pout. Bean sauce mottled his chin.
“Save your ‘gonnas,’” I retorted. “He’s thirsty now.” Then, giving him my best glare, I said, “He works a sight harder than you. You should see to his needs first.”
The lip puckered and pushed forward, further distorting the mumbled words: “He’s just a horse.”
Thomas tossed his head, showering me with water that did nothing to cool my ire. “What? What did you say?”
For a moment I thought he was going to back away, but the kid surprised me by shoving his hands deeper into his pockets and blaring an accusation. “He’s just a horse, and he’s a loony one at that. We’re supposed to change out horses midday, but he won’t have it. Soon as I tie him to the car, he bucks and pulls back till his halter breaks. Then he comes trotting to the fore and getting all the other horses lathered. Doesn’t have the sense to enjoy a rest when he’s given it.”
“That’s because he knows his work and takes pride in it. He’s not some sort of lie-abed slug, like you.”
The kid recoiled, though not out of fear, because I’d seen that same cold-eyed consideration in a rattlesnake I’d happened to disturb—and managed to sidestep—a few months back. He delivered his words with deliberate venom: “Is he a thief, like you?”
I threw a punch but was so off balance in holding on to Thomas that the kid was able to duck out of the way, smirking. Letting go of the reins, I started after him.
“Here now!” One of the foremen was suddenly pushing his horse between us. “Break it up! Get back to your work, both of you. And mind that loose horse.”
The kid scrambled for safety and made a show of fussing over Blind Thomas’s harness. My palms itched to lay him flat. A quaking sea of red and yellow jumbled my vision.
“I said, get back to your work!”
Forced away from any such satisfaction, I stalked back up the rails without stopping for anything to eat. I stalked all the way to where we’d been hacking at a rocky outcropping, mining the gravel and sand to build up the grade.
How did he know? I grabbed a pick and took a swing at the exposed rock. The jarring connection, a shock to my wrists and arms and shoulders, felt nearly as good as a punch. What did he know exactly? And who else knew? A large chunk began to loosen. I hit it again. Then I wedged the pick behind it and tugged. It wobbled. I tugged harder, repositioned the pick once more, and set all my weight against it, but I couldn’t get the right leverage. Dropping the pick and grabbing the loosened rock with both hands, I heaved backward. I felt the strain in my legs and my back. And a sharp, burning sting on my hand. From the corner of my eye I saw the pincher claws and wickedly curled tail of a scorpion as it scuttled back into the shadows.
I let go of the rock to stumble backward, surprised and scared. At once an ominous tingling began traveling up my arm, like fire ants crawling through my veins. My throat tightened; I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And then I really couldn’t breathe.
Help. I know I mouthed the word, but nothing came out. Blinking, trying to hold on to consciousness, I felt a giant dizziness swamping me. In slow motion I crumpled to the ground, gasping for air like poor, dying Lucinda.