“How about this?” He extracted a bat from his bag. Turning to the side, he slung it over his shoulder, struck a pose, and held eye contact with her.
“Nope.” The syllable emerged high-pitched because the eye contact was rearranging her insides into the shape of a heart with an arrow through it.
“That’s great to hear.” He broke character and they walked toward the parking lot. “It sounds like we’re safe from romance.”
“Nothing to worry about. At all.”
Midmorning on Saturday, a tiny train drew Luke deeper and deeper into the tunnels of Big Cedar Mountain Gold Mine.
Finley had recommended they retrace the steps she’d taken with Ed when they’d visited together. Today they’d start with the train tour, then mine for gold, then finish with the gift shop. Luke had agreed because he’d assumed he’d be okay with this tour. This glorified toy train was like a kiddie ride at an amusement park. This wasn’t a basement. They weren’t underneath a building.
Turned out, he wasn’t okay with this. Maybe he’d never be able to go underground again—not in any way—after the earthquake. His heart was pounding, and he was having trouble getting enough air.
He sat next to Finley in an open-topped train car so small it barely fit two people on its wooden bench. Finley’s thigh and upper arm pressed against his. The rounded roof of the tunnel zipped by inches from the top of his head. The cars in front of theirs held an older couple, a mom and dad, their three kids, and the engine where their driver/tour guide sat. The only light beamed forward from the front of the train. It brightened the tracks ahead but left him and Finley in shadow. He’d made the mistake of glancing back once into the black hole behind them.
What if the train lost power? They’d come to a stop in blackness.
Memories of El Salvador overwhelmed him.
Cold sweat gathered on his forehead. Angrily, he used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe it away. He was pretty sure they’d said this tour would last twenty minutes. How long had it been so far? It felt like seventeen minutes, but he had a sinking feeling that it had only been seven.
He thought of the cubic tons of mountain above them. The weight of it. The depth—
Concentrate on Finley. She was warm and comforting. She was close. Because she was close, he would be fine.
Over the clatter of metal wheels on track, the tour guide talked into a headset that broadcast to speakers mounted inside each car. An older lady, she had short hair dyed an unnatural shade of caramel and a huge overbite. Occasionally, light bounced off the veneers on her upper teeth.
She finished providing information about the Cherokee who’d once inhabited these mountains. Unfortunately for them, gold had been discovered in their homeland.
“A deer hunter named Benjamin Parks is recognized as the first to discover gold in these parts when he tripped over a rock, picked it up, and saw that it was full of gold,” she said in a thick Georgia accent. “Rain had been washing gold off the mountainsides for centuries, you see.”
How much time had now passed? Luke was having to think hard about his inhales and exhales.
He looked at Finley. Not only did she appear relaxed, she seemed to be enjoying this. Her lips were curved, and her hair sailed behind her. She wore her denim coat over one of the long dresses she liked. This one was brown print with a full skirt.
“News of Benjamin’s find quickly spread, setting off a gold rush in the year 1828, twenty years before the California gold rush began. Some fifteen thousand people flooded into the region, hoping to find gold. The first ones who arrived were the lucky ones—they harvested it by simply picking it up off the ground. Once they’dcollected all they could that way, they started panning for gold in rivers and streams, then directed water flow to create mudslides that brought material containing gold down into sluice boxes.”
They sailed past tunnels snaking away from the main tunnel, then underneath wooden supports. Was he supposed to believe that splintery pieces of one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old wood would keep this thing from caving in? What if an earthquake hit?
“A robber baron named Milton Lawrence, who’d made his fortune in steel, sent geologists and surveyors to this area. They reported back to him that these hills were marbled with veins of quartz containing gold. Most veins of that type are an average of two-to-three inches thick. But here, they found an area where several large veins converged into a vein that was approximatelytwenty-two feetwide. They called it the glory hole. Milton Lawrence promptly bought up five thousand acres and built the Big Cedar Mountain Gold Mine.”
The train slowed, then stopped. To the side, a room-sized area had been carved out of rock. It gave way to a narrow passageway. A few battery-powered lanterns built to look old-fashioned lit the space.
They climbed out of the cars. Damp ceiling hovered just above his head. His balance was off, and the whole place seemed to be tilting to one side and then the other, like a ship.
He took up a protective position behind Finley, legs braced, arms crossed over a chest that had gone tight with pressure. Panic edged his thoughts. What had he been thinking, bringing her down here? If this thing started to come down, he’d throw his body over hers. Were the walls closing in? It felt like they were closing in.
“The glory hole,” the tour guide continued, “is one of the largest veins of quartz carrying gold that has ever been discovered anywhere in the world.” She pointed out the area where it had been mined, explaining how long it had been and at what angle the vein had traveled.
He bit down on his molars, gritting it out.
The tour guide asked if anyone had questions. No one did, except the middle child of the family—a boy. He raised his hand again and again while his sisters played in the terribly small passageway. Every time one of them darted out of sight, Luke winced. If the tour guide tried to make him walk through that, he’d flat-out refuse.
The boy was proving the idea that there was “no such thing as a stupid question” wrong.
Luke wanted to strangle both the guide and the kid.
“Any other questions?” the tour guide asked.
