“No problem.” Jessica paused. “Be careful.”
Be careful.Nadine tied her hair back viciously as she gathered up her water bottle and the pamphlets, shoving everything into her purse before heading out the front door. Jessica had left the key on the hook for her and she made a point of latching, and then checking, the door.
People loved telling you to be careful. Then they didn’t have to feel bad for you if something happened. Because they’d warned you and could tell themselves it was your own fault.
The morning air was cool and crisp and redolent of pine, but there was a weight to the sunshine that suggested it would get hotter later. She found the path Jessica had mentioned easily enough, though if she hadn’t known exactly what she was looking for, she would have assumed it was just an old unpaved alley or one of those dirt trails that led to nowhere in particular.
On this road were more lingering remnants of Argentum as it had once been: there was an old telegraph pole with the wires removed, charred at the top like it had been struck by lightning; there was an ancient looking tractor; and also, what appeared to be an old, rotted-out carriage wheel.
Sprouting weeds dotted the path, and it was paved with dead leaves. Once you got past the shoulder of the road, the grass banking both sides of the path was hip-high.
She saw a fat chipmunk and several more painted ladies, and a sparrow. At least, Nadine was pretty sure it was a sparrow; it was rust-colored with a snowy white breast dusted with sooty gray splotches.Becalm thyself, a sinister voice whispered in her ear,and cease thy cheeping.
The sparrow went silent and looked at her.
Nadine shivered.
Eventually, the path became rockier, and the grasses and trees yielded to bare dirt that had been excavated so many times that it had the texture of silky powder. Nadine had seen some of this beige-colored dirt blowing around town in little whirlwinds of dust. It was what smeared the windows of the old shopfronts, and what had been kicked up by Cal’s Aston Martin as he pulled out of Jessica’s driveway.
The opening of the mine gaped from the protruding face of the mountainside like a toothless mouth. Old-fashioned looking lamps paraded down the ceiling in a line, hanging from brackets like iron muscles banding a throat made of stone. On the righthand side of it was a replica of a mineshaft, placed close to the road where it would be sure to catch attention. The wood was crumbling and rotted, scarred by the sun. Beneath its flat roof was an old hardwood mining cart, each wheel fixed with a chock to keep it from rolling. In front of this display was a rather faded-looking sign that said ARGENTUM SILVER MINING TOUR.
There were no hours listed.Oversight or cop-out?
She walked to the kiosk Jessica had mentioned, which turned out to be more of a shed. The door swung open with no handle, revealing a woman sitting behind a reception desk made up of stacked crates, sitting back in one of those folding chairs people brought to baseball games, knitting. She set the needles aside and got creakily to her feet while Nadine looked around.
The back window was open, filling the room with the loud hum of an old AC unit. A rack of plastic bins had been set up and filled haphazardly with various mass-market souvenirs: small jars of fool’s gold, pick-your-own tumbled rocks, and miniature prospector’s kits.
“Can I help you?”
Nadine looked away from a display of AUTHENTIC CALIFORNIA SILVER ORE VEIN, her eyes catching briefly on a cartoonish poster of a mining cart where visitors could tack up their names on little paper cut-outs of “ore.”Cute. “I’m here for the tour.Isthere a tour?”
“They start every hour.” The woman looked grumpily at her watch. “I don’t think anyone else is coming, though.”
Probably not, thought Nadine, though it seemed unkind to say so.
“I’m Dottie Peters.” As she slipped around the desk, Nadine noted that she was also wearing one of those KETCHUP WITH JESUS shirts. “My husband, George, is the mayor here in Argentum, which probably means he’s holding court at the diner right about now, shooting the shit with the rest of the old-timers here—if you pardon my French.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I don’t mind, um, French.”
“Have you been to the diner yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Food’s good there, if you like pickled and fried. Maybe you can stop there after we finish this tour. If you tell them I sent you, they’ll give you the Dottie Discount.” She clapped her hands. “All right, well, let’s get started. Our town was founded in 1851. Argentum is the Latin word for silver, which is what was mined here. Makes sense, right?” she shot this to Nadine, who nodded.
“All this was part of the great westward expansion, when folks were pushing west from other parts of the U.S., looking for better work and better lives, or maybe just a sense of adventure. In fact, silver mining picked up some of the runoff from the Gold Rush, when people began to think about what other precious metals they could dredge from the earth and sell at a tidy profit.”
Dottie paused again, and Nadine realized it was a canned silence. “Like silver?” she prompted.
“Like silver.” The older woman continued walking, pushing open the door from the kiosk. As they walked out into the sunshine, Nadine noticed it was already starting to get warm.
“Of course, this mine was also used to mine other minerals, like arsenic, which was used to make things like Paris green. Lots of people got poisoned by bad air and toxic substances down there, and the mine was shut down in 1938, just before the second World War. It remained closed for about four decades after that, before opening up again in 1979. I remember CalEPA and the DOC crawling around here like termites for a while, when there were talks about making us into a heritage site. That all fell through unfortunately, but they had people in hazmat suits in there, treating the rocks and bringing what was left of the arsenic out of solution so they could clear it all away. Most of the tunnels are blocked off now, but the main one’s safe enough if you want to go inside and take a look around. You have closed-toed shoes on, right?”
Nadine tapped the toe of her Converse sneaker on the ground. “Yes.”
Dottie nodded down at Nadine’s shoes. “Good. Last thing I need is someone coming in here and breaking a toe. Not that they wouldn’t deserve it,” she added cattily, stepping backwards in her mules. “Lot of loose rocks in here. Anyone could get hurt if they weren’t careful.
“At its peak,” she continued, “the mine was incredibly profitable, providing the majority of the jobs for people in town. People were coming in and out of here like clockwork hoping to find the motherlode. As far as I know, they never did. There was probably more money to be had in the arsenic. They put that in everything back then, you know. The arsenic. Even the paint and the wallpaper. They had it in makeup and medicine, as well.”
