A Curious Affair (4 page)

Crystal lives at the top of Viper’s Hill, where the rocky coil ends in a sort of mesa. I asked her once how Viper’s Hill got its name and she told me a story about an old tradition called a rattlesnake roundup. Since I hadn’t known her very long, I was inclined to dismiss this tale as a colorful legend invented for the tourists, but I later discovered that the nearby town of Columbia holds an annual poison oak festival, so the lunacy might be true.

Soft chanting led me up the hill: “
Om-Hrum-Adityaya-
Namah. Om-Hraim-Savitre-Namah
.”

I found Crystal in her yard doing her version of sun salutations, which were about half successful, given that she could not lie prone because of the thick mud. What bits of the sky we could see through the forlorn oaks was clear, but the day remained bitterly cold. Crystal waved as I walked up, but kept folding and breathing. Yoga was her most recent enthusiasm. An exasperated friend had once said that Crystal had been baptized in so many faiths that her skin was starting to prune from the holy water. I liked that she was so open to strange things and had almost—almost—told her about the cats back in October. But Crystal also liked to chitchat about
the strange and wonderful, and I couldn’t risk even a garbled version of this story getting around. I didn’t need to get labeled as the village kook.

“
Oh-Hram-Bhaskaraya-Namah
—
Hey, Jillian!” She ended her salutation for creativity and balance. Today she was wearing a bipolar outfit known well to mountain folks in the spring. The manic part was gauze harem pants in hot citrus colors and a lace shirt of lime green. The depressive part featured winter boots and a large wool sweater-coat she had belted at her waist. Her smile was wide. Clearly she was dizzy with the rapture of the sun.

“Hey, yourself,” I answered with a smile. Crystal was crowding fifty and not beautiful in any classical sense, but people always described her as lovely and gorgeous. I think what made her so attractive—to anyone grown beyond the hormone-driven fascination with teenage pop stars and supermodels—was the joy she radiated. It suggested a lack of suffering, or a transcendence of the earthly sorrow that wears most of us down eventually. Such bliss hints at the divine, and others want to bask in that reflected happiness while they tell their tales of woe. And to drink her homegrown calendula-mint tea, which was delicious and soothing.

“I’m afraid that I have some unhappy news,” I said.

“Then I’d better put on the kettle,” she replied, predictably. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm.”

It turns out that this was a red-letter day for me. Crystal hadn’t heard about Irv, which told me that the sheriff either wasn’t pursuing his death as a murder, or else was being very, very cautious about whom he questioned. Either way, I understood. It was annoying when I wanted answers, but reasonable given that he worked in Irish Camp, where everybody minded everybody else’s business and nothing would get done if the town council or the mayor got in the way of an investigation.

Disappointed that my usual source hadn’t already called everyone in town and figured out who the murderer was, I decided that I would take a trip down to the coffee shop myself. Not to do anything, really, just to hear what people had to say. And for the coffee and chocolate-orange scones, of course. Calendula-mint tea wasn’t enough.

I didn’t tell Crystal where I was going. I let her believe that I was heading home to write. Usually I did put my nose to the grindstone in the morning, so this inference passed without challenge. I felt pleasantly guilty for telling a lie—even by omission—and getting away with it. I know that sounds odd, but if you aren’t a good liar, there is pleasure in being able to pull off any untruth, however small. It wasn’t that I would have minded her company, but I had taken to walking indirect routes through town that kept me away from businesses with cats, and she would have noticed this change of pattern.

The road off Viper’s Hill is really more of a tunnel. Ancient oaks have overgrown the street, making it a dark and mysterious place. Even in winter, when they drop their leaves, the parasitic mistletoe still cling to the branches in great falls, casting the lower stretch of the road into a perpetual twilight. Its uncanny nature aside, it is of some danger to a pedestrian because the ancient tree trunks are so thick that there is nowhere to go if cars take the corners wide. Still, the residents always walk into town. It’s a matter of pride in our mountain-strong legs. And also because there is almost no parking in the town proper, designed when the only traffic was a weekly stagecoach and the odd mule team or two.

I walked cautiously, ears straining for the sound of cars as I crabbed guardedly down the hill. The road was slick with mud and loose gravel.

Crows cawed suddenly overhead, making me jump.
Aerial vermin, Irv had called them. They were the only creatures he didn’t like. He said they were an ill omen, and would throw rocks to drive them away. The rough sound of their voices in the cold air now reminded me of Irv’s death and made me shiver with a sort of atavistic dread. The oaks’ thick shadows grew even darker as my morbid imagination fought for freedom.

What am I doing?
I asked myself. Why did I care what happened to Irv when no one else did? He was a drug-dealing hermit, inarticulate, smelly—repulsive, even. I’d like to tell you I cared because he was a human and I am so spiritually enlightened that I know every man’s death diminishes me. But really, it was probably just guilt for never having repaid all the hours of work he’d put in on my house since Cal died. It’s almost always guilt that moves me to action these days.

No, Irv wasn’t a friend in the normal sense of the word, but of course I’d grown to know him. I’d seen him so many times, even before Cal got sick. He was a neighbor, sort of, someone you waved at but didn’t stop to pass the time of day. And once people knew about Cal’s cancer, he occasionally dropped around and brought Cal some marijuana, often leaving it in the old wooden message box by the door where one used to leave notes for the milkman in the days when delivery came to the door in glass bottles. He was shy, uncommunicative, and I was happy to have it so. I had no energy for anything except trying to save Cal.

Of course, that changed one very long, frustrating day soon after Calvin’s funeral, when I decided that I
had
to fix the front gate that hung so crookedly it dragged on the ground enough to leave a rut. The only tool I could find was a hammer, and I was having little success with my repair efforts. Don’t ask me why, but Irv chose that day to stop in, and though I don’t know exactly how it happened, he somehow ended up fixing the gate while
I went inside and made scones, brewed tea and dried my swollen eyes on a kitchen towel.

After that, every month or so, Irv would drop by to talk about the weather and incidentally fix a few things for me. I wanted to pay him for his work, but somehow the subject of money never came up. I tried once, but the man was evasive when he wanted to be. He seemed to feel that tea and pastry was sufficient payment, so I let it go. Still, I always felt vaguely indebted to him.

Later, I found out about his collection of feline strays and realized that I was probably just one more lonely creature he had taken under his threadbare wing. The thought was both touching and lowering, the latter because it underlined how pathetic I had become.

“Let it go,” I mumbled to myself. Then louder: “Shoo! Go away, you loudmouthed buzzards.” I threw the words hard, letting the crows know that I meant them.

It did no good.

I eventually staggered out into the light at the end of the oaken tunnel, shutting my dazzled eyes for a moment at the glare of the sun bouncing off the wet parking lot behind the bank. I breathed deeply, sampling the less damp air, and then opened my eyes very slowly. I was not the only stunned mole out that morning, standing in the half-empty lot. We were all eerily pasty extras from
Night of the Living Dead
, except that we smiled and didn’t bite one another. This was not a sight I had ever seen in the Silicon Valley where we used to live. Down there, people were polished and presented themselves with year-round tans. But mountain people are different. We have accepted our startling whiteness as part of what has to be endured in the winter, and do not try and hide it with cosmetics or long sessions in a tanning booth. I’d tried self-tanner before, but orange is just
not
my color, and no one had been fooled
into thinking that I’d just come back from a Carib be an vacation. Like smile lines and 34B-sized breasts, some things were best accepted with dignity.

I did a slow turn in the mostly deserted lot, taking in the town, recalling what it looked like without its watery veil; then I began walking slowly. My dream of scones ousted by my appetite-killing memories of Irv, I started for The Mule up on Main. This had been Irv’s home away from home. Business before pleasure, I told myself. What would Miss Marple do? Feeling brave, I took the shortest route, heading up Hard Rock Lane, watching my steps on the uneven sidewalk and keeping my eyes averted from the windows of the used bookstore where Oscar was sure to be napping. Oscar was a nice enough animal, but he was extremely vocal as well as hard of hearing and would caterwaul when he saw me.

In common with most gold-country towns, we had a Main Street and a Church Street, a Gold Street and a Lincoln Street. What we didn’t have was an Easy Street, real or meta phorical. Nothing had been easy for folks when the forty-niners were naming things in this Gold Rush town, and things weren’t all that easy now.

As I mentioned before, Irv frequented one of the town’s less tourist-friendly bars, The Three-Legged Mule. Around here, if a bar is historic or charming, it’s usually called a pub or a saloon. The Mule wasn’t charming. For one thing, people still smoked there—excessively. A little foretaste of Hell, Irv had joked. The bar had grandfathered in some clause that permitted both smoking and the sale of firearms on the premises. You walked by it any time from seven
A
.
M
. until three a.m. the next morning and belches of smoke and sweaty air would billow at you from under the swinging door. Yes, seven
A
.
M
. The Mule opened early, before anything else in town. It was the perfect place to go when you wanted
to hurt yourself at sunrise, and sadly there was always a handful of people who did. Rumor also had it that The Mule sometimes served underaged kids equally underaged scotch that hadn’t been brewed by the companies whose names were on the bottle labels. They never had happy hour there trying to attract tourists, either. They were at least realistic about that. Their clientele didn’t actually expect to be happy; getting inebriated cheaply was enough. Having happy people around would have just annoyed the regulars.

No one was loitering outside in the cold sun today, though there was a bench. Perhaps the break in the weather had gone unnoticed. More likely the bar’s owners and patrons were making an effort to stay out of sight of the mayor, who was getting ready to hold some kind of rally across the street at the courthouse. That didn’t mean the place was empty, though. It never was during business hours. On a successful Saturday night, ranks of patrons would drink until the bar closed and then lurch out to Fremont Creek Ranch, using the Victorian ironwork fences around the Mason’s graveyard as crutches while they pulled themselves along hand-over-hand. After that they would have to lean together, a shambling human tripod, or else crawl the rest of the way up the hill to their shacks and trailers.

I braced myself and then stepped up to the red door with the small diamond-shaped window now gray with smoke. I was a big girl—I could do this.

I held my breath as I stepped inside. The list of beers on the chalkboard behind the bar was short and boring, but no one went to The Mule because they sought exciting beverages. No one here was seeking excitement of any kind; if anything, they wanted to be numbed as quickly and cheaply as humanly possible. They didn’t bother with microbrews here, though there were many good ones in the area.

My first impression when my eyes adjusted to the stygian light levels was that everyone in The Mule was suffering from either liver failure or hepatitis. After a second look, I changed that assessment to only about two-thirds. Nevertheless, I resolved not to touch anything or shake any hands. This was the Sierra Nevada’s version of the black hole of Calcutta, and who knew what germs there abideth within.

The day was just dawning, but business was already being done at some of the tables. There were stacks of dirty cash on a table, and once in a while something that might have been a contract, though this was rare.

The barter system is alive and well in Irish Camp, and the underground economy flourishes. It starts in the heart of town where most businesses struggle financially even with the help of the tourists who visit, but the system of barter stretched deep into the forest around the township.

Here’s a benign example of how it works: Ranchers send sheep and goats to eat back brush that presents a fire danger to some historic old home that belongs to a historic but impoverished family. In return, that rancher gets firewood from trees downed by a storm on the historic property. Sometimes dental work is traded for plumbing or gardening services. A house painter gets his kid’s broken arm fixed by plying his trade for the doctor.

Then there are the less benevolent forms of barter. Like the trading of marijuana or other drugs for food from the fruit stands or the bakery, or for clothes from the thrift shop, or even for sex or a place to stay when it is snowing.

I don’t actively partake in this underground economy, but I see it and mostly approve. It’s a system that works in a poor county where there is never enough to go around, and I hadn’t personally seen anyone being coerced into participating. But that morning I thought
that perhaps it had a dark side I didn’t know about, and maybe that was what had gotten Irv killed.

Looking at the motley crew inside the Three-Legged Mule, I had to wonder what they were trading for the swill they drank so freely. None of them had regular jobs, and therefore had little money. Few of them had any skills to trade—Josh had worked as a steamfitter, Dell as a logger, Tim as a stonemason before he lost his left hand—but they showed so little inclination toward sobriety these days that only a crazy person would let them near power tools.