Auraria: A Novel

Praise fo
r
Auraria

“Fact and fancy are intertwined cleverly and seamlessly in a top-notch, thoroughly American fantasy.”

Publishers Weekl
y
(starred review)

“Envision Lewis Carroll on a romp through the mountains of Georgia, discovering a land of shimmery mystery and spirits, humble monsters, quirky characters, singing trees and vengeful fish. This whole world has sprung from Tim Westover’s brain yet remains firmly and lovingly the real thing, the actual Georgia landscape echoing with folk traditions of the southern Appalachians. The best part is that Tim Westover can really write. I’d give an Aurarian pot of gold to do what he’s done with language in the service of imagination.”

Josephine Humphreys, Hemingway/PEN Award Winner, author o
f
Dreams of Slee
p
an
d
Rich in Lov
e
.

“Mr. Westover brings my beloved Georgia to life, complete with spells, haints, and moon maidens. Not since Wendell Berry has an author woven such a beautifully intricate southern community.”

Ann Hite, author o
f
Ghost On Black Mountai
n
.

“The legends, myths and history of the North Georgia mountains (along with some very inventive additions) are woven into a wonderfully entertaining story.”

Victoria Logue, author o
f
Touring the Back Roads of North and South Georgi
a
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

AURARIA

A Novel

Tim Westover

Copyright ©2012 Tim Westover

All rights reserved

QW Publishers

Grayson, GA USA

www.QWPublishers.com

Print ISBN: 978-0-9849748-0-1

First edition published in 2012 by QW Publishers

Second edition published in 2015 by QW Publishers

Book I

Chapter One

Holtzclaw hadn’t heard of Auraria until his employer sent him to destroy it. The tiny town, nestled into the curve of an unimportant mountain river, had no reputation among capitalists or tourists, but even insignificant places can be expensive to acquire. Holtzclaw rechecked his traveling bag—all the money was still there. The thousands of dollars in federal notes were just ordinary paper, but the gold coins were the strangest he had ever seen. Instead of eagles and shields, the coins were stamped with images of bumblebees, terrapins, chestnut trees, and indistinct figures by a stream. The figures might have been bathing or even panning for gold; they were too small to tell. Shadburn had said the coins were minted in Auraria from local metal. The gold was returning to its source.

Opening the traveling bag was reassuring, but unnecessary. If any of the gold had gone missing, Holtzclaw would have felt by the heft of the bag. Besides, who could have taken it? He was the only passenger in the stagecoach. His other supplies, too, were present: pen, ink, linen paper, his notary stamp. The weight was a sign that all his work lay before him. If he met his employer’s expectations, Holtzclaw would be gone from Auraria in a few days, and his traveling bag would be much lighter. The worth of land deeds is not measured by their weight.

Even past noon, blue mist filled the Lost Creek Valley. The stagecoach descended from the ridge, fording a stream that cascaded from a moss-painted cliff. The air was heavy with water. Holtzclaw tried not to breathe in the mists, thinking they could imbue his unacclimated lungs with sickly airs. He already felt ill from the jolting and jostling of the iron-bound wheels over the road.

Beside the road, a boy was fishing from a fallen log that balanced from a precipice, giving him a clear cast into the emptiness of the valley. His feet swung in space above the mist. The boy’s fishing pole was just a gnarled branch, still covered in bark. The poor should take better care of their possessions, thought Holtzclaw, since they have so few to look after. He leaned out of the window and called for the driver to stop.

“There’s no water below you, young sir,” Holtzclaw said to the boy.

“Doesn’t matter.” He snapped his fishing pole back, and a fish flew up from the mist. Holtzclaw recoiled from the sudden projectile, which the boy caught with practiced hands.

“I’ll sell it to you.” The boy pushed the head of the fish through the open window. “They’re good eating.”

The fish’s ruby body and barblike fins were dusted with a golden residue. Its eyes were like two gold coins. Holtzclaw doubted that it made for good eating. The boy must be judging by rural standards.

“First, you must tell me how you caught it,” said Holtzclaw.

“You don’t have boys that go fishing where you come from?”

“They fish in sensible places. Creeks and ponds. Wet places, not empty ones.”

“Mist is wet, isn’t it?”

“But it is an entirely different state of matter. Water sustains life, but mist is a vapory nothing.”

“Not if it’s thick enough. I just throw out my line, and the fish latch on.”

This spilled the secret of the boy’s scheme. He must have hooked some local trout to the end of his line, then spooled it out so that the fish disappeared into the fog. When a stagecoach like Holtzclaw’s came down the Great Hogback Ridge Road, he hauled up his supposed catch and sold it to the naive traveler, who thought he was buying into some wondrous phenomenon.

“Here,” said Holtzclaw, pleased that he had not been hoodwinked. “I’m going to give you a few coins—not for the fish, but for the effort. From now on, you should be more honest in your business. Set up a little booth in the square and sell what you catch in the streams. It’s hard work, but you’ll find it more rewarding than these transparent tricks.”

“It’s no trick, sir,” said the boy. “I won’t take your money if you don’t want this fellow. I’ll throw it back.” The boy grasped the fish by the tail and flung it sidearm. It whirled into the mist below.

“For lies, I’ll give you nothing.” Holtzclaw hollered to the driver, and the stagecoach rattled on, crashing over every rut and rock.

The mist lifted as the stagecoach continued downward, and the view from the ridgeline became clearer. Breaks in the trees afforded glimpses of the Lost Creek Valley, rolled out just as on Holtzclaw’s map. The Lost Creek entered at the head of the valley and meandered for five miles before it exited through a gorge, white with the foam of waterfalls. The town of Auraria—thirty houses and a squat commercial square—clung to the river. Scars marred the valley walls where trees had been stripped away for pasture, ridges cultivated into narrow rows of crops, and smears of mud left behind after mining.

A chickadee and a titmouse called out from overhead; a terrible warbling from the woods answered them.

“Turkeys,” said the driver of the stagecoach, breaking his silence, “or the singing tree is out of tune. No, has to be turkeys.”

The driver had introduced himself as X.T.—a name simple enough for even an illiterate to draw. He pointed to brown shapes that waddled through the underbrush. “Folk drive them into town to sell, but some of the birds get lost and go up in the hollows. Now if it were a singing tree, that would be a real sight. It belts out old mountain tunes when it’s had too much sweet water to drink.”

Holtzclaw took out his notebook to record the details of this pastime. Evidently, the locals, after some stout brew, climbed the boughs of a tree to sing ballads and folk lyrics—and they sang poorly enough to be mistaken for warbling turkeys. Perhaps Holtzclaw could employ it as a distraction.

The jostling of the stagecoach troubled his handwriting. A wheel bounced off a stone, and his head was thrown against the window glass. “Is it much farther into Auraria?” he asked, rubbing his injury.

“Still a fair piece, Mr. Holtzclaw,” said X.T.

The stagecoach had left its station in Dahlonega at dawn that day. Holtzclaw had planned for the journey to take no more than five hours. Through the settled acres around the county seat, the stagecoach had kept an excellent pace. A private turnpike had provided the best stretch; Holtzclaw would have gladly kept paying the toll if the road had stayed so comfortable. But the smooth traveling was too short. On the Lost Creek side of the Great Hogback Ridge, the road was only a cart path. The primitive suspension of the stagecoach was inadequate for the mountain road and for Holtzclaw’s sensibilities.

“I’ll walk from here,” he said to X.T.

“Still a fair piece, Mr. Holtzclaw.”

“I will be in a fair number of pieces if I keep on with you.”

X.T. shrugged. “If you still want the old Smith place, then, it’s over the Saddlehorn two miles, then you’ll take the Post Trace down into the valley. I’ll haul your boxes to McTavish’s.”

“Is there any other inn in Auraria?” Scottish hospitality and cuisine had not impressed Holtzclaw in the past.

“Well, there’s the Old Rock Falls Inn and the Grayson House. We don’t like to put up guests at the Old Rock Falls. The whispering walls make strangers nervous. The Grayson House has a rough crowd. They bring out the chuck-luck wheel every night, and sometimes folks lose a finger.”

Were his deadlines less pressing, if the land was not pining to be purchased, Holtzclaw would have questioned X.T. further about these superstitions. But it was already later in the afternoon than he would have liked, and he had important visits to make. “Take my things to McTavish’s then.”

“Want me to wait for you on the road?” asked X.T.

“Not necessary,” said Holtzclaw. “I’ll enjoy the constitutional. Fine day for a walk.”

He climbed down from the stagecoach and stretched his journey-stiffened limbs. He was clean-shaven but with admirable sideburns—a young man’s fashion, and Holtzclaw could still, with some truthfulness, call himself a young man. His hairline had retreated only a short distance up his forehead. He removed a bit of fluff from his bowler; it was black, matching his wool suit. Beneath his double-breasted coat, which was studded with gold buttons, was a crisp silk shirt. In his breast pocket, he displayed a folded handkerchief.

“You’ll get your fancy getup all muddy if you head off by yourself,” said X.T.

“I assume you have laundry tubs and soap, somewhere in your town?”

“Sure we do, if you get there.”

Before Holtzclaw could retort, X.T. cracked his whip. The horse leapt forward, and the stagecoach bounded over the terrain like a jackrabbit. Holtzclaw watched his remaining possessions disappear down the rocky road. By the time they got to Auraria, they would be shards and splinters.

#

Two days prior to his arrival in the Lost Creek Valley, Holtzclaw was spending the evening working in the Milledgeville offices of his employer, H. E. Shadburn, Land Acquisitions, when Shadburn himself entered the office and opened a bottle of claret.

Shadburn, sixty-four years old, was twice Holtzclaw’s age. He was a head taller as well, which was evident even when he was sitting down. His knees jutted above the level of his hips; he could not relax even in the overstuffed chairs of his offices. Several of his shirt buttons were fastened into the wrong holes. His appearance was not inspiring. But appearances don’t figure into balance sheets, and to judge by his balance sheet, Shadburn was a spectacular success.

Gas lights glinted off his balding head as he poured a glass of claret. Drinking was not his personal custom. While his sideboard held full shelves of every clear and colored liquor imaginable, he kept them for the tastes of his clients and agents, rather than his own.

But Holtzclaw loved claret. It was a weakness, though he did not yet call it a flaw. The sight of the wine eased his annoyance at being disturbed. “I’d thought you’d gone home,” he said. “I was tidying the books on the Franklin deal.”

“You could have done them tomorrow, Holtzclaw,” said Shadburn.

“I wanted to see how the numbers would come out. Spectacularly, I might add.”

“And you haven’t anything better to do? No society evenings? No dances or dinners? No lady after which to clamor?”

“If there were, I assure you that I would not clamor after her. I would solicit her attentions through the appropriate channels. And one of those channels would be to inform you, of course, as such an entanglement would necessarily impinge upon my ability to execute my duties.”