Before the Grave
Calder read the slip standing.
Then he sat on the bed and read it again.
Mary Jane had left the needle in Eddie’s coat. A length of black thread hung from the lining, moving slightly whenever she breathed.
Outside, someone crossed the porch. Spurs touched wood. A door opened farther along the building and shut.
Eddie watched Calder’s eyes reach the final line.
*Mother says you’ve been dreaming about a door.*
The farmer lowered the paper.
“You wrote to her about it.”
“I must have.”
“Before.”
Eddie nodded.
He had built a beginning for the knocking because he needed one. The grave had seemed sufficient. Whatever waited behind the door had followed him out of the earth.
Now his brother’s careless little note lay between them, moving that beginning somewhere he could not see.
Mary Jane drew the needle free and set it on the table.
“Who’s Eli?”
Eddie looked at her.
The name had stirred something the moment he read it. A workbench. Drawers with mismatched handles. A man holding a broken watch close to one eye.
“My uncle.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t remember.”
Calder handed back the slip.
“Then we start with what you do.”
***
They made room on the table.
Mary Jane moved the lamp to one side, and Calder brought his account book from the wagon. He opened it to a clean page.
At the top, Eddie wrote:
**Elias MacRae.**
He waited.
The rest came more slowly.
**My mother’s brother.**
Beneath it:
**Repairs things.**
Calder watched the pencil.
“What sort?”
“Clocks. Lamps.”
Eddie paused.
“A music box.”
The memory arrived with a sound.
A few notes, thin and uneven, played too slowly because somebody was turning the mechanism by hand. Eddie saw his own fingers near the little brass cylinder.
A larger hand moved them gently aside.
*Let it finish.*
He closed his eyes.
“What happened?” Mary Jane asked.
“He was teaching me something.”
“About the music box?”
“I think so.”
The tune slipped away before he could place it.
He opened his eyes and added another line.
**Patient.**
Calder looked at the word.
“Seems a useful relation.”
Eddie almost smiled.
Then he wrote:
**He sent a letter.**
The pencil stopped.
That was the thing they needed.
The thing he did not have.
***
Mary Jane remembered the mail arriving.
A freight driver had brought several pieces together. Two for the office. One for Eddie from his mother.
Another envelope, narrower than the others.
“You weren’t there,” she said. “I put them on your bench.”
“Both?”
“I believe so.”
“Did you see me open them?”
“No.”
Eddie stared at the blank space below his uncle’s name.
His mother’s letter had been in Rusk’s drawer.
Perhaps the other had been there too.
Perhaps Rusk had carried it away with the ledger.
Calder shook his head when Eddie said it.
“We don’t know that.”
“He had one.”
“Yes.”
“He could have taken both.”
“Yes.”
The farmer waited until Eddie looked up.
“And you could have put the other somewhere else.”
Eddie set down the pencil.
For a moment, he resented the correction. Then he looked at the page again.
Everything they knew fitted in half a dozen lines.
Everything else waited for him to turn it into certainty.
“Somewhere else,” he repeated.
Mary Jane lifted his coat from the table.
“I’ve been through this lining. There’s nothing left in it.”
“My room.”
She looked at him.
“At the mine.”
“Yes.”
A bed beneath a sloped roof.
A chipped basin.
His boots standing beside a wooden box.
The image held.
Eddie leaned forward.
“I had a room.”
Mary Jane’s expression softened.
“Last door in the east bunkhouse.”
He could see it now.
Not clearly.
Enough.
“There’s a box under the bed.”
***
They found Harrow in the adjoining room.
Rusk lay on a narrow cot with his injured leg raised. The deputy sat near the door, cleaning dust from the revolver he had taken from him.
He stopped when they entered.
“Trouble?”
Calder held out the slip.
Harrow read it.
His eyes moved toward Eddie.
“Your brother wrote this.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The letter reached the mine last week,” Mary Jane said.
The deputy looked back at the prisoner.
Rusk had turned his face toward the wall.
“Did you take another letter from Bone?” Harrow asked.
No answer.
“A narrow envelope. From a relation.”
Rusk’s jaw moved.
“I took what was on him.”
“What else?”
“The paper.”
“The account.”
“Yes.”
“Any letters?”
“One.”
“Where did the others go?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Eddie watched him.
The foreman appeared smaller on the cot. Without his boots, with the blanket pulled over the splints, he looked like any injured man trying to endure the night.
It did not make the office less real.
Eddie stepped closer.
“When did you first hear me talking about the door?”
Rusk turned his head.
For a moment, his expression was merely puzzled.
Then it changed.
Not much.
Enough.
Harrow set the revolver aside.
“Answer him.”
***
“It was before the trouble with the pump.”
Rusk spoke reluctantly.
Eddie stood near the foot of the cot.
“How long before?”
“A week. More.”
“What did I say?”
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“Where?”
“The bunkhouse.”
Mary Jane folded her arms.
“You didn’t sleep there.”
“Collins sent for me.”
Harrow glanced toward her.
She shook her head.
“I didn’t know.”
Rusk shifted against the pillow.
“Middle of the night. Men couldn’t get him awake. Thought he’d taken fever.”
Eddie could see none of it.
“What was I doing?”
The foreman looked away.
“Trying the wall.”
“Trying it how?”
“With your hands.”
Calder moved nearer the doorframe.
Rusk stared at the ceiling.
“You kept saying somebody had shut it wrong.”
The room seemed to lose its warmth.
Eddie looked at his fingers.
“Did I say anything else?”
“Enough to make the others want you out.”
“What?”
Rusk swallowed.
Harrow’s voice hardened.
“Mr. Bone asked you a question.”
The foreman looked directly at Eddie.
“You said there wasn’t supposed to be anyone on this side.”
***
They went back to Mary Jane’s room.
Eddie remained standing after Calder shut the door.
The lamp had burned lower. A little pool of wax had gathered beneath the candle they had lit for sewing.
His uncle’s name waited on the page.
He read it without sitting.
Elias MacRae.
Patient.
Repairs things.
Calder put both hands on the chair before lowering himself into it.
“We can send to Collins.”
Mary Jane nodded.
“Ask him to look under the bed. Bring the whole box.”
“He’ll go through it,” Eddie said.
“He’ll have to carry it.”
“I mean Harrow.”
The farmer looked up.
Eddie felt suddenly ashamed of the objection. They had carried evidence across the desert and asked the deputy to believe an account no reasonable man would welcome.
Now he wanted a little wooden box kept private.
Mary Jane laid his coat over the bed.
“We can ask.”
The simplicity of it steadied him.
Harrow might refuse.
They could still ask.
Eddie sat.
“I’d like that.”
***
They sent the request with a teamster leaving before dawn.
Harrow added his own note, instructing Collins to preserve Eddie’s belongings and send them with a responsible man.
The deputy sealed it himself.
“You understand I may need to examine anything bearing on the account.”
“Yes.”
“But personal letters can remain personal unless they give me reason.”
Eddie nodded.
“Thank you.”
Harrow rested his hand on the envelope.
“Was that satisfactory?”
The question caught him off guard.
“What?”
“My answer.”
Eddie looked at the deputy’s tired face.
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ve had a long day of people hearing something different from what I said.”
He handed over the request.
For the first time, Eddie wondered what it cost Harrow to continue treating any of this as work.
***
They remained at the road camp the next day.
Rusk’s ankle had swollen during the journey. The keeper sent for a nearby physician, who argued with Doctor Vale’s splints and then left them substantially as they were.
The deputy used the delay to write statements.
Calder gave his account of finding Eddie.
Mary Jane described the warnings, the missing machinery, and the men below.
Eddie sat beneath the porch roof and told the story of the office until his own voice sounded distant.
Harrow wrote carefully.
At one point, he stopped.
“What did you intend to do after leaving the mine?”
“Tell the owners.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did someone know you were coming?”
Eddie looked toward the stable.
A man waiting.
He had thought of that before.
Someone expecting him after his shift.
The memory would not reveal a face.
“I think so.”
Harrow recorded the uncertainty.
He did not ask Eddie to improve it.
***
By afternoon, Eddie had found work.
A hinge on the stable door had pulled loose. The keeper had driven larger nails beside the old ones until the wood split.
Eddie took it apart.
He trimmed a piece of sound timber to fit behind the damaged post, borrowed a brace, and put the hinge back with bolts.
Calder watched from a feed barrel.
“Much more of this and he’ll charge us less.”
“Would he?”
“No.”
Eddie tested the door.
It moved without dragging.
For a moment, satisfaction came so plainly that he forgot to be watchful.
Then he noticed Calder looking at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“Door works.”
Eddie pushed it open again.
It did.
He allowed himself to enjoy that.
***
The box arrived near sunset.
Collins came with it.
He drove a freight wagon carrying supplies for the road camp, with two other men beside him and Eddie’s belongings secured beneath the seat.
He climbed down stiffly.
“Your room was untouched.”
Eddie stood by the porch post.
“Thank you.”
“Brought everything I thought might matter.”
The box was smaller than Eddie remembered.
A plain wooden chest with iron straps and a lock whose key he no longer possessed.
Collins set it on the porch.
Beside it, he placed a bundle of clothing, a shaving mug, and a worn leather pouch.
“Tools are still at the mine. Too much weight to bring without knowing where you’re going.”
Eddie nodded.
He could not stop looking at the chest.
Collins wiped his hands against his trousers.
“Bell’s eating proper now. Doctor says Dacey may keep full use of the leg if he behaves himself.”
“And Harker?”
“Fever’s eased.”
Mary Jane let out a breath.
Collins glanced toward Harrow’s room.
“Need to speak with the deputy.”
He left them on the porch.
Eddie knelt beside the box.
His hands knew the straps.
The dent near the hinge.
A dark patch where he had once set something hot on the lid.
He touched the lock.
Then his memory supplied the place he kept its key.
***
It was in the leather pouch.
Not hidden.
Simply tucked behind a little whetstone and a coil of spare bootlace.
Eddie held it between finger and thumb.
The small success nearly undid him.
Mary Jane stood beside the porch rail, saying nothing.
Calder waited until Eddie opened the lock before helping carry the chest inside.
They set it beneath the lamp.
There were shirts folded more neatly than Eddie expected.
A spare belt.
A razor wrapped in cloth.
Several small books.
At the bottom lay a packet of letters tied with cord.
He lifted them out.
His mother’s hand appeared on three envelopes.
His brother’s on one.
Another bore a name written in a fine, upright script.
**Mr. Edward Bone.**
Eddie knew it immediately.
Not from any clear memory.
From the care taken over each letter.
He slid a finger beneath the flap.
It had already been opened.
***
The paper smelled faintly of lamp oil.
A small drawing occupied the upper corner: a square divided by a diagonal stroke, with three short lines beneath it.
Eddie looked at it.
Then at Calder.
The farmer leaned closer.
It was not the same mark as the stones.
But close enough to make him draw in his breath.
Mary Jane moved the lamp.
Eddie unfolded the letter.
*Edward,*
*Your mother sent me the part of your letter concerning the dream. I would have preferred to hear it directly from you. I know what you think of my cautions, but humor an old man long enough to read this before deciding I have wasted your time.*
Eddie stopped.
A voice seemed to accompany the words.
Quiet.
Dry.
A man at a workbench who knew he was being ignored and continued speaking anyway.
He read on.
*First, a dream is not an obligation. You need not finish it. You need not return to a place merely because you have seen it before.*
Mary Jane sat on the edge of the bed.
Calder remained standing behind Eddie’s chair.
*You wrote that the person beyond the door knows your name. Names are easier to acquire than trust. Consider how many men in a town know yours without knowing you.*
Eddie felt the cramped writing in the tobacco tin as though it were pressed against his skin.
He continued.
*If you hear a familiar voice, ask yourself what makes it familiar. A voice can be remembered imperfectly. So can affection. Do not let your wish to recognize someone do all the work.*
The page trembled.
He lowered it to the table.
Calder put one hand on the chair.
“Enough for now?”
Eddie shook his head.
***
*As to the knocks: do not spend your nights devising answers. I have known sensible people wear themselves ill making a conversation out of a settling house.*
Beneath that sentence, another had been added in smaller writing.
*I have also known them regret answering when the house was not settling.*
Eddie swallowed.
*Keep ordinary company. Eat. Work with your hands. Sleep where someone can wake you. These are useful things regardless of the cause.*
Mary Jane looked toward Calder.
The farmer kept his eyes on the page.
*Write down what happens while you are fully awake. Put dates beside it. Leave room to discover you were mistaken.*
Eddie reached the final paragraph.
*I cannot tell from a letter whether this is a troubled sleep, an old recollection taking an unfamiliar shape, or something that requires my attention. Come see me. If you will not come for your own peace of mind, I have a clock here you repaired badly at sixteen, and I have waited long enough for you to put it right.*
Something warm and painful moved behind Eddie’s eyes.
At the bottom:
*Your uncle,*
*Elias.*
Below the signature stood an address.
Eddie touched it.
This time, there was somewhere to go.
***
No one spoke until he had read the letter twice.
Then Calder pulled up the remaining chair.
“Sixteen?”
Eddie wiped his face with the heel of his hand.
“I don’t remember the clock.”
“Sounds like he does.”
Mary Jane smiled faintly.
“He would.”
Eddie looked at her.
“You know him?”
“No. I know you.”
The answer left him quiet.
He read the address again.
A town.
A street.
A workshop behind a named business.
Specific things.
Things a person could ask after.
He had spent days listening toward a place he could not locate.
Now his uncle had given him a door he could reach by road.
Calder looked at the address.
“We’ll ask Harrow how best to send ahead.”
Eddie nodded.
Then he turned the sheet over.
Writing covered part of the reverse.
He had not noticed it before.
The first lines were his own.
Dates.
Brief entries.
An attempt to follow the instructions.
His stomach tightened.
He had read the letter.
He had believed enough of it to keep a record.
And then he had forgotten all of that beneath the gun and the earth.
***
The earliest entry described waking beside the bunkhouse wall.
The next mentioned a dream of a lamp.
Another recorded three knocks heard while repairing a valve.
Eddie read each slowly.
The days moved toward the date carved on his grave marker.
The final entry was shorter than the others.
His handwriting had changed with haste.
*Heard it in the office passage while fully awake. Mercer heard it also.*
Calder bent over his shoulder.
Eddie continued.
*Asked Rusk whether the lower workings had broken into an old drift. He says no.*
A line had been drawn beneath that.
Then, in darker pencil:
*Will ask Mary Jane to take me down after shift.*
She leaned forward.
“I remember.”
Eddie looked at her.
“You came to the engine.”
“The check.”
She nodded.
Seventeen.
The gate.
The spare key.
The pieces settled, but did not bring relief.
He had gone to Rusk about more than missing machinery.
He had been asking about something beneath the mine.
Something Rusk claimed not to know.
Eddie turned back to the page.
One last sentence stood near the lower edge, almost lost beneath the fold.
He lifted it toward the lamp.
*The door has opened farther since they began the new cutting.*
Outside, a door shut along the porch.
All three looked toward the sound.
Then Eddie lowered the letter.
“We need Collins.”
***
They found him with Harrow.
A map lay across the deputy’s bed. Collins had been marking the old and new workings at Ash Springs, using the account figures to explain where Rusk meant to extend production.
Eddie stopped beside the map.
There was the shaft.
The old rise.
The flooded dip.
And beyond it, a short line driven into unmarked ground.
His finger moved to it.
“When did they start this?”
Collins looked up.
“Three weeks ago.”
“Who worked it?”
“Harker’s crew first. Then the others.”
“What did they find?”
“Ore.”
“Anything else?”
Collins glanced at Harrow.
The deputy closed the notebook in his lap.
“Tell him.”
Eddie looked between them.
Collins rubbed his jaw.
“Harker remembered something this afternoon. Said he hadn’t thought it mattered against everything else.”
Mary Jane stepped closer.
“What?”
“They broke through into a little chamber. Dry. No sign of a worked seam.”
Eddie felt the lamp’s warmth against the back of his hand.
Collins pointed to the end of the cutting.
“Rusk had it boarded over.”
“Why?”
“Said the ground was wrong.”
Eddie unfolded his uncle’s letter.
The small drawing in the corner caught Harrow’s eye.
He reached into his coat and took out his notebook.
Between its pages lay the sketch he had made of the marked stones at Bellwether.
He set it beside the letter.
Collins looked from one to the other.
His face changed.
“What?” Calder asked.
Collins touched the three upright strokes.
“That was on the timber.”
No one moved.
“The timber they broke through at Ash Springs.”
Eddie looked toward the wall.
Beyond it lay the prisoner’s room.
Rusk had told them to cover the prospect.
He had known which way the marks should face.
Eddie put both hands flat on the map.
Behind the wall, something scraped across the floor.
Then Rusk began calling for the deputy.