The Check Board
They left while there was still light enough to see the stones in the road.
Ruth stood beside the gate with one hand resting on the post. She had made Calder take his coat and checked the water herself. When Eddie climbed onto the wagon, she handed him a small bundle of clean bandages.
“Dry ones,” she said. “Since you seem determined to put the others to work.”
He tucked them inside his coat.
“I’ll bring him back.”
Ruth looked at Calder.
“He knows the way.”
There was kindness in it, though she did not soften her voice. Eddie understood what she had spared him: a promise neither of them could safely make.
Calder gathered the reins.
“We’ll send word when we can.”
“Do.”
She stepped away from the wheel.
The wagon passed through the gate, with Jack following close behind. Eddie looked back once. Ruth remained where they had left her, the house catching the last of the sun beyond her shoulder.
Then the road dipped, and the fence hid her.
***
They went south until the house was out of sight.
At a dry wash, Calder turned off the road and brought the wagon to a stop beneath a low bank.
Eddie looked at him.
“Thought we were finding a lawman.”
“We are.”
Calder climbed down and walked back along the wheel tracks.
Eddie watched him reach the edge of the wash and stand looking toward the road.
After a while, the farmer returned.
“Anybody following?”
“No.”
He did not sound reassured.
Eddie took the brass check from his pocket.
The stamped number was seventeen.
He traced it with his thumb.
“Do you know her?”
“Mary Jane?” Calder shook his head. “Know a few people who’ve hauled through Ash Springs. Bennett among them.”
“We can’t ask him.”
“No.”
Calder glanced at the check.
“How much of her do you remember?”
“The engine. Her hands.”
“That she ran it?”
Eddie considered the image.
He could see her beside the great drum, one foot braced on a low timber. There was a rag tucked into her belt. She had been looking past him toward the shaft.
“She knew it.”
“That’s something.”
“She gave me this."
“That’s something too.”
Eddie closed his fist.
Beyond the wash, a little breeze moved the tops of the brush. The wagon horses had left their scent in the dust earlier that afternoon; Jack kept lifting his head toward the road.
Calder followed the horse’s attention.
“We’ll make the first stop. Hear what we can before anybody hears us.”
***
The road station stood around a well and a long, low stable.
A lantern hung beside the main door. Its light reached the nearest wheel ruts and no farther. Somewhere beyond the building, water spilled into a trough, and a mule complained with the weary persistence of an animal that had been disappointed all day.
Calder stopped short of the lantern.
“Keep your coat buttoned.”
Eddie looked down at the stained shirt beneath it.
He fastened the upper buttons.
Inside, three men sat over their suppers. An older woman worked behind a counter, cutting bread with a knife whose handle had been worn almost white.
She recognized Calder.
“Wynn. Ruth with you?”
“Home.”
“Then I’ll charge you proper.”
“You usually do.”
She glanced at Eddie, took in his face and bandaged hands, and returned to the loaf.
“What’ll you have?”
“Feed for the mule. Water. Whatever’s warm.”
“Beans.”
“Beans, then.”
They sat at the end of a table.
Eddie kept his back near the wall. It was an unfamiliar habit, or perhaps one he had forgotten having. From there he could see the door, the counter, and the dark reflection of the room in a small window.
Calder put his hat beside his plate.
“Any officer through lately?”
The woman brought two bowls.
“What sort of trouble?”
“Need to ask after a matter.”
“That sort, then.”
She set down the bread.
“Deputy passed yesterday. Heading west. Might be back in two days. Might be a week.”
“Anybody nearer?”
“Depends who you want carrying the answer.”
Calder looked up.
The woman wiped a thumb along the knife handle.
“Something happened north of here. Men have been asking questions all afternoon.”
Eddie kept his spoon still.
“What men?” Calder asked.
“Mine men.”
“Two in a freight wagon?”
“Those two. Another rider before them.”
The woman looked at Eddie again.
This time she stayed looking.
“Your friend ought to eat while it’s hot.”
Then she went back to the counter.
Calder broke his bread.
Eddie leaned closer.
“She knows.”
“She suspects.”
“Is that better?”
“Sometimes.”
At the next table, one of the men laughed at something Eddie had not heard. A chair leg scraped. The sound made him turn before he could prevent it.
Nobody was looking at him.
He took a mouthful of beans and swallowed carefully.
***
The oldest of the three men was wearing a coat shiny at the elbows and boots dusted with pale mineral powder.
Eddie noticed the dust because it had settled into the stitching in a way road dirt did not. He had seen it before. On floorboards. On cuffs. Beneath a washbasin after men scrubbed their hands.
The man had been talking little.
When his companions stepped outside, he stayed behind with his cup.
Calder watched him for a moment.
“You come down from Ash Springs?”
The man looked over.
“Why?”
“Heard there was trouble.”
“There’s always trouble.”
“Men hurt?”
The man stared into his cup.
“Yes.”
Eddie’s spoon touched the bowl with a small click.
“How many?”
The man lifted his head.
For a moment his expression remained merely tired.
Then his eyes narrowed.
Eddie felt Calder become still beside him.
“You work there?” the man asked.
“Machinery.”
“Thought so.”
His gaze moved to Eddie’s hands.
“Didn’t see you come out.”
Calder said nothing.
Eddie pushed his bowl away.
“Were you below?”
“First level.”
“The water reached it?”
“No. Not while I was there.”
“Second?”
The man’s mouth tightened.
“That’s where it started coming.”
Eddie could picture a passage sloping away from the shaft. Rails underfoot. A pipe fixed to the wall with iron straps.
He could not tell whether it was memory or something his mind had built to fill the silence.
“Did the pump stop?”
The man gave a short, humorless breath.
“We stopped hearing it.”
“Before the water?”
“Yes.”
Calder leaned forward.
“Did everybody get up?”
The man looked toward the door.
Outside, one of his companions was arguing over the price of feed.
“They said so.”
“You see them?”
“No.”
Eddie took the brass check from his pocket.
Calder’s hand moved beneath the table, catching his wrist too late.
The disk lay between Eddie’s fingers.
The older man stared.
“Where’d you get that?”
“A woman gave it to me.”
“Which woman?”
“Mary Jane.”
The man set his cup down.
His chair creaked as he shifted back.
“Put that away.”
Eddie did not move.
“Why?”
The man lowered his voice.
“Because I’ve had a long day, and I’d like tomorrow to be ordinary.”
***
His name was Abel Pike.
He gave it to Calder beside the stable, after the woman at the counter told them they were letting the room go cold.
Pike stood with his shoulder against a post and watched the yard while he spoke. His companions had bedded down in the loft. He said he would join them shortly.
“You’re Bone.”
Eddie nodded.
Pike studied him in the lantern light.
“They said you ran.”
“I didn’t.”
“They said you took money.”
“I didn’t take that either.”
A mule shifted inside the stable. Leather creaked against a stall divider.
Pike looked at Calder.
“You kin?”
“No.”
“You believe him?”
“Yes.”
The answer came without qualification.
Eddie looked away.
Pike rubbed at the pale dust on his sleeve.
“I saw him trying to get the lower workings cleared two days before the water. Him and the woman at the engine both.”
“Rusk was there?” Eddie asked.
“Everybody heard enough of Rusk that morning.”
The words stirred something.
A crowded landing.
Men waiting to go down.
Rusk standing on a timber where they could all see him.
Eddie remembered the humiliation before he remembered the words.
*If Mr. Bone wants to run the mine, he can buy it.*
A few men had laughed.
Not many.
He pressed the check into his palm.
“Where’s Mary Jane?”
Pike looked toward the station door.
“Not at the engine.”
“Why?”
“They put another man on it after.”
“After the accident?”
“Before.”
Eddie lifted his head.
Pike watched him carefully.
“The morning it happened. She came to the shaft, and Mercer told her she wasn’t needed.”
The bandaged hand returned to Eddie’s memory.
He made himself remain still.
“Where did she go?”
“She rooms behind the old assay shed. Unless they’ve sent her off.”
“Which shed?”
“East side. Past the spoil heap. Little place with a patched roof and a door painted green.”
Calder drew a slow breath.
“You know if anybody’s watching her?”
Pike looked at him.
“I’d suppose somebody’s watching everybody.”
***
They left the station without asking for beds.
Calder paid for the food and feed while Eddie watered Jack. The woman from the counter came outside carrying a lantern.
She stopped beside him.
“You’re younger than the men who came asking.”
Eddie rested his hand against the horse’s neck.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That doesn’t mean they know more.”
He looked at her.
She held the lantern higher, examining his face with no effort to conceal it.
“You tell your friend to use the wash behind the stable. Road goes around a bad stretch there. He’ll know.”
“Thank you.”
“Bring the cup back.”
Eddie looked down.
He was still holding the tin cup from supper.
He handed it over.
The woman took it and went inside.
***
Calder drove without a lantern.
The moon had risen enough to give the road shape, though the hollows remained dark. Eddie sat beside him, listening to the wheels and the soft clink of the harness.
For a long time, neither spoke.
Then Calder said, “You showed him the check.”
“He knew something.”
“He could’ve known Mercer.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Eddie looked at his hands.
The farmer let the question remain.
Finally, Eddie said, “When I see something I recognize, I feel as though it’s about to go. Like I’ll lose it if I wait.”
Calder’s expression changed in the moonlight.
“I can understand that.”
“I’m not trying to make this harder.”
“I know that too.”
The wagon rolled over a stone. Calder steadied the reins.
“We’ll agree on something before the next person.”
“What?”
“If you’ve got a question, you look at me first. Gives us both time to see who else is listening.”
Eddie nodded.
After a moment, he added, “If I start walking toward somebody again, pull harder.”
Calder glanced at him.
“Rather you learned to stop.”
“So would I.”
The farmer faced the road.
It was the nearest either came to laughing.
***
They rested before dawn in a shallow fold of land away from the road.
Calder unhitched the mule and fed both animals. Eddie offered to take the first watch.
“You need sleep,” the farmer said.
“So do you.”
“I’ll wake you.”
Eddie knew he would not.
He lay on the blanket anyway, with his coat beneath his head and his eyes on the paling sky.
The ground was hard.
That helped.
There were no walls beside his shoulders. No lid above his face. When he lifted a hand, nothing stopped it.
He slept in short pieces.
Once he dreamed of water passing beneath a door.
Once he heard the winding engine, its familiar laboring rhythm interrupted by a sharp knock.
When he opened his eyes, Calder was sitting with his back against the wagon wheel, his hat low.
Eddie sat up.
The farmer was asleep.
He had kept one hand around the reins.
Eddie rose quietly and went to the animals.
Jack watched him approach.
He checked the water, loosened a strap that had twisted, and stood for a while with his forehead against the horse’s neck.
Then he began to remember the road ahead.
Not all of it.
Enough.
***
Ash Springs appeared first as a stain against the hillside.
Spoil heaps broke the natural slope into pale, ugly ridges. A chimney stood above a cluster of timber buildings. Farther up, the headframe cut a black shape against the morning sky.
The mine was awake.
They could hear metal striking metal long before they reached it.
Eddie had expected the sound to bring everything back.
Instead, his mind seemed to retreat.
The buildings were familiar in the wrong order. He recognized a roof before the structure beneath it, a bend in the track before he remembered where it led. A shed appeared exactly where he expected it, but he could not say what had been kept inside.
Calder stopped the wagon behind a low rise.
“That it?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the east side?”
Eddie pointed.
Beyond the spoil heap, a few smaller buildings stood apart from the workings. One had a roof patched with sheets of mismatched tin.
He could not see the door.
Calder studied the ground.
“We leave the wagon.”
Eddie looked at him.
“You could stay here.”
The farmer climbed down.
“We’ve had that talk.”
***
They approached through a shallow drainage behind the outbuildings.
Calder carried the food parcel. Eddie had the brass check in his pocket and the copied warning folded inside his coat. The original remained hidden beneath the wagon’s floorboard.
They had argued over that too.
This time, Eddie had agreed.
The mine smelled of coal smoke, hot grease, and wet stone.
Beneath those familiar smells was another.
Water left standing where sunlight could not reach it.
Eddie slowed.
A dull ache began under his breastbone.
He pressed his hand against his coat.
Calder noticed.
“Need to stop?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
The farmer looked at him until Eddie corrected it.
“A moment.”
They waited behind a stack of discarded timbers.
Above them, a bell rang.
One stroke.
A pause.
Then two.
Eddie turned toward the sound.
His body knew it before his thoughts did.
The cage.
He could picture it moving in the shaft, a lantern swinging inside, men shifting their feet as the guide shoes dragged against the timber.
Something was wrong with the bell.
Or with the answer that failed to follow.
He listened.
From the engine house came a shouted order.
Then the winding machinery began.
The ache beneath his breastbone eased.
Calder touched his shoulder.
“The shed.”
Eddie nodded and made himself move.
***
The door was green.
Most of the paint had peeled away near the latch, leaving gray wood polished by years of hands. A small window stood beside it with a curtain drawn across the lower half.
There was no sound inside.
Calder stayed near the corner, watching the path.
Eddie knocked.
Nothing.
He knocked again.
A floorboard moved.
“Who is it?”
The voice brought back the engine room with painful clarity.
Mary Jane leaning over a bearing.
Mary Jane calling for a rag.
Mary Jane laughing at something he had said before the memory ended.
“It’s Eddie.”
Silence.
He looked toward Calder.
The farmer motioned for him to wait.
Inside, something scraped softly against the door.
“Who?”
“Eddie Bone.”
The latch did not move.
“Go away.”
He leaned closer.
“Mary Jane.”
“No.”
Her voice had changed.
He could hear her breathing now.
“It’s me.”
Something struck the door hard enough to make him step back.
“Get away from here.”
Calder moved alongside him.
“Miss, we don’t mean you any harm.”
“Then take him away.”
Eddie stood looking at the peeling green paint.
Of all the things he had imagined on the way, he had not prepared for her to be frightened of him.
He took the check from his pocket.
“You gave me seventeen.”
The breathing inside stopped.
“By the engine,” he said. “You told me if he changed the lock, I should come to you.”
A long silence followed.
Then the curtain shifted.
One eye appeared above it.
Eddie kept still.
The face vanished.
He heard the scrape again, then the heavy movement of something dragged across the floor.
The door opened no wider than her hand.
She looked older than the memory had allowed.
There were dark hollows beneath her eyes, and her hair had come loose from its pins. She wore a work shirt with one cuff rolled higher than the other.
In her right hand was a hammer.
Her gaze moved over his face.
Down to his chest.
Back up.
“I saw you,” she whispered.
Eddie held the check where she could see it.
“Where?”
Her fingers tightened on the door.
“On the cart.”
***
She let them in only after Calder gave his name twice and told her where his farm stood.
The room was small enough that all three had to choose where to stand.
A narrow bed occupied one wall. Beside it sat a washstand, a stove, and two wooden boxes used as shelves. A coat hung from a peg. Beneath the window, a pair of work boots stood neatly together, the soles still crusted with mine mud.
Mary Jane shut the door.
She did not put down the hammer.
Eddie remained near the stove.
“Was I dead?”
She stared at him.
Calder removed his hat.
“Perhaps let her sit.”
Mary Jane lowered herself onto the edge of the bed.
The hammer rested across her knees.
“I heard the shot,” she said.
Eddie’s hand closed around the brass check.
“Then?”
“I was behind the office. Had gone for my pay.”
She looked at Calder, as though needing someone whose presence she could understand.
“They wouldn’t let me near the engine that morning. Mercer said Rusk wanted someone who could follow instructions.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I waited. Thought if I caught him before the shift changed, I might get what I was owed.”
Outside, boots passed on the path.
All three fell silent.
The steps continued.
Mary Jane waited until they faded.
“I heard you shouting. Couldn’t make out every word.”
“What did you hear?” Eddie asked.
“Something about the lower drift. You said you’d told him to keep it clear.”
He looked down.
The warning lay inside his coat.
“Then the shot,” she continued. “I stayed where I was.”
Her eyes shone, though no tears fell.
“I stayed there.”
Eddie could find nothing to say.
“Later they brought a cart around. You were in it beneath a canvas. One arm fell out when they turned.”
She looked at his bandaged hand.
“Mercer put it back.”
***
Calder drew the only chair nearer to the bed.
“You couldn’t have helped him then.”
Mary Jane stared at the hammer.
“I don’t know that.”
Eddie looked at her hands.
The grease was gone from them, scrubbed away except beneath the nails.
“Did they see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have they been here?”
“Twice.”
“What did they want?”
“To know whether you’d left anything with me.”
Calder and Eddie exchanged a look.
Mary Jane saw it.
“What?”
Eddie took out the copied warning.
He unfolded it on the washstand.
She rose and came to look.
For a moment, the room seemed to hold its breath.
“You kept it.”
“Part of it.”
Her fingers hovered above the writing.
“He said you’d taken the whole account.”
“Did I?”
“You showed me a page. Supplies signed for. New fittings. A pump ordered and never brought down.”
Eddie looked at the blank spaces in his copy.
“Where was it?”
“In the office ledger.”
Calder stepped closer.
“Could somebody else have moved the equipment?”
Mary Jane shook her head.
“There’s one way down that shaft. I know what I lowered.”
She touched the warning.
“We’d been nursing that pump for weeks. Eddie wanted the lower workings shut until the replacement came.”
“And Rusk kept the men below,” Calder said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked at him as if he had asked why a hungry man ate.
“There was ore coming out.”
***
The bell sounded again.
Mary Jane flinched.
Eddie turned toward the wall.
Three strokes this time.
A pause.
One.
The ache returned beneath his scar.
He rested a hand against the washstand.
Mary Jane watched him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Calder looked sharply at him.
Eddie swallowed.
“I can feel the engine.”
Mary Jane’s expression tightened.
“It carries through everything here.”
But that was not what he meant.
There was a rhythm beneath the machinery.
A slow, uneven pressure.
He had felt something like it in the mirror at Calder’s house, waiting for the beat beneath his jaw.
Now it seemed to come from somewhere beyond the room.
Below it.
He took a breath and looked away from the wall.
“How many checks were missing?”
Mary Jane went still.
Calder looked between them.
“When?”
“The morning they put somebody else on the engine,” Eddie said. “After the water.”
She turned toward the bed.
For a moment he thought she meant to sit.
Instead, she knelt and reached beneath it.
Wood scraped across the floor.
She pulled out a shallow box.
Inside lay a folded shirt, a small tin, and a square board wrapped in a towel.
She lifted the board carefully.
Hooks had been driven into it in two rows.
Most were empty.
At the top, in worn black paint, someone had written a single word.
**BELOW.**
Calder leaned forward.
Mary Jane unwrapped the towel fully.
Six brass checks remained on the hooks.
Eddie looked down at the one in his palm.
Seventeen.
His own.
He approached the board.
“Why do you have it?”
“They replaced it.”
Mary Jane’s voice was barely audible.
“New board. New numbers. Said the old count had got confused.”
Calder stared at the six disks.
“They said everybody came up.”
“Yes.”
The word scarcely left her mouth.
Eddie reached toward the nearest check.
The brass was cool.
The instant he touched it, something struck the other side of his hearing.
A hard blow.
Then another.
He jerked his hand away.
The room went quiet.
Mary Jane stepped back.
“What?”
Eddie looked toward the floor.
The sound came again.
Faint.
Too far away to be in the building.
Three blows against something solid.
A pause.
Then three more.
Calder was speaking, but Eddie lifted a hand without looking at him.
He knew that sound.
He had made it himself beneath the earth.
Eddie turned toward Mary Jane.
“How long since the water came in?”
She answered.
He listened to the blows.
For the first time since the road, he felt his heart strike hard enough to hurt.
“Show me the shaft.”