"Rush" - Chapter Six, Part Two
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Chapter Six, Part One here.
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Over lunch at the Scotchbroom Café, Sam and Erica discussed the antipodes: history and current events; black holes and deep-sea vents; global warming and the last mini-Ice Age.
To Sam, in some respects it was oddly like breathing again. He savored the mental stimulation, ideas leaping from ideas spontaneously, sparking friendly, lively debate. Sparking a bone-deep thirst in him for intellectual challenge, where the subject had nothing to do with life or death, nothing to do with anything remotely supernatural. Talking with Erica was nothing like talking with Dean-from their father’s death to the demon virus to Sam’s dark destiny, the conversations with Dean this year had become filled with pitfalls, if the brothers even talked at all. But with Erica, almost everything seemed fair game for discussion.
Inevitably, though, their talk turned to Stanford.
“After sophomore year, I’d see you around campus every once in a while,” Erica told him, nibbling on a slice of jalapeno. “Then our paths didn’t cross so much. Guess you weren’t studying geology or engineering, huh?”
Sam laughed around his last mouthful of sandwich.
“No,” he said, swiping a napkin at the mustard on his lower lip, “not so much. I was pre-law.”
“Are you in law school, then?”
“Uh, no. This, uh, opportunity came up to work with my brother, so I kinda ended up in the family business.”
Stirring a packet of sugar into her iced tea with her straw, Erica raised an inquiring eyebrow at him. “You’re in mining?”
It threw him for just a moment, until he remembered that Steve Hartson had introduced him as a cousin, and Sam grinned, a little embarrassed but mostly amused.
“No, Dean and I are security consultants. We’re just in town visiting Steve for a couple of days.”
Erica leaned forward with interest. “Security consultants. What, like executive protection? Or more like smoke-detector installers?”
“We do a little of everything, actually,” he replied casually, hoping his vague response would encourage her to move on to another topic.
If anything, she seemed even more intrigued.
“Are you local? I mean, Bay Area? Central Valley?”
He crumpled the napkin in his fist. “Our work pretty much takes us all over the country-we spend a lot of time on the road.”
It didn’t feel like a lie-wasn’t one, in fact-until Erica asked about their base of operations. He couldn’t very well tell her that the Impala was their headquarters, so Sam finally opted for South Dakota, thinking of Bobby Singer’s salvage yard and all the time they’d spent there recently. It was as good a place as any.
Somehow, his old classmate still seemed extremely impressed. “Wow. I’ll bet you can’t tell me about any of your jobs, either, can you?” she asked. “Confidentiality and all that? Your life sounds very cloak-and-dagger.”
“You have no idea.”
Erica beamed at him for a moment from across the table. “I’m glad we ran into one another, Sam,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied, returning the smile. “Yeah, me, too.”
And he meant it.
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There was an awkward moment when the check arrived, both of them throwing startled looks at the waitress and then at one another.
“I’m sorry,” Erica said, turning again to the waitress. “Could you bring us separate tabs?”
Sam blinked, ready to protest until he suddenly realized that he had a five and some ones on him, but that was it. Dean had most of the cash, and they were both pretty broke, depending on the North Cedar job to ease their current financial straits.
“I’m sorry,” Erica apologized again, this time to Sam. “I can get reimbursed for my lunch, but I need a receipt.”
“Well…no. No, that’s fine. But did you want dessert or something?” he asked, trying to save face. “How about some ice cream, on me?”
She brightened at the suggestion, and the awkwardness of the lunch tab was on its way to being forgotten.
They paid their separate checks, Sam ordering a couple of ice cream cones and adding two dollars to the little pile of bills he handed the waitress. Then, while Erica hit the ladies’ room, he wandered out onto the sidewalk, leisurely eating his vanilla cone from one hand while holding Erica’s chocolate one in the other. When his cell rang, Sam stuffed the last of his dessert into his mouth and fished the phone out of his pocket, swallowing hurriedly before answering.
“Never gonna keep your girlish figure, you eat both of those,” Dean said without preamble.
Chocolate ice cream began to dribble down his fingers as Sam scanned the sidewalks on either side of the street. Tourists and locals ambled casually past the knick-knack shops and drugstore, past the bar and the museum and some kind of historical landmark, but there was no sign of his brother.
“Hey,” he replied, still chewing, unable to keep the color from rising in his cheeks. “Where are you?”
“Seriously, man. Nice ass.”
“What?”
“Not yours, you moron-hers!”
Erica appeared at his side suddenly, laughing as she took the dripping cone from him.
“Sorry!” she said.
“Dude, make her lick it off your fingers.”
“No! Uh, no, Erica-it’s no probl…uh…”
Sam was immediately distracted as he watched her lap the chocolate mess off the cone with her tongue, Dean’s voice in his ear.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about, Sammy!”
Sam shook himself mentally. “See this?” he growled, turning away from Erica and shifting his grip on the phone slightly to extend his middle finger. “Where are you?”
Dean ignored the finger and the question. “Who is she?”
“The state mine inspector, Erica Holbrook.”
“Uh-huh. So, what-you two giving one another private inspections?”
Sam reddened further as he looked up and down the sidewalks, still unable to spot his brother anywhere.
“I know her from school, Dean,” he said impatiently. “We went to lunch so we could catch up. What are you doing?”
“I’m researchin’, Sammy, like I’m supposed to be doin’.”
Over the phone, Sam could hear the faint murmur of a young woman’s voice and Dean’s muffled reply about ‘little brother.’
“Researching, right. Who’s that with you?” he asked.
“Wave, Sammy.”
Sam turned sharply, looking across Eureka Street at the bar and the museum, but the glare on the windows prevented him from seeing inside either one. “Dude, what the hell are you-“
“Wave!” his brother barked, and Sam offered a half-hearted salute, which he quickly turned into an awkward one-armed stretch as Erica looked up at him curiously.
“Hey, Steve’s up at the North Cedar-everything went okay with that, uh, project, so I’m going with Erica out into the field this afternoon, to see a couple other mines.”
“Have her in by midnight, and be sure to treat her like a lady.”
Dean chuckled lewdly, and Sam’s brows knit in aggravation. “The mines are local, Dean-we’ll be done in a few hours.”
“Jesus, Sammy, have I taught you nothing? And I meant my car, moron…you can treat your girlfriend there however she wants you to treat her, although knowing you, you’ll be done in five minutes, no matter what. Speaking of which, what kind of protection you got?”
“Dean!”
“Have fun!” Laughing, Dean broke off.
“Your brother?” Erica asked, biting into the cone now that she’d worked her way through the mound of melting chocolate.
“Yeah, my jerk of a brother.” Sam made another visual sweep of the sidewalk, but wherever Dean was, he was still out of view.
Sighing, Sam pocketed the cell, realizing suddenly that his other hand was still sticky with ice cream. Then he caught sight of the brown smear across Erica’s chin and smiled.
“I’ll get some napkins-then let’s hit the road.”
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Dean watched bemusedly as Sam came back out of the café with a handful of napkins. He and the girl exchanged more words and smiles while she wiped off her chin before scrabbling in her purse, coming up with what looked like a small bottle of hand sanitizer. Whatever it was, she poured it liberally into Sam’s massive palm, then into her own.
Dean rolled his eyes as the two made a little show of slapping hands to spread the sanitizer, the girl laughing and Sam’s smile so wide his dimples were apparent all the way across the street. Then they climbed into a giant white Yukon with state tags, Sam on the passenger side, and disappeared down Eureka toward the east end of Rattlesnake.
Jesus, Dean thought, what the hell was going on in this town?
The fan circled lazily overhead as he made his way toward the back of the museum, sitting down again at the old roll-top desk where he’d been culling through stacks of folders, old books with broken spines and faded lettering, newspapers crackling with age. With a sigh, he picked up a heavy leather volume containing fifty years’ worth of the local historical society’s newsletter and began leafing through it, looking for anything that might give him a lead on who or what had attacked Sam and Steve at the North Cedar Mine.
If Grace was curious about what someone from the Weather Service wanted with Rattlesnake’s old news, she kept it to herself, leaving Dean to his business while she went about hers.
Initially it was hard not to be distracted by her. She moved economically through the museum, dusting and polishing, seeing that everything was in order before turning to her paperwork. Every movement was-well, graceful, Dean thought, before yanking his eyes back to the task at hand until the next time he caught himself watching her. Finally, however, he settled down to business.
Records regarding accidents at the North Cedar Mine were scattered few and far between. Maybe it had been an incredibly safe operation; more likely, the bad press had been kept to a minimum in deference to one of the area’s richest families and principal employer. It was frustrating as hell, though, finding nothing Dean could reasonably relate to what had happened to Sammy and Steve down in the second drift.
C'mon, Casper, he thought, grabbing another volume of newsletters and opening it with a silent groan. Where you hiding?
By the end of two hours of ass-numbing research, Dean had a list of three names that matched those Sam had written down in the FoundersCemetery, and four more fatalities dating from the 1930s. He’d also found a little blurb about an explosion that had buried three “celestials” in an ancillary shaft in 1853. There were no names given for the Chinese miners, and no effort had been made to save them; presumably, their bodies were still somewhere in the North Cedar.
He’d made other discoveries, as well. For one, as soon as she had arrived in town, Agnes Markham had formed a Ladies Society determined to save Rattlesnake from “heathens and Chinamen.” And the reason why Grace’s family had stayed in town after their patriarch had been lynched? It seemed that Quon-Jin’s widow had ultimately taken over Delilah Reardon’s job as local madam, running an active stable of ‘singsong girls’ who serviced the nearby mining camps. Interesting that Grace hadn’t shared that little tidbit with him, Dean thought.
An assortment of loose pages had been stuffed into an old envelope in one of the folders, and he laid the papers out on the desk, just to be thorough. Several were stuck together, and Dean carefully peeled off a small news clipping adhered to the back of another document, a faint line forming between his brows as he read. Barely more than an inch high and regarding the accidental death of a toddler, the squib was dated January, 1854, the same year Katie Kaheny had died. The child, three-year-old Wren Markham, had choked to death in her crib at The Baron Hotel while her mother napped nearby.
Dean frowned, thinking back to the morning’s visit to the FoundersCemetery, picturing the Markhams’ gravesite, when suddenly Grace called out a warning.
“Prepare yourself!”
Dean jerked his head up from the clipping, reaching quickly behind him for the grip of his hand-gun. Then the museum door opened with a bang and a flood of schoolchildren spilled in, accompanied by a trail of harried-looking adults Dean assumed were teachers and parent volunteers.
The two dozen seven- and eight-year-olds moved like a wave upon sand, rushing fluidly through the display cases and around the antique furnishings until half of them dashed up against Grace in her colorful costume and the other half against him. Then the flow stopped abruptly, wide eyes taking each of them in, weighing them against known quantities in the real world, finding them both decidedly out of place.
One of the women clapped her hands sharply, her voice strident. “Attention, please! Boys and girls, I’d like you to say good afternoon to Miss Xiuying, who runs the RattlesnakeMuseum.”
There was a dutiful chorus of greetings with a lot of unique pronunciations of Grace’s Chinese name, and then Dean listened with interest to Grace’s smooth five-minute spiel about Gold Rush history. The kids listened, too-there was no reason they shouldn’t. In her silk pajamas, Grace was entrancing, exotic and beautiful as she told them about life in an 1850s mining town. Whether or not the kids took in what she was saying, most of them couldn’t take their eyes off her, nor could Dean. Warm and soft-spoken, she was an elegant butterfly flitting from one display case to another as she showed the children the museum’s ancient treasures. He thought she was simply amazing.
As she wound down, however, several of the children closest to Dean began to fidget impatiently, watching him from the corners of their eyes, whispering amongst themselves.
When Grace’s talk ended, they turned on him with avid curiosity.
“Are you a zibbit?” one little girl piped, and Dean wet his lower lip.
“A zibbit? Uh, no, I don’t think so,” he replied uncertainly.
The girl nudged a boy standing next to her. “See? I didn’t think he was a dummy,” she said with a sniff. “He’s not wearing the right clothes.”
Ah, Dean thought. ‘Exhibit.’ It had been a long time since he’d spoken second-grader.
“Who are you?” the boy challenged Dean at once. “You’re not with our school, and if you’re not a dummy, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”
Dean let his eyebrows crawl up his forehead. Cocky little bastard, for somebody so short.
“Listen, squirt, I’m not a zibbit, and I’m not a dummy, and-“ He caught the amused remonstrance in Grace’s eye from across the room, and backed off at once. “I’m a friend of Miss Xiuying,” he finished lamely.
“You’re her boyfriend!” another little girl shrilled excitedly, and suddenly everyone was anxious to see the man who had captured the exotic Miss Xiuying’s heart.
“Do you kiss her?”
“What’s that metal thing on your leg?”
“Are you Chinese, too?”
“Are you a miner?”
“Did you discover gold?”
“What’s your name?”
The questions came in a flurry as the children clamored around him, examining him so closely it was Dean’s turn to squirm.
“Help!” he called to Grace good-naturedly. “I’m a zibbit!”
She pulled herself out of her conversation with the teacher, moving easily through the displays to the children surrounding Dean, dropping to their level, smiling warmly as she put her arms around their shoulders.
“You found Junjei!” she told them with delight. “I’ll tell you a little secret-he’s one of my favorite parts of the entire museum.”
“He’s cute,” a girl with curly red locks said solemnly, and Dean couldn’t help but preen when several little heads nodded vigorously. “Are you gonna marry him?”
Grace caught his eye and winked. “Not this week, but maybe someday. I like to keep my options open.”
Then the teacher clapped her hands again, announcing it was time to move along and to please not get any more fingerprints on the display cases. The tide of small bodies ebbed back toward the front of the museum.
“You were awesome, Miss Xiuying,” Dean told Grace with a grin. “Best zibbit in the whole damn town.”
She pressed a finger to his mouth, a mock scowl on her face. “Language, Junjei! There are children present!”
In fact, there was one child still with them, a little girl Dean hadn’t noticed before, tugging gently but insistently at Grace’s long, silk sleeve.
“Who’s that man?” she asked, pointing, and Grace smiled again into Dean’s eyes.
“I thought you all decided that he was my boyfriend,” she said.
“Not that man,” the child replied, her tone chastising, the hand with which she pointed moving slightly. “That man!”
Dean whirled to look, his hackles rising, but there was no one there to see.
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Chapter Seven here.
TBC. Thanks for reading! Comments are welcomed.