Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

She hasn’t menstruated in over a year. A little spotting some months between miscarriages, not enough to even keep any pads in the house. She was a different woman the last time she had an honest-to-God flow. They were a different family then. They didn’t observe the Law. Back then they didn’t know any better. But now they know that she cannot be among the children and her husband as she is unclean.

She says for Jeremiah to get her to a hotel. She sits alone in her room and bleeds. She ponders the sky full of hammers. She listens to her children splash in the pool and calls Jeremiah on the phone next door. He worries. They are almost out of cash. They will need to sell some of the gold. She says the money doesn’t matter, how they are all going to have to go through these tribulations, how she can take it, all of it, anything Satan wants to throw at her. Cover her in boils. Take her sight. Pester her with lice and fleas. But the children are our true treasure. Promise me, she says, they stay with us until the end.

They pass by Mount Vernon and White Lake, which are neither mountain nor lake but a gas station and the interminable field of quietly steaming corn, worms turning in the hot loam and humus. None of these places have pawnshops to trade Pearl’s gold sovereigns.

Now the tank is nearly empty. In the town of Kimball, Jeremiah unloads the trailer to get at the safe and opens the safe to get the gold coins. Takes a few inside to show the old crone behind the counter. He explains that taken together they are a bit more than a troy ounce of gold. He opens the McEwan’s Index of the London Fix on her counter. He explains that he will let her have these for last year’s price, that she can see for herself right here that they are worth at least ten dollars more right now.

The woman’s face goes cross as she pats herself for her reading glasses and she screws up her face looking at the figures, her bottom lip out over her furry old chin. She asks him does he really expect her to give him a hundred thirty dollars for those gold coins. She says this here’s a gas station.

Pearl asks is she reading the papers. Does she know that the dollar will be worthless with what is coming to pass? Precious metal will be all that’s left for Christians to trade.

She looks askance. She whispers to him does he have no cash whatsoever.

He digs a dollar and eighty-five cents out of his jeans. Says, Look here at these dimes. What are they worth? What are they made of? Copper sandwiched between zinc and tin alloy. Money of tin, can you believe it? In and of itself virtually, literally worthless. It’s just scrip , he tells her. Company scrip.

She looks at him a minute and then at his children outside in the lot and in the store. She tears a piece of paper from a pad nearby and writes her name and address on it and slides it to him.

No charity , Jeremiah tells her, but she says she’s turning on the pump, he likes it or not. She ain’t interested in buying no coins.

Jeremiah beside himself at the woman’s insanity. After all that he’s just explained. Can she not see. Can she not hear.

She asks him does he want the gas or not. Well, does he.

Pearl asks Charlie can he believe this. Charlie is at this juncture quite confused as to Pearl’s point. If there is a point. The rain abates somewhat, and inside the damp and stinking tent there is no answer to Pearl’s question from Charlie or the others. Pearl says that the irony is not lost on him, coming all this way and having all this gold and no one with whom to trade. Incurring a gas tank of debt. He says he’d come to understand that it was already under way.

What is? Charlie asks.

The war , Pearl says.

Pearl is quiet now, grinning faintly it would seem like a man partway into a good drunk. In any case, Charlie offers him a belt from his flask. Pearl’s eyes flash at some memory of whiskey, and he nods yes he would like a drink.

He doesn’t say how they made it. Perhaps he thinks it and thinks he says it. There is more than paranoia at work here. His mind isn’t right. He bobs to the surface of human connection but resides mostly just under like waterlogged driftwood. Steadily saturating and sinking. He drinks again, wipes his beard with his dirty palm.

Every place is an East Berlin , he says. A Russia, and there is no West to be gotten to. Only these mountains, this Masada. He says he is dreaming of the Jews in their mountain caves, the Romans implacable as Romans building their siege embankment. I’m the kakangelist , Pearl says. Bringer of the bad word. The plague has come and the war is here.

Charlie knows a lot of religion, was himself taught by nuns, but these rantings amount to nonsense. He asks Pearl what he wants.

He says he wants to be understood.

Understood about what?

Pearl says he wants his efforts to be perfectly clear.

What efforts? Charlie asks.

Pearl says that Charlie and his partners undertake their enterprise in a war zone and he will require payment in gold to protect it.

They smile. At last a joke. He must be joking.

He is not.

Pearl is told he can go fuck himself. Get the hell out of here.

What thought makes the queer expression on his face is not clear. Is it sheepishness that the gambit has failed? Is it malevolent calm? Is it keeping his anger in custody?

He leaves in a slighter rain than the one that gave him up.

Pete sat up. Charlie went quiet. The fire had burned down to white flaky ulnas. George rose and disappeared into the encroached dark and fetched some lightwood and stirred the coals with a stick and put the sticks in. The flames danced up. He left the noose of new light again and Pete quietly worried what he might return with, he was such a long time gone.

“I should go.”

“I’m not done,” Charlie said.

“I need to go.”

George returned with firewood proper. He fed the fire, warmed his hands at it, and sat back down.

“You’re scared of us,” Charlie said.

“I feel like you’re keeping me here.”

“It’s Pearl you should be afraid of. I’m trying to help you.”

Pete gazed grimly into the flames. The moose was gone.

“Did you ever see him again?” Pete asked.

Charlie looked at the others, back at Pete.

“Not exactly,” he said.

THE RAIN ABATES. The soil drains, dries out, Charlie and his partners till and plant. They prepare another small field in another small meadow and yet another. Then they go home, back to their regular lives. Charlie washes trucks in Libby. Theirs is not a sophisticated operation that reaps a high-grade product. They plant, and Charlie or one of the others checks the crop when it suits him.

A few weeks later, he goes to see one of the small fields, takes a fishing pole by way of a disguise for game wardens, Forest Service, whoever. He arrives at a field of yellow knee-high stalks, dead and dying. He turns the soil. It’s been salted, literally salted with rock salt. He knows it is Pearl, and is certain when he gets back to his car: three quarters, evenly spaced on the front bumper of his van. A coin for Charlie and each of his partners. A hole in each temple.

Charlie is angry. This motherfucker. He doesn’t own the wilderness. Who does this cocksucker think he is.

A hole in his windshield. He’s still inspecting it when the report of the rifle washes through the air. There’s another and another and another, each only as loud as an egg cracked on a skillet, and he’s just hit the dirt when the shooting is over, the reports echoing off the mountains. He cowers a good ten minutes before crawling in the back doors of the van. Pale yellow mushrooms of stuffing out the back of the seats. He leaps behind the wheel. Keys, ignition, backing out, gas pedal to the floor. The windshield is so spiderwebbed he has to drive with his head out of the window to see his way home.