Child in the Valley by Gordy Sauer

Author:Gordy Sauer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938235801
Publisher: Hub City Press
Published: 2021-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

JUST BEFORE THE sun caps the hills with the ash dust falling like a snow flurry and the sky the darkest of a dark blue and the moon pinned to that color, the twins emerge from the tent they all share, gather their wares and their horses in jittery fast-talking voices with no modicum of consideration for the others still sleeping, and take to the hills each the other’s shadow.

The same day the twins depart Joshua takes up his shiny tin pan and carries it to the river along with a thin-bladed knife he hangs from his belt. He sets to placer mining, teaching himself the technique by watching the others panning around him. The water numbs his hands and feet. His back stiff and sore from bending over, from shivering even with the sun on him, his body still wearing the weakness and suffering of the trail even though he’s experienced a sort of rebirth of spirit since they arrived. At its core, he discovers panning isn’t a difficult process but one that relies on nuance to distinguish the successful from the unsuccessful, nuances that Joshua must learn through practice, which the redundancy of such a task greatly affords. Much like medicine.

That evening, Joshua wades out of the river, his pockets empty, his pan hanging at his side in defeat, walking stiffly and baby-like with his newly working legs, his gimp right foot difficult to navigate in the loose gravel as he makes his way back to their camp. Word has gotten around that he is a doctor. By supper there’s a line of men complaining of ear aches, broken fingers, angry coughs, constipation, chronic sores on their limbs, one with a stabbing pain in his chest, another with a bloated and hardened stomach who can’t keep down any food. He treats them mechanically, only half-listening to the descriptions of their ailments as he bleeds them or withdraws bottles from his medical bag he sometimes doesn’t look at before doling out the contents. They thank him profusely, which he dismisses, assure him they’ll pay richly for his treatment when they strike it rich. He laughs to himself whenever they say this, then, just as quickly, grows dour and angry. How is their unfounded optimism any different from his own?

On and on the digging continues, and each day the gold fever Joshua so often hears about in the valley roots deeper and spreads wider throughout him. His scalp tingles with the blood that wants to jump out of his skin, his breathing so erratic it makes him light-headed. Every river rock is gold in his periphery. He dreams of gold. His food tastes metallic the way he believes gold will. A kind of mania overwhelms him, erasing everything and everyone until it’s just him and his strained-out eyes digging until he can hardly stand for the fatigue. Then, exhausted by that fever and his body too welled by anxiety even for thought, he stumbles back to camp and finds Renard

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