Sintown Chronicles II: Through Bedroom Windows (15 page)

“Maggie, I was just saying that ‘cause I was mad. I didn't really think...” Greta paused.

“I'd rather not talk about it. Are you going to check out the job as Sandy's housekeeper? It pays more than you're making now."

“I don't think Eddie would let me, and besides, we just have the old truck. I don't know how I'd get there."

“If Eddie will take you in the mornings, I will bring you home at night."

“What time is it?” Greta asked.

“Almost five,” Maggie replied.

“Oh, hell, Maggie. He'll be home any minute now. You'll have to leave. We'll continue our search tomorrow."

“Greta, are you sure there's no other place Miss Jenkins might have hidden the notebook? Is there an attic?"

“Yes,” Greta said, her face brightening. “You have to get to it with a ladder from outside. Eddie went up there one day, but he said it was empty."

“How about a basement?"

Greta stared at Maggie a moment and hit her head with the heel of her hand. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said.

“What is it?"

“When I was cleaning out the spare room I filled all the drawers of the file cabinet and when I started working on the desk, all but one of the drawers were crammed with junk. I remember seeing some notebooks. I stuffed everything in a big box and Eddie took it to the basement."

“That's it!” Maggie cried. “Come on. Where's the basement door?"

“Tomorrow,” Greta pleaded. “We'll look tomorrow."

George sat on a rickety chair beside a scarred, unfinished table that served as a desk in the back of a cavernous produce warehouse in Charlotte. “How long have we known each other, Carlos?” he asked.

The little man with just a fringe of white hair around his ears smiled and pulled the pipe from his teeth. “Twenty, thirty years—maybe more, George."

“In all that time I've been a good customer, haven't I, Carlos?"

“The best."

“And in all that time, even when your prices were a little high, I gave you all my business."

“As far as I know, that's true, George. I appreciate it."

“And I always paid my bills on time and never once asked for any special consideration."

Carlos smiled, sucked three times rapidly on his pipe and slowly let the gray smoke escape from his lips to his nose through which he inhaled the pungent fumes. “You're setting me up, George. Who do you want killed?"

George laughed. “Nothing like that, Carlos. In fact, I'm trying to save someone's life—a very special someone."

“Female?"

George nodded. “Dottie Frank."

“You old dog."

“Look, Carlos. She's into you for a large chunk of change. You told me that on the telephone some time ago. You've cut off her credit and delivery. She's in a real bind."

Carlos cradled the bowl of the pipe in his hand and used the stem as a pointer, which he jabbed in George's direction. “George, I like Dottie. She's been a good customer almost as long as you have, but I just can't afford to carry her."

“I understand, Carlos. I want to pay off her bill and I want you to reinstate her credit and delivery service."

“She's a proud lady, George. She won't accept charity.” Carlos clenched the stem of his pipe between his teeth and sucked on it.

“You're right about that. I need you to tell her a little white lie. Don't let her know I paid the bill. Tell her you've reconsidered. You know business in Dot is booming and you want in on all of it you can get. Tell her she can pay her debt a little along and you want to reinstate her credit and delivery."

“And if she starts making payments on the debt, I credit your account?"

George wondered how Carlos could talk with the pipe in his mouth. “No,” he replied. “You keep it for your efforts. That's fair enough isn't it?"

Carlos pulled the pipe from his teeth and leered at George. “She's a fine looking woman. You figuring on getting into her bloomers, George?"

“Yeah, but not the way you mean. I intend to marry the woman."

Maggie stormed into the Korner Kafe, spotted George close to the cash register and marched quickly to him.

“Get in you office, George. Now."

“Maggie. What is it?” he asked as he held the door open for her.

“I read your letter a few minutes ago. Damn it, George, you didn't do anything to me and I didn't do anything to you. I made a bad choice. As you said, I was the one who wanted to wash your back. At the time, I just thought I wanted to do something nice for you, but now I realize I was making a whore out of myself. I don't want to be a whore, George. If I make it in this old world, I want it to be because I am somebody who deserves success, not because I have a nice body. For a while there I thought I was falling in love with you, George—the kind of love a husband and wife share. If there weren't so much difference in our ages ... if you had asked me to marry you ... things might have been different. But you couldn't do that, George, because you are in love with Dottie Frank. Now take off your jacket and stretch out on the sofa—face down."

“I don't understand, Maggie."

“Just do it."

She sat beside him and began to massage his shoulders. “I want to be your friend, George. We just went too far down the wrong road together. I'll always remember you fondly, and if you think I left because you were pressuring me for sex, you're wrong."

“Maggie, it's not too late to change your mind."

“I'm not going to change my mind, George. You concentrate on Dottie. You can, and do, love her. You can't possibly ever truly love me—not because of the age difference, but because I remind you too much of your wife. You kept seeing me as Maggie Bennett, not Maggie Skinner."

“Couldn't you at least help me out in the restaurant until I find a replacement?"

“George, I'm not going to lie to you. I told the Dollars I didn't like being a manager. That wasn't true. I ate it up. I felt important. I was important. I know I may have made a mistake in quitting my job. I miss it, but at the same time, I think you gave me the job as a way of fulfilling some sort of obligation you felt towards me because of the close relationship we developed."

“Maggie, I gave you the job before you offered to wash my back."

“That's true. I've thought of it a thousand times, but I've now made a commitment to the Dollars. I'm going to stick with it."

“It's a good deal, Mom,” Billy said as he and Tracy sat in Dottie's living room. “I'll have Mrs. Kimel look it over when he puts his offer in writing, but if she gives it her okay, I'll sign. He's going to make you the same sort of offer. I know he will. It's the answer to your prayers, Mom."

“What do you think of this, Tracy?"

“Dottie,” she said. “There's something we haven't told anybody yet. I'm pregnant. Billy and I were thinking about an abortion until Mr. Bennett made his offer this morning. We just couldn't afford me being out of work, but now we can."

“I'm happy about the baby,” Dottie said as she stood up. “Now, if you two Judases will excuse me, I'm going to bed."

“Be careful going down these stairs, Maggie. The lighting ain't too good down here,” Greta warned.

“I'm okay,” Maggie replied. “What's all that lumber for?"

“Eddie says he's going to build some kind of room down here. He drug some of that stuff from the storage building out back. The rest he bought at the lumberyard."

“I didn't know Eddie was a carpenter,” Maggie said as she looked more closely at the building materials.

“I don't reckon he is—not really. He worked a couple of summers while in college building houses with that group President Carter works with."

“I can't picture Eddie doing something to help the poor, and I had no idea he'd ever gone to college."

“Well, that's what he told me. He's smart. He knows the Bible real good. He used to quote from it all the time. Don't do that much anymore."

Maggie shook her head. “Did you mention the job with Sandy Dollar to Eddie last night?"

“I was too scared of him, but it turned out he brought it up. I didn't have time to get all my clothes off before he got here. I was still wearing my panties and he could see that I had just taken off the other stuff. He was in a terrible mood and beat my fanny bad with his belt. I can tell when he's gonna whup me. His eyes get real shiny."

“You have to get away from that bastard, Greta."

“It was my fault. That's why today I'm just wearing this old robe. I can rip it off in a hurry if he shows up. I don't know where he put the box, Maggie. It's a big, brown cardboard box."

“Is this it?” Maggie asked as she tugged at a box pushed under the stairwell.

“Looks like it. Here, let me help you."

The two women dragged the box under the single naked light bulb and began to empty its contents.

“What did you mean by saying that Eddie brought up working for Sandra Dollar?"

“He told me he didn't like us having different days off and Mr. Bennett refused to change the schedule. He said he wants me to try to get the housekeeping job Mrs. Dollar has advertised in the paper. He said I could walk there and back, or maybe he'd get a bicycle for me to ride."

“Greta, it's four or five miles from your house to the Dollars’ place."

“This is it!” Greta said excitedly as she began to tug on a thick three-ring binder.

Maggie laughed. “How can you tell? You haven't even looked at it yet."

“Miss Jenkins told me.” She handed the book to Maggie and explained, “Whenever she wants me to know something, I get a cold chill up and down my spine."

Maggie flipped open the cover and a thick folded paper fell out.

“You're right, Greta. This is it!” Maggie exclaimed. “Page after page of notes on North Carolina gold mining, all written in a beautiful cursive hand."

Greta picked up the paper from the floor and unfolded it. “This looks like a treasure map."

Maggie glanced at the map and said, “Boy, we can use that. It appears to locate all gold mines ever operated in the entire state."

“How can you tell that?”

“See up here at the top?"

Greta nodded as she read the title, “Gold Mines of North Carolina."

“What's in the notebook, Maggie?"

“I don't know,” she laughed. “We haven't read it yet."

“Let's go upstairs and you read it to me, Maggie. You can explain the big words as we go along."

“You'd better put on a big pot of coffee, Greta. This is a huge notebook."

Gold mining in North Carolina would probably not be profitable on a large scale, but for an individual prospector I am convinced it could be highly lucrative. Panning for placer gold could provide a nice income for someone who will stick with it, and I am convinced that many of the old mines have undiscovered veins that could provide a tenacious prospector with a fortune.

“Hold it, Maggie,” Greta interrupted apologetically. “What do ‘placer gold,’ ‘lucrative’ and ‘tenacious’ mean?"

“Well, lucrative means very profitable and tenacious means to stick with a project until it is completed. I don't have any idea of what placer gold is."

Greta nodded. “You want me to get a dictionary?"

“Let's keep reading. Perhaps Miss Jenkins will explain it later."

When Conrad Reed was just a youngster of twelve he found a seventeen pound nugget of gold while playing in Little Meadow Creek in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. Neither he, his mother or dad, his two brothers or five sisters knew what it was, but it was such a pretty rock they used it for a doorstop for three years. Later a Fayetteville jeweler gave Reed $3.50 for the nugget, which was actually worth thousands. Reed and three others eventually began to prospect in Little Meadow Creek when there was no fieldwork to do on the tobacco farm, and they realized a substantial profit for a while.

In 1803, a slave found a lump of gold near the stream, which weighed twenty-eight pounds. As others came to the area, panning for gold in the creek bed and along its banks became a common activity. The success on the Reed plantation caused neighbors to search their own land and many were successful.

Two decades later...

“What's a ‘decade,’ Maggie?"

“Uh, ten years—so two decades would be twenty years."

Two decades later better methods of mining were introduced to the area and shafts were sunk into the earth to tap veins of ore. Companies were organized and boomtowns sprung up.

“Sounds like a Wild West story,” Greta giggled.

Reed's wife died in 1843 and Reed himself lived only two more years. According to the will, the plantation was sold following Reed's death and his grandson, Timothy, and his son-in-law, Andrew Hartsell, became the new owners. Major interest in North Carolina gold began to dwindle when the California Gold Rush began in 1848.

Timothy Reed and Andrew Hartsell failed to profit from the property and it was sold and resold many times. The property eventually was subdivided and sold to various individuals. After the Civil War, however, William L. Hirst of Philadelphia managed to buy up all of the property of the original Reed plantation, but profitability of the Reed Gold Mine continued to be marginal.

“Hold it again,” Greta said. “Marginal?"

“That means they were recovering enough gold to make a little profit, but not enough to really make it worthwhile."

Again the property changed hands several times and additional shafts were sunk. Excitement built to a fever pitch when on April 9, 1896 a nugget that eventually weighed out to be seventeen pounds of pure gold was found. Expensive equipment was purchased and more shafts were sunk, but the discovery of high-grade ore in Alaska at the turn of the century made continued mining of low-grade ore at the Reed Gold Mine unprofitable.

Not until 1934 was there any further serious mining done at the Reed mine. A worldwide depression sent some people back to the Reed mine and Little Meadow Creek. A hard day's work might result in fifty cents worth of gold. The workers soon found they were better off on welfare. The Reed mine closed again and never reopened commercially.

Through a series of fortuitous events, ownership of the land eventually moved to the State of North Carolina and the Reed Gold Mine is now a state historic site with gold displays, mining and panning equipment, a film, gold panning and a tour of the old mine itself.