The Mine (Northwest Passage Book 1) Page 3

  Joel observed people on the street. They too provided no comfort. Men in suits and hats walked beside women in dresses and hats – hats with brims and nets and flowers, not logos of grunge bands or baseball teams or even tractor manufacturers. Central Casting could not have outfitted the city any better. Only two young men, standing on a street corner in work shirts and dungarees, looked remotely contemporary.

  Sam, thankfully, kept any questions he had to himself. He did not ask about Joel's Candy in Chains sweatshirt or why a tourist from Seattle was investigating an abandoned mine far off the beaten path. He limited his comments to observations about the weather and the impact of the economy on new car sales.

  He turned onto Main Street, or Last Chance Gulch, as it was signed a few hours earlier, and pulled into a metered parking space in front of the Canary. The diner, tucked between a bar and a smoke shop in a three-story granite building that occupied half a block, did not have a neon sign. Nor did it boast a flashy red awning. But it was the same place and appeared just as busy as the one that had provided Joel his last meal.

  Joel opened the door and stepped out of the Buick.

  "Thanks for the ride."

  "Any time," Sam said.

  He pulled away from the curb, slowed down long enough to watch Joel's next move through his passenger-side mirror, and then drove out of sight.

  Joel gracefully dodged two preschool-aged boys running down the sidewalk and entered the Canary for the second time that day. The interior looked much the same. The jukebox and not-so-antique cash register assumed their usual places and the bar, stools, and booths appeared completely unchanged. No televisions hung from the ceiling, of course, and a Frowning Frida had replaced Smiling Sarah. The thirtyish waitress warmed up as she approached the new customer.

  "Will it just be one today?"

  "Actually, I'm looking for a friend." Joel removed his hat. "He's my age, a little shorter, with curly black hair, and wearing a Red Sox jersey. He left his sunglasses here this morning. Have you seen him?"

  "Can't say I have, hon. But it's been busy. Let me ask Esther. She's working the other tables."

  Frida flipped the top sheet of her order pad and walked through an open door into the restaurant's kitchen. The sound and smell of sizzling beef filled the lobby.

  Joel again took stock of the diner. More than thirty people filled the joint, occupying most of its booths and stools. Business conversations dominated, though the party closest to him, two women dressed for a Bible study, buzzed endlessly about a neighbor girl who had "gotten into trouble." Joel thought about Marty McFly, the likelihood that this was all a nightmare, and turning that rattlesnake into sushi.

  Frida rushed out of the kitchen, dividing her attention between the customer who wanted information and a customer who probably wanted a hamburger. She approached the one with the dimples and shook her head.

  "No one has seen him," she said. "And we'd remember if we had. Almost all of our patrons are regulars. Sorry."

  "No problem. Thanks for checking it out."

  Joel stepped aside as an elderly couple opened the bell-rigged door and walked to the register. He couldn't imagine the last time this place had needed a jingle to alert staff to new business.

  At the far end of the bar, a tall man sporting a Stetson and a bolo tie put a newspaper and two dollars between an empty plate and a coffee cup. He grabbed his jacket and walked briskly toward the exit.

  Joel looked at the newspaper and groaned. He had procrastinated long enough. He walked slowly to the unoccupied stool, braced himself for the inevitable, and picked up the front page. The headlines and old-fashioned layout fanned his fears before the date at the top confirmed them: Thursday, May 29, 1941.

  He put down the paper, nodded to Frida as he worked his way down the counter, and excused himself through a throng that filled the lobby. One of the church ladies gawked at him, turned away, and quietly asked her friend about Candy in Chains.

  Be glad I left Barenaked Ladies at home.

  On his way out, Joel stopped by gumball row, wondered how often the diner had filled the machines in fifty-nine years, and held the front door for a weary mother pushing an unusually large carriage. She smiled, said thanks, and plowed her way in.

  Joel stood in the middle of the sidewalk and stared blankly at a grocery store across the street. It advertised bread for eight cents a loaf and milk for thirty-four cents a gallon. A pickup truck honked as it passed, snapping him out of his daze. He peered down the street in both directions and decided to head south, toward the downtown core. He entered his strange new world with angst, disbelief, and wonder.

  CHAPTER 9

  The monetary crisis of 1941 hit hard and fast.

  Ten minutes after leaving the Canary, Joel discovered that stores on Main Street did not take credit cards. They did not exist in prewar America. Two Sacagawea dollars clinking in his pocket were similarly useless, as was a checking account opened in 1996.

  Joel did have two late eighties Washington quarters that depicted the same mug as those minted in the thirties and forties. He hoped to use them at a place that wasn't fussy about dates or keen on reporting counterfeiters to local authorities.

  He was driven not by store-window discounts but rather a growing eagerness to replace distracting attire with something more suitable. Elderly shoppers passing his way glared and shook their heads. Young women looked at him, too, though their stares were softer and longer. Joel Smith would not fly under the radar in this town.

  As he wandered through the capital, Joel noted how little it had changed. Except for a pedestrian mall on the south end of Last Chance Gulch, Helena of 1941 looked a lot like Helena of 2000. Unlike other upstart communities, it had not rushed to replace bricks and mortar with concrete and steel. Romanesque office buildings and Victorian homes blended nicely with a Gothic cathedral and Moorish Revival civic center.

  Under different circumstances, Joel, a history buff, might have basked in the glories of a gold rush town. This city had serious potential. But he had more pressing matters on his mind, like solving his cash flow problem, finding a place to crash, and figuring out how he had traveled fifty-nine years in less than fifty-nine minutes.

  The mine was the obvious answer. Before Joel had wandered into the dusty pit and its supernatural wonder room, his world made sense. He had cell phone coverage, plastic accepted in two hundred countries, and reason to believe he would spend his salad days in the twenty-first century. He would return as soon as possible. But first he needed money, for cab fare, if nothing else. He doubted he could hitch a ride to the mine and was tired of walking.

  Joel pulled out his wallet for a final inspection. No tightly folded fives or tens clung to his expired ski pass, student ID, or driver's license. His Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card, buried beneath two layers of leather, might be worth a lot some day but not this day.

  He put the billfold away and walked to a small leafy park adjacent to a grade school, where recess was in full swing. Joel sat down on a poorly painted picnic table and observed the students. He tried to remember the last time he had swung on monkey bars or ridden a merry-go-round. He watched two boys extort lunch money from a porky peer on the other side of a chain-link fence.

  "Hey, over there!" he yelled. "Leave him alone or I'll beat the shit out of you."

  The bullies scrutinized Joel, looked at each other, and opted to take his advice. They left their target with his nickels and dimes and scurried into a large brick building with two-dozen others at the sound of a bell. The fat boy followed but took his time. He stared at Joel and mouthed a "thank you" before turning way.

  No problem, kid.

  Joel smiled, plopped on top of the table, and stretched out like he was testing a mattress. He closed his eyes and tried to grasp the insanity of it all.

  * * * * *

  When Joel awoke, he stared at his watch and had two revelations. The first was that he had slept too long, three hours, to revisit the mine that day. At four thirty,
he needed to focus on dinner and a softer bed. The second was that he had the means to finance his hopefully short stay.

  He jumped off the table, scanned the neighborhood, and saw his next destination two doors down, where a lean, muscular young man with tattooed arms sat on a driveway littered with motorcycle parts. Joel approached cautiously.

  Attired in a grease-stained undershirt, patched blue jeans, and steel-toe boots, the man scowled at Joel like a southerner greeting a carpetbagger. But as the visitor drew near, the scowl softened.

  "I like your shirt," he said. "You get kicked out of school or something?"

  "No," Joel said with a nervous laugh. "But I can always try."

  Muscles smirked and returned to his work, allowing Joel to relax. Whatever the price of interrupting this guy, it wouldn't be a wrench in the eye or a mandatory gang initiation.

  Joel started to ask a question when he took a closer look at the man's late 1930s motorcycle and stopped. The streamlined bike had large, skirted fenders and an engine that appeared to be inverted by design.

  "Is that an Indian?" he asked.

  "It ain't a Schwinn, Chief," Muscles said. He glanced at his questioner. "What's the matter? Never seen a Four?"

  "I have. I saw one last year," Joel said, on my last trip to the Smithsonian. "But I've never seen one with the motor upside down."

  "Pretty wild, isn't it?" Muscles grinned. "It's the only one in town. My ladies love it. It turns them to butter."

  Joel purged from his mind images of the tattooed man turning ladies to butter and stepped toward his new acquaintance. He began to speak but held up when he saw Muscles swear and shake a finger he had caught on a spoke. His face once again sported a Do Not Disturb sign.

  A moment later Muscles sifted through the parts around him, dropped his head, and swore another storm. Joel could see that his day wasn't going well. But it appeared to improve when he jumped to his feet, walked toward the garage, and picked up a small shiny cylinder that had rolled up against the door.

  "There it is. I thought I'd lost it."

  The man returned to his station, wiped a brow, and attached the missing part. Smiling again, he picked up a wrench and tightened another loose end.

  "So what can I do for you, Mr. Candy in Chains?"

  Joel flipped his head over both shoulders before turning to Muscles.

  "I need to unload some goods."

  CHAPTER 10

  Rick's Racket was no sporting goods outlet – or at least the kind Joel had patronized numerous times in Seattle. The only tennis equipment was a badly strung racquet that hung from the back wall of the very secondary second-hand store. But Muscles' recommendation had been clear.

  "You want to pawn a watch? That's the place to go."

  Joel needed twenty minutes to reach Rick's, located a dozen blocks north of his favorite diner in an edgy part of town. When he entered the shop, no one greeted him, save a three-foot-high lawn jockey standing on a display table just inside the door.

  He walked along the perimeter of the store, passing shelves and glass cases filled with radios, guns, bicycles, musical instruments, and antiques. Six watches gleamed brightly in a small jewelry display near the cash register. None came close to matching the feature-rich dive watch strapped to Joel's left wrist.

  "Can I help you?"

  A stout, balding man of fifty emerged from a back room carrying a large cardboard box. He placed the box next to the register, removed a smoldering cigar from his mouth, and tapped some ashes into a stained metal tray.

  "I'd like to sell a watch," Joel said.

  "Let's see it."

  Joel unfastened the timepiece and handed it to Rick, or someone who bore a passing resemblance to the face painted on the front of the store. Rick pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and gave the watch a five-star inspection.

  "Look's expensive. What'd you do, kid, bop someone on the head?"

  Joel chuckled.

  "No. It's mine. I got it for my last birthday."

  "So why do you want to sell it?"

  Because I'm stuck in 1941, you dope, and hotels don't take baseball cards as payment.

  "Well, truth is, I'm in a spot right now and need some cash."

  Rick lifted the watch toward a light, held it up to an ear, and returned it to Joel.

  "I'll give you ten bucks."

  "You're kidding. It's worth ten times that."

  "Look, kid. That watch is hotter than two strippers on a griddle."

  "But it's shock-resistant!"

  "I don't care if it bakes a cake. Ten bucks."

  Joel did the math. Even ten dollars in 1941 would probably put a roof over his head, food in his stomach, and a cab under his feet. He handed over the watch.

  "I like the name of your business," Joel said. "It fits."

  Rick pulled two five-dollar bills from the register and pushed them across the counter. He shook his head and picked up his stubby cigar.

  "There you go. Now get out of here."

  Joel obliged. He grabbed the bills, barreled out the front door, and did a beeline toward a budget hotel he had seen earlier in the day. The four-dollar rooms it had advertised were still four dollars and not subject to arbitrary pricing.

  Later that night he ate a ham sandwich and two apples he had purchased at a deli and crawled into a single bed that took up nearly half of his modestly appointed cell. He stared at the water-stained ceiling and once again tried to make sense of his predicament as X-rated sounds emanated from an adjacent room.

  Joel thought about his family, Adam, and Jana and wondered if he would ever see them again. Part of him still clung to the possibility that this was all a dream. He liked the idea of waking up in a flophouse and finding four bars on his cell phone.

  But if it was not a dream, his agenda was set in stone. He would take a taxi to the mine in the morning, find the fluorescent chamber, and try to travel forward in time the way he went back. It was a good plan, he thought. It was also his only plan. He went to sleep that night and dreamed of plans that worked.

  CHAPTER 11

  Joel slept until eleven. Despite the noise next door, a lumpy mattress, and two sirens in the middle of the night, he slept soundly. Helena may not have been as quiet as the country, but it was a vast improvement over Seattle's bustling university district.

  He slipped on his hooded sweatshirt and jeans and walked to the hotel's front desk, where he asked for breakfast guidance. The clerk suggested a nearby greasy spoon that offered bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee for fifty cents.

  With five spendable dollars, Joel took the tip and hit the streets. When he finished the surprisingly filling meal, he left three contemporary quarters near his plate, bolted for the door, and headed south along Main Street, where he found more flags on poles than shoppers on sidewalks. The reason soon became clear. America celebrated Memorial Day on May 30 in 1941, not the last Monday in May, so most stores and offices were closed.

  Joel did, however, find a taxicab. Thirty minutes after leaving the restaurant, he spotted a yellow 1938 DeSoto parked in front of the Mother Lode, Helena's seven-story hotel to the stars. He opened the rear driver-side door and slid in. A thin forty-something man in a leather jacket and worn chauffeur cap put down a newspaper and looked over his shoulder.

  "Where to, buddy?"

  "Well, that depends," Joel said. He pulled his liquid assets from a pocket. "Will four bucks get me to the abandoned mine off Gold Mine Road."

  "Sure. But why do you want to go out there? Running from your old lady?"

  Joel liked this guy. He could keep up with Adam in a World Series of Wit.

  "No. I just want to check the place out. I have nothing better to do today."

  The cab driver smiled as he pulled away from the curb.

  "All right, kid. I'll get you there."

  CHAPTER 12

  Joel's second trip out of Helena, Montana, went much faster than the first. With few lights, fewer cars, and no road construction to
impede their progress, he and his hired hand reached Gold Mine Road in fifteen minutes.

  Pete, the full-time driver and part-time wit, grimaced as he turned off a freshly paved Highway 10 onto a dirt-and-gravel local route that put a little extra wear on his well-maintained work vehicle. He caught Joel's eyes in the rear-view mirror and gave him a look that said, "Do you really want to do this?"

  Joel kept his thoughts to himself and stared out a side window at the scenery to the east. A freight train of at least eighty cars worked its way through tall grass and pine trees toward the mountains ahead. It appeared to slow with each passing minute.

  "Where do trains go from here?" Joel asked.

  "The eastbound go to Denver, Saint Paul, or Chicago. I know because I used to operate switches in Billings." Pete looked at Joel and pointed a finger toward a window. "But that one's headed to Missoula and Spokane – and from there Portland or Seattle. Why do you ask?"

  "Just curious."

  Joel resumed watching the train's progress. A jaywalker went faster.

  "Why does it move so slowly? There's nothing out here but acreage."

  "The pass," Pete said. "The train has to get over Mullan Pass. It gets real curvy ahead and you don't go through that driving like Casey Jones."

  Ten minutes later the DeSoto reached the peanut-shaped clearing and Colter Mine. Joel stepped out of the cab, stretched his legs, and quickly scanned the site.

  The place looked exactly as he had left it. No boards covered the entrance, the buildings appeared undisturbed, and Bonnie and Clyde had not retrieved their Ford.

  Joel walked back to the taxi and handed Pete four one-dollar bills.

  "Here you go. Thanks for the ride."

  "You want me to hang around a few minutes? It's a long way to town."

  Joel pondered the offer but rejected it. Pete had a living to make and it would be unfair to keep him waiting. The trip through the mine might take some time, particularly without a flashlight. The significance of that blunder had hit Joel on the drive up.