Ms. Got Rocks (20 page)

“I drove by, and I’m trying to turn around, I think that Mom’s chairs are in the window,” Margie was practically yelling into the phone.

“What! Are you sure?” Rocky screamed back at her.

“I’m pretty sure, how many authentic matched sets of four oak pressed back chairs are there hanging around anymore?” Margie was no longer shouting.

“Give me better directions, I can’t visualize where it is, I’ll be right down there.” She dumped the saute pan off the stove and started pulling her wet suit pants off her legs.

“Okay, I found a parking space. I’m parked right across the street from there now, got something to write with?” Margie said and then rattled off the directions as Rocky wrote as fast as possible.

“Got it, I’ll be there shortly, do not do anything until I get there,” Rocky futilely requested.

“Okay, holding down fort in progress here,” Margie the adventuress proclaimed.

Pulling off her wet suit top and dropping the whole bundle onto the kitchen floor, Rocky grabbed the cell phone, punched numbers as she raced into the bedroom to get dressed.

The dispatcher at the substation would relay the message to Deputy Dixon. He would meet the women at the antique store.

If they were wrong, then buying the chairs will soothe the owner’s feelings.

There was Margie, Rocky could hardly believe she was still in her car. Visions of her picketing the property for selling stolen goods, or making a citizen’s arrest or something had occurred to her on the way to the store.

Rocky and Margie met at the front window. If those were not Mom’s chairs, they were a perfect match, and somehow Rocky had to buy them to go with Mom’s chairs when she got them back.

Margie headed to the back of the store to find a sales person, Rocky looked at the bottom of the chairs and checked the marks on the bottoms under the first rail. All of the chairs should have scratched initials in them. Two should be marked DC, and two RC. One rainy day, Dev and Rocky marked them when they were making forts in the living room.

Rocky ran her hand under the rail and felt the faint scratch on one of them.

The Sheriff Dept. car pulled off the street, and Rocky left the store to talk to Deputy Dixon. She told him about the initials on each of the chairs. Deputy Dixon had a copy of the original stolen property report on his clipboard.

Margie came around the building and reported the sales assistant did not know where the chairs came from. She just worked there. The price tag was four thousand dollars for the set of four.

“That makes that a felony doesn’t it?” Rocky asked.

“Burglary is a felony.” Deputy Dixon said.

“I think that Mom’s plates are in the breakfront, but it was dark in that corner and I’m not positive,” Margie told the Deputy.

Deputy Justin asked them to remain outside while he entered the store.

“Who would sell our stuff to an antique store, what do you think,” Rocky was completely stunned by this new development.

“Honestly, Rocks I don’t know what to think. I don’t see that bum Callaghan selling anything to an antique store. I can’t even see him going into one, in my minds eye,” Margie was sounding puzzled.

“The local wild kids are even less probable,” Rocky was as puzzled as Margie.

The two amateur detectives stood next to the police cruiser, feeling flummoxed.

After a half-hour, Deputy Dixon returned to the squad car.

He asked the women to leave as the owner was going to come down to the store and show him the bill of sale for the chairs.

“The plates match what is listed in the report,” Dixon told them. “The Burglary Detective will be here soon, and he will take over from there. This may take awhile; you might as well go home.”

“Will I get my chairs back?” Rocky asked.

“Yes, ma’am, you will get chairs and plates,” the Deputy assured her.

“Okay, can you call me later on, and let me know what happened?” she asked him.

“Then you will call me and let me know too,” Margie chimed in.

“Yeah, I will call as soon as we know anything,” Deputy Dixon promised.

Later, when it is almost sunset, Rocky dragged the bag of charcoal out to the fire pit ring and roasted wieners on a stick. She ate juicy watermelon with out worrying about the mess. She threw the watermelon rind as far as she could over toward the rock face. The deer and raccoons will relish the rinds after dark if they have any room after chowing down on her garden.

The damn phone interrupted her reverie, she answered knowing it was Deputy Dixon with news of the chairs.

“Hey Rocky, this is Jazz.”

“Jazz what a wonderful surprise, what’s up with you?” Rocky answered with a smile.

“I want to invite myself to your place for some R&R,” Jazz sounded tentative about the request. “Dad said I needed to get out of the city and swim or climb or something. I'm driving him nuts.”

“That’s great when are you coming out, we can go gold dredging and climb the big rock? Well, that isn’t any challenge but you can stretch your muscles a bit,” Rocky said. -

"Soon, I just have one trip out of the country to make and then I’ll have at least a week free, I bought a wet suit, too.” Jazz informed her.

“Sounds great. The water is good right now, anytime you’re ready,” Rocky said.

Okay, that's great, I can hardly wait. I’ll call when I leave Sierra Leone,” Jazz promised and disconnected the call.

“That is in Africa, isn’t it, or South America? Rocky asked the dogs. They didn't know, either.

C
hapter 20

T
he dredging operation was going smoothly, this morning Rocky was moving the dredge over to the section near the massive rock. The samples from that area were too tempting to not take a quick look, before returning to work on the preplanned grid.

Rocky was giving herself a reward and teaser again to keep moving those rocks and slogging through with the plan. Her personality said to go willy nilly wherever her instinct told her there was gold. However, Rocky’s training from her Dad and her common sense guided her to follow the systematic pattern and keep to the grid. Gold dredging was enough like playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker that the probability of anything worthwhile turning up was the same as getting quad Aces in the final round of the tournament.

Nevertheless, Rocky was going to spend some time today in the exciting cracks and crevices of that big rock. It was August seventeenth. The dredging season closes on the American River at sundown on the thirtieth of September. Rocky had enough grids mapped and the area her father cleared to take her to the end of the season.

Unless she was really running short of cash, she was going to hold the daily finds and do all the cleanup after the season ended. She was not missing a minute under water, she could not afford to, it was dredge or not eat.

The pep talk and planning session finished, she dragged the dredge motor to the river in her little wagon from the garage sale.

While installing the motor again on the dredge, Rocky noticed the fittings were getting loose and worn from this daily procedure. She walked back to the cabin for her drill driver. Before doing another thing, she tightened the screws and bolts holding everything together on the dredge. One final check that all the hold down lines and anchors were in place and uncut, then  the equipment was ready.

Back at the cabin she gathered all the miners’ moss and the carpet, dumped that into her  little stakeside wagon with the wet suit, booties and weight belt. There was only one more item on her checklist to complete.

Back to the shed for the gas can, returning to the river she filled the tank of the motor.

Testing that the dredge hose and breathing hookah were free of any debris, Rocky was ready to go to work.

The dogs settled in on the porch, Rocky did not have to tell them to guard, they have gotten the picture after the last two months of strangers and strange things happening around the meadow.

The river was a little high; water was being let out of the dam upstream at night. Consequently, the water was also somewhat murky, but that could be a surface layer, it was hard to tell from on the riverbank. The water temperature was rising, coming from the warm lake behind the dam. It was warmer swimming, in any event, than the American River in the spring.

Rocky could almost work without wearing her raggedy torn wet suit. She wore it not only for the protection from the cold, but for some protection from rocks, bumps and sticks on the river bottom. Giving the dredge a good solid shove into the slowly moving river, she swam with it across to the spot next to the big rock.

The rock was up stream from the cabin, the water always full of bubbles. This area was inside the boundary for the claim, and part of the dispute with the infamous Mr. Callaghan.

Rocky promised herself to not think of him, but enjoy her swim and watch the birds in the willows lining the bank on the other side. The sky was deep blue with big puffy clouds, that later might turn into thunder bumpers.

There was a thin humidity haze over the surface of the little, shallow river. Rocky thought today would be a money day. She remembered her Dad saying that he felt like one of those riverboat gamblers who got this feeling when they know they will win. Today she knew she would win the whole big pot.

Underwater, Rocky began her usual coaching talk to herself. She got into this habit years ago, to keep herself from boredom and carelessness. It was like having a checklist on preflight.

“If I can wiggle the pry bar into that crack, I can move that whole pile of large rocks over enough to see what is under there,” Rocky thought.

The area was swirling silt and mud pretty steadily and visibility was falling. Rocky was stretched out to her full length, her stomach grazing the river bottom. The six foot long pry bar was in the sand right next to her. Her equipment was as it should be. Rocky continued her underwater conversation with herself and the crawdads.

“I will start with that flat dark rock and take the entire rock pile one at a time.”

Yesterday, while swimming around this big rock she judged she would have to move this pile of rocks that was embedded into the face. That would be the safest way, not causing the big rock to come tumbling down on top of her.

Getting down to serious work, Rocky pulled her dental picks from her belt pouch. As she worked scraping some pebbles away from the slit in the rock, she could see the sparkle of gold and quartz. That sparkle shone even through the muck in the water.

Picking and prying and scraping Rocky patiently worked her way along the fissure in the rock face. The fissure would be where the force of the winter and spring torrents would stab the gold nuggets into the face of the rock.

She must have worked for twenty minutes on that one-inch long little slot right in front of her face. She was floating a foot off of the river bottom. The nuggets were jammed into that slot and Mother Rock wasn’t letting go of them. Rocky could see the whole little nest of them, and excitedly wondered to herself how many were behind the first rank of the cluster.

Out popped one nugget with the dental pick right behind it. The nugget and the pick hit her right in the face mask.

Startled, Rocky grabbed for the little nugget on its way to the bottom. She could always get another dental pick if she could+ not find that one again, but nuggets this size do not happen daily. Rocky was glad she wore her gloves. She scraped her left hand against the bottom as she reached down for the nugget tearing a strip out of her glove. The neoprene strip floated to the surface swirling with the current, being escorted by the small flotilla of curious crawdads.

It was going to take some force to ease the crack open a little more. If Rocky could ease it open and tap out some of the rock right there, she could squiggle the pick into the backside of those nuggets. She would try prying them right out without having to take the whole rock face down.

"I'll take you down too, Mr. Rock Face." She burbled into the mouthpiece. Rocky laughed to herself around her mouthpiece because taking this granite rock face down would require dynamite and some kind of very heavy equipment.

"Okay here we go."

She would do the best that she could, sticking the dental pick in and pushing up to make a bigger hole for the big pry bar.

Rocky was still working that crack after a half-hour. Time seemed to be floating by. In her dive pouch were two pretty little nuggets out of the rock in that last half-hour. The far end of the slot in the quartz and granite was getting bigger. Rocky moved to her right to fan away some of the murk and silt. Then she would have a sideways view into the slot.

No matter what, Rocky was face to face with that rock, whichever way she moved she could not see into the bottom of the slot. Rocky counted five more nice little nuggets right on the face of the slot, and she told herself she was not leaving till she had them in her pouch.

Surfacing, she swigged from the water bottle and turned on the dredge suction motor. The eight-inch dredge nozzle was too big to actually use on the crevice, but maybe she could suction some of the debris and muck away long enough to get a clear look at what was in there. Maybe even rattle one or two loose.

Trying to do anything fine with an eight-inch dredge nozzle was pretty much overkill. If it did suck the little nuggets out, all they would do was go up into the miners moss on the sluice, no loss there and plenty of time gained.

“Maybe next year I should get one of those small backpack dredges? No, maybe I should get running water into the cabin,” Rocky thought as she moved the dredge nozzle back and forth over the little nuggets.

Moving to another section of the rock face with the big heavy nozzle Rocky began four feet from the rock and suctioned herself a path right up to the face. Then she started at her right and suctioned the face in an up and then down sweep moving from her right to her left. Rocky could hear rattles going up the nozzle. That could be anything, but the sound was reassuring.

“Old timer dredging miners swear they can tell the difference in sound from rocks to nuggets,” Rocky thought. “Don’t think I can do that, yet.”

“When I get to the pesky nugget nest I’ll give it a good shot of that suction. Pow, to it,” Rocky was back to coaching herself as she swept the area clean.

Rocky porpoised up to the surface to turn off the dredge motor, not wasting any motion she jackknifed back down to the rock slot and inspected the rock face. The tenacious little nuggets were still nestled in their rock bed. Using her dental pick again, Rocky could move them much better.

Wedging her pick into and around the backside of the nuggets she braced her feet on the rock, and gave a mighty pull using every bit of strength she could muster.

There was an awful sound and everything was red in front of her eyes, she could feel rocks falling on and around her, and then all Rocky could see was black.

There was a solid yellow searing fire in Rocky’s arm when she became aware of sensation again. Her hand was burning.

“My hand is cut off, I'm gonna die here,” she thought.

She was feeling waves of pain nausea, and then there was nothing but black weight again.

Was it possible to feel color, Rocky later remembered asking herself over and over.

“Can I feel color; can I feel color?”

Rocky still had her hookah mouthpiece firmly clamped in her teeth. She was spiraling upward in heavy stuff. That indescribable substance that was holding her down, squeezing her chest, wrapped in her brain.

The bright, fiery yellow, waves of pain pulled Rocky down away from the spiral to somewhere.

The somewhere Rocky did not want to be. She knew her body was going down. She desperately wanted to go up, into the blue light away from the yellow searing pain. Spiral,spiral upward.

“No, do not vomit; you will not vomit. I have a mouthpiece,I'm fine, I can breathe” Rocky’s brain told her. Her brain was demanding Rocky survive.

“Do not lose the mouthpiece; do not lose the mouthpiece, mouthpiece, my mouthpiece,” her brain screamed through the yellow pain fire.

Hot coldness, cold hotness, yellow pain, and red swirls. Then black and all senses stopped and she was serene.

Soft soughing sounds, gurgling soughing sounds, rhythmic fast, soft soughing sounds, and sound with the soft gargle of something else. Those were life sounds of her breathing.

The black non-color was changing to gray, then changing to yellow pain, changing into river color, the muted light of the underwater, the reflected sparkle of the sun filled surface. Rocky floated limply just off the riverbed.

“Wherever I was, I am not there now.” There was that tiny voice that talked, coached Rocky through the pain and darkness.

Rocky came to alert.

“I’m underwater, I’m still underwater, I still have air, and I’m okay?” were her first thoughts.

Rolling her head to the left, Rocky saw floating clouds of red swirling through the water, strings of red swirling through the murk. Moving her head to the right, she could barely see for all the red swirls there.

Rocky cautiously moved each leg; they were free and worked without pain. Her left arm was free and functioned without pain, Rocky continued through her bodily checklist.

Her right arm moved, to the pulse of incredible agony. The arm moved, but her right hand or fingers were stuck. Moving close to the rock face, Rocky hoped to get a better look and to ease the pulling on her hand.

Every movement was unspeakably full of pain. Intense searing, tearing pain and then the mercy of black again.

Rocky pulled her mouthpiece free and her stomach emptied itself into the river. She gulped a mouthful of river water to clear the taste but the taste of blood was in the water. Spitting out her blood, she vomited again and again. She lay floating in the bloody, vomit flecked water, then she forcefully jammed the hookah mouthpiece back into her mouth.

“Before I pass out again, I need to know,” Rocky thought, forcing herself to stay conscious.

“I must be semi conscious, I already know. I don’t know how badly and what I can do.”

Rocky forced her body to inch forward, using her knees to push herself. She rolled over as far as she could. That roll was too far; she was on the verge of passing out again with the pain. Moving as gently as she could, she moved toward her left. Rocky lifted her head and looked up at the huge rock face towering over her.

The water was swirling and flowing at the same rate and pattern as it was ten minutes ago, and the rock looked as if it would stand for ages.

Slowly swinging her body to the left Rocky snuggled herself up to the rock surface. After that move, she could reach with her left hand and using care could feel the rough rock as far as she could reach. Everything seemed very secure on the face. However, that small careful movement had caused another wave of pain shooting from her wrist up onto her right shoulder.