LITMIR.BIZ

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name?”

      “You didn’t get my name because I didn’t give it. I’m calling because I understand you handle property in this area and I’ve just come into a piece, it belonged to my brother and he’s left it to me. I need to take a look before I decide whether to sell.”

      “Sell” was all George needed to hear. He rocked forward and grabbed his pen and pad. “What’s that address now?” as he spun around to the book of county records, listing all properties by parcel number. Who died up there? He was trying to think but nobody came to mind.

      14747 Blind Shady, Parcel 671386, his fingers traced veins of roads that came off Highway 49, Tyler Foote Crossing, Murphy Road, Lost River Road, Wits End, lines too small to read, there it is, Blind Shady Bend.

      “I’ll be damned!” he hoped she didn’t hear, the property adjacent to Pete’s, where Blind Shady makes a sharp left, levels out, then dies altogether at the end of a dusty half-mile stretch.

      The locals pretty much thought of that parcel as Pete’s place, since he made a decent living for himself digging through the old culvert that ran down the middle of the property. Long ago dredged of gold, the culvert had been a prime spot for the miners who populated the area over a hundred years earlier, as gold washed down from the Yuba River, settling into the hundreds of tributaries and ravines that pushed their way through the mountains. George had vague recollections of a pot farm getting busted out that way a couple of years back, and wasn’t that the place? One thing for sure. Nothing grew on that land any more except Pete’s imagination. And wasn’t his luck about to change, George chuckled silently to himself.

      “I see it now, Raymond Blackwell” oh my God this is going to be good, he realized, having almost forgotten the woman was still on the phone.

      “That would be the one,” she confirmed.

      “I know that parcel very well and I’d be happy to show it to you,” the salesman in him recovered from the shock without so much as a hiccup. “I could get a good price for you. Properties are hot in that part of town, hot.” Pete would give his eyetooth, assuming he still had one left, to buy that place. George was already imagining the bidding wars.

      “Hot” he repeated but the word had lost some flame in the retelling and still he heard nothing on her end, no sound at all.

      “Are you still there ma’am?”

      A throat cleared, once and loudly. “I’m not so sure you understand. I told you I just want to see it, that’s all I said. We’ll talk about selling when I’m ready to talk about selling. You need to show it to me first.”

      With that, she granted him her name, and confirmed she would arrive Monday of next week, at ten am sharp.

      “Did she name a price?”

      George didn’t bother to look up before grunting a reply. He knew who it was. He could smell the breath.

      “You’ll be the first to know,” he said, then got up and walked back to the water cooler for no reason other than to indicate he wasn’t in the mood for Pete’s company.

      Pete had a habit of dropping in on George at irregular times, the realty company being two doors down from The Nugget. George had noticed Pete come in while he was on the phone, tried to keep his voice down in an unsuccessful attempt to muffle the substance of the phone call.

      “Oh come on, you’ve got to know something.” Pete was persistent when his livelihood was at stake, which is how he perceived any interference with his precious next-door treasure chest.

      “I don’t. She said she wanted to see the place, that’s all. The property’s not yours anyway so pipe down.” George had returned to his desk where Pete had already made himself comfortable, having moved a sheaf of papers off to the side to make some sitting room.

      “Get your ass off my desk. I’m not talking to you about this.”

      Pete leaned in close, perfuming George’s workspace with an acrid blend of Chesterfield lights and tuna fish.

      “C’mon Lundale. What’s she planning on doing with it?”

      “Nothing. I told her I’d help her sell and she told me she didn’t know if she was planning on selling and somehow I neglected to bring you into the picture. Maybe because the last thing that woman needs to know is she might end up with you as a neighbor.”

      Pete didn’t blink, expecting the insults and even welcoming them. They reassured him that that he held a place in the landscape, recognized and secure.

      “Tell her the place is worthless. Tell her it would take a ton of money to make it livable and the guy next door is a drunk.”

      “Tells me what you know about real estate. She’s from Roseville. She’s Blackwell’s sister. This isn’t what I’d call a regular customer. She didn’t make a sound when I told her it would bring a good price. If I were you, I’d start digging fast as I can because the place never was yours to begin with. Or did you forget that little detail?”

      Pete couldn’t understand how city people landed in these remote places. They kept creeping in, driving their little sedans into ditches, organizing town hall meetings to get electric poles installed, changing zoning laws so they could build bigger houses for their bigger cars that broke down like bludgeoned buffalo trying to maneuver the crooked mountain turns. He spent his life trying to avoid them.

      Pete had purchased his land when even paupers could own a piece. What attracted him to his two-acre dustbin was its proximity to the old county dumping ground along Blind Shady Creek that had long ago been pit stop central on an old gold mining trail. He’d grown up in nearby Grass Valley and had known about the area as a child, made his way in search of what just about everyone with a brain had given up on, the prospect of mining gold in his own back yard. Though pretty much mined of gold by now, the property on Blind Shady still offered plenty of treasures for Pete to sell at his flea market stall, as well as to loosely labeled ‘antique’ shops in the area that attracted weekend tourists. There wasn’t a day that Pete didn’t brag to someone about what he had lifted out of the ravine: an 1863 dime, a jackknife (thick with rust but still sharp enough to do some damage), sea green opium bottles, even a bit of lace he swore was a hundred years old and no one cared enough to argue with him.

      Since Ray got busted the first time—that was back in the early 90’s—Pete had pretty much helped himself to whatever showed up in the culvert next door. It was abandoned after all, he told himself. When he was sure nobody was around, which was most all the time, Pete would saunter across the property line to see what kind of treasure might turn up. He would bring a pick or not, blessed with two thick hands. Practically every try he’d unearth a tin toy, hatpin, picture frame framed in mud. The uncovering of a wooden sewing thimble, traces of turquoise paint still on, served to reinforce his smugness. And he wasn’t above making a couple of slight enhancements, to draw a better price. Like carving a date, say “1886,” into a plain piece of doorframe. It worked.

      Pete prided himself on his reputation. When the old Meriwether place was torn down, a bunch of locals followed him out there to watch him extricate stuff not even fit for the garbage. Deft and deliberate, he chipped away at a decomposing Ford pickup that the wilderness was slowly swallowing. The steering column had sprouted acorns; the tires had turned to mulch. He picked away at the rubber treads, extricating a swatch of denim, frayed beyond recognition, but denim nonetheless. A poor sucker’s favorite pair of Levi’s and there would be some fool out there wanting to buy it.

      Stories gathered and grew about how Pete got $50 for old lady Groman’s hairpins, $100 for Jess King’s beat up rocker. For some reason, people in the city enjoyed dusting up their whitewalls to get their hands on rusted objects that just may have been touched by a real gold miner at one point in time. Their stupidity was a mystery that gave Pete a great deal of pleasure.

      “Did she sound like she had money? Tell me something dammit!” Pete was pleading this time. George was doing his best to ignore him, fumbling through receipts and such as though he had real work to do. “Will you talk

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