Webb traced the faintly differentiated channel of trees on the picture with his pencil.
“You can see how this area of forest appears very slightly lighter on the photograph. That’s because the vegetation here-the trees-is less dense and of lesser stature than the forest on either side of it. And it’s like that because it’s growing in ground that is poorer in nutrients. You see the course of the river? How it curves around this spur? That’s not its original course. I think what we’re looking at here is the result of a landslip. At some point the face of the spur fell away into the path of the river and forced it into this curve, here. The line of sparser vegetation on the other side of the bluff follows the original path of the river. The trees are, in effect, growing on top of the original riverbed. In some cases a riverbed will be sediment rich and we would see the opposite effect on vegetation-that it would grow more strongly-but in others the riverbed is composed of gravel and sand and plants have a harder time because they only have a shallow layer of topsoil from which to source nutrients. That’s probably the case here.”
“But we own that land and where those trees are doesn’t look like a riverbed. I mean, it doesn’t dip down or anything.”
“The Swallow River is very shallow in that part of the country even now. There’s no reason to suppose it was any deeper along this old, original stretch. The slip might have happened several hundred years ago. Over that time whatever depression there was could easily have been filled with windborne debris, matter washed in by rain, accumulated dead vegetation…”
Stan made two quick popping noises with his lips. “Yikes, Johnny, a secret river and we didn’t even know it was there!”
Howard Webb looked slightly nonplussed, but recovered quickly and smiled at Stan. “A lot of these things are only visible from the air.”
I had what I needed. Stan and I thanked Howard Webb for his time and headed out of the office. At the door, though, something occurred to me and I turned back to him.
“When my father was here asking about the picture, was there anyone else with him?”
“Yes, a kind of redheaded guy, about your age.”
On the way home Stan was agog with the idea of a hidden river.
“I bet we’re the only people in the whole world who know about it, Johnny. It’s right there, in the trees, and anyone else would just walk over it, but we know. I told you it was weird how the trees were like that. And I was right.”
“That you were, dude.”
“I wonder what it would look like if we dug it up.” For a moment he was silent, then he startled me with a sharp intake of breath. “Johnny! That must be why Dad dug those holes there. Where he got that sample from. The hidden river must be full of gold!”
“Calm down, dude.”
“But why would he dig samples if he didn’t think it was? Hey, you know what? We should go exploring there.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be exploring it all right.”
“We should make an equipment list. Like a flashlight and an axe. And some rope.”
“What are you going to use rope for?”
“You coil it up and put it over your shoulder. So it goes across your chest.”
“And you look totally cool.”
“Yeah. We gotta do it when Rosie’s around so she can see.” After that he gazed out the window for a couple of minutes, then he turned back to me and said quietly, “You think we should get married, Johnny?”
“Can’t, we’re brothers.”
“Me and Rosie, stupid.”
That Stan and Rosie might get married was an idea so bizarre I’d never contemplated it and caught unawares as I was now I couldn’t help but react negatively.
“I don’t know, Stan, Marla and I aren’t married.”
“Yeah, but Johnny,” Stan looked uncomfortable, “you’re you.”
“Okay, even so, do you think it’s a good idea? I mean, Rosie’s a lovely girl but I think she had a pretty rough life in the past. Being married is kind of different than just going out, you have to deal with more of each other’s problems.”
“But Rosie and I don’t have problems. We’re happy.”
“Yeah, but what I’m saying is you might have problems if you got married.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Johnny.”
“Look, Stan, I know you love her, but you live right next door, you see her whenever you want. What’s the difference?”
Stan was silent for a mile or so and I knew I’d made him unhappy.
“But if we did get married you wouldn’t be angry, would you, Johnny?”
“No, I wouldn’t be angry.”
Stan smiled to himself and wriggled comfortably deeper into his seat. And I drove on, wondering just how complicated life could get.
Marla was later than usual and it was dark when she got home from work. She dropped her things over the back of a chair and collapsed on the couch. Her cheeks were flushed from the cool air outside but under the color she looked the same sort of tired she always did nowadays. Stan was in his room watching TV and came out when he heard her arrive. He was bursting to tell her about our buried river but before he could start Marla sighed and launched into an explanation of why she was late.
“They called an unscheduled meeting at the town hall about the road to Tunney Lake. I had to go up and take minutes.” She smiled grimly. “Things don’t look good for Gareth. They took an informal vote; there wasn’t enough of a majority to veto the project, but it could easily end up that way given time. You won’t believe who was there-Jeremy Tripp. He was with that woman who’s been campaigning around town.”
“Vivian Gelhardt.”
“You know her?”
“Gareth used to go out with her. He introduced us awhile ago, before she left him for Tripp.”
“What a shame. Well, they’ve got this petition with a ton of signatures. Tripp said he was going to keep collecting them until he had enough to force the council to abandon the road.”
“Could they really do that?”
“They see that van around town and enough people sign a piece of paper, they can’t just ignore it. Plus a couple of the councilors don’t want to spend the money anyhow.”
Stan, who had been jigging from foot to foot while she spoke, couldn’t contain himself any longer and blurted, “We’ve got a hidden river and it’s full of gold!”
Marla looked confused and I could tell she was trying to figure out if his comment was another behavioral anomaly like his moths. I held my hand up to stop him saying any more and he sat down on a chair facing the couch, grinning at me, waiting for me to explain our discovery to Marla.
“Stan and I found out something today that makes me pretty sure I know why my father bought this land.”
Stan leaned forward excitedly and said, “Because there’s a river full of gold!”
Marla rolled her eyes. “Oh God, Johnny, he was always digging around in one place or another. He never found anything worth more than a couple hundred dollars, you know that.”
“Well, listen to this-Millicent told me he was out here in February trying to get her to put her house on the market. While he was there she showed him a journal her great-great-grandfather or someone had written early in the Gold Rush. I’ve read it too, and this guy came up the Swallow and panned the whole length of Empty Mile. Didn’t find a thing, got pissed off, and moved on up the river. Okay, no big deal. Empty Mile’s called Empty Mile because no one found gold here. Everyone’s always assumed it was because some early party of miners got to the bend before the Rush really got going and mined it clean. Thing is, Millicent’s great-great-grandfather said in his journal that the bend had never been mined before he got to it. There were no piles of dirt, the riverbed wasn’t disturbed, etcetera, etcetera. So the reason there was no gold at Empty Mile couldn’t have been because it was mined out. Now, my father, being interested in gold forever, would have found this an interesting fact, and he would have remembered it, particularly because the rest of the Swallow River was so rich. Then, Chris Reynolds told us, he attended a lecture in March at the Elephant Society-the same subject you and I sat through-about how changes in the landscape, things like landslides and so on, can change the course of a river. I think it was at that point he started speculating about Empty Mile. But the breakthrough came with this.”