Old Van

A reporter wants to do a story about the death of Forest City, and shows up to interview one of its last inhabitants. She finds out that there's more to the death of a city than she'd realized.

Old Van

    Obscure, barely recognizable ruins are all that remain of Forest City, a once-thriving town high in the mountains above American Fork, Utah.  Among those ruins are graves.  The grave of George Tyng, who made the first discovery of silver and founded the town, and others who played an important part in the building of a town and brought an important aspect of the local economy to Utah.  One grave you won’t find, however, is that of Old Van.  His resting place has been lost in the seasons of years gone by.  Even the memory of that enigmatic old man has faded with time.  The following story is fiction, though there are elements of truth in it.

    I seen ‘er comin’ up the dirt road, strugglin’ against the slope like city folk do, an’ waited for her right where I was.  I could’ve gone down the road an’ saved ‘er the trouble, but didn’t.  She wanted to know what it was like in Forest City, what folks did an’ put up with, how they lived an’ so on, so I let ‘er find out.  Reporters is a nuisance anyway.  She had to stop twice to catch ‘er breath, an’ twice more to let beat-up old trucks rumble by.  Her eyes bored menacingly into me during those stops, but she eventually made it.  I’ll give her that.  Her bein’ a lady who’d clumb that hill, I figgered she was worth standin’ for as she strode up.
    “Mr. Steele?” she asked between gasps.
    I nodded.
    “I’m Abigail Hunter.  We had an appointment?”
    I nodded again.
    “So here I am” she said, not sure what to say next.
    “Seems that way, don’t it” I replied.
    “Is this a bad time?  It’s a long drive up here, but if you don’t have the time right now I’m sure I could come back another day.”
    “Time?  Ma’am, that’s all I got.  Let’s get ‘er done.”
    “Very well.  If you’re sure.”
    “I’m sure” I said.  “You like to sit a minute, catch your breath before we go up?”
    “Up?” she gasped in desperation.  “Up where?  Aren’t we on top.”
    I shook my head an’ woulda laughed if my heart hadn’t been so sick.  “No ma’am, we ain’t even reached town yet.  Around this here bend there’s another hill.  Town’s on top of that.  Then we go to the heart of it all, the mines.  They’re a few miles above town.  Nine thousand feet above sea level.”
    “I don’t think it’s necessary to go up there” she said.  “My article is about the closing down of the town, not the mines.”
    That didn’t set well with me, but I tried to remember she was just a reporter, that there wasn’t no real blood in her veins nor heart to pump it.  “Let me ask you a question, ma’am.  When you write about somebody dyin’, do you just say they died or do you tell what killed ‘em?  Do you put in a little about their life, or is it enough to say they died?”
    “Well...”
    “I read your article about Jack Tripp” I said, interrupting her.  “It told how he was killed by that no-good Able Tattington, an’ how he was a friend to everyone in town, a business man of integrity who’d be missed.  It was a good article, ma’am, even if it was a pack of lies.”
    “It wasn’t a pack of lies!” she blurted, mad as a rain-soaked bobcat.
    “Depends on who’s readin’ it, I reckon.  To folks up here Jack was a villainous murderer, but we ain’t here to talk about that.  Still, you’re standin’ at the death bed of a city, an’ I’d admire it if you’d treat it with the same respect you’d give the death of a man.  Tell a bit about it’s life an’ what killed it.  Ain’t no town ever been more alive than Forest City was.”
    “Very well, but it’ll have to be brief.  The paper doesn’t have room for a complete history.”
    “Make room, ma’am.  It’s your paper, ain’t it?”
    “I’ll do my best” she snorted, then pulled a small pad an’ pencil from her bag.
    “That all the paper you got?”
    “It’s enough” she said.  “All I need is the pertinent facts.”
    “That so?” I grunted.  “Then here’s the facts, ma’am.  Right over there is the refinery that was the life-blood of this town.  It ain’t processed no ore in two years.  If you look close enough you can see a set of railroad tracks behind it.  Them tracks ain’t carried a train for two years, neither.”
    “I know that” she said, seeming irritated.  “Of course, I had no idea how steep it is up here.  I don’t see how a train could navigate this canyon.”
    I started up the hill an’ she fell in beside me, still panting.  “The locomotive brung up empty cars, ma’am.  When they was loaded the cars went down by themselves with nothin’ but a brakeman.  Them brakemen was brave men, ma’am.  Ridin’ a couple hundred tons of ore down that canyon with nothin’ but a brake ain’t child’s play.  There’s a story right there, but it ain’t pertinent, is it?”
    “Look, I didn’t mean to anger you, Mr. Steele, and I apologize if I did.”
    “No ma’am, you didn’t anger me.  I was angry long before you got here.  This here town was my life.  I was born here, lived here an’ intended to die here, but the town beat me to it.  I’m the one should be apologizin’.  It ain’t right for me to take it out on you.”
    “Can we call a truce then?”
    “Truce it is” I said, then pointed back to the refinery.  “America’s becoming a rich nation, ma’am.  They say the twenties will bring prosperity such as never before, but that don’t mean nothin’ to the folks up here.  Amid all that prosperity Forest City is dyin’.  Hell, it’s already dead.  There ain’t no trains runnin’ no more, no refinery to process ore.  Jack Tripp saw to that.”
    “Jack Tripp?”
    “That’s right, ma’am.  His bank bought the loan on the train an’ moved it down to the settlements.  He killed us, ma’am, because we wouldn’t bank with him.”
    “Why wouldn’t you bank with him?  American Fork is a lot closer than Salt Lake.”
    “That it is” I nodded, “but the bank in Salt Lake didn’t kill George Tyng, neither.”
    “You’re saying Jack Tripp killed Mr. Tyng?”
    “That I am, ma’am.”
    “But Mr. Tyng was killed in an avalanche.  I don’t see how...”
    “An avalanche caused by dynamite, ma’am, set off by Jack Tripp’s bullies.  He wanted Tyng’s mine.  Didn’t get it, though.  My pa got it instead, given to him by Tyng with legal papers an’ all.  Pa got the mine, an’ with it he got hisself an enemy by the name of Jack Tripp.  After that, Tripp set out to shut us down, but it taken him twenty years to do it.  At least he ain’t here to enjoy it.  I suppose there’s some justice in that.”
    A truck rumbled by, loaded to the top of the stakes with beddin’ an’ furniture.  We stood aside to let it through, then waited for the dust to settle.  “There goes the boardin’ house” I said.  “Last load.  Ain’t nothin’ left now but the walls an’ ceiling.  Nearly two hundred men lived there once, now there ain’t nothin’ but memories.  Them men hiked three miles up a steep grade each morning to work.  Another hundred or so lived at the hotel, but most of ‘em built homes.  Forest City wasn’t no temporary boom town.  It was a town meant to live, ma’am.  It had schools an’ churches an’ stores an’ such.  Tyng saw to that.  This town was his dream.  Mine too, I guess.  Had my eye on the lady who ran the cafe, but she’s gone like all the rest.”  
    “Tell me more about Mr. Tyng.”
    I did exactly that while we walked up the hill to town, an’ from there we went up to the mining district where Tyng was buried.  It was only a couple miles, an’ I’d usually walk it in twenty minutes or so, but with her it taken most of an hour.  She was surprised to see such an elaborate grave way up in them hills, an’ I hoped she’d compare it to the grave of Jack Tripp down in American Fork.  Tyng was a man who was loved, an’ his grave showed that love.  Tripp was a banker.  His grave reflected wealth.
    “I had no idea it was so breathtaking up here” she said, surveyin’ the sweeping landscape all around us.  It was rugged country with a beauty flat-landers don’t often get to see.  I’d lived among it all my life, but the vista of mountain peaks an’ canyons an’ meadows never ceased to inspire me.  Even the flat-lands way off in the distance looked good from up there.
    “That’s a right good word for it, ma’am.  It does take your breath away, don’t it?”
    The day went by faster than either of us expected, an’ as late afternoon overtook us we went back down to town.  “That” I said, pointing to a little lean-to that was worn an’ mostly fallen, “was where Old Van lived.”
    “I don’t recall the name.  Who was he?”
    “He ain’t one of your pertinent facts, ma’am” I said, turning aside to the shanty, “but his is quite a story if you’ve got the time.”  Hanging over the door of the shanty was a bronze plaque, bought by the people of Forest City to honor the man.  It’s message was simple.
To the man nobody knew, everybody loved, and to whom we owe our lives.
    “Tell me about him” she demanded.
    “Can’t rightly say I know all that much, ma’am.  Not the pertinent stuff you’d put in a paper, anyway.  Nobody knows where he came from or what he done before arrivin’ in Forest City.  He was maybe fifty when he got here, an’ claimed he wasn’t no miner.  He hired on with the folks about town to haul firewood, bring water and take trash down to the dump.  Stuff like that.  Folks gave him a penny here an’ there, a nickel at times, an’ built this shanty so’s he’d have a place to live.  Monday through Thursday he worked at odd jobs around camp, but every Friday he disappeared, an’ on Sunday night he’d return.  Nobody knew where he went, but it couldn’t have been down to the settlements.  No way he could’ve made that trip in three days.
    “One day he left for California.  Had a girl there who’d been waitin’ for him to find his fortune, an’ he said he had it.  Left with nearly three thousand in gold, which made it clear what he’d been doin’ on his weekends.  Some folks went lookin’ for his dig, but never found it.  Come spring Old Van was back, ready to haul more wood.  Seems his girl spent his fortune an’ sent him off for more.
    “Come mid-summer he left again with close to five thousand in gold, but he was back before fall, broke again.  That was the year they decided to work through the winter, an’ Van stayed on with thirty or so other brave men an’ women.  My ma and pa stayed on, too.  Supplies was stored up, wood was piled all over the place, an’ they was set to survive the winter.  The winters up here are bad, ma’am.  Snow gets thirty feet deep, the temperatures are ungodly cold - forgive the language - an’ there ain’t a critter nowhere, so it ain’t no use to hunt.  You eat what you’ve stored or you starve.
    “That year the winter was especially bad.  The cabins an’ cookhouse was buried under snow, an’ them folks didn’t see daylight for months.  Tunnels ran from the cabins to the mine, an’ the floors of the cabins was muddy from melted snow.  Come March, the snow was still pilin’ up an’ supplies was mighty low.  Van dug his way to the surface an’ went to get what wood he could find, shot a few snowshoe rabbits an’ such, but it wasn’t near enough.  After awhile everybody started huntin’ an’ gatherin’ wood, but there wasn’t no way to feed so many off what they could find, so Van built hisself a hand-pulled sled an’ lit out for American Fork.  It took him two weeks to get back loaded with supplies, an’ the day he arrived was like Christmas to them folks.  They would’ve died without ‘em, an’ they knew it.  Well, Van rested up a day an’ took off for another load.  You ever walk in snowshoes, ma’am?”
    “No, I never had the need.”
    “It ain’t easy.  Goin’ downhill the sled would run into the back of his trappin’s, an’ comin’ back he had to drag it, loaded with goods up steep slopes in them awkward things.  Ain’t many men could do what he done, ma’am, but by doin’ it he saved the lives of those folks.  He was plum wore out, but after restin’ for a few days he took off again.  That time he never returned.  An avalanche got him down by the dugway.”
    “Van’s dugway” she said with a sharp intake of breath.
    “Yes ma’am.  They buried him there an’ put a marker at his grave, but they didn’t even know his last name.  Old Van.  That’s what the marker said.  Just Old Van.  The man who saved a town.  The marker’s gone now.  Winters took it, so only a few of us know where he’s restin’.  When we’re gone, won’t nobody remember Old Van, the hero with no last name.”
    She sat on a stump in front of the shanty.  The same stump Old Van used to sit on to suck on his corncob pipe.  She was strangely quiet for a reporter, especially a female reporter.  “And Jack Tripp killed the town Old Van saved” she muttered softly.
    “That’s about the size of it” I nodded.  “The irony of it is that Jack Tripp’s a hero to you lowlanders, an’ Old Van’s the hero to those of us in Forest City.  But he’ll be forgot when we’re gone.”
    “I’ll remember” she said, her voice as soft as spring in a meadow, “and through my paper I’ll see that no one forgets.  Old Van will live on.  Him and all the other heroes and heroines of Forest City.  This city isn’t dead, Mr. Steele, it’s sleeping.  You and I will share it’s dreams with the world so nobody forgets.  That is, if you’re willing to help.”
    Like I said, reporters is a nuisance.  They make you hike all over tarnation just so’s they can gather a few words, then they want more.  Then again, the way things was I had lots of time to give, so what the hell.  There was a city to save, dreams to tell an’ memories to share.
    “Let’s get ‘er done” I said with a grin.  We shook hands an’ headed down the road through the gathering darkness.  At the rise just outside of town I turned back to the town I loved so much an’ removed my hat.  “Pleasant dreams” I whispered.  The look she gave me wasn’t that of a snoopy reporter, but of a woman.  Compassionate.  Almost teary-eyed.  “You ever tie the knot, Miss Abigail?”
    “If you’re asking if I’m married, the answer is no.”
    “Then how’s about we talk some more over dinner down to town Saturday night?  You might wanna bring more paper, though.”  She nodded in the darkness, an’ I knew in that moment my heart wasn’t gonna be sick forever.  I’d go on, an’ so would Forest City.

Author's Note

Have fun with it. I did.

Reviews

[hmm]

I really enjoyed your story. It's very descriptive and full of wonderful imagery. Found it cute in places as well. I really enjoyed this. 100/100