I am rubber. Chris is glue. He wants to keep the Tonopah family. He wants to raise them, shelter them, rub the balm of caretaking all over his grief. I'm not surprised by grief, with your illness gone so severe, and now, suddenly, Del. I carry my own share of it around, but I recognize that the weight of Chris's grief is somehow mine multiplied, grief to the power of near unbearable.

Our oldest half-brother, Colton, is fifteen, twenty-six years younger than me. Michael is fourteen. When they saw our note from Del, Colton embraced us both.

You have his eyes, Colton said, looking at me.

When we returned to the mine, Colton invited us in for coffee without asking Brandy's permission.

You enter the—it's not a house really, more of a dwelling—through a wooden lean-to, graying boards that shift, entirely, to the left, then open into a cave cut into the side of the mountain itself. It seems like it might have been a staging room for the old-timey miners, a company office. There are two sets of bunk beds that seem to have been hand-built from pallet wood, a woodstove next to a propane camp stove. A large gun safe sits next to a ceramic utility sink. There's no running water, but they've plumbed the drains with PVC pipe out a crack in the lean-to and into a ditch outside. In the middle of the room is a solid wood table with four chairs, dusty maps and quitclaim deeds and notices covering its surface.

Michael struck a match, lit the propane stove, made the coffee. When I opened the envelope of powdered creamer, it spilled all over Colton's hand-drawn map of the mine. Brandy sucked her teeth at me.

There is one thing about planting sod. Not all soil amendments are created equal. To water strength down into the root system, to build drought tolerance and break up any hardpan earthen layers under the soil crust, add phosphorus. For general good health, joy, and transmission capacity, the savvy gardener will emphasize potassium over nitrogen. I enjoy bananas; the deep majestic purple dinner-plate “Thomas Edison” dahlia enjoys Miracle-Gro. Del's Tonopah family is just like Del, all three of them. They seek the flash and sparkle of a nitrogen infusion—something that makes them showier, more obviously golden, more present in the world.

Colton and Michael have promised to take Chris and me into the mine tomorrow. We will have to be careful about what we promise in return.

Love, Charley

To: Mom

From: Charley

Subject: Project Gold Rush

August 22, 2016