MCCXXXIV

 In the very first Tale which I took to pen, "Where Lies Hope", there was within that a fungus of desperate degrees. It has appeared, only hinted at so far, in other tales, specifically in "I'll Always be With You, Boys". This fungus leads to a determinitive and important event in the history of Baird's Holler, particularly the trials that were suffered in the winter of 1875 through '76. It was during these months, from November through to the following April, that the fungus found in Hugh Goff's house spread throughout that booming community with horrific effects. "Twelve-Thirtyfour" will be my first foray into discussing what the citizens of Baird's Holler would come to refer to as the Black Throat. While this plague does not encompass the story, it is inspiritive of its genesis. The ramifications of that plague and the necessities it established do make possible this Tale as the existence of such labor needed would have required such a winter even in such unforgiving land.

Death was ever-present in the mining towns that dotted the American West during the later 1800s. Most, even those vanished beyond trace, hold graves if not actual cemeteries. When the land reclaims from men their buildings and their bones, not always do there remain even hints that man once bent their bones to build on that land. For example, the city of Howells Arizona, where this author pens his Tales, holds now just the last crumbled remains of the smelter that once was its glory and a few small flat spots where buildings once stood. While this author is confident that he has located at least one grave on that hillside, no cemetery complete remains (though I do know where one is not too distant, one only marked by a strand of rusted wire and five clusters of sunken stone... my family hides all the shovels from me).

On a scale writ larger, such as the copper mining town of Jerome clinging desperately to the side of Cleopatra Hill against the Mingus Mountains in Arizona, the scale of death attendant to the population exceeded the value of available real estate. While there does remain a graveyard, only a paltry number of the 400+ graves remain, the rest buried too shallow and suffering the erosions of time and the depredations of hungry scavengers. With a population that ran as high as 15,000 at any given time, with those numbers constantly sheered by the violence in this "wickedest town in America" (as one New York paper termed it in the early 1900s) and the attendant loss of life due to mining accidents and diseases associated with that profession, that wee little number of graves is on its face too few to account for what passed through this town.

What then became of those dead, the thousands who perished in this single, small city built haphazardly on the side of a mountain hollowed out beneath? They became part of the city itself, their ashes contributing to the very concrete now trod upon by tourists hoping beyond hope their fantasies of seeing a real ghost will prove the price of their trip. Thankfully the eternal gullibility of those pretending at spirits generally satisfies as there are more than enough crumbled buildings and their colorful histories to inspire any number of "sightings"... that with the wine kicker from those sellers who've taken up residence there ensures always a pleasant trip. But those dead, yes, they do remain and while the idea of actual ghosts to this writer of ghost stories seems as silly as ever, to know that the Dead never leave Jerome is kind of nice.

What happened to them, those thousands of Dead? Well, um, the blast furnace. Yup, that's where you put dead folk when you do not have either enough real estate to bury them or, like the vanishing graveyard in Jerome, the ground just doesn't want them. Such was the situation that developed during those cold, hard months through the winter of 1875-76 in Baird's Holler. With the land there uncompromisingly tough, rife with gullies and washes with rarely a spot of level ground not claimed by some type of structure either being built or already standing, the small graveyard the town does boast was incapable of use during cold months overrun by a wasting disease. "Twelve-Thirtyfour" is the story of the furnace feeding the smelter at the Mortenson Mine in Baird's Holler, and how this new purpose became as important to the community as a whole as its stated purpose was to the mine itself.

"Twelve-Thirtyfour" is also the story of one Percival Clark, the scion of an antebellum family ruined in the wake of the American Civil War and the humbling of pride that comes with the accident of privileged birth. Its 4,974 words are dedicated to the telling of this man's life from his arrogant departure to win the world, his humbling and his acceptance through unlikely friendships his place. The story does well to help people the town of Baird's Holler, offering me at last a first real glimpse of Delores Jackson, the widow of Buchanan "Buck" Jackson, the only African-American member of the Mortenson Expedition and the beneficiary of his loss. Here is where I first get to mention with solid foundation the home built for her after Buck's untimely death, one which I now know to have been the evening of December 24, 1871.

Established as well in "Twelve-Thirtyfour" (and it is that, not "1234") are the protocols of the furnace, ones which were immediately utilized in the story which followed two Tales hence. These usages allowed and taken advantage of allow me at this point a connective thread throughout any Tale requiring the disposal of bodies thus allowing Percy and Marcus many opportunities to poke their heads into other Tales. This story is also a part of "Outside the Circle of Midnight Black", its conclusion occurring the second night (a Tuesday) of that overall series concerning the last five days of Baird's Holler.

"Twelve-Thirtyfour" was one of those Tales that wrote itself. It came out without delay allowing me to finish the month of August that year (2018) with two Tales complete, putting me just slightly ahead of my goal. Oddly, as I consider it one of my cleanest written stories, it is one which I have only submitted once and while that publisher granted that allowance for ten such Tales, he only had room for four with the cuts to be made by me. With the four I chose being important in the establishment of particular threads, concepts or themes, I opted not for this one. Time to change that.