Keep the Change

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When Joe Starling was ten years old, his father’s bank foreclosed on a fieldstone mansion which was by then a depressing ruin standing by itself in the middle of a fourteen-section cattle pasture. It had been built during the silver rush to house the man who found the vein of ore, but now its mortared walls sheltered cattle against the prevailing west wind. Twenty years later, Joe could not remember much of the house beyond its size and age, and its air of having seen things. Once or twice while he was growing up, he drove over from his family’s ranch. He recalled rumors of two old sisters who once lived there, nieces of the Silver King, whose poverty did not prevent them from seeming to have come from a higher caste than other people in the county. The sisters had not been long dead when Joe and his father first visited the house to view a painting that hung over the cavernous fireplace. It was a picture of a range of white hills. At first glance, it had looked like an unblemished canvas until the perplexity of shadows across its surface was seen to be part of the painting.

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