“Composure, Patty,” John said, as though his son were still thirteen and trying to split lumps of stolen terranium. “Men who don’t learn it don’t make a single right choice in their lives.”
Patrick threw his shoulder into the window again, harder now. There wasn’t enough air in the room.
“Guard your temper. You fly off the handle, you might as well fold your hand.”
Patrick pushed at the window again, heard something creak.
“This is the business, Patty. It’s a hundred problems, each as urgent as the next. The only one that matters is the one in front of you.”
Patrick threw his fist into the window in desperation, and the glass splintered. His father’s hands were on his shoulders, his chest, holding him back.
“Just breathe, Pat,” he was saying. “Come on, lad.Breathe. Till the light comes, remember? Till the light comes, we keep at it. Everythin’ has a fix.”
His lungs were howling as he inhaled, his eyes shut so tightly he thought they might never open again.
“Jus’ breathe. That’s the way,” John’s voice swooped in. “Ain’t anythin’ so big we can’t handle, Patty. We find a way. We’ll get us all the bluff we’ll ever need, son. All the bluff yourmothercould ever need.”
Tess’s face swam on a carousel. Younger and gray as smoke. Then older, wearier. He braced himself on the windowsill, felt tiny shards of glass embed in his skin. He breathed heavily, sweat trickling into the corners of his eyes.
“Nothin’ we can do for ’em if we go back empty-handed, Patty. We find the Seam first. This is the problem in front of us.”
Patrick nodded. There was nothing to do but nod.
“I rely on you, son,” John was saying now. “I gave you this burden ’cause you were the only one who could bear it. We’re so close now—I can’t have you fallin’ apart.”
His father slapped his spine between his shoulder blades, the reverberations reaching his heart. It was a reset, a jolt of strength.
“Till the light comes, son. Say it.”
“Till the light comes.” He could barely shove the words past his lips.
“That’s it.” John mussed his hair. “Come on, now. There’s gotta be a cigarette somewhere around here.”
Patrick opened his eyes to the broken window, the glass now a web. He traced the path of a fissure with his finger, and he thought to himself, if onlyhe could see where it would all end, where they would all fall, he would know if he could live with himself in the aftermath.
He turned to his father pulling a shirt over his head, pulling up his suspenders as though preparing for second shift in the mines. As though he might thunder down the stairs and kiss his mother on the cheek, pat Gunner’s shoulder, and pull on Donny’s nose.
“Till the light comes,” Patrick murmured to himself, searching for composure, shunting fear into his center and locking it away. “Down we go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENDONNY
It’d been several weeks since Donny had slept soundly. Every day, he felt as though he were morphing into a poor substitution for his absent brother.
He wondered if this heaviness he felt in the crane of his neck, in the bedrock of his stomach, had been carried by Patrick before him and his father before that. Had it felt to them as though their boots were sinking farther into the mud by the second? Had Donny truly been so absorbed in himself that he’d never noticed?
For the first time in seven years, the Coal Works was short of coal. Hearths would start emptying around the parish, the pipes would bring naught through its channels. The waters in their tanks and boilers would freeze over.
“A dead winter,” Gunner muttered. The gong of his boot kicking a copper drum rung hollow. “A dead fuckin winter, on top ofeverythin’!”
The factory floor of the Coal Works sweltered. In his mind, Donny imagined it bulging, the steam collecting along the walls and curling to the roof until the whole place distended. “God bloody help us,” he said.
“Ain’t any way round it,” said Otto. His voice was weary from a shift already spent in the mines. “Nothin’ left to trade with. Gotta keep the Union members happy with somethin’ if not bluff.”
Therein lay the problem. With no bluff to trade, there was only coal. Triple the amount outgoing than usual, and not half the men to mine it.There’d been too many good miners lost in the attack. Even working more than they ought to, the miners that remained couldn’t replace what they were exporting.
“Fuck,” Donny said, pulling his cap from his head and mopping his face. “Someone light me a smoke.”
“Can’t smoke in here, Donny,” said Otto.
