Fletcher drank and drank, and what came over him was a nimbus of deadening quiet. A boneless peace. He slumped further and further into his chair as though he might fuse himself to it, as though he hadn’t known relief for days, weeks.
“Thank yeh,” he said, his tongue too slow now. He panted like he’d reached the summit, finally resting after a long climb. He patted the air as though he were stroking the head of a dog. “Thank yeh kindly.”
Patrick and John moved him to the cot in the corner before he slid off the chair, taking either arm in a practiced way. Fletcher’s feet hardly moved. He let them lift him across his own kitchen, feet scraping the tiles, and collapsed gladly atop the foul mattress. His eyes shut immediately, a snore already escaping his open mouth.
“Lord almighty,” John said, taking the cap from his head and swiping it through the air as though he could rid the room of its sour smell. “He’s pickled. I hate to say it, darlin’, but he ain’t long for this world. Bluff well and truly has him. Men like him can’t come off it once they’re on.”
No one knew it better than I. It was oncemeescorting him to the pub to load him up when the bluff ran out, me pouring liquor into a mug to keep his mind soft between doses. The only times I could remember him sober were the times my mother had tried to clean him up. She’d grit her teeth and block the door with her body. Sometimes he heeded her. More often she found herself knocked aside.
“He’ll swallow his tongue,” I said as though I was someone else. “Turn him over.”
Whatever Patrick saw in me in that moment, it seemed to haunt him. He looked at me like he wanted to lift me into his arms and run off with me. Instead, he turned to the heap on the bed that was my flesh and blood and rolled him onto his side.
“We’ll find a room somewhere else,” he said decisively. “A miner’s pub, maybe. Dad, can you find one that’s friendly to Union members?”
“It’s too risky,” I argued, but already I wanted to turn for the door, launch myself over those steps. “We might be recognized.”
“It’s all right, darlin’. We’ll find a room somewhere else.” He said it with finality, turning me away from my father while I proceeded to fall apart. “Even if we have to climb in through the fuckin’ window.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREEDONNY
Donny heardThe Trench Tribunescrunch up in the ball of Gunner’s hand.
“Fuck,” Gunner yelled over and over. For the first time, Donny wished they had bluff on hand to knock his brother off his arse.
The sound of a copper frying pan falling told Donny his brother had broken into a rampage, something he would never risk in the presence of Patrick. Patrick would have him out in the cold, freezing his bollocks off. Tell him to cool his blood or stay out with the chickens in the yard.
“Bloody hell, Gun! Sit down before I’m forced to trounce you.”
“By a blind man?” Otto asked. “Seems unlikely.”
“It’ll make it all the more embarrassin’,” Donny insisted.
“Gunner,” Tess warned. “You mess up my kitchen, I’ll knock you flat myself.”
“How old is the issue?” Donny asked Otto and Scottie. The two men had brought it down the tunnels just this afternoon, having dredged it out of some dust yard on the east coastline.
“Two days” came Scottie’s grave voice. They all sounded this way now. Thick with increasing despondence. Their luck worsening by the day. Just this morning, they’d received a telegram from Dunnitch threatening retribution on Kenton Hill. The trades had choked altogether. Kenton Hill was marooned in the north on its own desolate island. Winter’s end was still so far away.
“It ain’t true,” Gunner was fuming. Donny could practically feel the heat he was emitting, hear the turn of his heel as he paced. “Patty would never surrender to the House.”
“Ofcourseit ain’t true!” Tess snarled, but at the notion of surrender rather than at Gunner. “But it’ll be enough to disband the last of the members, and we ain’t done a single thing to ease their minds.”
No, Donny thought.We’ve only worsened the tension.
Tess was right. This would be the final straw that broke them. And it seemed horribly tragic, poetic even, that years of work, of fortification, could be dismantled with a few pieces of newsprint.
“What do we do?” Otto asked, throwing a rope out in hopes someone would snag it and reel it in, as the Colsons always did.
But the right Colsons weren’t anywhere close, and Donny sat heavily in a chair, head in his hands, feeling the first waves of defeat finally crash over him. A terrible blankness washed in. It reminded him of deep water.
“What do we do, Donny?” Otto repeated, his voice so thin it might snap.
Suddenly, the door to the kitchen burst open. Sam appeared in an oversize coat his father used to wear, snow sticking to the fibers of his cap. “Someone’s coming down the western line,” he said, winded, chest heaving. In his hands he held a rifle, knuckles already white around the barrel.
“Shit,” Gunner intoned. Another pot collided with the brick.
Donny heard the sound of feet shuffling in the snow before anyone spoke. Three sets.
