John swore softly.
My breath abated.
“What?”Patrick uttered, stepping forward, swelling to twice his size. “How?”
“It’s winter, Pat,” Donny pleaded. “And we had no bluff to trade with—”
“We give ’em coal when we can’t give ’em bluff,” Patrick gritted out.
“There weren’t enough coal by half with the eastern mine buried and half the miners dead or injured. We tried to hold ’em at bay, Patty, I swear it! But they were insistent that you owed them. They kept mentionin’ debts to be repaid.”
Patrick ran his fingers tightly through his hair, lips moving as they did when he was consulting with himself. “Fuck,” he said once. Then he kicked a chair.“Fuck!”
“The newspapers haven’t helped, son,” Tess said. “There’s been doubt. Discord.”
“I’ve got the bloody rock here in myhands,” Patrick said to himself, his voice reduced to cinders and smoke. “We’ve got thefuckin’ Seambeneath us.I feel it!”
“It was a good shot, Pat,” Donny said, voice paper-thin. “But we can’t win.”
“That train ain’t here yet,” Patrick muttered. “They ain’t hereyet.” He looked out the window as though he expected to see the enemy thundering down the lane.
“But theywill be, Pat!” Theo reiterated, trying to break through his reverie. He put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, but he was shoved aside. Theo set his jaw and tried again. “They’recoming, Pat. At any moment. And if the Seam is uncovered, there won’t be enough Crafters in Scurry to fend them off. Our only hope is to bury it again!”
Patrick paced the kitchen. John stayed mysteriously quiet, watching the conversation unfold.
“I’ll siphon all night,” Patrick said through his teeth. “We’ll distribute to every willin’ Crafter in Scurry by morning.”
“That train could arrive at any moment, Pat—”
“Gunner and Donny will go to the Seam. They’ll bring up as much rock as they can carry—”
“Enough.”It was his mother whose voice seemed to reach him when no other could. The word was spoken softly, sadly, eyes glossing over, connecting with Patrick’s and communicating something no one else could read. “Enough, son,” she said. “I’m not askin’ you this time. I’m tellin’ you.”
Patrick locked onto his mother’s gaze, something devastating falling over him.
“I’ll befine,” Tess said, so gently, it felt like the rest of us were intruding.
“You won’t,” Patrick argued, and his face broke slightly.
I couldn’t make sense of the torture in his expression, or what the winning of terranium should mean for his mother, in particular.
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Gunner said, eyes sweeping over his mother, who stood colorless, then to Patrick, who looked like he’d been asked to point a gun at Tess and fire.
“Ma? What’s he sayin’?”
Finally, John shuffled in from his corner, hands deep in his coat pockets. “It’s her lungs, son. You know they ain’t right.”
Gunner looked at his mother uncomprehendingly.
But Donny had turned alabaster.
“She’s tough,” Gunner said. “She always pulls through.”
“With a dose of bluff every other day,” Patrick said then, bracing himself on the back of a chair, turning himself away from his mother while she stared after him, sorrow written all over her. “Sometimes more.” Something no system of rations would provide, unless it were run by him.
Gunner turned slowly wretched, realization first reaching his limbs, which froze in place, then his jaw, his eyes.
Donny put his hands on his hips. Scottie rubbed his jaw and murmured, “Have mercy.”
