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“I work hard. I dig coal. I get along. No laziness,” I said. “No laziness, no never.”
“That’s quite a speech.”
“He drives, too.”
“There’s nothing like him around here.”
“The vet at the White Mansion says they live out in Omaha. Very independent. They’ve caused some trouble to the rail lines, I suppose.”
“No touch railroad,” I said. “No trouble.”
• • •
On my way to the half day of work Saturday, the group of men walking up the road to the mine discussed who had been taken away on Friday night. We’d lost Grimm, a handyman who did odd jobs around the dormitory. The mine office staff had two of theirs go, but one of them was promoted out of Number Four to replace a petty thief at another mine.
“No one from the dark crew?” Rage asked.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Sikorsky said.
Foreman Bleecher met us at the elevator exit in the central run. He usually scowled, but today the lug nuts at either edge of his mouth were screwed down even more tightly.
“We only lost one, boys,” Bleecher said. “Aym.”
I tried not to show emotion, but my knees wobbled on me and I went down on all fours. No one in the shocked shift noticed. According to my reading, humans go through five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I believe I faltered at the gap between Anger and Bargaining. I felt my blood pound, the fur atop my head rise, and my ears go hot and flat against my head.
I’d already privately resolved to take Aym out with me, when eventually I escaped. She’d helped to bring me out of the funk that steady, exhausting work had allowed me to sink into, like a swamp, where thrashing seemed only to make more tendrils of futility cling to my fur. I would have led her across the Appalachians, carrying her on my back if nothing else. Strange, for I hardly knew her. I wondered at the agony of some of my human friends who’d had loved ones just disappear.
With those thoughts running through my head, I turned my attention back to the rest of the shift.
“Aym?” several miners said in angry tones. I could smell the anger on them.* “Why?”
“She practically lived in her cage,” Rage said. “There’s not one of us here who wouldn’t have gone in her place.”
“That so, Raymond,” Foreman Bleecher said. “Well, they only took her at midnight. Go on up and volunteer to go in her stead.”
“Could we do something about it?” Olsen asked. “Sign a petition or something? Bring it to the Church? Nobody at the mine would claim that she’s a useless mouth.”
“Petition? What did they put in your breakfast kibble this morning?” Pelloponensis asked.
“Want Aym back,” I put in. “We need our food.”
“Hey, even the stoop’s pissed,” Rage said. “We got a united front here.”
“A united front and three bucks will get you a ride into town,” Sikorsky said.
“We could ask to see the paperwork, I suppose,” Bleecher said. “Maybe there’s a cock-up between the three reviewers.”
“What’s done is done; let it go,” another miner put in.
“Just be glad there weren’t more.”
“We’ll just see about that!” Rage said. “C’mon, Sikorsky, Pelloponensis.”
“What’s up? You going to volunteer to take her place?” Olsen asked.
“Hey, Hickory, you come, too?” Rage asked me.
“Time for work,” I said. I wanted to think. I’d learned only a little about the victims of the Kurian Order and where they went after pickup even during my time with Maynes.
