“Then again, perhaps your father was right. When he finished, he used to say that you’re an ungrateful bastard. That’s the source of your weakness, Wendell. Ingratitude. And disobedience.”
“What about Wyles, Judge?”
“Who?”
“Emma Wyles. Did you make peace with her?”
The Judge stood up, crossed the room, and said, “I adjudicate the cases that come before me. I don’t make war, and I don’t make peace.” He leveled his gaze at Kamp. “But for what it’s worth, that bitch can rot.”
“Leave her alone.”
The Judge put his hand on the doorknob. “You’re lost, Wendell. Go home.”
Kamp pressed his forearm against the Judge’s throat, pinning him to the door.
“What is the letter about? Who sent it?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue. Read it yourself and find out.”
Kamp eased his grip.
The Judge stood up straight and smoothed his long beard.
“How is Shaw?”
“She’s fine.”
“And Autumn?”
“Have you prepared for them, Wendell? Will they be ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“Your leave taking.”
THREE
NYX COULD TELL by the way Aodh walked from the mine that the blast had done its damage.
She called after him. “I’m sorry I got you hurt.” He kept shuffling and didn’t speak. “I said, I’m sor—”
“You dinna do anything wrong.”
“It’s my fault.”
“If you’da gone in by yourself, we wouldn’t be talking.”
“That’s my point. You saved—”
Aodh stopped walking and looked at Nyx.
“There’s a black river flows out of the hole. Your only concern is that it keeps flowing.”
He tilted his head back to look at the stars and began walking again.
She said, “Well, are you going to be all right?”
Aodh said, “See you amárach” and shuffled down the mountain.
Nyx looked at her hands, ripped and raw, in the moonlight and said, “Yah, tomorrow.”
KAMP WALKED THE MILES from town alone. He looked up into the black expanse and listened to his feet crunching the gravel and in so doing created a barrier against the ruminations that would have swooped in otherwise.
He’d stayed in Bethlehem longer than he expected to and longer than he should have. Maybe he wanted to get home after they’d gone to bed, though he didn’t know why.
Are they ready for your leave taking?
Leave taking. Farewell. Kamp felt as if he’d been preparing Shaw for it since the day she found him. Truth be told, he felt himself leaving a little every day, with each forgotten remnant of a memory, with every new and desperate delusion. Every waking nightmare and tortured night of sleep dragging him away, piece by piece.
That’s not what the Judge meant, though, or seemed to mean. He was just responding to a threat with a threat.
Rounding the last bend, Kamp saw the candle in the window and as he approached his house, he saw Shaw in the front room. Kamp stepped onto the porch, put his hand to the knob on the front door. Locked.
Before he could knock, the door swung open. Shaw saw the look of irritation on Kamp’s face.
“We agreed to keep it locked.”
“I know, I know.”
“And I didn’t know where you’d gone, love.”
“I talked to the Judge.” Shaw put her hand on Kamp’s shoulder, and he shrugged it off. “It didn’t go well, naturally.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he wouldn’t answer my questions. Wouldn’t tell me what he knew about Adams, said he didn’t know whether Black Feather knows where Nyx is.”
Shaw faced him and took him by both shoulders.
“He can’t help you, and he never has.”
Kamp pressed his palms to his eyes. “He’s the only person who knows how it all fits together.”
“But, love, he’ll never tell you.”
He pulled in a breath. “I asked him what he knows about that letter.”
She smiled. “I can tell you that.”
“You opened it?”
Shaw nodded.
“What did it say?”
“You sure you want to know?”
Kamp nodded.
“It says that there are some of your things—”
“What things?”
“Things from the war are in a warehouse or something. And that you can go pick them up.”
“Do you have it? The letter?”
“It’s upstairs. Why?” She saw the color rising in his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
AFTER SHAW WENT TO BED, Kamp stood next to the fireplace, holding the envelope. He focused on the three-cent stamp picturing a man in profile—Jefferson, probably. He couldn’t be certain, because the image was mostly obscured by the cancellation mark, a fancy cancel, in the pattern of a grooved five-pointed star. The star was centered exactly at Jefferson’s left temple. Kamp tossed it in the fire.
UPON HER ARRIVAL at the cabin, Nyx felt the anger and fear she’d pushed down all day rumbling in her chest. With the skeleton key she wore on the rawhide string around her neck, Nyx unlocked both padlocks on the front door.
Just below the surface of her consciousness, Nyx perceived that a single misplaced word or even a sideways glance from Angus would set off an eruption. After all, in matters of another person’s suffering, Angus could appear indifferent, if not entirely oblivious.
Nyx expected to see Angus at his workbench, hunched over a rifle, effectively blocking out all sensation. But when Nyx went in, she saw the metal bathtub in the center of the floor, filled with water and steaming. Angus appeared from the bedroom and focused on her.
Nyx said, “I know, I know. You don’t even need to say it. Where was I? Why didn’t I come home until now?”
Angus didn’t speak and instead held Nyx by both wrists and turned them so that her palms faced up. He saw the ripped blisters, covered in coal dust, the stump where her little finger had been.
Nyx said, “And, yes, I know you didn’t want me to go there in the first place.”
Angus looked at the Nyx’s miner’s hat, sooty and sitting lop-sided atop her head. He removed it and set it on the workbench.
Nyx’s voice hit a higher pitch. “You’re not going to ask me how it went? You’re not going to say I told you so? You’re not going to say anything?”
Angus slid Nyx’s heavy coat from her shoulders, then unbuttoned her shirt and tossed it to the floor. He unwrapped the bandage around Nyx’s torso and let that fall, too. Nyx pulled in a deep breath, feeling her ribcage expand. Angus knelt and pulled off her boots, then removed Nyx’s wool socks. By the time Nyx was fully naked, she’d begun to shake with sobs.
And as she stepped into the hot, clean water, Nyx said, “It’s too hard, Angus. It was all too hard.”
Angus said, “Tilt your head back.”
Nyx followed the instruction, as Angus took a bar of soap, worked it into a lather and began washing Nyx’s hair.
“Now tell me about it.”
She explained the day’s events and the people she’d met: the agent, the fire boss, Aodh Blackall and the rest of the crew.
“Sounds like Irish,” Angus said.
“So what?”
“That’s trouble. They’re not going to like you.”
“They were fine. No one gave me any trouble at all.”
“Except for when they sent you in to catch that ferburstung.”
“They didn’t want me to get blown up. They just needed me to find the charge that didn’t go off.”
“Ach, maybe they set it up that way.”
“As a trap? Well, if they did, they got the wrong person.”
“Who? That fella Aodh? Yah, well, if that’s so, he’s the problem for them.”
Angus finished washing her hair
and rinsed his hands before drying them on his pants. Nyx swung her head to look at him and said, “You just don’t want me to be there in the first place.”
“Not exactly.”
“And, anyway, if Aodh wasn’t supposed to help me, why did he do what he did?”
“I don’t know. Ask him.”
KAMP WAITED UP LATE, waited for quiet to descend on the house. He waited for his thoughts to slow and for the knots in his neck and shoulders to loosen. They didn’t.
When he heard the great horned owl in the tree behind his house, Kamp laced up his boots, put on his heavy coat and went to the back door. As he turned the knob, he heard soft footfalls on the stairs.
He turned to see his daughter Autumn in a white nightgown and with a doll in each hand, a boy and a girl, held by their ankles. She set the dolls on the kitchen table, went to Kamp and hugged him hard.
“You can’t go,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s not true.”
Kamp stroked her hair. “Well, I was just going for a walk. I wanted to say hello to the owl before he goes to bed.”
The girl let go, took a step back and stared up at Kamp. Her eyes, one brown and one blue, brimmed with tears.
“That’s not true. You were going away for good.”
Kamp knelt so that he was at eye level with his daughter. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“I had a dream.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Kamp brushed them away with his thumb.
“I’m not leaving, Autumn. I promise.”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. As she headed back up the stairs, she said, “Well, anyway, before you go, you should marry mommy.”
Kamp looked at the dolls on the table. He took off his coat, unlaced his boots and turned out the lantern.
The figure in the forest, the one that had watched through the window and waited for him to emerge, saw the light go out and disappeared back over the mountain.
FOUR
NYX READIED HERSELF IN THE PITCH DARKNESS. She checked the mutton cloth that Angus had wrapped around her hands to make sure it was tight before putting on her gloves, boots and miner’s hat. She picked her way down the mile-long trail under bare branches that swayed and creaked in the hard wind.
She remembered a morning like this years ago when, lying warm and awake in her bed, she’d heard her father and Danny Knecht talking at the backdoor. She’d jumped out of bed to say goodbye before they headed off to the mine. For an instant she felt an old combination of excitement and love before it was replaced by a pang of sadness.
She shut her eyes against the memory and against the urge to run back to the cabin. Nyx waited for the emotion to wash over her, then started marching again.
When she saw the glow of the fire at the top of Sleeping Bear Mountain, Nyx remembered all the gear, the Gezähe she needed: the dicka Hamma, sheesa kit, and Schachthut.
I don’t even know what that shit is, she thought. She knew she had to buy it all at the Black Feather Company Store. Nyx didn’t know where she’d get the money, let alone the time to go shopping. And she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to borrow anything.
The fire glow grew brighter as Nyx neared the top, and she discerned still another peak, to the left of the entrance to the mine, the spoil heap.
People—old men and women, and children—picked through the spoil, even in the pre-dawn. They searched with bent backs, black fingers rooting for smooth crow coal, eyes searching for its luster in a moonbeam. The wretches on the spoil heap, exposed to the elements, didn’t even have tools.
Nyx saw the agent, ledger in hand, checking boxes with a pencil by the candle light from miner’s hat he wore. She approached him empty-handed and ready to plead with him to let her go back underground. As Nyx put her head down and trudged to the agent, a voice called to her from behind.
“Hey, hey. Slow up.”
She turned and saw Aodh.
The agent cleared his throat and said, “Ach, I told you, no Gezähe, no Arwet.”
“I couldn’t go to the—”
“It’s here. I have his kit here.”
Aodh pushed in front of her and held out a haversack full of gear. In his other hand, he held a pick and shovel.
The agent sneered. “Ach, you know you daresn’t use another man’s Gezähe.”
“Casey don’t need it no more, Butcher.”
“That’s the rules.” The agent looked back down at his ledger, dismissing Aodh. “And don’t call me that.”
Aodh pushed the sack into Nyx’s hands.
He said to her, “Get going.”
She took it, walked past the agent and climbed into the mine car. Aodh waited for the agent to look up.
When he did, Aodh said, “You want your number for the day, you gotta let that black river flow. Otherwise, daddy won’t be happy. Butcher.”
THEY ROLLED INTO THE MAW with the purple pre-dawn vanishing behind them. Nyx rode in the mine car next to Aodh. They stood silent and heard the creaking of the beams, the click-clack rhythm of the wheels and the low, shifting rumbles of the earth.
Soon enough, Nyx was on hands and knees again, crawling with pick in hand into the space they’d blasted out the day before.
She still didn’t have a candle for her hat and so she had to work by the flicker of Aodh’s light. They settled into a working rhythm, hacking out the pieces, filling the bucket and dumping it into a car.
“Aodh?”
He worked lying on his side, facing away from her and hacking at the seam and saying nothing.
“Aodh? I have a question.”
“Yah.”
“How do you know when you’re finished for the day?”
“When you hit the number, you’re finished.” He kept working while he talked.
“What number?”
“Seven.”
“Seven what?” Nyx perceived his irritation by the way he shifted.
“Cars. We hafta fill seven cars with coal. Every day.”
“Well, with all ten of us working, that shouldn’t be too hard.”
Aodh stopped working the pick. “It’s not ten. It’s two. The two of us have to hit seven. Otherwise, we donna get no pay. Not for six, not for six and a half. Nothing. Unless we hit seven. That man above ground, the man with the pencil and the glasses. He has a number, too. If we donna get our number, he can’t get his.”
“Why did you call him Butcher?”
“Tha’s enough.”
“Whose tools did you give me? Who’s Casey?”
“Work.”
Aodh raised his pick and tore into the seam. Nyx saw splotches of blood blooming through the back of his shirt. She backed out of the crawl space, stood up, and dumped the contents of her coal bucket into the mine car.
Nyx guessed they’d been working over an hour already. The mine car, the first of the day, wasn’t even half-full.
Aodh more than made up for the work Nyx couldn’t do. He didn’t slow for the remainder of the day, hacking and hauling coal without pause and without comment.
As soon as they’d filled a car, he’d yell, “Done.”
A pair of figures, children, would soon appear and take their places, one in front of the car and one behind. They’d roll the car from the room and within minutes, an empty car would appear, guided by two more children.
Nyx spent equal time hewing and watching Aodh in order to learn his methods. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up, not at first. And she discerned, too, that she’d have to conserve strength, lest her body fail before the end of the day. Not that it seemed like a day.
Their world extended only to the edge of the candle’s glow. Beyond that was unending night, the sky replaced by the crushing tons above their heads. Whenever Nyx allowed herself to think about the darkness and danger, she felt panic in her throat.
So she focused on Aodh, his movements and techniques. She noticed that he appeared to have entered a trance,
a mode in which there was only movement and labor, stripped of thought.
Aodh topped off the seventh car with the contents of the last bucket. He shouted “done” and stood to his full height. Nyx gathered up her tools and started out of the room.
“Behind it,” he said.
Nyx stopped. “What?”
“The car. If we want the credit, we walk out behind the car.”
Soon enough, the children appeared, filthy and bent and rolled the cart ahead. Nyx felt an urge to help them, but the fire in her joints instructed her otherwise.
When they reached the heavy wooden door, the boy stood up from his small bench and swung it open, releasing the mine’s last breath of the day. Once outside, Aodh settled up with the agent and started down the mountain. Nyx felt herself weighed down by her tools and doubted she had the strength to carry them home. She thought about stashing them somewhere, then thought better of it and shuffled after Aodh.
“Where can I put my tools?”
“Store.”
“Where is it?”
“Where I’m going.”
At the base of the mountain, she saw a string of kerosene lanterns hanging from the roof of the wide porch with more burning inside. Nyx caught a whiff of supper and felt a powerful twist in her guts. She’d finished her lunch by eight in the morning and hadn’t allowed herself to think of food since.
Aodh went in first, boots sounding off the wooden floor planks. He walked to the counter at the back of the room and laid down his tools. When he did, a small man emerged from the back room.
“You’re lucky,” the man said, “I was about to close.”
“For that I’m eternally grateful.”
The clerk lifted a large iron ring and slid each tool onto it via the hole at the end of every handle. Once finished, he hung the ring on a hook on the wall.
The clerk looked past Aodh and saw Nyx, glassy-eyed and slump-shouldered.
“Ah. New guy.”
Aodh took Nyx’s tools and handed them to the clerk who repeated the process of putting them on the ring and hanging them on the wall. Finally, he placed two brass tokens on the counter. Aodh picked them up, tipped his miner’s hat and turned to go.
Nyx mumbled, “Can I have something to eat?”
Kill the Raven: A Thriller (Raven Trilogy Book 3) Page 2
