Hunger Makes the Wolf

by Alex Wells

  “A good man’s dead, and we know who killed him, with no reason or mercy, no justice.” That was how he started, flat, with no preamble. What followed were the bare details, Papa being thrown off the train, shot from the helicopter. Hearing it stated so cold, hard, and angry made Mag curl around her stomach. At the end of the too-short story, Clarence paused, and raised his arms for silence. “Philip Kushtrim deserves a wake, brothers and sisters. And mayhap the men who murdered him need a reminder that they own our labor, not our lives.”

  Mag swallowed carefully around the hot lump in her throat. Maybe she wasn’t done crying after all.

  “I say we throw our brother Phil a big party, in two days’ time. Big enough that none of us are gonna be able to work, day shift or night shift. And we’ll invite the miners in Rouse and Shimera, even Walsen if we can get a messenger that far, to join in. They can come to our party, or throw their own, but I say we got a right to remember our friend. Hands, who agrees with me?”

  It looked like a forest of hands to Mag, rooted on taut, angry faces. There was no hesitation; some even seemed to punch the air, driving their fists toward the ceiling.

  “Looks like the majority has spoken. Two days. Bring a pie, bring your beer, and bring your guns if you got ’em, ’cause it could get ugly.”

  The miners dispersed quickly, flowing from the warehouse in a grim tide. A few hung back to speak with Clarence; he dispatched them one by one to the surrounding towns with the news, gave them money so they could get onto the trains or get passage on a caravan, and noted their names so he could mark them as sick.

  When the last of the men was gone, he turned to Mag. “Two days, we’ll give your daddy a good sendoff.”

  Mag shook her head. It was more than that – it was a work stoppage, something that would make the pit bosses furious, something that would make a splash and cause trouble. “I don’t think Papa would have wanted that,” she whispered.

  Clarence smiled. “I think there was a lot about your daddy you don’t know yet, Mag.”

  “You could get a lot of people hurt. Or worse. I don’t want anyone else losing their papa over what’s happened to us.”

  “Ship just left a few days ago, Mag. Won’t be another one for six months at the earliest. If they hurt us or blacklist us, they’ll lose a lot more than one day’s work in their mines. So long as we stick together and stand strong, ain’t nothin’ they can do to us.”

  Mag shivered. “Plenty they can do to you. Things that are way worse than bein’ killed.”

  * * *

  The night shift miners of Ludlow, their husbands and wives and children, filled the streets two days later right at lunch time. They dragged dining tables out of their houses, covered them with pies and pitchers of lemonade, any sort of food that people were willing to share. The whole thing felt like a festival more than a wake, but it was the sort of thing Papa would have liked. He’d never been a man to let people be sad; he always tried to crack jokes, get people to laugh even when there was reason enough to be grim.

  From the works, all the dayshift miners came down the hill to cheers from the night crew. They were handed plates and cups, offered seats so they could rest. People ate fried protein with dirty fingers, wiped dust from their faces with the corners of checked tablecloths. The whistle blew again, and the miners stayed seated.

  On the surface, it was all gaiety, people gossiping and telling jokes. But a deaf man could have heard the undercurrent of nervousness, and felt it tickling at the hairs on the back of his neck. There were people playing handball in one of the streets, but players missed passes because they were keeping an eye on the guard shack and the mine works, waiting for men in Mariposa green to come pouring out.

  Mag took a slice of mince pie and slowly disassembled it on her plate. Her mouth tasted strange and the spices would have been welcome, but anything that passed her lips felt like glue and dust.

  An hour and forty-five minutes into the street picnic, the pit boss came down the street, the full security contingent at his back. The guards were bulky, chests like barrels; they had to be wearing body armor under their uniforms. Batons and rifles were out and ready. Some guards showed grim faces, and others had a shine of excitement in their eyes that said they were itching for a fight, looking for a chance to use those company-issue guns for something other than taking potshots at passing eagles.

  Further down the table, one miner handed another a fistful of chits; they must have been betting on how long it would take for security to come out.

  “Clarence!” the pit boss called.

  Clarence stood, a few seats down from Mag. “Bill. What can I do for you?”

  “I got quite a few questions, Clarence, but maybe you can start by telling me what you’re doing down here. Whistle’s blown twice, and I’m not seeing anyone at work.”

  “Taking the day off, Bill. Funeral. We’ve all had a death in the family.”

  The pit boss made a big show of looking back and forth across the street. The crowd had gone silent, watching and waiting; the only sound was the breeze lapping at the tablecloths. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Phil Kushtrim out of Rouse. He was brother to us all, and we’re determined to give him a proper sendoff. I expect you understand. We got a right to funerals, a day off.”

  “I heard rumor of this, so I did a little checking. Philip Kushtrim’s on the blacklist, Clarence. You can’t expect me to approve time off for someone like that.”

  The sound of angry shouts was dim in Mag’s ears, like everyone was yelling from down a tunnel. She drifted up to her feet, it felt like, pushing against the table with her hands, but somehow that sent her fork tumbling off onto the ground, made her coffee slop over onto the tablecloth. “You’re a damn liar!” she shouted. “He weren’t on the blacklist when you bastards shot him in the back!”

  Silence again. Her hands trembled against the tablecloth, but it wasn’t fear, it wasn’t even grief: it was rage, pure and hot, so much fire in her blood that she wanted to leap onto the man and tear his eyes out. All eyes were on her, and she didn’t even feel the weight. She just stared at the pit boss, something fierce itching in the back of her head, until he looked away.

  “Well, I hardly see how that could be the case–” he started to say.

  “Shame on you!” she shouted again, cutting him off. “Shame for slanderin’ a good man! Shame!”

  Others picked up the word, a murmur that grew into a chant, up and down the street: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

  More miners surged to their feet, crowding up around her and hiding her from the company man. They pressed forward, a unified front until they were up against the security guards, still shouting, waving their fists in the air. The power of that crowd, like they melded into a giant beast, made her forget every misgiving she had, everything but the anger, the desire to just fight back.

  A guard drove the butt of his rifle into the stomach of a miner. The man half fell, the people next to him catching his arm. Another miner lunged forward at the guard, and Clarence himself grabbed the man by the shirt collar, yanked him back.

  Mag surged with the crowd. She wanted blood.

  “We’re supposed to be celebratin’ a man’s life,” Clarence said, shouting to be heard. He repeated himself until people quieted down enough to listen. “I don’t think you want this turnin’ into a fight, Bill. Ain’t no place for a riot at a funeral.”

  Bill’s face was paste white. He reached over and grabbed the sleeve of the guard who’d hit the miner, jerking him to the side. “I don’t think anyone wants to see that.”

  “Then why don’t you go on back to your office, do some paperwork. We’ll have us our party, and then we’ll be back to work tomorrow, like nothing ever happened.”

  “The night shift–”

  “Needs a chance to rest and do their own mourning. Today belongs to us.”

  “One day,” Bill said. Each movement of his hand jerky, he adjusted his tie, smoothed it down. “Yo
u can have one day. But I don’t give a shit if any of you are hung over, everyone’s back at work tomorrow if you don’t want your pay docked.”

  “We do appreciate it. See you tomorrow morning.” Clarence crossed his arms over his chest and just stood, watching the company men until they turned and left. The street was silent until they’d gone back into the office building, and then there was cheering, even singing. Someone grabbed Mag’s hands and swung her in a circle; a woman kissed her on the cheek.

  It felt like a victory.

  * * *

  It felt less like a victory in the next days, when Clarence was at work and Mag took messages at his door for him: three blacklisted in Walsen, with most of the other miners too afraid to try the work stoppage, so there wasn’t a group to protect them. A riot in Shimera, two miners beaten to death by security guards and the mine works smashed to pieces. That would be a longer stoppage than just a day, waiting for repairs.

  And in Rouse there had been a successful wake, but two nights later Phil Kushtrim’s house burned down, his widow trapped inside it.

  Mag sat at Clarence’s rough kitchen table, the note that had brought that news sitting in front of her. A cup of coffee cooled slowly between her hands as she tried to comprehend the words. The note was battered, the flimsy streaked with sweat and dirt, almost torn in half. The handwriting on it belonged to someone ill educated, half the words spelled wrong. But she couldn’t pretend that bad spelling made anything less real in the heartlessly plain summary: house burned, Irina’s remains found in the ashes, no one heard anything.

  Maybe Mama had already been dead, heart attack or stroke or just plain grief. Maybe the fire had been an accident, and the smoke had gotten her. But Mag didn’t believe those hollow excuses for one second, and with the timing of it, no one else would either.

  And did it even matter? She felt numb. How much tragedy could one person truly understand in the space of a few days? Her papa murdered, her mama likely murdered, and all of the things that had happened to her; she didn’t even want to walk through those memories, not now, probably not ever. Everything ached, her head heavy, her throat tight, her hands trembling against the coffee cup. She might have cried, but her face was numb; if there were tears she didn’t feel them.

  Maybe there weren’t tears at all, maybe she’d already cried as much as she could ever cry when Papa had died, because she’d been so selfish about it and saved no tears for Mama.

  Mag had once wished that she were tough and angry like Hob, that she had that sort of permanent chip on her shoulder. They’d never been alike in that respect; Hob’s anger frightened her sometimes, and she knew she could never feel that sort of white-hot rage at the general injustice of the world. Like Uncle Nick – the two of them were bullets from the same mold, ready to go hot and spit blood. And maybe it meant Hob did stupid things, ill-advised things, but she did them fast and hard and with conviction. Maybe that made those stupid things a million times worse. And in the end, they’d both had their hearts broken equally, hadn’t they?

  Mag had always been the quiet one, who watched and waited and plotted. The one who everyone called a good girl, no one suspected when things went sideways because a rope was frayed or a button had come undone. She wasn’t a good girl, had never been a good girl. A good girl wouldn’t have been friends with Hob, wouldn’t have loved an uncle like Nick with all her heart. And she spared a little corner of worry, for what Uncle Nick would do when he heard this news, what Hob would do as she got pulled in his wake. Their damn drama, their chest-beating and flash-hot anger. Damn them for making her worry when, for once, she wished she could worry after her own self.

  Mag had been a good daughter, even if she’d never been a good girl. She’d been dutiful, and she’d loved her parents, and now she loved Hob and Uncle Nick as the last family she had left. Maybe she could do more than just sit and worry. Papa had been a quiet one too, a deep thinker, a plotter, as unlike his older brother as Mag was unlike Hob.

  Clarence walked in the door, skin blackened with mine dust. He stank of sweat and black powder. “Evenin’…” he stopped, peering at her face. “You all right, Mag?”

  She offered the note to him; her hand was steady now, as if she’d come to a decision in her heart already that her brain hadn’t quite caught up with. She watched his expression as he read the short message, saw the sympathy in his eyes, all that empathy for a pain that he couldn’t truly understand, because no one could. He reached for her, and she stood, walked away, dumped her coffee out in the sink and rinsed the cup.

  She was tired of men touching her, even well-meaning ones. It seemed maybe Clarence wanted to be a father to her, wanted to take her in like a stray and treat her like his own. But he wasn’t her papa, he could never be, and it made her a little sick to think of even a good man like him trying to step into her father’s shoes.

  “Mag? Anything… I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Is there anythin’ I can do?”

  Mag turned, leaning back against the counter. The rough edge poked the fading bruises that Mr Franklin had driven in to her, but this time it was a pain she owned, a place she’d decided to stand. “I want to know everythin’ my papa was doing with you. Everythin’ you were plannin’. It’s mine now.”

  He stared at her, looked her deep in the eye. Whatever he saw was enough to make him look away, and enough to make him start talking.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nick laughed as he read the note Hati handed over to him, so loud it shut everyone in the little mess hall up. The sound ended in a wheezing cough that he cut short, the muscles of his throat working strangely as he stood and raised his beer mug. “Those crazy shaft-rats in Ludlow are gonna have a wake for my brother, an entire goddamn day of eatin’ and drinkin’. And in Shimera, Walsen, and Rouse besides! I say we join ’em. We’ll take tomorrow off and make it a big damn party!”

  Everyone cheered, though to Freki’s ear, well tuned by their childhood years together when he’d been Francis and hadn’t yet earned his Wolf’s name, Hob’s was halfhearted at best. “You OK?” he asked in an undertone.

  “Me? I’m fine. Never better. He seem OK to you?” she answered.

  Freki shrugged, turning to look at his brother. Geri had always loved to talk, so it was easiest to just let him do it. It used to be that no one could tell him and his brother apart, except for how much Geri ran his mouth. But Hob had cut Geri a good one on the scalp with a broken bottle, during a particularly idiotic fight they’d had in a bar. Freki still wasn’t sure why they’d always hated each other, and that left him as disturbed as his more laconic nature would allow. The scar was mostly hidden in Geri’s hair, but a tuft of his tight black curls came in shocked white. Just meant that now they wore hats everywhere.

  “Seems as OK as a man can get after his brother’s been turned to eagle meat,” Geri said. “But he’s a tough old bastard, so what can you say?”

  “Just dunno if I ever seen him cough, is all.” Hob shrugged.

  She made a good point. Thinking about it, Freki could never recall a time when Nick had the sniffles, even when a cold was raging through the barracks. Maybe it was the tobacco; burned out all the viruses. Man had never even been hungover properly that he could recall. But he let Geri make the answer: “You got somethin’ to tell us?”

  “Nah. Bein’ a worrywart for no good reason, I guess.”

  Geri snorted. “Must be those motherin’ instincts of yours.”

  Hob laughed. “Oh, you know. I got ’em in spades. Mothered you a time or two, good and proper.”

  Geri propped his arm up on the table. “Come on, let’s see you wrestle me.”

  “Best muscle I got is my brain. Means I don’t take sucker bets.” Hob finished her beer, bolted down the rest of her potatoes as Nick headed out of the mess hall, shoulders hunched like a vulture. “Gonna make it an early night. You boys try to save some fun for the actual party.” She slid off her seat on the rough bench and walked quickly away, plate in hand.

>   Geri barked a laugh. “Probably run off to see Old Nick.”

  Freki swirled the dregs of the beer in his glass. “Better not be thinkin’ to add somethin’ nasty to that, brother. You know it ain’t a thing I like to hear.” He was tired of Geri’s sniping, and he’d always had a soft spot for Hob, even when they’d been boys and calling her pinkbelly for the way she always burned lobster red in the sun while they’d just tanned blacker and blacker. Though come to think of it, Hob hadn’t spent that much time with her sunburns; they’d stopped about when she started smoking. Odd thing, that. Probably the witchiness he pretended he didn’t know about.

  “Ain’t you supposed to be takin’ my side?”

  Freki smirked. “I’m your twin, not a total fuckin’ moron.”

  “Coulda fooled me, the way you go moonin’ around sometimes.”

  “You ain’t gonna pick a fight with me neither. I don’t got your burnin’ desire to be the top wolf in every pile.”

  “Wolf always wins over a bitch.”

  Freki stood, waving Geri’s comment idly off. “You know where to find me when you’re ready to be a fuckin’ adult.” He tucked his thumbs in his belt and wandered out after Hob.

  * * *

  Hob followed Nick at a distance, pretending that she was just going to the barracks. Ready to escape at a moment’s notice, she hunkered down just out of sight of his office and listened. Coughing, hacking and painful, filtered through the door. She grimaced, the sound making her chest itch in sympathy. She heard footsteps, the sound of Nick dropping into his chair. More coughing.

  She didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like him; the old bastard was too mean to get sick. Her pointing out a problem would buy her nothing but a week of shit jobs, likely why Coyote had told her instead of approaching Nick himself. Coyote was crazy, not stupid, and he loved to get other people to take the fall for him.