by E. E. Knight
• • •
My time in the mines had one amusing diversion. I had a very short-lived career as a prizefighter representing Number Four.
It started on a warm spring day. I’d been at the mine more than six months. The sun blazed, almost unfiltered by lingering upper-atmosphere swirls. You could hear rocks cracking in the mountains when the machinery was quiet.
Prapa, the director of Number Four, was picking through the slag heap, seeing how much coal was being accidentally thrown out with the other mining waste with a couple of men in engineer boots and the jeans-tie-and-corduroy-jacket ensemble under their white hard hats that seemed to be favored by technical professionals in the Coal Country.
I was doing Aym a favor by bringing her empty propane tanks up to the office after my shift, and the visitors stood up when they saw me.
“What is that, a Grog or a white Squatch?” one of the white helmet group said.
“Thunder, look at the size of him!” another technician said.
“According to the White Palace, he took on twenty bounty men in a bar,” Prapa said. “He was part of Bone’s security detail, right up until he drove into that tree.” He inflated his lungs. “Hey, Hickory, come over here. These men have never seen your kind before.”
It has often struck me that stories that would be laughably outrageous if told about a man are given credence when one of the Xenos is the subject, even if the one in question is a slightly (if not ripely, at this writing) aged Golden One.
I put down the empty propane tanks and stepped over to the slag heap. The men descended, carefully. One of them tossed a fist-sized chunk of coal he’d found.
“You like to fight, Hickory?” Prapa asked.
I lowered my face and stuck out my hands, palms up. “No, me no fight. No cause trouble. No. Never.”
“Never heard of a stoop who could talk that good,” one of the engineers said. “You’d think he was human.”
“I’d never mistake that for human,” the other corduroy jacket said.
Prapa ignored the byplay. “No, no—you’re misunderstanding. Fight when it’s your job.”
One of the men stroked the fur on my upper arm—a bit too sensually for my taste. “He could go all the way, representing your mine.”
“What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine,” the other engineer said. I didn’t understand the reference. Was the mine under some sort of pressure to produce more?
I didn’t care to become a fighter, even a part-time one. Were I to succeed, I might attract the interest of another Kurian Zone, the Ordnance, for example. And who knows what rules set up these fights, or how they were arranged to make the contests even? Or what might happen to me in the pursuit of seeing me lose—or win, I guess. The Kurians are supposed to have some combat drugs that make you unbeatable right up to the moment when a blood vessel bursts in your brain. I might be injured or crippled.
“We’ll give him a try,” Prapa said. His tanned face smiled widely enough that I thought of an orange being squeezed until it spits sweet juice. “Don’t worry, Hickory, just a game. Not like your job before. Contest. Boom-boom-boom,” he said, pantomiming punches.
• • •
Saturdays and Sundays the Number Four ran only one shift each day, and it was a short-handed shift at that. There was coal piling up all over the Coal Country because of transport “accidents” as they were now being openly called.
Prapa and the mine’s senior foreman, Castaway, came to collect me at the dorm. Castaway said it was time for my “contest.” If I won, I’d have three days off with all I could eat. If I lost, I’d still get two days off to recover.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Prapa said. The gold bracelets on his wrist jangled as he continually tapped his knee.
We piled into a charter bus from the Coal Country transport line. It smelled like unwashed humans and the scented sawdust used in bars to clean up vomit. A contingent of our own miners came along, paying Prapa a small fee for the ride and admission.
Prapa, drinking the whole ride, announced that he’d bet heavily on me. It seemed as though the whole mine had bet on me. According to Rage, who loved watching punches being thrown almost as much as he loved throwing them himself, even Aym had placed one hundred dollars on me, which made me feel like a traitor to the rest. I did not feel guilty for the other miners. I am aware that a fool will lose his money one way or another. At least losing a bet doesn’t poison the liver in the manner of the cheap liquor a won bet would have otherwise gone to purchase. But Aym had put up that cash out of regard.
We pulled up in front of a ruin of an old beige-colored hotel near Charleston. It had a vast atrium running six or seven floors—it was hard to tell with temporary lighting—and it smelled of damp ruin. A low roar of voices inside—men struggling to be heard without outright shouting—sounded like surf on a ship’s hull all around.
They’d set up portable lights run by a noisy generator, illuminating the sanded tile floor of the atrium into a glow that hurt the eyes. The atrium was square, and on the balconies running up into the darkness, spectators hung over the rail like idling sailors on a ship.
They hustled me off to the stripped kitchen, where I changed into a red knit scarf that I wrapped around myself as a sort of loincloth. Prapa painted the number 4 on my back in red barn paint, as though I were some kind of advertisement, clearly not giving a whit how sticky it would become as it dried. This steeled my resolve, and I hoped Prapa hadn’t been engaging in his usual bragging about how much money he’d bet.
I never learned the names of my “trainers.” One was bald and short; the other muscular, save for an enormous, drum-tight belly. The trainers didn’t really know what to do with me. I got the impression they didn’t do much training; their equipment looked limited to stitching pugilists back together after a bout.
The boxing ring had no ropes or corners, just a circle about thirty feet across. I was told being pushed out of the circle was an automatic defeat, but it appears they changed this rule at the last minute when they saw me.
There appeared to be an argument about my competing. The fight rules for the Coal Country bouts were in a small three-page pamphlet, and I saw Prapa arguing with the referee and some of the other mine directors and fight officials (the officials wore little red-white-and-blue boutonnieres of the Sports and Recreation Club, one of the few times I’ve seen the colors of the old American flag combined in the Kurian Zone).
There was a good deal of muttering about my size and reach. I looked up, but the figures on the balconies were all shadow and outline, like crows lining a wire on a gloomy night.
The referee wore a black version of hospital scrubs, save that the shirt hung down to his midthigh, with a red sash wound about his waist. He had scarred skin as dark as the coal we dug. Despite his gray hair, he looked as fit as any of the waiting fighters. No one told me directly at the time, but the red sash was for when he would oversee a duel. He would unwrap the sash and tie the duelists’ left arms together (or right arms, if the left arms were dominant).
My opponent was small, even for a man, and as he warmed up, he did an elaborate back-and-forth with his bare feet that reminded me of a dance move.
My trainers made “fighting” gestures with their fists, a comical pantomime of “Put your dukes up, for God’s sake.” I flattened my ears and raised my fists.
The other fighter didn’t like the look of them. He came inside my reach and gave an experimental duck-and-punch to my stomach. I let out a whoof! and covered up, backing away.
“No, no, stay in the ring! Fight!” I heard Prapa scream.
My opponent, after a moment dancing away from the counterblow that never came, stood flat-footed, perhaps not believing his luck.
“Yellow as his fur.”
“Wasn’t he a bodyguard for Maynes?”
“Winner!” the referee shouted.
Director Prapa looked like a man on his way to his execution the whole ride back. Or perhaps all the
alcohol had rendered him somnambular.
• • •
When I told Aym the story during our second real conversation, she tilted her head back and laughed. “Weird thing is, the man’s so sure of himself. He takes himself more seriously than anyone else takes him, director title and all. It’s never occurred to him that there’s a reason he’s at Number Four, too.”
I had been longing to learn more about the Coal Country and how the arrangement with the Maynes clan got started, and I finally had my chance, but I was even more curious about the firemen. They had been on my mind since the massacre at Beckley. Most Kurian Zones had low-level toughs to keep order, close enough to the locals to know who the troublemakers were, but not so well armed and trained that they could cause trouble if they turned their weapons against their masters. The firemen of the Coal Country seemed an imprudent mix of heavily armed and badly trained. As far as I knew, the fire department arrangement here was unique in the Kurian Order.
“How did the firemen get started?” I asked.
“First fire marshal, it was. Bear Torril. He believed himself the perfect revolutionary. Pure intellect and all that. No emotion, no conscience, no regrets. He hated rich people like you couldn’t believe. Until you saw the bodies.
“He rode around here after the collapse, the ravies—there were little groups of survivors here and there. He’d be very helpful, offer a ride, ask them about their lives before. When he found someone who he decided had too much money, or too nice a house, he’d find some excuse to stop and get everyone out and kill the ones he’d chosen.
“Of course, most of what they owned was only on paper, so they’d lost it in the collapse.
“That brought him to the attention of the Kurians. They didn’t like him killing people, but they admired his efforts to remake the world in a different image.
“Imagine that. You survive everything. Civilization’s gone, the ravies kills and scatters everyone you know, and along comes a college dropout who decides you used to have too much and he sticks a knife in your back.
“The Kurians put him to work rounding up people he thinks might give them problems. He starts working out of a fire station because you can live there twenty-four hours easily enough, maintain your vehicles.
“So a riot starts. One of his guys actually had been a fireman. He showed the others how to use the hoses. Next thing you know, they’re serving as a real fire brigade.
“The Kurians had him make other ‘fire teams.’ The ironic thing is he’d started out as this would-be revolutionary or anarchist or whatever you’d call him, killing rich men, or formerly rich ones, and just a few years later he’s using water hoses on desperate people.
“Turned into a real mean old bastard right up until the end. Still convinced he was changing the world? Who knows? He had no problem killing ’em, poor as well as rich.
“In the end, they just want power. That’s what it’s always been about.
“Funny thing is, he knew what it was like pre-2022. My old man said everything they say about that time’s a lie.”
• • •
Director Prapa paced the mine like a caged wolf for the next few days, finding fault everywhere. We spent three days tearing apart drilling gear for cleaning and maintenance ordered by Prapa; then the foremen came down and reported that the director was furious with the drop in production.
With the purge looming, everyone felt that he was certainly on Prapa’s list. Word of my loss in the ring spread and I began to get speculative looks. They were probably wondering if I was large enough to feed two Reapers.
“He’s really mad about the loss of his four-wheeler,” Sikorsky said. He had the best connections in the mine office. “He had to sell it to pay gambling debts. And his boat. And the tow rig. Now he either gets to drive a mine pickup or his wife’s natural gas wagon.”
Rage chuckled. “I heard that was just some bait in the water to let the sharks know the real meal is coming. Wonder where he’ll get the rest of the money? Can’t borrow. Nobody in Coal Country’s rich, except the Maynes family.”
Perhaps as a threat, Prapa took to wearing his militia uniform to work, with his old Youth Vanguard decorations in a neat little row under the lighter patch that used to hold his name tag. It seemed he felt that, for him as director, having to wear his name would fall in the area of lèse-majesté.
Some men look like a sex crime waiting to happen no matter what uniform they put on, and Prapa was one of those. He tried standing with feet out and arms clasped behind; he tried carrying a walking stick; he tried sporting a shoulder holster with bullets slipped into the bandolier’s loops. The men still snickered when he passed. Whoever he was trying to impress, it wasn’t the miners. Were there other eyes watching Number Four? If so, why would they be impressed by his strutting?
Smelling faintly like mothballs and the witch hazel his wife used to mask the mothball odor didn’t help, either. Men of substance didn’t smell as if they’d been sleeping in a basement footlocker.
When the lift dropped to the mine level during my shift four days after the fight, the witch hazel odor told me Prapa had ventured into the dark face of Number Four. I had a premonition of trouble. I’ve only had a handful of such feelings in my life that I can recall, but each time they have proved correct.
I’d been five hours at the coal face and had an appetite that wouldn’t reject raw dog or cooked rat. I’d smelled stew cooking in Aym’s commissary cage as I’d passed it while travelling to the face, and I’d finally found time to sample it. She’d given me a double portion and fresh cider in my canteen.
“Cider’s going to be running short until the fall again. This is the last of the overwinter supply,” she said, filling my stainless reservoir up. “Sorry if it’s a bit vinegary.”
“Sweet. Sour. Both good,” I said.
“Wish I could have a radio down here,” she said. “Help pass the day. Sikorsky promised to rig something, but he can’t find parts.”
“I could read to you,” I said.
“It might look odd, or blow your big smart Grog act.”
The lift began to whine. “Those pulleys need oiling again,” I said.
“Tell me about it. Drives Crumb nuts. He hides whenever it’s in use.”
“Prapa,” I said as the lift banged down to the tunnel.
I sat down with my back against the bench outside (I was too big for the rather narrow bench itself, but the wood was better than cold rock), and I went to work on the stew. It wasn’t bad, though I suspected it had been made from horse meat.
“Our yellow Grog’s stuffing groceries, I see. No fear of a sandwich in that one.”
Prapa looked down. Crumb was nuzzling his ankles and purring.
He stomped on the cat, or kicked it, hard. I didn’t see the actual blow. I heard something snap, and the cat clawed away from Prapa, one rear leg bloody with exposed bone scraping awfully against the ground as it moved.
“Crumb!” Aym shouted. “What?—”
Prapa, sick of the yowling, pulled his revolver. Aym recognized the sound of a hammer being clicked back and threw herself toward him. He stiff-armed her, knocking her into her kitchen cart.
The loud report snapped painfully off the tunnel walls, making the gun seem three times as loud.
Crumb lay limp with the terrible stillness of a corpse. Aym crawled, feeling around for her pet.
“Fuck me!” Prapa shouted, looking down at his foot. His work boot had a hole in the arch and a fragment of bullet. “That burns. Look what your damn cat did, you tin cunt.”
“All he wanted was a tickle,” Aym said, her broken voice sounding as though it had a tough fight in exiting her body.
• • •
To this day, I wonder what would have happened had I relieved Prapa of his revolver and left him lying on the floor as still as the dead cat. With the five remaining shots I could have easily procured transport and left Number Four. Would I have made it halfway to Kentucky before the dogs were
upon me? The excitement of an escape (and probably the return of one big furred corpse) would have short-circuited the anger brewing at Number Four. It might have saved many lives.
It was a decision point that passed before I had time to think. Prapa moved on to the shift office down the tunnel, and I helped Aym put her cat in a tinfoil tray. She decided to bury Crumb outside, as there was nowhere to bury him in the tunnel near her trailer.
Prapa’s foul mood was not dispelled by killing the cat. He put everyone on overtime (without wages, the only compensation was food and drink and wash water brought down by wheelbarrow).
The purge would begin on Friday of that week, though it was officially called a “review.” It would be conducted by a triumvirate of the New Universal Church, a Maynes representative, and one of the shift foremen, randomly selected by a name draw.
“Review,” in the parlance of the mines, was an inspection of the mine, a health examination of the workers, and sometimes interviews. But everyone knew what would happen to men deemed surplus to requirements. There was nowhere to go after Number Four.
Word passed unofficially even before the notices went up in the shaft lift. The miners didn’t need to worry about physical fitness—the vigor of their jobs kept their muscles like suspension cable—but some of them broke out their New Universal Church Guidons and familiarized themselves with old maxims and the latest offerings from the Church.
“Think as a species; work as an individual. You are your contribution to the future,” one miner mumbled over and over. I felt for him. Much of the language in a Guidon could be shuffled around without losing much meaning, for it had little to start. “Work as a species; think for the future.” “Your individual contribution is you” is in the same spirit as “Contribute as an individual; work for the future; you are your species.” They’re all much of a muchness, as your writer Carroll said.
Others, some of whom couldn’t read beyond simple everyday signs that they recognized the same way a reader today would see a creation mark, were refreshing their memory of what had been discussed in services.
“What was in church Sunday?”
