Chapter Twenty-Nine Donny
In the first dregs of morning, Donny roused Gunner.
They had slept once more in their bunks, like kids. Gunner above and Donny below, beams of dawn breaking in through the small window. Patrick’s childhood bed lay empty. There was a silent agreement that neither of the men use it.
Of course, Donny had never left. Gunner had married and taken a house on Penance Street, and Patrick, when he did sleep, preferred sleeping in the hotel.
But Donny knew these stairs and each individual floorboard.
He knew every surrounding inch of the house.
He thought he could draw it, if he were artistically inclined, to near perfection.
He stayed for the persisting comfort of it.
Gunner groaned and rolled over heavily. “Lord, kill me now,” he rasped, as though his lungs had emptied themselves overnight.
“Time to return to work, brother,” Donny said, pulling on Gunner’s earlobe, then the hairs on his bare chest.
“Ow! Fuck.”
“Get up,” Donny said. “No more shirkin’. There’s men in the western tunnel.”
“There’s always men in the western tunnel,” Gunner growled, pushed Donny’s face away.
“Well, these men ain’t from Kenton.”
Donny felt the mattress shift as Gunner sat upright. “Who?”
“Dunnitch lads, it seems,” Donny said, patting him twice on the shoulder. “Get your wits about you, Gun. On your feet.”
They carried a sack each over their backs down the western tunnel.
Gunner held the lantern, and Donny the canary.
He heard the dirge of the underground rising up beneath them, heard the minute shifts of earth, mites chewing at the mineral-rich bacteria, black beetles burrowing tiny crevasses, water tables, somewhere beneath them, cutting silver pathways.
Gunner walked with a limp, his gait heavy-footed on the right. Intermittently, Donny heard him gasp and clutch his side where the knife had shanked inward.
Donny remembered the wet sound of it, the easy split of the tissue, the reels of red streaming into his mind.
Gunner didn’t shout for bluff anymore. He only wasted away. For three days or more he’d slept. Ate and spoke and moved about like a ghost. In the night, when he thought Donny asleep, he prayed. Mostly, he prayed that Patrick would return.
It reminded Donny of when their father had first been captured.
How they’d counted the passing days and hoped against fading odds that they’d awaken to John strolling back down Main Street, announcing his next grand plan.
Patrick had prayed harder than any of them.
He’d never faltered. He went about running Kenton Hill as though John would waltz in at any moment and light into them all for letting his town fall to ruin.
Donny wondered where his brother was now. He wondered what Patrick would do if he found Dunnitch men wandering uninvited down the western line.
An hour into the tunnels, Gunner called out, a weakened rendition of his usual menace, but menace enough. “Oh ho!” he yelled, as though he were calling across a vast cavern and not a six-foot-tall tunnel. His voice rebounded off the walls and rang in Donny’s ears.
“Mornin’,” came Scottie’s voice. “Found us a couple of visitors.”
Six pairs of feet shifting the mud—his own, Gunner’s, Scottie’s, Otto’s, and two others. Two unwanted guests.
“Hello, boys,” said Gunner. “Just what in bleedin’ hell can we do for you?”
A scuffle, one of them likely detained in Scottie’s fists. “Tell this fuckin’ oaf to get his hands off me.” The voice was tremulous, rough.
“He only does that to people he fancies,” Gunner said casually. “What’re your names?”
“Dirk,” said that first voice. From farther down the tunnel, a smaller one said, “Warner.”
“Found guns in the backs of their trousers,” said Otto.
Donny could feel the silver in them from here, now protruding from the pockets of Otto’s overalls. Two small pistols. His mind reached for them.
“Now just what were you plannin’ on doin’ with those, eh?” Donny asked the men. “Was it to be a two-man raze?”
“We only wanted to talk,” Warner said, and Donny thought he might be younger, on the cusp of manhood. “Your men didn’t come at collection time.”
Donny shrugged. “They didn’t come to collect, ’cause there’s nothin’ we’re needin’.”
“Or they didn’t come ’cause you ain’t got a single ounce of bluff to trade,” said Dirk. There was a strangled sound, as though Scottie had gripped his throat a little tighter.
“Let him down, Scottie,” Gunner said. “For fuck’s sake, he’ll pop.”
A thwack of limbs in the mud. A groan.
Donny clicked his tongue. He pulled a damp cigarette from his pocket. “Now, didn’t we make it clear to your members that the bluff is bein’ allocated elsewhere?”
“Aye,” said Dirk. “And it ain’t what we agreed to. We need the bluff as much as anyone else.”
“Once the infirmaries clear up, we’ll send some down the line.”
“It ain’t just us,” Dirk continued. “The Union members in Hoaklin want to know when to expect the next trade. Same with Dorser and Trent.” Dirk panted as he stood upright. “Trades ain’t ever failed before.”
“Times are hard,” Gunner responded. “From each what they can give. To each what they need—”
“And we need it,” Dirk spat. “We’ve fought just as hard, sacrificed just as much! If there’s still bluff in Kenton Hill, then you’re favorin’ your own parish.”
Gunner stepped forward then, his feet sloshing through the muck. Tension bloodied the air and turned it red. “A smart man,” he said. “Would not utter the name again.”
Warner cleared his throat, seemed to work his tongue around his fear. “We came to deliver a message. That’s all.”
“I love mail,” Donny said. “A poem, I’ll bet.”
“The Northeastern contingent—Hesson, Dunnitch, Dorser, Hoaklin—have agreed to halt our trades with Ken—with the Miners Union,” he faltered with Gunner bearing down on him, “until we see some evidence that any bluff remains in the brink.”
With that came the flourish of paper. Thin, wispy. Newsprint, not parchment. It was snatched up and read aloud by Otto. “National House of Belavere Trench celebrates as new Alchemist, and former leader of the Miners Union, Patrick Colson, forms alliance with new administration.”
Quiet descended, damningly thick.
“The papers lie every day,” Scottie said with a laugh. “You ought to know better than to believe swank gossip.”
“You ain’t got your Alchemist,” said Dirk.
“He’s makin’ idium for the House now. And you’re leadin’ us all along like fuckin’ sheep, takin’ from us what you can’t repay!
” He spat a gob into the mud. “There’s a debt not settled.
The Northerners won’t trade until we know the facts.
We want proof the Union is still operational. ”
Donny sighed inwardly, replacing his unlit cigarette back into his pocket. It’s come to this, he thought. And then, Forgive me, Patty.
“Message received,” Donny said with a smile.
“And if you wouldn’t mind sendin’ my regards…
” Here, he let his mind reach once more for those silver pistols in Otto’s pockets.
He felt the way they lifted in the air as though held by his own two hands.
He felt the barrels and the muzzles and the smooth curve of the triggers.
He pulled back the hammers on both in tandem and pointed them in the direction of Dirk and Warner.
The silver went in the direction his mind bid it, even if he couldn’t see where. He imagined the hearts of Warner and Dirk, and knew that if he were to fire, the bullets would puncture them both.
Swank magic, he’d learned, was in the mind, not the eye.
“Tell your members in Dunnitch, and the ones in Hesson and Hoaklin and wherever else, that if it’s proof they want, we’ll gladly come show ’em.”
He heard Warner stumble backward.
“God almighty,” Dirk cursed.
“Don’t shoot, please,” Warner said, the words warbling off the walls.
“Shoot?” Donny said. “Now, why would I shoot a fellow Union member, eh? What kind of comrade would I be then?”
Donny pulled the sack from his shoulder and let it fall into the mud. The rifle muzzles within clacked together. Gunner followed suit.
“A gift,” Donny said, kicking the sack in their direction. “Consider it an act of good faith.”
Warner’s feet hesitated. Dirk finally hauled up his awkward body and stood. Calculations ran taut in the quiet.
“You boys need any further demonstrations?” Gunner asked.
More silence. Donny heard the mechanics of their bodies, the air dragging through their teeth, the reproach of the canary.
“We ain’t short of ink,” Donny finally said.
“The Union is as operational as it ever was. But just so we understand each other, we don’t take kindly to guests waltzin’ down our tunnels.
” He let the two pistols drop to the floor with a wet slap.
“Thanks for comin’, boys,” Gunner said. “Take your partin’ gifts with you.”
“How will we know?” Dirk asked. “When the next trade is. We ain’t received a single scribble.”
Even from a distance, Donny thought he heard Otto’s chest caving in on itself.
“No scribbles,” Donny responded. “We’ll send a telegraph the old way.”
They left the Dunnitch men with Scottie and Otto, with a sense that the walls were closer.
In his mind, Donny imagined the cold-rimmed edge of Patrick’s old pocket watch, its cogs pushing the needle round a wheel, the seconds and minutes and hours ticking down to an eventual end.
“What did he mean, Gun?” Donny asked. “What did he mean about a debt not settled?” Patrick never left a debt unpaid.
Gunner lagged. Eventually it wasn’t him leading Donny, but the other way around. By the time they exited the pit, Donny was carrying half his weight.
“It’s this fuckin’ wound,” Gunner was hissing between his teeth. “Keeps reopenin’.”
Donny had the sudden, terrifying notion that without their father, and without Patrick, it was he who stood at the helm. Hot fear flooded his veins. He saw Kenton Hill then, colored in steel-gray, like iron bars. An apocalyptic city. He stumbled under Gunner’s weight.