Chapter Sixty-Six Patrick
Tess dropped the rifle as though it burned her, her breaths sharp.
Her hand went to her chest, where her heart was.
And the ground shook in a way that had become familiar to Patrick.
He looked at his mother. “Ma?” he said.
Her eyes were pinned to the man on the ground behind Patrick. “Better that I do it,” she gasped, tears slipping down over her cheeks. “Better it be me.”
Patrick looked down at his shaking hands. A pool of blood sank into the earth. He covered his face and sank to his knees. “Lord almighty, Ma. What did you do?”
“Had to,” she murmured, her lips trailing on senselessly. “Had to be done.”
Patrick shook harder now. His father, dead. His mother with a rifle at her feet.
“Why?” Patrick asked, eyes cinched shut.
“Had to,” she said again. Tess fell to her knees, pushed her face into her hands. “Lord,” she moaned. “Your brothers…”
Patrick felt a wave of nausea come over him.
“Look at me,” he said, hauling her against him for support. She coughed in a stream, panted for air in a way that frightened him.
“Just—just listen. I can fix this.”
“Lord, I didn’t mean… I had to.”
A wrenching sob left Patrick’s chest. He gripped his mother’s frame and rocked her. The ground shook. Pebbles danced around them.
Nina.
“Listen to me,” he said, though his heart had shaken free of his chest and sunk to his stomach. “Go down to the docks. Right now. You hear me? One foot in front of the other.”
She seemed to shrink in his arms. A low keening sound was coming from her. “Don’t think,” Patrick told her. “Don’t think of anything else. Just one foot in front of the other. Come on.”
He lifted both of them off the ground. He shouted the names of his brothers as loud as he could, hoping the sound would carry down those hills to the river.
“Go,” Patrick told Tess, placing a hand between her shoulder blades and leading her away from the body.
“Don’t think. Say nothin’. You hear me?”
She nodded continuously, like her head was trapped in the motion. With her fists clenched to her chest she moved forward, momentum carrying her, as though she was very slowly falling.
Patrick left at a sprint.
Back down the alley to the street.
But Nina was nowhere. All around, Scurry was alive and running through the street. The siren chased them onto the hills beyond. Sallow-faced mothers with wide-eyed children at their hands. Men hauling suitcases.
No Nina among them.
“Fuck,” Patrick intoned, turning in circles to catch a glimpse of her. Perhaps she’d retreated to her father’s house. Or to the hills with everyone else.
The tremble beneath his feet became a quake that shook buildings. No telling where it was coming from. But it meant she was in trouble.
“Nina!” he yelled, running toward the main square as though she was calling directly to him. People were suddenly screaming, running in the opposite direction. Then he saw what they were all running from.
The ground cleaved, separating, toppling the townspeople left in Scurry. They screamed and fled. Facades cracked and the clay tiles shook free, falling in cascades and exploding on the frost-hardened ground.
He ran like there were walls caving in around him, like the crumbling earth chased his heels and the light was just ahead. And then the ground stilled, quieted. The houses settled back on their foundations. Ahead, a cloud of dust plumed where the church had been.
He heard her cry before he saw her, tied to a post. Nina. Her head was down, hair sticking to the soot and sweat on her face.
“Nina!” he shouted. He moved faster still.
There were tear tracks over her cheeks, a tremble to her chin.
He finally reached her, ripped at the bindings around her. “Come on,” he said to his own hands, begging them to hurry.
There it was: the miner’s shiver. No canary in sight, but he could already smell the gas.
When the last binding was freed, Nina fell into his arms, barely conscious.
“We have to run,” he told her, already lifting her arm over his neck. “Listen to me, the ground is full of gas, we have to—”
Thunder roared.
Not from the sky, but from the ground as it began to break beneath them.
“Let’s go, Scurry girl,” he said, pushing her ahead of him. “Run!”
She ran and fell as the earth shifted off its axis, as the town’s buildings broke and crumbled, Idia rising from her grave.
Gas explosions sent the ground cratering inward, morphing the hills around them.
Sending rock crumbling down the hillside.
Patrick picked her up, shoved her onward.
“Go!” he yelled as they left her birthplace for good.
They passed the town limits, over a fallen fence and into the hills, the earth still rearranging. Patrick felt fire at his neck, the heat of it blistering his skin. He didn’t turn to see Scurry cave in on itself. Idia swallowing the parish whole.
The dirt and debris reared up behind them, spilling over the sunken hill, and they couldn’t outrun it. Couldn’t hope to make it all the way to the river.
Nina turned to grab his collar, to pull him down as the dust clouded around them, swallowing everything in sight.
They went to the ground together, his arm around her waist, hers over his head. And Patrick held his breath, waited for that wall of dirt to barrel into him, to bury them both.
But it didn’t come. He felt the rock and dirt slide by, but it never touched them. When the ground finally settled and the roar died, Patrick lifted his head.
All around them a curtain of dirt and dust hung in the air, refusing to fall, and Patrick could see nothing but her.
Nina was panting, shaking, one hand outstretched to the nimbus of dirt.
With a gasp, she let her hand fall, and the wave of earth flew sideways, and tumbled down the hill. It did not touch them.
Nina blinked like she was waking from a nightmare, her lips waxen and shaking. She finally returned his gaze.
Patrick felt a titanic breath leave him. His forehead fell to hers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
But Patrick shook his head, already absolving her.
And she faded out of consciousness, her breaths mingling with his.
He carried her the rest of the way down the slope, now filled with the former inhabitants of Scurry, who looked back at their town with gaping mouths and horror in their eyes. He walked past them like a ghost.
At the dock, Gunner paced. He called out to Patrick the moment he and Nina came into view.
“Ma,” Patrick panted. “Where’s Ma?”
“She’s here,” Gunner grunted, running up the hill to meet Patrick.
He nodded to the smoke and fire of Scurry on the hill.
“Was it her?” he asked, awe in his voice. He looked down at the sleeping form in Patrick’s arms.
“Yeah,” Patrick answered. “It was her.” He tried to draw breath. “We have to leave,” he panted. “Now.”
Theo, Sam, and Scottie were waiting on the deck, their caps in hand, jaws limp at the sight of the sunken town.
Theo’s attention drew to Nina as Patrick came aboard with her. “Is she hurt?” Theo asked Patrick, going to them. “Nina?” he said softly, trying to rouse her.
Patrick felt like he might collapse where he stood. “In more ways than you could imagine,” he said. He looked right at Theo. “I need you to get us out of here,” he said.
Something passed between them. A truce of sorts. Theo glanced down one last time at Nina, then nodded. He went to the till.
“We’re goin’ home,” Patrick said.
“Pat… Ma said Dad was… was shot. She said he—”
“I shot him” was Patrick’s reply. He kept his eyes down. “I shot him myself. He’s dead.”
He felt the repercussions met out slowly, first to Gunner, then to Donny. They seemed unable to voice any response.
Calamity was all that remained now. They each swayed amongst it, barely keeping their feet, their breath. They glided upriver against the pull of the water, Theo charming it to part at the stern.
The morning around them finally relieved and turned ashy, then ice-blue. Behind them, a whistle blew thinly. The call for first-shift miners in Scurry, its relentless mechanism somehow having survived the dust.
And another whistle that Patrick thought might only exist in his mind.
This one from a train, rattling into the brink from the city.