Chapter Text
The Angle of Repose
"Give me the islands of the upper air,
all mountains,
and the towering mountain trees."
H.D.
"So at last the King gave orders for Daniel to be thrown into the den of lions.
The King said to him 'May your God, whom you serve so faithfully, rescue you'."
Daniel 6:16
Johnson County, KY | 1972
“It don’t sit right,” Victor said, and Dean took a long pull off of the cigarette pinched between his fingers.
“All this talk – it don’t sit right. Twelve cuts? There ain’t nobody can pull twelve cuts,” Victor kept on, Dean exhaling and watching the blue smoke ribbon up towards the murky sky.
“If Boss says he can, then he can,” Dean remarked with a soft shrug of his shoulders, blowing the remainder of smoke out with his words. “At least he better,” he added, tapping some ash to the dirt and stifling a yawn into the back of his free hand.
“You know what this is?” Victor demanded, turning to his friend. His dark face was fierce and unsettled and Dean offered him a tired smile.
“First degree murder,” he said, a laugh tinting his voice. He shook his head. How many times had he heard that? Too many to count.
“You watch,” Victor continued, jabbing his finger at Dean, features deepened by shadows in the dim light of early morning. “You wait and see because I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Hiring some briggity son-of-a-bitch who thinks he can pull twelve cuts in a single shift? There ain’t nothing safe or good about that. That there’s hubris. You know what that is?”
“What’s hubris, Victor,” Dean played along, rolling his neck back and forth with his eyes closed.
“That’s pride, Dean. That there is arrogance. That’s what gets men kilt,” Victor’s hand kept stabbing at the empty air with his words. “Any fool with two eyes can see that. Makes my guts hurt,” Victor growled out, and he began patting the pockets of his coveralls for his cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it and sucking the end anxiously. “Twelve cuts. Twelve fucking cuts in a shift you ever heard such a tall tale in your life -”
“Victor, you’re giving yourself an ulcer,” Dean said abruptly, cutting his friend off and giving him a labored sideways glance. After a moment Victor’s mouth snapped closed and his eyes wrenched away from Dean’s to scowl furiously across the yard. “
“You seen Benny this morning?” Dean asked, breaking the tense quiet. Victor nodded, lifting his cigarette back to his mouth.
“He’s talkin’ some business,” Victor said, words calmer and more bemused. “Trying to bleed somebody dry, I’m sure.”
Dean rolled his eyes. It was always something: cards, racing, moonshine. He could only guess what poor soul Benny was trying to gamble out of house and home that particular day.
“Speak of the devil himself,” Victor continued, nodding towards the dirt drive that dipped down over the back of the hill. They were standing at the far edge of a narrow yard positioned in front of the Venus No. 6 mine, a standard procedure for the two of them. There was always time to kill before shift – waiting for Boss to finish inspection, waiting for the mantrip or the belt to be cleared or some detail to be ironed out.
The mine never slept, never quit and all around was the thump and grind and constant whir of machinery.
Farther away, unseen, there was the sound of night shift’s cuts being sorted – good coal from slack rock – as it went tumbling into the hopper cars at the foot of the hill, ready to be trained back to the refineries. It was only a little past six thirty in the morning but the company always swarming like an anthill – night shift buddies were traipsing across the loose red dirt mopping at their faces with handkerchiefs that came away black as pitch.
Others were stopping to have a post-shift smoke, stretching their cramped joints in the growing dawn before they went to the wash house, talking in low voices to each other.
Outside men wove around these little groups, hustling back and forth to ready for day shift – checking generator gauges and giving equipment once overs and getting the final figures on load before the whistle wailed the start of the next wave of work.
Dean gave intermittent nods as they passed and was offered tired smiles or waves in return and other soft admonishments, but soon his attention was focused on the burly figure sauntering up through the hog-back spine of brush on the side of the road leading up to the mine. He went merrily along, tipping his captain’s hat to men he recognized and truck drivers beginning the trek down the mountain.
“Bonjour!” Benny called loudly across the yard, voice muffled by the constant racket, and Dean raised his hand. There was the tell-tale swagger to Benny’s long step that told everyone he had a fat wallet that morning, or at least one in the making. Behind him, the sun was beginning to curl its fingers over the horizon, gold light banding the mountainsides. Far yonder, as far as Dean could see, Old Man’s Creek wound around the foothills in a thin ribbon of silver.
“Well at least somebody is in a good mood,” Victor said, dropping his spent cigarette to the ground as Dean had earlier, the broad Cajun coming to a stop.
“Well?” Benny huffed lightly, looking expectantly between them. “You see him yet?”
“No,” Victor said cooly and rolled his shoulder, staring around the yard, eyes glancing from face to face, looking for a new one.
“I figure he’s in the office, anyway,” Benny continued and all three men turned their heads to the squat trailer on one side of the lot where the books were kept. “Boss say anything particular about him?” Benny asked, singling Dean out. The younger man nodded and looked up at his friends with the pleasure of someone who knew something others didn’t.
“He laid it out for me last night,” Dean began, luring with his voice. “Said it all came to when Ronald Reznick pert-near lost his mind a few days ago. He barged right in on Adler and all them wailin’ about how the machine wasn’t safe and he wasn’t gonna work on it anymore.”
“Aww,” Benny began, sarcasm lilting his voice. “Kid just didn’t want to get fired. Barely pulled – what? Six cuts?”
Ron was a good man, but his position as operator had been a running joke for the past few months.
Dean nodded solemnly. Victor lit another cigarette.
“That’s what I told boss. I reckon the poor son a bitch just wanted to pull out before they put it down on his record,” he frowned. “They had no business puttin’ him on that miner anyway. I don’t know what they were expectin’.” Dean moved his shoulders, twisting slightly to adjust the back brace under his jacket. “Everybody knew Ron was skittish ‘bout everything after Ricky. Doin’ the dead man’s job ain’t gonna help that.”
There was a respectful silence for Ricky Wade in that moment, the three recalling in too-vivid detail the horrific aftermath of the four-ton slab of shale crushing him into the mine floor. Dean had worked in a mine since he was sixteen years old and he had never seen an accident so bad in his life. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he still saw Ricky Wade’s mangled legs as they dragged him out.
“Well, if he hadn’t done it I would have,” Benny continued. “Six cuts doesn’t cut it with me.”
“Ron’s better than some outsider,” Victor snapped and Benny slung his arm around his shoulders.
“Come on now mon frère, you know that ain’t fair to say. I was an outsider too, once upon a time.”
Victor gave him an unimpressed stare.
“I ain’t crazy about you either,” he said blandly.
Dean laughed along with Benny before shaking his head.
“Just no business putting him on that miner,” he reiterated, bringing them back to the point.
“So?”
Dean reached up and rubbed his forehead tiredly, recollecting the conversation with Boss from the night before.
“Said he doesn’t say much. Real plain spoken when he does. Supposed to be some kind of miracle worker that’s gonna whip us into shape,” Dean answered.
“I heard his people are that Bohemian type, you know, gypsy,” Benny added, like it meant something, and Dean glanced at him.
“I don’t care where he’s from,” Dean said. “If they say he can average ten cuts a shift he better do it.”
“Ten?” Benny marveled. “They said that?”
“I told you,” Dean reminded. “Miracle worker.”
“Hubris,” Victor grunted.
Dean couldn’t blame either of them for their incredulity. He hadn’t believed it either when Bobby had told him, sitting there at the table after Dean had cleared away supper. Karen was in the back of the house getting the baby dressed for bed and Sam had been sent out to the yard to put up the mule for the night, leaving the two alone.
While Dean called him ‘Boss’ the moment he stepped out his front door like every other buddy he had, there in the house he’d been born and brought up in it was Bobby, the gruff but caring man he’d known all his life. It was surreal sometimes to be the one sitting in his father’s chair with Bobby sitting in his usual one, the two talking the job and everything else the way John had done before he died.
“Coffee?” Dean had asked.
“Don’t care,” Bobby had replied, all worn in formalities, giving a soft thank you when Dean poured more into his mug.
They drank quietly and then Bobby pulled his old cap off his head, rubbing it and then replacing it.
“Dean, I’m a good worker. Used to pull and stable Jennies with your pa when we were barely thirteen years old. Back then they used log posts and dynamite; weren’t anything like what you fellas work with. Thirteen years old,” he repeated, and Dean lowered his chin in respect. “That’s when I stepped into that hole for the first time and I haven’t been out since. You know I’ve seen every kind of man there can be go down in them mines. Watched my daddy and your pap break their backs hauling loads, hell, watched my own daddy get kilt, and I’m telling you, I ain’t ever seen such trouble like I have these past six months. You’d think ever body had gone and lost all the good sense God might have given em’.”
“Ron?” Dean had asked and Bobby pulled the bill of his cap more securely over his forehead.
“Came in Tuesday night lookin’ like he’d seen the devil himself. Said somethin’ about the machine – that it doesn’t mind him. Got a mind all its own. So, I had Ash look at the damn thing and he can’t come up with anything, and I looked at it myself and of course came up with nothing. Far as I can tell, something just spooked him, but you know how he is.”
“He just didn’t want the humiliation,” Dean affirmed and the two men nodded. “What are they going to do about it?”
Bobby gave Dean a sideways glance.
“That’s the other thing,” he began, and Dean’s eyes narrowed. “You know as well as I do that Ron shouldn’t have been on that miner at all. He’s too damn nervous. Boy kicked that generator so many times I nearly beat him over the head with the control box. Well, for a while the night shift been carrying for us and playin’ catch up, but apparently that don’t suit Adler anymore. He wants ten cuts per shift per crew, period.”
“Ten?” Dean blurted. “Is he smoking his shoes? We barely push seven on a good day - what put that idea in his head?”
“All this union talk has him bugged and he wants to push as hard as he can before they bring the fist of God on him. Least, that’s all I can speculate.” Bobby paused to take a sip of his coffee. “It’s changing, Dean. I thought it was over in my day. They introduced all the machinery and I figured it’d be the end of it. We’d adjust and keep on, but,” he trailed off and Dean looked past him, at the floor.
“This old way of doin’ things ain’t gonna be round much longer,” Bobby finished and Dean’s stomach clenched. “You young fellas ain’t the same breed. You’re quicker than we were and you don’t treat the job the same – how could you? You’ve got all the equipment we never had. Used to be a man could just depend on another man, but now we don’t depend so much on the man as the machine he’s workin’, and it don’t take much to learn how to work those machines. It just ain’t the same.”
Dean kept staring at the floor, mulling the words over. He knew Bobby well enough to know he wasn’t being critical in a personal way. Dean knew he wasn’t like his father, that he’d never know what it was like to wedge the old four by fours up against the ceiling and pray they’d hold, but it had also been John who’d taught him how to work the bolt machine. It was John who had taught him how fast to turn the pin so your arm wouldn’t get torn off and how long to let the glue set before backing it out.
But it was Dean who knew how to think with the bolter. He knew how to feel the pin, knew what bad top felt like without even looking, could tell the difference between shale, slate, and seam within seconds. It was Dean who had turned it into a profession, and he knew that was something his father’s generation couldn’t understand completely.
His father had always said he was a miner, but Dean, when asked, always knew he was a bolt man.
“So this new guy,” Dean said, the light hanging above the kitchen table becoming more pronounced as the sun set. He lit a cigarette and Bobby sighed, and they both listened to the soft off-key hum of Karen singing Emma to sleep in the back of the house.
“His name is Novak. Can’t remember his first name for the life of me - somethin’ foreign. Don’t know too much about him. Don’t even know where they found him – but with all these strikes lots of people been drifting. I’ve been askin’ around and it seems like he’s the best operator in Kentucky.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Dean laughed, blowing smoke out of his nose. Bobby laughed too, leaning back in the kitchen chair.
“I won’t meet him till you and the rest do tomorrow morning, but he sounds like a real briggity son of a bitch. At least he’s got reason to be. They said he pulled twelve cuts one shift doin’ overtime and he averages a little over ten. That’s why Adler wanted him somethin’ fierce.”
Dean refused to believe it. Even if someone was good, twelve was ungodly – he didn’t even know if he could keep up with someone who made twelve cuts.
“How’s he on clearance?” Dean asked, and Bobby moved another chair out and put his feet up on it with a low groan.
“Didn’t ask.”
“Probably shit then,” Dean grunted.
“They made him out like some kind of magician. Said he can hear the coal and that’s how he can follow the seam so close. Never kicks it either.”
“Mhmm,” Dean hummed. “So this big shot comes in and he gets carried away. Then what?”
“Ride it out,” was all Bobby could say. “Pray he’s just there to do his job and that nothing else comes of it. This mine has had more than enough of its share of bad luck. We could use a few miracle workers if you ask me.”
Dean couldn’t argue with that. Ricky Wade’s death had rattled all their cages; sudden and violent and strange. It had been wrapped up in so much specific circumstance it almost seemed unreal. He was standing in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, but there he was, crushed to death – a mangled bloody mess of the man he used to be.
Dean shook the image away.
“Well I’ll believe it when I see it,” Dean had ended up saying, taking a sip of his coffee that was quickly going cold.
“You’re only twenty three boy,” Bobby had drawled. “You got plenty of things more interesting to see than some hot-to-trot miner operator. Quit worrying so goddamn much and wasting these young years.”
They’d said their goodbyes soon after. Dean had thanked Karen and she had smiled at him the way she always did and told him it was nothing.
“Guess we’re about to find out,” Benny said as the story came to a close, and the reason became apparent. There was the squeal of breaks as Bobby came out of the mine on the mantrip, hauling himself up from the low driver’s seat. He was already dark with coal dust just from the short inspection trip, and he glanced at the trio and motioned for them to follow him as he made his way to the middle of the yard.
“Gather up!” he yelled, and Dean and Victor and Benny were soon joined by the rest of their crew in a small loose semi-circle around the foreman. Bobby looked around their faces and nodded to himself. There they all were, standing like disciples from Ash down to Ralph, their imposing electrician with the board-stiff posture.
“Now I know you’ve all heard everything there is to say about this,” Bobby started, pushing his jacket away from his waist to rest his fingers under his tool belt as he usually did when he was getting started on a lecture. “I know the sort of things you fellas get up to sayin’ about each other, let alone a new man and one hired so sudden.”
Victor moved a little beside Dean.
“I don’t need to tell you what this business is about,” Bobby went on, looking purposefully at them. “I can’t say nothing about what you do when you step out of this yard, but I’m going to set it straight right now: there will be no problems in my mine. You will do your job and you will expect every other man here to do his job, and if he don’t do his job then I will see to it that he is reminded. We will work, and we will keep in that coal. You want to bitch? Do it on your time. Is that clear?”
The men sounded their approval in a dull murmur that circulated around the group and Bobby nodded, grunting.
“Right,” he trailed and there was the soft sound of footsteps crossing the sandy ground and Dean shifted his eyes with the rest of them.
The footsteps halted and Dean’s gaze narrowed on the slim man who had made them.
“Come here boy,” Bobby said loudly and the man did as he was told, going to stand beside Bobby. He adjusted his lunch box under his arm and stared back at them with just as much scrutiny, appraising them as much as they were appraising him.
“This here is Castiel Novak, our new operator. He’s here to replace Ronnie. He’s a good worker and he’s going to help us make our poor man’s dollar – ain’t you son?”
Castiel Novak kept his eyes trained on the men before him.
“Yes,” he said after a long moment, his voice deep and morning-rough.
Dean took in as much as he could in the waxy morning light, before they were all hustled underground and it would be harder to make something of the figure standing before them.
This was the so-called miracle worker: a mostly ordinary man in a worn-out dark blue Dickies work set and a beaten denim barn jacket. Dean could see the threads on the quilted interior lining were starting to come apart, and his boots were shabby and obviously hand-me-down from some father or older brother. Still, he wasn’t quite the usual breed, not really. There was nothing particular about him, nothing Dean could name specifically, but he was clearly different. His face was strongly European, but in what seemed to be a general way, with a square jaw and sharp cheekbones and unruly dark hair sticking out under his helmet (one that seemed a little too big and fell a little far over his stern brow) and an expression that did not betray much of what he might have been thinking of the men before him or the situation at hand. Maybe it was his eyes that were so unsettling, such a strong and emotional blue peering out from his otherwise impassive face.
The moment snapped back into reality and Dean realized that Bobby was gesturing for him to come closer and the other men were dispersing, most off to ride the belt into the shaft or load up on the mantrip parked in front of the entrance.
“Yeah Boss?” Dean asked as he stepped closer, keeping a polite distance between him and Castiel Novak. He looked over Bobby’s shoulder at Benny and Victor crossing the yard, his friends giving him questioning stares before making their ways into the mine.
Beside him, Castiel Novak was eyeing him warily but attempting to not be auspicious about it, letting his gaze wander around the yard every so often.
Dean made sure to match his stare when he could.
“Just get him down there in one piece. Show him the equipment, and make sure nobody starts any shit,” Bobby said quietly, ducking his head towards Dean.
“Why me?” Dean whispered, moving his body to at least provide the guise of tact to the new operator. Dean saw that the very tips of the man’s thin fingers were curling and uncurling slightly where they hung at his side.
“Because if they see you gettin’ along with him the rest will follow,” Bobby replied shortly and Dean huffed out of his nose, looking around. “Also because you have to be behind him from now on, so you might could use this opportunity to get it done your way.”
Dean bit back a grumble. Bobby had a point, as much as Dean hated to admit it.
The foreman clapped him once on the shoulder and turned to Castiel Novak.
“See you underground – oh, shit, almost forgot, the board’s over there. Dean’ll show you. Did they give you your number?”
Castiel Novak held out the dull metal tag with the punched letters and Bobby nodded, looking back at Dean.
“See you boys in a minute then,” he repeated and Dean scowled briefly, grunting.
Just like that, Dean realized the yard was empty. Not even Garth was wandering back and forth to relieve some of the tension; just Castiel Novak standing stiffly a step away. Dean mentally shook himself out and turned to start walking to the little board just outside the mine opening that displayed row after row of the same tags all with their numbers – many had been moved from the top rows to the bottom, signaling that the miners they belonged to were underground for their shift.
He heard Castiel Novak’s old boots pick up behind him, matching his pace easily. Without speaking he found his tag and moved it on the board, stepping back and waiting for Castiel to do the same.
“Do that every time, obviously. Last mantrip usually leaves about seven, so get there before if you want to take it,” Dean said, chancing to look at the silent new man and Castiel Novak didn’t say anything or do anything, but his eyes flashed.
“They show you everything out here?” Dean continued and instead of responding Castiel Novak’s hand shot out and hung in the air between them.
“Castiel Novak,” he said in that same dark gritty voice and Dean stared at his hand and then reached out his own, shaking it.
“Dean Winchester,” Dean nodded, fingers squeezed in the other man’s cool grip. Their hands fell back to their sides and Dean licked his lip.
“How’d you say your name?” he asked.
“Castiel Novak,” Castiel Novak repeated, stressing the syllables differently than how Bobby had. “It’s Hungarian,” he explained and Dean nodded.
“Right.”
“You can call me Novak if you’d like. Everyone did at the other mine,” he continued and Dean just nodded again, giving him another once over.
“We’ll think of something,” he said gruffly, starting the walk back down to the mantrip the crew had left for them. “You can take the belt too. Not all mines let you do that, but they usually don’t give too much of a damn here long as you show up, so if you’re late you have an in,” he said over his shoulder, gesturing towards the heavy thick band shooting into a large window in the mountainside. It emerged on the other end carrying coal into a spindle-legged structure built over the railroad tracks down below the hill called the tipple.
“Generators are up there on that slope,” Dean pointed out, putting his boot up on the mantrip and readying himself to get into the driver’s side, and Castiel nodded, following the line of his finger. “That back there is the locker room and wash house, and down that hill is the pay office and the company store and housing – you’ve already seen the offices….”
“Do you live there? In Birdsfoot,” Castiel interrupted, referring to the town where the camp was situated.
“No,” Dean said quickly. “I don’t – now today is Friday so for most of us that means payday, but I’m sure your check is on hold till next week…”
“Where do you live?” Castiel cut him off, obviously uninterested in the talk. “Back in the hills?”
Dean gave him a blank stare before speaking.
“I live about three miles away in Elbow Holler. You ever heard of it?”
Castiel shook his head. “Didn’t think so,” Dean rumbled in response, irritated.
Castiel looked closely at him and his mouth opened as if he were about to ask another question and Dean hardened his eyes.
“Do you know what I do?” he said abruptly, voice louder than before, and Castiel’s lips pressed tightly together.
Dean didn’t wait for him to answer.
“I work the bolter. That means I’m responsible for every poor s.ob. in that shaft, including you. My job is to make sure none of that top comes down on anybody in that mine. If it does, it’s on me. So I’m not here to get to know you – I’m here to make sure you get into that coal and you do your job so I can do mine so we can all go home and get our checks at the end of the day. All I care about is being sure that you are going to do your job right and give me enough clearance when you’re behind that miner. That’s it. Because if you don’t, and I can’t do my job, that’s on me. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Castiel said, voice cold, eyes flashing. “And I know why I’m here,” he added flatly after Dean had turned his back on him to position himself behind the wheel of the low cart. “Someone didn’t do their job.”
Dean’s blood froze.
He remembered Ricky Wade’s mangled legs –
“You just worry about making those ten cuts, and I’ll worry about the rest,” Dean said, and he keyed the ignition, drowning out whatever else there was to say.
--
Dean parked the mantrip with the others and slowly extracted himself and his lunchbox from it, the bright beam from his helmet lighting up only a little ways in front of him. The shaft hummed with the low electric whoosh of the fans being turned, rustling the plastic sheeting partitioning off the long columns where the miner had already ground out rooms into the rock. There was the dull murmur of people talking and the clanks and rumbles of other pieces of equipment already being put to use.
It was a chill, constant 45 degrees in the mine – a welcome from the humid summer air outside.
“Through here,” Dean said, listening to Castiel come around beside him, both of them crouched over because of the low ceiling. Dean didn’t need to be trite anymore, not with work to be done.
The minute the sun disappeared behind them it was all professional.
On the way through the main shaft Dean dumped his lunch in a corner with the ones he knew belonged to Benny and Victor. He looked at the other miner’s face when he tried to do the same. “You might want to keep yours with you,” he said and Castiel’s eyes flickered in the darkness and his grip tightened on the handle of the old-fashioned bucket he held. His face was clean, but soon enough it’d be as sooty as the other’s.
They duck-walked the rest of the way through several more curtains, feeling along for balance, and Dean stopped again right before the face itself, looking at the bolt machine parked in front of it. He whistled and there was a jostle of activity and a young face appeared from around the side of it.
“Milligan did you move them glue boxes?” he said loudly, cursing when the scoop rattled to life behind them, clearing the floor.
“What!” the face yelled over the roar and Dean shook his head.
“Can’t fuckin’ hear myself think,” he grouched. “Did you move them glue boxes!” he said louder and Adam gave him a thumbs down. “You better move then!”
Dean shook his head, watching in the dim and dusty light as Adam got up from where he was sitting, crawling to where a service cart was stacked with long flat cardboard boxes of apoxy for the pins. He liked his cousin as much as anyone liked their kin, but having him as his less-than-enthusiastic assistant was driving him up the wall.
He couldn’t wait till next spring, when he could really start coaching Sam; he only hoped his brother had the knack for it that he had.
Continuing on through the partition the ceiling opened up a little, the cavern lit by a hanging fluorescent lamp nailed loosely to the wall. The faint yellow light cast itself down on the dug-out stretch of rock and looming half in shadow was the grungy orange tail of the continuous miner.
Weighing in at three tons, the miner was a leviathan. In the further darkness its tungsten carbide coated drum head gleamed, the front hydraulics drooling oil. Tamed, the beast could scrape out five tons of coal a minute. From there the coal was shoveled up into the low flat cart of the scoop, and shuttled to the conveyer belt and out of the mine where it was cleaned and sorted for transport. The miner itself moved up in the mine as it went, creeping its hulking body on thick treads, gouging twenty foot long ‘rooms’ in the coalbed to form a center ‘pillar’ or forty square foot column of rock – extra support for the mountain and the men inside.
Dean bent and picked up the heavy metal control box and held it out to the waiting operator. Castiel took it from him and looked over the machine, craning his head to look around it.
“Has this machine been serviced?”
“Boss checks the oil and gets full report from the night shift and company gets the warranty from Cat.”
Castiel nodded and without another word pressed the switch on, the corner light on the box going red. He tested a lever, watching the hydraulics hiss and lift the head up and down. He tested every control, face blank except for minor twitches of his brows under the line of his helmet while he observed with a clinical sort of regard.
Dean chanced to look at his hands on the box; they were already becoming black-smudged with only a few movements. Castiel Novak sank slowly to his knees on the mine floor beside the massive machine, settling the box on his thigh and tilted slightly up, and Dean watched his dark lashes fall to his cheek as he closed his eyes and pitched the miner forward with a scream of gears. Castiel tilted his head slightly to the side, towards the face, and there was an initial grind of the head through rock – layers of shale and slate - and then a softer sound of him striking the seam, hooking the great teeth into the coal.
Dean was stunned. He had never heard someone break into the rock that fast or that accurately.
“In the coal!” he yelled, remembering himself, and cupping his hands round his mouth. There was a yelled back response as the scoop kicked on again and the echo of boot steps, the real work starting.
The acidic smell of hot metal pricked in Dean’s nose, sharp and pointed as a needle, and giving him the start of a good headache.
--
There was little sense of time inside the mountain; just the cool darkness and the endless rhythmic pulse of all the machinery. It acted a lot like clockwork, but there was no way to tell how many minutes or hours had gone by or how long you had been at it until you were told. Dean didn’t mind so much so long as there wasn’t a lull; keeping busy was the best antidote against the dulling hypnosis of sound and lack of good light.
He was only thankful that he had his break starting soon. There was always a sense of detachment at the end of the work week before his four days off that made him feel like he was only half a person.
They were taking lunch. Bobby was complaining over the radio to someone above ground about something and Benny and Victor and Dean crouched in the corner, leaning against the wall while they ate.
“I’ll give it to him,” Benny started around a forkful of some spicy smelling rice concoction. “He’s living up to that reputation.”
Dean shook his head, taking a bite of his sandwich and chewing it in a sort of stupor and Victor said nothing. From the moment Castiel had hit the seam the entire crew had been fighting to keep up with him, and Dean was no exception. He hated to admit that he was eating his words, but there was an undeniable bitterness in his mouth as he hounded Adam to get the pins ready every time Castiel had finished a cut. Dean assumed that the operator was taking his lunch by himself – the coal had stopped rolling in and there was no tell-tale growl of the miner.
“You think he’ll make ten?” Benny asked and Dean turned to him, lamp light from his helmet settling on Benny’s scruffy face.
“Oh, he’ll make it,” he said, shoving his sandwich back in his mouth.
“I just wonder how much that’s going to cost us,” Victor said sagely and Dean sniffed, wiping his nose, succeeding in getting even more black across his face.
“I don’t know,” Dean said. “I ain’t goin’ out of my way. He’ll blow out of here in a few weeks, you just watch. He’ll start asking for more money and they’ll shut him down.” Dean didn’t know what to do about Castiel yet; his instincts told him to let it be. He seemed to be nothing more than a drifter and Dean didn’t have time to waste on someone who would be gone in a week or so. Not when he had a job to do and a family to look after.
“You’re probably right,” Benny agreed, stretching a little in place. “In the meantime he’s killin’ my back.”
This elicited a chuckle from his companions and Dean finished his lunch, rubbing lightly at his hands to get the crumbs off and wiping at his mouth with his dirty handkerchief, staring into space.
“You got somethin’ on your mind, Winchester?” Victor asked and Dean blinked till his head cleared, his mouth falling into a frown.
“You know what Sam did this morning?” he said, reaching up to scratch under his helmet. “That boy asked to take my truck to Carraway today.”
Dean nearly marveled at the sentence as he said it.
His little brother had been acting odd for the past few weeks, but not enough to leave good evidence. Truthfully, it wasn’t the first time Sam had asked to take the truck to Carraway, but lately he’d been doing it more and more with one excuse or another. His mind wandered back to that morning and he rubbed his hand on his thigh.
Usually it was a world war to get Sam out of bed, but for a while he’d been getting up on his own without complaint. Dean hardly had to say anything anymore, just had to tell him when his breakfast was on. Dean wanted to blame it on Sam gearing up for the coming months, but he knew Sam better than that; his little brother was up to something, but it wasn’t because of coal mining.
“I’m already up,” Sam’d said loud enough for Dean to hear after he’d rapped on his door.
“Hurry 'fore your food get cold,” Dean had replied, rolling his eyes when Sam made some muffled noise to show he understood. He’d stepped away from Sam’s room and gone back to the kitchen, floorboards creaking under his boots as he went. The radio was on and the newscaster was saying something in an even voice as he sat down at the table, glancing at Sam’s empty seat across from him and the steaming plate in front of it.
Shaking his head, Dean picked up his fork and cut one of the biscuits in half, smearing it through extra gravy before bringing it to his mouth. He chewed, that one lazy eyelid of his drooping a little, and turned towards the toddler at his elbow. She was seated in her high chair, feet swinging and kicking against the legs, the fingers of one hand stuck in her mouth and the others fiddling with the cork on her little dish.
“Emma Lou, what are you doing?” Dean said sternly and she’d lifted her warm brown eyes to him, fingers dropping from her mouth. He raised his eyebrows and her face melted into a smile, hand held out to him to take. He smiled back and reached forward to pull the spoon off of her tray and put it into her little palm, watching in delight when she fisted the handle.
“You eat them grits,” he directed and she dipped the spoon into her bowl and brought it messily to her mouth. Dean pinched her fat little leg and she giggled around the spoon, pushing it back into her porridge and stirring it around. “Emma Lou Winchester, I said eat it not play,” he scolded lightly, and she did as she was told. “Good girl,” Dean said sweetly, tickling her little foot and going back to his own food, his daughter smacking happily away, legs still swinging.
There was the thump of Sam’s door closing and his footsteps jogging into the kitchen. He eyed the table and then went to the icebox, fishing around for the carton of milk and bringing it back to the table with him.
“I already fixed you coffee,” Dean said, chewing, looking at his little brother with confusion.
“You never put enough milk innit,” Sam drawled, sitting down and mending it to his liking. Dean huffed and took another bite, wiping his mouth with his napkin between. He watched his brother carefully, but there was no real sign that anything unusual was up.
“You oughta learn how to drink it black,” Dean said offhandedly and Sam scowled. “Some days you don’t have time to dress it up the way you like.”
“Yeah, I oughta,” he grouched. “Everybody knows you just dump sugar at the bottom so it looks black.”
“What people don’t know won’t kill em’,” Dean smiled, taking a smug bite while Sam rolled his eyes so hard Dean figured they’d roll right across the floor.
“You need to go down and see how that corn is,” Dean rambled after a while, looking back to his plate, voice less playful than it had been. A gnat buzzed against the little dome of the light hanging above the eating table and there was a yowl from the garden as the cat rustled in the grass around the corn crib. “And today’s payday so be there to pick up my cut with the sled so I can have hot water, alright? Last time I was waitin’ around for nearly half an hour,” Dean continued, and Sam nodded, brushing his shaggy hair out of his face with one hand. They lapsed into comfortable silence for a few minutes, save for the drum of Emma’s feet and the scrape of their forks against their plates and the soft sounds of them picking up their coffee and setting it down again.
Dean had lost himself in thought when Sam spoke again, suddenly, wriggling his fork into a stubborn part of his breakfast.
“Can I borrow the truck today?”
Dean’s eyes snapped up over the edge of his mug.
“What you need the truck for?” he said slowly, bringing it away from his mouth.
Sam shrugged again, still sawing at his food with his fork, eyes concentrated.
“I busted the hoe on a rock and I need to go to Carraway to get a new one.”
“Sammy,” Dean said, exasperated. “How the hell did you bust it? We’ve had that thing for ten odd years and I’ve never busted it on a rock in my life,” he continued. “Why can’t you just borrow someone else’s anyway...goin’ all the way to Carraway. What’s a kid like you need to go all the way to Carraway for…” he trailed, putting his fork on his plate and standing up from the table, appetite gone.
“Well, what if I bust that one too,” Sam said shortly, and Dean felt his eyes on him as he got up to go to the sink.
“And I ain’t a kid. I’m seventeen. Sides, you said it yourself, Dean, we’ve had it for ten years so why not just get a new one. I’ll even pay for it. So can I?” He gave Dean’s back a pleading gaze. “It’ll only take a little bit. If I leave right after Karen gets here I can be back ‘fore you can even blink– and I promise nothin’ will happen and I’ll put it back right where I found it. I’ll even put gas in the tank. Just to Carraway and back I swear.”
“You’re mighty eager just to get a damn garden hoe,” Dean said over his shoulder, scraping the food off of his plate and into the sink.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Emma said from her chair, and Sam laughed at her. “Ho, ho, ho!” she repeated and Sam poked her on the forehead.
“Not Christmas, you chicken,” he told her and she giggled.
“Cheep cheep, cheep cheep,” she said, going back to her bowl.
“You’re up to something and don’t think I don’t know it,” Dean said loudly.
“Am not,” Sam said, scooping another mouthful of food onto his fork and trying to ignore how his face was getting a little warm. It always did that when he lied and he was grateful Dean wasn’t looking directly at him.
Dean sighed, setting his plate down in the sink with a loud rattle.
“What’s wrong with you anyway?” Sam said, trying not to be too obvious by switching the subject and swallowing a piece of bacon. “You ain’t actin’ so nice yourself.”
“Nothing is wrong,” Dean grumbled. “You’re just awful eager to take that truck out.”
“That ain’t it. You were actin’ strange all last night too, talkin’ with Bobby,” Sam continued, pushing his hair out of his face again. Dean ran the water a little and added enough soap to get the suds going. He turned away from the sink to the counter where his lunch box sat, its rusted red top pushed back to expose the inside.
Dean rubbed his face for a moment and began rifling through the cupboards, throwing things into his lunch haphazardly, ignoring Sam.
Sam watched him do this and set his hands on the table top.
“Dean?” he said seriously, and Dean grunted, adding the rest of the coffee in the pot to a slender blue metal thermos.
“It’s nothing Sammy,” Dean reassured him, screwing the cap back onto the thermos. “Just things on my mind.”
“Must be an awful lot seeing as you were pacing the yard for twenty minutes before you came in,” Sam observed, referring to Dean’s intermission after feeding the mule.
Dean gave him a look from across the room, only distracted when Emma began to fuss and compelled him to walk to her chair and lift her out, settling her on his hip while he finished putting his lunch together.
“You’re too damn nosy,” he said, closing his lunchbox lid. “And I was not pacing. I was thinking. Anyway, it’s not going to be a problem. Everyone is going to do their job like always.” He knew he’d sounded curt at the end – he was convincing himself as much as Sam.
He picked up his lunchbox and walked over to the kitchen table, hovering near the high chair, and Emma whined, leaning her heavy tired head on his shoulder.
“You be my good girl, alright? Don’t give Karen any fuss,” he said, and kissed her on her warm cheek. She smiled her toothy baby smile at him, sticky hands coming up to touch his face. He kissed her little hand and her cheek and her mouth and the fine soft hair she had across her forehead with reverence. “You’re my pride, baby girl,” he sang and she cooed. It was getting harder to stop every time he held at her. It was the slightest hesitance to put her down again, the barest trace of reluctance to step away from her in case he forgot some important detail; incase he didn’t get the chance to see some small and priceless part of her again or know exactly how she felt in his arms.
“What about the truck?” Sam said and Dean bent to try and put Emma back in the chair but she kicked her legs and grabbed his sleeves with a cry. Dean sighed and held her against him again, giving Sam a wearied stare.
“Come take this baby offa’ me ‘fore I’m late,” he said and Sam got up, walking around to collect her, his big hands out and a smile on. Emma whined but reached for him, leaning into his arms and Sam groaned at her weight. Dean looked long and hard at the two of them and lifted his finger to jab Sam on the forehead and get his attention.
“Carraway and back. If I hear you stopping off by the river or pickin’ anybody up I’ll skin you, you understand me?”
Sam’s face shone with excitement.
“Thank you!” he exclaimed, suddenly throwing his arm around Dean’s middle, the other still holding the baby. “I’ll be so careful with it, I swear Dean –,” Sam rushed and Dean patted his back while Emma looked between them, fingers back in her mouth.
“Alright, alright,” he laughed, prying lose from Sam’s grip, being careful to mind his baby and see that Sam’s head didn’t go slamming against his own. “Oh,” he remembered, touching Sam’s shoulder. “Tell Karen that her check’s in my bedside table drawer, alright?”
“Course,” Sam replied, looking up into his eyes and smiling crookedly. Dean brought his hand up to muss his long hair. “And get a damn trim while you’re there, would you? You can take the rag money,” he chastised
“Jerk,” Sam grumbled, punching Dean lightly in the arm and wriggling away, back to the table and to his food, settling the baby on his lap. Dean nodded and let his eyes wander from Sam to Emma – he caught the baby’s eye and lifted his hand to his mouth, blowing her a kiss. She did the same, smacking her palm against her lips and then thrusting it back to him with a laugh. He caught the kiss in his fist and put it right over his heart, patting the place.
“I’ll be home by six I hope,” Dean mentioned, heading towards the door and eyeing his watch.
“Keep in that coal,” Sam called and Dean nodded to himself. “And don’t forget your braces!” he added.
“Today I got the back one on,” he replied, suddenly aware of the stiff belt around his middle and under his jacket. Sam made a sound of approval and Dean heard his chair scrape as he got up to turn the radio back up.
Dean paused for a moment to tuck his wallet and his keys into his pocket and adjust his jacket before continuing out onto the porch. The little amber cat was grooming herself on the steps and she looked up at him with her soft golden eyes before resuming the delicate task of washing her face with a dainty paw , bathing after morning meal.
She stretched when Dean passed her and slunk out after him to the front fence line, rubbing herself up on the posts and twining between them before sitting back on her haunches and watching him leave.
Dean only looked back once that morning, he remembered.
“I’d rather walk on my lips than say I don’t trust that kid, but he’s up to somethin’,” Dean continued in the present. “I just don’t know why he can’t just tell me.”
“He’s at that age. You were there too not so long ago yourself,” Victor chuckled, knocking Dean with his elbow. Dean rolled his eyes and knocked back.
“I’m twenty three. That’s hardly seventeen,” he grumbled and Victor laughed a little harder, Benny joining in.
“You youngins,” Victor teased, earning a punch on the arm, which only served to make him laugh louder.
Sam loved the doctor’s house in Carraway.
It was an old Victorian with white trim and shutters and a huge covered porch and a long driveway you could park two cars in side by side: one for the doctor and one for the doctor’s wife. The doctor’s wife drove a cream-colored Cadillac with leather seats and a tortoise-trimmed dashboard and chrome hubcaps; it was the same color as the woman’s handbag, Sam had noticed. It was the same soft off-white that made him think of frosting and the smell of vanilla and whipped cream and he thought that if he ever made something of himself and had a wife he would buy her a handbag just like that, and a little satin wallet to go inside with mother-of-pearl inlay on the clasps.
He wondered, when he saw it, if Mrs. Dr. Moore’s purse had come from some faraway place like Paris or New York. In truth, the bag had been purchased in Cincinnati, but Sam didn’t know that. It was more fun to think that it had come from someplace special, anyway.
The old truck door squealed as he opened it and got out, walking around to the bed and bringing the hatch down so he could climb up and untie the push mower and the other equipment he had brought along, including the garden hoe that was a lot more intact than Dean believed it was.
He’d lied to Dean, but he knew Dean would never have let him do what he was doing if he’d told him. There was no way to put it to his older brother. Not with Dean so dead-set on Sam taking up a red hat the minute he turned eighteen.
“You’ll red hat under me, so it won’t be so bad, and then after a few months you’ll be certified and can start bein’ my miner helper and I can finally shake Adam off on Benny…” Dean would say and Sam would nod along, but it was getting harder and harder to be excited about it. Once it had thrilled him to think he would be just like Dean, to go underground and work with all the big interesting equipment, but after their father had died something about Sam’s attitude had changed.
All of a sudden Sam realized how alone they were. He only had Dean, really. The mine had taken all of their other relatives: uncles, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and one day, one way or another, as much as it broke Sam’s heart, it would take Dean.
The thought that his brother could one day come home in a box terrified him. He hated it. He hated how selfish it turned him, how unlike himself it made him because he should have been supportive, should have been chomping at the bit like every other boy his age to be like their daddy or older brother, but he just couldn’t.
He hated that Dean got up every morning and left for a job that could kill him and steal him away from Sam. It didn’t make sense that someone so good and so smart could put on a pair of overalls day in and day out and be shuttled far away from the light and the people he loved for hours and hours, breathing in coal dust and God knew what else, but Dean did it the same way their father had. Dean did it with a tired smile and their daddy’s back brace, taming innumerable risk into an occupation.
He didn’t know fear, and he didn’t question.
A coal miner couldn’t afford to do that. Not when coal mining was the only thing between you and starving. There wasn’t anything else to do in Johnson county except run moonshine, or leave, and Sam knew he couldn’t do that either.
So Sam did the thing he always did to comfort himself: he read. Even if he didn’t have a choice, he could at least know everything about what he was going into. Make sure it didn’t have any other legs up on him.
So he read books and articles in magazines and newspapers; he learned statistics and numbers and facts and figures and all it told him was what he already knew: black lung, emphysema, a slab of rock the size of a truck coming down on him, a mechanical accident, the list went on and on.
Going underground was signing his life away.
It was during one of these spells that he came across the little ad, all creased and gone soft as velvet in his shirt pocket, the one he unfolded every night before going to sleep and every morning when he woke up.
It was the little ad that had him sneaking out to Carraway and thinking about handbags when he should have been thinking about coal mining.
HOUNDS: purebred, champion
stock, Bluetick Coonhounds.
250.00$ LAFERTY KENNELS
Sam had seen it, crammed in with all the other advertisements for farming equipment and used cars and acreage, and before he could even think he’d pulled out his pocketknife and carefully and exactly cut it out, pushing all the other paper away to hold the small square. There it was in the palm of his hand, leaving him without a clue as to what to make of it or understand what it was making him feel.
He just looked at it and looked at it, night after night, thinking.
He’d always loved dogs, but he loved the institutions of dogs even more.
The small niggling promise that maybe, maybe, he could have something of his own. Something that didn’t belong to Dean or to obligations or to the mine but Sam alone – a wiggling, wriggling, puppy-breathed something that would depend on him, need looking after, require his attention and his time and training, something he could be master of.
Most importantly, something that wasn’t a coal shaft or the feel of cold metal in his hand or deep darkness where the light couldn’t touch. He shuddered to think of it. He didn’t know how Dean did it. How anyone could put themself out of reach of something as instinctual and basic as sunlight or wind or air.
Every coonhound he’d ever seen flashed through his mind: redbones, black and tans, treeing walkers. They were beautiful noble dogs with elegant lines and long legs and floppy ears and compassionate, intelligent eyes and working-man sensibilities. They were dogs that men were proud of.
“Champion stock,” he had said quietly to himself, thinking of the dogs he sometimes saw passing through the hills on their ways to Arkansas and Tennessee for the hunting cups, tethered to truck beds or, more often, riding in the cabs beside their owners, long pink tongues unfurled and happy dog smiles on their droopy faces. Sometimes he’d see them on the way back with trophies glinting among the hunter’s luggage or ribbons laid out on the dashboards, and somewhere, in all the baggage, the coonskins themselves.
He knew that good money came from those competitions, if your dog was good enough and if you were smart enough.
But Sam didn’t have 250 dollars – not even close. Even if he had that kind of money it was ludicrous to spend it on a dog – not when he could use it to buy clothes or help Dean with repairs or the crops or anything else. Sam knew they struggled. Dean never said it, but Sam wasn’t a fool, and Dean didn’t go to great lengths to hide it.
It was hell to be poor in the hills. It meant hard work and the agony of watching it spoiled by a hailstorm or early frost or a flooded creek bed. People lost everything they’d ever owned, and here was Sam, fantasizing about coonhounds.
But they were beautiful dogs with their short sleek coats and big heavy paws and that beautiful marbled merle blue coloring. He could almost see it, his dog, collar bell clanging as it tore through the underbrush and reared up on the trunk of a pine, baying and bawling, tail wagging in victory and Sam and Dean walking side by side, listening for it.
That was worth a thousand dollars, Sam imagined. To see Dean pleased about something other than coal loads or a discount on mule feed; to walk with him down the old trails looking for arrowheads the way they did when they were little and unspoiled, before the hurt of losing mama had left their daddy a husk. Dean in his big Carhartt jacket and Sam in his, and all around them the amber smell of resin, and the moon bright and clear and blue above them, and the whisper of breath out of their mouths mingling with the cool mist of the mountains, and the eerie wind shaking through the pines, rustling up all the ghosts that tended to harbor themselves in such old and lonely places. They would walk and wait for the sudden and violent shudder in the air – that fine hound gone to baying, bruising the tender quiet.
He knew Dean still loved the hills, was desperate to wander like he did when they didn’t have to care so much. Before Emma and before his eyes had gone so flinty and before the back-breaking weight of responsibility.
Sam didn’t know if he could buy the chance of his brother’s youth back. Sam didn’t even have 250 dollars.
Not yet.
But he’d get it.
He’d get it and he’d get himself a coonhound, so help him God. It was the last summer before his eighteenth birthday and all the banners of his childhood were starting to come untied, but Sam clung to them with boyish determination and if Dean called him stubborn and a fool he couldn’t blame him. That was the Winchester in him, and Sam couldn’t help that.
He’d move heaven and earth if he had to, but he was gonna get himself a coonhound. A good coonhound – a coonhound so fine Dean would have to like him. They may make him shovel coal the rest of his life, earn that poor man’s dollar and break his back doing it, but he’d get himself a coonhound.
That had been May and now it was late August, and the coffee can under the loose floorboard in his bedroom was starting to get harder and harder to lift out. He’d started out there, in Elbow. He’d patched every fence for everyone he could think of, done every odd job that he could swindle a neighbor to pay him for. He’d carted cuts up and down the hills for weeks, hung laundry, gone down to the creek bed to dig through the muck for nightcrawlers and minnows for the fishermen. He’d done everything shy of putting down railroad or running moonshine and then he’d realized that there was nothing left to do.
Which is how he ended up in Carraway to look after the yard of Dr. Timothy Moore, Carraway’s resident physician.
He came once a week to mow the lawn and see to the hedges and put down mulch or whatever else Joshua, the Moore’s old gardener, told him to. He’d already been coming for three weeks and earned nearly twenty dollars; the doctor was an exceptionally generous man especially when “a boy was trying to make his own way”, as he’d put it when Sam had showed up to answer the ad that Dr. Moore had put in the Pennysaver.
Once a week he came to the beautiful Victorian house and admired it, and tried not to let himself stare whenever he saw her.
Sam’s ears were already red from the heat as he dragged the mower up the drive to lay down in the grass in the shadow of the house, but the minute the porch door opened he could feel his entire face catch fire.
He heard her name when she and her mother were getting into the big cream colored car. Jessica.
She had been wearing a striped skirt that reminded him of sherbet and a white tank top and he had watched the car drive all the way to the end of the street before he’d remembered he still had the garden hose in his hand and it was dripping all over his shoes.
Her name was Jessica, and she would come out on the porch and read magazines while he worked. They were the slick kind that came in subscriptions in the mail and talked all about celebrities and how to wear your hair at parties.
She had blonde hair and long legs that she tucked under her on the wicker furniture or stretched out while she pushed herself back and forth on the porch swing while she read, popping her gum or sipping tea or pop and wearing big round sunglasses that hid her eyes. When his back was turned he swore he could feel her peeking over the edge of the magazine to spy at him and it made butterflies bump against the walls of his stomach.
She’d done it every week since the first and every week Sam tried and tried to think of one thing to say to her but everything seemed so stupid and contrived or silly he couldn’t bring himself to even look her direction except when he was very, very, brave and chanced a glance at her.
He heard the porch door slam shut and the soft sound of her feet on the bare wood slats. She settled into the wicker lounge closest to the railing and opened her magazine and Sam looked her way only to see her eating an apple, crunching the skin and turning pages.
He did his work with her there, going about the business Joshua had left for him, keeping careful watch of the time and wiping his face and the back of his neck on an old rag he kept with him every once in a while. When he’d finished for the day he made sure to hose down blades of the mower on the driveway and his dirty boots and brought the stream to his mouth to take a drink.
“Is that your truck?”
Sam sputtered and the hose flailed, water splashing his shirt.
He coughed into his fist and turned his head to where the voice had come from, looking up.
She was leaning over the back of the loveseat, elbows on the railing, blinking down at him, magazine forgotten beside her and apple core abandoned on the floor.
“P-pardon,” Sam rasped and cursed because his voice was still recovering from the water going down the wrong pipe. “B-Beggin’ your pardon?” he said louder after another obnoxious cough.
She tilted her pretty head and slid her sunglasses down her nose towards Dean’s truck down by the curb.
“Is that your truck?”
Sam turned more fully towards her and quickly creased the hose so it wouldn’t drip so much while he replied.
“No,” Sam said, blushing. “That’s my brother’s.”
She nodded and smiled, glancing back to him. She cupped her chin in her hand and leaned further on the railing, and Sam tried not to look at the way her hot pants were riding up in the back.
“Don’t you have something you want to ask me?” she said after the pause and again, Sam wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly.
“What?” he said and she sighed, staring at him imploringly.
“I’ve sat here three times now, and I’ve made sure I wore my cutest shorts – the ones my mama doesn’t like,” she said behind her hand , aside, and Sam went crimson. “And I’ve watched you watch me, and you’ve watched me watch you, and you haven’t asked me for a glass of lemonade or what my name is or anything and I’m really worried I’m doing something wrong here.”
“Your name is Jessica,” Sam said abruptly and Jessica put the tip of her tongue between her front teeth when she grinned.
“Well, I guess that’s an easy one. Mama’s voice carries too far for her good…” she trailed away. “So what’s your name?”
“Sam,” Sam said and she leaned back a little.
“Ooh, Sam, I like that!” she smiled. “Well, Sam? Don’t you want to ask me anything now?” she teased and Sam swallowed. Her eyes were silly and bright and she seemed so at ease. Sam felt like he was six years old and trying to talk with missing front teeth.
“I – uh,” he started and she began chewing on the edge of her fingernail, waiting. “H-how do you get your hair like that?” he asked shyly and her face immediately fell into a confused sort of amusement.
“My hair?” she repeated on a laugh, touching a strand of it. Sam nodded.
“Yes’m,” he explained. “See, I – I ain’t never seen hair like that on a girl except in, you know, in pictures, and on the television at the drugstore, so I was just wonderin’ how you got it that way.”
A silence hung between them, Jessica at a loss for words. Her face was dusted with pink and she just kept smiling at him like he was the strangest thing she’d ever seen, but, then again, he figured a girl like her was used to something other than simple mountain boys.
“Hot rollers,” she said. “Hot rollers, I use hot rollers. I sleep in them too, but they’re not hot,” she nearly laughed again, this time at herself. “You know what those are, right?”
“I know,” he said, giving her a small smile and she sighed, leaning on the railing again.
“Well, I guess that was a fair question,” she said. “So it’s my turn now, I guess. You’re not from around here, are you?”
“How could you tell?” Sam said bashfully, interested in her answer. She shrugged her slim shoulders and pulled her shirt down a little.
“Just can,” she replied and Sam sagged. Was it really that obvious? She looked up and flashed him another impish grin. “Or maybe Joshua told me,” she started with an air of mystery, still smirking. “He said you came all the way down from Birdsfoot to answer daddy’s ad in the penny saver because you’re trying to buy yourself a bona fide coonhound.” She settled herself on her arms, watching him. “So are you?”
Sam knew he shouldn’t have told Joshua, but the old wiry man had asked him a mess of questions trying to see if he was trustworthy or not, and somewhere the little ad had been unfolded and shown and Joshua had chuckled and patted his shoulder and told him it was right fine to want a good dog.
“Elbow Holler,” Sam corrected. “It’s further back than Birdsfoot.”
“Elbow? That’s some name,” she laughed. “I’ve never heard of a town called Elbow.”
“It’s on account of the crick,” Sam explained. “Old Man’s Creek makes this turn and,” he mimicked the design with his own arm, pointing a little ways up to his shoulder. “We live right round here.”
“So? Are you really getting yourself a coonhound?”
Sam shifted a little, ever embarrassed.
“Do you think that’s funny?” he asked, and Jessica shook her head back and forth.
“I think it’s nice. Those are good dogs. Daddy’s friend has a few and they win big ribbons all the time and cash prizes.”
“My dog is going to be champion stock,” Sam boasted, not sure if that was even fair when he didn’t have all the money yet. Jessica’s eyes widened in appropriate admiration anyway.
“I bet he’ll be handsome, just like his owner,” she said and Sam’s throat choked up a little.
“Jessica!” their heads snapped towards the front door where Mrs. Moore was leaning, struggling to put on a set of pearl earrings. “Jessica we have twenty minutes to get ready for the Seever’s, what are you doing out here? And you left your records on again they’ve been playing all afternoon -” her slim body peered around her daughter and he caught Sam standing there on the driveway. “Oh, hello. You must be the boy Tim hired!”
“This is Sam. He’s getting himself a coonhound, isn’t that interesting?” Jessica said, introducing Sam as if she had known him all her life. She sat up and picked up her empty apple core and magazine, walking towards her mother.
“Well, I suppose so!” Mrs. Moore laughed. “Sam’s a good name – Jessica’s great uncle was a Sam!”
Sam nodded and Mrs. Moore trailed her eyes once more to her daughter.
“Jessica Lee Moore what in heaven’s name are you wearing,” she hissed and Jessica looked at Sam and winked. “You are not wearing those to the Seever’s go upstairs and put on a dress – tea length young lady!”
“Mama these are my favorites,” she whined. “Everyone wears them,” but Mrs. Moore was already shooing her into the big beautiful house. The woman paused and looked back out at Sam and then came across the porch herself, extending her soft white hand over the railing to shake.
“I’m Jenny, by the way!” she said brightly. “Excuse Jessica, she’s going through a phase.”
Sam shook her hand gently and she went back to smoothing her dress. She was a beautiful woman; older, refined. She kept her hair in a tight blonde French twist and her eyes were exactly like her daughters, though mostly Jessica favored the good doctor in the face. She was soft to the touch and smelled like expensive perfume and her dress made her skin look all peachy and healthy in the shade of the porch.
“It was nice to meet you Sam!” she said, going back into the house and Sam opened his mouth, but by the time he had figured out what to say she had gone back inside. The next thing he heard was the upstairs window right above him being cranked open and music came drifting out of it. He waited to see if Jessica would peek her head out, but there wasn’t even a flash of blonde hair, just the music and the sound of her clamoring around in her room getting ready.
Sam remembered the mower and resumed cleaning up, trying to draw it out as long as he could.
Being thorough was important, after all.
Dean gripped the pin and fed it into the machine, working the switches to drive it through, the bolter emitting a loud rattling sound as it spun the pin upwards. Behind him, Castiel Novak was watching and chewing on the remainders of his lunch, having stopped right at eleven cuts at Bobby’s behest. Dean shook off his eerie stare, focusing on the task at hand.
“Dean, you almost finished there?” Bobby said and Dean nodded and grunted in response, crouching to get a good look at it as it went up through the rock.
“Yeah – just give me a second…” he said, watching the spin and slowing the machine to a halt so the glue could set. After the apoxy had hardened he pulled the machine back down with a whisper of hot air and gave one final glace around to the surrounding top.
“Adam!” he yelled, waking his cousin from his end-of-day stupor. “Hand me that pick – come on boy, hustle.”
He was looking at a little buckle of shale on the mine ceiling, a small jut of the rock that could be problematic. He held his gloved hand out for the heavy metal pick and shuffled back so he could break the weak spot off, jamming the sharp metal end against it, careful not to disturb any of the surrounding rock.
A good five pound tumble of dark blue rock hit the mine floor and Dean pushed the heavy piece into a nearby pile with the toe of his boot, grunting. His ears pricked up for any dull cracks or low groans of the rock, but it was all quiet.
“We’re clear,” he called, finally satisfied, and nodded to Adam. “You pick up the boxes and get all the pins put up,”
“Yeah, yeah,” Adam drawled. “I know.”
Dean clapped the dust off his hands and as he turned to get his tools, he found himself face to face with the operator.
“Christ –,” he hissed, stepping back, and Castiel looked impassively on.
“Do they have a laundry service?” Castiel said and Dean caught his heart beating quicker from the startle. The man had a smear of coal across his face that made his eyes so bright and so unnervingly blue – even more than before – that Dean couldn’t look away.
“If you’re gonna ease around like that from now till kingdom come, we’re going to have trouble,” Dean began and Castiel blinked. “And yes. But it costs extra. Quarter for shirts, double for sets.”
Castiel looked unimpressed.
“I just work here,” Dean said. “Adler’s rules, not mine.”
He bent and picked up his tool belt and when he straightened Castiel was still there, holding his lunch pail against his hip and looking up at the place where Dean had chiseled off the rock, brow slightly furrowed under the brim of his helmet in some sort of contemplation.
He looked back at Dean for a long moment and then pushed past him, on his way out.
“Well he’s pleasant,” Victor said, coming from another chamber where he had been putting the scoop away for the next shift.
“You caught that?” Dean laughed tiredly. “I’m definitely inviting him to the game Sunday.”
They both chuckled and stood there a moment more. Bobby yelled the last call for the mantrip and Dean sighed.
“Come on,” Victor said lightly, slapping Dean’s back. “Always loads easier on payday.”
Dean could only smile and rub at his face. When he pulled his hand away small specks lingered – flashes of bright and violent blue that followed him all the way out of the mine and were only intensified by the bright and sudden presence of the sun.
--
Dean was more than relieved to see his brother standing with the other boys, most of them holding their father’s mules with the sleds hitched to the back. Plenty of folks had trucks, too, but it was just easier to walk Daisy down and take the sled, especially over all the back paths. He looked winded, which told Dean he’d probably hurried to make it on time, but Dean didn’t mind so much so long as he was there.
“You need to wash up?” Sam asked when his brother came trudging over, the whistle blaring to signal that the small interim between shifts was starting. Dean shook his head.
“Too tired. I’ll do it at home,” he said this as he lit a cigarette and sighed the smoke out once he’d inhaled, nodding at the mule. “You load up that sled and we’ll head back.”
Sam got to work, passing his mule in front of the long line where two other miners were dumping the cuts into the sleds and turned her around to where Dean was waiting and speaking to Victor. They shook hands and waved to each other and parted, Sam joining Dean in a few steps.
“So how’d it go?” Sam asked as they walked, Dean waving to trucks and buddies as they passed.
“Fine,” Dean mumbled, pulling his envelope out of his pocket and inspecting his check. He’d have to go to town to get it cashed, which was a pain, but something he couldn’t avoid. Everything seemed in order on it – they hadn’t skimmed any off the top for once. “New operator pulled eleven cuts.”
“Eleven?” Sam said, shocked, and Dean breathed in, folding the check back up and slipping it away where it wouldn’t get dirtied from the dust still on his clothes. “Jesus,” Sam added softly.
“Some kind of fuckin’ miracle,” Dean mumbled. “We’ll see how long it lasts though. Might have just been showing off.”
“Still,” Sam said. “Does that mean a bonus for you?”
“You kidding?” Dean laughed, looking at his little brother. “Hell no! That’d be something wouldn’t it. A bonus. Hot damn. I’d take me a vacation.”
Sam smiled and they marched along, Daisy and Sam and Dean, the sled trundling along behind them. They came to the ferry across the creek and Sam helped Dean pull the rope to take them across; a woman neighbor crossed the rope bridged next to it spied them and waved as she passed. Dean didn’t look at the water, his eyes set firmly on the opposite bank, and Sam could see the line of sweat around the collar of his shirt, leaving a thin film of coal dust against his neck that trickled down his back, the same on his temples and his hairline.
Like black tears falling, skimming around Dean’s nose as he hauled the rope back again; when they were safely across Dean pulled an old handkerchief from the bib of his overalls and mopped at his face, his breathing a little labored.
Sam was content to wait until he felt good enough to walk, Daisy lifting her head drowsily in the heat and nuzzling at his shoulder.
They walked the red dirt roads and soon came up to the little dove gray house on the hill with its weather-beaten shingles and peeling siding looking almost beautiful in the end of day intensity of the sun, that last pulse of light onto the world before it bunked down in the bowl of the valley.
“Karen’s started supper for you,” Sam said as they came up the drive to the house. Dean didn’t say anything but pushed his brother a little, moving to take Daisy’s reins in his own hand.
“Get on in the house, I’ll put her up.”
“Dean,” Sam protested, but Dean insisted, and Sam sighed. “At least let me get your water started,” he pleaded, and Dean shook his head, resolute.
“Get on in the house help her with supper,” he said sternly, and Sam finally relented, turning away.
“You’ve got a lifetime of shoveling coal ahead of you,” Dean called as Sam went up the porch steps, opening the screen door with a squeal and going inside.
“One more day of not doing it won’t kill you,” Dean said to himself once his brother had disappeared into the warm glow of the house. Cicadas whirred in the trees around him, signaling dusk, and he tried to take another breath, and then another – and it was easier the second time.
He looked at the mule and she nuzzled at his chest, smelling for sugar or mint.
“Alright, alright,” Dean said, leading the creature around the back of the house to the little mule shed. He rolled up his sleeves and unhitched the sled from her, dragging it with a low grunt down to where the cellar doors were sunk into the ground. He’d see to Daisy first and then set up the furnace for his bath water.
In the cool shade a cluster of Virginia Bluebells had come up, nestled against the corner of the house, and the petals swayed when he walked by them on his way to see to the little mule.
--
It was refreshing to stand by the pump and wash his face and arms before filling the bucket up; to simply crouch there and even take a little drink of the metallic tasting water and finger comb it through his hair and over the back of his neck. He’d breathed a few times, felt the slight pinch of his lungs, and then the tension release when he coughed into his fist or hand, air coming easier.
He could hear talking in the house and the clatter of plates – Karen or Sam had opened one of the kitchen windows to let in the cooling air, and the warm smell of sweet corn and chicken drifted out and made his stomach fist with sudden hunger.
A few minutes later Dean was sloshing the low trough at the back of the mule stall, humming under his breath as he did so.
It was an old tune, one he had known since he was a boy, and he always liked to hum or whistle to himself at the hazy end of day when no one was around to hear.
He bent with a slight sigh, trading the pail of water for the one full of grain at the foot of the trough, and hefted this up to a peg on the shed wall, his song trailing to a soft stop.
His mother had done this same chore every day of his short boyhood in the same little shed, traipsing across the chicken run in her yard boots and flour sack dress instead of coveralls while his father washed up at the stand beside the back door. She’d haul the coal to the cellar too and shovel it into the same little furnace. It was on the trips to water the mule – a noble thing they had called Fella - in the falling shadows of her long days, that she had idled that little song into existence.
At night, when everything was dark and quiet except for the faint warm glow of the coal oil lamp, she would sing it to him to coax him into sleep. It was the little song, he knew, that brought out unnamed something about the smallness of the mule shed and made the way the faintest stripes of fading sunlight began to creep through the slats come to the forefront of his mind. It was the same something in the little song that was in the mule shed and made him remember his mother with such undeniable devotion and affection.
It was a part of himself he allowed only there, before even the cock crowed to announce sundown to the rest of the world and the nighthawks started up their dizzy chant. The doves nesting in the rafters cooed and huddled together, feathers rustling.
“Come on,” he said lowly to the dozing mule behind him. The animal twitched to life and nudged past his arm to get to her feed, snuffling at the pail before digging in. Dean patted her neck and scratched lightly between her ears while she ate, trailing his hand down to her strong shoulder. She was a gentle, sensible, creature and Dean had always been fond of her; she performed well and was good natured enough to make the task of looking after her more inviting than it could have been.
“Good girl, Daisy” he continued, patting her broad back and lapsing into thought.
He couldn’t shake the miner operator’s eyes. They lingered in the back of his head and it was irritating that he couldn’t get them out.
He blamed it on his tiredness and his reluctant curiosity; he always was a sucker for a mystery, and Castiel Novak was a big one.
The creature made a small sound of contentment, chewing her grain, and Dean backed out of the shed after he made sure there was enough hay to satisfy her for the night piled in the corner of the stall. Dean knew he spoiled the animal; there was always a bit of mint or a few licks of sugar and a kind hand brushing her down at the end of a hard day, and this one was no different and she’d been grateful to him, he could tell.
It had always been his Father’s insistence to treat animals well. For one, they were expensive, and there wasn’t too much money floating around to buy a new mule if the one you had went lame. A mule who likes his master minds him, John used to say. At one time his father might have added “just like any man” to the end of such a statement, but after Mary died he didn’t extend the same courtesy, even to his sons.
Dean left the shed and wandered back out across the yard. A few chickens nestled under the coop rustled their feathers as he passed and the hog grunted in his wallow at the sound of his footfalls, swollen body shifting in the mud.
At dusk the house was a soft gray smudge of shadow a few feet in front of him, and Dean paused for a moment before making his way up the steps. He looked out to the edge of the property, facing down into the valley: the mountains rose up on either side, cloaked in a muted gray-green. Edges of sunlight were beginning to crest over their peaks .
Above, the sky was blending into a milky blue and lavender with a halo of bright orange and red.
He stood still, watching the sun set. In the 480 million years the mountains had been around that was one thing that had not changed so drastically. The peaks themselves had been ground down to a gentle roundness, but the sun was still bright and violent as it struck the valley, as if it remembered far-before days when the land wasn't so sloped. When the mountains tore up into the sky, a maze of cliffs far greater than these - if that was how you measured greatness.
Maybe that was why it was so slow to go down in Johnson County. The last rays still held onto the land with golden fingers spreading wild over the pines into every crevice, reluctant to pull away.
The bright orb continued its slow edge downwards and the softness of its fading light touched Dean’s face and reflected against his eyes, softening them to the same green-gray as the mountains. The clouded valley lit up in kaleidoscopic wonder, a dream-catcher spin of color, the sun hovering halfway over the earth. Light tumbled and ran in rivers down the hillsides, spilling out and lighting up the back of the house. Shadows shifted, leaning, and Dean knew he needed to get inside, but something kept him planted there a few lingering moments.
Dean watched the 480 million year miracle in the making; land overflowing with light, the bowl of the valley unable to hold onto it all. The ribbon of water snaking a mile past his feet into the hills, Old Man’s Creek, was lit into a silver stream of mercury winding through the bottom of the hollow.
The dying blaze washed in brilliant finale over the hill where the house was situated and surged across the yard like a tide, breaking over him: glorious and old and significant.
--
Dean had been lying there for some time, alone with the dark in the bedroom, long after supper had been cleared away and the baby had been put to bed.
He listened as the dogs fought down the road for a while. It must not have been too much of a fight - a sharp yelp every so often and then the low rumble of growling mixing with the hum of train cars and crickets and other night sounds – and it didn’t last long. Soon there was nothing to hear but the train and the soft rain and insects.
He knew the cat was out prowling around in the yard. Lydia’s cat – a nameless scrap of creature that kept the rats out of the corn crib and out from under the house. He could imagine it very clearly: her flat yellow eyes in the dull moonlight as she groomed herself on the porch step in the tidy, methodical, way cats went about it. Yes, he could see her. Licking her paw and swiping it over her pointed little face and muzzle. After she finished she would stand, back arched and shoulders hunched, and stretch languidly, whiskers twitching with drops of rain. She’d drag her claws down the bannister a few times and then fold herself up into the dark to catch some moths.
Tomorrow he would find her curled up on the chair leaned against the house wall, beside the door, her dainty feet pulled under her body and her tail touching the tip of her nose.
Dean listened very hard for the dogs, but they were gone. He would have heard them go by the house if they had come up the road. All six of them made quite a racket as they went anywhere, panting and yipping. If they ventured close enough, he would hear them snuffling around the grass and the siding sometimes. The tallest one could put its paws on the window sill and peek in the kitchen if it wanted.
She would go under the house, he thought. The dogs will be too big to get her there.
He had seen those dogs: big fellows. Lumbering, clumsy, things - most of them likely related from what he could tell. They were not bad dogs. They were only simple and instinctive, which was not their fault. They often smiled as they trotted by, and in the mornings Dean would see their dusty tracks on his way down the hill and he’d see where they’d bumped into one another and tripped up a bit over themselves, their prints smeared together in the loose clay.
The little cat would simply go under the house, Dean thought again.
The train horn moaned, signaling in the night.
It was so still in the bedroom. The quiet was unnerving; no background clang of machinery, no mine. Just the very quiet darkness.
He didn’t dare touch the emptiness on the other side of the bed. He let his fingers curl against his palm instead, and if the desire persisted he’d tuck them under his leg, close to his side.
He did not want to feel the small depression where Lydia had lay for so many nights; the soft dent in the mattress she had carved out. The old flat thing didn’t rise but stayed sunk, heavy with the old habit of holding her while she slept, or maybe, while she lied there like he was now.
He breathed slowly and evenly and did his multiplication tables, but it wasn’t much use.
He heard a tap squeak on as Sam got up to get himself some water, the flow rushing into the sink, right along the slight rust-stained path in the basin.
Dean’s mouth tasted like pennies.
He remembered the sharp smell of disinfectant and a woman in a starched white nurse’s uniform handing him a clipboard and a pen and Lydia standing behind him with her little carpet bag in her clenched hand, not having anything to say.
Dean had cast sideways glances to her shadow on the floor and seen the taffy-stretch of her arms and legs and the bulge of her bag with all the clothes she owned. There was something freak and alien about her posture projected on the ground under the harsh fluorescent lights.
He’d signed his name in a hurried jumble on the line, and they had left him alone with her for a moment.
Her eyes lifted to him, fringed by her long lashes; a strand of her hair stuck to her lip and shuddered as she breathed She seemed stripped, as though she was wearing nothing, and her hands clutched her bag even when he reached forward to hug her, because he felt that was what she was supposed to do. Even though her face was pale and hollow with terrifying indifference. He reached forward, and she stopped him, holding a hand to his chest.
“Don’t,” she had whispered, and Dean knew it was her voice but it sounded like it wasn’t, like it had come from some other place, some other person, and she was only mouthing along.
“My dress is all wet,” she said, slightly annoyed at the idea. She looked down at the damp fabric and his eyes followed. She held up the edge of her skirt, bone-white legs sticking out underneath, skin slightly mottled to a soft purple from the chill of the air conditioning.
“Oh – oh just look at me…” she snapped loudly, the sound echoing around the tiny waiting room, expressing her upset. “Do you suppose they’ll give me a gown? I’m so embarrassed. I don’t want to wear this, it’s ruined – there was soap in the water -”
He didn’t know what to say and when he was silent she shook her head at him. She just kept plucking at her dress and he wanted to grab her, wanted to shake her, ask her why, make sense of her, understand why her face went blotchy with an angry blush -
“This won’t do,” she said to him, staring down at the slightly wrinkled front, and every thought bottled itself up in his head. Tears welled in her eyes and her voice choked.
“This won’t do at all.”