The Deadheart Shelters (11 page)

The first thing we did was take our hammers and start hitting at the mound made by the ceiling falling. We were calm, then. It took saying “We’ll be okay” many times to understand we wouldn’t be okay.

“They must have blasted the wrong wall,” I said.

“How stupid do you get?” He sat down. “Sorry.”

“We’re lucky it didn’t crush us.”

“Plenty die from being trapped, too. Think how long it takes to empty a wall; think about it.”

I leaned back against the wall and breathed out black dust. “Oh well.”

“Oh well?”

“If we die at least we lived.”

Dirt moaned. “You think that way! Me, I was just born! I knew it was a mistake to go with you—O…” His sobs made the words like hills, with up-walks and down-walks and a constant unsteady. It was the kind of thing that bothered you to hear, not because it made you realize something deep, but it was uncomfortable just to have happening.

“Shut up. What will that do?”

“Oh nothing, obviously,” but that made him cry more. And I realized how much like a child Dirt is, and I remembered when I thought to myself that I am like a child. It changed without me realizing it and then couldn’t come back.

Dirt thrust his hands into the coal and all the loose pieces turned to powder. Floating like pollen in springtime open air but there was no open air and our lungs were hour glasses. I knew it was happening. None breathe it long enough without it happening. But Dirt was still crying, so I didn’t say it.

At one point we heard the soft ping of hammers unburying us from the other side, but then it stopped. Dirt sank his head lower.

“Did they give up so fast?”

“Who knows? I wonder what time it is.”

“We gave up too. We can’t be angry at them.”

“There’s nothing to be angry at.”

His face got that weird kind of tense before crying so I quickly said, “They’re just getting different tools.”

Meanwhile, I imagined we were in one of the soap operas I watch when I want to simplify things.

There was a checkers table like there always was, but we were in a white-painted room with windows that took up whole walls. The platform the board sat on was made of bones from an elephant leg, because in soap operas you can buy anything. I’ve always noticed this. It’s as if the money’s always there without anybody getting it and in America we all accidentally dream this might be true. Today it was me and Mark’s turn to play. He was being like he always is and not much fun to play with but we were in a soap opera.

“The problem with the youth is they got no respect,” Mark said. “They just want to do. But I watched checkers for years before I ever touched one.”

“What you know about that?” Abe called. “You half as old as me. I could say things about you folks, too.”

“Well shoot, old man.”

We said these things because we had nothing else to worry about. In real life, where we did, we might have said them too, but they would have meant different things. Abe held a glass of red wine above his head, looking at it, and shook it too hard so some got out on the floor.

Lilly walked in heavily-makeup’d. “Hello, boys.”

“Hello, Lilly,” we all answered in unison. Mark muttered something that wasn’t meant to be understood. She sat on a stool and held her face like it would break if dropped, then stood up and opened the oven even though it was off.

“What is it?” I asked. My voice was much fuller in the soap opera, because I knew what to say in advance.

“Oh, I’m just worried about Clyde, that’s all.’

“Always worried about somethin’. Pete, quit lookin’ away, it’s your turn.”

“What’s wrong with Clyde?”

“Oh, you know what he does. I’m worried that it won’t stop.”

“Your turn, Pete.”

I looked down and arbitrarily moved a checker from one spot to another. “It’ll stop, Lilly.”

I got bored of thinking this. There’s a reason I just watch television, and that’s enough for me.

The starkness of the collapsed coal mine came back to me. Dirt was having a nap on the floor, getting black.

Eventually he woke up, turning his head and blinking a lot then letting out a long sigh when he remembered where he’d fallen asleep. “It’s one of those things you think you might’ve dreamt,” he said. Sitting, he refused to look in the direction of the collapsed wall. He hummed tunelessly, stood up very briefly and sat.

“Tell me about the slaves.”

“Stop asking me that.”

“We’re here for a while. Listen—there’s no sounds of them trying to rescue us. Like you said we could die. Just tell me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well then please talk. Say something.”

I thought back but each day seemed coated with blurred plastic, so I could see nothing particular in them. Imagine if I told him, “The story of the day is always the same—I wake up and then I am here. Here, I get in a way of doing things that I don’t notice time elapsing. It’s like someone shaking me awake, how it ends.” It might have made it easier to leave. But instead I told him the only story I could remember.

“I saw a man get hit by a car the other day. He had a phone pressed up against his ear with his shoulder and in his right hand he held a cigarette. I think that’s why it happened. One of those taxis was going too fast and he was just going too fast and suddenly he flew up and over the whole thing and right after he hit the ground, already, blood was rolling into the gutters.”

“Did he die?”

“I don’t know. He must have. He didn’t even twitch.”

Dirt groaned. “That makes me feel better.”

In the soap opera we walked out on the back porch, me and Abe and some red wine. The afternoon poured into our glasses and poured out of them singing like trumpets faintly, as if the afternoon was separate from us by acres. Almost like memory. It was one of those moments I always wished I had and when I watch the kids fly kites it feels like I’m almost having it.

“I’m going to pass soon,” Abe said. “You know that I’m going to pass soon?”

“Die?”

He laughed into his red wine. “Yes. Die. For good.”

“Why are you saying that?”

“Well I’m old, Pete. A man can only get so old before time shouts Enough!”

I shook my head. “Let’s think of simpler things.”

“That’s why I love you, Pete. You don’t let the rest get you. Look out, look at all of this,” he said, motioning to the land. The sun was laying its head upon the pillow of the mountains tiredly. The hills rolled like my hand rolled over Lilly’s undressed body (
stop
). In the heliotrope water the ostriches were waiting for the trout, and on the shore the pyramid was made out of dehydrated bones. The bulls stood with nothing to run at. There was more, much more; peach trees and the missions that animal go on, unbound to time, and creeks like our wine glasses; but in soap operas who notices these things? “It all belongs to you when I pass. You, not Mark—know why? Mark’s always thinking how bad things can get, and you never do. You just let things happen.” He finished his wine and put the glass down, turning away from the land. “I ain’t afraid. Life’s been too good to me.”

I turned to Dirt and said, “Don’t be afraid to die. To have lived at all is lucky.”

Dirt shook his head. “Life hasn’t done anything for me. It just started and it’s just ending and all that happened in between was all this
black
. It’s all I ever see anymore. If I get out of here I’m quitting on the spot, I’m leaving, and trying to figure out what was really supposed to happen.” He was breathing heavily, now, as if the breaths were weighted down going in and out of the body. His skin, in spots where the black wasn’t, got paler. “What about you? You gonna quit?”

I opened my eyes at him. “Why would I ever?”