Gray are the days of this town. The men, the women, and its emaciated children. The earth gives little any longer. Our rape no longer brings satisfaction, just more work-weary days in the dark of low black smoke until dusk when the furnaces hiss to a halt and we all come home beaten and lost to our wives. Gray are our days and I fear they shall only turn darker, dark as the ore we so achingly crave. It is our lifeline, our profit, the umbilical to a larger world which could sooner be free of us and not notice.
Justice, not the ideal, but my wife, grows anxious with the times. She harasses me so, begging me to move the family to a new town and a new existence, but I resist, not entirely sure why. Perhaps it is because I have lived my whole life in this town, dredging through the nearby swamps and hiking through the looming, dark forests in my youth. I look to them, which are dreary to some, and my heart yearns to return to their carefree realm. Instead I labor and break and come home to a wife who I never wanted and never wanted me.
The children think me lazy and turn to books instead of the wild, dreading the day that they might become me. Our youngest, Edwin, is the only of our four that has any worship for me left. He still sees me as provider, hunter, father, and god. His bright-eyed blindness to my faults give me what little satisfaction I have left in life, but I am struck with the horror that any day he too will forsake me.
As I write this, I sit alone at my desk illuminated beneath a candle so dim I can barely see the pages, and I wonder how much longer we can last. The veins of these mountains have all but dried to pitiful dust. I I have decided that once this town is gone it will be the end of me, my last hurrah before I return to the fantasies of my youth. I’ll live off the land and forget the family that has been my parasite since I was only sixteen. Hardly should I feel old at my age, but I have already found a dozen gray whiskers in my beard and more streaked throughout my air. My lungs feel stale with the rock dust I inhale every day deep below. My limbs are weak and without will.
Perhaps I’ll leave tomorrow. For now, I just wish to sleep beside my wife, who loathes me.
Edwin rested his father’s journal on his sidetable, carefully folding the book shut and fastening the tie about its cover. He must have been a toddler still when this last entry was written. Three or four, perhaps. Now, having just turned sixteen, the same age his father was when his oldest brother was born, Edwin felt the burden of responsibility closing around him. He could barely remember his father’s face, except for his sad, deep eyes. Edwin remembered his father’s coarse hands too, always there to comfort him and tuck him in to sleep after dark.
The coal mining town that he read of seemed a distant memory, a place both dreadful and mystical, but so much more exciting than the little farm they had lived in for much of his youth. He had read the journal time innumerable, as if it were a prayer book, and every word his father had scrawled were rules to guide his life by. This had been one of the final entries, after so much of his father’s vigor had been choked out by the beginnings of modern industry. He died in a tunnel collapse only a few days later, and after that, Justine, Edwin’s mother, moved the family to the countryside with her cousins where they raised livestock.
A soft wrapping of knuckles at his door made Edwin jump. “May I come in?” his mother’s voice requested. “Of course, mother,” he responded a little hoarsely. She glided in dressed in her white nightgown. Her black hair was streaked with gray now, her mouth drooped in a permanent frown. To say the least, the years since his father’s death hadn’t been kind to her. She eyed the journal resting on its pedestal beside Edwin and frowned further.
“He is gone, Edwin.”
He rolled his eyes, tired of this old argument, “I know, mother, I’m not an idiot.”
“Well why do you still pretend as if he’s alive. As if he reads to you every night. You need to grow up. You’re a man now, and you are the spitting image of him. It is an unfortunate truth, but it must be told if you are to learn from your father’s mistakes.”
“You always talk about him with such spite, but I’ve read his words a thousand time and I know he loved you with every bone in his body!” he felt a bit niggled by the last entry he had read, but his father had grown more delusional as he came unknowingly closer to the day of his death. Or maybe he did know. A sense of foreboding always filled Edwin while he read the final recordings.
Now it was his mother’s turn to roll her eyes, “You must stop living in this fantasy world of yours. Look around you. The world of science surrounds us now. There will be no mysteries left in the world with the enlightenment.”
He took her words literally and looked around him. The only things he could see outside under the moonlight were miles of endless pasture and the stout figures of a few roving bovines. He groaned to himself. Hardly enlightening.
“Now, listen,” she continued, bristling at his attitude, “I know that you are a young man and that the only thing that crosses your mind is where to sow your oats, but please be mindful of your family. We are depending on you. Since the death of your brother, Percival, heavens keep him, we’ve no head to the family. Your sisters and I rely on you, as the man of the house, to bring us to providence. Your aunt and uncle have nearly had it with us and would sooner boot us to the curb than accept another late deposit.”
“Yes, Mother,” Edwin droned helplessly.
“And another thing. You really must wake up earlier. You waste half the morning in bed when there is money to be made. The cows can’t just milk themselves. Not to mention clean the barns.
“Yes, Mother. Is that all? I need to rest if you want me to do all of these things tomorrow.”
Her nostrils flared. How his father had ever seen anything in her… Then her eyes began to glisten, “Of course, Edwin. Goodnight. You really are your father’s son.” She abruptly slammed the door behind her. Edwin listened to her footsteps recede down the hall, followed by the sound of her door creaking shut. Had he upset her? It almost sounded as though she were complementing him, but no, it was the usual digging insult, he was sure.
Edwin blew out his lantern, watching the white curls of smoke rise and letting the smell sting at his nose for a while. Then he turned to his side and closed his eyes to sleep with one last thought; he had to get out.
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