In the Shadow of the Greenbrier by Emily Matchar

Author:Emily Matchar [Matchar, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Sol

August 1910

Ears ringing and watch gone, Sol cried as he limped down the slope towards the camp at Big Four. He would have to walk straight to Welch, eight miles west, to Meyer Visner’s house. There was no point in stopping at the camps along the way: Who wanted to buy shattered perfume bottles from a bleeding peddler?

But as he crossed the wagon-ridged track that cut between the Big Four company store and the mine, he heard someone yelling.

“Eh! Eh! You!”

He looked up, his vision fogged with tears, and saw a black figure standing in front of him. Blinking to clear his eyes, he could see it was a miner, his entire face sooty with coal dust except for an oval of clean pink lips. A bulge in his cheek and a half-eaten sausage roll in his hand suggested he’d been in the middle of eating his lunch.

“You a…what…a owww?” the miner said, his English splintered and singsongy. Tiny plumes of dust rose from his mustache as he spoke. His liquid brown eyes, shining against the dull gray of his face, studied Sol.

“I’m all right,” said Sol. “Just heading on to Welch.”

The miner glanced over his shoulder at several other men sitting in a line on a stone retaining wall. They also had sausage rolls in hand and flasks of coffee.

The miner said something to them in a language Sol thought was Italian, and in a blink, the men had put down their food and were surrounding Sol. Just in time, as the moment their strong hands gripped his upper arms, Sol felt the world shimmer, then melt, then go completely black.

Sol woke up some hours later, a rectangle of late afternoon sunlight having stretched far enough through the window to reach his face. He was in a bed. He hadn’t been in a proper bed in weeks. He sat up, careful not to hit his head on the sloping ceiling. The attic room had the raw green stink of fresh cut pine boards. There was another bed across from his, with a pair of long underwear neatly folded on the pillow and a steamer trunk at the foot. On the wall between the beds was tacked a picture of the Virgin Mary in a blue cloak, her hands clasped at her heart as she gazed up at a circle of thorns.

Sol stood. As he did, he felt a rush of nausea. He sat back down, chilled by a sudden cold sweat. Someone had taken off his boots. His pack was gone too. He breathed deeply and deliberately for a few minutes, then stood again and walked slowly downstairs in his stocking feet. The front room held two more beds and a pine table that looked like it had been cobbled from scrap lumber. On the table, an enameled tin bowl held a small mountain of knobbly yellow-flecked green squash. Some type of dried plant hung upside down on a string from a nail in the wall. He was alone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.