The Green Age of Asher Witherow by M Allen Cunningham

Author:M Allen Cunningham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2004-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

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THIS WORLD, VERILY, GAUTAMA, IS FIRE. THE EARTH ITSELF IS ITS fuel, fire the smoke, night the flame, the moon the coals, the stars the sparks. In this fire the gods offer rain. I remember the rains of that year’s prodigal spring. They pounded down in torrents even until May, as if wild with fear against the coming blaze of June.

I was to start in the mines that summer. Those rains seemed to draw curtains between me and my initiation, pushing summer back. Gray slush everywhere underfoot, mud mingling with the coal-dust dragged from the air. Puddles swirling black. Dust guttering from wet oak canopies, smearing ghost trees across the ground. Still, mid-May came, though cloudy. My time of induction.

On the eve of my first day of work, father took my shoulders in his hands.

“A boy can’t go down that mouth of earth with the wind in his fist, Ash.”

We had long been conscious of my coming passage, but had spoken nothing of it yet, nothing save a month before when father had tossed off to me the starting date, like a heavy thing shaken temporarily from his shoulder.

Now he said: “I’ve made plans with the foreman to start you off low. You’ll be a nipper on the Clark Vein.”

Mother shuttled to and fro behind him, bearing our used plates to the basin. I caught a sidelong glance from her.

“I thought I’d work with you, sir. Thought we’d be side by side.”

His eyes flickered shut a second. “This is best, Ash.”

“But Jim Griggs went straight to work with his pa—and most the other kids too. We could pick twice the bushels they do.”

“Ash, it’s decided.”

I saw he was firm and I let off my plea.

“Anyway, I’ll not be far off. Joel and me are just down the seam from your door. You’ll see, son. It’s best.”

He turned from me to take down his pipe. He and mother exchanged silent glances as he plucked a wad from his pouch and stuffed the bowl and lit it.

Our gabled roof rattled like a snare under the rain. Father walked to the porch window and sleeved the steam from the glass. He watched the silver curtain coming down off the awning. His voice was plain, as in sadness.

“That’s not all, Ash,” he said. “You’ll come with me tonight.”

“Where?”

He turned. He held the pipe-stem level in his hand and looked at the fizzing bowl, seeming to speak to it. “To the Exchange Hotel.”

Mother clattered a spoon.

“Abicca, I’ve decided it,” said father quickly, not raising his eyes. “It needs to be. A boy cannot, all of a sudden one day, become less of a boy, but he needs some turn in his character.”

“David, I’d thought something of temperance—”

“I’ll not hear it, Abicca.”

“But a boy so young, David!”

“Aye, and not so young that a man’s life is his before he’s tasted it, I hope!”

They looked long at one another.

“It needs to be, Abicca. He’ll have a hard forehead in weeks. We wouldn’t just throw him down there, would we? It’ll be this once only, then we’ll forbid it.

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