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Barret’s mama used to say that you couldn’t tell to look at ‘em, but it was always Dyne what was the wilder of the two.
It would have been difficult to find hard evidence for this, since nobody, including the boys, could remember an instance when one had gotten into trouble and the other hadn’t been right there next to them. A time when Barret had been caught up a tree trying to rescue a stray and Dyne hadn’t been right there at the base of it trying to make a rescue-pully from a their belts and lunch sacks. When Dyne had been hauled in front of the principle for fighting, nose bloodied and dirt smeared, and Barret hadn’t been stood silently next to him, neither of the two going to incriminate the other by admitting why it had started. (A bully, usually, picking on one of the smaller kids, but having backed off under the two friends’ defense, and not tattled themselves, they’d earned their own clemency.)
They were kids that way, in each others shadows, and at each others sides. And they spent their childhood days trying not to get caught distracting each other in class, and making plans about how they wouldn’t be stuck in the mines like all the men they’d ever known.
They were men that way too. And spent their days beneath the earth they swore to never be swallowed by. But just for then. Always just for then.
It was lunch break, one of these just-for-then-low sky days when, the earth shook.
A little sun to go with the heat, a little extra lightness in Dyne’s shoulders had Barret pausing in the bite of his apple to look twice at his friends almost untouched lunch. The two of them sitting on the scaffolding just out the worst of the noise.
“If you ain’t gonna eat that, or at least lemme in on what’s eatin’ ya, gimme that damn sandwich Dyne.” He meant it as a way to force start a conversation. One he was more curious about, than worried by, given the grin that’d been flickering on and off of Dyne’s face since payday.
To his complete surprise, and mild bewilderment, Dyne reached down tore the thing in two, and offered half to Barret. The larger half at that. Slowly, Barret accepted, and not just because he hadn’t been expecting it. Now the wrapping was off and the bread is torn he could see that it was The Sandwich. The halfway famous liver and bacon sandwich which no one in Corel could make like Eleanor, and which Dyne had never shared his helping of any more than Eleanor had her secrets. It would have been like Myrna just giving her spicy sweet potato recipes away.
“Not that hungry today, brother.” Said, with lightness.
“Not hun-… since when?” Didn’t stop Barret from taking a bite, damn why is that so good?, both because the work leaves anyone's stomach hollow and arms aching, but also as a test. Dyne still doesn’t react much, but with a shrug, another flicker of that smile, and looks uncharacteristically away. “ Damn, really? You...you nervous about somethin’?”
“Yeah.” That was enough for Barret to set the food back down on his knee, fixing Dyne with an earnest look. Nervous wasn’t Dyne’s way. Not even their first day underground. Not even when he’d been in charge of getting everyone where they needed to go the day of Barrets wedding, and that had been the sort of thing that didn’t come naturally to him.
“Okay. What’s getting at you? Ain’t seen you smile like that since the second High School dance.”
“Barret, you’re not too far off there, you see, you know I been saving money for something.”
“I do.”
Dyne was fumbling with the button on the pocket of his denim shirt when it happened. With a roar and a lurch the like a ragged cough the earth moved, sending the sky into shakes and ripping the metal away from the rocks edged. Barret found himself scrambling to keep upright, to keep oriented, to keep from either falling straight down the side or being stuck by the iron braces as they tore away. Where he ended up was back down at the foot of the ledge. Lodged between a boulder and the cliff-side, knees and elbows and forearms skinned but that was a damn sight better than having anything broken. He looked around and saw Dyne getting to his feet, patting off dust, a look of alarm tight on him until a check of that shirt pocket seemed to confirm that whatever he was worried about was fine. “You okay?”
“Ain’t hurt. You?”
At the sound of his voice Dyne was at Barrets side, looking him over and crouching to help lift the rock that had him trapped.
“Little banged up, but I’ve had worse.”
“I do know it.”
“On three?” Dyne didn’t have to nod an ascent for Barret to know they were in agreement.
That was when the alarm started to blare. And a fear deeper and colder than any he had ever felt during a quake bit into his chest. “Fuck three, now now! We gotta go!” But Just as Barret was jerking at his foot, Dyne was already straining. The two of threw them throwing themselves against the barrier with adrenaline strength.
There had been people in the mine when the earthquake hit.
That was the only thing that blare had ever meant.
Barret was free, and Dyne dropping the rock, both heedless of the abrasions their haste left behind, and they took off sprinting. It was only seconds from the time they had started running to when they came to the mouth of the mine, barely five minutes since the end of the quake, but already the air was filled with cries of pain and alarm, of friends and family trying to find each other in the settling dust. A small group of men were huddled to the side of the entrance, taking stock of injuries. From the mouth of the cave a pair of coal covered figures hobbled into view, clearly under the power of only one of them.
Dyne’s momentum carried him forward to help their two coworkers to the makeshift medical group while Barret caught hold of a shell shocked looking greenhorn, looking lost, but directly in his path.
“Barret, thank Gaia - it was really fast. It happened really fast!”
“I know kid, always does, and it’s gotta keep happening fast now. Who’s still in there? How many?”
“There’s uh...Maverick and Toby and Anna. No...Mavericks dead. He’s gotta be dead so.”
“So just two?”
“Just two yeah.”
“Where they at? What’s it look like down there?” He gave the kid a shake, but not roughly. Just enough to keep them present.
“Shaft F. We were getting ready to blast, Anna’d set the charge but...I dunno I guess there’s gonna be a lot further to dig now...” He knew he probably wasn’t going to be getting any more detail than that, not if the glazed look taking hold of the kid was anything to go by. But that was alright. At least know he knew where to look. The hand that had been holding the kids arm loosened, the grip turning into a reassuring pat. Wasn’t the new guys fault. Sometimes the rock just decided that it was hungry.
“Thanks. Don’t worry. Dyne ‘n me, we’ll get ‘em. You get to the town proper, get the doctor okay? You got good legs on you, so get going.”
Dyne met his gaze as they pulled on their safety gear and headlights, and Barret cought him up on what he’d learned.
And together, they pressed down into the dark.
There was a difference in the darkness of a days work, and the darkness of a cave in. The latter was stifling and charged, and kept every muscle in Barret’s body primed, as if by sheer willpower he could sense when the rock would start to shift again, and force it to be still.
They picked their way with sullied beams of light towards F shaft. He tried not to think to hard about Toby and Anna, and how they might find them. Of what they must be feeling trapped down there in the dark. Especially if they really were trapped with the corpse of their friend. If whatever had happened to Maverick was bad enough that the kid thought he must be dead, then for his sake, Barret hoped that they’d been right.
He wasn’t sure if he should be thankful, or more worried, that they found nobody more along the way.
It was about halfway down shaft F that they started to hear the cries, and at once, Barret’s heart leapt with hope that they could be heard at all, and then sinks at how much stone that muffle said was there.
It was expected, when the blocked path came into sight. Expected but that did nothing to dim the horror of the immediate knowledge that whether there was to be an aftershock or not, the survivors couldn’t have much air time left in there. Nor that of the dark trickle of blood creeping beneath the far edge of rubble.
“Toby! Anna! Tell me you two are alive in there! The response wasn’t entirely intelligible, but it was most certainly alive.
“Mavericks dead!”
“I know. Either of you hurt? We’re getting you out.”
“I hit my head.” The voice, he thought, was Anna’s. “But we’re fine.”
Barret and Dyne worked in unison, the one digging and chatting while the other talked to the trapped miners, and kept the excavated rubble out of the path, then switching off when the diggers pace began to slow.
They had just managed to clear a crack, enough to breath through and talk through and blessedly see that the others were truly unharmed, when the ground started to tremble again. In a panic everyone through themselves to the floor and pressed into corners, throwing arms over heads. This time, it passed with only a shudder. But the point felt clear.
There was no time.
Barret and Dyne shared a look. It was risky. Possibly even stupid. But if that rumble was any true indicator, they had two choices. They could run for the safety of the open air above, themselves, leaving their comrades to a certain death one or another. Or they could try this.
Before Dyne could even move to dig the explosives out of his back, Barret was shouting instructions.
“Okay guys, listen to me, you get back against the wall as far as you can. Cover your heads you hear me!?”
The voices that came from inside the closed of shaft were anxious, but the shuffling and scrabbling of rock seemed like the others were complying, as Dyne set the charges that would have been used to dig the mine deeper, when he’d gotten back from lunch. Instead… Barret just hoped that he was making the right call.
With everything in place, Dyne and Barret reatreated further back the way they’d came, covering their ears, and said a prayer that they were not about to make things infinitely worse.
Three
Two
One
When the blast came it was nothing like the earthquake. Echoing and hot and covering showering them with bits of stone. It was several long seconds before either could move to check the outcome.
But they didn’t have to.
As the smoke started to clear and they opened their eyes, it was with a wash of relief that they could seen the distinct shape of Anna dragging herself out of the newly widened blockage, Tobby’s arm over her shoulders. They were dirty, and scratched up good, and Toby was patting out a smoldering section of his overalls, but otherwise…
Otherwise, they looked okay.
In a rush, Barret caught the both of them in a hug, while Dyne who’d always had the stronger stomach, went to look for Maverick. When he emerges from the hole a few moments later, it was with a grim set to his jaw, and fastening an ID bracelet around his own wrist. So that then, was all he thought they could bring out for Mav’s boy. At least for now. Silently, he joined the hug, and the four of them took a moment to just. Be grateful for their own lives. And grieve the other in a way that could only happen away from the sun.
Anna opened her mouth to say something, it took her a couple of tries before words would start to form.
That’s when the roaring started up again, in earnest.
“Run!”
The dash back up the tunnel was a frantic blur, hands catching at shaking walls and feet scrabbling for purchase. Nothing of the caution with which they had made their way in. Not when they could all hear the collapse starting behind them.
Barret pushed the others ahead of him, as close to a dead sprint as he could manage as the ground shook.
They were almost out, the sunlight reaching them and the voices of the people on the surface audible when a particularly bad jolt sent them stumbling. Barret heard Dyne curse and turned. Just in time to see him dart back down the tunnel.
“Hey asshole!”
“Just a second!”
Barret shoved the others the last few feet towards the mouth of the mine, towards the waiting arms of the doctor and their other colleagues, and he doubled back.
Dyne hadn’t gone far. Just a couple meters.
Barret could see him on hands and knees, searching for something on the ground.
He could also see the collapse rising. And without thinking, he dove.
Whatever it was he was looking for, he must have found it just as Barret reached him, because he was halfway to standing again when they collided, fist closed tight.
It was seconds before the rocks started to fall where they had just been, that Barret hauled them both out into the safety of the open air.
The two of them collapsed in a coal-dust covered heap, fighting for breath, and were promptly surrounded by grabbing hands and worried faces. Barret however, had only one question in his mouth.
“What the fuck man!?”
“Sorry, sorry. Just couldn’t lose it.”
Dyne rolled onto his back the item he’d dove back into the tunnel for held up, glinting in the sun. He looked at it as if it was every bit worth the risk he had just taken.
It was a ring. Thin, but golden and set with three small milky stones. “Told you, I’ve been saving.”
___
Barret’s mama used to say that you couldn’t tell to look at ‘em, but was always Dyne what was the wilder of the two of them.
If Barret never thought about it back then, he thinks about it now, with his knees in the dirt and his hands left reaching for a distant, grayed out sky that is both too much, and too little, the sky of him. That he knows will not reach back down to him but what else can he do. He thinks about it now with the last swirlings of dust in the wake of Dyne’s last steps playing behind his eyelids, and the smoke still curling from patches of ground where their bullets had bit.
He’s tired. Tired from the race of learning his best friend is still alive. And monstrous now. And losing him again.
Tired of being the last one left to dig, with already dirty hands.
Eventually, tired of the sound of his own heart beating in his ears, and the muffling silence of both the wastelands around him, and the companions at his back. He lows his hands, and he breathes. He closes the flesh one around the cool lines of the Eleanor’s pendant. Grips it tight.
He thinks about the way Dyne had gripped that ring, years ago.
The metal, he thinks, had been the same.