Excerpt from "Don't Go Unless You Mean It" by Nathan Gower
Nathan Gower is the author of the novel The Act of Disappearing (Mira Books / HarperCollins) as well as many short-form works published in literary journals and magazines such as the Bellevue Literary Review, Had, Louisville Review, Baltimore Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from Spalding University and a PhD in humanities with emphasis in aesthetics and creativity from the University of Louisville. He has previously edited for The Louisville Review, The Campbellsville Review, and the Russell Creek Review. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and is also on faculty at the low-residency Naslund-Mann School of Writing at Spalding University.
Excerpted from
Don’t Go Unless You Mean It
PROLOGUE
Remembering is an act of creation.
So go ahead, Cody, and remember. Lift yourself up, just pick one of those giant oaks in Town Square Park and climb, and look out over this: the little western Kentucky river town of your youth, stretching its limbs out in all directions like a slain giant—ribcage hills and valleys, its open mouth the entrance to the cavernous coalfields. Now look, imagine you’re seeing it for the first time: Dad being dragged from the gullet of the mine, melted skin glued to his bones, ash-flake clothes lifting up into the hot wind like a prayer. Picture Luke, that brother of yours— see him with the gun, the smile that isn’t a smile, the things he will do, the things you never bothered to stop.
Don’t look for Maisie. She’s not here. Maybe she never was.
Go on, now. See the clearing of the woods, see the winding highway pulling you back into the world you tried so desperately to leave, and remember this above everything else: before you ever met Hunter McCready, there was the deer. A harbinger. An augury. A breathing carcass darkening the frame between death and life.
You know how it will all turn out, Cody—same as always. Will you still go? You don’t have much time. Make your choice. And do it like you mean it.
1
The truck’s hazard lights blinked, their red glow pulsing Cody’s shadow against the tree line of the woods that banked the two-lane highway. He had walked behind the truck to check for damage, but instead found the dying deer itself, its mangled body meshed into the metal of the trailer hitch bar. Part machine, part beast. Its hind legs kicked against the box trailer, its bloodied face resting against the truck’s tailgate. Ropes of entrails hung down from its gaping belly, mopping the pavement. Cody lit a cigarette because he couldn’t think without one. They were just four miles from reaching the Blue Valley city limits, and now this.
Maisie emerged from the passenger side of the truck into the punchy October air. She stretched her legs, threw on Cody’s faded University of Chicago hoodie. Edging her way to the back of the truck, she scrunched her dyed-purple hair into a messy bun. Cody held out a hand to stop her before she saw anything.
“Don’t go back there,” he warned. “It’s bad.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, turned to blow the smoke opposite from Maisie. He’d done his best not to smoke around her for the last couple of months, but he hadn’t had a cigarette since they left Chicago six hours ago, and he needed something to take the shake out of his hands. Maisie held onto his arm, angled around him to look behind the truck.
“Oh, God,” she said, lifting a hand to her mouth. She looked at Cody and then back to the mutilated animal. He took a final drag on the cigarette, flicked it into the gravel on the shoulder. The dark of the night whispered all around. It was well past 1:00 a.m.
“We must have dragged the thing two hundred feet,” Cody said. The deer moaned, kicked against the trailer one more time, fell limp. It sucked a breath, but it couldn’t last long. Cody fumbled with his keys out of habit, something to keep his hands busy while he thought. He looked back at the deer and then at Maisie, and he felt bad for one of them but couldn’t quite figure out which one. “We’re gonna have to cut it off the truck somehow,” he said. Where had they packed the kitchen knives in the U-Haul trailer? Maisie had made sure everything was stacked so tightly back there—Tetris skills, she had said—that it would likely take a few hours to find the right box and then put everything back in place.
“You think she’s in pain?” Maisie asked, edging toward the deer’s face. “You can’t just cut her up. She’s still breathing.” Cody hardly ever noticed Maisie’s British accent anymore, but now that they were out of Chicago, it clashed against the open Kentucky country of Blue Valley County. A sudden pang of regret welled inside him, dark and deep. What the hell were they doing here? Maisie inched her hand closer and closer, finally letting it rest on the deer’s nose. The animal whimpered, but it didn’t flinch.
“Look, I’m gonna have to find some help or we’ll be stuck here for hours,” Cody said. As he paced between the trailer and the cab of the truck, he could hear Maisie humming softly to the deer as she stroked its nose. She was going to be an amazing mother. In their two years, Cody had witnessed it countless times: Maisie’s ability to pour kindness into others, even when she was damn near empty herself. She had a way of attracting the dying deer of the world, and she always knew just what to do when they found her.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It didn’t take long for Cody to wave someone down. That’s one thing he could say about Kentucky—people around these parts were still willing to stop in the middle of the night to help a stranded motorist. The guy gave him a ride in his brand new, 1991 GMC Cyclone, took him two miles down the road to a pay phone, and had him back to Maisie in only fifteen minutes. Cody hopped into the cab of the truck, scooted next to her. She tucked her knees up into the oversized sweater.
“You get in touch with anyone?” she asked.
“Luke,” said Cody. “He just got off swing shift at the mine. Said he’ll be here in a few minutes.” Maisie closed her eyes, rested her head against the back of the seat. “Feeling sick again?” She nodded, so Cody eased her head down into his lap, rubbed her temples. The nausea hadn’t let up since four weeks into the pregnancy. Hyperemesis gravidarum—that’s what the doctor called it, reaming out the Greek and Latin like a wizard casting a spell. She threw up three or four times a day, lost six pounds early on. It landed her in the hospital after she couldn’t keep any liquids down for three days straight. Now that she had made it to thirteen weeks she was showing some improvement, but the slightest trigger could send her heaving. The smell of cookie dough. The sight of raw meat. A mouthful of Greek yogurt. She’d dealt with carsickness her whole life, but now that the problem was compounded by the fetus—that’s what they called it, always with a smile—she could only travel at night, or tucked up in the back of the cab where she could hide from the dizzying light behind the tinted windows.
The glint of headlights flashed across the rearview mirror as Luke pulled his Jeep onto the shoulder of the road. Cody didn’t want to see him, not until after he and Maisie had settled in, until he could work up the nerve to deal with his brother and the hell he would give him. About how Cody had to come crawling back to Blue Valley begging for work. How the big-time college man was knocked out of the ivory tower and smacked down into the belly of the underground coalmines. It pissed him off just thinking about it, but now the deer was here and so was his brother. He was just going to have to deal with it one way or another.
“He’s here,” Cody said. Maisie was drifting in and out of sleep. “You just rest while we take care of the deer.”
“No. I should meet him. I want to meet him.” She pulled herself out of his lap.
“No, you really don’t,” Cody said. “Not tonight. Not like this.” He swung out of the cab before she could protest. Luke stood at the back of the truck next to the animal, shining a flashlight on the corpse like a cop at a crime scene. Cody edged along the side of the truck, approached with the same caution he always used with his older brother. Luke Culver was a deep well—it was always best to dip the first bucket with caution.
“You know what I said to myself this morning?” Luke asked. He flashed the light into Cody’s eyes, flipped it back down at the deer. “I said, hey Luke, you know what would be great? It sure would be special if Cody rolled in to town a week before he said he would, just drove right through the middle of the night without telling nobody.” Luke swung his body forward, and that’s when Cody first noticed the fifth of Jim Beam gripped in his right hand. “And then I thought, you know, I’d be so happy if he exploded a damn animal all over the back end of his truck so he could call me up at two in the morning to come rescue his sorry ass.” Luke stepped into the divide between them, sucked a long shot from the bottle. The hazard lights strobed his face, reflected just enough to expose the contours of his pronounced cheeks. A scar ran the length of his right jawline, the raised skin glistening in the red glow. He’d lost weight since Christmas, all taut skin and jutting edges. He leaned close to Cody’s face with 90 proof breath. The slightest spark could have set them both ablaze.
Cody began to stammer, but before he could get out the first word, Luke broke into wild laughter. “C’mon, Cody,” he said, trying to reign himself in. “I’m just messing with you, man.” He threw back another shot from the bottle, wiped a hand across his mouth. Cody shifted his weight, forced out a laugh. Luke thrust the bourbon bottle into his grip.
“Here, college man. Drink yourself some courage and let’s go slice up Bambi over there.” Luke stumbled back toward his Jeep. Cody looked toward the cab of the truck, saw Maisie watching them from the rear window. He shrugged and blew her a kiss. She swiped at the air and caught the kiss, made a show of sticking it in her pocket for safe keeping. Maisie to the rescue. If Cody had to shred up a deer carcass with his drunk brother at two in the morning, at least he could look at Maisie and know that somehow the world still made sense. He smiled at her, then turned around to find Luke extending the handle of a hunting knife toward him. Cody took it, and the two of them went to work on the deer.
“So, where’s your, uh, you know—your European?” Luke asked. He tried to slip into an exaggerated British accent, but he sounded more like an Irish-Australian hybrid—maybe some Canadian mixed in for good measure. “She taking a spot o’ tea in the truck? Avin’ some crumpets and biscuits, eh?” Cody shook his head and laughed—what else could he do? Bourbon or not, if Luke found his way into one of his “high spells,” you just had to go along for the ride. He would come back down soon enough. That’s when you really had to worry.
Cody poked at the deer while Luke made broad, sweeping slashes across the flesh. When the carcass was almost free, Luke grabbed the deer’s head, pressed his left foot against the truck’s bumper to brace himself, and yanked. The butchered doe swung free in one clean motion, splatted the concrete. Blood pooled around Cody’s shoes.
“How’s that for fun on a Friday night?” said Cody. “Now you get on back home to Candace before she thinks you’re out messing around on her.” He smiled, but Luke clenched his jaw into a rigid line. He swiped the bourbon bottle up from the ground a few feet away, lifted it to his lips, but then thought better of it, easing the bottle down onto the hood of his Jeep. Cody looked away. He knew nothing about Luke’s life anymore, nothing about Candace. (How much later was it before he realized that Luke was thinking of Hunter McCready even then?)
“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to—”
“Grab the legs down there and help me swing this thing into your truck,” said Luke. He bent down and lifted the deer’s head.
“You’re serious? I’m not putting a mangled deer corpse into my truck.”
“Of course you are,” Luke said. “I don’t know how y’all do things in Chicagoland, but you best not forget your roots. Folks around here ain’t gonna let all that meat go to waste. I’ll come take it off your hands tomorrow.”
Cody looked through his truck window, waved at Maisie. He had brought her to Blue Valley. No turning back now. With a guilty throb caught in his throat, he gripped the hind end of the deer, heaved the carcass into the bed of the truck.
2
The truck careens around a bend on a deserted highway, the Chicago skyline fading in the rearview mirror. The deer sits in the passenger seat, head bobbing, hoofs scratching at the windows. Cody punches at the deer to keep it away, then reaches back for the wheel—but it’s gone. Maisie is on her knees before him, soft purple curls brushing his legs. Relax baby, she says, it’s just a deer. The truck zooms on through the highway. Cody tries to push the brakes, but the pedals are gone. Relax baby, she says. Do you think she’s hurt? Just enjoy the ride. When did she start sounding so Canadian? Cody looks to the passenger seat. Luke holds the deer, tilts the animal’s head back, flashes the knife. One clean cut across the throat. Spurts of blood. Maisie looks up and gags. Dry heaves. Here it comes—
Cody startled awake, pushing himself off the sweat-drenched pillow. Maisie was retching somewhere—in the bathroom, he hoped—but he was still trying to get his bearings, remember where they were. Back in Chicago they had lived in a closet-sized studio apartment a block from campus. Barely enough space for a futon, a writing desk, Maisie’s plants. Here, in the ramshackle farmhouse on Old Johnsonville Road on the outskirts of Blue Valley, they faced a maze of sprawling rooms, an embarrassment of space they could never fill with their smattering of mutt furniture and disparate knick-knacks. Half the rooms had been gutted, but they were living rent-free—Cody’s mom inherited the old house at her uncle’s passing a decade ago, and the place had been sitting vacant for years. Even with the two large bedrooms upstairs practically inaccessible—a leaking roof and years of neglect had left most of the drywall and flooring a rotting, brittle mess—the house swallowed them in the 2,000 square feet of the first floor. It echoed the clicks of shoes against the oak floorboard, creaked when they moved through the solid-plank doorframes. No electricity yet, so last night they had stumbled through the darkened labyrinth, dumped a sad pile of everything they owned onto the middle of the living room floor.
Cody stretched his back until he felt the satisfying pop of his spine, then rolled off the futon mattress they had thrown on the floor in the corner of the main bedroom. Morning sunlight broke into the room through the dust-streaked windows. The cream-colored walls were mottled with nail holes where pictures had once hung. Dingy baseboards. Cracked drywall. Cobwebs streaming from the blades of a tarnished ceiling fan. Cody peeled off his t-shirt, used it to wipe the streams of sweat from his chest and back of his neck. The crisp October air seeped in from the broken window seals and enveloped the room. Cody stood in just his boxer briefs, let the coolness overtake him.
Maisie hobbled back into the bedroom wearing Cody’s oversized sweatshirt stretched down over her underwear and the tops of her bird-bone legs. Her purple bangs swooshed across her face. “I was half-asleep and couldn’t find the toilet,” she said, “so I puked in the kitchen. Mostly in the sink.” Cody tucked her bangs behind her ear and kissed her forehead. He slid around behind her, slipped his hands up under the front of the sweatshirt, resting them across her bare stomach. She wasn’t showing yet, but he could feel the subtle contour of a baby bump, her skin firm and taut just below her belly button.
“What does the fetus want for breakfast today?” he asked. Maisie’s body stiffened in his arms. They had joked this way since the plus sign first appeared on the pregnancy test, but that was back in Chicago, back where it was safe and they knew how to manage their own shifting lives. “You feeling okay about all this?” Cody asked. “I mean, I know we agreed this would be best. But now we’re here and it’s real and I just need to know you’re okay.” Maisie wrapped her arms across his hands. It was all she could give him.
“Waffles,” she said. She turned into him, kissed his bare chest. “The fetus demands waffles.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cody flipped through the familiar FM radio stations of his old hometown as he pulled his truck onto Pike Lane, one of the two main drags of Blue Valley. The half-broken antenna on his Chevy S10 only picked up five stations: three contemporary country, one classic rock, and one gospel/country hybrid. He was about to flip to the AM dial to find some talk radio when Johnny Cash and June Carter started crooning “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” He cranked up the volume and let those two give him a guilty-pleasure welcome back into Kentucky life. Pike Lane stretched through the entire west side of town—the old end as the locals called it—and eventually joined up with the highway that would take you across the Ohio River and into Indiana. It ran parallel with the three-block stretch of downtown Blue Valley with its connecting storefront brick buildings. Most of the old downtown shops were boarded up, but a few staples of the community clung to the old roundabout—stubborn, unyielding, the ethos of the little river town made manifest.
Cody set his blinker and turned onto Third Street, rolling past the remaining stalwarts of downtown: Chuck’s Hardware and Fine Gifts, Dreyer Brothers Furniture, River View Bakery. At the end of the block, he squealed into a parking spot in front of Leon’s Family Restaurant. If the fetus wanted waffles, the fetus would get the best damn waffles in western Kentucky.
The welcome bells clanked against the glass, and just like that, he was back to the Saturday mornings of his childhood. His dad, known throughout Blue Valley as Coaldust Culver, made Saturday morning breakfast at Leon’s with his two boys a nonnegotiable weekend tradition until he died ten years ago when Cody was fourteen. “I work 70 hours a week underground,” Coaldust would tell anyone who would listen. “When I come out of the hole on the weekend, you bet your bottom dollar I’m going to spend it with my boys, whether they like it or not.” It was a conviction of his, one he stuck with for Cody’s entire childhood. Leon’s on Saturday morning, bowling at Spinning Pins Lanes on Saturday night, church on Sunday. A small chalkboard sign still hung behind the counter at Leon’s with 337 scrawled in big, blue numerals: the number of weeks in a row Coaldust Culver sat in his front corner booth on Saturday mornings, a stack of waffles in front of him, his two boys across the table. Leon presented the sign as a gift to the family at the funeral, but Luke took it back the next week and hung it in its rightful place.
The restaurant was mostly empty. A smattering of seniors sat at a row of tables against the back wall drinking black coffee, prattling about last night’s Blue Valley High football game. A group of miners occupied a round table at the center of the restaurant. Cody had left town six years ago, but it was still just as easy for him to spot a gaggle of miners in Blue Valley, mostly because at least a few of them would be wearing some bit of clothing with the distinctive logo of the Unified Partners mine: a dotted triangle with “Energy” emblazoned at the apex, and “Family” and “Community” at the two lower corners. Last week, when Cody had finished the last of his underground mining certifications and signed his final paperwork, the HR rep tossed him a Unified ball cap and windbreaker. “The brand’s important to us here,” he said with a stiff smile. “It’s important to you now, too. Wear it with the same pride your daddy did.” When Cody arrived back in Chicago later that night and walked through the apartment door wearing the cap, Maisie gave him a quick hug and peck on the cheek, then said she felt sick and needed to lie down. “It’s just for a year or so,” Cody promised. They started packing the next day.
As he stepped to the counter to order, he heard his brother’s voice at the miner’s table behind him: “You get my deer cleaned up yet?” Cody turned to see Luke lingering over a plate smeared with the remnants of biscuits and sausage gravy. The other three men at the table turned to look Cody over. Two younger guys around Luke’s age—late twenties—and one in his fifties. The older man looked familiar, but Cody couldn’t place him. Cody sidled up to the table awkwardly, trying to figure out what to do with his hands. These were his colleagues. The word bounced around his mind as he nodded and waved, but he just couldn’t make it fit.
“Small town, huh?” he said. He pulled an extra chair back from the table but didn’t sit.
“It’s Saturday,” said Luke. “Don’t act like you didn’t know exactly where I’d be on a Saturday morning.” He gave a quick nod at the chalkboard behind the counter. The other three men stared at Cody until he could feel it, until he had to do something. He tilted the chair back on its hind legs so his arms would have purpose for a few moments. “You gonna sit in that chair or dance with it?” asked Luke. Cody leaned the chair back down and took a seat. He shook hands with the other three miners, starting with the older man to his right.
“Cody Culver. Nice to meet you,” said Cody. The man smiled at him, gripped his hand.
“Lord almighty, Cody,” he said. “You been gone for, what, six or seven years and suddenly everybody’s a stranger?” He tossed his napkin on his empty plate, leaned back, squinted his beady eyes. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” Luke chuckled to himself. Cody made a quick study of the man: his thinning brown hair graying at the temples, his reddened cheeks, his plaid, button-down shirt stretched over his bulging stomach. He certainly didn’t have a miner’s body. His voice was gentle, familiar. And then it hit him.
“Brother Jim!” Cody said. He shook hands with the pastor again, with vigor and a smile this time to make up lost ground. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. Jesus.” As soon as the word slipped from his lips he wanted it back. Taking the Lord’s name in vain right in front of his old preacher—it was worse than dropping an f-bomb. Luke slapped Brother Jim on the back.
“You’ll have to forgive Cody here, Pastor,” he said. “He hasn’t had to tame his tongue much in the city.” He faced Cody, smiling. “But he’s back in Blue Valley now, so I reckon he’d better learn how things work around here again soon enough.” Hives vined up the back of Cody’s neck and around his ears. He imagined himself running out the door, grabbing Maisie from the old farmhouse, burning up the road all the way back to Chicago. But he had made a promise to his mother, and he wasn’t going to flake out a day after he came into town. Just for a year or so, he reminded himself. This would have to be his mantra. It was the only way.
Brother Jim pushed back from the table, tossed a stack of cash next to his plate. “Breakfast is on me this time, fellas,” he said. “If I don’t see y’all tomorrow in service, you boys be safe underground.” He turned to Cody, gave him a wink. “Come on just as you are, young man. We’ve got a pew for everybody.” He stuck a toothpick into his mouth and let the door chime usher him out. The two younger guys excused themselves as well, leaving Cody to face his big brother alone. No midnight darkness to hide in.
Luke slid a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one up, setting Cody’s mouth to watering like Pavlov’s dog. He dug a cigarette from his own crinkled pack, lit one up, held the smoke deep in his chest until he felt the burn. Luke tapped the ash from his cigarette into his empty plate and slouched in his chair.
“How’s Candace?” Cody asked. He’d already picked at the wound last night—might as well rip off the scab in broad daylight. Luke leaned forward, took another drag. He chortled as he exhaled, the smoke popping in ringlets from the corner gate of his smile.
“Look,” he said, “let’s not pretend like you care about how Candace is or how we’re getting along.
“I was just—”
“We’ve seen you, what, a half-dozen times in the last six years? If it wasn’t important to you then, it’s not important now.” He cocked his head to the side, eyes growing sharp. “What the hell are you doing here, man?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Cody. “You know why I’m here. We’ve talked about this.” He used the dying embers of his spent cigarette to light a second one.
“Right,” said Luke, shaking his head. “You and the Brit are broke. Baby on the way. I get all that.” He picked at some dirt underneath his fingernails. “But that ain’t enough for my baby brother to come crawling back with his tail between his legs. No sir. Too much Culver pride.” Cody picked up a straw wrapper, rolled it into a tiny ball. Par for the course, Luke was speaking half of the truth. There was nothing waiting for Cody and Maisie in Illinois but mounds of student debt and welfare housing. They thought they could manage with government benefits for a while, so they hurried to the courthouse for a marriage license the day after the pregnancy was confirmed. But living in the city ate every bit of money they made, leaving nothing at the end of the month to pay off their monstrous student loans—loans that their undergrad degrees in English literature and art history may never be able to pay back. But that was only half the story.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” said Cody. He flicked the tiny paper ball across the table. Luke leaned back, raising the front two legs of his chair off the ground.
“I just want to hear the words, that’s all.” He slid a toothpick into the side of his mouth. “You don’t trust me to take care of her. Just say it.”
“That’s not true,” said Cody, looking away. “She needs both of us here.” He thought of their mother, how frail she looked after the diagnosis the month before. Stage three colon cancer. He came in to visit, only planned to stay until after she was back on her feet. But after the first surgery, his mom had begged him to move back home. “You’ve been gone for six years, baby,” she said, taking his face between her trembling hands. “You can at least give me six months.” He wanted to tell her no, that his life was back in Chicago. But when he saw what a mess Luke had become—drunk, depressed, unhinged—Cody knew he had to come back.
“We don’t need no hero around here,” said Luke as he eased his chair back to the ground. “You just keep that in mind.”
“Fair enough,” said Cody. It was no use to go on defending himself. “Well, I need to go grab some waffles before Leon runs out. I’ll be seeing you around the mines, I reckon.” Cody jumped back at his own words. Did he just say reckon? Six years gone, but it came back so fast.
As he turned to leave, the door chime sounded again, drawing the attention of the brothers. At first Cody didn’t pay much mind to the slender man darkening the door frame, but when he noticed Luke’s eyes narrow, saw him clenching a white-knuckled fist around a butter knife, he thought he’d better take a second look. When he did, something opened inside him, a seed blossoming in the gut.
Long wisps of black hair curled around the man’s ears and framed his smooth, angular face. Intricate tattoo sleeves wrapped up his arms and disappeared beneath the short sleeves of a plain black t-shirt. He looked like he was in late twenties, but there was an air of innocence and youth in his subtle movements, in the way he smoothed a stray curl away from his face, the way he scanned the room with cautious eyes. He stood in the doorframe for only seconds, but it was long enough to turn Cody inside out, even if he didn’t know why. When the man caught eyes with Luke, he backed out of Leon’s as quickly as he came, an apparition, an omen.
(Later, Cody would think of this moment and the quantum entanglement that made it possible, how every choice opens a new parallel existence, creates a new version of you and everyone else. Whatever came to be of the Hunter McCready who chose to stay at the restaurant that day? Whatever came to be of the Cody Culver who yielded to his fears and left Blue Valley before ever meeting him in the first place?)
Luke smashed the head of his cigarette into the center of his plate. Cody studied his brother, rigid and unyielding, anger pulsing behind his green eyes. “What’s with that guy—” he started, but Luke cut him off.
“A bit of advice before you go, little brother,” he said, looking away as he talked. “Don’t go down in those mines unless you mean it. I know I give you hell about running off to Chicago, about studying literature and other nonsense that won’t ever pay your bills. But it’s no joke underground.” His posture relaxed, just a little. “Those mines will swallow you up the same way they did Dad, the same way they’re doing me. Everybody goes down there thinking they’re just digging through the dust until something better comes along, but nothing ever does. So make sure you mean it.”
Cody stood still and let Luke’s words fall over him. What did this have to do with the man with the tattoos? What was he not saying? He smashed his cigarette into the center of the ashtray, gave his brother a firm slap on the back. Nothing else to go on, they shared a moment of silence, an unspoken acknowledgment of what they both knew: there was no other way for Cody. Yes, the mines would devour him, partly because he was desperate for cash and had a baby on the way, but mostly because he was a Culver. This was the path carved for him by the generations who came before, by those who knew the caverns under the western Kentucky hills better than they knew the world above, better than they knew each other, better than they knew themselves.