Read Online The Deadheart Shelters by Forrest Armstrong - Free Book Online Page A

you’ll see them again?”
    “I don’t want to.” I was surprised at myself saying it; not because I thought it wasn’t true, but because of the ease of saying it. I mouthed the words again and smiled, then realized I should be ashamed at smiling and didn’t feel shame. “I used to think I would.”
    Dirt shrugged. “They’re suffering.”
    “I suffered too. Do you know how good it feels to be able to forget that? Is that one of your false memories?”
    “Don’t talk about those. I told you I don’t think about them anymore. I’m normal.”
    “I’m normal too. Why do you want to remind me about the slaves?”
    Dirt rubbed his hand along the wall and clapped and black dust fogged out the white momentarily. When the dust fell we heard a bang and much more black rushed the white lightless. We couldn’t see and when we could we saw there was no way out.

The first thing we did was take our hammers and start hitting at the mound made by the ceiling falling. We were calm, then. It took saying “We’ll be okay” many times to understand we wouldn’t be okay.
    “They must have blasted the wrong wall,” I said.
    “How stupid do you get?” He sat down. “Sorry.”
    “We’re lucky it didn’t crush us.”
    “Plenty die from being trapped, too. Think how long it takes to empty a wall; think about it.”
    I leaned back against the wall and breathed out black dust. “Oh well.”
    “Oh well?”
    “If we die at least we lived.”
    Dirt moaned. “You think that way! Me, I was just born! I knew it was a mistake to go with you—O…” His sobs made the words like hills, with up-walks and down-walks and a constant unsteady. It was the kind of thing that bothered you to hear, not because it made you realize something deep, but it was uncomfortable just to have happening.
    “Shut up. What will that do?”
    “Oh nothing, obviously,” but that made him cry more. And I realized how much like a child Dirt is, and I remembered when I thought to myself that I am like a child. It changed without me realizing it and then couldn’t come back.
    Dirt thrust his hands into the coal and all the loose pieces turned to powder. Floating like pollen in springtime open air but there was no open air and our lungs were hour glasses. I knew it was happening. None breathe it long enough without it happening. But Dirt was still crying, so I didn’t say it.
    At one point we heard the soft ping of hammers unburying us from the other side, but then it stopped. Dirt sank his head lower.
    “Did they give up so fast?”
    “Who knows? I wonder what time it is.”
    “We gave up too. We can’t be angry at them.”
    “There’s nothing to be angry at.”
    His face got that weird kind of tense before crying so I quickly said, “They’re just getting different tools.”
    Meanwhile, I imagined we were in one of the soap operas I watch when I want to simplify things.

There was a checkers table like there always was, but we were in a white-painted room with windows that took up whole walls. The platform the board sat on was made of bones from an elephant leg, because in soap operas you can buy anything. I’ve always noticed this. It’s as if the money’s always there without anybody getting it and in America we all accidentally dream this might be true. Today it was me and Mark’s turn to play. He was being like he always is and not much fun to play with but we were in a soap opera.
    “The problem with the youth is they got no respect,” Mark said. “They just want to do. But I watched checkers for years before I ever touched one.”
    “What you know about that?” Abe called. “You half as old as me. I could say things about you folks, too.”
    “Well shoot, old man.”
    We said these things because we had nothing else to worry about. In real life, where we did, we might have said them too, but they would have meant different things. Abe held a glass of red wine above his head, looking at it, and shook it too hard so some got