A Novel Excerpt

?The colliery whistle wailed. Dylan Teague, sitting on the stoop of his house in the patch, turned in the direction of the colliery. A glance up at the position of the sun told him it wasn’t noon. Nor was it time for a shift change. There was only one reason for the signal now, one that made the youth shudder. The piercing blast of the whistle was among the myriad sounds imbedded in his memory of the day that had been his last working at the breaker. “The mishap,” his mother called it. Dylan had mulled other words for it but none were truly fitting. Unconsciously, the boy’s left hand went to the empty sleeve where his right arm should have been. He gritted his teeth, recalling the pain and horror of that day. Shutting his eyes, Dylan rose and leaned against the porch post. “You’re still me lovely boy,” his mother had told him. “I’m a cripple, Ma. No use to anybody. And how are we to live now?”?

“We’ll get by. We will, son. We’ll get by.” Oh, the pain of it! They’d barely been getting by as it were. Now, without his paycheck, his mother and Jennie had to struggle to eke out a living for all of them, the job that should have been his gone through his own stupidity. And now, he who’d hoped to go from the breaker down into the mine and make a good living for his family, now he was nothing but another burden to them. Tears welled up in his eyes and he angrily brushed them away with his one good hand. “What’s happening?” his mother asked from the doorway behind him. “Must be another accident.” “God be with the poor soul, whoever he be,” she said and he heard her moving back into the house. Sure and she didn’t want to know more about it. As it was with him, so it was with her, stirring up the bad memories. Opening his eyes, Dylan saw people at the doors of other houses in the patch. Some walked out into the sunlight and down toward the colliery, drawn like bees to the plight of one of their own. Dylan stepped down into the road between the houses. But instead of going in the direction of the colliery, he turned?toward the church at the opposite end of the road. The sun was hot on his head and his shuffling feet kicked up dust from the road. He scratched at the bristle on his chin and stopped, gazing back in the direction of the breaker. As he turned around again he saw Nora McHugh coming out of the church. She was so lovely. Dylan gasped and his?breath went out of him as it always did when he saw her. Dylan knew what happened at the cemetery and he figured Nora had been in the church praying for her father. Like him, the girl ignored the colliery whistle. She went down between the houses and took the path into the ravine where the people dumped their stove ashes and other trash. Odd though, she carried no trash. As she came into sight again while she climbed up from the ditch, Nora glanced back over her shoulder. Though she didn’t acknowledge him, Dylan knew she’d seen him and he felt a red heat run over his body. She was only a few years younger than him and they’d played together as children. Now she must see him as the others did—a useless cripple, more to be pitied than loved. The thought hurt him, stung like the bite of a noisome insect. Do I love her? Dylan thought he might have, had life treated him differently. What right do I have now to entertain such thoughts of any girl? Now—seeing her—prompted thoughts other than love, thoughts that made him ashamed, though he could not control them. An annoying bulge in his britches reminded him of those feelings and, without conscious thought, his hand in his pocket gripped the protuberance.

If life had treated him different, Dylan thought, he might have loved Nora and tried to make her happy. He might have been a good husband and father and contributor to his community instead of a useless cripple. He might have been as good a man as his father had been, or as good as he believed?Ben Yeager would become. Nora disappeared into the trees as Dylan started down into the ravine behind her. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E9D5648/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p2_i11