Fury Calls by Caridad Piñeiro Read Free Book Online Page B

from the abandoned farm up the road from the meager cottage he shared with his mother and five brothers and sisters. The smallish potatoes were all he had managed to round up that day to feed his family.
    With the latest accident closing the coal mine, there had been too many young men like him in town, looking for either jobs or handouts. It was possibly harder now than it had been when his da had passed in an accident nearly a dozen years earlier. At least back then he had found a way to put food on the table.
    A chill sweat erupted through his body at the memory of what he had done for the coins for that food. Of the old man’s cold touch and the press of the papery dry lips against his. The slide of a gnarled hand into Blake’s pants. Pants made loose from weeks of hunger.
    He had survived those weeks by finding greens in the forest and boiling them with water to make a thin soup that somehow managed to sustain him. Whatever food he had been able to scrounge back then, or buy with the coins the old man gave him in exchange for the liberties he took, he had left for his family.
    Luckily the mine had reopened several weeks after the accident that killed his da. With the mine shorthanded due to the men that had been lost, Blake had secured a job going down into the pit in place of his da and labored there for over a dozen years. His young boy’s body had become a man’s, filled out with thick, hard muscle from the arduous labor and the food he had been finally able to put on the table.
    But then another, much larger accident a month ago had forced the closure of the mine. The main shaft had been too badly damaged to repair, and the mine had nearly been tapped out anyway. With only one other mine left in town, many men had lost their livelihood, Blake included.
    As he approached their small homestead, guilt assaulted him that all he had to show his family was a few handfuls of stolen potatoes. At least it would be enough to take the edge off their hunger, he thought.
    To Blake’s surprise, the smell of something rich andearthy filled the room when he entered the cottage, making his stomach rumble and clench. He approached his mother as she stirred the pot at the stove, laid a hand on the small of her back as he had watched his da do for so many years. He leaned over her petite body and glanced at the thick, meat-filled stew simmering on the stove.
    â€œMa, that looks wonderful. Where did you—”
    â€œBryan caught a pair of rabbits in his snares this morning. Managed to find a patch of wild carrots as well,” his mother replied. But her anxious glance told him she didn’t quite believe Bryan’s explanation for the sudden bounty.
    Neither did he, judging from the thick diameter of the carrot pieces floating in the stew. No wild carrot he’d ever seen was that plump, not to mention that the wild rabbits had been scarce that spring, a by-product of the many snares that had been set to catch them.
    â€œI’ll talk to him, Ma,” he said, and emptied his pockets onto the work-rough surface of the kitchen table.
    His mother picked up one of the potatoes. “These will make a nice addition to the stew. You’re a good son, Blake.”
    He took hold of her hand and squeezed it tenderly. “Don’t worry about Bryan, Ma. I’ll see to it that he stays out of trouble.”
    His mother shot him a grateful glance and a nod of approval. “I know you will, son.”
    With that, he walked out of the cottage and toward the ramshackle shed where they kept a few scraggly chickens that occasionally provided them some eggs, and sometimes a meal when a hen became barren. Ashe did so, he waved at two of his sisters as they tended the tiny plot of vegetables that somehow managed to grow in the rocky soil.
    By the shed he ran into Bryan, who was tossing a handful of seed to the scrawny chickens within.
    Crossing his arms, he asked, “Where’s William and