Page 226 of Tar City
The entire place is fucking sterile. The floor shines so much you can see your face in it. At this time of the night, everyone’s gone, which makes it very clear that my grandfather staying isn’t a normal work thing.
I take the stairs to keep myself from moving too quick, too fast. I breathe through the anger toward my family that decides now is a great time to surface.
When I hit the top floor, a memory comes back.A scream.I remember it from when I was a kid, something specific and odd. It’s buried so deep beneath everything else I’ve survived that I don’t even know who it belonged to anymore. But standing here—back in this hallway—brings it up like it happened yesterday, and I know with a certainty that chills me that I heard it right here, in this spot. Everything else from that moment is gone. Names, faces, reasons. But I know it happened.
I move down the hall, grateful for the thick rug swallowing my footsteps. The paintings on the walls pretend to be art but they’re really just trophies of land acquired: waterlines, shorelines, property borders. My family’s legacy, drawn in blood and ink.
The door to his office is slightly cracked, and voices slip out.
“…had a witness last time.”
My grandfather’s voice—calm as a fucking ledger. “Then you were sloppy.”
“I’m saying we should adjust the timing,” the other man presses, a little too careful. “The offering people have multiplied. They were still lighting candles. The whole ritual—the reverence they have for it. To dispose of one like that, right in the middle of their prayers… it feels like a risk. An insult.”
“Theatrics,” my grandfather cuts in. “I don’t care what you do to soothe your conscience, just don’t bring it into my building.”
“But—”
“The debt?” my grandfather asks, almost bored.
“It’s still unpaid.”
“An unpaid debt becomes a curse,” my grandfather says. “You know that. Make them pay.”
I take one more step and the floor creak gives me away.
My grandfather’s tone sharpens instantly. “Whoever the fuck is out there,” he says, cold and precise, “think very carefully before you?—”
I push the door open.
The man in the gray jumpsuit startles, looking between me and my grandfather like he’s trying to decide which one of us will kill him first.
“Leave,” my grandfather says to the man.
The man hesitates.
My grandfather doesn’t raise his voice. “I said leave.”
The man almost runs.
I look at the photographs—black-and-white shots of Tar City before it was Tar City. Back when it was just scaffolding, smokestacks, and men in coal dust lined up like volunteers.
I take one step further in and he smiles. “What can I do for you, Jaxwell,” he says at last.
I’m not in the mood for his games. I lift my hand and show him my palm. “Tell me what it is,” I say.
He leans back slightly. “Look for yourself.” He gestures toward the wall. “To the right.”
I glance over and see that one of the old photographs isn’t a photograph at all but a faded survey map, with thick red ink carving lines through the rock diagrams, right in the center of which is the same symbol burned into my palm: a vertical shaft line with two branching tunnels splitting outward.
My grandfather taps the frame lightly. “That,” he says, “is the St. Clair claim.”
He watches me take it in. “Early mining companies marked territory with symbols,” he continues calmly. “Surveyors carved them into beams. Stamped them onto tools. Filed them with the land registry.” His eyes flick back to my hand. “That one means the shaft belongs to us.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking tool,” I snap.
His eyes flick up. “You sound like your father.”
