kanyon macmillan | d12 (fin)

hīdəˌwā

"Hideaway (n.) A place used for retreat or hiding. Synonyms include sanctuary, hideout, refuge…"

The Macmillans carved their quarry in dozens of directions, but Kanyon was never allowed to step foot in any of them but one. It was too dangerous, his father declared, outside of the shallow strip where he did have permission to wander. The narrow part of the mine was abandoned, with only traces of uprooted railroad tracks in its weight, their imprints permanent upon the gravel and stone.

For Kanyon and his sister, this became their hideaway. A place for them to go if things got intense at the house. The Macmillans hired dozens of miners, but Kanyon couldn't name one who was happy to do so. They'd show up at the Macmillan doorstep with torches lit, demanding to see his father. The hours are too long. There's no light in the mines. Our miners are fainting from the lack of food and water. His father and older brother, Evan, were the ones tasked with responding. In case things took a turn, they ordered Kanyon and his sister to their hideaway in the mines.

They played Miners down there. It was a puzzle game where the players took turns moving stones around the board until they could move the Golden Ball outside of the stones with a pickaxe. If either the ball or the pickaxe touched a stone, the mine would collapse, resulting in a game over. Kanyon tormented his sister with his reckless style of play every time. He breathed down her neck, strands of his long brown hair tickling her shoulder. Selfishly, he wanted her to lose. When they won, it meant one less thing to do wait out whatever conflict was going on overhead.

He loved his sister, desperately. No matter how much he loved Evan, his big brother was too old and complex to understand. According to one of the miners who accosted Kanyon outside of the quarry, his big brother was a lackey for their father and a psychopath. Needless to say, when Kanyon told his father about this encounter at the dinner table, he sent Evan to take care of it. That gentleman was fired shortly after.

When Kanyon asked his father why the miners came and went so quickly, he responded quickly "We run a tight ship. Or minecart, I suppose would be the better word for it." While the Macmillan business was known to be strict, Kanyon could never recall a time when his father was strict with him. Was he a warm, loving father? No. In fact, he was quite cold. Never once did he lay a finger on him or his sister. And he never asked more of them than he knew they were capable.

It was the time of the 88th Hunger Games when some things changed. Evan volunteered. It took everyone by surprise, even their father. Initially, it didn't seem as though his father was worried. "If anyone can volunteer and win, it's your brother." On the fourth day, when Evan did die, their father fell into a rage. He ordered Kanyon to find a hideaway in the house this time. The machete overhead the front door has disappeared from its mantle. Kanyon and his sister hid in the basement. A leak from the storm raging outside dripped through the aged concrete. The afternoon bled on into early evening before their father found them and told them it was okay to come back out. The machete was back in its place by the time they climbed the stairs as if it had never left its place.

Kanyon suspected violence, but he was surprised to see miner after miner hand in their hardhats the next day. His father fired them with no replacements in mind. That day, he ordered Kanyon to make a sign for the quarry and post it outside the house.

CLOSED FOR THE YEAR.

They made no money for a year. Kanyon's stomach sunk itself in, fending for him and his sister on daily trips to the Seam and market. Their father fasted often and meditated on the hill behind their estate to pass the time. Fog settled in on the house every night as if haunted by Evan himself. At night, Kanyon slipped into the closed mines. With a flashlight in hand, he went deeper than the hideaway, and much further than a boy his age ever should've gone.

He hunted for something down there, but never quite knew what. Gold? Secrets? Monsters? Ghosts?

Kanyon made it his goal to find the end of the mine on the final day before his father reopened the quarry. He memorized paths each night, knowing which ways led deeper and which were dead ends. He went at night this time, when his sister, father, and his father's new girlfriend wouldn't be awake to wonder where he went. He followed the railroad tracks until they transitioned into a beaten path, and the beaten path until it transitioned to gravel indented with boot tracks.

The sound of flowing water signaled to Kanyon that he was getting close to something. He took the wide path toward the trickling water and a feint blue light. He was about to round the bend when a hand wrapped around his shoulder. Cold, ghostly. "The mines are closed, Kanyon."

It was his father. For the first time, he looked at Kanyon disapprovingly. They walked back out of the mines together. It interested him how easily his father maneuvered the mines as the pair made it out of the quarry in half the time it took Kanyon to get down.

Kanyon never knew what his father was doing down there. It was the middle of the night, after all. Shouldn't he have been sleeping?

A week later, the mines officially reopened, and every worker they once had was replaced with new, younger men and women, just out of reaping age by their appearances. His father gave Kanyon a new role this time. He was to punch the workers in and out each night in exchange for his weekly allowance.

He grew up faster after Evan died. By sixteen, his father had him working in the mines with all the other workers. That was something Evan never had to do. Was it punishment for his nosiness as a boy? Life drained out of his eyes, he was an employee of his father now, sometimes at the expense of him being his son.

At the end of the work day, Kanyon wandered back to his hideaway. He played Miners on his own now, mostly, except when his sister wasn't out with their stepmother and had the time to play like they were kids once again.

The mines were once his hideaway. But now, as a consequence of that night, it's a place of long-spent and hard-worked days.

Was this a consequence of his father catching him? Or was it a consequence of him catching his father?

Only the fog will tell.