Harlan County Horrors (12 page)

The
mine was as small and decaying as the town itself. Ernest didn’t
intend to work there very long, though he feared that was what his
father had told himself, and his father before him. With each step
toward the shaft, hope drained from his life. Only the vaguest idea
of a future smoldered in his young mind.

The
elevator car creaked as it wobbled to life, a shuddering start as
it lowered. For most of the morning, he wandered about near the
mouth of the shaft, crouched within its four-feet-high confines,
slowly acclimating himself to the low mine. Never straying toward
the depths promised by the shaft, Ernest watched it descend. The
steeply slanted roof prevented him from standing fully up. In a
squat shuffle, the work, while not overly arduous, after years
would take a toll. The tedium of their labors—no deviations from
the daily rituals, no promise of higher opportunities—reduced,
drained, and broke strong, vital men. Their good cheer masked
dilapidated spirits, a resignation to their lot in life; meat
puppets waiting to be ground by the company.

Momma packed the lunch and probably would have brought it down
herself if women coming underground weren’t considered bad luck.
Bologna between slices of white bread protruded from a sandwich
bag. He fished for the canteen of coffee from his metal lunch
bucket to wash it down, hating the taste of each. Yet eating among
the rest of his crew, each sharing similarly bland meals, made him
feel like one of them.

“
You scared, boy?” Dewey was a thick, no-nonsense man with
hard eyes and silver stubble. Up close, his crooked yellow
teeth—two uneven rows—were still stained with fresh brown spittle.
Grey chest hair sprouted in tufts above the fall of his shirt. He
spoke with a lethargic drawl.

“
No.” Ernest turned to Gene, who stared straight ahead and
drank his coffee. He’d have to make his own way without Gene’s
help.

“
I
can smell it on you. Don’t let no fear demons get in the way of
doing a good job.” Dewey was now the superintendent, but he regaled
Ernest with tales of how he used to cut timber to hold up the
ceilings, before the roof bolters, and dug up coal with a number
four shovel for eighty cents a ton. He’d joined the United Mine
Workers in 1948 for ten dollars and had carried the card with him
ever since...reminding Ernest of his grandfather.

The
thing about his grandfather was that Ernest had hated him and
everything he stood for. His grandfather had been a breaker boy at
age nine, breaking larger blocks of coal with a sledgehammer or
picking rock or slate from coal as it left the mine. He’d graduated
to a trapper, who closed and opened the doors to allow the coal
cars to travel in and out of the mines—since the doors had to be
closed to direct the airflow to the working face—still an unpaid
apprentice in order to gain the experience. Ernest hated the way
the old man had assumed he was just as simple-minded. A killer of
dreams, drumming into him to aspire to nothing higher than
mining.

He’d died of black lung. The mines had killed him. Ernest spat
at his feet.

“
You okay, son?” Dewey asked.

“
All of the stories you heard and dreams you ever had are
true.”

Dewey held an odd frozen rictus of a smile on his face. “What
about the nightmares?”

“
Especially the nightmares.”

“
You’re a very odd boy. Not at all what I expected from Gene’s
boy.”

“
I
get that a lot.”

Muck was in his blood.

The
desolate mine shaft stood, a festering sore among the landscape.
The machines continued to pound. The wind picked up and the rain
scourged the mouth of the mine. The drill struck from above, boring
deep beneath the folds of sifted earth to find where the coal seam
ran. The agitation of his heart, the racing of his blood, the
asthmatic seizing of his breath—Ernest attributed his state to his
deprivation of decent sleep, not to the opening in the earth. A
mouth locked open in an eternal scream only truly understood in the
night. The elevator compartment closed in on them, the thick wire
mesh clamping shut like a jaw. The compartment rattled to life and
then lowered. Over seven hundred feet of granite stood between them
and daylight. The elevator opened into an expansive chamber: a
crude coring of rock and a patchwork of beams and braces. A series
of tunnels, capillaries carrying the flow of coal, sprang from the
main shaft. Occasionally rapping a sounding rod against roof to
determine the safety of the shaft, Dewey, with the regular rhythm
of a sonar ping, dug holes every twenty feet.

“
He’s digging test holes,” Gene answered Ernest’s unasked
question. “If he got a trickle of water, we’d shut things down.
Danger of tunnel collapse.”

“
It’s like being buried alive. Like we’re already dead.”
Ernest placed his palm to the stone wall. It thrummed with
life.

“
Miners expect death every day,” Gene broke his reverie. “The
air tastes sweeter. Your mother looks as good, or even better,
every evenin’ I make it home.”

The
darkness held a sumptuousness to it. The air smelled loamy and
sweet. Ernest knew a sense of home within the craggy vestibule.
Filth crusted under his fingernails. Dust mixed with sweat, formed
a grey grime. He wiped his face, smearing himself in earthen war
paint.

Ernest prepared to plunge his shovel into the ground, then
suddenly froze. To the man, the miners stopped moving. They knew
something had gone wrong before the sirens went off. The subtle
shift of earth, the barest tremor, like exposed skin under a sudden
cool breeze. The cavern shuddered, a cascade of stone and dirt
followed by an explosion of dust. Earthen veins opened as a rocky
tumult collapsed, leaving plumes of smoke.

“
No!” someone cried, his voice distorted by the cacophony of
stone.

Ernest huddled against the craggy rock; the song of a cave’s
silence exaggerated the noise of shadows. Every distant
plink
, every choking breath or stifled
cry, every despondent moan, every shuffling, every shift of scree,
landed in Ernest’s ears with the force of exploding dynamite.
Within the wan light of his headlamp, he stooped, cramped by the
low ceiling, and he peered into the dark recesses, the sacred
depths of the cavern. The feeder shaft was reduced to a bottled up
earthen intestine. Many of the honeycombed passageways had
collapsed. Twisted and corroded, the metal skeleton of the elevator
crumpled under its own weight. Sparks jumped, ethereal
will-o’-the-wisps, until the power finally shut off. Cut off from
outside, the winds, cold and distant, and rain beating like the
plaintive wail of a mother along a casket faded to a brittle
memory.

Ernest’s jaundiced lamp dulled to a burnt orange glow; the
light withered before the towering shadows as the failing battery
sputtered. The outcropping of rock formed small chambers, barely
man-sized nooks, which cut off their freedom in degrees. A faint
groan emanated from the pool of cloying darkness. Something
sparkled in the faint reaches of his light. Ernest inched along the
claustrophobic enclosure, the passage reduced to a slot as rock
scraped him on either side.

“
Poppa?”

“
I’m all right.” Sprawled under the rubble of rocks, Gene
propped himself up on his elbows. Bruises the shape of rotted
apples dotted his skin, his body battered in a mosaic of wounds.
His helmet was slung at a peculiar angle, his eyes wide and lost.
His breaths came in spastic, shallow bursts.

“
Can you move?”

“
Yeah.”

“
What happened?” Ernest hooked him under his shoulder and
helped him up. Suddenly the man he called “Poppa” seemed very
small.

“
Top was bad.”

“
But it had been inspected.”

“
My ass ‘it had been inspected.’ The company’s gonna have the
rock fall cleaned up before the inspectors ever get here. But
they’ll pay for this. It’s our way. Someone does harm to kin, even
if it takes years, blood is avenged. ‘Blood for blood.’
”

“‘
Life for life.’”

“
It’s all about kin. Come on, let’s keep moving. The mine’s no
place to leave your ghost.”

“
I
think I heard someone this way.”

“
It’s all right to admit you’re scared, son.”

“
I’m not.”

The
image of dust in the lone lamp beam added to his mounting dread,
each breath becoming more and more of a struggle. He flashed his
light about the cavern, scourging the shadows, then paused to
listen and gain his bearings; each tunnel was identical to the
last. The writhing darkness scattered the frail light of his
beam.

“
Who’s that?”

“
That you, Dewey?”

“
Gene?”

“
Yeah. Me and the boy.”

His
face an ashen lump, Dewey was an echo of the man Ernest knew,
frozen in terror with the dawning realization he was dying alone
and in the dark etched in his eyes. The rocks had collapsed onto
his waist and pinned him. His breath came in hitching
gulps.

“
My rheumatism seems to be actin’ up.”

“
That might be the rocks on top of you,” Gene said. They both
forced a chuckle.

“
I
sure could use me a cigarette.”

“
I
hear these things are bad for your health.” His hands trembling,
Gene put a cigarette in his mouth, though he wouldn’t light it even
if he could for fear of another explosion. The taste of the tobacco
in his mouth seemed to be enough.

“
Tell my girl—”

“
Tell her yourself.”

A
knot rustled in Dewey’s throat. His chest stopped moving. Ernest
brushed against the sandpaper scrape of his face and closed the
man’s eyes.

A
wail over the unsteady pounding of his heart broke the viscous
silence. Ernest swallowed hard at the hollow howl of grief and
abandoned hope. The endless darkness undid the men who lay trapped
and dying in the dark. The scent of gunpowder charged the air. With
a nod, he led Gene toward the sound. Despite the hunch of his
posture, he found a foothold and inched his body forward. His
fingers dug along the unforgiving rock walls. Scarred rock. His
fingers scraped across the stone, studying the braille of the
crevice. Runes, primitive calligraphy etched into the walls, each
crevice a sarcophagus of stone. The passageway canted upward into
an unfolding network. The black dust of coal reduced them to
walking silhouettes.

Ernest stopped abruptly. Gene trundled past, not noticing the
niche in the cave wall, then sidled up alongside him. Rats, finely
arranged in a crude geometry. Their bellies gnawed through, their
furry bodies in varying states of decay. The state of deformity
pregnant with meaning. The sense of otherliness, of transition,
brought to fullness upon entering the caves. The susurrous,
indefinable noises brought a measure of comfort.

“
Poppa, somethin’ bad happened,” Ernest whispered, overwhelmed
by the reverence demanded by the room.

“
I
know, but we’ll get out, you’ll see. I bet the rest of the men are
already halfway through to digging us out.” Gene’s arm dangled at
his side.

“
No, not this. To Uncle Russell.” Ernest spoke with a grave
sincerity.

“
What happened?”

“
We were fishin’. Sittin’ there like we always did, feet
dipped into the water, lines cast out. Not expectin’ to catch
anything—we never did—it was just our excuse to be out in the air.
In the light.”

“
Go on.”

“
Poppa, it was like a fox raised with hens. They might play
nice at first, but eventually the fox will remember it was a fox,
and the hens weren’t its playmates, but its prey. One moment we’re
sittin’ there laughin’; the next, he suddenly looks
like…food.”

“
What did you do, boy?” Poppa grew even smaller in bearing.
Pale, thin, and soft.

“
I
didn’t do nothin’. All of a sudden, his fishing line got tight. We
stared at each other, stunned that we caught anythin’. He grabbed
his rod with both hands, screamin’ about what a fighter it was.
Maybe a ten pound catfish. A shadow crept across the water. Next
thing I know, somethin’ yanked Russell into the water. He fought.
Water splashed everywhere, a churn of pink bubbles, and then it
stilled. The thing in the water…all I remembered were its eyes.
Cold and grey. And I ran.”

“
You did what you had to. You’re still a boy. My boy. You were
afraid.”

“
Except I wasn’t afraid. I know those eyes. They felt
familiar. That day you and Russell went huntin’, the day you met
Momma, had you killed anythin’?”

Ernest raked his fingers across his father’s throat. Gene
clutched at the sputtering gurgle his neck had become. His eyes
bulged with an almost alien aspect. Ernest twisted his Poppa’s head
until he heard a sound that reminded him of the cracking of ice
along the creek. He stood, transfixed at the sight of the broken
form of his father. Intruding on his small, child-like world, a
familiar thrum of a dim voice called across the darkness to
Ernest.

Exhausted, running on the fumes of adrenaline, Ernest’s head
ached. Gene’s body dragging behind him, he tromped through a puddle
and skidded, re-twisting his ankle. His blood sludged through
his
veins. Cold
and numb, he no longer felt his foot within his boot.
Ha
ving grown up on
a farm, Ernest knew well the smell of an abattoir. He entered a new
chamber. An initial wave of panic surged in him at the horror of
wounds. The bodies of the men were indistinguishable in the dark.
Claw marks within torn flesh. Bodies half stripped, slabs of beef
presented as offering. An assembly line of flesh, fit for little
more than stew meat and bones for dogs to grind up.