The Hollow Ground: A Novel (11 page)

“I can’t see,” I sobbed. My breath snagged in my chest and my heartbeat became thunderous. I thought of Auntie sinking into the earth, I thought of Daddy trapped and terrified in the Devil Jaw mine shafts. “You don’t conquer fears,” Daddy liked to say. “You bury them deep down where you can’t feel them anymore.”

Billy and Eddie laughed and Billy said, “That’s ’cause the headlamp’s over your face, you dumbass.”

I sat up and pushed the headlamp back onto my forehead, too embarrassed to say anything. First all I saw was red and white patches but then my eyes started to adjust to the darkness, which was lit dimly a few yards in either direction by our lantern and flashlights.

I felt my way off the sofa cushions, my palms feeling hot and raw from rope burn. I stood up and shivered. It was not only chilly but so damp you felt like you could touch the moisture in the air. My gaze roved over the ceiling, and then down the wall to the floor. The tunnel was probably about eight feet wide and who knew how long in either direction. The lantern was on the ground near a six-pack of beer. There were empty bottles and cans of beer strewn all around and up against the wall nearest me were three kitchen chairs that matched the kitchen table up in the basement.

“You guys are the only ones who know about this?” Marisol said.

“Mike and Georgie come down sometimes too,” Billy said and then the boys bragged about how far they’d wandered in either direction of the tunnel and how many times they thought for sure they were lost or dead. Listening to them I got this feeling of déjà vu, as if I’d been in these tunnels many times.

“I don’t know about anyone else,” Marisol said. “But I don’t want to get lost or dead.”

Billy opened a can of beer and handed it to Marisol. “We also just hang out and drink.” He kicked an empty beer bottle. “Sometimes play truth or dare.”

“Truth or dare?” Marisol said. Her voice quivered with excitement. “Haven’t played that since I lived in New York.”

Despite the chill, sweat beaded on my neck. Truth or dare was a game the older kids played to get other kids to do or admit horribly embarrassing things. Often girls got dared to lift their shirts or to go off into the dark with a boy. In the back of my mind the warnings from Ma and Gram blazed, making it hard for me to think straight.

I nuzzled my face into my shoulder to arm myself with a sniff of Eddie’s sweatshirt. The boys arranged the three chairs into a tight circle and Eddie placed an empty bottle in the center.

“But there’s only three chairs,” Marisol said.

“Sit on my lap,” Billy said. “If the bottle aims at us we’ll take turns. First I’ll go, then the next time it aims at us, you go.”

Eddie said, “That’s the stupidest—”

Billy cut him off. “What do you care?”

Eddie grunted and looked away as Marisol settled onto Billy’s lap. We were sitting close enough that we could see each other fairly well but only yards from us darkness swallowed all of the light and lay there like a presence.

“I’ll go first,” Billy said. Awkwardly he leaned to reach the bottle and spin it. I’m sure we all knew he was hoping it would stop and aim straight at him and Marisol. But instead it fell short of its mark and aimed straight at me. He actually groaned in disappointment. “Truth or dare?” he said as if it was the most boring question ever asked by anybody.

I did Ma’s proud chin tilt. “Truth.”

He leaned into Marisol and she snuggled against him making a soft sound of sleep or pleasure. “Then you better tell the truth,” Billy said. “Did your grandfather kill Jack Novak?”

I tsked my tongue, irritated at how gossip made lies out of what happened. “All he did was hit him.” I didn’t add with a bottle, I didn’t want to talk about it with someone like Billy.

“That’s not how some people say it went,” Billy said.

“Who?” I said, standing up and stepping toward him. Marisol said my name as a form of plea and I sat back down, wondering what she could possibly see in such a jerk as Billy. “Who?” I said again.

“Lots of people,” Eddie said. He nodded his chin at me. “Your turn.”

I leaned down and spun the bottle, hoping it would land on Eddie and not hoping it would land on Eddie. If it landed on him I’d surprise everyone by not daring him to so much as hold my hand. I had my pride. I’d make him tell me who was spreading those lies about Gramp.

The bottle stopped slightly to the side of Eddie. “Truth or dare?” I asked him.

“Dare.”

I tongued the back of my teeth like I could find a good dare stuck between them. Billy made kissy-kissy noises and Eddie grunted again and looked up at the ceiling.

“Shut up,” Marisol said and the burn off Billy’s teasing eased.

I looked off toward the darkness beyond Eddie and my inner eye lit with visions of crystal caves and lacey fossils of creatures no one ever knew existed. I dared Eddie to walk a hundred feet down the shaft and when he readily agreed, I said I wanted to come with him.

“No hankie-panky you two,” Billy said.

“Jesus,” Eddie said and he swiped up his flashlight and started down the shaft with me trailing him. Then I heard a slap and Marisol playfully say, “Behave. That’s off-limits.”

“What about here?” Billy said.

“Jesus,” Eddie said again.

I was embarrassed by what Marisol was doing and by what Eddie clearly did not want to do with me, but I was also excited by the thought of going deeper into the mine. Eddie moved deftly into the darkness and it was easy for me to focus on following his beam of light. It was easy for me to convince myself that Daddy had at one time or another walked the very ground I was walking and I felt that proved something mysterious and vastly important. For the first time I felt more than merely pride that my great-great-granddaddy had been a Molly Maguire, I felt a connection to him.

Eddie stopped and shone his light at the wall. “Look at this,” he said. There in the beam of our lights was an opening in the wall, a narrow shaft that started at chest level and ended a couple of yards below the ceiling. A monkey shaft, so named because only a monkey could maneuver well in it. It was exactly this type of shaft that Uncle Frank was found dead in.

I bent and twisted my head so that my headlamp beamed up into the craggy dark of the chasm where some mica, embedded in the rock, glistened. “Wow,” I said. “I always imagined what one would look like.”

“Come on,” he said, waving me back in the direction we came. “That was at least a hundred feet. Probably more.”

We headed back quickly to the sounds of Marisol play-slapping Billy and saying, “Bad boy. No. What’d I say?”

Eddie stepped into the circle and spun the bottle before I’d even sat down. It stopped and pointed directly at my empty chair. “Redo,” he said.

“Nah, that counts,” Billy said with a wicked laugh.

“Truth or dare?” Eddie said.

I didn’t even pause. “Dare,” I said.

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. His face was less than a foot from mine and my heart hammered at the thought that he’d dare me to kiss him, dare me to kiss him just to be mean.

“I dare you to crawl a hundred feet up that monkey shaft.”

“A hundred!” Marisol said.

“Okay, fifty.”

“Fine,” I said, pushing the headlamp further up my forehead. Then I stood and faced the darkness behind Eddie but I didn’t move.

“I’ll go with you,” Marisol said. Eddie stood to go with us and then Billy did too. The tunnel was wide enough that we could walk side by side and Marisol and I linked arms and Billy and Eddie flanked us. We reached the monkey shaft more quickly than I expected and this time I didn’t pause. I reached into the hole, my fingers scraping at whatever purchase I could find and then I yelped as I felt hands on my backend and the boys lifted me and pushed me in. I took a deep breath and coughed on some dirt I’d swallowed.

The hole was high enough that I didn’t have to slither and could crawl on all fours. It led upwards slightly and was probably more than thirty feet wide. The cold wet rock scraped my bare legs as I slowly crawled forward, swinging my head from side to side to keep an eye on what was next to me as well as what was ahead.

“Can I touch you there?” I heard Eddie say, followed by a slap and a high-pitched giggle. “What about here?” Billy said.

“This will cut up my knees,” I said. “How far do I have to go?”

“I’ll tell you when to stop,” Eddie said.

“She’s in shorts, Eddie,” Marisol said.

“Who told her to wear shorts?” he said.

“You all right?” Marisol called to me.

“Yeah,” I said, managing to crawl a few more feet. The cuts on my legs and hands felt like badges of honor. Ahead I could see the shaft open up into a wide chamber. “Crawling into the earth’s belly,” was how Daddy described crawling up a monkey shaft. “You can get so spun around you can’t tell your forward from your back,” he’d say. “You can get so lost it can feel like no one will ever find you.”

As I looked sideways in the narrow space I was sure I was feeling some of the same feelings Daddy had felt countless times and I felt so close to him then, to who he was before the disaster, that I quickly moved ahead, eager to feel even more.

“Okay,” Marisol said. “Enough.” This time the slap and her protest sounded real. “Come on, Brigid. Turn around. Let’s get out of here.”

I looked behind me, trying to figure how best to get out. The ceiling of the shaft wasn’t high enough to let me easily turn around. It was only then I noticed a sound I couldn’t place. It was like a fast ticking clock or water quickly dripping. The rocks were wetter here. Maybe I was near a spring. But then something brushed my arm and shot past me into my beam of light. A rat! I sobbed, “A rat touched me.”

“Get out,” Marisol said. “Move fast.”

“I’m trying,” I said and veered to the side but I’d moved too quickly and a small avalanche of rock and coal showered me.

“Crawl slow,” Billy said.

“Shit,” Eddie said. “I knew we shouldn’t have brought a little girl.”

Slowly I moved backwards, seeing yet another rat several feet from me and realizing the sound I’d been hearing was them calling each other, doing whatever they do with their tongues in anticipation of food. I whimpered again and kept trying to turn my head to see behind me but all that happened was that my headlamp beamed the darkness to my side.

“Keep coming, Brigid, you’re doing all right,” Marisol said.

“As long as you keep moving, the rats won’t bother you,” Billy said.

Backwards I moved first one leg than another and then my skin prickled as if someone was watching me. I could feel the stare coming from somewhere to my left, to the side I was turned away from. I swung my head in that direction but saw nothing except rock. Could bootleggers still be coming down here? Is this where some serial killer or pervert hid? Or could there really be a monster living down in the mines like rumor said?

For one ridiculous moment I feared that this was the monkey shaft Uncle Frank had been found in and that his ghost was there waiting to get me. I knew I needed to follow Daddy’s advice and bury my fear deep down where I couldn’t feel it anymore, but I didn’t know how to do that when all I could feel was dread.

My hand touched something and I snapped it back, but then I saw it was only some miner’s old glove.

“You got to straighten out,” Marisol said. “You’re heading to the side.”

I turned my head over my shoulder, aiming the headlamp as best I could and trying to maneuver so that my feet angled straight down to the opening of the shaft. “Better?” I said but then my head knocked the roof and another shower of rock fell on me. I gripped something hard to steady myself and moved a leg backward, lowering my head to see what I was holding. It was a white stick. And alongside that white stick was another white stick and then a piece of cloth and then a rib cage.

A scream stuck in my throat. There, several feet from my hand, was a skull staring at me.

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. Even when Billy and Eddie crawled up and poked the skeleton with a flashlight, I didn’t make a sound. Fear had turned all my muscles as stiff as the bones I was staring at.

They had to pull me out by my ankles, shredding my shins and belly with sooty black cuts. Marisol held me and said the Hail Mary and told the boys that we had to get out of there. Even after we’d scrambled up out of the hole and were standing outside in the bright green of the day, all I could do was merely whimper. I could still feel the empty eyes of the skull looking at me, knowing I was there.

PART II

Ten

Nobody rested well in the weeks after finding the body. A murder down in what everyone called “our mines” was a bad omen and surely meant that the dig-out project would fail and the fire only worsen. And as far as most of Barrendale was concerned, us kids were to blame.

“Couldn’t you leave well enough alone?” was one of the questions we heard in those first few days after finding the body. “Don’t we have enough problems without you kids digging around for more?”

The postmistress was so angry that she hissed at me over her counter, “Knew once you started hanging around with that Puerto Rican girl you’d be trouble.” And I remember how hurt and shocked I was by her saying that, especially when she didn’t know Marisol or me at all.

“Don’t tell nobody nothin’,” Gram warned me. “If they can blame an Irishman, they will. Blame a Howley, even better. Tell them lies if you have to. Tell ’em anythin’ but the truth.” Gram’s face looked as wrinkled as a crumpled sheet as she added, “Specially don’t say nothin’ about being with two fifteen-year-old boys. Don’t you value yourself none, girl? Don’t you want to be good?”

Billy’s daddy beat him so bad he had to wear a sling on his arm for a week and whenever he saw me or Marisol he acted like he had no idea who we were. Eddie’s daddy sent him off to work on a relative’s farm in Ohio. “That boy’s a bad seed,” Mr. Battista would tell anyone who’d listen. “What could I do? Tie him to a tree? I couldn’t watch him every second.”

Marisol said she’d heard people calling her spic and little bastard. “My parents were
married,
” she said to me, her eyes fierce. “And if my mother wasn’t
Puerto Rican
people would believe that.”