Coal River

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  High on the mountain, the rising sun slowly lit up row after row of windows on the breaker as the wide shadow of Ash Mountain retreated from the mine entrance like a creeping veil. The coal train pounded in the distance, echoing in the valley like a giant beating heart. Even from here, Emma could hear the inner workings of the breaker droning on and on, the constant strain and screech of gears and belts. The crunch and splinter of coal being dumped into the crusher reminded her of breaking bones.

  She walked slowly but steadily, trying to brace herself for what lay ahead. It was Saturday, her first day of work at the Company Store, and it was payday for the miners. Percy had warned her it would be busy. How was she going to look in those poor mothers’ eyes and tell them they owed money, or that they couldn’t buy milk and bread for their hungry children?

  Thinking about the children reminded her of Michael. She bunched her hands into fists, her chest constricting. He was a deaf-mute who had never spoken a word. How and why, all of a sudden, was he speaking to her? Was it a miracle? Should she find his parents to tell them he had spoken at long last? No. It didn’t feel like a miracle. It felt like something else entirely, something dark and threatening. Perhaps it was a warning, an omen, a message only she would understand. Except she didn’t understand it. At all. And why in the world did he mention Albert? How did he even know his name? Then another thought crossed her mind. What if Percy was lying about Michael, or had him confused with someone else? Or what if she had imagined the entire thing?

  She walked faster, tears of frustration misting her eyes. Last night, after learning Michael was a deaf-mute, and afraid she was having hallucinations, she had dumped the rest of the laudanum down the toilet. There had only been a few sips left in the bottle, but if the medicine was having that kind of effect on her, she was never going to touch it again. She was trying to move on with her life and needed a clear head. Taking medicine would only make it harder to think straight. Except now, in the light of day, she no longer believed the laudanum had anything to do with it. What happened with Michael felt real.

  Outside the Company Store, women with goat-drawn wagons and hand-pulled carts filled the street. Emma kept her eyes on the sidewalk, worried that Michael would be among the crowd. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to push all thoughts from her mind so she could concentrate on the task at hand. She couldn’t afford to make mistakes on her first day at work.

  Inside the store, a line of miners’ wives stood at the register, wicker baskets and canvas bags slung over their arms, children with dirty faces clinging to their frayed skirts. Percy worked at the register, running a finger down a page of the customer ledger, his brow furrowed in concentration.

  Emma went into the office, grabbed a white apron, and hurried back out and behind the counter.

  “What do you need me to do?” she said, slipping the apron over her head and tying it behind her back.

  Percy kept his finger on the open book. “Here,” he said. “I’ll run the register while you check to see if they owe anything from last week. See this? Mrs. Anderson still owes twenty-six cents. I’ll add it to what she’s buying now, and you can mark it paid. If any purchases need to be wrapped, you can do that while I take their money.”

  “All right,” she said. She smiled at the woman in line to show her she was on her side. Mrs. Anderson stared back at her, her face dour. Percy rang up her purchases: a bag of flour, a tin of lard, three boxes of matches, and a bar of lye soap. Then he added twenty-six cents and announced the total.

  Mrs. Anderson reached into a drawstring pouch tied to her waist, counted out the coins, and gave them to Percy. He handed Emma a rubber stamp and told her to mark the woman’s total PAID. Emma did as she was told and, without a word, Mrs. Anderson gathered her groceries, put them in a hand-pulled cart, and exited the store. The next woman waddled up to the counter, one hand on her huge belly. She looked like she was about to give birth any second. She said her name, and Emma looked it up.

  “She owes one dollar,” Emma said. She gave the woman a weak smile, hoping she would see that she sympathized with her dilemma.

  The woman scowled. “Are you sure?” she said. “Check it again.”

  “William and Meredith Trent?” Emma said, raising her eyebrows. The woman nodded, resting her knuckles on the counter and leaning to one side as if nursing a sore leg. Emma ran her finger beneath the woman’s name to follow the pencil line to this week’s total. “Yes. It says right here.” She turned the ledger around so Mrs. Trent could read it herself, but Percy grabbed her wrist to stop her.

  “We don’t show anyone the ledger,” he said, his voice firm.

  Emma turned the book around and shrugged. Percy finished ringing up Mrs. Trent’s purchases, added the dollar, and waited patiently while she dug in her apron pocket for more change. With tears in her eyes, Mrs. Trent handed him what she owed, leaving two nickels in her hand. Unable to meet her gaze, Emma marked her total PAID.

  For the next few hours, Percy and Emma worked at the register, slowly making their way through the line. Every time Percy told one of the miners’ wives to put their purchases back on the shelves because their husband’s paychecks weren’t enough to cover them, Emma blinked back the moisture in her eyes and tried not to look at the children’s dirty, desperate faces. Some of women swore at her and Percy before stomping out of the store, while others quietly wiped their cheeks, trying to put on brave faces.

  Shortly before noon, a high-pitched whistle suddenly pierced the air, shrieking through the screen door like a banshee. The women gasped and froze, staring at one another with wide, frightened eyes. Then, in a frantic mob, they stampeded out of the store, dragging their children behind them.

  “What’s going on?” Emma asked Percy.

  Percy’s features sagged. “When the breaker whistle goes off at an odd hour, it means only one thing . . . disaster at the mine.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “But where are they all going? I thought—”

  “They’re going up to the colliery to find out if anyone was hurt or killed. But the mine bosses won’t tell them anything. And unless it’s a huge accident with a lot of miners involved, everyone has to keep working.”

  She gasped. “Keep working? That’s ridiculous!”

  He picked up the ledger and the PAID stamp. “Being injured or killed is the worst offense a miner can make against the coal company,” he said. “So why would the bosses stop production?” He shrugged and started toward his office.

  She shook her head, unable to believe what she was hearing. “No wonder the miners want to go on strike,” she said under her breath.

  He stopped and turned to face her. “What did you just say?”

  “Nothing.”

  Six hours later it was closing time, and Percy agreed to let her walk partway home, as long as she promised to wait for him near the deserted woodshed at the bottom of the hill leading up to his parents’ house. The woodshed sat just inside the edge of the forest, and she could hide behind it if she heard anyone other than him and the Tin Lizzie coming up the road. He wouldn’t be long, and it was important for them to return home together.

  She left the store while Percy finished locking up, her mind spinning and her feet aching. The light in the sky was just starting to thin, and the dark shadow of Ash Mountain was draping itself over the coal breaker. She thought it bizarre that the breaker had always reminded her of an enormous creature looming over the town. Now she knew the truth, and it was more awful than she could have imagined. The breaker was a creature. It was a monster that ate little boys. How was it possible that the citizens of Coal River were having parties and celebrations, cooking dinner and tucking their children into bed in the shadow of such a horrible place? Were they blinded by greed, or was it something else?

  As she made her way along Main Street, she thought about Uncle Otis criticizing her father for not taking a job in the mines. How could anyone think it was a good idea, especially if a man has another cho
ice? She couldn’t picture her father in the mines, or Albert in the breaker. She couldn’t imagine her mother shopping in the store, being told where she could buy her food and clothing, being turned away for not having enough to pay for an overpriced bag of sugar. In Manhattan her mother used to haggle with the greengrocer and baker, offering to mend aprons or shirts in return for a bag of potatoes or a loaf of bread. Everyone in the neighborhood bartered and worked together, willing to help one another out during hard times. Seeing how things were done in Coal River felt like visiting another country, where she didn’t speak the language or understand the culture. And this country was savage and cold.

  When she reached the turnoff leading up to the miners’ village, a covered wagon pulled by a team of massive, sweaty mules rattled past her and made its way up the hill. A black box with the first-aid symbol painted on both sides enclosed the back of the wagon. A group of women and children in worn clothing hurried after it.

  “What’s going on?” Emma asked a girl carrying a toddler on her hip.

  “It’s the Black Maria,” the girl said, her face grim.

  “The Black Maria?”

  “Don’t you know?” the girl said. “It’s the hearse!” She hitched the toddler higher on her waist and ran to catch up to the others.

  Emma stood on the side of the road and tried to decide what to do. If she wasn’t waiting for Percy at the bottom of the hill when he came through, he’d never let her walk home again. Then again, it would only take a few minutes to go up to the miners’ village and find out what was going on. If she hurried, she could make it up and back before Percy even finished sweeping the floor and latching the shutters. If they met on the road before she made it to the woodshed, he wouldn’t have any idea she had taken a detour. She’d just say she was walking slowly and enjoying the cooler air. He couldn’t fault her for that.

  Her mind made up, she trudged up the hill behind the Black Maria. The slag road grew steeper and steeper. Out of breath from exertion and fear, the women begged the driver to tell them who was in the back of the hearse.

  The driver shook his head and said, “Next of kin, only.”

  Some women dropped their shoulders in relief, while others remained panic-stricken, no doubt worried the driver couldn’t know everyone.

  A few minutes later, the miners’ village came into view, and Emma slowed, trying to comprehend what she was looking at. She knew the miners were poor, but seeing where they lived made her shake with shock and sadness. It was nothing like she had imagined as a little girl.

  The village was made up of row after row of shanties sitting back to back, their shallow front yards separated by ragged dirt paths, their small backyards surrounded by misshapen fences made of splintered planks and twisted metal. Several of the houses sat on or between old culm banks, the loose piles of refuse from the breaker. One house had fallen into a huge, jagged hole, its corner sticking out of the collapsed ground.

  From down in town, the houses looked square and true, lined up in neat columns like the outlying neighborhoods of a large city. Up close, they were nothing but shacks and shanties, cobbled together with raw scraps of lumber and rusted tin, with porches and railings and steps that looked ready to collapse. Thin, grimy curtains hung in open windows with broken or wood-covered panes. Gray smoke rose from crumbling, soot-covered chimneys to mix with the acidic smell of burning culm and the sour tang of human waste. A string of outhouses ran up the center of each row of shanties, the ground around them black and moist. At the far end of the outhouses, a rusty water pump stood surrounded by mud.

  Chickens, pigs, goats, and the occasional dog ran loose in the roads and yards, their faces and feet stained black. Children in torn, dirty clothing played on lawns filled with washtubs, broken bicycles, struggling gardens, and sparse grass. An elderly woman sat in a rocker, a naked infant on one knee, silently watching the Black Maria pass. Some porches held twenty people or more: elderly men and women, adolescent girls, weary mothers, and children of all ages. Coal dust covered everything—the walls and roofs and gardens, the steps, the fences—even the leaves on the trees.

  Emma blinked back tears and, at the same time, felt anger burning in her feet, as if it came from the very earth she was walking on. It rose through her legs and torso, traveled up to her neck and to her head where it burned like fire. She pictured Hazard Flint in his expensive clothes, counting his money at a rolltop desk inside the Flint Mansion, while up in the miners’ village, children cried with hunger and babies shivered beneath threadbare blankets. She thought about Uncle Otis and Aunt Ida, their fancy clothes and china-filled cabinets, their sideboard piled high with shepherd’s pie and beef stew, lamb chops and deviled eggs, bread pudding and cherry tarts, tea rolls and scones with orange marmalade. How could they live with themselves, knowing they were living high on the hog while the families of the men who dug the coal from the earth lived in poverty? Then her stomach turned over and she nearly gagged, realizing she’d been wearing the same clothes and eating the same lavish cuisine, bought with money made off the backs of miners who could barely afford to feed their own children.

  Michael’s words rang in her ears: You have to help. Was that what Michael was trying to tell her? That she had to help the miners and their children? But how? What in the world could she do? And what did Albert have to do with any of this?

  Trying to shake the sensation that dark shadows were brushing up against her, even in the light of the day, Emma followed the hearse as it passed Scotch Road, Dago Street, and Welsh Hill, then turned into a narrow dirt path called Murphy’s Patch. The wagon mules were foaming at the mouth, their hooves kicking up clouds of black dust.

  Someone shouted, “It’s the Black Maria!” and women erupted from their shanties to stand on their front stoops. They wrung their hands and clutched their stained aprons, waiting to see where the hearse would stop. Young children appeared beside their mothers’ long skirts and looked toward the road with curious eyes. One by one, as the death wagon passed each house, the women bowed their heads in relief, as if saying a silent prayer of thanks that their husbands or sons hadn’t been killed that day.

  Finally, the driver of the Black Maria pulled back on the reins and stopped at the second-to-last shack at the end of the lane. The woman on the porch went white and fell to her knees. Then she started screaming. Two young children ran out the door and clutched the splintered porch railings with dirty hands, staring at their mother, their faces filled with terror. The rest of the women moved down their steps and silently walked toward the new widow’s house. The driver and his helper climbed down from the Black Maria, pulled a covered body from the wagon bed, and carried the stretcher toward the shanty, only stopping long enough to replace a dangling foot beneath the bloodstained sheet. A neighbor woman helped the new widow to her feet, then moved her and her children out of the way so the men could take the body inside.

  A big-bosomed blonde left her porch and strode toward Emma, her long, faded skirt twisting around her legs as she marched in her direction. Emma recognized the woman from the store. Her name was Fern, and she’d been charged for two pair of long johns she claimed she didn’t buy. Percy had warned the woman to be quiet and pay or else her husband would be looking for another job. Emma remembered feeling frightened when Fern glared at them for a full minute before leaving the store. Now Emma clenched her teeth, hoping Fern didn’t recognize her.

  “You best be going back down to the rich folk where you belong!” Fern shouted before she reached her. “The likes of you aren’t welcome here. Especially since you’re working at the pluck me store.”

  “I only wanted to see—”

  “See what?” Fern said. She stopped and stood, her fists on her hips, scowling. “Some poor miner’s dead body? His crying widow? His hungry children?”

  “No,” Emma said. “I . . . Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “There’s nothing you can do ’cept go back where you came from. Now git!”

 
“I wish I could,” she said, not knowing what else to say. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do.”

  The woman crossed her arms. Her elbows and lower arms were scaly and red. “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m here in Coal River because my parents died in a fire,” Emma said. She directed her attention back to the new widow’s shanty, hoping Fern would take pity on her and leave her alone.

  Fern harrumphed, and Emma turned to look at her, surprised to see that her features had gone soft, the hostility gone. The woman was shaking her head, her eyes sad.

  “I’m only working at the Company Store because my aunt and uncle expect me to earn my keep,” Emma added. “I’m not getting paid.”

  Fresh sympathy crossed Fern’s face. “When I was a little girl,” she began, “we used to wait on the front porch for Pa to come home. When we saw him walking up the dirt path, his hands and face black with coal, we’d all run into him, never mind that we’d get dirty when he picked us up to hug him. We were just happy to see him come home alive, his hands and feet and arms and legs all still attached. He was one of the lucky ones who died of old age. Can’t imagine what it felt like to lose your ma and pa at the same time. Sorry I was so hard on you.”

  Emma nodded once to show she’d accepted Fern’s apology. “What’s going to happen to the new widow and her children?”

  “Hard to say,” Fern said. “Company might send her to Widow’s Row, where she’ll earn rent by taking in new immigrants and single miners. Supposin’ there’s room, that is.”