Coal River

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  The previous night, when Clayton had said a roof collapse had crushed Nally’s helper’s leg while he was robbing the pillars—removing coal from support pillars in a spent shaft, sometimes supporting the roof again with lumber, sometimes letting the roof collapse—Emma knew it was the perfect opportunity to go inside the mine and take pictures of the spraggers and nippers. Clayton had already explained that miners often had “butties,” or helpers, to carry their tools, fill lamps with oil, inspect work areas for poisonous gases and unstable roofs, and share in the miner’s pay. Sometimes miners used their sons, who were only allowed to load their fathers’ cars. That way, if the boy got injured or killed, the mining company could say he wasn’t on the payroll and had no business being down there in the first place.

  But when Emma suggested she could replace Nally’s butty, Clayton was against it. Then she threatened to go to the Irishman’s house and offer to be his “free” helper, and Clayton agreed to invite Nally over to discuss it. A few hours later, in the middle of the night, the three of them sat at the kitchen table, making plans over a growler of beer.

  “Emma seems to think that if we get the attention of the newspapers,” Clayton said, “Hazard Flint will be less likely to retaliate when we move forward with the strike.”

  “I like the way ye think,” Nally said, his eyes shining with enthusiasm. “The old Irish try just doesn’t seem to work around here.”

  “The new shaft, number six, will be the least crowded,” Clayton said. “There’s less chance of being caught there.”

  “The biggest problem will be having enough light to take pictures,” Emma said. “Can we take in extra lanterns?”

  “Don’t worry about that, lassie,” Nally said. “I’ll make sure ye have all the light you need.”

  “You can’t breathe a word of this,” Clayton said to Nally. “You know how the miners feel about women in the mines. We have to use every caution.”

  “If I betray ye,” Nally said, “may the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase me so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can’t find me with a telescope.” He finished the rest of the beer and slammed the growler on the table.

  Now, Emma lumbered along the railroad ties, jostled between men and boys funneling down the timber-lined gangway like rats entering a sewer. When they reached the first chamber, the miners stopped at the inside boss’s desk to turn in their brass tags. The inside boss placed the numbered tags on a pegboard, to be picked up later when the miners left for the day. If a tag was still there at the end of the shift, the inside boss went looking for the missing man.

  After the inside boss’s desk, the miners went to the Dutch door of the fire boss’s room to pick up the safety lamps used to check for dangerous gases. Beside the door, Uncle Otis stood talking to the fire boss, his arms crossed. Emma dropped her eyes and kept moving.

  Clayton had told her that the inside of the mine was like a vast underground city, and the miners were extracting coal from numerous beds on different levels, like the floors of an apartment building. Shafts, chutes, and slopes, like a black labyrinth, connected everything. She imagined the noise would be deafening, but to her surprise, the mines were echoless, the tramp of boots and the clang of shovels and picks absorbed by the thick earth and layers of coal.

  Farther in, they passed the mule stables and the emergency hospital, which was nothing more than a whitewashed timber room with a red cross over the doorframe. The door was open. A man lay moaning on a cot inside, his forehead wrapped in white gauze, his arm in a sling. A bald man wearing dirty white overalls dipped a wooden blade into a metal jar and applied a black tincture to an oozing wound on the moaning man’s leg.

  After the hospital, there were no more wall torches to light the way. The miners lit the oil wicks on their caps and slogged deeper and deeper into the tunnels, shuffling into the darkness like shadows into the night. The walls grew closer and closer, and the ceilings dropped lower and lower. Massive slabs of wet rock sloped left and right, mere inches above Nally’s head. Sometimes he had to duck to get into the next chamber. The farther into the earth they walked, the colder it grew. Water dripped from the ceilings, and Emma couldn’t shake the feeling that they were inside a giant grave. In a sense, they were. How many men had died down here? How many bodies remained entombed beneath cave-ins, buried forever beneath monstrous piles of earth and coal and shale?

  She hunched her shoulders against the chill, struggling to push away images of the support timbers cracking and breaking, the roof collapsing, the mountain of rock and dirt burying them alive. After a while, she and Nally lagged behind the rest of the miners, letting them move ahead so she could get out the camera. When they were alone, they could only see as far as the fluttering circles of light from their head lamps. Behind them and in front of them, there was nothing but blackness.

  They stopped to talk to one of the nippers, or door handlers. The boy worked by himself, opening and closing a wide wooden door to let the coal cars through. He looked to be about eight years old. Nally introduced “Emmet” and showed off “his” new camera, then asked the nipper if he wanted his picture taken, promising to show him the exposure after the film was developed. The nipper eagerly agreed and stood on the tracks with his arms crossed, grinning. Nally opened his powder can and pulled out three fat sticks, their ends wrapped in oil-soaked rags. He lit two of the homemade torches, laid them on the rock floor, and held up the third.

  Torchlight lit up the tunnel, flickering off the jagged walls and sloping roof, illuminating initials carved in the heavy wooden door. The mine walls and ceilings were marbled with various colors—whites and greens, blacks and grays, and a strange yellowish orange that looked like veins of copper or rust. Every surface dripped with condensation. The thick timbers that held up the gangway were covered with white and black mold.

  “Sit where you always do,” Emma said to the nipper. “And don’t look at the camera. I want you to look like you’re working.”

  The nipper sat on a wooden box next to the door, the flame of his oil wick head lamp shooting up from the brim of his hat like the distant beacon of a ship. An extra jacket hung from an iron peg above his head on the black wall, next to the pipes used for pumping water out of the mines. Emma shivered, imagining the boy sitting in the dark chamber all alone, ten hours every day, opening the door when he heard a coal car coming, listening to the trickle of water and the groans and cracks of the mountain settling all around him. And what about the huge rats Clayton had told her about, watching the boy with hungry red eyes? She didn’t think she could be that brave.

  Nally stood to the side while Emma took two photos. When she was done, Nally stomped out the torches, then pulled a roll of Necco Wafers from his dinner pail and gave them to the nipper.

  “Not sure how the boss would feel about us playing around with a camera instead of working,” he said, winking. “But what he don’t know won’t hurt him, right?”

  The boy smiled and took the wafers, stuffing them into his pants pocket and nodding. Then he pulled on the iron door handle with both hands and leaned back, using his weight to open the giant door. He waved Nally and Emma through, then started to whistle as he closed the door behind them. As they made their way farther into the shaft, Emma slipped the camera back into the waist of her pants and beneath her jacket. In low-ceilinged tunnels leading off both sides of the passageway, miners and their butties worked in water on their hands and knees, their clothes heavy with black mud. After she and Nally passed the workers, a low rumbling sound came from somewhere deep inside the mine, like distant thunder.

  Emma stopped. “What was that?”

  “It’s just the mountain,” Nally said. “Some days she likes to talk.”

  He smiled and motioned for her to keep going. She took a deep breath and started moving again, an icy trickle of fear crawling up her spine. A voice drifted around a bend in the passageway.

  “Gee!” a boy yelled. “Wah-haw!
”

  Chains rattled up ahead, axles creaked, and hooves crunched on loose slag. Nally gestured wildly, telling Emma to get the camera out again. She did as she was told and a mule appeared around the bend, pulling an empty coal car driven by a teenage boy. Two younger boys sat in the car bed behind him, holding wooden sprags. Nally pulled a bag of chewing tobacco from his jacket pocket, stepped between the tracks in front of the plodding mule, and held the bag in the air.

  “Interested in some fresh chew?” he said.

  “Whoa,” the mule driver said, and brought the animal to a halt. He jumped to the ground, and the other boys climbed out of the car.

  “What do you want for it?” the mule handler said, his hands on his hips. “You want us to play a prank on somebody?”

  Nally shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “We just want to take a picture of ye and your fine mule.”

  “What for?” one of the boys said. He was still holding a wooden sprag, resting it on one shoulder like a baseball bat. “This have anything to do with the upcoming strike?”

  “My friend is trying out his new camera, ’tis all,” Nally said. “There’re two bags of tobacco in it for ye if ye can keep your mouths shut about it.”

  “Why do we have to kept our mouths shut about it?” the mule driver said.

  “Because if ye don’t, I’ll tell the foreman it was you lads prodding those boys to ride the empty cars down the slope the day that new spragger got run over and killed. Ye’d be in a sad state if the foreman found out, ye having to tell your mums why ye lost your jobs and all.”

  “I ain’t got no reason for telling anybody about you and your stupid camera anyhow,” the mule driver said. He reached for the tobacco, but Nally held it higher, well out of his reach.

  “Stand for the picture first,” Nally said. “Next to the animal.”

  Then there was a loud crack, like a boulder breaking in two. It sounded like it came from deep in the shaft, behind the mule and coal car.

  Emma stiffened, fighting the urge to turn and run.

  The mule put his ears back and started moving forward, his eyes wide with panic. The driver grabbed the mule’s bridle to stay him. “There’s lots of noise in shaft six this morning,” he said. “We was just coming back out to let ’em know it needs checking.”

  “Yeah,” one of the spraggers said. “Somethin’ ain’t right in there.”

  “Let’s get this picture taken right quick then,” Nally said.

  The driver held on to the mule, and the spraggers stood next to him. Nally relit the torches. Emma took two pictures of the boys, trying not to shake as she pushed the exposure level and wound the key. More than anything, she wanted to get out of the mine as soon as possible. Once the film was used up, she needed to leave. Maybe Nally could tell the bosses she was deathly ill and couldn’t work. Then again, the bosses probably wouldn’t care. She was probably going to be stuck in here the rest of the day. Nally gave the boys their reward, and they climbed back on the coal car and rode away. Emma closed the camera and began to put it in the waist of her pants while Nally stomped on one of the torches to put out the flames.

  Just then a high-pitched squeaking drifted up from the depths of the shaft, like a thousand wheels turning on dry axles. Nally picked up one of the still-burning torches and held it high, peering into the mine. Hundreds of rats came scurrying around the bend toward them, zigzagging back and forth, hopping over rocks and rail ties like a brown wave, their long tails scratching along the slag. Then there was a thunderous crash of rocks and timber, and a powerful gust of soot-filled air knocked Emma off her feet. Nally dropped the torch, yanked her up, and started running, dragging her with him.

  “Cave-in!” he shouted.

  She stumbled beside him, coughing and gagging on the thick dust, terror rising in her throat like bile. She felt for the camera beneath her jacket. It wasn’t there.

  “Where’s the camera?” she yelled.

  “Ye must have dropped it!” he shouted.

  She stopped and raced back to where she fell, ignoring Nally’s cries to leave the camera there. The still-burning torches glowed on the rock floor, orange flames flickering in the dust-filled air. She pulled her scarf over her nose and searched the floor for the camera. But the coal dust was getting thicker and thicker, and she could barely take a breath without gagging. Panicked voices traveled up the shaft, shouting and yelling. Then a silver glint caught her eye and she knelt, searching blindly through the slag with her fingers. Finally she felt something hard and square. She grabbed the camera and straightened. But now she was turned around. Which way was out? One of Nally’s torches set a support beam on fire. It burst into flames. The timber hissed and spit.

  Every instinct told her that the exit was behind her. But the blinding dust and smoke left her disoriented. She heard Nally calling for her, but the direction of his voice was lost in the cacophony of shouting men, snapping timber, and crackling fire. If she ran the wrong way, she would die.

  Emma closed her eyes and tried to remember which side of the tracks she was on when she fell. She kicked the ground until her boot hit a railroad tie. Had she been on the right? She turned around and hurried toward what she hoped was the exit, squinting and spitting, trying to see. For what seemed like forever, she stumbled along the tunnel, one hand pressing the camera to her chest, the other on the cold, hard wall, feeling her way. Then someone grabbed her wrist. It was Nally. He pulled her forward. Other men surrounded them, miners who had stumbled up in the dark.

  “Everyone, out!” Nally yelled. “Run! Get out!”

  An explosion shook the shaft behind them. A blast of hot air roared past, nearly knocking Emma to her knees. Nally held her up, and they staggered through the nipper’s door, then made their way toward the slope leading up to the main shaft. Men stumbled and fell all around them. They were shouting and pushing. Mules brayed and whips cracked. The smell of burning wood mixed with the sulfuric odor of coal dust and rock, stinging Emma’s eyes and nose.

  “Where’s Clayton?” she shouted.

  “I don’t know!” Nally said.

  “Did he come down the same shaft?”

  “No!”

  She gripped the back of Nally’s jacket, hanging on for dear life. Her teeth rattled as she pounded along the passageway. Nally pushed past the other miners, moving faster than she thought possible. After what seemed like an eternity, they came out into the main gangway. At the inside stables, Uncle Otis was yelling at the stable hands to unlock the stalls and let the mules free.

  “Damn the men, save the mules!” he shouted over and over.

  A thunderous roar rumbled deep in the earth below. Hot air filled the mine like a living, breathing thing. Nally and Emma ran up the slope toward the exit. The timber roof of the gangway creaked and shifted above their heads, like a great ship being tossed at sea. Finally they burst into the sunlight and kept running. Debris and smoke spewed out of the mine’s yawning mouth.

  When Nally and Emma were far enough away, they stopped. Dozens of other miners did the same, staggering and limping, taking inventory of who made it out and who didn’t. The mine whistle was screaming, announcing the disaster. Men fell to their knees, coughing and spitting and wiping their burning eyes. Emma could hardly see. She fumbled with the camera, struggling to put it back beneath her coat. At last she slipped it into the waist of her trousers and pulled the edge of her jacket over it. Someone put her hands in a bucket, and she rinsed her face with gritty water. She stood and looked desperately for Clayton, her head spinning. She didn’t see him anywhere. Was he still in the mine?

  No, God. Please. Not Clayton.

  A dark pillar of smoke poured out of the mine, rising in the sky until it obscured the sun. Fire crawled up the trestle leading to the top of the breaker, the dry lumber bursting into orange and yellow flames. Bits and pieces of timber broke away from the trestle and fell to the ground like burning leaves. Then an entire top section of the track gave way, and two coal cars tipped over a
nd fell hundreds of feet through the air, hitting the earth with a thunderous crash.

  A stream of boys poured out of the breaker, gripping the iron railing and scrambling down the rickety steps. They glanced over their shoulders at the mine and the fire crawling up the trestle, their eyes wide with terror, trying to watch their step at the same time. One fell halfway down, and others helped him up, struggling to keep their balance while being crowded from behind. The boys at the top of the stairs hollered and cursed until the line started moving again. Another boy slipped below the railing, hung on for a moment, and dropped to the ground below. His feet hit hard and he stumbled forward. Then he got up and scurried away, his hand on his cap. Several others followed suit. One boy slipped, tumbled beneath the railing, and fell. He lay in the dirt for a moment, rolling in pain, then got up and limped away. When the rest of the boys hit the last step, they immediately started running to get away from the building.

  Emma spotted Uncle Otis a few feet away. He stood panting and looking back at the mine, his thin face dripping with soot and sweat. It was only then that she realized she’d lost her mining cap. If her uncle looked in her direction, he’d recognize her. She turned away and tried to disappear in the crowd. Then she stopped in her tracks. Mr. Flint and Levi were headed straight for her, hurrying toward the mine. Before she could run or hide, they shoved past, bumping into her shoulders. Frank followed directly behind them, oblivious to the fact that she was mere inches away. Mr. Flint and Levi stormed over to Uncle Otis, Frank on their heels.