by Homer Hickam
The beam from a helmet light suddenly hit my eyes. “Big Jeb? Sonny? You awake? Come on out of there.”
“Yes, sir,” Big Jeb instantly answered. Ponderously, he swung his bulk to clamber out, pretty much crushing me against the man-trip cab. After he was out, I climbed out, too.
“Turn your light on, boy,” the man-trip driver said.
I hadn’t realized I’d turned it off, so I fiddled with my lamp until I got it working again. The driver pointed down the track. “Richardson said this is where the hoot-owl shift got last night. There’s posts, shims, and crib lumber stacked in the gob.”
“Yes, sir,” Big Jeb rumbled, and limped off, his head down, one huge arm behind his back, the other carrying his bucket.
Since I had no bucket, I put both my hands behind my back and plunged after him. After two steps, I straightened my spine slightly and promptly slammed my helmet into the roof. I was knocked to my knees, stars doing a little pirouette around my head. When they stopped spinning, I also saw that my lamp had gone off again. Before I could get to the knob to fiddle with it, the man-trip driver came over and helped me up. “Boy, if you plan on raising the roof of this old mine, you’ll need something harder than your head.” Then he added, with undisguised glee, “And you need to turn your light on, too.”
I pulled away from him and lurched on, still fiddling with my lamp. Big Jeb had disappeared somewhere in the darkness. I heard the man-trip locomotive behind me crank up and then the squeal of its wheels as it trundled away.
I had no idea where I was. After the noise of the man-trip faded, it became very quiet. I could feel a slight breeze in my face. I peered around with the feeble light from my lamp, trying to catch sight of Big Jeb. When I didn’t spot him, I held my breath and listened until I heard a distant wheezing. I headed in the direction I thought it was coming from and pretty soon found Big Jeb sitting placidly on a pile of thick timbers. By their size, I knew them to be the posts that were used to hold up the mine roof. “Yes, sir,” he said as I came up to him. I was beginning to wonder if he ever said anything else.
“What are we supposed to do, Big Jeb?” I asked, but he made no reply. Instead, he pried his lunch bucket open and sloshed some water into his mouth. Then he just sat there, breathing heavily. He was sick with the silicosis, I supposed. That was when gob, a mix of coal and rock dust, coated your lungs. The silicosis was not uncommon in Coalwood, but usually when you got it as bad as Big Jeb, you stopped working. Maybe because he had two families, he had to keep at it.
After a while I assumed we were waiting for something or somebody, so I took a seat up on the lumber stack with Big Jeb. Then, just as I got comfortable, he said, “Yes, sir,” crawled heavily off, and went wandering into the dark. I saw him stoop, and then he came up with an ax in one hand and a sledgehammer in the other. He walked over to a timber supporting the roof, ran his hand over it, peered at its top, then dropped the ax and swung the hammer into the timber as hard as he could. It fell down with a heavy thump. I waited for a million tons of rocks to fall on top of us, but, to my utmost relief, nothing happened. Big Jeb ran his hand over the lumpy stone roof, threw down the hammer, walked over to a stack of posts, and picked one off the top. Then he waited, still wheezing. When he looked over in my direction, I got the message.
I took one end of the post with both hands. He eyed me, then started walking, holding his end of the post with a single hand. I followed behind, managing a kind of bent-kneed waddle. When we finally got to where we were going, I dropped my end and stood up to stretch my back, and bounced my head off the roof again. Big Jeb didn’t say anything, just set the post into its place, then shuffled away into the darkness. Rubbing my head, I waited until he returned with a triangular-shaped piece of wood. He inserted it at the top of the post, then whacked it with the blunt end of the ax blade. The wedge tightened the post against the roof. “Yes, sir,” Big Jeb said, and then lumbered back to the stack of posts and sat down again. When I clambered up beside him, he was drinking more water.
I wistfully eyed the cool liquid. After he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and put the bucket away. We sat until I became restless. Big Jeb kept wheezing. It occurred to me that maybe he couldn’t do very much without getting out of breath. “How about I try my hand at putting up one of those posts, Big Jeb?” I asked him. “You just tell me which one.”
Big Jeb snorted, then scratched his chin languidly. “Yes, sir,” he finally allowed, and after a moment more of staring into the dark, he stood up and lurched off toward the line of posts going down both sides of the track.
I grabbed a post and waited for him to help me with it. When he didn’t, I dragged it after him. “I’m coming, Big Jeb,” I called.
My idea to do most of the work was apparently one that appealed to Big Jeb. For the rest of the morning, he would go to a post, swing his sledgehammer, knock it loose, then wait until I got the new one in place. Then he’d tap in the wedge and wait while I carted the old post away and picked up a new one. I kept forgetting the low roof. Pretty soon, my head took on a dull, permanent ache.
I don’t know how many posts we’d set before Big Jeb said “Yes, sir” again and lumbered back to his lunch bucket. He started pulling out sandwiches wrapped in heavy gray wax paper. I leaned against a rock-dusted wall and closed my eyes and just listened to Big Jeb grunt and wheeze and slosh and chew. Then there was a long silence and I opened one eye and found his light shining into it. I couldn’t see his face for the glare, but when I peered closer, I saw an apple in his hand, being tendered in my direction. I snatched it lest he change his mind and never tasted an apple so sweet! Then I saw he was also holding out the bottom pan of his bucket to me. “Thank you,” I said as I gulped the delicious wet water down my parched throat.
Big Jeb silently took his bucket back when I was finished, then hunkered down. Soon I heard him snoring, each exhalation a raw wheeze. I watched him until I felt a certain urge in my bladder and intestines.
I got up and staggered back into the gob. There were no bathrooms in the mine. I knew that much. You had to find whatever place you could that was out of the way. I wandered on, turning this corner and then that one until I felt as if I had reached a place decently far away.
Just as I finished my business, my helmet lamp faded, then went off altogether. My heart knotted. I was immersed in a darkness so black that I could almost feel the pupils in my eyes stretch as they tried to find some light.
I fiddled with the knob on my lamp, but nothing I did seemed to work. I took a step, waving my hands in front of me. Then I took another step and another until I touched the cool, dusty surface of a wall. I didn’t know which way to go. My heart started racing. I was lost for all time! Not only that, I was hungry and tired and my head hurt and soon, I thought, I’d be adding dead to that list. Lost!
I started yelling. “Big Jeb! My light’s out! I’m lost!” The pitch of my voice started to rise. “Big Jeb!” I shrieked.
I listened, but I heard not so much as a sound, not even a scurrying rat, which, now that I thought about it, were supposed to be in the mine to the tune of about a million. Would they be after me next? I started to sweat, a trickle of it wandering down my cheek and startling me into slapping myself.
My cheek still stinging, I decided I’d better give myself a little pep talk. I could figure my way out. All I had to do was think like an engineer and put two and two together and see if I didn’t get four. I felt the movement of a whiff of air across my sweaty face. What did I know about the mine? For one thing, the giant fans on the surface pushed air down a multitude of shafts and kept the mine slightly above atmospheric pressure. I’d picked that much up just listening to Dad yell into the black phone over the years. Would they even bother to ventilate an old shut-down section of the mine? I doubted it. What I needed to do was move toward active air. That would be in the direction of the main line. That was my theory, anyway. I turned slowly, sensing the faint pressure of the air brushing m
y damp face. I kept turning. It was subtle, but I was pretty certain there was more air on my face in one direction than any other.
I walked slowly toward the air, stopping every so often to call out Big Jeb’s name. Finally, my aching eyes picked up an atom of light. Then I saw another one, and then a flash that lasted a fraction of a second. “Big Jeb!” I yelled.
“Yes, sir,” I heard him say, then I saw his massive shape coming at me. I’d never seen a more welcome sight.
“My light’s dead,” I said, my voice trembling.
Big Jeb slowly made his way to me, then, without warning, slapped the side of my helmet. He almost knocked me down, but my lamp came back on brighter than ever before. “Thank you, Big Jeb,” I said, even though my ears were ringing. He said nothing, just continued past me. I guessed he was going to do his business. I went back to the pile of posts and collapsed on top of them. Oh, I was having a fine day.
When Big Jeb returned, we went back to work and kept up the same routine all day. By the time the man-trip showed up, I was pretty much worn out. All I could do was thank the good Lord my dad was going to cut me off. I wanted nothing more to do with mining coal, even though, technically, I hadn’t actually mined so much as a lump. I got on the man-lift and looked up the shaft. There was light up there somewhere. I allowed myself a little smile as we started to rise toward it.
My career as a coal miner was over, and that was fine by me.
13
CUT OFF
WHEN I stepped onto blessed open ground, Mr. Filbert, the lamp man, waved at me from his lamphouse. “Hey, Sonny, come on over here.”
I didn’t know what he wanted, but I had to turn in my lamp and give up my tag for the first and last time, anyway. Mr. Filbert led me to a wooden powder box in a dark corner. “Back here’s the lost-and-found box,” he said. “See anything in there you lost?” He was having trouble holding back his outright laughter.
Silently, I retrieved my bucket.
“Guess you got mighty hungry,” he said, still laughing up his sleeve.
“Not a bit of it,” I said. “I’m on a diet.”
I headed outside, where, to my surprise, Big Jeb was waiting for me. “What is it, Big Jeb?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said, and fell in beside me.
“I’m supposed to go see my dad,” I explained.
Big Jeb shrugged heavily and kept walking with me. At Dad’s office, he sat down on the steps. “I’ll be right out,” I told him, since it looked like he was bound and determined to stay with me. He raised a hand and wheezed while nodding his head.
Wally glanced up as I came inside his anteroom. “Go on in,” he said.
Dad was at his desk. At my knock, he waved me inside. “Shut the door,” he said ominously.
I did as I was told. Dad got up and sat on the front edge of his desk. “All right, Sonny,” he said tiredly. “You and John Dubonnet have had your fun but it’s over. I want you to quit.”
“Quit? I thought you were going to cut me off,” I said.
Dad crossed his arms. “Sonny, I’ve got a problem. I want you to help me with it.”
“Okay,” I said, but I was instantly on my guard.
“I can’t afford to train a couple of college boys just to have them leave in a few months. You understand what I’m saying? That means the only jobs you and Bobby Likens are going to get are the absolute worst and dirtiest ones in this mine. Why do you think Dubonnet agreed to this in the first place? It’s because his union members don’t want to do those jobs.”
“Then why don’t you just cut me off?” I asked.
His blue eyes went hard. “Because you’re a union member!” He shook his head as if he hadn’t yet quite grasped the concept. “If you quit, Dubonnet won’t be able to say anything. So that’s what you have to do.”
“What about Bobby Likens?” I wondered. “Did you tell him he had to quit, too?”
“Yes. He just left.”
“What did he say?”
Dad looked grim. “He said he needed the job. He didn’t care if it meant he had to shovel gob twenty-four hours a day, he wasn’t going to quit.”
“Then I’m not quitting, either,” I said.
“Bobby’s parents can’t pay his way through med school,” Dad said, his voice calm although I noticed his fingers tighten on the edge of the desk. “But you—you’re on the gravy train. I pay every penny of your college tuition, your books, your uniforms, everything. You don’t need this job.”
I didn’t have a good answer to that and he knew it. All I could say is what I said. “I’m not quitting.” Then I thought—Damn! That felt good!
Dad glowered, and his voice tightened. “All right. Let’s do it this way. You want to keep going to college? Quit, or you’ll never see another dime from me.”
My dander was totally up. For the first time in the entire history of my life, I was going toe-to-toe with my dad. “I don’t care what you do,” I said. “I’m not quitting. And if you give me trouble about it, I’ll run to the union.”
Dad’s eyebrows went up so high I thought they were going to bounce off the ceiling. “You’re just like your mother!” he sputtered. “If I see you at work tomorrow, you’ll get no more money for college—ever. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
“Well, I leave it, then,” I said. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought it was going to leap right out of my throat.
Dad blinked, then took a sudden interest in the map of the mine that covered one side of his wall. “Get out,” he said.
I had the sudden sense I’d embarrassed him. Wally was listening, even through the closed door. Everything we’d said would be all over Coalwood in a matter of minutes. “Dad—”
“You heard me.”
I closed the office door behind me. Wally just stared. Big Jeb stood up as I came outside. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Big Jeb and I marched side by side down Main Street. I felt weak-kneed and foggy-brained. Not only did my head hurt, every muscle in my body felt like it had been twisted into knots. It felt like I had blisters on my feet, too. Between jolts of pain, it occurred to me that I had managed to get myself cut off, not from the mine but from college. What had I done?
At the Club House, I stopped at the steps. To my astonishment, Big Jeb put a huge paw on my shoulder. I winced, my shoulder a wad of cramped muscles. “You done good,” he rumbled.
Startled, I gulped, “Thank you, Big Jeb.”
His lips turned up in a smile and his tiny eyes fairly glowed. “You done real good.”
Then Big Jeb removed his giant hand from my shoulder and, wheezing, lumbered on down the road. As I watched him go, it occurred to me Big Jeb was about as eloquent a man as I’d ever had the privilege to know.
14
WHUPPED
WHEN I entered the Club House, I found Floretta waiting for me. “You look like you’re whupped,” she said.
The grimace on my face probably told her I was in full agreement.
“Tell me what hurts.”
“Everything.”
She chuckled. “I think some of my special liniment might fix you up. Get on upstairs and take your shower. There’s Lava soap in there. Scrub good around your eyes. We don’t want you looking like Cleopatra.”
I limped toward the stairs. “These new boots pretty much rubbed my feet raw.”
“I got some salve for that, too. Go on with you, and I’ll be right up.”
I shuffled to the bathroom and sat down on a stool by the shower. I practically had to screw off my boots. There were two nice blisters on each of my feet, one on the heel, the other on my instep. I stripped off my sweaty, filthy clothes, perched my glasses on the window ledge, and climbed in. The hot water beat on my back. I’d never felt anything quite so wonderful. I slid down to the tile floor and just let the water wash over me. When I started to feel a bit better, I crawled to my feet and got the Lava soap and started scrubbing. Lava soap, made of volcanic grit and beach sand, could pe
el a layer of hide right off you, but it did its job.
When I finished, I wrapped a towel around my waist and tottered to my room, falling facefirst on my bed. A little later, I heard a tapping on my door and Floretta came in without me saying anything. She was carrying a glass jar and a round tin can. When she opened the jar, the smell of whatever was in it burned my nose all the way across the room. “What is that?” I asked suspiciously.
“Floretta’s Special Club House Muscle Liniment,” she replied.
“What’s in it?”
“Pine resin, mutton tallow, ginseng, pale bergamot, Gilean buds, pennyroyal, and John Eye’s joy juice,” she recited. “Along with a good dose of camphor-
phe’nique.”
“Is it going to hurt?”
“Let’s find out.” Her tone was gleeful. She stripped my towel away. When I started to complain, she said, “I seen you when you was a baby and I still ain’t interested.”
I was too sore to argue. She dripped the liquid on my back and started kneading muscles. I yelped when she found knots and gave them a special squeeze. Her liniment burned like acid and I said so.
“That means it’s working,” she said, kneading even harder. “So did you get cut off?”
“Only from college.”
She stopped her battering. “What are you talking about?”
I told her the whole thing, and she started to squeeze my muscles again, this time even harder. “I swan, you Hickams! Sometimes you say things that don’t mean nothing to nobody nohow. I can understand your daddy—he’s been known to get puffed up now and again, but you, I figure you’d do some better.”