by Gregg Olsen
Seeing that, Bill Steele knew instantly who it was.
“This is Custer Keough,” he said. “He’s worn his overalls like that for years. No doubt. It’s him.”
An FBI agent stripped the skin from the fifty-nine-year-old miner’s fingers. Steele didn’t think it was necessary. Only Keough had that yellow wire. Once a name was paired with a body, it was turned over to the FBI for fingerprint confirmation. Fingerprint records, thankfully, were not hard to come by. Many of the dead had been printed in the military; other comparisons came courtesy of arrest records from the Shoshone County Sheriff.
Identifying Joe Armijo was also relatively easy. He was a tall man, just under six feet, with a lean build and shiny black hair. In addition to the Navy tattoos on his chest and both biceps, Armijo had a heavy scar that spilled down his right shoulder, the remnant of an accident at Bunker Hill. A BM-1447 self-rescuer had been tucked inside his body bag. Armijo was one of the thirty-one who made it to the 10-Shaft station on 3100, only to die.
When identity still remained in doubt, bodies were weighed and measured and set aside as John Does. Five men were designated as such—one of whom would be later identified by a wedding band.
Something else registered as peculiar. Four of the five John Does came from the same pocket. All the men there had removed their lamp belts. Why had those particular men taken them off? The FBI didn’t know, but Steele did. Belts were heavy, loaded with battery packs and ten-inch pipe wrenches. Whenever a man ate lunch or waited at the station, he routinely dropped his belt. The men on that level had been waiting for the cage.
Throughout the night, fluorescent tubes buzzed like a chorus of wasps and cast a shadowless light. When it came time for a break, Bill Steele found a place to eat a TV dinner, though after a moment it dawned on him that he was sitting on a stack of body-bagged remains. Others were doing the same thing. If someone had told Steele he could ever get so used to the unthinkable that he’d do something like that, he’d have said they were crazy. Somewhere between working on the handful of bodies at the funeral home in Kellogg, and the ever-growing heap in Smelterville, Steele became immune to the horror.
Forty-seven
5:50 P.M., MAY 9
4800 Level
TOM, DAMN, I JUST SAW A LIGHT OUT THERE,” RON FLORY SAID, looking in the direction of the borehole.
Wilkinson thought the worst. Now Ron’s lost it for sure. It made absolutely no sense that anything or anyone would come from that direction. Everything came from 10-Shaft.
Wilkinson remained calm. “You’re seeing things. There’s no light.”
“Yeah, there is.”
“No, there isn’t.”
The two argued a little, and Flory put on his boots and turned off the motor light. A black shadow descended over everything.
And a wash of light spread over the drift.
Wilkinson sat up. There was a light reflecting over the water line.
Flory hit the water line with his wrench, hammering out as much noise as he could. Wilkinson went for the motor and flashed the light. Flory kept pounding, a steady hammering that said, We’re alive back here. Wilkinson yelled for help.
Then a beam moved in their direction.
“Stay right where you are,” a man’s voice called out. “We’re coming.”
It was more than a week after they’d been trapped. Outside at the portal, news swept through the crowd and hope poured over everyone like rain.
Ron Flory, twenty-eight, and Tom Wilkinson, twenty-nine, had been found. It was not delirium, but reality. They had dreamed about it and discussed it over and over since the smoke stalked their crew and left them alone. The two survivors of 4800 had no idea how many others had died. In their time underground, they assumed their level had been the one in trouble. They’d seen the other cages whiz past the station on May 2.
“How many of you?”
“Two. Just two.”
Becker and Kanack came into the Safety Zone, where they met a pair of miners as grungy and bewhiskered as men could be. Although their features were hollowed by weight loss, they were in surprisingly good physical condition. Their mood was even more striking. Never in all their lives had the rescuers seen such unabashed joy. Even Wilkinson, who kept his emotions more private, couldn’t help but let it show. They’d been saved. Flory’s eyes flooded. They were going home.
Wilkinson asked for a smoke. A second later, when he took a drag, he nearly fell to the floor. Man, that was strong. Flory had a cigarette in his mouth, too. Their promises about quitting after they got out of the mine had been abandoned in two seconds. They’d pledged to go to church, and to be better husbands and fathers. Only time would tell on those promises.
Both wanted to know how severe the fire had been, and why rescue had taken so long. Becker indicated the death toll had been substantial, but there were no definitive numbers.
“You’re the only two we’ve found so far,” he said, adding that they were hopeful that the guys on the lowest levels would be all right. They just hadn’t made it down there yet.
Flory’s head spun, and adrenaline pumped. Wilkinson also felt the surge of energy and emotion. They picked up their dinner buckets and some of the braided blasting wire and walked toward the borehole where the capsule would take them to the surface. Flory would go first, then Wilkinson. They were told the borehole was dangerously narrow and their ascent would be slow. The capsule would take them to 3700, to the spot where Kenny Wilbur had removed the lagging cover that allowed fresh airflow to 4800 and created the Safety Zone.
On the surface, the public address system that until then had only brought news of food and cigarette distribution gave hope that lifted hearts to the sky: “We have found two men alive and in good health on the 4800 level.”
7:45 P.M., MAY 9
Sunshine Bridge
MYRNA FLORY WALKED FROM RON’S DARK BLUE CHARGER TO THE bridge over Big Creek. Her bell-bottoms were loose at the waist, her hands numb from gripping things so tightly. She was tired, sick, and afraid that God might actually renege and let her down. She wondered if she’d have to raise Tiger on her own, after all. She heard other women were planning funerals and futures. A group of network TV people loped across the yard, light stands and cameras with power cords dragging like maypole ribbons. They’re after another story. The memory of the reporter who had told her that her husband was dead was still fresh. But they didn’t come for her. They backed off.
A preacher touched her shoulder. It was 7:40 p.m.
“Mrs. Flory, your husband’s alive. Come with me.”
Is this a dream? Myrna felt the emotion of the week close in on her, and started to cry. She had a bad cold and a throat raw from coughing. She was sicker than she’d been in a long time, but she was overjoyed. A few more men were around her, and before she really knew what was happening, she was in a small room adjacent to the payroll office.
Frances Wilkinson was already there, having stayed most of the week in her sister’s camper, crumpled on a metal folding chair. She, too, had been crying.
“They found Tom, too,” she said. “They’re both alive.” She and Myrna held each other and sobbed.
Mine officials backed off to leave the women alone in the most joyous moment since the fire broke out.
Outside, the pack moved closer to the Jewell, compressed by their excitement and the need to be at the front of the group. And they were shivering. The early-evening air brought a bite from the mountainside.
“Two so far!”
AFTER 7:00 P.M., MAY 9
3700 Level
WHILE RON FLORY WAITED FOR HIS PARTNER ON 3700, SOMEONE handed him a can of Gatorade. He poured it down his throat, and a USBM photographer recorded the moment. As a Wallace doctor checked his pulse, Flory was lost in the thoughts of a hardworking man. He only wanted two things: for Tom Wilkinson to get up the borehole, and to get out of Sunshine. While it was true his wife and boy had been on his mind, there was nothing more important than breathing t
he fresh air of a world not shut in darkness.
Flory asked for a cigarette and messed with his lighter. It hadn’t worked since he’d been trapped. A miner struck a match. He mentioned that he was going to quit smoking.
“How you holding up?” the doctor asked.
“Oh, I feel great,” Flory said, though the ordeal’s toll on his body and mind was obvious.
“Don’t keel over, here,” the doctor said. “You’ll embarrass the whole goddamn outfit.”
The other guys laughed. This was the moment all of the men had dreamed about as they’d battled day upon day of disappointment and the unbelievably cruel fire.
“Did it seem like seven days down there? Longer or shorter?” a Sunshine rescue man asked.
Flory didn’t have to think. “It seemed like seven years,” he said.
When he arrived to take his place with his buddy, Wilkinson had considerably less patience, and no taped voice recording was made. Someone offered him a coat, and he took it for the walk out into cool, fresh air. But when the doctor attempted to take his pulse, Wilkinson jerked his arm away.
What the hell’s he doing? Wilkinson thought. Let’s get out of here.
Two stretchers were set to the side of the station. Wilkinson refused to have anything to do with them.
“We walked in,” he said. “We’re going to walk out.”
The survivors were told their wives would be waiting for them outside the portal, as well as a couple of hundred well-wishers, along with television cameras and correspondents from the news magazines and major East Coast dailies.
“Before we go out there, you want us to run them off?” one of the rescue men asked.
Neither did. They were focused on getting outside. No delays. Just get going.
And up the Jewell Shaft and out of the portal, they walked to the most blinding lights they’d ever seen. A Sunshine shift boss followed behind in case either slumped over. Ron Flory had felt okay before the light, noise, and chilly air from the outside blasted at him with almost overwhelming force. There were so many people there, cheering and clapping, his legs went weak. He fought hard to keep from hitting the ground.
“Thank God,” he said, stepping into air moved by wind, not by a compressor. He looked astonishingly fit, his blue T-shirt stretched over a leaner frame. His beard, no longer neatly trimmed, was the only hint that he’d been away for more than a week. A cap lamp borrowed from another miner and affixed to a dirty yellow hardhat sent a beam into the crowd of three hundred. Hand after hand reached out to greet him. Disoriented by the commotion, he walked right past Myrna. She lunged for his arm. He turned and hugged her so hard the breath was squeezed out of her. For the first time in more than a week, his muscles relaxed and he just let go and cried.
Right behind Flory, Sonny Becker held on to Wilkinson’s arm, steadying him for the walk out. Wilkinson, squinting back the glare of the movie lights, looked for Frances’s coat to pick her out of the crowd. He didn’t see her. In truth, he couldn’t see much at all. He needed his glasses. Also, he didn’t know that Frances had borrowed her sister’s navy peacoat. Not a very big man to begin with, Wilkinson looked small standing next to Flory. In many ways he had been the stronger of the two underground, but he appeared frail in the light of the TV cameras. The crowd parted to let Frances through, and she held her husband and sobbed. A smile broke out on his heavily whiskered face. He thought that he and his buddy were just going to get into their cars and go home. He had no clue they’d need to go to the hospital. Wilkinson had no idea how extraordinary his survival had been.
The cheers were deafening, and suddenly the world was big again. As the survivors and their wives climbed into the front seats of the ambulances, a pastor near the portal led the families in a hymn, “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”
A rabid caravan of reporters followed Shoshone County Sheriff cruisers and the two ambulances down the gulch to the highway, and on to Kellogg and West Shoshone Hospital. Driver, wife, and survivor all rode in the front seat, talking on the radio to the other ambulance. The survivors talked about food and drink and the crowd outside the portal, but mostly about food. Ron Flory wanted a steak and a cold beer, and that sounded damn good to Wilkinson, too. As Myrna gripped him, her big bear of a husband cried.
Robert Flory drove his mother and sister, riding the accelerator with such a heavy foot that it passed through his mind that he was going to crash. If others at the mine were buoyed by the discovery of his older brother and partner, Robert’s feelings were somewhat dark and mixed. He had been told by the rescue crew that there were no others alive on 4800, and probably none in the deeper levels. There were others who were desperately needed by their families. Many others. He loved his brother, but Myrna, young as she was, was a fighter. She would have been able to get by. He wondered about others with households full of children and no man to bring home a paycheck.
Myrna’s sister, Garnita, stood at the hospital entrance crying as the ambulances pulled up. Her brother-in-law was a big man, but he’d shrunk down to mortal size. Flory had dropped nearly twenty pounds and Wilkinson had lost around fifteen. But with a wool blanket draped over his shoulders, Flory looked especially small. Garnita’s concern shifted to Myrna. She held on to her husband and they walked in lockstep toward the door. Myrna had also withered over the week, existing on nothing but coffee and cigarettes.
Which one is thinner? she asked herself.
A reporter called out a question about the survivors’ need for treatment and rest.
“They aren’t about to lie on a cot,” an ambulance driver with a broad smile shot back. “I’ll tell you that. No cots for these boys.”
Flory wasted no time announcing that his days underground were over.
“I won’t be a miner again,” he said, “if I have anything to say about it.”
Myrna nodded. “No, no way.”
Wilkinson, however, was less committal. “I don’t know,” he said, “I couldn’t say. I might go back in the mines. If I find something else, I might go to it.”
Frances Wilkinson let her tears go. “If he wants to go back, he can,” she said. Inside her purse she carried a piece of the braided blasting wire. She’d make it into a key chain and would keep it with her forever—as if she needed anything to remind her of what happened at Sunshine.
MAY 9
Pinehurst
MEANWHILE, THINGS WERE QUIET AT THE FIRKINS PLACE IN PINEHURST. Lou Ella dressed to go to the mine. Days of hope and anguish had melted her small frame; the Jaycee’s wife had lost at least fifteen pounds. Nerves had bunched up her intestines like a clenched fist. The children urged their mother to eat, but even with the renewed hope that came with finding Flory and Wilkinson, food stayed on her plate, congealing. She still had no idea that Don Firkins had fallen on the concrete floor of the hoist room, feverishly trying to activate his BM-1447. No one told her how Don’s life had sputtered from his body as Byron Schulz looked on, frightened out of his mind and unable to do anything. In the end, Lou Ella didn’t make it to Big Creek that day. She didn’t have to. A brother-in-law gave her the news that Don’s body had been identified. Tears, always at the edge of her eyelids, fell down her hollowed cheeks, and her voice was a soundless scream. The sky had finally fallen.
Forty-eight
MORNING, MAY 10
Coeur d’Alene Mining District
WEDNESDAY’S MORNING NEWS DEFINED THE TIMES. AN IRA sniper had killed a British soldier; the prosecution was nearing the end of its case against radical activist Angela Davis; and a U.S. blockade of North Vietnamese ports had begun. But amid all of that, there was good news from northern Idaho. The Los Angeles Times trumpeted it with two-inch letters on the front page: TWO FOUND ALIVE IN BURNING MINE. Nearly every paper in the country ran the story on page one.
In a shared room at West Shoshone Hospital, it was a nonstop celebration. Flory and Wilkinson started their day with New York strip steaks and interviews from media outlets across the globe
. The men had shaved and their wives had freshened up. Myrna Flory had put on a short skirt, and Frances Wilkinson had curled the ends of her hair in a flip. Idaho senator Frank Church sent his best wishes by Western Union: REJOICE WITH ALL IDAHOANS AND THE NATION AT NEWS OF YOUR SAFE RECOVERY FROM SUNSHINE MINE, AND PRAY THAT OTHERS WILL FOLLOW YOU TO SAFETY. Idaho governor Cecil Andrus arrived with a six-pack of Lucky Lager, and photographers snapped images that wire services dispatched across the country. The nurses wouldn’t let the guys smoke in their room, but when Andrus showed up, all rules went out the window. It was the best beer Wilkinson had ever tasted. The governor promised that if they didn’t want to go back into mining, the state would retrain them for new jobs. He’d personally see to it.
Flory credited his survival to a guardian angel. “I’m not a praying man,” he told a reporter, “but I prayed a lot down there.”
Later that day the survivors were discharged, and the world beat a path to their doors. The London Express phoned Flory. So did the National Enquirer. A life insurance company offered sales positions within hours of their exodus from 4800: “Relating your experience to our customers would be worth thousands of dollars to you in sales.” A flurry of mail crammed their mailboxes. Many praised God for sparing their lives: “I’m sure you and your families have thanked the Lord many times for your narrow escape, but I’m wondering if you have asked the dear Lord for what purpose he spared you two. . . .” Others, from across America, from England, and from South Africa, shared the joy: “Our oldest daughter was in her room in the basement doing homework when she came running up the stairs and said she had just heard on the radio that two survivors had been found. I don’t mind telling you, Tom, that there was not a dry eye in this house as we thanked God for your safety. . . .”
But throughout the mining district the joy was tempered with grief, blame, and bitterness. At the Big Creek Store, conspiracy theorists insisted Flory and Wilkinson hadn’t been survivors at all, but that the company had planted them on 4800 as a public relations ploy.