The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  Only Sandy Bone, who had gotten his job as winderman, had any idea what Sam was doing. In the morning he would take him down with the other men in the cage and bring him up the shaft in the next cage. In the evening, just before the shift was due to come up, he would send Sam down to the shaft bottom again and bring him up a quarter of an hour later with the men who had worked the shift.

  As far as the Company knew or cared—it was only his money he was losing—Sam was listed as being injured. The fact was that Sam had gone into training for the Games that were coming up. He began running the roads down below the work area, out of sight of the town. At first it wasn’t much good; he was strong but his muscles were knotted in the way of miners, all of them tight and lumpy from the squatting and the endless bending and lifting of mine work. His aim was to uncramp his body and he forced himself to run in as easy and fluid a way as possible. For a week he felt it would never come back, but then one afternoon it began to come, the long easy strides he remembered as a boy before the mine had gotten him. It was pain all the way that week, because while the work was hard in the mine it didn’t call for the sustained endurance that running called for. He ran until he began to achieve the runner’s second wind, and then through that until he ran in a kind of nervelessness, running beyond any capacity he knew he possessed.

  In the second week he worked on his jumping—the standing jump, the running broad jump, the steeplechase, the running high jump—and on the weight throws. That would be the dangerous one, because no matter how hard he practiced, there were men stronger than himself in Pitmungo, like old Andy Begg. He would have to make up with speed, with spin, with timing, with the swiftness of the lift, to match other men’s superior natural strength. At the end of the second week he was throwing the thirty-six-pound stone twice the distance he had begun the week at, and, finally, five or six feet beyond any stone thrown in Pitmungo in his time.

  At night, lying in bed, he went over the events, thinking each one of them through, knowing the opposition, planning what he would have to do, because it would in the end come down to a matter of pacing himself, of using his energy exactly right. There would be no sense in winning a race by fifteen yards when one yard would do, or taking three tries at the hop, step, and jump when his first try would win it.

  Because he was going to do what no one had ever done before, not since the Games began in 1705, and no one had probably even dreamed of doing. He was going to win it all.

  Everything!

  He rolled over, kicking in bed, his covers off his bed again.

  “What’s the matter with you, man?” Jemmie said to him. “What are you up to? You look as drawn as a race horse.” It was what he wanted to hear. He decided to be as blunt as he could about it.

  “Look,” Sam said, “our mother has some kind of dream and no one asks her about it. Well, I have this dream and I don’t want to be asked about it.”

  “You haven’t spent a hell of a lot of time down in the pit.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Och, come on, Sam. Do you think no one’s seen you rubbing coal dust on your gob so you look like you did a day of work?”

  Sam was embarrassed. That was the trouble in a place like this; there was always someone looking.

  “All I can tell you now is that every cent will go back in the kist.”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “I do.”

  Win it all. Every bottle of whisky, every ten-shilling note, every little silver cup donated by Lady Jane. Every ribbon, every honor, every prize awarded in Pitmungo. No matter where they went, when they left Pitmungo, the name of Cameron, of Sam Cameron, was never going to be forgotten.

  14

  Sam sat up suddenly and stared around him.

  “What is it? We’re late. We missed it.”

  Jemmie reached out an arm and pushed his brother back down onto his straw mattress.

  “Easy, man, they’re only warming up.”

  They lay in the dark room listening, and the sounds came again.

  “Pitmungo Miners’ Brass Band.”

  “The worst brass band in West Fife.”

  “In all Scotland.”

  “I don’t see how you can afford to be so sarcastic,” Andy said. “You could have joined, they asked you. You could have made it better.”

  “Did you see the hats they wear? Pillboxes or some such. The kind the monkeys wear.”

  “Blether is cheap, performance is high,” Andy said.

  There was a long sustained roll on the snare drum followed by a crash of cymbals at the end.

  “Very timely,” Sam said.

  They heard Sarah’s flute floating out above the drone of the drums.

  “Sarah’s good,” one of them said.

  “Sarah’s the best.”

  They lay back relishing the comfort of bonus time on the straw.

  “Do you think there is anything between her and Sandy Bone?” Andrew asked.

  “Oh, aye, but what does it matter? She don’t want her to marry him.”

  “Sarah’s got a mind of her own,” Andrew said.

  “Yes, and it belongs to her mother.”

  Silence again. Her. It was always her. They could hear her bustling about in the but—swift steps, quick movements, a clicking of things—the plates were never put down, they were clicked down and zicked away, and her movements down below made her presence felt upstairs. A flatulent-sounding blast of air trying to force its way through the bell of someone’s trombone bellowed in their room.

  “Someone just put a knife to the throat of a grumphie,” Jemmie said.

  “Pig,” Andy said.

  “Grumphie is a better word.”

  “Don’t let her hear you say it,” Andrew said.

  “Grumphie,” said Sam.

  “Grumphie,” Jemmie said.

  “Grumphie,” Ian said. They looked at Andy.

  “Grumphie,” Andy said.

  “Grumphie, grumphie, grumphie,” they chanted all together, low but audible. “Grumphie, grumphie, grumphie.”

  “Oh, it’s so exciting,” Sam said. “It’s so daring.”

  “Its so wicked,” Andy said, and they laughed and took it up again.

  Gillon lay in bed and listened. The sound came down the stairway into the ben as if it were a pipe. He should warn them about that. He was happy for the boys and envious of them, lying back in their beds, sharing all the things of their lives with each other. He had never had that. He didn’t have it now. They didn’t really listen to him any more; it was always her. His fault. He had abdicated, given up the fight. Andrew handling the money now. And what was one to say? He always got better prices. Andrew going down to Kirkcaldy to buy rolls of linoleum to sell in the town, talking to important men down at the factory gate, arguing with them, driving a hard bargain with them, because Gillon didn’t know how to handle men like that. And he had heard them talking behind his back, in the pit and on the walk back home. “Aye, he’s a John Thomson’s man the now,” which is Pitmungo for a man who has surrendered his masculine prerogatives to his wife’s influence.

  “Sad, the man that bashed Andy Begg.” They always remembered that, to his detriment now. “Who would ever have believed that?”

  Gillon got out of bed and by habit began getting into his pit clothes, and then took them off and got out his Sunday blacks. The black had faded and the back of the suit, he could see in this bright light, shined from rubbing against wood in the chapel for thousands upon thousands of hours. It wouldn’t do much longer. He could see the light through the seat of his trousers.

  It wasn’t, Gillon thought, that he had surrendered so much as that she had taken; there was a difference. She wanted so much more than he did, she wanted so much harder, that in the balance with her he was unbalanced. If you didn’t want a thing hard enough, it was so much easier to let the other person have it. That wasn’t giving in; it was merely being sensible and making life livable.

  He went upstairs to the b
oys’ room. It was his second time there, which showed how little contact he had left with them. They were surprised to see him.

  “Time to get up now,” Gillon said. “Parade’s due to begin in half an hour.”

  “Not going to parade, Dad,” Sam said. “Going to rest up for the Games.”

  “Miners’ Freedom Day,” Gillon said. He looked around the room at the others. “No parade?”

  “Rather rest, Dad. Just a paraude,” Jem said. “With a very bad brass band.”

  “Aye, but you don’t seem to understand. This is Miners’ Freedom Day.”

  They didn’t understand.

  “Look,” their father said. “I’m not from here but I know what took place here and it’s something we should never forget, that much I know.”

  “It’s over and done with, Dad,” Andy said. Gillon turned and went back to the stairs. If they didn’t know, he had failed them.

  “Breakfast,” their mother called. Gillon looked at her, almost not seeing her, and went out onto the Terrace and walked as fast as he could down toward the end of town. Selkirk, of course, was in bed but Gillon got him out.

  “I want you to come up and tell my boys why they’d better be marching on Miners’ Freedom Day. There’s a half a bottle of Glenlivet in it for you.”

  “I could get Mr. Brothcock to march for that,” the librarian said, and began getting dressed. When they got back up to Tosh-Mungo Terrace he was very red in the face and winded but awake.

  “This is Mr. Selkirk you’ve heard me talk about,” Gillon said.

  “I couldn’t have guessed,” Maggie said.

  “Where is the Glenlivet? Mr. Selkirk would welcome a drink.”

  “I couldn’t have guessed that, either. Isn’t it a little early, considering the paraude hasn’t even stepped off?”

  “Get the bottle doon,” Mr. Selkirk said; “the man has kindly offered me a drink.” She got it down.

  * * *

  They never had a chance, really, lying as they were on their beds against the wall, facing the door, no way out of the room.

  “So you don’t choose to walk out on Miners’ Freedom Day, is that it? You don’t elect to get up off your arses and march a little for the men who went before you, is that what I hear?”

  When Mr. Selkirk chose to use his voice, there was a timbre to it that could make one’s backbone shiver.

  “You want to rest your poor worn bodies to do well at the Games? Hap, step, and loup, is it, and a fluttering blue ribbon at the end?

  “Well, bravo for you, sporting lads, hurrah for the Cameron boys. No, don’t get up, I wouldn’t have that. Rest your worn-out limbs and forget those that made it this way for you, who died down pit not of noxious gases and explosions but of starvation in the middle of their shift.

  “‘Excuse me, lads, I think I’ll sit doon the now,’ and never get up again, dead from hunger, the pick still in their hands.

  “I’m not talking ancient history; I’m talking about men rotting right now down on the Wet Row, stinking in the filth of their rat-infested rooms, too weak to do anything but shit on the floor in payment of sixty years in the bowels of the earth.

  “But I’m not going to talk about them. I’m going to talk about your own blood, sporty boys, your own grandfather, dragged down the pit at six months in his mother’s coal creel and left lying in the wet and glaur fourteen hours a day while his mother carried hundred weights of coal up the ladders and at the end of the day had climbed as high as the highest mountain in all Scotland with bloody hundredweights breaking her back.”

  He took a strong swig from his drink.

  “Breakfast was water, and mid-meal in the mine was a drink of water and shave of bread the mine rats fought to get; and then dinner, dinner—ah, that was the treat that made it all worthwhile. Tatties mixed, if they were very lucky, with a spoonful of oatmeal.

  “How do I know, do you want to know? It’s in the bukes, it’s in the records, all in the famous Royal Commission to Study the Employment of Children in Mines. All your family’s names. The Drums. Mengies, Hopes, and Picks. All the good old slave names.

  “And do you know, it was a very strange thing they found when the Commission came through Pitmungo. The little children didn’t seem to have any bones in their bodies, and the few they had were bent. For no reason they could find, the little children were ill-informed and dejected.

  “That was the word for them. Dejected. ‘The children are dejected and need more teaching in the Bible and the value of good hard work.’

  “And they got that, oh, yes, they did; the Company was good about the Commission’s findings. They started the Bible School and the little children got more work. Are you ready for the Games, gentlemen?”

  His glass was empty but he had his own bottle to give it a little boost.

  “And chains—maybe you would like to know about chains; how your great-grandmother and great-granddaddie were chained to each other so when they pulled the sleds of coal to the ladders at the shaft, they would be forced to pull together. It was for their own good, you see.

  “And when they didn’t pull fast enough, what else do you think they did with the chains and were allowed by law to do? I’ll bet you’ve guessed it. Ten across the face, sports, until their own brothers didn’t recognize them. And slaves, that should be interesting, because no one in this village with the exception of your father is not the descendant of slaves. Odd how quick people are willing to forget. For you carry the blood of slaves, you should never forget that, as much as any slave from Africa, sold into the pit, sold with the pit, and their children condemned by law to enter the pit and die in the pit.

  “But especially you’ll want to know how your great-grandmother died. When your great-granddaddie was split apart by a stone, your great-grannie was left five children to keep from starvation. The masters were good about that. They let her go down the pit and dig the coals and drag them to the shaft and haul them several hundred feet up, and because she had so much to do and was slow, she had to be paid less, of course. Sir Gilbert Tosh-Mungo gave her eight pennies for sixteen hours of work, sporting boys, sixteen hours a day. So I say, ‘Here’s a cheer to Sir Gilbert on Miners’ Freedom Day.’ But to get back.

  “One spud a day, lads, and all the foul water they could find, and at night cockcrow ’n’ kail. You don’t know it? We’ll see it here again, if I know my coal masters. It’s chicken soup with no chicken and no kail. Boiled moor grass with a stone for flavoring, sports.

  “Aye, so you stay in your beds, boys, and rest your bodies for the fun and games ahead. And as you do, I want you to think of the way your great-grannie went. Because she was a woman, they gave her the wet places to work, and when her ankles were swollen to the size of her thighs, they gave her the gassy places to work. She worked where no light would burn, where candles were smothered and died, and where the foulest air the mineral world could breathe was blown out upon her.

  “And when they found her she was face down in the glaur, trying to drink fresh air from the floor, but that wasn’t the interesting thing. The whole sides of the stall were rimmed with rotting fish heads; she was mining her room by their little phosphorescent glow.”

  He let them think about that before going on. They had had enough; the lesson had been learned, but Mr. Selkirk didn’t know or care.

  “They didn’t march either, sports, they never marched at all. When the coal masters came by, they put off their caps and they smiled until their face muscles froze.

  “I’ll tell you something time has taught me. It’s bad to live in a place where you can’t smile, but it’s hell to live in one where you must.”

  They began to get up off of their mattresses, trying to get dressed and not have to look Mr. Selkirk in the face at the same time.

  Mr. Selkirk took his glass and felt his way downstairs. His effort had exhausted him. In the but he saw the bottle on the dresser and he filled his glass and put the bottle in the pocket of his coat.

  �
�I heard what you said,” Maggie said, coming into the room. He was embarrassed at having been seen sliding the bottle into his pocket even though it had been promised him. “The lesson is that the tough survive,” she said. “That baby in the gassy stall was my father.”

  “The lesson,” the librarian said, and his voice was as hard as it had been upstairs, “is that if you had all got together and stuck together you needn’t have been so tough to survive.”

  “It was hard but they made it,” Maggie said. Selkirk turned on her.

  “Aye, they made it. How many of your father’s brothers and sisters died before they grew up?” Maggie was slow in answering.

  “Four of the five,” Mr. Selkirk said triumphantly. “I looked it up in Pitmungo Register. It’s a wee bit of a price to pay to learn how to survive, I would say. Thank you for the drink, Mrs. Drum,” and he slammed his glass down on the dresser.

  The boys filed down the stairs in their Sunday black. They were quiet and subdued.

  “Hot scones for breakfast,” their mother said, but none of them felt like eating. They thought of their great-grandmother down in the pit, howking coal in the gas with the rotting shining fish heads all around her stall. Mr. Selkirk had taken all the fun out of the day.

  15

  It was the same as always, Sam saw, but still he was glad he had come. A man has to show up and be counted. The Pitmungo Miners’ Brass Band lined up on the top of the Sportin Moor, and then Wattie Chisholm, eighty years old and still doing his shift in the pit, lowered his beribboned miner’s pick and the paraude was on. Five or six hundred miners with their sons and a few women and girls here and there, ones who still remembered their mothers or their childhood, stepping off to the thump of the drum. The brass would save their lungs until they got into the rows of Doonietoon.

  It was a day of subtle defiance, a day when the miners made their unity felt, however amiably and however little came out of it. Still the threat was always there that someday they could mass together. Several black banners, commemorating the more memorable bad days in the Pitmungo mines, headed the march.