by Glen Krisch
"Mr. Jimmy, things are stirring up. You best be up and about. They're liable to get surly, they see you sleeping."
Jimmy groaned, his eyelids opening to slits. All he could see at first were the whites of Harold Barrow's eyes. In the darkness of the caverns, his charcoal skin was hard to detect. The old Negro looked concerned, not necessarily for Jimmy's well-being, but for the repercussions if Jimmy wasn't able to work yet. "Leave me alone, Harold."
"They'll get worse on you. They want you digging with me an' Benjamin."
"Let them get worse. Let them kill me. I don't care."
"But Mr. Jimmy, don't you know you can't die here? They bring you right up to where you think you can't take no more, then when you think you're gonna die, you only open your eyes again. Open your eyes to forever."
Jimmy eased to a sitting position. The faraway torches afforded little light at this distance. He could now make out Harold's face. His cheekbones were sharp, as if honed with a whetstone. His jaw line angled to a pointed chin covered in patchy white hair. His head was a mass of wiry whiteness, the hair unkempt, filthy.
"That so, Harold?" Jimmy touched the shackle rubbing the skin of his ankle. They were chained to the wall of a former stables that acted as their quarters. This section of the Underground overlapped with the old mines. The last of the cart mules left the stable long ago, but the ground was still littered with chaff dust and bits of hay, while the air carried a barn's pungent stench. A crust had formed around the ankle iron while Jimmy slept. It didn't take much walking for blood to lubricate the shackle.
The shackles bound their ankles with six feet of slack--enough length to allow them to walk in an awkward hobble in a small circle, to find a spot to squat and shit. When needed in another section of the Underground, their short lengths of chain were unlatched from the wall, and reattached to a waist-high cable lining the walls. Once attached to the cable system, they could move throughout the caverns as far as the cables permitted. Their rattling chains announced their presence long before anyone could see them. The monsters didn't want any surprises.
"You messing with me, Harold? Looking out for me; making sure I don't push them hard enough for them to go back on me, this time with their machetes?"
Harold didn't immediately answer. The old man stared into Jimmy's eyes, a chilling, angry look. He blinked several times, his expression softening in degrees. "These chains are like an umbilicus."
"A what?"
"Ain't you a farmer?"
"Yeah. Well, that's what my family does."
"You ever seen a calf birthed?"
"Plenty times."
"The umbilicus connects the calf to the momma."
"You mean the cord."
"That's right, the cord. Same as people and pigs and such. We got these chains on us, and we can't get away. If we could, God as my witness I would go this instant. Run off like a baby calf."
"What do you mean, Harold?"
"Oh, Mr. Jimmy, you'll see soon enough. You'll see so much you wish you wasn't born seeing."
A man walked along the narrow corridor leading from the main chamber to their stall at the end of the stable. Like a cavorting jester, his shadow danced in front of him on the uneven limestone wall. Hearing the approach, Harold stood quickly, looping a hand under Jimmy's armpit.
"That's trouble walking. Get up."
The man in charge of keeping order, a brute named Arthur Scully, had told Jimmy he expected him to work a full day alongside Harold and his son-in-law, Benjamin. Jimmy despised the prospects of forced labor, but what made it worse was the fact he'd been teamed up with the only Negroes he'd seen. Jimmy had seen Benjamin only once, when he first entered the cavern after swimming through the tunnel. He didn't notice right away--he had been surprised to distraction recognizing familiar faces from Coal Hollow in the gathering crowd--but Benjamin was chained to a wall, the wide meat of his back exposed. Not until Jimmy saw the lashing whip and heard the startling whip-crack did he realize he had ventured where he shouldn't. The crowd had engulfed Jimmy, and as they began to pummel him, George swam for his life toward the tunnel. They were whipping Benjamin even as Jimmy lost consciousness from the violent beating.
There was one other Negro prisoner, Harold's daughter, Edwina. They didn't put her to work along with her husband and father. They had certain other labors for her to attend to that kept her busy.
With Harold's help, Jimmy was able to stand.
"Rise and shine." Arthur Scully appeared from around a rock outcropping. His scalp was hairless and pink. His lips always seemed to quaver, as if he were verging on having a fit. A ham-sized fist swung at his side, an axe handle gripped in his clenched fingers.
Jimmy looked to Harold to see how the old man reacted to Scully. The Negro kept his eyes lowered, and his posture became more slight. His rough knit shirt hung on his lank shoulders. Jimmy tried to imitate the old Negro.
"Boy, you bring your new bitch with you and show him the ropes." He unlocked their chains from the wall, clamping the links over the cable, then relocked it. "You been at it awhile, that won't be no problem."
Scully swung the axe handle down on Jimmy, catching him in the lower back. He gave him one wallop, and then stood back, waiting for a response. Jimmy writhed on the floor, his breaths accompanied by a sharp, jagged pain.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Mornings, now on, you get one smack if you're good. Get your nose dirty, I'll club you 'til you ain't got any face left." Scully laughed, walking away.
"That Scully, he don't like you. That's for sure." Harold helped Jimmy again to stand.
"Bastard. I'm going to get him for that."
"You go on thinking that. Let's get going. Scully won't wait a minute before coming back swinging that axe handle."
Harold tried to aid him in walking, but he shrugged him off. He didn't want to owe anyone anything, especially a colored man.
Their chains rattled as they walked. Jimmy watched Harold pick up a shank of iron and pull it by hand, taking the pressure off his ankle. They passed a rough wooden door set inside a rocky face. A bloody handprint was smeared along the wall, still wet and dripping, as if someone had fought being put behind the barred door just minutes earlier. A chill seemed to pass through Harold as he saw it, but he quickly left the door behind without comment.
After long minutes of silence and near-dark, a low hallway opened off to their left. Harold quickened his pace, keeping his eyes keened ahead. Jimmy heard an animal-like grunting coming from a small, secluded room. He then glimpsed a man's white naked ass jouncing between two thin colored legs.
"Come on now, 'Wina! That's a girl, come on now!"
The girl's legs trembled as the man thrust into her. Jimmy's stomach clenched. He averted his gaze. Harold was staring back at him, his eyes haunted by sadness. Jimmy hurried next to the old man, leaving the unsettling sight behind.
"Harold--"
"Not a word Mr. Jimmy, not a word. I can't speak on it."
Jimmy kept his mouth shut. Harold slowed a bit, his bare feet scraping against the damp ground. They entered a high-ceilinged chamber, nearly running into a couple of men passing a bottle between them, taking long swigs. Upon seeing Jimmy and Harold, they looked disappointed. Jimmy figured that's where the line to Edwina started. Farther off, other men lounged on straw-padded seats cut into the limestone walls, drinking straight from hooch bottles and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. It smelled like a barn, but there were no animals around. Just unwashed, foul-smelling men, sharing dirty jokes and laughter.
"Those men are off-shift. They're the old miners."
"Is that why they're not chained like us?"
"Sure, sure. Me, Benjamin, Edwina, we slaves. And you? They don't know what to do with the likes of you." The old man laughed weakly. "Here, we go off this way to where the work is."
"What is this place, Harold?" Jimmy whispered, trying not to draw any attention. The limestone had been carved away and wasn't a natural formation like the chamber where he
and George had been fishing for White Bane. It didn't look smooth, aged by the elements; it was raw, a picked scab, gouged and irritated.
"This is just a small meetin' area. Like a social club. They drink an' tell bawdy stories, and well… you know…" They left the men behind, entering a corridor in which Jimmy had to turn sideways in order to walk. The candlelight didn't reach far into the cleft in the rock, and they walked for a short while in near-darkness.
"Who are they? Why are they underground?"
"I remember when underground was a good word for a Negro--"
"Harold, please. I've seen people I recognize from town."
"Mr. Jimmy, many of them been here long as me. There's others, newer ones trickle in here and there. Women, children, too. Miners, miners' families. See, it gets to be when you been here so long you can't never leave. But if you come here and stay, well, you come and stay long as you like."
They exited the narrow hall, Jimmy still not understanding this place. Sitting high on a boulder, Scully noted their arrival, returning to whittling a hunk of wood with a long blade. His axe handle rested against his thighs, within easy reach.
The room dwarfed the chamber they had just seen. Benjamin was at the opposite side of the room across a clear pond, so far distant his features were hard to see. He swung a pickaxe in a smooth, measured arc, carving chips from the limestone wall he faced. Every few swings, the axe spit a shower of sparks. A group of unchained white men worked the other side of the vast space, taking their time, drinking and talking as much as laboring.
"This is the new place. They call it 'Paradise.' It's gonna replace that ol' gathering spot."
"Jesus, Harold, how long have you been working on this?" It was as big as a football field, torches lining the walls. Between the stone support columns, bonfires dotted the ground, illuminating the sprawling dimensions. Carved stone seats and tables filled the room. A trio of men harnessed to a heavy wooden cart heaved by them, carrying away the waste rock. To his surprise, Jimmy saw Dewy Piersal, the owner of the last bar in town, pulling at the lead. Dewy used to give him penny candy for sweeping out the bar on Sunday mornings. After his business closed, he'd supposedly died, some said by his own hand. That must have been eight years ago. Dewy nodded to him in recognition, then looked ahead, focused at his task.
"How long? Can't say for certain, Mr. Jimmy."
"Why not?"
"Can't say 'cause I don't know what date it is."
"It's the end of June."
"June. June, what year?"
"1934."
Harold grunted as if struck in the stomach. He picked up a pickaxe for himself and handed Jimmy a shovel. "Come with me. I'll show you what's what." Harold lifted the chain to relieve the pressure, then began walking along the cable-lined wall.
Jimmy followed, holding the shovel in one hand while carrying his chain with the other. "So how long's it been?"
"Mr. Jimmy, my arithmetic ain't too good."
"Well, when did they take you and your family?"
"Oh… 1851. August 1851. I don't recall the 'xact date."
The shovel slipped Jimmy's grip, crashing to the floor. He couldn't believe his ears. When Scully shifted his weight in his perch, Jimmy quickly picked it up again.
Eighty-three years.
The methodical hammering of Benjamin's pickaxe echoed in Jimmy's head. They had imprisoned Harold and his family for eighty-three years. Looking at the hand-carved walls--unable to fathom the time and effort to do such work--he wondered if this really was hell.
Harold's words trundled through his head as steadily as the ringing clang of Benjamin's pickaxe:
You been here so long you can't never leave.
When you think you're gonna die, you only open your eyes again.
Open your eyes to forever…
Jimmy followed Harold's instructions, shoveling away the piles of chipped limestone, loading the waste rock into a wheeled cart. His back was hurting not even an hour later, adding to his miseries. Stretching out the kinks in his spine, his eyes rested on the cavern's ceiling. He imagined desperately clawing his fingers through the rock and clay and the layer of top soil above, imagined pushing back the earth, reaching the fields where he'd grown up, a land he thought he knew like the back of his hand. He wondered if his family was worried about him.
3.
A knowledgeable person could travel during daylight hours from one side of town to the other without once having sunlight touch their skin. Few people knew about the labyrinthine tunnels tying together certain of the town's buildings, and still fewer knew who first lent spade to earth to begin their construction. Some say Indians attuned to the functions of nature began digging with sticks and rough stone tools. In sparsely traveled tunnels the remains of ancient campfire could be found, if someone were inclined to search. In crannies of rock, sharp tools had been left where aboriginals once tread. Under layers of dust, broken bones and shattered skulls remained after a long ago hunt and feast. If someone were inclined to search--and no one in the know seemed to be the prying sort--the bones might be seen as human remains.
At the time of the town's charter, the people of Coal Hollow dedicated their lives to serve God. With their every word and action they devoted their energies to their savior. Coal Hollow soon became an abolitionist stronghold. In order to spread their word, local pamphleteers and newspapermen spun out essays to a national audience at a blurring rate. North to Chicago, east to Boston and New York, and south to whoever would listen. Their efforts fell on deaf ears. They soon found alternative methods to help those unfortunate souls forced into a servitude for someone other than their personal savior.
At the town's southernmost tip, the current owners of a deacon's former home, Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Boynton, woke every morning at dawn and took to their beds nightly at eight o'clock sharp. They slept, ate their meals and read the Saturday Evening Post without realizing their home once served as an entryway to a secret world. The Boyntons would listen to the Amos 'n' Andy radio show at 7:15 p.m. before settling into bed, all the while ignorant their home once played a pivotal role in the local abolitionist movement. The Boyntons, residents of Coal Hollow for thirty odd years, and soon to retire to their son's home in Kentucky, didn't know people once secretly gathered in their dirt floor cellar. Or the deacon would lead these residents in quiet prayer, everyone with their hands enjoined, their eyes dewed with love for their God. Or a runaway slave would often cower inside these prayer circles, usually marred by a master's brand or raised whip scars. After the preliminaries of prayer and food, they would lead the runaway to the safety of the tunnels, where the Underground's healing touch could work its wonder, until the time was right to continue on, farther North, to safer lands.
Beneath the cellar (where Mr. Boynton currently kept his workbench for tinkering with engines and such) a trapdoor remained hidden. From the Boyntons' cellar, a narrow passage led five hundred yards northeast to the Cloutiers' home. The Cloutiers didn't know about the secret wooden panel in their basement, or the cramped, unlit room behind it that was only big enough for someone to hide within if fearful for their life. The room had been empty of all but spider webs long before the Cloutiers emigrated from France in '02.
The hidden room in the Cloutier basement connected with the tunnel system, and somewhere in Claude Cloutier's north forty, the tunnel split in two. One shaft had collapsed farther north where the overhead traffic on Teetering Road had pummeled it for fifty years. Some people wondered why the road was in constant need of repair. Others knew the reason. They knew and they meant to keep the secret within their tightly held circle.
The surviving tunnel snaked toward downtown. The most frequently trafficked section of the labyrinth, the downtown tunnel had a spur leading away from the main tunnel. The spur--so low to the tunnel floor that most people would have to belly-crawl to traverse it--terminated at a natural gap in a limestone wall. Once inside the gap, the air grew cold. Cold as winter, no matter what time of year.
This was where Thea Calder and Ethan Cartwright passed through to enter the Underground.
After confronting Ethan outside her house, the founder of the Southern Outfitters led her down the alleyway to the icehouse. Once inside, they passed the shelves of perishables, the chunks of ice awaiting Cooper's cutting, and finally, the workbench on the backmost wall where George Banyon's body lay in stasis before his burial.
Beneath the workbench, hidden behind sealed crates filled with rocks, the gap opened up to the spur leading to the downtown tunnel. Thea and Ethan had crawled through one after the other, carefully replacing the crates behind them.
When they left the tunnel system and entered a large cavern, a burly man in bib overalls greeted them. He held a sawed off shotgun at belt level, ready to fire on anyone not permitted in the Underground.
"Morning, Boss."
"Actually, it's much closer to night than morning, Daryl," Ethan said to the watchman.
"Well, it's morning to me. Just had my breakfast, matter of fact."
"Was it good?" Ethan asked. His decomposition had advanced to the point that his lips looked ready to fall from his face.
"Oh, sure was, Boss. The women put out a good spread."
"I'll have to agree with you there. I've never been disappointed. Good thing Miss Calder is exempt from domestic tasks, or my opinion might just change."
Thea clucked as if offended and slapped Ethan on the shoulder. He was always teasing her about her cooking; it had become a game of sorts.
Daryl, keeping his eyes to the floor, acknowledged Thea. "Miss Calder." His nod of greeting deepened to a bow. She smiled innocently, but in truth, she relished the man's subservience.
Ethan clapped the man on the back. "Keep up the good work, Daryl."
Ethan's decomposition began to heal as soon as they left the tunnel system and entered the cavern. The rotting stench of his flesh abated, and the lesions in his face were knitting themselves back to normal. His gray pallor warmed to flesh tones as sinews and muscles reformed and refitted themselves. Stark white epidermis stretched across his healing muscles.