by Homer Hickam
“What’s going to happen now?” she asked.
“The feds swooped down on an outfit called Atomic Coal over the weekend. Looks like those fellows have been buying up metallurgical coal from anybody who’d sell it to them, no questions asked. Based on tests, some of their stockpile came from this mine.”
“Who sold it to them?”
“If the feds know, they’re not saying, but it had to be somebody who knew all the ins and outs of this mine and was a bit underhanded. My first suspicion, naturally, was Mole.”
Song shook her head. “Not Mole. He’d have never given me the production numbers if it was him.” They fell silent for a moment, then Song said, “You heard about Stanvic.”
Cable took a breath and let it out. “Yeah. I think Stan was the thief, but now he’s dead, murdered the constable says. He also thinks there’s a strong probability Squirrel Harper was murdered too. But who killed them? That’s what we don’t know.”
“I bet whoever pushed Square off the road is our killer,” Song proposed.
Cable thought that over, then said, “Look, I don’t know how this is all going to end, but I guess it’s not up to me. It’s up to Constable Petrie and the state police and the FBI. They’ll figure it out. It’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, anyway. Song, I’m proud of you, working in the mine like you have. And I want you to know I know I was wrong about you. There’s a great deal more to you than I ever imagined.” He smiled, and for just a moment, she saw the dimple in his cheek that she’d nearly forgotten existed. “I’d say all that to you even if your father didn’t own the mine.”
“Working down here has taught me a little about you too,” she answered. “You run a first-class coal mine, Cable, and I respect and admire you for it.”
“Thank you,” he said.
They fell silent until Cable asked, “Do you remember when we met?”
She smiled. “You picked me up at Times Square. In more ways than one.”
“As soon as I saw you, I thought, here is a woman I’d like to get to know.”
“Well, you were on the rebound. We both were.”
“Those first weeks we were together . . . Song, they were like magic. I want to thank you for them.”
“They were magic, Cable, at least for me. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was really needed by a man.”
“It was true. I needed you. That’s why I asked you to marry me.”
“Cable . . .”
“I know, Song. I wish those days could have gone on forever.” Cable looked down at his boots, his light playing across them while her light played next to his.
Song slid a little closer to him. Her heart was beating so hard, she felt as if it were going to come out of her chest. The truth had finally burst through all her protective layers. She needed this man. She wanted this man. It was time to stop denying it.
“Cable,” she said. “Maybe if we . . .”
“No, don’t say anything. You’re right. I’ve been a fool. About you, about the mine, about everything. That’s why I sent Atlas headquarters my resignation today. I don’t deserve to supervise this mine.”
Song’s eyes went wide and she flashed her light onto his face. “You did not!”
Cable was wearing a sad little smile. “It was the right thing to do,” he said, then handed her the manila envelope. “This is the right thing to do too.”
She took the envelope. “What is it?”
“The annulment papers. I signed them, Song. This is a copy. I sent the originals to your lawyer. You’re free.”
PART 3
THE DARKEST PLACE
Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust,
neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;
Yet man is born unto trouble,
as the sparks fly upward.
—Job 5:6–7
Thirty-Three
5:42 p.m., Tuesday
His men were adding thirty more feet of pipe to the well on Highcoal Mountain, which worried Birchbark more than a little. He thought about telling them to stop, to give it a rest, but they were into it now, the work nearly done. Birchbark heard the rattle of an engine and rolled his eyes. Here came Bashful again, his four-wheeler slipping and sliding through the snow. Birchbark stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and looked away. He didn’t like his boss much, but what was a well-digger to do? If he wanted to live in Highcoal, Bashful’s company was the only one around. Birchbark had dreams, big dreams. He had been saving up, and when he got enough, he was going to apply to the Fox Run First National Bank for a loan. Then he was going to buy his own rig and go into competition with Bashful. With the cruddy old hardware Bashful kept patching up and shoving into the field, Birchbark figured he could give the man a run for his money, especially if he could snag even a little piece of the Atlas contract.
But what he was doing now, Birchbark thought, could jeopardize everything. He needed to stop it. Bashful, dressed in a parka, snow pants, and insulated rubber boots, climbed off the vehicle. He looked like an Antarctic explorer. “Didn’t think I was going to make it,” he said as he came up beside Birchbark. “How’d you and the boys get up here?”
“Hello, Bashful,” Birchbark said tiredly. “We came in on one of your bulldozers. See it over there?”
“Yeah, I see it. You know how much diesel that old thing burns? Y’all gonna put me in the poorhouse.”
“It was either that or shut down the rig.”
Birchbark knew Bashful didn’t really care about the diesel. He just liked to pull Birchbark’s chain. Bashful proved it when he immediately changed the subject. “How deep are we?”
Birchbark kicked at the frozen mud around the rig. “Too deep. We’re almost down to the abandoned part of the mine.”
“No gas yet?”
“Not even a wisp.”
“Keep drilling,” Bashful ordered. “There’s gas down there, I swan.”
Birchbark kicked his boots against the rig to dislodge the snow from the soles. “There may be gas down there,” he said, “but if there is, I’m certain it’s below the mine. And if we go any deeper, we could knock the roof down when we punch through.”
Bashful shrugged. “So what? What about abandoned don’t you understand?”
“I’m worried about a fire.”
Bashful laughed. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does and you know it as well as I do. When it’s cold like this, and the air pressure’s high, methane starts coming out of the coal in buckets. Might be a lot of it built up inside those old works.”
Bashful slapped his team leader on his back. “You worry too much, son. That old section’s closed off with concrete block stoppings. I checked it out with Mole. A fire would have nowhere to go. That’s why they’re called stoppings.”
“What if Mole tells Cable what we’re doing?”
“I gave him a couple hundred dollars not to. Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll take the responsibility if anything goes wrong, but nothing is.”
Birchbark saw that his team had the new pipe down and were drilling again. “Any second now and we’re going to punch through.”
“Good,” Bashful said, rubbing his hands together and stomping his feet to warm them up. “Then maybe you’ll stop whining like some little girl. I bet in the next few hours, we’ll make one of the biggest strikes on this mountain ever.”
“Maybe so,” Birchbark said, then took off his helmet and looked up at the sky. “Looks like it’s clearing.”
Bashful was about to reply when he saw the crew suddenly run away from the rig. Then he felt the earth trembling beneath his feet. “What’s happening?” he asked, but it was to empty air because Birchbark had joined his riggers, running for the safety of the bulldozer.
THERE WAS A rumble, and then everything at the face shook. Draw rock fell with a clatter.
At the sound of thunder where it never rained, Cable’s head snapped up, his light flashing toward the crosscut ventila
tion curtain. A moment later, the curtain flapped as if a hard wind had struck it. He got to his feet.
“What was that?” Song asked. She was still sitting on the track cover of the continuous miner and clutching the envelope with the signed annulment papers.
Cable’s voice was unnaturally calm, as if he had to restrain himself from yelling. “Do you know how to activate your SCSR?” he asked.
“Of course.” She stood up. “But what—”
“Be ready to put it on when I tell you.”
“Cable?”
“Just do as I say. And for once in your life, don’t argue.”
BUM LOOKED DOWN the tracks, then cursed. He’d fallen asleep and missed the mantrip out. Now he’d have no choice but to confront the foreman of the evening shift and confess what had happened. The foreman’s name was Gibson, nicknamed Hoot. Hoot and Bum had never gotten along. Likely he was going to get a laugh out of Bum’s predicament and would probably tell him to either work the shift or sit down until it was over. It was one more frustration on top of frustration that had started when Bum had seen Square Block sneaking around the preparation plant. Bum was still confused about that. Why was Square spying, and who sent him?
Of course, Bum had taken care of the old busybody by pushing him over the mountain, and then he’d taken care of Stanvic too. The next morning, after popping some OxyContin, Bum had dragged himself to work, lest anyone be suspicious why he wasn’t there. He’d slept most of the shift and was still hung over. Now, he dug in his pockets and felt three capsules of crystal meth. One would give him plenty of energy to walk out of the mine. He grinned his gap-toothed grin. Shoot, if he took all three, he could fly out!
Bum heard voices coming from the direction of the face. He assumed some miners were doubling back on the evening shift and were taking a break until the rest of the section got there. He started walking toward them and then came upon Cable’s jeep. He stopped and listened again. Now he recognized Cable’s voice, plus one more. He frowned. It was that girl! What were they doing?
Bum crept closer. To his surprise, he heard them talk about the coal thefts, and how the state police and the FBI were involved. Then he heard them agree that Stanvic was in on it and that his murderer was probably in on it too.
Bum scurried back to his manhole and sat down and tried to figure out what he should do. With the state and the FBI involved, he knew there was a chance they might look at bank statements, his included. He had some vulnerability there. He had not tried to hide the money he’d made on the purloined coal, his bank statements reflecting thousand-dollar increments every time he made a run for Stanvic. That had been stupid, and now there was nothing he could do to change it. He allowed a meth crystal to melt in his mouth and quickly felt its hot, white energy coursing through his veins. It was just what he needed. His mind went into overdrive.
I have to run, he thought, just as far and as fast as I can. Yes, that was what he would do, withdraw his money and head west, maybe even slip over the border into Mexico, then lose himself somewhere. He thought about Cable’s jeep and considered stealing it but dismissed the idea. Cable would hear him and call ahead and Bum would be caught at the bottom. No, the best thing to do was to quietly sneak out of the mine, get to the bank, and get gone.
Bum began to walk out. He reached the turn for the main line and kept going, ready to jump into a manhole if he heard Cable’s jeep coming behind him. He felt a tremor, then a blast of hot air struck him from behind, so powerful it lifted him off his feet—and Bum was flying! With the meth coursing through him, he had a brief moment of ecstasy before crashing headfirst into one of the cribs. Then he flopped into the gob while the furious exhaust of a mighty explosion roared over him and began to spread through the mine.
MOLE WAS IDLY watching the manlift from the doorway. He was waiting for his brother Clarence to replace him at the bank of monitors so he could go home to his wife and eight kids in the doublewide he owned on the slope of Harper’s Mountain. It took a lot of money to keep those eight kids in shoes, not to mention baseball caps for them to wear backward and iPods to stick in their ears. He pondered the birthdays coming up. The kids having them would expect nice presents.
They had it so easy. When Mole was a kid, the mines were mostly all shut down, and his father, after years out of work, had gradually gone nuts until one day he’d hung himself from the limb of a big oak just behind the house. His mother had soon been packed off to the loony bin. Mole was only twelve then, yet it fell to him to take care of his two younger brothers and three younger sisters. The state tried to break them up, shipping them off to foster homes, but they always ran away and came back to Highcoal, sneaking into their abandoned house and living off squirrels, mountain cabbage, and creek water. Finally, Old Preacher, Preacher’s father, took responsibility for them. It had been quite a family since Old Preacher had six kids of his own. Somehow they’d made do, and now every one of those kids had grown up to have good jobs, mostly out of state. There were a ton of grandkids too. Mole was proud of what he’d done to keep his family together, and it didn’t bother him a whit to extort a rich woman like Song, or anyone else, for a little extra coin. To him, money meant more than buying things. It meant survival.
Day-shift black caps and one red cap, which proved to be Justin, stepped off the manlift. They were joking around, as they always did. Mole saw Justin grinning and knew the jibes were probably being directed at him, but they were apparently good-natured ones. Justin was going to get his black cap, and maybe that would allow him to get his son back. Mole approved. Cable would be happy for Justin too, and Lord knew Cable needed some good news, what with Square in the hospital and now Stan Stanvic drowned. The news had the entire town in an uproar. The telephone lines had nearly melted from the people trading speculation on what had happened. Of course, nearly everybody in town had called Mole. Since he was the mine clerk/dispatcher with an office beside the superintendent’s, it was expected that he would know everything. But Mole didn’t know a thing. What had happened to Square and then to Stanvic was all a mystery to him.
Mole felt a sudden jolt through the floor. Another pillar pulled too close, he supposed. But if so, it had been a complete collapse. There was a lot of energy in the tremor he’d felt. Maybe part of the old works had collapsed. That would make sense. Then he heard a steady beeping in the control room. At first, he didn’t put the vibration in the floor and the alarm together. He suspected that a sensor in the mine was in need of calibration or had failed. But then there was another beep, and then another, and another, all joining in an irritating cacophony, demanding that someone come and see about them.
Mole hurried into his office and sat down in his chair to study the monitors. It took just an instant to see the carbon monoxide sensors were activated near Six West. One by one, other sensors were being activated along the main line return. He’d never seen anything like that before. There was also a red light on the seismic monitor. Mole studied a blip on the screen that was nearly straight up and down. He’d never seen anything like that either. A bump or a roof fall created a sharp spike, but not one that big. He reached for the phone and called the machine shop at the bottom. “Did you feel anything down there?”
“Yeah,” a machinist named Mayday said. “What was it?”
“Check your detector for carbon monoxide,” Mole said.
A moment later, Mayday came back. “All’s normal. Wait a minute.” Mole heard Mayday talking to someone, then he came back on. “A motorman on one of the mantrips said he heard thunder and the mine shook. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I just see CO sensors lighting up in the return. Is Cable or Bossman at the bottom?”
“Nope. Bossman’s usually the last man out so he’s probably somewhere back down the main line.”
“If either Cable or Bossman show up, tell them to call me.”
“Will do,” Mayday said and hung up.
Mole stabbed the button for the pager on Six block. When no o
ne answered, he activated its speaker to demand that somebody, anybody, pick up. But no one did. He tried pagers working back toward the bottom on both the intake and the return. There were no answers anywhere.
The carbon monoxide sensors continued to beep. Mole turned off their audio, then pushed his chair back and thought for a couple of seconds, then got up and went to the door. He was looking for a white cap. He spotted Vietnam Petroski, waved him over, and told him all that had happened.
“Doggonit!” Petroski exclaimed. “Sounds like methane has lit off somewhere back around Six block. Did you call Cable or Bossman?”
“Bossman should be on his way to the bottom. Cable’s in the mine somewhere, but I’m not sure where.”
“I do,” Petroski said. “He was on Six block. He was talking with Song. They were still there when we left. Cable said he’d bring her back on his jeep.”
Mole uttered an expletive. “That ain’t good, Vietnam.”
Petroski kicked at the dirt, then looked back at the manlift. The cables were vibrating, indicating more men from the day shift were coming up. That at least was good. But the evening shift miners were starting to cluster around the shaft to take the ride down. They would have to be stopped. “Did you call MSHA?” Petroski asked.
“Not yet,” Mole said. “I wanted to talk to a white cap first. What do you think? Should I call?”
Petroski worried it over. “This is above my pay grade. Cable or Bossman should decide.”
“Yeah, but they ain’t here.”
Petroski reached into his pocket and pulled out a pouch of chewing tobacco. He dug into it with his fingers, then pushed a huge wad into his cheek, took a chew, then spat the whole thing out and kicked dirt over it.
“Call MSHA,” he said to Mole’s back. The dispatcher was already on his way to the telephone. Petroski turned to tell the evening shift to back away from the manlift. They weren’t going inside, not until Cable, Bossman, or MSHA said so.