Red Helmet

by Homer Hickam

  Before Mole could call anybody, his telephone rang. It was Bossman. “I’m at the bottom,” he said overly loud. “What going on? My jeep almost went off the track that bump was so big.”

  Mole quickly brought him up to speed, ending with what Petroski had ordered him to do. “You agree with me calling MSHA, right?”

  Bossman hesitated. “That’s a question for Cable.”

  Mole heard Bossman put his hand over the receiver, then a few muffled shouts. When he came back on, he said, “I was trying to find out if anybody had seen Cable or his jeep. Nobody has.”

  “So I call MSHA?” Mole pressed.

  Bossman took a few seconds to think, then said, “Call their main number, then track down Einstein.”

  THE VENTILATION CURTAINS had ceased flapping. Cable read his gas detector, then tucked it back in its holder.

  “Stay here,” he said to Song. “I think there’s been an explosion toward the main line.”

  There was no way Song was going to stay alone in the section. She followed Cable through the curtain into the entry. There was a wisp of smoke floating in the beams of their lights and the odor of something burning. “Carbon dioxide and monoxide levels are up, but not too bad,” Cable said, checking his detector again.

  “How about methane?” Song asked.

  “Higher than it should be.” Cable took a breath and coughed. The smoke, though thin, was acrid. “We’d better get our SCSRs on.” He turned to help Song but saw she already had hers ready. “Square trained you well,” he said. “Let’s get to the bottom before this air gets any worse.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Song replied.

  They hurried to the jeep. Cable energized it and they climbed aboard and began to head out of the section toward the main line intake, which was the way home. The smoke thickened, burning their eyes. “Put your goggles on,” Cable ordered.

  The smoke was getting denser. Soon it was difficult to see more than a few yards ahead. Cable slowed the jeep while straining his eyes to see the marker that indicated the turn onto the intake. “Do you see the placard?” he asked.

  “There it is, I think,” Song said when she spotted a whitish smudge through the smoke.

  Cable eased the jeep forward, then felt it curve to the right. He was relieved. It was the turn that would lead them to safety. There was also a pager there.

  Cable stopped the jeep and felt his way to the manhole where the pager was located. He picked up the receiver and listened. There was no dial tone, not even static. He went back to the jeep. “The line’s probably been cut somewhere up ahead,” he said. “We’ll keep going out.”

  “I’m having trouble breathing out of the SCSR,” Song confessed. “The air’s too hot.”

  “Slow down your inhalations,” Cable advised. “Relax as much as you can.”

  Song did her best to take slow breaths and also to relax, but it didn’t seem to help. The oxygen was still too warm to be comfortable. It caused her to start coughing. “Hurry up, Cable,” she urged.

  “I can’t go any faster through this smoke,” he replied, talking around his mouthpiece and breathing between comments. “This is the intake and the smoke should be blowing past us, but it’s not. Something must be blocking it, maybe a roof fall. We don’t want to plow into it.”

  A few minutes later, Song felt the wheels on the jeep rolling over something. Cable pushed the brake and the jeep ground to a stop. “It’s what I was afraid of. Rock on the track. We’re going to have to walk ahead to see if there’s more of it.”

  Song climbed off the jeep and felt her way until she bumped into Cable. “Oops, sorry,” she said.

  Cable took her hand. “Stay close.”

  “Like glue,” she answered.

  They hadn’t gone far before they ran into a massive rock fall. Their beams shot aloft and illuminated exposed roof bolts hanging like bizarre chandeliers. Cable climbed up on the rocks and tried to see over it. He came back down. “I think there’s another fall in front of it.” Cable consulted his detector. “Carbon monoxide is rising.”

  “Can we move enough rock to get through?” Song asked.

  Cable played his light along the rock fall, then shook his head. “It’s going to take some heavy equipment to clear this.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “First, we don’t panic.”

  “I’m not panicking, Cable,” Song replied evenly. “I just asked you what we should do. You’re the experienced hand here. I’m just a lowly red cap.”

  Cable gave himself a moment to think. “Petroski ought to be at the bottom by now and he knows where we are. I’m sure the carbon monoxide and methane sensors have gone off in Mole’s office.” He paused to take some hits off his SCSR to satisfy his oxygen debt. “The one good thing this rock fall has done is to keep the smoke from being pushed back into Six West. The air back at the face might still be clear. We’ll go back there and barricade ourselves in.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Song admitted.

  “We’ll be fine. There’s a half-dozen SCSRs stocked near the entry. We’ll pick them up and take them with us. If we ration our oxygen, we’ll be okay for a day, maybe more.”

  Song eyed the wall of rock. “Are you sure we can’t move enough rock to squeeze through?”

  “I’m sure. Come on. We’re going to be fine. Get back aboard the jeep.”

  Song climbed aboard the jeep while Cable again checked his gas detector. “Carbon monoxide’s still climbing. Methane’s up but still not too bad. Most of it got burned off, I think.”

  Song looked at the detector, squinting through the oily smoke to make out the numbers. “What caused this?” she wondered.

  “Methane explosion, I’m pretty sure. If I had to guess, I’d say in the old works. It was big enough to blow out a stopper. Maybe more than one.” Cable put the jeep in reverse.

  “What would cause that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  While Cable went after the box of SCSRs at the turn-in to Six West, Song peered through the smoke and saw lying in the gob what looked like somebody’s cast-off shirt. She got off the jeep to take a closer look. “Cable, there’s somebody buried over here!” she yelled.

  Cable secured the box of SCSRs on the jeep and came over for a look. “You’re right,” he said grimly. He began to dig with his hands until he had enough rubble and gob removed to turn the man over. When he did, an all-too-familiar face was revealed. “It’s Bum! What’s he doing here?”

  Song shook her head in disgust. “Probably fell asleep and missed the mantrip out. According to Vietnam, it wouldn’t be the first time either. Nobody can figure out why you haven’t fired Bum a long time ago, Cable.”

  “That’s not entirely true. Most folks know why.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Song said, rolling her eyes. “Your old football teammate.”

  Cable took the SCSR off Bum’s belt, opened it up, then tossed it away. “Empty. He’s been taking hits off it, most likely.” Cable leaned in to smell Bum’s breath. “He stinks of meth too. Bum, you sorry sack of . . . I’ve done my best to help you, but this is the end of it.”

  “Hallelujah,” Song said.

  Cable chuckled. “I didn’t know Yogists said hallelujah.”

  “Oh, we say a lot of things, Cable. For instance, this Yogist is kind of curious whether we’re going to get out of this alive.”

  “I told you we’re going to be fine.”

  “And I heard you. But can I believe you?”

  Cable pointed at his helmet. “See this white helmet? You have to believe me. I’m your boss.”

  “I thought you resigned.”

  “It isn’t official until the end of the week.”

  “Well, anyway, I own this mine, so I outrank you.”

  “No, you don’t. Your father owns this mine. A subtle but important difference.”

  Song took a deep breath. The air out of the SCSR was still too hot. “Just keep us safe, Cable.”

  �
�That’s what I intend to do.”

  Cable went to the jeep to get a fresh SCSR for Bum and a roll of duct tape. He activated the rebreather, strapped it around Bum’s neck, then put the clips on his nose. He used the duct tape to hold the mouthpiece in place.

  “Nice look for him,” Song said. “Too bad you didn’t just tape over his mouth and forget the SCSR.”

  “Let’s put him on the jeep,” Cable said, ignoring her suggestion.

  “Are you kidding? He’s got to weigh two hundred and fifty pounds.”

  “That’s why I said ‘let’s,’ as in let us.”

  Song took another deep inhalation, then allowed a long sigh. “All right, Cable. Let’s save your little teammate.”

  She knelt and lapped one of Bum’s arms across her neck. Using the muscles in her legs rather than her back, just as Square had taught, she stood up, dragging the big man to his knees. His head fell forward and his black helmet fell off. “Hey, you’re strong,” Cable marveled, picking up the helmet and jamming it back on Bum’s head.

  “Coal mining will do that for a girl,” she grunted beneath Bum’s weight.

  “What else does it do?”

  “Makes her mean and lean, Cable,” she growled. “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to help me with this ugly brute? Remember you said ‘let’s’ as in let us?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  Together, Song and Cable half-carried, half-dragged Bum to the jeep and stretched him out on it. Cable drove the jeep very slowly through the smoke, turning into the cut that led toward the face on Six West and, hopefully, clear air.

  “Just about there,” Cable said just before another huge tremor shook the mine. A crib collapsed, and the header it was holding fell, swinging in a vicious arc into the side of the jeep. Cable yelled something, then the jeep was battered off the track.

  Song was sent flying, landing hard in the gob on her back beside the crib on the other side. After a few seconds of shock, she pulled herself up. Dust and smoke hung in the air. “Cable, are you all right?” she called. There was no answer. Then she heard a splintering sound. She looked up and her heart turned to ice. Through the acrid smoke, she could see cracks racing through the draw rock. “God, help me!” she heard herself cry. It was decidedly not a Yogist’s prayer.

  Then there was a noise that sounded like a gigantic plate glass window struck by a sledge hammer. Song’s desperate prayer stuck in her throat. The entire roof was coming down.

  BOSSMAN ENTERED MOLE’S office just as another blip appeared on the seismograph. Mole pointed at it. “It’s bigger than the first one,” he said in awe.

  Bossman studied the jagged line on the monitor. Then he looked at the CO sensors. They were lit up to Three block on the return and to Five block on the intake. “Fire damp exploding,” he muttered, using the old miner’s term for methane. “But where’s it coming from?”

  Bossman’s eyes shifted to the big mine map on the wall. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said to himself, although Mole was listening intently. “I fire bossed up on Six block myself and the methane level was normal.” He pondered a little more, then asked, “How’re the fans?”

  “All operational,” Mole said.

  “Did you call Einstein?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t talk to him. His voice mail said he’s at the MSHA Academy giving a class for inspectors. I left a message.”

  Bossman picked up the mine phone and called the bottom. “I want everybody out of the mine,” he growled. “Yes, everybody!” Then he called the lamp house. “When you think all the men on the day shift are out, let me know whose tags are still on the board. And tell any miner on the rescue team you see to report to the dispatcher’s office.”

  Bossman hung up the phone and turned to Mole. “Call the rescue team.”

  “You think Cable and Song are still at Six West?”

  “How the hell should I know? If they are . . .” He left the sentence unfinished, looked again at the mine map, then picked up his white helmet and plopped it aboard.

  “Where you going?” Mole asked.

  “Back inside.”

  “But you just ordered the mine evacuated.”

  “I know what I did. I also told you to call the rescue team!”

  While Mole picked up the phone to make the calls, Bossman tore across the mine yard, waving at the manlift attendant to open the gate.

  ON THE AIRWAY entry to Six West, Cable’s jeep was beneath the header that had struck it and a pile of draw rock. On the other side of the entry, pressed against the crib that had saved her, Song lifted her head, then brushed off the fragments of the knife-sharp rock splinters that had fallen all around her. She played her light through the dust and smoke, saw the jeep, then crawled to it. Its motor was still humming. She fumbled with its controls until she had it turned off. If it was methane that kept exploding, she didn’t want a sparking electric motor to set off more. She was just a stupid red cap, but she knew that much!

  She heard Cable groaning and found him folded into the small space below the driver’s seat. “I think my leg’s broken,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Song’s spot of light moved along his leg. The bend in it told her Cable’s suspicion was correct. “Tell me what to do,” she said.

  “Help me out,” he said.

  Song did her best, but she couldn’t get any leverage. Finally, Cable reached up and grabbed the header with both hands and pulled himself up. He gasped at the resulting pain, but he worked himself hand over hand until his upper body was hanging over the lip of the jeep. Then he lost his grip and fell, landing on his back in the gob. He shrieked, then subsided into moans.

  Song worked her way to him. “Cable?”

  Cable took a long, ragged breath through his SCSR. “How far are we from the face?”

  Song flashed her light down the entry. “I think maybe another fifty yards,” she said.

  “Get me a crutch or something.”

  “Cable, there’s no crutch except me.”

  He rolled himself over on his stomach, gasping as his broken leg flopped into the gob. When she put his arm around her shoulders and struggled to lift him, he said, “You can’t take my weight.”

  “Yes, I can. I’ve had you on top of me before. Remember?”

  Cable managed a smile. “Guess I’d forgotten, it’s been so long.” Then he added, “Too long, maybe.”

  “This is no time to get romantic,” she chided, then lifted with all her strength. He grunted in pain, and so did she, but she managed to lift him until he could hobble along on one foot with her supporting him. It took what seemed hours but was probably no more than fifteen minutes before they got to their destination. Song let Cable down as gently as she could, then spat out the mouthpiece of her SCSR and took a quick breath. “I think this is good air,” she said.

  “We need to put up a curtain.”

  “I’ll get one.”

  Song trotted off to where she knew the curtain material was stored. She unrolled the plastic sheet, estimated the length she needed, cut it off, and hung it where Cable told her to. For the moment, they were sealed off from the smoke.

  Cable crawled to a rib, dragging his broken leg. He rolled into a sitting position, then wiped the sweat and grime from his face. “You hung that curtain like an expert,” he marveled.

  Song shrugged. “I had a good instructor.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any morphine on you, would you?”

  “I have a bottle of ibuprofen in my lunch bucket.”

  “Go get it. I’ve got to knock this pain down a little so I can think.” Cable released the mouthpiece on the SCSR and took a tentative breath. “You’re right. This air isn’t too bad.”

  “Check your gas detector to be sure.”

  Cable did. “Acceptable,” he reported.

  Song soon returned with the ibuprofen. She also brought a bottle of water from the box Petroski always kept near the face. There were plenty of bottles, so water was
n’t going to be a problem, at least not right away. Cable swallowed four of the tablets, drank the entire bottle, then asked, “Did you see Bum after we ran off the tracks?”

  “No, but I didn’t look for him either.”

  Cable looked grim.

  “What?” Song demanded.

  “Well, a miner never leaves his buddy behind.”

  Song peered at Cable in astonishment. “Bum is not my buddy. Nor yours, I might add.”

  “I know,” Cable said quietly.

  Song had a furious argument with herself, then said, “All right. I’ll go get him.”

  Cable touched her arm. “No. Stay here where it’s safe.”

  Song made a hopeless gesture. “I can’t just leave a man out there to die. Not even Bum. What would Preacher say? What would the church ladies say? They’d call me a pure snotty little witch again and this time they’d be right.”

  Cable groaned as pain shot through his leg. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m sorry I made you stay behind with me,” he said. “You’d be safe outside by now.”

  “Yeah, well, if pigs could fly and all that.” She stood up. “Any advice before I go risk my life for—I can’t believe I’m saying this—Bum?”

  “Bring along the SCSRs on the jeep. There’s also an extra light and a charged-up battery in a metal box behind the driver’s seat. Bring them too.”

  Song nodded, then walked to the curtain and pulled it aside.

  “Song?” Cable called after her.

  Song turned. For some reason, the sound of her name on his lips made her think Cable was going to tell her something from his heart.

  “Don’t forget the light and the battery,” he said.

  “I’m a woman, not a mule, Cable!” she snapped, then angrily pushed through the curtain into the entry. The smoke was like a thick gray wall. She put the SCSR mouthpiece back in, snapped the nose clip on, and pushed into it.

  Thirty-Four

  6:14 p.m., Tuesday

  Birchbark’s crew were shoveling dirt into the open sore in the ground that had been created by the eruption from below. Bashful was pacing around them. “What happened?” he asked for about the tenth time.