Clan of the She Bear: Diamonds in the Rough
by
Emmy Waterford
c2018
Waterford Publishing Co.
www.emmywaterford.com
PART 1: Hannah Alexander
CHAPTER ONE
Marion County, Indiana 1840
The mountain seemed quiet. Hannah felt as if she were right there with them, transported fifty years back in time, but only a few precious miles away, her old friend’s words echoed in the back of her mind.
“They worked from before dawn,” old man Roth said, his voice grainy, “that day like every day. Their cruel master would have nothing less, and his pitiful slaves could offer up no more. They all knew a day would come when things would have to change. And though the mountain seemed quiet that morning … ” His words trailed off and a chill ran through Hannah’s body. She was safe in her neighbor’s house, standing by his bed, her loving family in the house next door. But Hannah felt as if she were one of them, a slave, shuffling through that freezing mud and into that endless hole, deeper and deeper into the ground.
Whale oil lamps flickered against the round, jagged walls and ceilings of the mine, the shovels digging into the hard rock in a continuous rattle, underscored by the slaves’ grunts and panting, air becoming thin.
“But the foreman,” old man Roth said, his voice grainy and weak but ripe with the drama of his telling, “he’d gotten word from the master himself. They were to drive deeper into the mountain, farther down, the angle too sharp for a cart and rail, a canal that would suck men down to their deaths for certain.”
Hannah felt her own eyes widen, mouth dipping in horrified suspense, the light of Roth’s own lamp flickering against his own papered walls.
“But the master, his name was Chisholm, Cyrus Chisholm as I recall, told the foreman, ‘To the devil with them!’”
“The foreman tried to explain the expense of losing so many slaves,” Roth told Hannah. “How much time they’d lose having to get to the slave market, but Chisholm wouldn’t hear it.” In another voice, more stern and parental, angry and blustery, Roth enacted the part of Cyrus Chisholm, the slave master and the property owner, the man behind the massive mining project.
“‘What good are they to me if their labor fails to bring me the results I’m looking for? If there’s a shortage of labor, get more! Send some of your men out to collect more numbers, if that’s what you need — ’
“‘But master,’ the foreman said,’” Roth went on in the more careful voice of the foreman, “‘the roads are dangerous. And without enough guards on our force here, they could rebel —’”
“‘Then I’ll kill them all myself,’ Chisholm shouted back. ‘I want those diamonds, and I’ll drag every one of those coal-skinned bastards to the gates of hell by the very scruff of the neck to get them!’”
Hannah stood by Roth’s bed, almost afraid of the old man who’d become her friend and confidant. No longer the harmless, hairless old man down the road, he’d embodied the fearful fiend of his tale. His story, and his performance, had that strong a grip on her imagination.
And it was only beginning.
Roth went on. “So the foremen drove the slaves deeper into the mountain, digging farther into the darkness, carrying dirt and rock up in buckets. The tunnels became so sharp and so narrow that men were cutting into their own bare feet with their rusty spades as they dug, stifling their own screams to avoid being cut down by the other slaves just to keep the foreman from coming down on them all. There was no air, no light, men pressed against each other, no room to dig or to move.”
“‘Get on with it,’ the foreman shouted, ‘dig, you Godless savages!’”
In Hannah’s imagination, the mountain no longer seemed so quiet.
The rumbling came in long and slow, creeping in under the growling and straining breathing, shovels clanking against the hard rock. But once that distant rumble got louder, leaking into the first ear and then the other, all other sounds came to a stuttering stop. Shovels ceased, those who could still breathe held that breath, knowing it could be their last.
The rumbling brought the shaking, clumps of dirt and rock falling from the ceilings and walls. Then the screaming began. The foreman said nothing, already on his way to a cowardly escape, leaving his workers to die. And their terror clamored against the walls of the trembling mine, wooden beams cracking in the upper tunnels as the slaves trampled over each other toward the exit.
They clawed at each other in deathly panic, shoving their brethren aside, vicious and desperate in a drive to escape, to survive.
But the lower tunnels, so fresh and so raw, unsupported and slick, were filled with men scrambling from the water as it rose up from the sopping base. They climbed on top of one another, hands reaching up in clawed finality as their heads were shoved into the muddy water, last air bubbles rising up and bursting.
Dead.
Several managed to pull themselves up to one of the main tunnels. But most were trampled by others racing to safety, some of them falling with shattered ankles or knees to writhe in the mud, destined to die along with the others.
“The rumbling and the shaking only got worse,” Roth told Hannah, his old, yellowed eyes wide, bony fingers craned in front of him to bring his tale to life. “One of the lower tunnels broke from the bottom out, water pouring in from an underground spring. And it flooded the chambers quickly, roaring like a freight train down those main tunnels, drowning every poor living soul still in a lower chamber. Those still running in the upper tunnels, feet slipping in the mud, some of them fool enough to turn and see the face of the charging death that came up behind them, frozen in fear, finally accepting what they knew they couldn’t ever have denied … their fate.”
Hannah stood by that bed, unable to move. “W-w-w-w-what happened?”
Old man Roth went on. “They say the foreman made it out … some say, anyway.”
“But … the slaves?”
“All dead, s’what the townsfolk said, all drowned. Some people even started saying the mine was haunted.”
“Haunted?”
“Well sure, Hannah, sure! There are spirits, some say, a lot of people. You believe in God, don’t cha?”
“Of course I do!”
“Of course you do,” Roth repeated with a tender smile on his cracking face, his old, chilly hands finding Hannah’s, young and supple. “So you believe in a soul, right?” Hannah only had to nod, and Roth went on. “And you know that black folks, they got souls too, just like white folks, right? Yer not one of those people think that ain’t so, not you.”
Hannah shook her head. “If God made them, and they’re people, they must have souls.”
“That’s right, Hannah,” Roth said, a little tear rolling down his cheek. “That’s very, very right. And what do you think happens when a soul can’t find a way to heaven somehow, because they’re trapped somewhere, or are sad or confused and can’t find God’s light, or … or they just can’t rest in peace, maybe because they were so wronged in their lives, Hannah, so much pain that they just can’t let go of.”
Hannah had never known such pain, and Roth could see it in her eyes. She knew his little smile was a grateful smile, that he was glad she could hardly guess what horrors those poor souls must have endured. He hoped she never would, and even at ten years old, Hannah hoped so, too.
“Anyways,” Roth said, “the waters went down, back into the mountain, and the townsfolk finally made old man Chisholm dynamite the mountain, close up the mine.”
“Because of the ghosts?”
Roth nodded. “Some say, others ‘cause there weren’t no diamonds anyway.”
“Were there? Diamonds, I mean.”
R
oth looked at her, long and slow, leaning forward a little bit, a glint in his eye. “Not that they ever found. ‘Course the legend is that the spirits, they’re still workin’ the mine, been workin’ it all this time. Sometimes the mountains shake a bit, some folks think thats thems hittin’ a vein, openin’ up a new tunnel, goin’ even deeper. Deeper and deeper and deeper … deep into the ground … ”
Old man Roth lay back into his pillow, his fragile, knobby hands slipping out of Hannah’s, falling to his sides and then slowly rising up to fold over his chest, rising slowly with his wheezing breath.
“Always wanted to find that mine myself,” Roth said, “always wanted to believe it was true. But it wasn’t….” His words trailed off with a few sputtering coughs.
“It wasn’t … it wasn’t real?”
He looked at her with a gentle smile and a last flicker of light in his eyes. “It wasn’t … my fate.”
Hannah stood by the bed as old man Roth closed his eyes and leaned farther back into his pillow. “Go on back home now, Hannah, it’s time for your supper.” Hannah nodded and stepped away from the bed. “You’ll come back, visit me again tomorrow.”
“My mom’s made some prickle berry jam.”
“You’ll bring me some?”
“A whole big jar,” Hannah said, “just for you.”
Roth smiled. “For us, Hannah. We’ll share it … we’ll share it all.”
*
Hannah sat quietly at the dinner table, pushing the venison stew around her copper bowl. The day-old bread soaked up the gravy and was almost ready to bite through.
“Ghosts and diamond mines,” Hannah’s father, Michael, said, shaking his head. “What nonsense.” He lowered his sopped bread and turned to Hannah, shaking a stern finger at her. “That old man is filling your head with a lot of foolishness, I keep telling you.”
“There’s nothing altogether all too wrong with a little foolishness, Husband.”
“Adrienne!”
Hannah’s mother shrugged, long black hair graying around her fading features, a stark contrast to Hannah’s brown hair and round face, which looked more like her father’s. Adrienne always smiled when Hannah’s hair appeared almost auburn, in just the right light. She would touch her hair and claim it was the Lord’s special touch. “We’re in our own home, none of the community here.”
“Even so. My God woman, you are a stubborn one.” But Adrienne only smiled, returning her attention to her own meal to eat in quiet satisfaction.
Michael went on. “If there’s any real fortune to be wrought from the ground, it’s right on the surface, not buried in some dark hole.”
Hannah asked, “You mean the gold in the streams?”
“I mean the iron,” Michael said. “And it doesn’t come in flakes, I can tell you that, but in rails; endless rails stretching in every direction, crisscrossing the whole damned new world.”
“Language, Husband.”
“My apologies to you both,” he said, “but I’ll not utter a single sorry, or shed a single tear, for those mechanical monsters. They’ll be the ruin of the country, just as they’ve been the ruin of this family!”
A sad quiet settled over the dinner table, Adrienne pouring Hannah another glass of chilled, boiled goat’s milk.
“I admit,” Michael went on after staring too long into some distant point of self-recrimination, the moment of some grave and irreversible mistake. “I was wrong. I thought they’d never come to anything. Who would want such a contraption running through their town? All that smoke and noise, the crime they bring. And for what? The waterways weren’t enough, that damned trench wasn’t enough—”
“Husband, language!”
“What was the point of the whole thing, the Erie Canal? All those men dead, all that time and money spent, now they just throw down some tracks and here comes the Baltimore and Ohio number ten, right on time, take from here to the ends of the earth. Who would have thought they’d throw their own time and money and men away like that?”
Hannah couldn’t help but imagine the slaves in the diamond mine, shuffling into the mountain that morning with an eerie stillness in the air; later drowned and trampled, souls trapped forever in endless toil and misery.
“Anyway, the die is cast,” Michael went on, pushing his bowl of stew away in disgust. “There won’t be much further use of the stagecoach, much less any workshops like mine.”
“You could build train parts,” Adrienne said.
“They’re building those for themselves, Adrienne. You think I can just start hammering out steam engines? I fix stagecoaches, I can smith a hinge or a buckle and that’s about it.” After another long silence, during which Hannah could only sit and watch her father stare out, one arm crossed in front of his belly, the other resting on it to lean his fingers against his chin. “I … I don’t know, Adrienne. The winter’s coming—”
“Michael,” Adrienne said, “you’ll frighten the child.”
“Perhaps she should be frightened!” Michael turned to Hannah, his voice becoming low and grave, words quick and stark. “Forget your fairytales about diamond mines and slave ghosts, Hannah. If you want a real horror story, think about this.”
Hannah’s blood slowed steadily in that long, slow pause before her father said, “Winter is coming.”
*
The next morning the sky over Marion County, Indiana was blustery with cloud rolling over the hazy blue beyond. Summer was just giving way to autumn, the smell of the air heavy with rotting bark, leaves falling in bright orange and purple and yellow, to turn crisp and tan with the coming weeks before the snow.
The snow.
Her father’s words rang in her head, but Hannah tried not to let the chilly breeze suggest that he was more right than either of them could know. I just hope Mr. Roth gets through the winter all right, Hannah thought, the glass mason jar cold in her ungloved hands. She was careful not to wear them so the jar wouldn’t slip from her fingers.
Mr. Roth never answered his door. He’d spent the past three months in his bedroom in the far corner of the house, and he’d grown unconcerned about being robbed or assaulted. Everyone in Marion County knew Samuel Roth, and everybody knew he had little to steal and was too close to death to bother trying to hurt.
“Mr. Roth,” Hannah called as she stepped casually into the house, as she’d almost every day since he’d taken to his bed. “I brought the jam, like I promised. My daddy wouldn’t let me bring any bread, said it was too old to eat, but we can use a spoon or something, it’s still gonna be delicious.”
Hannah presumed to walk straight into the kitchen to find two silver spoons with Paul Revere’s own initials stamped on the bottoms.
“My daddy says he’s worried about the railroads, and the winter, but he always says that. But we got through last winter, right?”
No answer came back from Roth’s room.
“Right, Mr. Roth?”
Hannah opened the door, creaking on its hinges. She stepped slowly into the room and saw Roth lying on the bed, hands crossed over his chest, eyes closed, lips pulling tight across his teeth.
“Mr. Roth?”
Still, no answer.
A bolt of cold terror shot through Hannah’s body, her arms becoming numb, the jar slipping out of her fingers and crashing to pieces at her feet, red jam pouring out of the shattered vessel, the red stain leaking into the rug.
*
The pastor’s words hovered over the grave as they lowered the coffin down, Michael at the front, several other men of the community joining in the sad duty. They stood with legs splayed on the sides of the grave, muscles straining, hands slowly releasing long letter straps as the coffin slowly sank into the earth.
Hannah stood with her mother and the few dozen others who knew Roth well enough to pay their final respects. His congregation was there, his pastor, his neighbors. Few others knew he was alive, and far more would never know that he’d ever existed at all.
Hannah’s tears gathered he
avy in her eyes, clinging to her ducts and finally falling down over her cheeks, salty in the corners of her mouth.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
Hannah thought about the story he'd told, the frightful deaths of those poor men in that mine, another dark hole in that unforgiving ground. In his own way, Hannah couldn’t help but think, he’s like one of them, one of those poor, wretched creatures who would spend forever in the dark of the grave without ever finding their peace, their true destinies, their fate one too terrible to even imagine.
The coffin found the bottom of the grave and the men tossed in their straps and stepped away from the grave. The pastor went on. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”
Are they green? Hannah had to wonder. I don’t question the Lord, of course, but maybe … maybe His work isn’t done. Sure those men don’t lie in green pastures, but far beneath. And poor Mr. Roth, dying alone with a dream yet in his heart, one never to be realized, a fate he died knowing was denied him. So sad.
“He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul.”
Hannah told herself, yes, yes He does work those mighty wonders, He can restoreth the soul. Who dares to doubt the greatness of the Lord or His perfect plan? But … what if He needs just a little help down here on Earth? What if His plan involves one of His humble followers? Isn't that the case so often in the Bible? Who was Abram who became Abraham but a poor old man? And who was Rahab but a prostitute within the walls of Jericho, whom the Lord called upon to aid Joshua and his men bring those walls tumbling down? Isn’t that our duty, as good Christians and as good people, to help each other, to help God, to do the Lord’s work if so called upon to do so?
“He guides me along the path of righteousness for His name’s sake.”
Hannah was flush with a sense of purpose, a heat pulsing in her blood to wash away the moaning melancholy of the days before. She could see the light of God’s purpose through what seemed to be shadow. Now the shroud of death was being removed from Hannah’s young eyes and she could see more clearly than ever before what God intended for her, for Roth, for those poor enslaved spirits trapped in the mountain.
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