Written in the Scars

by Adriana Locke

  “That works both ways, Mr. Foreman. I’m not about to go up and tell Elin, ‘He’ll be right here.’”

  Staggering to my feet, I wince as my left leg screams in agony. “It’s Jiggs. You. Then me. Got it?” I bark.

  He watches me closely, his lips forming a thin line. Finally, he shrugs and stands, grabbing his helmet off the ground. “Whatever, Whitt. I’m gonna go take a leak.”

  His boots splash in the water as he makes his way into the darkness. I watch him until I can’t see him anymore, then I turn to Jiggs. He’s smiling in his sleep, his face streaked black, making him look like a cartoon character.

  My knees buckle as the situation slams into me. I catch myself on the wall.

  “Dear God,” I whisper, feeling my lashes touch the grit on my face. “Please get us out of here.”

  ELIN

  “I love you.”

  Even though I didn’t say the words out loud, I can hear them ricochet through my mind.

  Ty’s face is all I see, his wide grin highlighted vividly in my mind. I see his thick lashes, the little freckle on the right side of his nose. The way his dark hair contrasts with his fair skin.

  It’s comforting, the only relief I can find in this madness. I feel connected to him this way, to imagine him in front of me and talking to him.

  “We’ve been through some crap lately, huh?” I say, although not out loud. My words, again, are for he and I only.

  I block out Lindsay talking quietly on her cell phone across the room. I ignore the faint sounds of the office that shares a wall of this conference area we’ve settled into over the last day. I concentrate on Ty.

  Tears wet my lashes as I let that thought wash over me. “You’re a survivor,” I tell him. “You’ve made it through hell before. And I need you now more than ever.”

  My hand goes to my belly and I fight the tears. “I have a surprise for you, Ty.”

  I catch a sob before it escapes and I draw Lindsay’s attention. Right now, stressed to the max, the lights dim, my life on pause, I need this moment with my husband—real or not.

  “You have so much to do here yet. I need you to fix the back door. I need you to make sure the furnace is still on. I need you to hold me,” I say, even my not-real voice breaking.

  My body quakes with the tears that beg to spill, my back lifting off the brown fabric of the chair.

  “Get my brother and get Cord and get out of there,” I beg. “Do you hear me?” I scream inside my head. “You can’t leave me here! Not again.”

  A man’s voice makes me jump, nearly catapulting out of my chair. My lids fly open, only to see Vernon standing at the front of the room.

  Lindsay gives me a strange look and I realize I must not have heard him knock.

  “I just received an update from the mining board. We will begin boring into the hole within the hour,” he relays.

  I glance at the clock. It’s nearly noon, Ty’s day off. “That’s fantastic!” I exclaim.

  “It’s great news,” he says cautiously. “Just remember, this is not a guarantee.” He holds his hands out as Lindsay and I balk. “I don’t want to scare you, but I want you to be aware of the risks.”

  “Which are?” Lindsay asks.

  “We have flown in an expert in this kind of thing. He has designed plans to extract miners numerous times before, so we have reason to be optimistic. But you have to remember, we are battling Mother Nature. There are no guarantees.”

  The room suddenly feels too small. The air too stale. The lights too fake.

  I begin to pace, walking back and forth across the laminated floor. “I need to get out of here,” I say, stopping and looking at Vernon. “Can we get closer to the mine?”

  “I can get you into a different room here, certainly. But we aren’t authorized to get any closer to the mine. And I strongly suggest not going outside, unless you want to give a statement to the press. They’re camped out, waiting for news, just like we are.”

  My head tilts towards the ceiling and I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.

  “I’ll work on getting a fan brought in. Maybe circulating the air will help?” he asks.

  I watch him like he’s crazy. No, a fan won’t help. No, circulating the air won’t help.

  Having my husband and going home will help.

  He seems to sense my thoughts and backs towards the door. “We will do our best to update you before any news hits the media. They are outside filming. If you’d like to watch, I can bring in a television . . .”

  Lindsay looks at me and I stare blankly at him. He leaves.

  TY

  Jiggs sits on top of a lump of coal, his head buried in his hands. Water laps at the tops of his boots, just like it does mine.

  It leaks inside my boots, the bitter cold stinging my toes. Our teeth are chattering as we struggle to stay out of hypothermia. It’s been this way for a couple of hours now.

  My spirits are falling, as much as I try to keep them up for all of us. I’m tired, cold, achy. And I have this overwhelming fear that’s taken root in my gut as my energy wanes that this isn’t going to end well. Every hour we’re down here increases the chances we won’t make it out. That’s why they suggested we write these letters. They know the odds.

  Shivering, my heart as broken as the walls of this cavern, I look into the darkness. So many things I didn’t do, so many things I put off, so many things I took for granted because who would’ve thought this would’ve happened to me.

  I look at my friends.

  To us?

  Cord takes the pen from me and rips a sheet of paper from the notepad the top sent down. I can see the paper wet as his damp fingers touch it.

  A heaviness sits on us, silencing us all. Once they start boring, which they informed us will happen shortly, our contact with the outside world will cease. All attention will be put on the bore and the reservoir of water sitting on our heads, the same water that’s slowly filling the room.

  “I’m done,” Cord says after a while. He folds the paper into quarters. He puts it in the baggie and when Jiggs and I don’t make an effort to drop ours into it, he crushes the opening with his hand and sighs.

  “Just . . . give me a minute,” I eke out, watching the paper tremble in my hands.

  If shit goes wrong, these will be my last words to my wife. To the love of my life. To the woman I would do anything for and love beyond measure. I wish I had more time to write this, more time to be able to find the words to tell her all the things I want her to know, to give her some sort of guidebook on how to do the things she doesn’t know how.

  I look away into the darkness and blow out a breath, even the darkness a blur through my tears.

  I love her. So damn much. And if I don’t make it out of here, I’m okay with that on my part. I mean, I hate I won’t get to experience life with her, but what will I know once I take my last breath? Nothing.

  I hate it for her. For the pain she’ll go through, for having to recalibrate her life. I feel like I’ve let her down, and I just wish I could talk to her, face to face, one final time, and beg her to forgive me and tell her how much she means to me and hold her in my arms and . . .

  The tears come fast and hard.

  Sucking in a quick breath, I look at the words on the note in my hand. They’re incomplete. A ramble of topics and words and emotions and things to make her laugh, but it’s the best I can do.

  My words mirror the man I am: a failed attempt at making things right.

  “We’re ready to start!” a voice booms from above.

  I look at Jiggs as his head lifts to mine. His eyes are bloodshot, his hair caked with soot. “Here we go,” I say, reaching for his letter. He kisses it before putting it in my hand. I drop them into Cord’s bag.

  He stands and places them in my lunch box. Tying a rope around the handle, he tugs on it and we watch it rise to the surface as water speeds down to the floor.

  ELIN

  A plate of nibbled fruit and sandwic
hes sit on the table in between us. Paper cups of water sit, virtually untouched, next to it.

  Lindsay’s face is swollen, her lips cracked and red. Her skin is blotchy, her hair a tangled mess. It’s such a contrast to her usual made-up appearance that it breaks my heart.

  “How are you?” I whisper, my throat parched.

  “About the same as you.” Her voice is husky, matching mine. “You know you look like a mess, right?”

  A hint of a smile plays on her lips and, instantly, a bit of pressure releases from my shoulders.

  “You haven’t looked in the mirror recently, huh?” I tease.

  “Aren’t we a sight?” She leans back in her chair. “How long do you think it will take?”

  “I have no idea.”

  We sit in silence again, each of us coming to terms with the next piece of the puzzle. How the next few hours will determine the rest of our lives.

  “They’re going to be fine,” Lindsay says out of nowhere. “I know that sounds crazy and optimistic, but I believe it.”

  I half-smile, unable to give her more.

  “I fell asleep earlier—today? Yesterday?—and I had a dream. I was giving birth to this baby, a girl, if you’re wondering, and Jiggs was with me, holding my hand. I felt so calm, so happy. It has to be a glimpse of the future because I could never feel like that if he wasn’t here. I just couldn’t.” She looks at me earnestly. “They’re going to be okay, Elin.”

  “They have to be,” I say, wishing I had felt as sure about it as Lindsay. “I can’t . . .” I gulp, “I can’t imagine going through life without either one of them.”

  “I know and that’s why they’ll come back to us. They have a guardian angel watching over them. I feel it.”

  I pick at a sandwich and avoid her stare. Even though I’ve tried to convince myself this will end well, I don’t feel that way. Maybe because I’ve heard Ty talking about mining disasters. Maybe because I feel like he’s been spared once already. Maybe because I understand the dangers more than she does. Whatever the reason, I just can’t find that peace about it.

  “I was thinking,” she says, her voice lifting me out of my daze. “We should have a double baby shower.”

  “I can’t think about that right now.”

  “Sure you can,” she says, resting her elbows on the table. “You have to feed the result in your mind that you want. If we are imagining this party together, our boys there, that gives the universe the energy we want it to have.”

  Laughing, I roll my eyes. “I don’t know how much of that universe energy stuff I believe.”

  “Well, I do,” she says simply. “And I’m going to be over here choosing the theme and the finger foods, so if you want a say in it, I’d speak up.”

  “You’re nuts,” I say, feeling an ease seep in my bones.

  “I am,” she laughs. “So should we wait until we know what we’re having or should we just go green and yellow and—”

  A knock hits the door, cutting her off. The positive air evaporates from the room as Vernon walks in.

  “The boring has started,” he says, walking over to the table. He forces a swallow before producing two baggies. “Your husbands sent these up for you.”

  My stomach hits the floor as I stare, unmoving, at my name written in Ty’s handwriting on the dirty piece of paper in front of me.

  TY

  The boring equipment screams over our heads, shaking everything around us. Mixed with the water gushing in like a river has been unleashed, it’s like being in a giant washing machine.

  The water is now up to my waist. A sea of cold, black water that’s thick like soup from the debris and mud and muck, rippling in a nonstop motion from the commotion above.

  I barely hear the sound anymore. It was loud, so loud, at first. But that was untold minutes ago. Hours, maybe. Now it’s just a new normal as we wait to see if the shaft hits bottom.

  My heart strikes against my ribs, my lungs battering them too as I struggle to stay calm. To stay alive.

  Ducking chunks of rock from the ceiling as all four walls of the room judder and quake from the assault of the boring machine, I’m pulled into one direction: survival.

  “Ty!”

  I read Cord’s lips more than I hear his voice as he yanks on my arm, pulling me off my feet. One hand lands on his chest in an attempt to catch myself, my chest submerging in the muddy water. A boulder the size of a small car smashes into the water right where I was standing.

  A chill rips through me, more from the fear of what could’ve happened than from the ice-cold water.

  Jiggs grabs my other arm and helps me to my feet. His teeth clamor together, his cheek cut but the blood clotted together by black gunk.

  I’m exhausted. The fatigue I feel is reflected on my friend’s faces.

  “Just a little longer,” I shout, looking as optimistic as possible. They nod, reading my lips, but my words do nothing to help their spirits.

  Cord’s headlamp flickers towards the sound of another boulder smashing into the water. As it scans the cavern, it pauses on the north wall and the steady flow of water pouring down the walls.

  “Stay calm!” I try to shout over the shrill screams of the boring machine.

  “Fuckkkkkkkk!” Jiggs shouts, eyes wide, as we dodge falling rocks from both above and on either side of us.

  “Shit!” Cord screams, his face contorting in a mix of agony and fear as a rock strikes his left shoulder. He sags at the impact, his knees buckling, threatening to drop him into the water pooling around us.

  Jiggs and I grab an arm and pull him up, Cord wincing in pain, as we huddle together in a corner and try to stay alive.

  “Stay calm,” I repeat, my face inches from theirs.

  “They have to be close!” Jiggs shouts, looking over my shoulder at the spot where the ceiling is bowing and flexing. “Surely to God they’re close!”

  “Ah!” we shout in unison as the noise becomes too loud to take and the boring machine drops through the ceiling.

  We shout in celebration, tears flowing down our jet black faces, as we hug one another in an attempt to celebrate as well as keep each other from collapsing into the water.

  The machine is silenced as it begins its ascent back to the top.

  “You boys okay down there?” a voice shouts from above.

  “Yeah!” I shout back. “Cord got a little banged up, but we’re here!”

  “How’s the water situation?”

  I shine my headlamp around the room. The water is now rushing into the room full-speed. “Coming in quick!”

  “We’ll have the box to you in just a few minutes. We’re gonna have to work fast! You’ll get in and pull the rope and we’ll haul it up. Got it?”

  “Yes!”

  I look at my friends’ faces. A combination of relief and fear is etched through every line.

  Looking at Cord, I give him a final shot to reneg on the agreement we made earlier, that Jiggs is the priority. He nods.

  “Jiggs,” I say, looking him in the face. “You’re going up first.”

  ELIN

  I never knew one piece of paper could weigh so much.

  Holding it in my hand, palm open, I look across the way at Lindsay. Her eyes are wide as she looks at Jiggs’ note in her hand. Turning her back to me, she walks to the front of the room and slips out the door.

  I brush my fingers over my name, scrawled in Ty’s penmanship and stained with water and dirt. It reminds me of the inside of his truck—everything had its place, but none of it could escape the mine dirt. Just like this letter.

  With my heart strumming at an ear-splitting level, I carefully unfold the paper.

  The edges are torn and stained and a big drop of something has hit the middle, making the words there hard to read. I start at the top.

  “Dear Elin,

  If you’re reading this, I’m guessing I didn’t make it out.”

  “No,” I whisper, blinking back tears. Jaw set in defiance, I redo the folds
of the paper and enclose the letter in my hand. “You will make it out,” I say out loud. “I won’t read this if that’s what it means.”

  Anger flashes through me, a zip of energy that I embrace.

  “Get your ass back here,” I demand, not even caring if someone hears me and thinks I’m crazy. “Stop this ‘guessing you didn’t make it out’ bullshit and come home.”

  I pace a circle, feeling the electricity soar in my veins. I take a deep breath.

  “Ty, if you hear me,” I say out loud, “I need you back here. I have something to tell you, and this time, you better fucking come home.”

  Swiping the water cup off the table, I take a long drink. The water is lukewarm, but it feels good sliding down my throat. I down it all.

  Setting it back on the table, I continue my plea. “Jiggs, if you hear me, I’m not about to host Thanksgiving at my house from now on. So figure out your shit and come back here. You’ve got a wife to take care of and a baby to raise. And don’t tell Ty, but a niece or nephew too.”

  I blink back a tear and sniffle. “Cord . . .” my voice breaks as I think of my sweet friend. “You never, ever fail me. Somehow, you always figure out what I need or what I need to hear and you deliver. Every. Time. Right now, I need you to deliver your sweet self, along with my handsome husband and ridiculous brother. Do you hear me?” I ask, my bottom lip trembling. “That’s an order.”

  I fall into a chair at the table and listen to my cries resonate through the room.

  “Ladies,” Vernon says, rushing into the room without knocking, Lindsay on his heels.

  I stand immediately, springing to my feet, my heart stalling in my chest. “What?”

  “One of the men is on the way up.”

  I suck in a breath, my eyes floating to Lindsay. Exhaling, it comes out in shaky, tear-filled breaths. “Which one?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I just got word that one is in the slot.” He looks between us. “We have a television out here if you want to watch. I can clear the room out.”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding emphatically. “Please.”

  He goes before us and we can hear his voice booming through the other room, followed by shoes hitting the floor. I grab Lindsay’s hand and we race across the hall into Room E11.