***
Daniel and Molly Ann found Jimmy in the barn, but he wasn’t fussing with his mule—at least, not that mule. The animal was contentedly munching on some hay in his stall. Jimmy was bottling the squeezin’s.
He was standing in front of a wooden bench which was covered with clear glass pint bottles. Under one arm he held a jug, in the other hand a funnel. Quickly, efficiently, with a motion born of years of practice, he slipped the nozzle of the funnel into the bottle, tipped the jug and let the clear white liquid flow into the bottle. When it was full, he moved on to the next.
Daniel was fascinated. Not so much by the rebottling, but by the fact that when he poured the clear ’shine into the bottles, it immediately turned smoky brown in color. He had never seen anything like that before. They stood there silently until Jimmy had emptied one jug and reached for another. “Mr. Simpson,” he said.
Jimmy turned and smiled. He put down the empty jug. “Ever’thing okay?”
Daniel nodded. “I guess so.” He glanced at the bench. “We don’ mean to be interruptin’.”
Jimmy laughed. “They waited this long fer Simpson’s whiskey, they kin wait a bit longer.”
“Whiskey?” Daniel was puzzled.
Jimmy nodded. “That’s what I’m makin’. A few drops of sarsaparilla and flavorin’ an’ you cain’t tell the difference between mine an’ store-bought. Gits a better price ’n clear ’shine, too.”
Daniel hesitated. “Got a favor to ask, but you already been so kin’—”
“Go ahead an’ ask,” Jimmy said quickly. “Anythin’ I kin do.”
“Mr. Fitch says I’m too tall to work in the glass factory heah, an’ he got me a job in a mine down Grafton way.”
Jimmy made no comment. “An’ your sister?”
“She’s goin’ to the mill heah.” Daniel looked at Molly Ann. “It’s not ’zactly the way we thought. We thought we would be together. Mr. Fitch says he’ll look after her.” He fell silent.
Jimmy looked at Molly Ann. Her gaze dropped demurely. He saw the faint blush come into her cheeks. “What d’you think?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer.
He turned back to Daniel. “You don’ lak Mr. Fitch.” It was more a statement than a question.
“I don’ rightly cotton to that man,” Daniel admitted. “I’d feel much better in my own mind if’n I knew that you was keepin’ an eye out for her rather than Mr. Fitch.”
Jimmy nodded. “I know the feelin’.” He spoke again to Molly Ann. “How do you feel about that, Miz Molly Ann?”
Her voice was very soft, but she did not look up at him. “I would feel right comforted by your kindness.”
He smiled. “Then I’ll be glad to he’p. Fust thing to do is fin’ you a proper place to live. I have some friends, a good family. Their oldes’ girl jes’ married an’ they have an empty room, an’ they kin use the boardin’ money. Let’s us go over there an’ fin’ out if they’re agreeable.” He put the funnel on the bench and started toward them.
“But what about your whiskey makin’?” Daniel asked.
Jimmy laughed. “Let it set there. Haven’t you heard that agin’ whiskey is the best thing fer it?”
Chapter 7
In his sleep Daniel heard the distant shriek of the mine whistle, signaling the first changeover of shifts. He rolled over on his narrow cot and opened his eyes. The three other boys with whom he shared the small room were still huddled under their coarse blankets.
Quietly he pulled himself out of bed and made his way barefoot to the washstand. He put the stopper in the bowl and poured some water from the giant pitcher into it. The water was cold on his face and helped awaken him. He stared into the faded, cracked mirror over the basin.
The face that was reflected there was a different face from the one he’d first seen in this mirror almost three months before. All traces of color from the sun had long since gone. His skin was now a peculiar blue-tinged white, and it was drawn tight across his cheeks. Large black hollows held the eyes, which looked like the pieces of anthracite he worked with all day long.
He rubbed at his cheeks. There was a faint stubble of blue-black beard. Without feeling it, he never could be sure whether it was a beard or merely coal dust that had penetrated his pores and become a permanent part of his complexion. He dug his fingers into the can of Gresolvent and rubbed the gritty paste into a lather on his face. But even after he had rinsed it away and dried himself with the rough towel, there was no change except that his face hurt from the rough sandy grains in the soap. Coal dust had a way of implanting itself into the skin the way a weed clung to the earth. No matter what you did, you couldn’t get it out.
After wetting his hair and combing it flat against his scalp, he went back to his cot and began to dress. The blue work shirt and overalls were stiff with coal dust, as were his heavy work boots. He picked up the denim miner’s cap and checked the lamp fastened to its peak. The wick was soft, and there was enough oil in the can to last through the day. Softly he walked to the door. He took a last look at the other, sleeping boys before he went out, but made no move to awaken them. They were breaker boys, and they didn’t have to be on the job until a half-hour after him, at seven o’clock.
He closed the door behind him and went down the narrow staircase to the main floor of the boardinghouse. He walked through the hallway to the kitchen. The heavyset cook, her black face already shining with the heat from the ovens, looked at him. She smiled. “Mawnin’, Mistuh Daniel.”
“Mornin’, Carrie.”
“Usual this mawnin’, Mistuh Daniel?”
“Yes, please. An’ don’t fergit—”
She grinned. “No, suh. Aigs fried hard with lots o’ salt an’ pepper.”
He sat down at the table and poured himself a steaming mug of coffee from the big iron pot on the table. He added cream and three heaping spoonfuls of sugar and stirred the coffee.
“Ah got some good cally ah kin fry up with the aigs if you lak,” she said.
“That’s right kind o’ you, Carrie,” he said. “I sure would fancy that.” He spread butter thickly on the still-warm home-baked bread and took a bite. “I declare, Carrie, next to my maw, you bake the best bread in West Virginia.”
“Aw, go on, now, Mistuh Daniel.” But her face broke into a pleased smile as she brought the eggs and pork butt over to the table. He reached for the salt. “Hold on a minute,” she warned him. “I got lots of salt in there already.”
He tasted the eggs and nodded. “It’s fine.” But as soon as her back was turned, he added more salt.
He ate quickly and carefully, wiping the yolks of the eggs from the plate with his bread. He finished his coffee and got to his feet.
She brought him his black metal lunch box. “Ah slipped in a extra apple an’ orange fo’ you,” she said. “Ah knows how much yo’ laks fresh fruit.”
“Thank you, Carrie.” He took the lunch pail from her hand and walked to the door. “See you tonight.”
“Yo’ be caihful, now, Mistuh Daniel,” she said. “Doan’ yo’ go too near them dynamite charges.”
“I won’t,” he said, and smiled as he went out the door, knowing that it was his job as shot man to place the fuse and light it. It got him an extra dollar a week, and he was not about to let that get away from him. Seven dollars a week was almost as much as a grown man was paid.
Silently he trudged down the rain-dampened mud street past the rows of company houses, all gray-and-black with mine dust, and turned on the street that led to the mine entrance. The road was beginning to fill with men going to work and men coming from work. Some would be going to the beds that had just been vacated by the day shift. Beds were at a premium, and many boardinghouses accommodated two shifts. On Sundays, when the mines were closed, confusion was rampant, and often there were fights about which shift had first claim on the beds. The house rules said that they were to alternate on Sundays, but that didn’t really help, because everybody was too tired and shor
t-tempered. Daniel felt that he was lucky to have found a sharing room. But the grown men didn’t seem to want to share.
Daniel reached the front of the mine. As usual, he was the first of his work gang to arrive. He sat down on a wooden box and watched the men coming out.
Their faces were black, their clothing even dustier than his own, and their eyes squinted painfully as they adjusted to the morning daylight. They moved slowly, almost painfully, as they accustomed their bodies to walking erect instead of half hunched over, as they did in the low-ceilinged corridors of the mines.
One of the men stopped in front of him. He was a heavyset, barrel-chested man, and his blond-white hair was covered with coal dust. “Andy here yet?” he asked.
“No, sir.” Daniel shook his head. Andy was his shift foreman. The man who spoke to him was the night-shift foreman.
The foreman looked around for a moment. “You tell him the west tunnel needs shoring before you do any more blasting. The walls are getting thin.”
Daniel nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
“Don’t forget, now,” the man warned. “Or you may all find yourselves eatin’ dirt.”
“I won’ fergit,” Daniel promised. “Thank you.”
The man shook his head and lumbered wearily away. Daniel fished in his pocket and pulled out a piece of chewing tobacco. He bit off a corner and began to work up a wad in the corner of his mouth. A good spit helped keep the dust out of a man’s lungs. Expertly he shot a gob of tobacco juice at a water bug crawling near his feet. The bug drowned in a brown stream of poison.
Daniel looked after the night foreman. He wasn’t particularly concerned. The warning was an old story to him. Each shift tried to unload the shoring on the other because the time it took decreased the mining tonnage. You couldn’t bring out the coal while you were boarding up the walls.
***
The air in the mine was heavy with humidity, and the walls were soaked with moisture. The earth underfoot was soft and spongy, and as their heavy boots sank into it, water rushed in to fill the footprints.
“Damn!” the foreman swore. “We better git some pumps down here or we’ll be in water up to our ass before we know it.”
“All the pumps is in use in the East Tunnel,” one of the men told him.
The foreman turned to Daniel. “You git up to the superintendent’s shack an’ tell him we gotta git some pumps ’cause our mules are up to their bellies an’ cain’t haul the coal.”
Daniel nodded and turned away. He walked back up the tunnel toward the main entrance, passing a gang of workmen who were laying track for the coal trucks.
“What’s it lak down there?” one of the men called.
“Wet,” Daniel answered. “I’m goin’ fer some pumps.”
“Bring back a bird while you’re at it,” the man said. “I don’ like the smell down yere.”
Daniel grinned. He had been sent on those errands before. Canaries were supposed to be used to detect leaking gas or oxygen shortages, but in all the time he had been working in the mine, he had never seen one. “I think I kin ketch an eagle if’n y’all kin git me the afternoon off,” he replied.
The shout of laughter followed him until he turned the corner. The entrance was up the inclined corridor about twenty yards in front of him. He stared through it toward the dark blue sky in which thousands of stars twinkled. A sense of wonder filled him. Outside it was daylight, but seeing the sky through the long narrow tunnel made it night. The stars were always there behind the sun. They faded and began to disappear as he approached the entrance.
The timekeeper stopped him at the entrance. “Where at you goin’, boy?”
“Andy sent me to git some pumps from the super’s office,” he replied.
“Yer wastin’ yer time” the timekeeper said. “Git back down there on the job.”
“Andy says the mules is up to their bellies an’ cain’t haul the coal.”
The timekeeper looked at him. After a moment, he shrugged his shoulders. “Go ahead,” he said truculently. “But it won’t do you no good.”
Daniel walked over to the office. He knocked on the door and went in. The clerk looked over his desk at him. “What do you want?”
“Andy says we need pumps in the West Tunnel,” he replied. “We cain’t git the coal out.”
“Why not?”
Daniel stared at him. Already he had the ingrained dislike of office workers that every miner felt. “Ever’body knows mules cain’t swim an’ haul coal at the same time,” he said.
The clerk stared back. “Wise kid.” He looked down at his desk. “Go back and tell Andy there ain’t no pumps.”
Daniel was stubborn. “He tol’ me to see the super.”
“The super ain’t in.”
“I’ll wait.” Daniel looked around for a chair.
“No, you won’t,” the clerk said. “You go back to work or you git docked.”
“Okay,” Daniel said purposefully. “I’ll go back an’ tell him. But you know Andy. He don’ mess aroun’. He’s goin’ to come up here hisself.”
The clerk backed down. Everyone knew Andy’s reputation. He had been in the mines all his life and had a very short temper. Nobody got into an argument with him unless he was prepared to fight. “Okay,” he said. “Tell him I’ll git some pumps down there.”
Daniel nodded. He turned to leave. The clerk called him back. “You new aroun’ here?”
“Not ’zactly.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dan’l Boone Huggins.”
The clerk made a note on the sheet of paper in front of him. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll remember that.”
“You took yer own sweet time about it,” the timekeeper said sourly as Daniel went past him.
Daniel didn’t answer. He went down into the blackness. Andy came over to him. “What about the pumps?”
“The super wasn’t there,” Daniel replied. “The clerk says he’ll git ’em down to us.”
Andy nodded grimly. He kicked the ground beneath his foot. The water sprayed. “They better git here damn soon,” he said. “I got a feelin’ we’re comin’ into an undergroun’ spring.” He looked up at Daniel. “You start bringin’ over shorin’ planks.”
“Okay,” Daniel said. He walked along the tunnel until he reached the stack of shoring timber. Then, one by one, he laboriously dragged the ten-foot planks through the thick mud back to the end of the tunnel.
Nearly an hour had passed, and he had moved almost thirty of the two-by-eight planks, when he heard the pickman yell, “Hey, foreman! I hit water!”
For a moment they all froze, looking at Andy. The foreman was calm, his eyes appraising the situation. A stream of water was gushing from the far wall, washing the earth away.
“Don’t stand there lookin’ at it, you donkeys!” Andy shouted. “Start packin’ it.”
Immediately a dozen shovels began to fly, throwing the earth back against the wall in an effort to seal off the water. “Git the shorin’ planks up there!” Andy yelled. “I want a two-foot wall.” He turned to another man. “Dig a drain trench.”
They all worked frantically, but it took more than an hour before the water was sealed off, and by that time they were all heaving and sweating with the exertion. One by one they dropped to the ground in exhaustion.
Andy leaned against the shoring planks and looked down at them. He ran his arm across his forehead, wiping away the dripping sweat. He took a deep breath. “On yer feet,” he said. “Move that coal. We’re more’n twenty ton behind already.”
Daniel struggled to his feet. His clothing was soaked through to his skin. “What about the pumps?” he asked.
Andy stared at him. “Fuck ’em,” he said. “We’re okay now. Let the night shift git ’em, like they should’ve in the first place.”
“But—” Daniel said.
The foreman fixed him with a baleful eye. “You start loading coal in them trucks,” he said. “Or I’ll have your ass outta here.”
<
br /> Daniel stood there hesitantly.
“Git a move on!” Andy snapped. “It ain’t our affair to worry any more about ’em than they worry about us.”
Silently Daniel went to work. The foreman was right. Each man had to look out for himself.
***
That was the way it seemed until about three o’clock in the morning, when the weird, wailing shriek of the mine whistle pierced his sleep.
He sat up in bed rubbing his eyes. The other boys in the room were already awake. “I wonder what that’s fer,” one of the boys said.
Outside, there was a sound of people running. He went over to the window and looked out. Already men were pouring from their homes into the night street. He pulled up the window and leaned out. “What happened?” he yelled down.
A man stopped and looked up at him, his face white and pale in the night. “Cave-in at the mine!” the man shouted back. “The West Tunnel fell in!”
Chapter 8
“You, boy! Get me another torch over here!” The superintendent’s voice echoed in the mouth of the tunnel.
Daniel scrambled back through the wet muck, grabbed a torch from a wall bracket and made his way back to the wall of earth where the cave-in had come to a stop. He looked at the superintendent.
“Get up on those shoring planks an’ hold the light steady,” the super commanded.
Daniel clambered up on the wooden planks until his face was within inches of the wall of wet earth. He put out one hand to balance himself.
The superintendent gestured to Andy, and the two men climbed up beside Daniel and stared down at the moist earth. Below them they saw a steady flow of water coming up from under the dirt, and they heard the hissing, suckling sound of the pumps. The two men fell silent, studying the earth beneath them.
Daniel watched them in fascination. They were very different. Andy was large and powerful and gruff; his work clothes were layered with mud and coal. The super, on the other hand, was prim, small, neat; his tie and white shirt with starched collar and gray suit seemed untouched by the mud and dirt around him. His eyes glistened behind the wire-framed pince-nez. Daniel followed the man’s gaze. In the few minutes they had been standing there, the mud line on the shoring planks had risen almost an inch.
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