by Sally Laity
“It’s not really that bad,” Ken said. “Just feels that way when you work hard.”
She gave him a half-hearted smile. “I thought I’d never get done at Mrs. Hughes’s. She picked today to decide she wanted her lace curtains washed and stretched and the silver polished. All of it. Even the pieces I doubt ever see the light of day.”
“But I’ll bet they looked real nice when you were through,” Ma said, bringing her a glass of lemonade.
“Oh, thank you. And yes, they did.” After several swallows of the cool liquid, she brushed damp strands of hair from her forehead and reached into the pocket of her skirt. “Here, Ma. She and Mrs. MacNamara paid me today.”
With a nod, their mother picked up the money and took it to the cupboard, where she put it into the sugar bowl with the other family funds. “We’re not doing too badly this month,” she said a bit too cheerily. “Barring any accidents or the like.”
Ken grimaced. “What we need is to get caught up and get a little ahead, pay down the bill at Murphy’s that’s been hanging over our heads forever.”
“The Lord will provide,” she assured him.
“I’m sure He will,” Ken muttered under his breath. “If we live so long.”
“Kenneth!” His mother planted her fists on her hips. “It’s not like you to mouth such disrespectful nonsense.”
“You’re right, Ma,” he admitted with chagrin. How quickly he’d forgotten the time he’d spent basking in God’s handiwork. “I’m sorry. I guess I have a lot on my mind lately.”
“We all need to get rested and refreshed,” she said, her tone softening. “And we’ll get that at church tomorrow. Things always look brighter after services.”
❧
After returning home with the various plants she’d found on her jaunt up on the mountain, Rosa helped her grandmother sort and prepare them. Some had to be tied and dried, others kept fresh, and others boiled, their extracts strained and put into small bottles and jars. Once that chore ended and supper was over, the dishes washed and put away, Rosa’s grandparents went out for an evening stroll. She stayed behind and settled back against the worn cushions of the sofa to relax.
Much as she tried not to think about the miner she’d encountered earlier that day, the memory of his kind voice and gentle gaze seemed to hover at the edge of her mind all during her tasks. And now that she had some leisure time, she allowed herself to relive the pleasant moments she dared not speak of.
Ken Roberts was not at all like the men her grandparents had warned her about. They considered the Welshmen, Englishmen, and Italians who worked in the coal mines to be loud and boisterous hotheads who wasted every penny they earned in the beer gardens near their homes. Down in the coal towns, it seemed there was one of those establishments for every four or five houses—certainly far more than there were churches. Her people felt it their duty to protect the unmarried young women in the camp from being lured away and taken advantage of by some uncouth coal cracker. Already the parents of many of Rosa’s friends had arranged marriages for them with countrymen who met their strict requirements.
Rosa wondered if those girls had also approved of mates not of their own choosing and found true happiness. Surely a marriage union should involve love. She was sure love had come for her grandparents. They often displayed deep affection toward one another and for her as well. She hoped one day to have that same kind of relationship with a man who respected and loved her.
Her musings ceased when her guardians returned from their walk. “Such a moon, little one,” Grandfather said, his eyes dark as the night and twinkling like the stars. “You should come, too. The neighbors, they like to see you.”
“I will next time,” she promised. “I was tired from my long walk today.”
“She would be tired, Abraham,” Grandmother said. “When you don’t take her out on wagon, I send her up in forest.”
Rosalind got up and hugged them both. “It’s all right. Truly. Neither of you forces me to do things. I love helping out.”
“But you should think of being bride soon,” her grandmother urged. “Tonight Nicholas, he ask about you again.”
A chill tingled along the back of Rosa’s neck, raising the fine hairs. “Please do not encourage him. He makes me uncomfortable. I do not like the way he looks at me.”
“He is good man,” Grandfather said. “Has much money saved for future. He will make good home for wife.”
“Then he should have a wife who loves him,” Rosa said, turning away. She knew her grandparents had never seen their neighbor’s cruel side, yet she did not want to be the one to lower their opinion of him. “I want a husband who will have feelings of love for me, the way you two have for each other. And Nicholas Habib is not such a one.”
A strange look passed between the older couple, and they smiled. Grandmother moved to the stove and set the kettle over the hottest portion, while Grandfather took his favorite chair, then leaned back and made himself comfortable. “Not always was love between us,” she confessed. “Not at first. I not even know him when his papa an’ mine say we to marry.”
“But we grow to love,” he said. “My Eva is good woman. Good wife.”
Rosa barely heard his words. Her insides still revolted against the unsettling news her grandmother had just uttered. She knew that more often than not, it was the way of her people. Even her cousin Philip had reminded her of that fact just yesterday. But still, she harbored the hope that for her it would be different. She could not imagine living with a man who made her skin crawl. The look in Nicholas Habib’s eyes made her feel undressed. Dirty. Besides, no amount of money could make up for a temper like his. Rosa pitied the woman who ended up with such a man. After all, who really knew what happened to his first wife?
She swallowed the huge lump of disquiet gathering in her throat and looked at one guardian and then the other. “Please,” she implored. “Please, don’t ask me to marry Nicholas. I am not ready to marry anyone.”
“I know, little one,” her grandfather said, patting her knee with his big, callused hand. “And we are not ready to give you up.”
“But goldenrod tea is ready,” Grandmother said, her smile adding another dab of comfort. “Come to table.”
More out of duty than need, Rosa stood and followed Grandfather to evening tea. She could not bear to dwell on the conversation they’d just shared. She needed something more cheerful to help restore her happy mood.
Please don’t run away. Maybe our paths will cross again sometime.
Even as the words Ken Roberts had spoken drifted across her mind, Rosa couldn’t help smiling. Perhaps he had offered her friendship. Now that so many of her friends had married and moved on, Rosa had no one left but Philip. She could use another friend.
No, her sensible side countered. Don’t be stupid. It is forbidden to associate with someone from the mines. Worse than that, her grandparents would skin her alive if she dared to do so.
“How is tea?” Grandmother Azar asked. “Is good?”
“Yes. Good.” Rosa hadn’t even tasted it. She quickly took a sip, scalding her tongue in the process. Using more caution after that, she downed the remainder as quickly as possible, then manufactured a huge yawn. “Oh, my. I’m sleepier than I thought. I will turn in now.” Rising, she took her cup to the sideboard, then returned to hug her guardians. “Good night, Grandmother, Grandfather. I will see you in the morning.”
“Good night, my Rosa,” her grandfather said.
But after she visited the outhouse around back and then changed into her nightgown in her room, sleep was the farthest thing from Rosa’s mind. All she could think about was a pair of smiling, silver-gray eyes and an offer of friendship that could never be.
❧
The sun had yet to inch its way into the eastern sky when the steam whistle from the motor house at the colliery announced to the countryside the start of a new workday.
In the small, second-floor bedroom he shared with Timmy, Ken flung his
sheet and light blanket aside and got up, then pulled on some clean socks and work clothes. As he dressed, he observed the towhead, who lay sprawled on the other bed sound asleep, one bare leg dangling over the side.
What with his brother’s excitement about becoming a working boy, Ken just hoped the kid had dozed off at a reasonable hour. At least the hearty breakfast Ma fixed every day would revive them both—even if they did have to gobble it so fast they hardly tasted it. He shook Tim’s shoulder to rouse him.
Moments later, in the kitchen, nobody talked as they wolfed down pork chops and eggs, then gulped the strong coffee Ma had perked and waiting for them. Ken avoided looking at his mother altogether, knowing her uncharacteristic silence revealed her fear and dread of sending her youngest child off to the mines.
But the inevitable could not be put off forever. Before exiting the back door, he and his brother grabbed their work hats and tugged on clodhoppers, then took the metal lunch pails Ma held out to them.
She gave Ken a peck on the cheek and tried to smile. Then she hugged Timmy hard. “Be careful,” she whispered.
“I will.”
“Don’t worry, Ma,” Ken assured her. “Ralph Vaughn’s a decent supervisor. He treats the boys fairer than most.” A quick squeeze of her hand, and the two of them hustled out to join the stream of men and boys already climbing the hill.
Ken looked down at Timmy walking beside him, knowing the glow of anticipation in his kid brother’s eyes would be doused long before this workday ended. “I already talked to your boss,” he began. “He’s willing to give you a fair shot. But you might as well know, it’s not gonna be a picnic working in the breaker. It’s hard there. Real hard. And your fingers are gonna take awhile to toughen up.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tim muttered. “It ain’t like I don’t know no boys who work there already. I heard lots of stories.”
Ken nodded. “Right. I’m just trying to warn you. A couple of hours from now you might wish you’d stayed in school.”
“Humph. That’ll be the day.”
“We’ll see if you feel any different when the quitting whistle blows. Not to mention having to work every Saturday.”
They soon reached the breaker, a tall, gloomy structure silhouetted against the sky. There, filled coal cars were pulled by steel cables up the steep incline to the top, where the contents were tipped out into a shaking machine. The coal then rushed down into chutes running from the top of the breaker to the bottom, in a deafening, earsplitting roar that made the whole place vibrate and wouldn’t let up until the quitting whistle.
Ken took Tim into the building, conscious of his brother’s curious perusal of the dismal interior. He saw the kid’s eyes widen at the high walls, the narrow staircase that climbed toward a tangle of blackened beams, and grime-covered windows.
Dozens of boys already sat hunched over on pine boards astride the long iron chutes, picking rock, slate, and other refuse, or culm, out of the coal. As they worked, clouds of coal dust, steam, and smoke settled over them like a blanket, blackening them from head to toe.
Their supervisor, a short, muscular man, stood off to one side. The broomstick he used to keep his workers alert stood propped against the breaker wall, within easy reach.
Ken steered Tim over to him. “Just tend to your own business,” he all but shouted above the racket. “Don’t shame Ma by getting mixed up with troublemakers who are always thinking up pranks and making mischief.”
His brother looked askance at him, but made no reply.
“Morning, Mr. Vaughn,” Ken hollered as they approached the overseer. “This is Tim. He’s here to go to work.”
Leaving the boy to learn his job, Ken walked out of the breaker and headed for the shiftin’ shack, the gathering point for each shift. Here many of the miners changed into working garb and, after the shift, showered to remove some of the coal dust before going home. His butty, Tony Valentino, had already arrived and stood waiting for him.
Before heading for the iron cage that would plummet them down to their work site, they moved to the peg shanty and retrieved the brass tags bearing their miner’s numbers from the board.
Tony gave Ken a cheerless grin.
“Ready for a bright new day?” Ken quipped, nodding to him and the other workers awaiting the descent.
“Let’s hope we get a spot wi’ a good bit ’o top coal, for once,” ruddy-faced miner Sandy MacNeil said in his Scottish brogue. He and his butty worked on the same level with Ken.
“ ‘Happy is he whose hope is in the Lord,’ ” Ken returned lightly.
“Verse for the day, Preacher?” Tony asked, his tone teasing.
“Something like that.”
Just then the hoisting engineer brought the elevator rumbling into view as it was hauled up by its thick, greasy cable. A pair of waiting workers stepped inside, joined by Ken, MacNeil, and their two fellow laborers.
A bell rang. Overhead, massive iron sheave wheels began to turn, lowering them into the black depths. Slowly at first, past slimy, dripping, moss-encrusted granite blocks at the mouth of the shaft, then faster, machinery creaking and timbers groaning as they plunged with incredible speed. Daylight became a speck above, then vanished. Only the thin, wavering glow from the electric lamps on the men’s hats broke the inky blackness.
They came to a stop at one of the many levels being mined hundreds of feet beneath the earth’s surface, and the two extra men exited and were quickly lost to sight in tunnels extending into the darkness on either side. Loaded mine cars standing on a narrow-gauge track waited to be pushed by the “bottom men” into the rails of an ascending cage.
After passing additional levels, the platform slowed suddenly, then jarred to a final stop nearly a thousand feet down. Ken, MacNeil, and their helpers stepped off into the gloom.
Despite the strong, cold downdraft of air at the bottom of the shaft provided by huge fans at the surface, the dank smells of rotting mine timbers and of wet rock and earth assaulted their lungs. The thumping of powerful water pumps in the pump room throbbed in their ears.
The young nipper opened the ponderous wooden door that regulated the flow of air into the mine at their level, and they entered the tunnel, or gangway, extending from the shaft. There were noticeably fewer sounds besides the crunch of their boots on the coal dust. Just the eerie trickle and dripping of water from the nearby Susquehanna River kept at bay, the rumble of distant mine cars, and the occasional explosion set off to jar coal loose from the rich seams.
At the fire boss’s belowground “office,” the men hung their brass tags on a Peg-Board indicating the exact location in the labyrinth of tunnels and chambers where they would be working. No one ever spoke of the purpose the board served—they needed no reminder that in case of a cave-in, the mine officials would know how many bodies needed to be dug out.
Next Ken checked the slate on which the fire boss had recorded his daily notations regarding the present air quality and any spot where the roof needed extra propping.
A huge rat skittered by, as if detecting enticing smells from the lunch pails each of them carried.
“Okay, you guys know what we’re here for,” Ken said. “Let’s get to it.” Lunches in hand, they started the long trek along the irregular tunnels to reach the individual chamber, or breast, where yesterday’s tools and gear awaited them.
❧
Washing the breakfast dishes, Rosa peered out the window at the morning sky, noting several high clouds.
“Do not worry,” her grandmother said, joining her. “When clouds are white and scattered across sky and winds are from west, no change comes. And leaves on the trees are not bottom up. It will not rain today.”
Rosa just smiled. Her guardian had a saying for every occasion. “Then it will be a good day for making the rounds with Grandfather.”
But even as she spoke, the older man came in from the shed, a frown knitting his shaggy brows. “Toby has sore foot from stone. We will not go to peddle today. Maybe not tomorrow
. I will rest him.”
“Show me the hoof,” Grandmother suggested. “I will see if a compress or salve will help.”
“That is why I love my Eva,” he said, his expression brightening. “Always she can make things better.”
“Not always,” she said, perusing the various concoctions lining the wall shelves. “But I try.” She selected a few small jars and slipped them into her apron pocket.
“Is there something I can do?” Rosalind asked, drying her hands.
“No, little one. Not here. But maybe more berries you can find up in hills. For supper tonight.”
“Of course. I will go as soon as I finish sweeping the floor.”
When the older pair had gone, she made quick work of the task, then slipped the strap of her herb bag over one shoulder and a basket for berries over her forearm.
One of the rangy dogs from the camp loped over to her when she stepped outside. “Hello, Maloof,” Rosa crooned as she leaned down and scratched behind his shaggy brown ears. “Would you like to come with me to the forest?” He licked her hand, and the two of them started up the incline, the dog bounding ahead of her, prone to checking out any and all distracting sounds and smells.
Many more blueberries and raspberries had ripened since her last visit, she discovered when they reached her favorite berry patch, but they could wait to be picked until after she looked around for herbs and medicinal plants. She hung the basket on a low birch branch and checked to see where Maloof had wandered.
A sudden scuffle in the bushes sent a red squirrel scampering out into the open and up the trunk of the nearest tree, the brown dog charging after it in pursuit. Rosalind chuckled as Maloof gave up and followed his nose elsewhere.
In the swampy ground near an underground spring, she gave wide berth to a sumac tree rather than risk contact, which could cause severe skin irritation and blistering. But the dwarf ginseng growing on the moist edge of the clearing was another matter entirely. She pulled out several of the tubers and tucked them inside the bag. Grandmother could boil those for supper.