Canary in the Coal Mine

by Madelyn Rosenberg

  “Were there . . . did the report mention any names?” Bitty asked.

  Walter twitched her head sideways again, then upright. “No names,” she said. “It was an early report, quite fragmented, but our reporter stayed on the scene, so there’s bound to be more later. Do you want me to see if—”

  “No,” Bitty said. “I’ll check back.”

  So the full 103 days hadn’t passed, but it didn’t matter: he was still too late. He’d gone to the big city to try to change things and nothing had changed. Another accident. Another death. Two. Two. That part didn’t make sense. Why had the Gap-Toothed Man taken two birds into the mine? Two birds, a male and a female, according to Walter’s report. Alice and Chester? Uncle Aubrey and Aunt Lou? Bitty pictured the bird cemetery with two more sticks, and two more funerals he would never attend.

  Alice’s words came back to him. “You could change things.”

  “I have to see Eck,” Bitty said.

  “Maybe you should take a break,” Clarence told him. “Come back to the station. We could—we could have a service here, if you want to.”

  Bitty shook his head. He wasn’t going to grieve until he knew exactly who he was grieving for, so he could do it good and proper. “The best way to remember them is to make things better,” he said. “I’m going to the inn.”

  “I don’t think I could fit through the tunnel,” Clarence said. “But I’ll wait outside if you need me.”

  “No. I’ll meet you back at the station,” Bitty said. “I can do it alone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m fine,” Bitty said. But he wasn’t.

  He found Eck in the dining room. The mouse had a bandage that covered his eye and the wound above it, but the scratch on his rear was nearly healed.

  “You look like a pirate from one of Jamie’s books,” Bitty said, forcing his voice to be light.

  “Arrrh!” shouted Eck. “And you still look a bit under the weather, my friend.”

  Bitty thought about repeating Walter’s news report, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Besides, there wasn’t time.

  “Look sharp,” Eck whispered. “Yon scallywag approaches.” The second-floor house cat, who already looked thinner than the last time Bitty had seen him, tiptoed into the room.

  “Very pleased with his progress,” the mouse said. “Very pleased indeed.”

  The cat hadn’t seen them yet, and Bitty felt the urge to do something reckless. He stepped out in the open and tried to think of something to say. He hadn’t gotten very far in his studies with Miss Mona, but he cleared his throat and mustered the biggest meow he could. “Hello!” he shouted in distinct Cat. “Where is the bathroom?”

  His accent wasn’t perfect, but he could tell that Eck understood him from the way the mouse was laughing. The cat stopped, stretched and pointed with one paw in the general direction of his litter box. Bitty didn’t follow the cat’s directions. Instead he raced with Eck back into the mouse hole, as the cat made a half-hearted lunge.

  “Did you hear me?” Bitty said, as he followed Eck through the tunnels, to Virgil Smith’s downstairs room. “I talked to a cat!”

  If only he could talk to Virgil Smith as easily. The inventor sat on his bed, tinkering with wires and tubes that were once again piled upon his nightstand.

  “He’s been working for hours,” Eck said. “Comes out for meals and then starts working again. I think he’s almost done.”

  The mechanism looked much the way it had earlier, before the cat had smashed into the table.

  Bitty wanted a closer view. He popped out of the mouse hole and entered the room without even checking for cats. He cleared his throat.

  “Fee-yo.” The inventor gave him the same intense look the politician had given him. But again, the man was no mind reader. Or was he?

  Bitty hopped atop the table, and the man picked up something bright yellow and waved it at him: Bitty’s tail feather.

  “Yours, I presume?”

  “Fee-yo.”

  “I thought so.”

  Bitty was quiet.

  “Interested in what I’m doing?” the man asked. “I presume you would be. This here’s a gas detector. You might say this is your competition. Or would be, if I could ever sell it.”

  He smiled and turned out his pockets, which were empty. “They cost too much for me to produce just on spec,” he said. “And I reckon I’m not much of a salesman. I don’t know the right people.”

  Bitty wasn’t much of a salesman, either. But he might know the right person. Plan E. He hadn’t been in time to save Boggs, or the last two birds who had died in the No. 7, rest their souls. But those canary deaths were going to be the last. For the first time since stumbling out of his sickbed, Bitty knew exactly what he needed to do next.

  He followed Eck back through the maze of tunnels. “Plan E,” he said aloud.

  “Ah,” said Eck. “For ergo, no doubt.”

  “Ergo?”

  “Meaning ‘therefore,’ ” Eck told him. “You help the miners, ergo, they’ll help you. Plan E.”

  When Bitty arrived back at the station, the pigeons were waiting for him, their faces so full of pity that the first thing he wanted to do was leave again. Work would keep him busy. He needed more newspaper. He wasn’t hungry, but he needed food to bolster his strength. There was also his nest to rebuild—Clarence’s mother wouldn’t let him keep the hat.

  “Bad luck to sleep there, surrounded by all those germs,” she said. “You’d best start fresh.”

  Bitty flew from his thoughts. Once again, he gathered sticks and cotton and a patch of flannel from a workingman’s shirt. He circled the building until he found a nook under an awning, safe from the rain and just one floor down from the pigeons. Clarence’s mother approved. “If I were building a nest,” she said, “that’s just where it would go.”

  On to his letter, then. But by five p.m., he’d only found two scraps with the words he needed: 8 a.m. and capitol. He’d had better luck finding food: the heel of a loaf of bread and part of a hot pretzel, golden brown and dotted with chunks of white salt.

  At six, he returned to the station’s roof. The pigeons returned to gazing at him sympathetically, especially Clarence. Bitty knew it was their job, but they made him feel worse instead of better. He heard a toot in the distance, as if the train were grieving with him, and he flew to the station’s weathervane to watch it approach. Smoke cascaded over the engine like a veil.

  Bitty stared into it. Then, through the veil, he could make out two tiny dots, a mixture of yellow and black, floating toward him from one of the boxcars. They could have been fireflies or bumblebees. But no, they were larger than that. Ghosts? They got closer still, and Bitty could see them for what they really were: two canaries, covered with coal dust. His pulse quickened. It seemed impossible, but even from this distance Chester was unmistakably Chester. And Alice—how many times had Bitty stared at her when he thought she wasn’t looking? They were free. They were here. And, most importantly, they were alive.

  Bitty’s heart filled with a warmth he hadn’t felt since he’d left Coalbank Hollow. He hadn’t gone home; home had come to him. Relief surged through his veins like blood.

  “Haaallooooo!” he yelled, sailing skyward. “Haaallooooo!” he called again. “It’s me! It’s Bitty!”

  The canaries flew toward one another and would have collided like the cellar mice had Bitty not arced upward and out of the way. Then he swooped back down again and they all swirled around together, a spinning circle of color over the long, dark train.

  “You’re here! You’re here! You’re here!” Bitty looped twice like a trick airplane. The others followed; they flapped and they soared and they laughed. Finally, when Bitty ran out of breath, he landed on the terra-cotta tiles of the station’s roof, about ten feet from the pigeons, who were watching, their sympathy replaced by astonishment. His friends landed beside him, where they belonged. But the others . . . ? Bitty forced himself to ask the question he�
��d been carrying with him since he’d heard Walter’s news report.

  “Who’s dead?”

  Just then, Walter herself appeared on the station roof.

  “I had to tell you right away,” she said. “The story from Coalbank has been updated, with one very important correction. The two canaries who were reported killed at the Number Seven mine did not die this morning.”

  “They didn’t?” Bitty repeated. In just a couple of hours, the sun would set, but now the light was dawning.

  “No, it was just the opposite,” Walter said. “They escaped to Charleston.” She studied Alice and Chester, asking a silent question. They nodded. “Oh, this is news. This is big news. I’ve got to put this on the wire right away. But I’ll be back. I want an exclusive interview with all three of you.”

  “How about that?” Chester said. “We’re famous!”

  “Do you want to clean up before you meet your adoring fans?” Bitty said. “Or would you rather have something to eat first? How is everybody at home? How’s Jamie? You’ve got to meet—how did you get out?”

  “I can’t answer all those questions at once,” Alice said, laughing. “But I wouldn’t mind a bath, if you know where I can find one.”

  “Food for me,” Chester said. “Who cares about being clean?”

  But he followed Bitty and Alice to the creek behind the station and washed the dust off his face anyway. Bitty stood guard, but no one—neither hawk nor grackle—bothered them.

  “Chow time,” Chester said. “After that you can show us your farm.”

  “Farm?” Bitty said. “What farm?”

  “You’re living with pigs,” Chester said. “That was the message. ‘Living at Char depot with pigs.’ ”

  It was Bitty’s turn to laugh. “But ‘pigs’ means—”

  “ ‘Pigs’ means me,” said Clarence, who appeared on the rock as if from thin air.

  The others stared at him.

  “Right,” Bitty said. “This is Clarence. He’s the friend I was talking about.”

  “He’s a pigeon,” Chester said.

  “That’s right,” Clarence said. “You want to make something of it?”

  “But pigeons are—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Rats with—”

  “I said don’t say it.” Clarence raised his voice.

  “Stop,” Bitty said. This wasn’t going well at all. “Chester didn’t mean . . . And Clarence isn’t . . . It’s not like that. He and his mom took care of me when I was sick. Listen, can’t we all just—”

  Argh. Why couldn’t Chester keep his mouth shut? At least until everybody got to know each other. Bitty thought Clarence would fly away to sulk, but his new friend wasn’t budging.

  “You were sick?” Alice asked, changing the subject.

  “Just a cold,” Bitty said. “It was no big deal.”

  “No big deal?” Clarence said. “He almost died, that’s all.”

  “You almost what?” Alice said. “There’s so much to tell. It seems like you’ve been gone a year.” She turned to Clarence.

  “I’m Alice,” she said.

  “Clarence,” Clarence said. He turned to Chester. “And you are . . . ?”

  “This is Chester,” Bitty broke in before his friend could say anything. “Now, come on. Let’s eat.”

  He led them to his nest and his store of food, which the pigeons had respectfully left alone. “So what happened?” he asked. “You first. The last I heard, two canaries were dead. And then you two showed up.”

  “Yeah, you first,” Clarence said, directing his attention to Alice and ignoring Chester. “I’ve heard all Bitty’s stories already.”

  They didn’t need to be asked again. Between bites of the soft pretzel, Alice and Chester began telling the story of their escape from the Big House, which was every bit as exciting as Bitty’s own.

  Chapter 16

  “Al can start. Ladies first and all that,” Chester said, his mouth full.

  So Alice began: “I guess it started when we found out you were safe. A blackbird brought us your message. He hollered the news right through Jamie’s window. ‘To all canaries present.’ It was the first time we’d ever gotten a message from the outside. Aunt Lou nearly passed out. Anyway, the blackbird said you were safe and living ‘at Char depot with pigs.’ Of course we figured out you meant Charleston right away. As for the pigs part—”

  “Oink,” Clarence said.

  “It’s an abbreviation,” Bitty explained. “I never thought you’d believe I was living with real pigs.”

  “Maybe it’s best for Uncle Aubrey that we did believe it,” Alice said. “Anyway, we knew you were safe and had started work. You have started work, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Chester. “What about your ‘mission’?”

  “You finish your story first,” Bitty said. He wasn’t quite ready to tell them what he’d accomplished so far—and what he hadn’t. Unless he showed them a new bill that made it illegal to use canaries in coal mining, it wouldn’t be good enough for Chester. And unless humans recognized canaries as heroes, it wouldn’t be good enough for Uncle Aubrey.

  “Well, Jamie got a canary to replace you,” Alice said. “Bascom. He was so nervous; he passed out before the Gap-Toothed Man even took him into the mine for the first time. Then Uncle Aubrey had a close call—he passed out for real when he hit a pocket of bad air. Aunt Lou was so worried she nearly went bald. But Uncle Aubrey got better eventually, and he got to add two more marks to his perch. That made him impossible. ‘Saving lives.’ You know how he is. By then, Chester and I were sure we’d be better off out here with you. We started dreaming up all kinds of plans, and then Chester came up with a really good one.”

  Bitty had just enough time to wish that he’d been the one to get Alice out of the Big House instead of Chester and Chester’s great plan. Then Chester took over.

  “We didn’t exactly escape from the Big House,” he said. “We got kicked out.”

  “You got fired?” Bitty asked.

  “Yup.”

  “I wonder what Uncle Aubrey thought about that!”

  “I’m sure he was furious,” Alice said. “You know how he is about our reputation. Anyway, you’re messing it up, Ches; you have to start earlier.”

  Walter flew back to the roof in time to hear Chester begin again: A few days after Bitty left, after Bascom and Uncle Aubrey had already passed out, the Gap-Toothed Man snagged Chester and toted him down to good ol’ No. 7.

  “There were hardly any lights,” Chester said, more to impress Clarence and Walter, who didn’t know every detail, than Bitty, who did. “Those are the kinds of conditions some of us have to work in. The walls had a spooky glow.”

  There had been gas in the mine, just as there had been for Uncle Aubrey. It had gone straight to Chester’s head. He shook and fluttered his wings. Then he fell backward with his legs in the air, as good as dead. The Gap-Toothed Man ran with him to the elevator and rushed him out into the cool, clean air.

  “I woke up feeling like I’d taken a nine-pound hammer straight to the head,” Chester said. But besides that, it was as if nothing had gone wrong at all. Chester was younger than Uncle Aubrey, and he recovered quickly. The miners lost a few hours of work; Chester was sent back to the Big House to rest. He had rested for about two days when the Gap-Toothed Man took him into the mine again.

  “As soon as we entered the mine, I started squawking and flapping and I flopped on my back,” Chester said. “Only this time? There wasn’t any gas.

  “The Gap-Toothed Man picked up the carrier and ran again,” Chester continued. “He runs like an elephant.” Once they were outside the mine, Chester stood up and pretended to be woozy. The miners went home for a couple of hours. And Chester got another day of rest.

  After that, it became a game. Two days in a row, Chester volunteered for scouting duty. Each time, he passed out. The Gap-Toothed Man ran from the mine as if there were a tiger in it. The miners started grumbling
—they only got paid for the coal they mined, and they couldn’t mine much in half a day. Most of them weren’t earning more than twenty dollars a week, at best. The big shots grumbled. Production was down. And the Gap-Toothed Man lost four pounds from the running he was doing.

  “That’s when he started to catch on,” Chester said. “The next time he came looking for a scout, he took two of us.”

  Two mining canaries, one male and one female . . .

  The miner’s plan was to see if the two birds reacted the same way inside the mine. “But I saw that one coming a mile away. I told Alice that if he ever asked for two, she had to volunteer. If we both played dead and stayed dead, he’d open the cage and then we could break out. And if he didn’t, well, we could always bite somebody, like a certain bird I know.”

  So that morning, when the Gap-Toothed Man reached his hand into the Big House, Chester flew into it. When the hand came back a second time, Alice flew into the line of fire.

  “My mother yelled her head off,” Alice said. “And I started to panic. I hadn’t even practiced fainting.”

  Into the elevator they went, and down into the mine. When the doors opened, Chester started squawking. “Do what I do!” he yelled. They reached a bend in the mine and he flopped over with his eyes shut. Alice flapped and squawked and flopped.

  “Al turned out to be a first-class fainter,” Chester said. “A real natural.”

  “I was good,” said Alice. “The Gap-Toothed Man took us up and out of there and into the coal yard.”

  “That must be when the reporter spotted you,” Walter said.

  “It must be,” Alice said. “But then I messed up. I opened one eye—just one—and he was staring at me.”

  “Fakers!” the Gap-Toothed Man roared. “Troublemakers, that’s what you are.”

  “He opened the cage,” Alice said. “ ‘Get out of here. Scat.’ So we opened our eyes and flew into the morning.”

  “Were you scared?” Bitty asked.

  “Who, me?” Chester said. “No way.”

  “I was,” Alice said. “But I kept thinking about what you said. How could the real world be any scarier than it was in there?”