Breaker Boy

by Joan Hiatt Harlow

  Mr. Russell shook Dad’s hand. “Between both of us, maybe we’ll get some help to close up these old shafts.”

  Dad started down the steep cliff. “I wish Corey didn’t have to go to work in the mines, but I don’t know what else we can do. Mining is in my blood. I guess you’d say it’s a family tradition. I began in the mines when I was Corey’s age.”

  “Who knows? Maybe it will be different for Corey,” Mr. Russell said. “Thanks for coming with me. The bosses up at the mine may now pay attention to the dangers out here.” Mr. Russell put his arm around Corey’s shoulder. “Did Abby tell you what she heard down in the pipe while she was hanging in there?” Mr. Russell asked as they walked down the hill.

  “No,” Corey answered.

  “She said she heard knocking,” Mr. Russell said. “She’s convinced it was the knockers. Poor Abby was so frightened she could have imagined anything.”

  17

  First Day as a Breaker Boy

  Things happened fast during the next couple of days. Corey was determined to help out with the family finances. Since he was feeling better and certain he would not have to go down into the mine itself, he was ready to work at the breaker. He hoped he could get on the baseball team he’d heard so much about. He was a good player in the neighborhood games.

  It was the first day of Corey’s employment at the Mountain Crest colliery, and Corey was up before the sun rose. Mom had set out an old pair of black trousers, a shirt, and a cap that she had cleaned up and repaired. They wouldn’t stay clean for long.

  “Mrs. Balaski gave us this extra lunch pail that she had in her pantry, and I packed a meat loaf sandwich that you’ll love,” Mom said. “There’s a slice of Aunt Millie’s apple pie, and a slice of her peach pie made with her own wonderful preserves, so you’re going to have a grand lunch on your first day.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “I’ve made you a good breakfast,” Mom said, pushing a plate of bacon and eggs under his nose.

  “I’m just not hungry. . . .” Then, seeing Mom’s crestfallen face, he added, “I’m nervous—well, excited to be going to work.”

  “You’ll be starving by lunchtime if you don’t have breakfast. . . .”

  “So I’ll eat everything in my lunch box, then.”

  “I’ve put in a vacuum bottle of hot coffee,” Mom said. “Now that you’re a working member of the family, you’ll need coffee—it’s what miners have every day to give them energy.” She looked at Corey’s hands. “They’ll be sore and red when you get home.”

  “Can I wear gloves?” he asked.

  “No, the bosses won’t let you. With gloves on, you can’t feel the differences in the coal.”

  Corey probably would never be a real miner, although he recalled Mrs. Chudzik telling him that he would get over his phobia in time—or that that he’d be better, at least. For now he would only work in the breaker—the big building with the chute that lifted the coal to the top and then dropped it down through the conveyer, where the breaker boys waited to pull out rocks, slate, and stones that didn’t belong in with the anthracite coal. People around the country didn’t want to pay for expensive anthracite and find rocks mixed in. Anthracite was called “black diamonds” because it was harder than bituminous coal and more valuable because it burned longer.

  “You look like a breaker boy, except for one thing. You’re as clean as a cat,” Dad said, looking Corey up and down. “When you come home tonight, you’ll be covered with coal dust like the rest of us.”

  “I hope no one will know I’m new. Maybe I could say I worked in another mine and just moved to this one.”

  “No, you don’t want to lie. Besides, you know some of the boys, who will know you’re new,” Dad said. “They might tease you a bit. And maybe play a trick or two—like stealing your lunch. They did that to me when I worked in the breaker. Just grin and bear it and you’ll be one of the boys in no time.”

  Corey knew some of the breaker boys who’d gone to school with him from first grade until they left to work in the breaker in third grade. A few boys he remembered were the Slavic boys. They were always a friendly group who minded their own business. Corey supposed it was because they didn’t speak English and they had a different alphabet. They ended up leaving school and going to work at the breaker too.

  “I hope I’ll make some friends,” Corey said wistfully to his dad. “And I hope I can play on the baseball team.”

  “They’ll be lucky to have you on the team and as a friend,” Dad said.

  The colliery was about two or three miles down the road—beyond the company store, and the town itself. Corey felt edgy as they neared the giant breaker that stood silhouetted near the top of the hill.

  Dad took Corey to the superintendent and signed papers. The superintendent gave them a birth certificate, and Corey noticed his age was already penned in as twelve and eligible to work.

  Dad waved good-bye, and a boy named Charlie took Corey to the washroom, where the breaker boys cleaned up and left their lunch pails. Corey found an empty cube and shoved his in there. If he concealed it well enough, the boys couldn’t hide it on him, he figured.

  “Stop the breaker!” Charlie called to someone who ran the conveyer. The command was repeated all the way to the top. The grinding, noisy conveyor came to a slow halt. Then Charlie yelled to another boy who stood nearby. “Hey, Frank! Come over here and show this kid how you tell the good stuff from the bad stuff.”

  Corey wanted to say, “I know the difference between the anthracite and the junk rocks,” but decided against it. Something about Charlie and Frank—the way they swaggered as if they were in charge and knew everything—gave Corey the feeling that he should keep his mouth shut.

  He followed Frank to the conveyer belt, found a seat, and let Frank show him the sharp gray slate and the plain rocks that were mixed in with or part of the shiny black coal. “Throw the bad stuff into another chute,” Frank said. “Got it?” Corey nodded. “Then get to work!” Frank signaled someone at the top to turn the conveyor back on, and the scraping sounds started again.

  So Corey began his job as a breaker boy.

  At lunchtime, the conveyor stopped, and the boys all trooped into the washroom, stood in line to remove the black soot from their hands, then grabbed their lunch pails and headed for the yard outside. The fresh air “cleaned the black soot from your lungs,” the miners had been told. Black lung disease was never cured by fresh air, Corey knew. Even the air around the coal mines was full of coal dust.

  As Corey cleaned the black dust from his hands, he gulped in pain. The cold water smarted, and he could now see the red welts and the cuts from the sharp rocks. He couldn’t let the other boys see how much he was hurting. He swaggered a little himself, and acted like he was fine, but his fingers were bleeding and sore. If he could just find his cube, he’d get his lunch and get outside.

  The cubicles all looked alike, and now Corey wasn’t sure which one he’d used to hold his lunch. He stood around waiting, hoping that his would be the one left. However, by the time everyone had gone, he still couldn’t find his lunch pail. And he was hungry, too.

  “Lookin’ for somethin’, kid?” asked Frank, who waited by the door with a mocking grin.

  “No,” Corey answered.

  Corey followed Frank outside, a bit wary and hoping he’d find someone who had seen or taken his lunch. A few kids paid no attention to him, while others stood aside and whispered to one another.

  “So, where’s your dinner pail?” Frank finally asked.

  “I dunno. I must have lost it,” Corey answered. “Have you seen it?”

  “You lost your lunch?” another boy asked as he sauntered up to them. “Too bad. We found one that had a great meat loaf sandwich. It was delicious.”

  A couple of younger boys joined in. “It had the best pies we’ve had in a long time.”

  Corey realized the boys had played a dirty trick on him, just as Dad had warned. He hoped the boys didn’t have
anything else in mind. But a boy named Paddy had something more to say. “See that little fellow over there? That’s Shorty.” He pointed to a kid who was so small he looked about eight years old and who carried a huge oilcan. “He has something for you.”

  Now what? Corey wondered.

  “Come over here, Shorty,” Paddy yelled to the little kid.

  “Shorty has the huge, important job of oiling the machinery every lunchtime. He gets an extra quarter a week for doin’ this key job,” Paddy explained. He took the big oilcan from Shorty and showed it to Corey. “See this? It’s grease. We discovered that new guys need to be greased every day too. So they don’t get too stuck on themselves.”

  Corey noticed that a crowd of boys had surrounded him, closing in from every direction.

  “That’s right,” someone said. “New guys need oiling every day.” The boys were laughing.

  Paddy came closer. “Stand still while we give you a greasing.” He pulled out the back of Corey’s pants and squirted something wet and cold down his trousers.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Knock it off!” He thrashed around, punching at everyone who was near. He was able to get a good wallop at Paddy’s face.

  Paddy yelled and swore. “He got me. Someone else take over!”

  For a second, Corey felt good. He saw Paddy’s face covered with blood and knew he had made a direct hit on that rotten kid’s nose. But his victory was short-lived as another kid grabbed the can from Paddy and continued squirting the smelly grease into Corey’s trousers.

  Corey tried to pull away, but several boys held on to him until his pants were completely full of the thick, greasy oil and it was trickling down his legs. Then, as swift and noisy as a flock of crows, the breaker boys disappeared to the other side of the field, leaving Corey standing alone, legs apart and very well greased.

  18

  Sticky Business

  Now what do I do? Corey wondered. He was sticky, hot, and hungry, and his fingers and hands were brutally sore from working all morning at the breaker.

  Dad warned me the kids might steal my lunch or play little tricks, but no one told me that the other boys would be just plain rotten and mean—that they’d pour grease down my pants. And they made fun of me—that was the worst part.

  The colliery whistle pierced the air, calling the boys back to work as the lunch hour ended.

  No way would Corey go back—not with all the grease dripping down and his clothes sticking. Instead, he watched as the boys stopped their ball game and gathered into lines that disappeared into the great black dragonlike breaker.

  Once the boys were gone, Corey took off across the field and onto the path that led home. The thick, sticky grease in his trousers clung to his body and slipped down his legs and out through the bottom of his pants, leaving a trail of oily slime on the ground as he ran.

  Finally, gasping and sweating, hurting and hungry, he saw the line of houses where he lived. If he could just soak in the big tin tub and get all this sludge off . . . Mom would have some salve for his poor hands.

  He thought about the neighborhood kids who’d known he was going to work. They’d never let him live it down. He actually wished he had stayed in school and never left Miss O’Shea’s class. School wasn’t as bad as the breaker and the guys who worked there.

  As he ran up the steps to the porch, his breath came in gasps that turned into moans. “Mom? Mom!” No one answered. The door was locked, and he sank to the floor of the porch and banged his fists, and then cried out as his hands began bleeding. “Mom!”

  Corey got up and ran to the backyard to the clothesline, where Mom set the laundry out two or three times a week. The clothes swung in the wind, like dancing paper dolls.

  If he took some clean clothes off the line, he could go to someone’s house and clean up. But where? Mrs. Balaski next door was nice, but she was usually helping out her elderly mom every day. The more neighbors who knew what happened, the more people would laugh and talk about him and how he couldn’t take being a breaker boy.

  He sat on the back steps and thought. Aunt Millie! Sure, that’s where he’d go—even though it would be a long walk to the other side of Wilkes-Barre, where she lived. Aunt Millie was usually home this time of day, and she’d help him.

  He went to the clothesline, pulled off clean clothes and underwear, piled it all into a towel, and pinned it together with several clothespins. After gathering the bundle into his arms, he started the trek across town.

  He had walked a few miles, mostly uphill, and he was hungry, thirsty, and miserable. His clothes stuck to him with the sticky grease, and his hands were bleeding. He would turn around and go home, except he’d have to face Dad. What would Dad think if he lost his job on his first day as a breaker boy because he didn’t return after lunch? Couldn’t Corey take a little horseplay from the other boys? What would everyone think of him for walking away from the breaker and his new job?

  He was about to turn around, head home, and face the music, when he saw a red car coming up the road toward him. The driver honked the musical horn, and the dog in the front passenger seat barked. It was Mrs. Chudzik and Hovi!

  “Where are you going?” Mrs. Chudzik shouted from her chariot.

  “To my aunt Millie’s, across the bridge.”

  “Get in,” she called to him. “Show me the way and I’ll take you there.”

  “It’s out of your way,” Corey protested—but not convincingly. He was never so glad to see anyone.

  “Backseat, Hovi!” she ordered the dog. She reached over and opened the passenger door.

  Corey climbed in the car and sat on the edge of the luxurious leather seat, while Mrs. Chudzik turned the car around.

  “Why are you walking way over there this time of day?” Eyeing the big bundle he carried, she asked, “Are you running away from home?”

  “Um, n-no . . . ,” he stammered. “I’m going to Aunt Millie’s to take a bath.”

  “Can’t you take a bath at your own house?”

  So Corey told his story—how he started work as a breaker boy, what the boys did to him, and how his house was locked, so he decided to go to Aunt Millie for help.

  “Let me get this right. You ran away from work because the boys put the grease down your pants and stole your lunch?” Mrs. Chudzik asked.

  Corey’s story sounded lame when she told it—as if he was a sissy and ran away. “And because my hands are all bleeding and sore,” he said, adding a little more misery to the tale. He held out his hands to Mrs. Chudzik. “See?”

  Mrs. Chudzik looked down at his hands through her thick goggles. “Well, I have some salve that will fix up those cuts. Why don’t you come over to my house and have your bath there, and then I’ll take you back to the breaker.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the breaker after what happened.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” Mrs. Chudzik said as she turned her chariot around again.

  19

  The Skeleton

  Later, at Mrs. Chudzik’s house, Corey waited in the kitchen while Mrs. Chudzik disappeared somewhere. Meanwhile, Hovi crept closer and stretched out on the floor in front of Corey, his tail still wagging.

  “Good boy, Hovi.” The dog turned over onto his back, four legs in the air. Corey reached down and gingerly scratched the dog’s soft belly with his sore fingers.

  Corey heard water running as Mrs. Chudzik came into the kitchen. “Here’s what we’ll do. You can take a hot bath and get the grease off you. Then get into your clean clothes and I’ll take you back.” She motioned for Corey to follow her, and he and Hovi trailed her into a room that looked like an office.

  Over by the window, sickly white against the darkness of the room, with a miner’s hat and light perched upon its head, was a grinning skeleton—and it was glaring straight at him! Corey stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Oh, that’s my husband’s skeleton,” Mrs. Chudzik explained.

  Corey’s weak knees just about gave out on him. Mrs. Chudzik kept Dr
. Chudzik’s skeleton right here in her house? “You . . . mean that is . . . was . . . Dr. Chudzik?”

  “No! That is not my husband. Dr. Chudzik bought that skeleton for his medical practice. Paid a lot for it too. We named him Zerak, which means ‘guardian of the king’ . . . the king being my husband, of course.”

  “Is . . . is it real? Is it someone’s bones?”

  “No one we know.” She opened a door to another room. “This is the bathroom, and as you see, the tub is filling and almost ready.” Steaming hot water and suds billowed in the white porcelain bathtub, filling the room with the aroma of soap and pine trees. “Take your bath, get yourself clean, and then we’ll fix up your hands. Those cuts need to be cleaned and will probably sting in the water, but you can stand it, I’m sure.” She was about to leave the room. Hovi stayed, looking at Mrs. Chudzik with pleading eyes. “Hovi wants to stay in here with you.”

  “He can stay.” Corey removed his shoes. “Where did you get that name, Hovi?”

  “He is a Hovawart—an ancient German breed. Let me tell you something about this dog. Hovi is gentle and obedient, but he never runs away from a challenge. Something for you to think about.” She went out of the room but left the door open.

  As Corey undressed, he could see Zerak grinning at him from the office. “Mrs. Chudzik,” Corey called. “Zerak is staring at me . . . and I’m stark naked.”

  “This is a doctor’s office,” Mrs. Chudzik reminded him. “Zerak has seen naked patients before.”

  “Please close the door, Mrs. Chudzik.”

  The door shut—as if by itself.

  20

  Corey’s Bath

  Corey sank into the warm water. What did Mrs. Chudzik mean about running away from challenges? Did she mean that I ran from those breaker boys? Well, who wouldn’t?

  Corey put his hands cautiously into the water. “Ouch!” he cried out as they stung and smarted.