Mother Lode

by Carol Anita Sheldon

  “My God!” Catherine bent over her husband, dabbed her handkerchief on his wound. “Aren’t there any safety precautions?”

  “Ma’am, a mine’s a dangerous place. Your husband knows this.” Mr. Ahlers said.

  The laborer chipped in, “We lose about a man a week in all manner of accidents.”

  Mr. Ahlers glared at him.

  “They’re usually miners though, or trammers,” the young man finished lamely.

  “The mine should be closed until proper precautions are taken!” Catherine stated.

  Mr. Ahlers turned to the laborer. “You can go back to work now.”

  “We’ve finished sorting the rocks in the shaft house, sir. Mostly mucking out poor-rock today. Not much copper a’tall.”

  “There’ll be more brought up by now. Go report to your captain.”

  The laborer left, and Mr. Ahlers turned to Catherine.

  “Ma’am, with all respect, the Portage has the best safety record in all of Copperdom.”

  By the time Doctor Carlyle arrived, Thomas had come to.

  “You’ve done a fine job preparing my patient for me,” the doctor smiled at her. “I could use a nurse at the company clinic, if you’re interested.”

  Catherine ignored this. She thought he ought to be apologizing for being so late.

  Thomas sat up, felt his head gingerly. After getting his bearings, he said, “No need to trouble yourself further, Catherine. Go along home now.”

  “Not without taking you with me.”

  “It’s only three o’clock.”

  “Go ahead, Radcliff,” Ahlers said. “Your wife is quite right. Go home and take it easy.”

  They climbed into Thomas’ buggy, with the gelding tied to the back.

  As Catherine took the reins, she said, “I was very worried, believe you me. What a relief to know that nothing serious happened.”

  Walter handed Jorie a spade. “We’re going to find copper here,” he said. “Start working. We’ll stope it out, just like a real mine.”

  Walter struck the wall several times with the rock. Jorie imitated him, hitting it with his spade.

  Walter looked around, saw a wheelbarrow. “Here, we’ll use this to haul the rocks.”

  He brought the oversized barrow to the coal pile. A shaft of light from the dirty window fell upon the boys.

  “Come on, fill it with all the rock we busted out today. You have to do that ‘cuz you’re just a trammer. You have to pick up rock and put it in here.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I’m the miner. It’s my job to find the veins of copper and choose what to blow up. When I set off the dynamite, there’s going to be a big explosion.”

  “Walter, let’s get out now! I want to go home.”

  “You are home, dummy. Come on. Let’s see who can get the most in the barrow.”

  When it was full, Walter instructed, “Lie down here, next to the coal pile, and check the ceiling for falling rock and cracks.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want a cave-in, do you? Buried alive—is that what you want?”

  “I’m not the miner — you are,” Jorie injected.

  Walter thought a moment. “Well then — you be the captain. It's his job to check.”

  The house was unnaturally quiet. Catherine went to Jorie’s room, then called to the boys and got no response.

  “Thomas, they’re gone! I left Walter in charge of Jorie—something’s happened!”

  “Perhaps they went to catch polliwogs,” Thomas offered. “You go to the creek and I’ll see if they’re down by the well.”

  Catherine started in the direction of the creek.

  “Oh, my God!” What if Walter had taken Jorie to the lake? As Catherine rounded the house, the open cellar door caught her eye. Why was it open?

  “Jorie!” she called down the stairs.

  There was no answer. As she crept down the steps her mouth went dry and her throat tightened. The sight caused her to gasp. The coal, usually piled high to the window, and restrained at the bottom by a low wooden corral, had overflowed its banks and spilled out on the dirt floor.

  “Jorie!” she called. “Walter!”

  Still no reply. Her toe caught against a jagged piece of rock in the uneven floor, and sent her sprawling forward on her face. When she was back on her feet, she ran up the steps and toward the well.

  “Thomas! They’ve been in the cellar playing in the coal,” she spat out between gulps for breath. “But they’re not there now.”

  Her eyes widened in fear as a sudden thought crossed her mind. Thomas caught it, and they were off running back to the cellar. They fell on their knees and began raking the coal with their hands, throwing chunks to one side and the other.

  A patch of pale blue caught Catherine’s eye, and digging more furiously than ever, she uncovered Jorie. He was as black as the substance that covered him.

  Lifted from the rubble, he seemed not to be breathing. Catherine held him, pounding him on the back. His head rolled back and he lay still in her arms. At last, as she ran to the house with him, he gasped for air.

  Thomas called out for Walter. Had an avalanche of coal buried them both? He fell to his knees again, pushing the coal aside as more cascaded from above. Finally satisfied that Walter was not under the coal, but wanting to make sure he wasn’t hiding, Thomas poked his way around other parts of the cellar. In the late afternoon, the light was so scant it was hard to make out shapes. He dare not light a candle amidst the highly inflammable coal dust in the air. The sudden splintering of glass startled him. Groping in the dark he’d knocked over a bottle of his home-made wine. He stood still and waited in the silence, hearing only the chirp of a lone cricket somewhere in the dark recess.

  He was about to leave when a chunk of coal slipping down the pile caused him to look up. Near the top and to the side of the fading shaft of light two eyes gleamed in the darkness. He went closer and held the candle high. There, camouflaged by the coal dust that covered him, crouching like a feral cat, was the form of Walter.

  By the time Catherine got him to the house Jorie was crying hysterically, taking in great gulps of air, while his whole body shook. As she held him, he first coughed up black phlegm, followed by his lunch.

  Blackened as he was, she couldn’t tell what injuries he had, beyond almost suffocating. She could see a trickle of blood drying on a gash on his forehead, and a huge goose egg. She put water on the stove to boil and dragged out the washtub. While she waited for it to warm, Catherine rocked him in her arms.

  Thomas came in as she was bathing Jorie. “How is he?”

  “It’s the jerky way he’s breathing that bothers me most.”

  “Any broken bones?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Suddenly she looked up. “Where’s Walter?” It was the first she’d thought of him.

  “On the veranda. He needs a bath too.”

  “Well, you do it, when I’ve finished here. Where did you find him?”

  “On top of the coal pile.”

  “He needs to be punished for taking Jorie down there. They both could have been killed in that avalanche of coal.”

  Finally she took Jorie out of the bath. He wasn’t very clean, but the rest would have to wait. She wrapped him in a blanket, put iodine on his cuts, and carried him upstairs to bed.

  “Don’t go, Mummy.”

  “I won’t leave you, Precious.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Where?”

  “All over.” He put his hands on his ribs. “It hurts to breathe.”

  She tried to rearrange him on a pillow, but it made him cry.

  “I’m sorry, Jorie. Whatever made you boys go in the cellar?”

  “Walter wanted to play miners.”

  “You shouldn’t have been down there, and you certainly shouldn’t have been climbing the coal pile.”

  “We weren’t climbing on it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Walter
dumped it on me.”

  Catherine and Thomas stayed up that night talking for hours.

  “Walter can’t stay with us. He’ll have to go away.”

  “Go where?”

  “He should be given over to the care of the Good Will Farm.”

  “Talk sense, woman.”

  “They’ll be kind to him, I know they will. He can’t live here, Thomas. It’s out of the question.”

  “What are you saying? He’s my son as much as Jorie. I will not send him the Farm.”

  “He tried to kill Jorie!”

  “That’s not true!”

  “You heard Jorie say it yourself. Walter dumped the wheelbarrow full of coal on him. When he tried to get up Walter pushed him down—”

  “They were just playing.”

  “—And Jorie hit his head on the stone. Then Walter ran to the top of the pile and kicked more coal down on top of him.”

  “That’s sheer speculation.”

  “How do you think the coal got all over the floor?”

  “He might have been trying to scare him, but he wasn’t planning to kill him.”

  “You’re blind, Thomas. When we called to him, did he answer? He remained on top of the coal pile while his brother was dying under it! That’s an admission of guilt, believe you me.”

  Thomas said nothing. Catherine stared at the wound on her husband’s face. The blood had seeped through the bandage, and for a brief moment her heart went out to him.

  “And it isn’t the first time. Jorie told me that one night Walter locked him in the closet. All night! The Lord knows what else he’s done. I tell you, Walter is out to do away with Jorie!”

  “He’s my son, Catherine. He’s lost his ma. Now you want me to abandon him.”

  “I won’t argue any more. I will not risk a repeat occurrence. Either Walter goes or I leave with Jorie.”

  Catherine held her son that night. Several times he woke crying, sometimes in pain, and sometimes in terror.

  In the morning, when Thomas had taken no action, Catherine said, “I am going to see Earl Foster.”

  “What are you talking about? This is a domestic matter. If you’re so sure he did it, I’ll give him a whipping.”

  “A whipping! He tried to murder my son!”

  Thomas’ hand flashed across Catherine’s cheek before he could stop it. It was the first time he’d struck her. She felt the hot burn spread through her face, but refused to let Thomas see her pain. As she started for the door, he rushed to block her exit.

  “Sit down, Catherine. Let’s discuss this reasonably.”

  “I’ve done with talking. I will hold firm to my decision on this matter.”

  Thomas sat down at the table, his head in his hands, while Catherine waited by the door. Finally, he rose, called Walter and left the house.

  It was hours before he returned. The suffering of her son served to convince her that she’d done the right thing. Jorie’s breathing was shallow and labored. He continued to cough up dark matter, and wanted no food.

  Finally the door opened.

  “It’s done then?” Catherine asked.

  He gave a curt nod. “Are you satisfied now?”

  “Did you tell Mrs. Lerner what he did?”

  “I didn’t take him to the Farm. He’s with my sister.”

  Catherine started to say something and changed her mind. Well, what did it matter to her? He was gone, and Jorie was out of harm’s way. Walter would never pose a danger to her son again.

  Thomas barely spoke to his wife, and the evenings lay heavily between them, with unspoken resentment. There was nothing but the ticking of the mantle clock to keep them company, as he read his newspaper and she did her mending. And all the time her mind went back to how she’d gotten into this marriage to begin with.

  Chapter 7

  Sixteen year old Catherine stayed under the covers as long as she could, ignoring her mother’s calls.

  It stung her anew each morning as she awoke: Her father was dead. Pneumonia had taken him quite suddenly several months ago, but she was not yet accustomed to it. Each morning she experienced the pain anew. It was just last summer they were in Paris. Remembering the night they played out the death scene from Othello took her breath away. She bit her lip; she must not think of these things now, for surely tears would overtake her and her mother would make more derisive remarks.

  Finally, forcing herself to leave her warm covers, she slipped out of bed, punched through the thin layer of ice in her pitcher, and poured the freezing water into her basin. Jumping from one foot to the other, she dashed the icy cloth quickly on her face, around her neck and shoulders, trying to avoid getting her chemise wet. Grabbing the clothes she’d laid out the night before, she raced downstairs, to get dressed by the warmth of the kitchen stove. April afternoons were beginning to warm up, but the nights and mornings were still freezing.

  While Catherine stood eating her porridge with her backside to the stove, her mother was touting the merits of a suitor.

  “I don’t want to marry Thomas Radcliff! I don’t want to marry at all!”

  “Just ye listen tae me, daughter.”

  “Thomas Radcliff is an old man! He was father’s friend.” She slammed the bowl down on the table.

  “He’s a well-tae-do widower, Catherine. You’d never be without.”

  “He has grown sons!”

  “And a wee laddie, a needin’ a mother.”

  “You’d have me a step-mother at sixteen?” Catherine shouted.

  “Watch yer tongue, miss.”

  “He must be sixty!”

  “Forty-one, and not a day o’er.”

  “You’ve already talked to him!”

  “He came to me. You coulda do far worse. Thomas Radcliff is Chief Mining Captain for the Portage Mining Company.”

  “A mole!”

  “Och, no. He’s a fine office on the grass, Missy. The Portage Mining Company is—”

  “Where’s that?” Catherine asked impatiently.

  “Near Hancock.”

  “How far from here?”

  “Aboot twelve miles, above Portage Lake. It’s purty there, ‘tis. And the mine’s up and coming, believe you me. “

  Catherine groaned. “A Cornishman, no doubt — another ‘Cousin Jack’. Who ever saw so many immigrants — German, Irish—”

  “Immigrants, is it? And what do ye think ye are? But no, Mr. Radcliff is American-born. And he’s the first college engineer any mine in these parts ‘as ever ‘ad. The other companies still be using Cornish miners for their captains.”

  “What do I care aboot that?”

  “Well, yer living in ‘Copper Country.’ That’s all you’re ever goin’ tae hear aboot—minin’. It’s the life and blood of the country.”

  “I hate it here! I want to go back to Scotland. Or Paris.”

  “They say Mr. Radcliff—”

  “Does he own the mine?”

  “No, the owners own it.”

  “And who be they?”

  “Stockholders, back east, all.”

  “Then I don’t want him.”

  “Stop yer greetin’ and roarin’. He’s comin’ tae call on ye Sunday next.”

  “How could ye? Daddy would never have put me through such misery!”

  “Hush up aboot yer daddy.”

  “He’s barely cold in his grave and ye’d have me married off—”

  “I said hush up aboot him!” Barbara MacGaurin shook her head in disgust. “Yer daddy, always fillin’ ye with fancy notions of who y’are! Bletherin’ foolishness it was. It’s exactly cuz he’s gone, it falls tae me tae see ye are ta’en care of.”

  “I’d rather die!”

  On the way to school Catherine’s thoughts returned to Paris. He was there on business and she had persuaded him to take her along. Early mornings on the ship deck watching the sunrises while Daddy brushed her long red hair, nights in their narrow bunks so close she could feel his breath.