by Hazel Woods
“How’s it coming, Amador?” Sacha says loudly, removing his hands from his ears, his voice echoing through the closed chamber.
“Yep,” Amador says, giving no other hint to his status.
Henry crouches beside Sacha, their shoulders and elbows touching. He shakes his head, admonishing Sacha for the interruption. Whispering, he says only, “Live explosives.” Sacha is confronted by the smell of Henry’s last cigarette, now stale on his breath.
Sacha nods, willing the bones in his legs to cease their aching and the muscles to release their cramping. He imagines climbing up the ladder, just to stretch his legs, have a peek at what that damn powder man is doing. How long might he be expected to wait like this? He realizes how little he knows about the workings of this underground world. Like a rodent in a crowded nest, he starts dreaming of escape. His fingers scrape mechanically at the hardened dirt in front of him.
It is at this moment that the call comes from Amador, “Fire in the hole!”
There is a silence broken only by Amador’s feet, scuffling across the dirt above them. His satchel sails in first, like some frantic, disoriented bird. Then, forsaking the ladder, Amador jumps in as well, his legs pulled in to his chest as though the cavern where Sacha and Henry are huddled is a swimming hole on a hot summer day. Amador’s hand grazes Sacha’s neck when he’s airborne as he tries to avoid landing right on top of him. There is something in his hand—something cold then hot, hard then soft, that easily sinks into him.
“No!” Amador says as he falls beside Sacha.
Just as his tumbling subsides there is an explosion of magnificent proportion. Sacha’s hands reach for his ears and his eyes shut tightly. There is a pain in his chest that seems to come directly from the noise of the blast. He curls his body tight around the pain, expecting it to subside in the quiet.
But the quiet comes and the pain remains. His hands are still tucked tightly around his ears and he can hear the ocean’s strong tide drifting in.
“Shit,” Amador says. “My steel.”
“What?” Henry says. “Where?”
Sacha understands that Amador has lost something. The two men are quietly panicking, but he is not yet sure why the location of Amador’s chisel is so important. The ocean’s soft, rhythmic noise dulls his reasoning. He opens his eyes. It is smoky, which has made their cavern even darker. A warm, wet stream trickles down his neck and he wonders if they are sweating as much as he is. The pain has subsided, but there is an ache that remains. He shifts his eyes and sees Henry’s face, black with dirt.
“Should we take it out, boss?” Henry asks, and then Sacha realizes just where the chisel is. He moves one hand to the dull ache in his chest, but there is nothing there, only the subtle beat of his heart. Henry shakes his head. He puts his hand to his own throat.
Sacha follows his lead, surprised when his fingers graze against the cool metal of Amador’s steel chisel. It moves slightly underneath his touch and the pain accelerates, driving hard into his chest and all the way through his legs.
“Oh, hell,” he says, realizing that the constant warm oozing is blood, not sweat. When he tries to turn his head, the pain squeezes tighter, as though it is a rope twisting around and around his neck.
Amador’s face is at Sacha’s periphery—his eyes red, his face blackened, his lips trembling. Sacha pities the poor man.
“I don’t think we should take it out,” Sacha says. “But I would like a bit of fresh air.” His own voice sounds very loud in his head, but he can tell that Henry is struggling to hear him.
Sacha decides to let Henry wrestle with the problem of their exit. He fixes his eyes on the dirt just above him, in a position that corrals the pain into that dull ache in the center of his chest.
It seems nearly unbelievable that the entire world exists a few thousand feet above his head, that everything is continuing out of his sight. Hensley preparing her own dinner, the dry goods store busy with inventory, the mournful cooing of retiring doves. All of it goes on without him. The miners hammering out nuggets of gold, Mr. Lin preparing the day’s specials, the fight for suffrage and workers’ rights on the streets of New York and Boston, the brutality of war, and, finally, the baby, his own grandchild, becoming eyelids and ankles and fingertips.
Sacha closes his eyes. He travels through the layers of dirt, reversing the recent journey down. And then, with great and sudden clarity, there is the burst of dusk, so bright compared to this hole. The thin, clean air stings his lungs and he breathes even deeper for the thrill of it. Far away, a bell is ringing, summoning children to school or men to work.
The sound of the bell conjures the only memory he has of the crossing from Germany to America. His mother and older brother were standing on the deck, awaiting the view of New York’s harbor. Behind them, he was bouncing a small red ball, trying to catch it on its first, then second, then third bounce. A strong hand grabbed his shoulder and Sacha immediately clasped the ball and shoved it in his pocket, afraid it would be confiscated. Instead, a large man in a smart blue uniform asked if he would like to ring the arrival bell from the bridge. Sacha nodded and followed the man up three flights of narrow stairs to a large metal bell that hung above even the officer’s head. He lifted Sacha into his arms and held him up so that Sacha could reach for the fraying brown rope that hung from the bell. Pulling hard on that rough rope, Sacha smiled so much he felt his chapped lips split and bleed, even as the loud metal clang rattled his teeth and made his fingers numb with its reverberation.
Even now, Sacha can taste the blood on his lips. He smiles at Henry—who is suddenly beside him, his face clean, his shirt white—wishing he had the energy to tell him about his first glimpse of America, that bell buzzing through the small length of his body.
Instead, Henry is telling him to breathe slowly in through his nose and out through his mouth. The blossoms of the fruit trees—pale pink, lavender, even yellow—have such a sweet fragrance that Central Park has become young love’s delight. Everything so full of raw possibility and hope—from the nectar collected in small dusty clumps by the honeybees to the electric, tender skin of his young wife’s fingertips when she wraps them around his arm. The future is unknown and thrilling. Their good fortune swelling between them on a Sunday afternoon—everything yet to come.
Straining to move, Sacha urges a shoulder forward. There is a whistle coming from his own body. A teakettle screaming that it’s ready. He wants to hold her there in the park. Olivia Wright. He wants to study the complex coloring of her golden emerald eyes one more time. Feel the heat of his own breath moisten her skin. Watch her lips move ever so slightly as she reads over his work. Give her more reasons to smile, more babies to swaddle, more trips to the seashore.
Tell her not to take the hot loaf of bread to her aunt’s apartment uptown. Forget the tea towel and the twine and silk shawl from Shanghai that she’d never wear again. Not after she shed it upon her return later that afternoon, a headache just setting in as dusk did. Taking a cup of tea beside him in the living room, her coloring fading, even as Hensley skipped through, the ribbons in her hair flapping like crimson warnings, and Harold recited his verses, stumbling with shame around the forgotten ending. She descended into a fever that night as she slept beside him—the first grip of the influenza her aunt would recover from just days later, but that she never would.
Just as Sacha had put his own linen to her face, hoping with each touch that she might soon recover, Amador wipes Sacha’s face with his dusty handkerchief. But Sacha does not want to be bothered with the poor man’s grief and regret. He only wants to see each of his children, now so grown and fierce that their previous chubby cheeks and short fingers reside only in his memory. Their contagious giggles and stormy tantrums. Pink rosebud lips and shell-shaped ears. Gone, soon. Recalled by no living soul. A worse death than his own.
That their sweet little legs pushing against his chest as he held them hig
h will not be remembered after this. That the memory of their sleeping faces cradled by their mother’s arms, so dear to him, will be lost. That the countless details of their treasured beginnings will be buried here, too. Beside him, beneath him, within him. This is the sadness that presses against him, beginning with the steel embedded in his neck and filling him with its black, leaden weight. He cannot move his arms, nor his legs. It is as though there is a gigantic magnet just below him, pulling at all this metallic sorrow flooding his veins.
With great effort, Sacha rubs the fingers of his right hand in the dirt. If he can just keep moving, there may be a chance to resist the infiltration of the steel’s blackness. You cannot die if you are moving, he thinks to himself, wondering if this realization is as significant as it seems. Just stretch your fingers out, let their vague movement save you. Slowly, the dirt gives away beneath his efforts, creating five small divots of defiance.
Part Two
When Hensley opens her eyes, there is a woman beside the bed. Her posture erect, her arms folded patiently in her lap. The room is dim—she has no idea the time of day, or even what day it is—but Hensley feels sure it is her mother. The woman doesn’t touch her. She doesn’t speak. Her face is composed, unmoved. But she worries over Hensley. Hensley knows, could sense, even before she was fully conscious, that this woman has been sitting here for hours, watching her sleep. In fact, could it be that at one point her mother’s hands were actually on her, smoothing her hair, easing her shoulders onto the pillow, stroking her temple?
This memory wakes her, tears seeping from behind her eyes into her throat. It was this presence, though, this reassurance, that allowed her to sink so far into the blackness that gathered around her, pulling at the edges of her mind, pushing its weight onto her chest. She simply gave in to it. She left all resistance to her mother, knowing that she would pull her back when it was time. It was as though she’d been loaded into a small rowboat, sack upon sack tossed on top of her slight body, until she could no longer move. The undecipherable rhythm of the water as it sloshed against the hull filled her ears with its urgency. She floated in those dark waters, bearing the weight, grateful for the grief that did not need words. That it was not hers alone.
But it was not her mother who pulled her back. It was Teresa who sat beside the bed, waiting for her. And Hensley hates her for it. Hates her for being here. For being real at all.
Her hair is not folded beneath Berto’s hat, nor are his boots on her feet, nor his high-collared shirt buttoned tightly around her neck, but, rather, her long hair is parted gently, falling across her shoulders, a full skirt wrapping her slender hips, a sheer cotton blouse buttoned nowhere near her neck. To Hensley, her beauty seems more of a disguise than Berto’s clothes.
When Teresa sees Hensley’s eyes upon her, she smiles tenderly but says nothing. Hensley turns her own head toward the window, its curtains pulled tight. This single fact tells her that it is true. All the details of her loss rush at her. The boat that carried her through an ocean of murky sadness is suddenly gone and she is on the shore, alone, unprotected, searching the horizon for the people she loves. The words and images that suddenly overwhelm her mind are what she feared most. The truth of the accident.
The bells that started ringing just before dawn, the horses’ hooves that seemed to never stop, the chaos in town as she walked Mr. Reid’s letter to the post, the miners solemnity along the side of the road, their heads bowed, nobody’s eyes meeting hers. The whole thing had seemed like a stage play; an elaborate show designed to test her. So she did what she thought she should. She busied herself composing a telegram to Harold, writing a letter to Mr. Reid, and brewing the morning coffee. She’d thought that once she completed all the tasks required of a grieving daughter he might reappear. She would pass the test and be rewarded with his approving nod, his gentle smile.
But instead, even after the simple burial at the top of the hill, the house remained hers alone. The days were empty and without rhythm. She washed his clothes and hung them out to dry, taking special care with the shirt collars. When she couldn’t sleep, she read and reread the letters from Mr. Reid. She stared at the chessboard, wondering if she should dare to make the next move; if this act might finally complete this excruciating charade. She held a pawn, then a bishop in her hand, straining for some insight, but soon replaced it. She pulled the curtains and took to her bed, where she’s been now for a week.
Both cats are stretched out long on the bed beside her. “What time is it?” she asks.
Teresa tells her just after dinner. “There is soup. Just broth. Shall we give it a try?”
Hensley nods. She’d agree to nearly anything just to have the room to herself, to be rid of Teresa’s sympathetic gaze. It only confirms her worst fear—there is no one else.
Alone, she shoves the cats onto the floor.
Her grief is like an impossibly heavy blanket, smothering every inch of her. She wants to destroy it—to push against this weight, set fire to it, escape its iron hold. The only way this seems possible is if she wreaks some damage of her own, takes a piece of this blanket and throws it over someone else. Watches it suffocate them, stifling their movement, choke their breath.
The cats land on their feet, as cats do, undamaged and unfazed. They saunter away from her slowly.
Hensley stands on her bed and places her hands against the ceiling. Pushing as hard as she can, Hensley hopes to break through. Climb up and out, stand on the roof, survey the new, ravaged world. But the mattress beneath her bare feet sags, preventing her from achieving her desired effect—destruction. She turns her hands to fists and bangs until a piece of the plaster buckles, disintigrates, and falls into her eyes.
She crouches on the bed, her eyes blinded, momentarily, by the debris. Behind her closed eyes she once again sees the horse-drawn coach that brought her father’s body back to the house. She gasps. She’d almost forgotten. Those dreadful, innocent horses, so useful and large. In vain, she tries to push the image away, tries not to see its arrival in front of this house. Though he must have died hours earlier, it is this bleak, irrefutable evidence that haunts her and that she wishes to undo.
If only he’d gone on a train to Chicago or Los Angeles or anywhere instead of into that mine shaft. She could accept the abandonment, the truth of his absence, if only she didn’t have this image in her mind. The stubborn, vile memory of him with his bloodied shirt still tucked into his dungarees; the wide metal wedge awkwardly cradled in his neck, like a child’s prank, a circus stunt; his mouth agape, utterly abandoned by the vibrancy of a working jaw; his fingers on both hands stretched long, as though with a yearning, a profoundly hidden desire. She wants to eradicate the piece of her brain that has stored this, that will undoubtedly torture her by replaying it every time she isn’t entirely fortified. But the plaster in her eyes has only shut her in with this memory and she is unable to escape it, trapped in the darkness.
From the doorway, Teresa’s voice intrudes and rescues her. “Have you plans to destroy the whole house or just the ceiling?”
Hensley tries to open her eyes. She blinks away the lingering dust. The first thing she sees is Teresa’s bare feet, so brown and alive on the wooden floorboards.
“Either,” she says, noticing the tray in Teresa’s hands. “Any scrap of this horrid place.”
There is a long silence between them. Hensley looks at the welt on her knuckle that is beginning to show itself. This pain snaps her to life. She scrambles from the bed in a shock of movement and drags all the bedclothes off. Throwing them to the floor, she howls at the insult of this comfort. This suggestion that life could go on. As though the bed and its covers are mocking her. She rages at them, beating at the mattress that remains, at the dreaded pillows. Her face reddened and wet, she finally throws herself back on the bed, defeated.
Teresa is not moved. “I once saw someone go up in flames fueled by grief. As if her very soul was a box
of dry timber. There were ashes dancing in the breeze even as her flesh charred and melted.”
“God.” Hensley’s heart races with the possibilities. Destruction frolicking around her like a harlot with lifeless eyes.
Teresa nods.
“God,” Hensley says again. Might that happen to her? Might she simply ignite?
Teresa places the tray on the cane chair beside the bed. Without invitation or hesitation, she climbs onto the bare bed beside Hensley. The two girls hold each other, trying desperately to affirm some community, some solidarity that neither feels in her heart. But each girl’s tears dry on the other’s skin in thin, salty tracks of protest.
• • •
Immediately after hearing her father was dead, Hensley sat in front of the typewriter, still in her nightclothes, her hands streaked black with ink. She imagined Mr. Reid, living in that time warp of their letters, innocent of the events in the mine. He would exist there, with her father still alive, still a solid opponent, for a few more weeks.
I’ve woken early, the room still dark. I wonder, in fact, if I actually slept at all. Only the occasional birdcall breaks the silence—an eager finch or mourning dove. And I must confess that even now I am contemplating an act of forgery. Mostly to spare you, but also, perhaps, to spare myself. I think I could surely mimic his terse, rational prose—his voice will always be in my head—but I would be a hopeless failure when it came time to determining the next move in your chess game. You would wonder and worry what fate had befallen your partner and I would eventually have to confess to my crime. So, as the sunlight shed its rays onto my pillow, I knew the terrible truth of the day. I would have to form these detestable words and send them across an ocean to you: My father, Mr. Sacha Dench, has died.