Baker Towers (32 page)

T
HEY CROSSED THE BRIDGE
and joined the procession, a long line of cars barely moving in the snow. Engine noise, smoking tailpipes; a string of red taillights. It seemed that the whole town was driving to the Twelve. Here and there, cars had slid off the road. An old Plymouth had nosed into a ditch.

Finally they approached the tipple. A man in a hunting vest stood inside the yard, directing traffic. George rolled down his window. “Any word from down there?” he asked.

The man studied him. “Are you relatives?”

“This is Evelyn Stusick. Her husband is down there.”

“Gene’s wife?” The man pointed out a narrow road that led into a forest. “Deer Run is thataway.”

They followed the road, bumpy with red dog but cleared of snow, as though many cars had come before them.

“I should have packed him more food. I just put the one sandwich in his bucket. He’s on a diet.” Ev laughed, a choking sound. There was a tremor in her voice. “He put on some weight during the strike.”

The road ended in a clearing, where a long construction trailer was parked. Lights on inside; outside, people milled about. George wondered how long it had been there, if it was kept at the ready for just this purpose.

They parked the car and went inside. Someone had set up folding chairs and card tables. Only a few people sat waiting. Gene was the assistant foreman of the crew. Ev had been one of the first called.

George sat and removed his coat. The Salvation Army had set up urns of coffee. It was going to be a long night.

T
hey were longwall miners, a crew of ten. A few had come over from the Two, mined out that summer; the rest from other sections of the Twelve. The strike had sapped their bank accounts, their confidence. A year ago they’d bought hunting rifles for Christmas, fishing gear, power tools. Now they watched every penny. They were grateful to be back at work.

All through autumn they had worked in low coal. At Deer Run the seam was three feet high. On their hands and knees they set the chock line, to lock the longwall in place. A deafening roar, a flash of lights: coal and rock clawed from the face. Behind the chock line, the earth crumbled; fast, crab-legged, the roof bolters crawled into place. Coal was loaded onto the conveyor. On their knees the men moved the chocks. Noisily the longwall was reset. Another block of coal was cut.

The machine was an old one, brought over from the Two. New longwalls were coming, machines that protected the miners under a shield; but at Deer Run, the roof still required bolting. Old-timers sang the praises of
the old Lee Norse miner; but there was no arguing with the longwall’s efficiency. The machine made cuts a thousand feet long.

The men were named Yurkovich, Yurkovich and Sullivan, Kukla, Randazzo and Quinn. Kelly and Kovacs were the roof bolters. The foremen were Bernardi and Stusick. A young crew, like a bone newly set, not yet fused. Their grievances were small. Stusick’s humor grated on them. As a foreman, he was a stickler for details. Twenty minutes exactly for chow break, and at quarter past he started tapping at his watch.
Jesus, I hate that tapping,
Pat Randazzo complained once to Kovacs.
Just yell for me, why don’t you? Or beat me like my wife does.

Angie Bernardi did not tap. He clapped his hands in their yellow gloves; he shouted, he whistled, he called the men special names. Filthy names, some of them, but pronounced with such affection, such ringing admiration, you felt you’d done something remarkable to earn them. One day Joe Kukla had taken an enormous crap in the hole, and after that Bernardi called the guy Footlong. The men hooted with laughter; Kukla beamed with pride. Coming from Angie it seemed like the highest praise.

A
boveground, wives and mothers murmured prayers to Saint Anne. The Salvation Army distributed sandwiches and sugar cookies. Cots were unfolded against the corrugated wall.

George smoked and paced. Periodically he brought Ev sandwiches she didn’t eat. He drank Salvation Army coffee until his stomach ached.

After a few hours they stepped outside for a breath. The snow had stopped; the sky was flat and starless. George marveled at the absolute darkness, so unlike his suburban neighborhood, where street lamps glowed every fifty feet. The cold hit his brain like a drug. Years ago, as a student, he’d worked nights; he remembered the jangly rush of energy that came at midnight, the body, shaken from its usual routines, primed for crisis.

Ev leaned against the corrugated wall. Her skin looked ghostly under the floodlight. “I should have waited for Leonard before we left. The house is never empty when he comes home. He’ll know something’s wrong.”

“I’m sure he went right to his grandparents’,” George said. “He’s a bright kid. He’ll know what to do.”

A man approached them, a silver-haired man in a plaid lumberman’s jacket. “Mrs. Stusick?”

“Yes?”

“Oh, don’t be frightened, dear. I’m nobody.” He chuckled. “Actually, I’m Regis Devlin. I know your husband.”

She smiled. “Mr. Devlin used to be the president of the local,” she told George.

“Your Gene is a clever boy,” said Devlin, patting her arm. “Don’t worry, dear. Those men are in good hands. Gene’ll bring them up safe.” He smiled warmly, but George saw his eyes flicker.

“This is Georgie Novak,” Ev said. “We went to high school together.”

“Novak?” Devlin offered his hand. “Sure, sure. Your brother Sandy was out in Cleveland with my boys. I hear he’s in California now. Good-looking kid. He should be in the pictures.” Gently he touched Ev’s shoulder. “You look exhausted, dear. Go and have yourself a nap.”

Ev watched him go. “I’m surprised he has a kind word, after that horrible election,” she said. “You know how Gene can be.”

George nodded.

“But he’s right. Gene
is
clever.” Ev hugged her coat around her. “I’m going to see if any of those cots are free. It might do me good to close my eyes.”

George stared into the distance, at the lights of town on the other side of the river. This was Ev’s whole world: Polish Hill, the Twelve, the eight blocks of downtown. Just a few hours ago he’d imagined taking her to New York. By then the explosion had already happened. Gene was already trapped underground.

He glanced across the parking lot. A man in a topcoat stood beneath
the single floodlight. Beside him stood Regis Devlin, head bowed, listening intently. George thought of the way his eyes had flickered.

They’re dead,
he thought.
He knows they’re all dead.

H
OURS PASSED
. Slowly the room began to fill. Old women in babushkas, in mantillas; young women in high heels, in pantsuits, holding babies. Men in Sunday clothes, fathers and brothers; wet-haired men from the Six, the Eight, just finished with their shifts.

Sometime after midnight a man entered the room. He wore a dark coat and hat. George recognized him from outside, the man he’d seen talking to Regis Devlin.

“Who’s that?” Ev whispered.

Someone answered, “The secretary of mines.”

The secretary stood at the front of the room. In an instant the crowd quieted.

“Thanks for your patience, folks. I know some of you have been waiting for hours.” His voice was grave. “Here’s the situation. At twelve-thirty this afternoon there was an explosion in the Deer Run section of the mine. We know that because the brattices have collapsed. They’re solid concrete, and they’ve buckled under the impact.”

Gasps, a stifled cry. Ev’s eyes widened. She placed a hand over her mouth.

“At twelve forty-six, as best as we can figure, there was a second explosion. That’s when the backup generator kicked in and restored power to the mine. What exactly caused that second impact, we don’t know for certain.”

A male voice mumbled something at the front of the room.

“Could have been a spark,” the secretary answered. “Or an electrical fire. There’s no sense in speculating on that now.”

“Methane,” said a deep voice. George turned to see who was speaking. A man had risen from his chair—an old miner, by the looks of him, stooped and unshaven. He wore a dirty red cap. “A spark isn’t going to explode unless there’s methane down there.” He spoke gruffly, his breath short. His lower lip held a pinch of snuff.

“That’s one explanation,” said the secretary.

The man sat, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, I hope you shut the power off.”

“We’re aware of the methane issue.” The secretary had raised his voice slightly, to recapture the crowd’s attention. “Ventilation is our primary concern.” He spoke quickly, bluntly, a man used to giving orders. “We don’t know what kind of air is flowing down there. The men have portable ventilation devices, and they’re trained to use them in an emergency. That’s standard equipment.

“Two rescue teams are down there right now, one from Iselin Collieries and one from Eastern Coal and Coke. We’ll know more in the morning,” he said.

“Morning?” George murmured. “Why is it taking so long?”

Ev sat silent, her hand still clamped over her mouth. Her other hand clutched George’s arm.

T
HE MINE SECRETARY
knew why. So did Regis Devlin, and the old miner in the red cap. Blame the long success, the legendary profit and glory of the mighty Baker Twelve.

A mine is made by mining, and for seventeen years the Twelve had
been mined hard. The Deer Run shaft was seven hundred feet deep. From it, tunnels extended for miles in all directions. Viewed from above, the Twelve resembled a snow-covered pasture, thousands of acres of rolling meadow. But beneath the surface, the layout was as elaborate as a honeycomb, an intricate network of rooms and corridors running parallel to the ground.

Even with their antiquated longwall, the Deer Run crew had progressed far from the shaft. Shift after shift, they cut a narrow corridor through solid coal. The corridor was now two miles long. How much of it had collapsed—behind them, around them—was impossible to say.

A
little boy told her. Dorothy would remember it later like a dream. The implausibility of it did not trouble her; her life had been filled with strange totems. Birds. Nuns walking. There had been a Chinese woman in a mink coat, stepping out of a car long ago.

“Where did you come from?” she asked the boy. He was standing on her porch.

“Connecticut, ma’am. Before that, Philadelphia.” He was very polite. His voice was clear and sweet as an altar boy’s.

There had been an accident at a coal mine, he told her. Men were trapped. His father had taken the lady from across the street.

“Trapped?” she repeated. The connections eluded her at first, the series of deductions, like the solution to a math problem. Gene Stusick lived across the street. Gene worked with Angelo at the Twelve.

“Do you have a car?” she asked the boy.

“I’m only thirteen,” he said.

F
IRST SHE CALLED JOYCE
, who had heard about it on the radio.

“I tried to call you earlier,” she said. “Where were you?”

“Taking a bath.” Dorothy hugged her housecoat around her. Goose-flesh rose on her bare legs.

“Angelo is down there,” she said. “Can you come and get me? I need to get out there right away.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Ed has the car this evening. He had a meeting after school.” Joyce paused. “Are you sure you want to go out there? The roads are terrible, and the bridge traffic is jammed. They’re telling everyone to stay at home. All but the immediate families.”

Dorothy hesitated. It was true: he was not her family. He was something else to her, something she had no word for.

“Sit tight,” Joyce said. “I’ll call you in a few hours.”

Dorothy hung up the phone.

She walked up and down Polish Hill in her old raincoat, looking for cars. None in front of the Poblockis’, the Klezeks’—Ted and Bud were working Hoot Owl at the Six. Dan Wojick had sold his Chevy during the strike. Across the street the Stusicks’ windows were dark.

Inside, the boy was sitting at the kitchen table, his hands folded in his lap.

“Your hair is frozen,” he observed.

Her hand went to her head. Spiky tendrils at the nape of her neck, where her hair had gotten wet in the bath. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She needed to compose herself.

She went upstairs and collected a wool sweater, a hat and gloves. Angie had left three pairs of trousers for her to alter; he had gained a
little weight, and she’d offered to let out the waist. For a moment she considered wearing them—she’d never owned slacks, herself—but Angie’s trousers would be far too big. She combed through the closet in Joyce’s room and slipped on a pair of old corduroys Sandy had left behind.

In the hall closet she found her galoshes, her long coat. She looked a sight, she knew, but that hardly mattered. It would be a long walk.

“Where are you going?” the boy asked.

“To the mine.” She wound a scarf around her neck.