Coal River (27 page)

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll bring you in some dinner, then you’ve got to get some sleep.”

“I’ve got my own bed.”

He shook his head. “You’re not sleeping on a wooden floor anymore. And I hate to say it, but you need to rest so you can go back to work in the morning.”

CHAPTER 25

O
ver the next few days, the sky was overcast. Then it rained for two days. Not only did the foul weather make it seem like the middle of the night inside the breaker, but it made it impossible for Emma to use the camera. The photos had to be taken on a bright, sunny day, when the inside of the building was filled with the most daylight possible.

Every day she wrapped her uncle’s camera in a rag and took it to work tucked into the waist of her trousers and hidden beneath her jacket. Every day, she sat at the top of chute five, praying for the sky to clear so she could pull the camera out when the sun was at its highest in the windows, turn in her seat, and take pictures.

In the meantime, while sorting coal and trying to keep her hands and feet from being torn off by conveyor belts, she paid attention to the bosses’ routines and noticed what sorts of things drew the boys’ attention away from their job. When the bosses were distracted, she sent pieces of pure anthracite down the culm chute for the miners’ wives to cull from the banks, and picked through the coal with one hand, switching back and forth to give her fingertips a chance to heal. Even with nightly applications of goose grease, she wondered if her burning, cracked skin would ever scab over and harden. At mealtime she could barely hold a fork or a piece of cornbread. How did young boys face this day after day?

While they were working, the breaker boys gestured with their hands behind the bosses’ backs, fingers flying to make letters and communicate with one another. During the midday break, they ate their meager lunches with filthy hands, then smoked cigarettes, played baseball and tag when it wasn’t raining, or ran into the machine shops to get nuts and pieces of iron to throw at the bosses when they weren’t looking. They played pranks on one another, throwing balls made of grease and coal at the back of someone’s head, nailing dinner pails to the floor, or tying a boy’s jacket in knots when he removed it during lunch. Luckily, Sawyer had told them that “Emmet” was a new orphan and didn’t talk much because he’d had the fever, and they left Emma alone.

She watched from the side, amazed that the boys had enough strength to do anything more than rest and eat. It seemed as though they had become like their fingertips, both cracked and bleeding, and hard and calloused at the same time.

Every day she looked for Michael, ready to turn away if she saw him. More than likely, he worked on a different floor in the breaker, but she worried he would recognize her if they got too close. Then one day she thought she saw him, eating his lunch on an empty dynamite box near the train tracks. His hat was off, his thick dark hair sticking up in all directions, and a pair of crutches lay next to him on the box. Plus, he was the only breaker boy eating alone. But his face was black like all the others, and she couldn’t tell for sure. Still, there was something about the way he held his head that looked familiar. Luckily, he sat in the same spot every day, making it easy to keep her distance.

When the breaker bosses cracked whips and brooms across the boys’ backs, it took all her effort not to stand up and push them down the steps. Daily, she had to fight the urge to scream at the gap-toothed boss when he rapped his long stick across a boy’s knuckles. She was shocked and horrified to see that the boys were abused for not working fast enough, for turning their heads and talking, even for coughing too long. How was it possible that these men, who had worked in the breaker when they were young, showed no mercy for those who labored there now? Had they forgotten what it felt like to be afraid and in pain? Had they forgotten the need for sunshine and fresh air, the desire to swim and fish and do all the things young children were supposed to do? Had all those years in darkness turned their hearts to stone, like the pressure of the earth turned tree roots and fallen branches to coal? She knew the men needed their jobs, and Mr. Flint probably fired them if the coal wasn’t pure, but working in the breaker was hard and dangerous enough. Was it necessary to cause more pain in the process? Or did they believe they were readying the boys for the hard life ahead? Every time one of the breaker boys cried out in agony, Emma blinked back tears. It had to end.

By Tuesday of her second week, she wondered if the sun would ever come out again. It rained all morning, and during the lunch break, the sky was still filled with high clouds. Then, an hour later, the sun finally slipped out from behind a thunderhead, shining in the highest corner of the grimy windows and filling the breaker with gray light. She touched the bulge beneath her jacket, wondering if she should get the camera out now or wait for a brighter day. Then one of the bosses shouted and she jumped.

“Wake up, you lazy shit!”

Emma glanced over her shoulder, her heart pounding in dread. It was the gap-toothed boss. But he wasn’t talking to her. He was standing beside a young boy at the bottom of chute two who looked to be about seven or eight. The boy jerked awake and straightened, his eyes bloodshot and puffy.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“This is the third time I’ve caught you dozing today,” the boss said.

“I’m feeling sick,” the boy said. “Can’t get warm and can’t stay awake.”

“I’ll keep you awake,” the boss said. “Put your hand right here.” He tapped the step with his stick, parallel to where the boy was sitting.

“I won’t doze off again,” the boy said. “I promise.”

The boss lifted his stick and cracked it across the boy’s back. The boy cried out in pain. Most of the breaker boys had turned to watch, while others kept working, their heads down. The other bosses and a foreman were on the floor of the room, leaning on brooms and talking. Emma unbuttoned her coat and fumbled to unwrap the camera, her hands shaking. She had waited long enough. She opened the locking level, pulled out the lens panel, and turned in her seat, the camera held close in her lap.

“Put your hand on the damn step!” the gap-toothed boss yelled.

The sick boy did as he was told, grimacing and knowing he had no choice. The gap-toothed boss lifted his hobnailed boot and stomped on the boy’s fingers. The boy howled and hunched over, his face twisting in agony as the boss pressed his foot down harder and harder. Emma pointed the camera at them, struggling to hold it steady. She pushed the exposure level, waited for the shutter to close, then faced forward again and wound the key to get to the next picture, coughing over the winding noise, even though no one would hear it above the crusher and the boy’s tormented wails. Then she twisted in her seat again and pointed the camera toward the far corner of the breaker, hoping to capture several boys and chutes at once. She took the picture, turned forward again, and wound the roll of film to the next exposure. She did this four more times, moving the camera right and left, her entire body quaking.

Finally, the gap-toothed boss took his boot off the boy’s hand. The boy slumped forward and held his bleeding fingers in his lap, sooty tears streaming down his black face. Just then, a man in a top hat and three-piece suit entered the breaker through a side door. One of the bosses left his broom and hurried over to talk to him. It was Mr. Flint. Emma spun forward, pushed the camera closed, and shoved it back inside her jacket. She glanced around to make sure no one had seen her taking pictures. The gap-toothed boss was going down the steps while the rest of the boys went back to work. A few of the younger ones were weeping. Emma let out a trembling sigh, her teeth chattering with a mixture of anger and fear. It was all she could do not to get up and push the gap-toothed boss down the stairs. But for now she just had to get through the rest of the day. She couldn’t even think about what would happen if the photos didn’t turn out. There were twelve exposures on the film, so counting the two of her aunt, uncle, and Percy on the Fourth of July, and the six she took today, she had four left. She just had to find a way to get inside the mine to take pictures of the nippers and spraggers so she could fill the roll. But instead of worrying, she went back to work.

All of a sudden, the crushers and shakers slowed and ground to a halt. The entire breaker shuddered, like a giant beast shaking off water after a swim. Coal dust drifted down from the rafters like black rain. The boys straightened and looked around, confusion lining their faces. Emma stayed hunched over, one arm over the camera inside her jacket. Panic exploded in her mind. Had someone seen her taking pictures? Is that why they’d shut down the breaker? Was she about to feel the end of a whip, or worse? Or had someone discovered her identity? Maybe Mr. Flint was here to take her to jail.

“Why are you shutting down?” Mr. Flint bellowed up from below.

“There’s a boy in the crusher!” a man shouted above Emma’s head. “He was oiling the machinery and fell in!”

Emma gasped, a jolt of horror rushing through her body. Several of the boys covered their ears and squeezed their eyes closed. Some cried out in alarm.

One of the boys stood, his eyes filled with fear. “Who was it?” he shouted.

“Jesus Christ!” Mr. Flint roared. He started toward the bottom of the coal chutes. “You boys, shut up and get back to work!” Then he yelled up to the man above Emma’s head, “Start her back up and keep working! You can take care of the body at the end of the shift!”

Emma pushed her elbows into her sides, struggling to stay in her seat. She wanted to run down the steps and beat Hazard Flint with a stick until he bled. Maybe the breaker boys would help by holding him down. Then the giant gears above her started grinding again, the crusher turned, and she heard what sounded like ribs splintering. She hung her head and put a hand over her mouth, trying not to be sick. The conveyor belt between her legs started moving again. When she could breathe without gagging, she gritted her teeth and reached into the trough, tears stinging her eyes. She grabbed a piece of slate and immediately dropped it. The river of coal was streaked with bits of ragged flesh and glistening blood.

CHAPTER 26

A
week after taking pictures inside the breaker, Emma made her way into the mouth of the Bleak Mountain Mine, trying to stay hidden between Nally and Clayton, her eyes on the ground. All around her, miners, nippers, spraggers, and mule drivers carried bar-down tools and tamping rods, cans of blasting powder and Davy lamps, drills and picks, sprags and bullwhips. Together they trudged into the dark shaft, talking and coughing, their dinner pails and tools and canteens clanging, their boots crunching on the loose slag. On one hand, she was relieved to be finished at the breaker. On the other, the thought of traveling hundreds of feet into the earth, moving beneath a massive mountain into long black tunnels of coal and rock, made her insides feel like they were being stirred in an iron kettle. She pressed her lips together and tried to breathe slowly, already feeling dizzy.

The previous night, when Clayton had said a roof collapse had crushed Nally’s helper’s leg while he was robbing the pillars—removing coal from support pillars in a spent shaft, sometimes supporting the roof again with lumber, sometimes letting the roof collapse—Emma knew it was the perfect opportunity to go inside the mine and take pictures of the spraggers and nippers. Clayton had already explained that miners often had “butties,” or helpers, to carry their tools, fill lamps with oil, inspect work areas for poisonous gases and unstable roofs, and share in the miner’s pay. Sometimes miners used their sons, who were only allowed to load their fathers’ cars. That way, if the boy got injured or killed, the mining company could say he wasn’t on the payroll and had no business being down there in the first place.

But when Emma suggested she could replace Nally’s butty, Clayton was against it. Then she threatened to go to the Irishman’s house and offer to be his “free” helper, and Clayton agreed to invite Nally over to discuss it. A few hours later, in the middle of the night, the three of them sat at the kitchen table, making plans over a growler of beer.

“Emma seems to think that if we get the attention of the newspapers,” Clayton said, “Hazard Flint will be less likely to retaliate when we move forward with the strike.”

“I like the way ye think,” Nally said, his eyes shining with enthusiasm. “The old Irish try just doesn’t seem to work around here.”

“The new shaft, number six, will be the least crowded,” Clayton said. “There’s less chance of being caught there.”

“The biggest problem will be having enough light to take pictures,” Emma said. “Can we take in extra lanterns?”

“Don’t worry about that, lassie,” Nally said. “I’ll make sure ye have all the light you need.”

“You can’t breathe a word of this,” Clayton said to Nally. “You know how the miners feel about women in the mines. We have to use every caution.”

“If I betray ye,” Nally said, “may the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase me so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can’t find me with a telescope.” He finished the rest of the beer and slammed the growler on the table.

Now, Emma lumbered along the railroad ties, jostled between men and boys funneling down the timber-lined gangway like rats entering a sewer. When they reached the first chamber, the miners stopped at the inside boss’s desk to turn in their brass tags. The inside boss placed the numbered tags on a pegboard, to be picked up later when the miners left for the day. If a tag was still there at the end of the shift, the inside boss went looking for the missing man.

After the inside boss’s desk, the miners went to the Dutch door of the fire boss’s room to pick up the safety lamps used to check for dangerous gases. Beside the door, Uncle Otis stood talking to the fire boss, his arms crossed. Emma dropped her eyes and kept moving.

Clayton had told her that the inside of the mine was like a vast underground city, and the miners were extracting coal from numerous beds on different levels, like the floors of an apartment building. Shafts, chutes, and slopes, like a black labyrinth, connected everything. She imagined the noise would be deafening, but to her surprise, the mines were echoless, the tramp of boots and the clang of shovels and picks absorbed by the thick earth and layers of coal.

Farther in, they passed the mule stables and the emergency hospital, which was nothing more than a whitewashed timber room with a red cross over the doorframe. The door was open. A man lay moaning on a cot inside, his forehead wrapped in white gauze, his arm in a sling. A bald man wearing dirty white overalls dipped a wooden blade into a metal jar and applied a black tincture to an oozing wound on the moaning man’s leg.

After the hospital, there were no more wall torches to light the way. The miners lit the oil wicks on their caps and slogged deeper and deeper into the tunnels, shuffling into the darkness like shadows into the night. The walls grew closer and closer, and the ceilings dropped lower and lower. Massive slabs of wet rock sloped left and right, mere inches above Nally’s head. Sometimes he had to duck to get into the next chamber. The farther into the earth they walked, the colder it grew. Water dripped from the ceilings, and Emma couldn’t shake the feeling that they were inside a giant grave. In a sense, they were. How many men had died down here? How many bodies remained entombed beneath cave-ins, buried forever beneath monstrous piles of earth and coal and shale?

She hunched her shoulders against the chill, struggling to push away images of the support timbers cracking and breaking, the roof collapsing, the mountain of rock and dirt burying them alive. After a while, she and Nally lagged behind the rest of the miners, letting them move ahead so she could get out the camera. When they were alone, they could only see as far as the fluttering circles of light from their head lamps. Behind them and in front of them, there was nothing but blackness.

They stopped to talk to one of the nippers, or door handlers. The boy worked by himself, opening and closing a wide wooden door to let the coal cars through. He looked to be about eight years old. Nally introduced “Emmet” and showed off “his” new camera, then asked the nipper if he wanted his picture taken, promising to show him the exposure after the film was developed. The nipper eagerly agreed and stood on the tracks with his arms crossed, grinning. Nally opened his powder can and pulled out three fat sticks, their ends wrapped in oil-soaked rags. He lit two of the homemade torches, laid them on the rock floor, and held up the third.

Torchlight lit up the tunnel, flickering off the jagged walls and sloping roof, illuminating initials carved in the heavy wooden door. The mine walls and ceilings were marbled with various colors—whites and greens, blacks and grays, and a strange yellowish orange that looked like veins of copper or rust. Every surface dripped with condensation. The thick timbers that held up the gangway were covered with white and black mold.

“Sit where you always do,” Emma said to the nipper. “And don’t look at the camera. I want you to look like you’re working.”

The nipper sat on a wooden box next to the door, the flame of his oil wick head lamp shooting up from the brim of his hat like the distant beacon of a ship. An extra jacket hung from an iron peg above his head on the black wall, next to the pipes used for pumping water out of the mines. Emma shivered, imagining the boy sitting in the dark chamber all alone, ten hours every day, opening the door when he heard a coal car coming, listening to the trickle of water and the groans and cracks of the mountain settling all around him. And what about the huge rats Clayton had told her about, watching the boy with hungry red eyes? She didn’t think she could be that brave.

Nally stood to the side while Emma took two photos. When she was done, Nally stomped out the torches, then pulled a roll of Necco Wafers from his dinner pail and gave them to the nipper.

“Not sure how the boss would feel about us playing around with a camera instead of working,” he said, winking. “But what he don’t know won’t hurt him, right?”

The boy smiled and took the wafers, stuffing them into his pants pocket and nodding. Then he pulled on the iron door handle with both hands and leaned back, using his weight to open the giant door. He waved Nally and Emma through, then started to whistle as he closed the door behind them. As they made their way farther into the shaft, Emma slipped the camera back into the waist of her pants and beneath her jacket. In low-ceilinged tunnels leading off both sides of the passageway, miners and their butties worked in water on their hands and knees, their clothes heavy with black mud. After she and Nally passed the workers, a low rumbling sound came from somewhere deep inside the mine, like distant thunder.

Emma stopped. “What was that?”

“It’s just the mountain,” Nally said. “Some days she likes to talk.”

He smiled and motioned for her to keep going. She took a deep breath and started moving again, an icy trickle of fear crawling up her spine. A voice drifted around a bend in the passageway.

“Gee!” a boy yelled. “Wah-haw!”

Chains rattled up ahead, axles creaked, and hooves crunched on loose slag. Nally gestured wildly, telling Emma to get the camera out again. She did as she was told and a mule appeared around the bend, pulling an empty coal car driven by a teenage boy. Two younger boys sat in the car bed behind him, holding wooden sprags. Nally pulled a bag of chewing tobacco from his jacket pocket, stepped between the tracks in front of the plodding mule, and held the bag in the air.

“Interested in some fresh chew?” he said.

“Whoa,” the mule driver said, and brought the animal to a halt. He jumped to the ground, and the other boys climbed out of the car.

“What do you want for it?” the mule handler said, his hands on his hips. “You want us to play a prank on somebody?”

Nally shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “We just want to take a picture of ye and your fine mule.”

“What for?” one of the boys said. He was still holding a wooden sprag, resting it on one shoulder like a baseball bat. “This have anything to do with the upcoming strike?”

“My friend is trying out his new camera, ’tis all,” Nally said. “There’re two bags of tobacco in it for ye if ye can keep your mouths shut about it.”

“Why do we have to kept our mouths shut about it?” the mule driver said.

“Because if ye don’t, I’ll tell the foreman it was you lads prodding those boys to ride the empty cars down the slope the day that new spragger got run over and killed. Ye’d be in a sad state if the foreman found out, ye having to tell your mums why ye lost your jobs and all.”

“I ain’t got no reason for telling anybody about you and your stupid camera anyhow,” the mule driver said. He reached for the tobacco, but Nally held it higher, well out of his reach.

“Stand for the picture first,” Nally said. “Next to the animal.”

Then there was a loud crack, like a boulder breaking in two. It sounded like it came from deep in the shaft, behind the mule and coal car.

Emma stiffened, fighting the urge to turn and run.

The mule put his ears back and started moving forward, his eyes wide with panic. The driver grabbed the mule’s bridle to stay him. “There’s lots of noise in shaft six this morning,” he said. “We was just coming back out to let ’em know it needs checking.”

“Yeah,” one of the spraggers said. “Somethin’ ain’t right in there.”

“Let’s get this picture taken right quick then,” Nally said.

The driver held on to the mule, and the spraggers stood next to him. Nally relit the torches. Emma took two pictures of the boys, trying not to shake as she pushed the exposure level and wound the key. More than anything, she wanted to get out of the mine as soon as possible. Once the film was used up, she needed to leave. Maybe Nally could tell the bosses she was deathly ill and couldn’t work. Then again, the bosses probably wouldn’t care. She was probably going to be stuck in here the rest of the day. Nally gave the boys their reward, and they climbed back on the coal car and rode away. Emma closed the camera and began to put it in the waist of her pants while Nally stomped on one of the torches to put out the flames.

Just then a high-pitched squeaking drifted up from the depths of the shaft, like a thousand wheels turning on dry axles. Nally picked up one of the still-burning torches and held it high, peering into the mine. Hundreds of rats came scurrying around the bend toward them, zigzagging back and forth, hopping over rocks and rail ties like a brown wave, their long tails scratching along the slag. Then there was a thunderous crash of rocks and timber, and a powerful gust of soot-filled air knocked Emma off her feet. Nally dropped the torch, yanked her up, and started running, dragging her with him.

“Cave-in!” he shouted.

She stumbled beside him, coughing and gagging on the thick dust, terror rising in her throat like bile. She felt for the camera beneath her jacket. It wasn’t there.

“Where’s the camera?” she yelled.

“Ye must have dropped it!” he shouted.

She stopped and raced back to where she fell, ignoring Nally’s cries to leave the camera there. The still-burning torches glowed on the rock floor, orange flames flickering in the dust-filled air. She pulled her scarf over her nose and searched the floor for the camera. But the coal dust was getting thicker and thicker, and she could barely take a breath without gagging. Panicked voices traveled up the shaft, shouting and yelling. Then a silver glint caught her eye and she knelt, searching blindly through the slag with her fingers. Finally she felt something hard and square. She grabbed the camera and straightened. But now she was turned around. Which way was out? One of Nally’s torches set a support beam on fire. It burst into flames. The timber hissed and spit.

Every instinct told her that the exit was behind her. But the blinding dust and smoke left her disoriented. She heard Nally calling for her, but the direction of his voice was lost in the cacophony of shouting men, snapping timber, and crackling fire. If she ran the wrong way, she would die.