Digging Out (8 page)

It’s the same stuff over and over, day in and out, ‘bout the National Coal Board being bandits and Da trusting them over Parry or Auntie Beryl.

Mam stands like always ‘tween Da and Parry. She stretches her hands out on Parry’s shoulders, but he jerks away.

Sometimes the yelling is about whose responsibility ‘tis, Da’s or the coal board’s. Or how Da isn’t listening to Parry, or Parry’s acting
like a bully. Today they are yelling about the man from the coal board who was sent round to check if there was a creekbed beneath the coal tip where the men are piling the slag that’s behind the school. Auntie Beryl says the inspector was a lazy sod for not really doing his job right, or he would have found the dirty spring. She is telling Parry to get the men to strike.

“A strike will put pressure on them, Parry. Talk to them. Most of them are fathers. Tell them they’ve more at stake then just their jobs.” Her eyes glow like two bright flames against her red hair. Auntie Beryl looks as if she is on fire.

But Parry needs no pushing. He’s wanted to strike since first the rumors started that the tip was in danger of collapsing. But Da doesn’t want to go up against the coal board.

“What’s happened to you, man?” Parry says. “What’s happened to the da that used to stick up for what’s what? I want to know where that man has gone. I want to know where my da is.”

“Parry, stop it. Get ahold of yourself,” Mam says. “I might ask you where my sweet boy is. The boy that thought your da could do no wrong. He is only doing his job, protecting his men —who you are now one of, in case you forgot —as well as protecting his family.” Mam looks over at Da. “Right, Da.” Her voice is shaky. “Co back to your painting, Parry. You’d be better off taking that offer from the university. You are happier when you are painting, regular. Leave this fight to your da.”

I think Parry is starting to cry. His eyes are red-rimmed and full of tears. But then I can see that it is rage. Cram comes over and stands next to him, her hand holding back Parry’s arm.

Just then Beti comes in through the kitchen door, not knowing what’s what and unbuttoning her cardigan like it was a normal afternoon with everyone gathered in the kitchen having a cup of tea. She smiles at Auntie Beryl across the room.

“Ta, very much for the Welsh cakes, Cram,” she says, handing Gram the empty plate from out of her tan satchel. “I ate every single one at work.”

My sister is all the way through her schooling. She is the eldest, ten years older than I. Two years older than Parry. She’s never around, hardly, and has no time for me or Hallie when we try to get her attention. She loves Colin. In fact, Beti would live at Colin’s if Mam let her.

“Set an example for your sister, Beti,” Mam always tells her about
things concerning Colin. I never know exactly what she means about that or anything. Mam and Beti puzzle me. I want to be able to read their minds like I can read Gram’s.

Mam doesn’t even say hello to Beti. The talk keeps going on about mine stuff.

“Colin says he won’t walk,” Beti tells Parry. Colin and Beti are engaged. “I don’t blame him,” she adds. “You’re asking a lot of the men, Parry.”

“Where’d you come from, anyway?” Parry asks, looking over at her. “No one asked you for your input, Beti. Colin’s a bloody idiot, he is. You can just go to your room, like. We don’t need you here, pretending you know what’s what.”

“Parry, stop it! Colin’s a good man, he is, and Beti loves him,” Mam says.

“They’re both bloody fools,” Parry says, turning his back on Gram and Beti.

“Well, I’ll be off to Colin’s, then,” Beti says. “I’ll tell him what you said, Parry. I’m sure he’ll be very pleased. We’re all incredibly pleased with how bloody fierce you’ve become. It does us all a world of good. What I wonder, Parry, is what you’re really afraid of. The mining work’s not big enough for the likes of your anger. Sorry, Mam. I can’t stand this rubbish or the way you both let him go on about it.” She shakes her head in Parry’s direction.

I want to go with her bad as I’ve ever wanted to do anything. I don’t feel well. My tummy is hurting and my arms feel heavy.

“I’ll come home after supper, Mam. Maybe by then you will have sorted this all out and there’ll be some quiet.”

“Not bloody likely,” Parry says, throwing his arms away from Gram’s hold and making a fist. “Shit! What is it with you two? For God’s sake, Mam, you’re not gonna tell me you’re protecting Da’s retirement over the possibility of God knows how many lost lives?”

“Jesus, Parry,” Da says under his breath. “Get control of yourself. You’re over the top, boy. Like I’ve told you half a dozen times, the National Coal Board is neither my friend nor my adversary.”

“You can’t be in the middle,” Parry says. “On this one you’ve got to take a side —the right side.”

“But they should be,” Beryl says on the tail of Parry. “Your adversary, I mean.”

“Well, Beryl, they’re not. They are merely my bosses. They pay me to walk that middle line.”

“Oh, Arthur. Dear, dear Arthur. You can’t know what you’re saying. Wait a moment. Follow me, bear with me.” Beryl straightens herself up tall as she is, which is taller than Da. She rearranges her skirt and pulls her blouse down tight.

“Let’s just say for the moment, Arthur, Rita, that there is a stream running beneath that particular tip as some say.” I lie down on the floor, the cool lino against my face. There is a breeze coming in from under the kitchen door. “That in fact, the flooding we experienced before is due to runoff from underground that streambed.”

“We’ve been over this, Beryl, get to the point,” Da says.

I wish I had stayed at Hallie’s. Wish I hadn’t heard the bell. Why did they even bother calling me home? None of them have noticed me. I want some tummy tea and a biscuit. I pull myself up off the floor and try to be noticed.

“Just exactly where do you think all that muck is going to go? On the off chance that indeed there is a streambed under that tip, and it does slip, well, it comes down straight and it comes down fast, Arthur. And the only thing ‘tween the top of that tip and Moy Road is the school. Can you imagine what that would mean? On the off chance, that is, Arthur, just let your mind go.”

Auntie Beryl seems worn-out. Her voice sounds hoarse. Her beautiful smooth skin seems loose and saggy.

“Those are your facts, Arthur. I know them. Parry knows them. We’ve already handed the headmistress a petition stating the danger. But we won’t be able to close the school down unless we get the NCB behind us. We need your help.”

She pauses, waiting, I guess, for Da to say something. He doesn’t. So she says, “But mind you, if I have to talk to each mother and father myself, you better believe I will. Because you listen here, Arthur. My facts say there is indeed a spring underlying that tip and we are standing here right now not doing a bloody thing, when it could go any moment, and it scares the life out of me. But it’s not my life, Arthur. It’s Alys’ life at risk and the lives of all those children at Pantglas School. If something happens to even one of those children, could you live with it, Arthur?”

By this time I am up close to the group of them, and I bury my face in Gram’s neck. Auntie Beryl is scaring me.

“Rita,” Da says to Mam. I look at Da. He looks at me and shakes his head. “Do you think I would actually allow Alys to go to school each morning if I thought there was any real threat of that tip slipping? Please, Rita.” Da runs his fingers through his graying hair, then bows his head. He puts his elbows up on the table and buries his face in his hands. “She’s my daughter as well as yours.”

Mam comes away from the sink to Da. She puts one hand on the back of his neck, the other on his shoulder. She says softly, “Well, how do you explain the slimy black muck Alys tracked in the same day Mrs. Symmons complained her daughter walked through it on her way to school?” She sits down and turns to face him, putting the washing-up rag down on the table.

“I just don’t know.” Da shakes his head. “I can’t explain anyone else’s experience, Rita. I ‘spect it’s hysteria. You know how women and children in groups can get.” His head is still down on his bent arms.

“Arthur, please. It can’t just be hysteria, all of us begging you here. You can’t really mean that we are all just hysterical?”

“What I mean is that all of us are under such enormous stress that we’re not coping properly. I think it means we should let things go a bit. See what happens,” Da says, looking over at me again. “Let’s not go over this any longer.”

“Mam,” I say quietly from behind Gram. “I’m not feeling well.”

Mam pushes away from Da and sighs. “Come, Alys, let me feel your head, then. Don’t be standing on the cold lino with no shoes, like.” Mam puts her lips on my forehead and I can feel the soft flick of her hair on my face as she moves her lips around.

“You’ve got fever.” Mam touches the back of my neck. I want to stop the bad feelings ‘tween Mam and Da. I want Mam to let me stay home from school. I want Parry to get along with Da. I want all of this to go away and the house to be quiet like it was a long, long time ago when there was no trouble with the tip.

“Right. I think you do have fever. That’s all we need now, a sick little girl.” She hugs me up a little. “Now upstairs and in your jammies and to bed. I’ll be there in no time with a cup of tea. Choose a book and I’ll read you off to sleep. Go now, Alys.”

As I drag my feet out of the kitchen I hear Mam say, “I hope you’re right about all this Arthur. I only hope you’re right.”

I am home from school for almost a week. My sore throat and cough won’t go away. I’ve had fever for three days but now it is just the sore throat and I feel yucky.

Parry is glad I am home. “Keep her in bed, Mam. It’s the safest place for her right now.”

“Parry, you can’t go on like this, ramming your point home to Da. He’s doing his best.”

Sometimes when Parry is around it feels like there’s not enough air.

“Your da knows what’s what with that tip. He’s said so and he ought to, like. If you’re to continue down the mine, you need to let Da worry about that tip.”

“Yeah, right,” Parry says, making a snorting sound that looks like his anger escaping from a red-faced balloon. He shakes his head. “He ought to know what’s what, and he actually does, though he won’t act on it. Mind you, it comes out in the end same as not caring. It’s like with the mural I painted on the side of the school. Remember, Mam, a few months back? He will never admit how much that mural, showing the hardships of a miner’s life, helped get the boys and him our pay rise.”

The mural is huge and Parry painting it had made Da angry. Da said it could have cost him his job.

“You’re either a painter or a miner. You put us all in jeopardy by being both.”

But the mural is still there on the side of the school, the three paintings: the big black mine, a miner sick in bed with black lung, a man under the wheels of a mining cart. The man under the cart was the way Cranda died. Gram had told me the story after Parry finished the mural.

When I am sick, I want to be in the parlor, where the telly is. But it’s a rule. The parlor is saved for best. There’s nothing to do. I am making stories up in my head about being rescued by a handsome prince on a horse or by a friendly giant and riding away real fast from this family. I am counting black sheep backward from one hundred. I can’t read, my eyes hurt too much. There is absolutely nothing else to do. I miss Hallie.

“Can Hallie come over after school today?” I ask.

“If you’re not well enough to go to school, you’re not well enough to have a friend over,” Mam says sternly.

“But I don’t have fever anymore.”

“We’ll see what the day brings.”

The day doesn’t bring Hallie.

The next morning Da comes into my room. When he leans over me and feels my head, I can smell the soap on his hands. Those hands of his, never quite clean, rough as dry cement and the black coal dust always under his nails.

I don’t open my eyes. He shakes me lightly with those hands. “Get up,” he says, softly but firmly. “You’re fine. You’re going to school today.”

I sit up slowly. Da seems so tall from where I sit. Part of me wants to feel fine but I don’t. “I’m dizzy,” I say.

“Dizzy doesn’t mean sick,” he says. “Get up now and have a wash. Your mam will be making you breakfast and she’ll be getting your dinner ready in your lunchbox. I’ll walk you to school.” His mind seems made up.

I move slowly. When I go to the toilet I feel really dizzy. When I swallow, it feels like I have knives in my throat. I practically crawl down the stairs. Through the crack in the kitchen door, I can see Parry and Da. But this morning they are not yelling for a change. At least not yet. Mam is at the stove, with her back to them.

“Rita, I’ll be taking Alys to school myself. It won’t do for her to be staying at home with all the commotion going on down there. We have to set an example, like. And that’s the final word.” Da raises his thumb and nods.

Da puts his cap on and turns to Parry. “I’m tired to the bone of you always being on the other side. Sometimes I think it’s just to rile me. Try to distinguish yourself in some other way, Parry.”

Parry clenches a fist and moves toward Da, but Da puts his hand up. “No more this morning. I’ve had enough.”

“What kind of example do you think you’re setting?” Parry’s loud voice makes echoes in my achy head. “Stupidity is all I can see.”

“Yours, boy,” Da says.

“I’m not listening to you like you’re not listening to me.”

“Another word and you can find somewhere else to live.”

“Arthur, please,” Gram says, coming down the stairs into the kitchen. “It’s too early in the morning for this.”

“You’re gonna throw me out. Is that it, old man?”

“You push. You’ve been pushing me hard for some time now. More, it seems like, since you decided to quit your painting and go down the mine.”

“Now, Arthur, don’t say something you’ll regret after,” Gram says.

“Parry, Da, leave it alone, please,” Mam adds.

“I’m in the wrong job—that’s for sure,” Parry almost spits. “Going down the mine was for you, Da. So I could be just like my da. Walk in my old man’s footsteps. But I don’t want to be like you anymore. And truth be told, I’m bloody sick of myself. If I stay around this house, I’ll turn out just like you, Da. Scared to do the right thing. Fuck you, Da. Fuck you and your tip. Fuck that filthy mine that sucks us all dry. And most of all, fuck whatever the fear is that’s got hold of you.” Parry turns his back and slams out the kitchen door.