Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) (31 page)

A gigantic crash shook the walls as one of the pickups tore the large door from its hinges. Coal dust filled the air, stuck to the wet part of my eyes and filled my sinuses with the smell of sulfur. Footsteps clomped on the floor above. Alex’s voice came up to me on the draft that emanated from the cave. Maybe it was the paranoia or the coal dust, but I thought I caught a whiff of the organic tang of methane.

“Alex! Scoot! He’s going to burn it.” The dust spun and collected in eddys.

I tried shouting to Charlie’s men as I made my way deeper into the hole. “Eddie! I believe there’s gas coming up from this mine. There’s definitely coal dust. You need to keep that fire out of here.”

Some of the footsteps came to a complete stop. Somebody yelled, “Charlie, you hear that?”

“You disrespecting me?” Charlie yelled back. “I’ll shoot you with your boots on.”

“Charlie,” somebody else pleaded. His accent was Pittsburgh, not West Virginia. “He ain’t lying. There’s coal dust all over.”

Charlie shouted over them. “Burn it!”

“Go, Alex. Go!”

We scrambled on our hands and knees, falling and tumbling to the rock at the bottom of the mine shaft. Protests came from the guys who’d come into the building. A tremendous whoosh filled the air with a flash that lit the path ahead of us. Long shadows pushed into a dark tunnel. The outwash of air made it hard to breathe.

I fell onto Alex, covered her head. In the brief instant that the passage was illuminated I saw beams and angular walls. I tried to take a picture of them in my head. “This goes right into the mountain.”

From the space above, Charlie’s men screamed. Rocks tumbled into the opening behind us, shaken loose from their places in the old walls. The roof collapsed into the building above.

“He burned them,” Alex said, voice quivering.

“Just go.” I turned to look at the light one last time.

She helped me to my feet and led me down the corridor.

My eyes searched the velvety blackness for the slightest hint of light ahead. A glow. A reflection. I felt the air in front of me, certain that I’d at least be able to see my hands.

“Alex,” I whispered. My voice seemed loud enough to topple buildings.

“Here.”

I turned to the sound of her tired voice. “You okay?”

“I’m good. Do we get out the way we came?”

I paused. “No. We keep going. Sounded like the whole building fell in.”

“Oh.” That one word, uttered so weakly, was the first sign that we’d been defeated. “Can we get out the other way?”

“We should be able to. The shaft angles up. I’m guessing we came in through the back door or a vent.” It was easier to lie to her than disappoint her.

“Somebody will find us if we wait. Don’t you think?”

I tried to smell as much of her as I could. Her hair, her breath. Instead I could only smell wetness and clay. And when she didn’t speak I could only hear drips, and echoes of drips.

“No. I think we’re on our own.” I ran a finger along her cheek.

She sighed, a sweet release of air that temporarily brightened the space, before shuffling ahead. We walked half-bent, hand in hand, dragging our feet to avoid tripping. Once we started moving, her hand never left mine. Not able to fully stand, I steadied myself against the walls. My posture eased the pain in my chest. The cold rough sandstone contrasted sharply with her soft warm hand. I ran my other hand along the wall, the alternating sensations of rough sandstone, tepid coal, and chalky limestone were my only map. Carboniferous rock told the story of tropical jungles and giant amphibians. Fine-grained shales reminded me of fossil ferns that I used to find when I was young. I should’ve learned then that nothing lasts forever.

If we only moved at the rate of one step per year of geologic time it would still take us three hundred million steps to get out of here. I figured if we kept ascending we’d eventually make it back to the present.

There was no other way.

The textures, the smells, the sounds, they were all that we had. Without sight nothing was real. Things like the passage of time were more imagined than anything else. But for some reason I continued to walk with my eyes open. Occasional slabs of shale tripped us up, but they were never enough to keep us from moving ahead. When we felt like it, we rested, our hands perpetually clasped. She’d lay her head on my shoulder and try to find my lips for a small kiss. Or I’d rest my head on her folded legs.

We talked less when we walked. Sometimes the dripping of a spring or seep would give us false hope that we were close to a way out. If the water was good we’d sip and move on. We’d become accustomed to listening for other springs, each time hoping we’d find a drainage opening instead. Hoping to find moonlight and clear blue skies amidst the darkness.

Hours passed. Thousands of steps and a thousand moments of silence. Suddenly time had meaning. Sound filled my head. Out of the blackness something grabbed my foot and threw me to the ground.

“Henry!”

A white flash of pain filled my head. I had to remind myself that it wasn’t really light. My hands climbed the rock jumble as I tried to stand. But the rock pile just kept going higher and higher.

“What is it?” Alex said. “Henry?” She reached for my hand. “Are you all right? Say something.”

“It’s a cave-in.”

It seemed like days until either of us said anything.

I found her neck and pulled her over for a kiss. “I’ll start digging.”

She followed me up the roof-high pile of slag. The thin slabs weren’t heavy, just numerous. We’d need to move thousands, millions.

At first I tried to remain clean, to keep the dirt away from my face, but it was futile. That black dust—I couldn’t imagine it as any other color—covered my lips, filled my nostrils and my ears. That was how my dad looked at the end of each day. Every night he brought a little more of the mine home with him. “These rocks were moved by people. They can be moved again.”

“I know.” She tried to compose herself.

I couldn’t ever imagine myself as a link in that chain of people born to move rock from beneath mountains out of desperation. But now that I was down here, the only thing I knew for certain was that it’d get a whole lot darker before I ever saw light again. The original miners were compensated by the ton. They died in cave-ins for nothing more than a company house they’d never own. The mine bosses, always grateful, were kind enough to give their sons a chance to take their place in the event of an accident. I’d only be paid in the blood and sweat I had left in me if I ever made it out alive. But I’d happily take it.

“Like what?” She sounded tired. Defeated.

“Anything. My mind keeps going to bad places.”

Even though she did as I’d asked, it didn’t keep my mind from wandering. I thought about the guys who suffocated or starved in sections of the mine forever cut off from the world, drowning when sumps burst. Many, like my dad, would die slowly as the mine ate away their lungs. A healthy diet of coal dust, full of lead, mercury, arsenic and sulfur would only feed a family of four after the miner passed away. But a widow’s pension is no way to live.

Alex and I took turns sleeping, always certain one of us was moving shale. Hour after long hour we pushed our way through the roof collapse. Even though we couldn’t see it, we reached a turning point. The only way to move forward was to place the excess slag behind us, thus sealing our exit. I noted this without mentioning it to Alex.

My hands cramped. The splintering feeling in my ribs had returned—I felt it in every breath. But I knew if I died here it wouldn’t matter. The only real thing became Alex’s grip on my ankle, which she clung to like a kid hangs on to a balloon. Afraid if she let go I’d be gone forever. Her touch was one of the things I held onto as we passed the point of no return. People sometimes said that there were ends worse than death, but I never believed them.

Now I had proof.

At a certain point I could think only about the end. I kept getting lulled into the false sense we were close and moved faster with the anticipation of breaking through. But I only ever found more slag. Sweat brought on chills. Coal dust found its way into my mouth and eyes. And that smell, like sulfur and fire, was so thick I could almost eat it.

The roof was always just above us. Our passage grew shallower as we grew more exhausted. We’d gone from crawling on hands and knees to belly- crawling. The mountain was in my face when I breathed, in my hair and ears. The throb I first felt the day I’d heard Jane was gone had finally managed to push me into a grave. I’d only guessed at the approximate size of my coffin, but found it to be a perfect fit.

“Let’s move just a few more,” she said. It wasn’t her words that made me go on, it was the way she said them. Like I’d made a promise, and if I stopped working, I’d be breaking it.

So I’d hand them back to her, always just a few more.

I said, “Now I know why my dad is the way he is. Working because he wasn’t prepared to be a father. Weeks without sunlight and fresh air so we could go to school with new shoes. So Christmas morning wouldn’t feel so empty. When Jane and me sat down with the Sears catalog we didn’t think about where the Legos and Transformers came from. Until he started drinking he never brought any of this home with him. Except for the coal dust. Now that I’m up to my elbows in it, it’s hard to imagine how he could ever be free of it.”

She said, “That was his life, though. You were a kid.”

“I know. But now I understand how ten hours down here couldn’t be left behind like a pair of boots.”

“You make him proud by pursuing your education. You want to be a writer? Write. That’s how you honor him. Let the world know that you’ve been here, so you know what you’re talking about.”

“Feels like an easy way out, doesn’t it? What if each of these stones was worth something? A nickel even?” I could always hand her one or two or three before I couldn’t move again. Always four or five or six before my hands cramped into claws. Always just seven or eight more before…

There were none left.

I pushed the rocks out ahead of me and listened to them fall. Once, twice they’d hit before coming to rest with a quiet thud. A new smell greeted us from the other side, like the air came from the other side of the mountain.

“We did it!” Alex cried. She climbed onto my back and kissed my neck.

We crept down the other side of the cave-in. Hand over hand, so as not to get hurt. Once at the bottom she kissed me some more and held me. I could only shake my head. We dropped to the muck-covered floor, stretched out, and fell asleep without saying another word to each other.

TWELVE

Our false morning arrived without sunrise or birdsong. Without breakfast or tea.

Alex woke me up with her singing. “You’re awake, I suppose?”

She placed a dirty finger over my lips. I felt her hot breath on my neck as she finished the verse.

She was shaking. “Singing is the only thing keeping me from losing it.”

With no need to act out any false morning rituals, we got up, stretched, and shuffled through the darkness as fast as we could. A handicapped creep through the murk. She was still more nimble than me. She kept right on singing.

I tried to be patient with her and suppressed an urge to yell. “You’re a little loud don’t you think? I mean, Jesus….”

She sang, “
Isaac’s on a tear, old Ishmael’s out on bail.
”

The melody was a little more joyful than the ones she sang yesterday and the day before. I said, trying to negate my earlier lack of compassion, “What’s this one?”

“
Now Isaac’s on a tear and Ishmael’s out on bail
.
Ain’t none can help me with them witches on my trail
.” She seemed irritated that I’d interrupted her. “Katy said to sing it when things got the most hopeless.”

She paused for a second, like maybe she expected me to interrupt her again, then went right into the next verse. “
Pounded nails in the oak, the spirits slipped away. Pounded nails in the oak, those spirits slipped away. I hear there’s more a coming, and I’m out of nails ‘til payday
.”

I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t resist. “And what’s the song supposed to do?”

“I’m not sure. But Janie sang it a lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas.” Alex stopped walking. “I’m pretty sure we’re not alone down here. Anything else you want to know?”

“No.”

She sang, “
Ash under my pillow, ginseng on my breath. Got my ash ‘neath my pillow and ginseng on my breath. Still got snakes at my door, and the house still smells like death.
”

In this old mine, without the rush of wind or passing of landmarks, it was impossible to say how far we walked or for how long. Just the song, which she sang over and over, to provide a sense of time passing. She went through the same four verses again and again without pausing in-between. The slope increased and it became difficult to move as fast. The loose shale was slicker than snot on a warm doorknob. Our feet slipped frequently and we often had to keep each other from stumbling. As always, I kept a hand on the wall. That was the only way to tell if this was for real. Once she put it in my head that we weren’t alone, I couldn’t think of anything else.