Red Helmet (32 page)

She next opened a file called
MonOrders
. This one let her look at the orders that had come in to the mine from Atlas headquarters month by month. She sorted through them until she found the one marked
India
. That was the one she was interested in. She saw that the orders for India had increased until the past three months, when they had gone flat, perhaps leveling off because the mine had never met the previous orders. She next opened an icon marked
GradeProd
, which showed the monthly tonnage of the various grades of coal as they came out of the preparation plant.

She studied the numbers. What she needed, she decided, was a monthly comparison of the Indian-grade coal and the overall production. The software, however, gave her no way to get it. She realized that she would have to print out the results she had, then do the calculations manually, a tedious exercise.

Song did the printing on Rhonda's laser printer, then removed the disk, trashed Mole's software out of the computer, and put the computer to sleep. She folded the documents, then headed for her room. Tomorrow was a work day. She didn't have time to work with the numbers now, but she would get to it as soon as she could. Inside those statistics, she hoped, was the answer to the mystery of why Cable wasn't meeting his quotas.

Song undressed and climbed into bed and slid beneath the cool sheets. She found herself looking forward to going to work the next morning. It was hard inside the mine, but it was always challenging. She liked that her foremen all thought she was doing a good job, and the other men, even the veteran black caps, respected her. She went to sleep soon after, and it was the sleep of quiet satisfaction.

Twenty-Seven

B
ashful's rig was on the back slope of Tucker Mountain, on the western end of Atlas Energy property. Using bulldozers, his crew had cut a road across the mountain and set up a drilling rig, but Birchbark, his straw boss, was not happy with the setup.

“There's old mine works below this spot, Bashful,” he complained. “We'll punch into them if we drill.”

Bashful put his hands on his hips, took a deep breath, and looked around the slope. It was a lovely spot. Clear-cut thirty years ago to provide timbers for the mine, it had grown back into an even denser forest. The only people who ventured into it were deer hunters. Since hunting season was over, Bashful's crew had the place to themselves.

“Quit your worrying, Birchbark,” he said. “So what if those old works are down there? They abandoned them twenty-five years ago, and they're at least a thousand feet below us. My gut tells me we can make a big strike here.”

“How do you figure?” Birchbark demanded. “There's old wells spotted all around this area. They've been pumped dry, far as I know.”

“Maybe, but nobody's drilled at this spot. I like the looks of the geology. I think there's a big pool of gas right below us.”

“Sounds like wishful thinking, Bashful.”

“Well, you just let me do the thinking, wishful or otherwise,” Bashful snapped. “Drill here and keep drilling until I tell you to stop.”

Birchbark opened his mouth to argue, but it was too late. Bashful was already walking purposefully
toward his ATV. He climbed on, then roared off. Birchbark shook his head. He didn't like the idea of punching into a sealed-off section of an old mine. He'd never done that before and he didn't know what might happen if he did. But orders were orders, and there were car and trailer payments to make. Reluctantly, Birchbark waved at his men to level the rig and start drilling.

M
ONDAY MORNING
, B
OSSMAN
Carlisle came up to Song as she stepped off the manlift. “I'm putting you as a helper on a roof bolt crew today. Two East. Don't let me down.”

The chief foreman kept moving, whistling and waving his arms at his black helmets, signaling them to climb aboard the mantrip. Justin had overheard.

“I'll probably just shovel gob all day,” he said despondently.

“I'm sure you'll be doing something else soon,” she said.

“I don't think so. Seems like whatever I do requires a strong back.”

Song put her hands over her head and stretched. “Speaking of backs . . .”

“I feel like I'm stove up half the time,” Chevrolet admitted, as he, Ford, and Gilberto joined their fellow red caps.

“I wonder how our town got its name,” Ford said. “I surely ain't seen much high coal. I stay bent over beneath that low roof all of the time.”

Gilberto rolled his head. “I spent all day Sunday in a hot bath. I kept running it to make it hotter. My bones still hurt.”

“No dang wonder there weren't no hot water when I took my shower!” Chevrolet erupted.

“Try yoga,” Song suggested.

“Twist myself around like a pretzel?” Chevrolet demanded. “That's the problem, not the cure!”

“You red caps gonna stand around yakking all day?” Bossman yelled. “Get to work!”

Song and Justin crawled into a mantrip compartment together. Two black caps were in there already asleep. The mantrip trundled onto the main line and picked up speed, the posts flying by in a gray blur. It all seemed routine for Song now.

“How are you doing, Justin?” she asked when she saw he was wearing a morose expression.

“I'm still off drugs, if that's what you're asking,” he snapped.

“That wasn't what I was asking, but I'm glad to hear it, all the same.”

Justin peered at her, then shook his head. “You ever done drugs?”

“Some men are like a drug,” she answered. “So I guess we've all got addictions. But what happened? How did you start?”

He shook his head and turned away as if she was not worthy of an answer. But then he turned back to her. She sensed his need to explain.

“One semester in college and I came running back. I just didn't fit out there, but it didn't take too long before I knew I didn't fit here, either. The mines were mostly closed then, so there were no jobs. About the only thing left to do was to get high. Clarissa was a cheerleader in high school and tried college but came running back too. We got married when she got pregnant the first time. She lost the baby, then we both started on meth, oxy, uppers, downers, painkillers, even heroin. Whatever. We didn't care. We broke into houses, stole what we could. Did some shoplifting in Beckley or Bluefield. Clarissa worked as a dancer in one of those men's clubs. Anything for money so we could buy the stuff we needed.”

“What about your son?” Song asked. “Didn't the drugs . . . ?”

“He's fine,” Justin answered quickly. “That's the one thing we did right. When Clarissa found out she was pregnant, she laid off the stuff until she had him, but then went right back on. I took care of both of them, best I could. I mean except when I was high. One day I came home, she'd gone off somewhere. I asked around, heard she'd been arrested. I gave the baby to some friends and went on a toot myself, then tried to sell some dope. I was in jail when she committed suicide. Before the funeral, they took my boy away from me. I thought about killing myself then, my idea to join Clarissa, you know, but I didn't have the guts, I guess.”

“But you're here now,” Song said gently. “Trying to put your life together.”

“Yep. Because of Preacher. They put me in a clinic to dry me out and Preacher came over and sat with me and started to explain how heaven and earth worked. He said the devil made me evil by luring me into drugs. He said the only way to get out from under the devil's spell was to get baptized in the Lord. So that's what I did. It worked too.” He pondered the passing posts and cuts, then looked at Song. “You don't believe in all that, do you?”

“I believe Preacher knew you needed to believe in something,” Song replied. “But I don't think you were ever evil.”

“Well, that's where you're wrong!” Justin retorted. “I made straight As in school and I was the big football star. I thought I knew everything there was to know. But my teachers didn't teach me about what was good and what was evil. Oh, I knew what
felt
good, but that was all. If you haven't figured it out, let me tell you, there's true evil in this world and those drugs I took, it was drinking the devil's own piss.”

“But you're all right now,” Song insisted.

He shook his head. “You just don't get it. Once the devil has hold of you, he never lets you go. That's why I still want it, why I'd give anything, even right now, to get high. But I know it's the devil talking in my head, telling me to go on, it won't hurt anything if I just take another pill, just this one last time. Get thee behind me, devil, that's what I have to say every minute, every hour, every day.” He looked away. “I'm sorry. I get a little worked up.”

“It's okay,” she said.

“I'm going to get my boy back.”

“I hope you're right.”

Justin took on a determined expression. “First, I have to wear a black cap, and then have a real responsible job, like operating a continuous miner or a shuttle car. Then I can tell that judge, hey, I'm somebody important in the Highcoal mine. You can trust me with my boy.”

“If I can help, be a witness or something . . .”

He gave her a sharp look. “You can. Tell Mr. Cable to make the foremen let me do something besides hold a shovel.”

Song shook her head. “That wouldn't work, even if Cable did what I asked. You have to earn your way down here. You know that.”

“So you're not going to help me, right?” He shook his head. “You're like everybody else. Just talk.” He turned away from her and pulled his helmet down over his eyes, feigning sleep.

Song sat back against the steel bench and allowed a long sigh. She thought over what Justin had asked. Of course, she could help him if giving him what he wanted was helping. After all, her father owned the mine and she could do whatever she wanted to do, even forcing Bossman and Cable to train Justin for a responsible job. But would that truly help the young man? She didn't think so. Maybe too many people had given Justin too much throughout his life. Maybe that was why he'd turned to drugs when his life hit a snag. No, the way things were done inside the mine, where a man—or a woman—proved himself, step by step, day by day, that was the right way to go.

Still, she would do what she could, within limits, one red cap for another. Justin, after all, deserved a chance. The steel wheels of the mantrip kept clicking on the rails, each click carrying them deeper into the mine while Song thought over what she could do.

A
T THE FACE
,
“Brown Mule” Williams provided a prayer, and then called Song over and told her to report to the
roof bolt crew.

“How about Justin taking my place?” she asked.

Brown Mule cocked his head. “That dopehead? I don't think so. He can shovel gob.”

“But he's off drugs.”

The foreman reached over and rapped her helmet with a knuckle. “When your hat's white, lady, you can put crackheads on heavy machinery. But right now, it's red. So here's your choice. Do what I tell you or get off my section. You got less than a second to decide.”

Song saw he was serious. “I'll find the roof bolt crew,” she said.

“Lucky Irvine's the leader. Get going.”

Lucky Irvine proved to be a tightly wound little man who ran his team like a well-oiled machine. “You mess up once and you're gone,” he told her, and Song believed him.

The first thing Song discovered about roof bolting was it required perfect teamwork. When the continuous miner moved out of a cut, the roof bolters moved in, first holding up the freshly exposed roof with a power lift, then operating a drill to punch a hole in the roof, then feeding the roof bolt into the hole. If everything wasn't done sequentially and efficiently, the entire shift had to stop. She felt enormous pressure not to slow things down.

Her assigned task was to look for anything left behind and to make sure nothing impeded the reentry of the continuous miner after the bolts were secure. When a wrench fell off the front of the drill mount, she scrambled after it, and Lucky started screaming. The roof bolter was shut down, Song was jerked back by her jumpsuit, and everything stopped. Brown Mule came running. When he saw the situation, he turned purple with outrage, though he allowed Lucky to provide the lecture.

Lucky spun Song around and demanded, “What did you just do?”

Song was a little breathless after she had literally been pulled off her feet and dropped into the gob. “I just picked up a wrench,” she explained.

“Right. But where did you pick it up?”

“In front of . . .
oh
!” She knew now what she'd done wrong.

“That's right. You were inby, under an exposed roof.”

Lucky took a slate bar and lightly tapped the unsupported roof. In an instant, a huge dome-shaped dense black boulder fell, striking the bottom with a solid thump.

“That's a kettle bottom,” he said. “An old tree stump sitting there for millions of years just waiting to fall. We got more than a few of them on this section.”

Song stared at the huge stone. It would have easily crushed her skull, helmet or no. Her wide eyes told Lucky he had made his point, but he pressed it home. “You do that again, and I will have you sent you out of this mine. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Song replied meekly.

“Then get back to work.”

During the last hour of the shift, Bossman came by. Song was operating the drill by then. As Bossman and Brown Mule watched, she used the slate bar to knock down some draw rock, then inserted the bit and fed it up through the roof. She chose the correct length of bolt, pushed it into the hole, and torqued it down. The lights of the foremen flashed over her, then turned away as they huddled, talking over whatever foremen talked about.

On the walk to the mantrip, Bossman came up beside Song and said, “Good job,” and kept walking. Song was filled with pride, but tamped it down when she again found herself sitting beside Justin on the mantrip out.