by Gregg Olsen
“Bob! Beehner’s down,” Hawkins called out. “Let’s get the apparatuses off the timber truck and get him on it and get him out of here!”
Launhardt looked over, his terrified eyes filling his mask, as Hawkins wiped blood from his faceplate. The rock rabbit felt disoriented and nauseated. He suddenly became convinced something wasn’t right with his own air supply. He thought he was rebreathing his own used air, but mixed with the deadly atmosphere of the drift. Panic took over. He struggled to lift Beehner onto the timber car, but he couldn’t do it. He gave it everything he had, but he just couldn’t do it.
“Bob, I have to go,” he said, already moving away. “My machine isn’t working right.”
“Do you think you can make it?”
Hawkins thought he could. “Just go ahead and take care of Beehner and the kid. I think I can get to the fresh air back there.”
With that, the rock rabbit hurried down the track, feverishly working the bypass valve of his McCaa self-rescuer.
LAUNHARDT BALANCED A FRIGHTENED BYRON SCHULZ ON A TIMBER truck ahead of the motor, a precarious and dangerous spot. If Schulz thrashed and slipped off, the motor could slice him in two. Don Beehner was splayed out alongside the tracks, his body limp and damp. Launhardt squatted and hooked Beehner under his arms and lifted him chest high, but the sides of muck cars were wider at the top than at the bottom, making it awkward to get him inside. A cocktail of adrenaline and fear drove him, but Launhardt still couldn’t gather the strength. He made at least three attempts.
This can’t be happening, he thought.
Blood dripped from the nipper’s mouth like red candle wax. He must be dead, Launhardt thought. He didn’t feel for a pulse because he didn’t think there was anything more he could do. Schulz needed out, or he’d die right there, too. Launhardt rolled Beehner away from the rails and started the motor for the station. Leaving Don Beehner alone in the drift was the worst moment of his life. He knew it even then.
WESTWARD DOWN THE DRIFT, HAWKINS FELL TO HIS KNEES. WHICH way to go? The sole source of light was the beam of his cap lamp. Everywhere he looked was another possible route to the Jewell. Tracks converged in a spaghetti of both rusty and polished steel bands. Two men are dead. Probably a hell of a lot more. And I don’t know which way to go to get out of here. An answer came from the tracks themselves when burnished steel glinted off his lamp. Rust grew virtually overnight in a wet mine like Sunshine, so it was apparent to Hawkins that the parallel lines of the shiniest track had to be the way out. He moved as fast as he could, falling and getting up, the pack bouncing on his back reminding him with each blow how it had failed Don Beehner. He tried to tell himself his confusion was only his unfamiliarity with 3100. Yet as he hurried through the drift, he wondered if, like Don Beehner, he’d been poisoned by the air. Maybe he would die, too. He tried to rotate his bypass valve again, but nothing. His hands were sweaty, and his grip had weakened. He felt the valve give a little, but he still wasn’t getting any air. Everything he’d learned in mine safety training came back in an avalanche, and he worked all the scenarios. Something, he thought, had to be wrong with his McCaa. Twenty more yards down drift, he came across Charlie Casteel, standing along the rib of the drift. Relieved that he wasn’t alone, Hawkins tapped Casteel’s shoulder, but he didn’t respond. It was more than the absence of even a flicker of life. Casteel was completely rigid.
Hawkins’s terror was now off the meter. When had Casteel arrived there? How was it that they hadn’t seen him when they passed by earlier? Launhardt and Schulz were probably dead, Casteel was dead, and if he made it out, he’d be the last one. Hawkins started to run.
But a hundred yards from Casteel’s body, Hawkins came across something far more horrific—a crosscut into 3100. He hadn’t a clue which drift went to the Jewell. This time the tracks offered no clues. Hawkins knew he’d reached the end. He’d never make it home to Ross Gulch and his high-school-sweetheart wife and their two boys.
Most who die in a mine perish in a quick gulp or a bloody splat that doesn’t allow for much, if any, contemplation. Larry Hawkins was on the ground, thinking he was nearing the end. He did not reflect upon the moments of his life or on those he’d leave behind. Instead, the desire to survive took over. He pulled himself together when he heard the familiar sound of a motor. Adrenaline urged him to get back up and try one more goddamn time to get out of there. He fought for clarity. He wasn’t sure where the sound was coming from. He turned around. A growing ray of light was coming from the direction of 10-Shaft. It was Bob Launhardt. Hawkins yelled for Launhardt to keep going, and he jumped onto the last muck car. Concerned that his apparatus could be snagged by a timber, Hawkins crouched down as low as he could. In doing so, his hat and lamp slipped. Now, unable to see, he braced his right hand against the car, and used his left to feel for the bypass valve. He worried that Launhardt might think he’d fallen off the car, so he grabbed for his lamp and held it to the edge of the car so the light was visible. He didn’t want to stop for a second.
When the motor stopped at the station, Bob Launhardt tore off his face mask and went to help Schulz. Hawkins wanted to throw what he insisted was a goddamn piece of junk against the wall, but he stopped short.
“Bob,” he called over. He held out the hose. “Look at this.” His voice was a rasp. “It has a tear in it.”
Launhardt really couldn’t see anything. “My God,” he said, anyway. “You’re lucky you got out.”
A couple of miners helped Hawkins walk across the station. The big man was drained of color and trembling, but he insisted that he was fine.
“Like hell you are,” a miner said. “You need good air.”
Launhardt stayed with Schulz. He put his own mask on the traumatized cage tender’s face to give him an extra shot of oxygen. Schulz was petrified.
None would say so aloud, but everyone else was, too.
Twenty-two
AFTERNOON, MAY 2
Downtown Kellogg
NOTHING IS DIRTIER THAN A MINER’S DIGGERS. THE WATER, THE heat, the oil from machinery, and sweat wick so much dirt into a man’s Levi’s or the weave of his T-shirt that no amount of detergent or bleach can remove it. In many homes across the district there were two distinct clothes piles—Dad’s and the rest of the household’s. Most men cleaned up with a shower and changed into street clothes before going home, but some didn’t bother. Those fellows got into their cars and trucks and took that grime right with them. Myrna Flory had gathered up her husband’s dirty clothes, planted herself in front of roiling coin-operated washers at the Pik Kwik in Kellogg, and thumbed through a magazine.
Early Tuesday afternoon, a keyed-up Garnita Keene spotted Ron Flory’s blue ’70 Charger parked in front of the laundry. She knew her sister, Myrna, had to be inside. Everyone in town knew that car and the man who drove it. “Ron Floorboards” some called him, because he drove with a foot pressed hard on the accelerator. Garnita hurried inside with the news of the fire at Sunshine. Myrna set the magazine aside and listened. She thought that a fire only meant that her husband would get home early. He’d grouse about being shut out of the mine, losing pay for something as silly as a little bit of smoke in a place that had no fuel, nothing to burn. The sisters chatted a minute and Myrna gave up on her remaining laundry and returned to the tiny house she shared with Ron and Tiger on Smelterville’s Washington Street. A few minutes later she was on her way to have a look at what she fully expected was just a shack ablaze. She was among the first to arrive, and a quick inspection of the metal-sided structures of the compound made it immediately obvious that none were on fire. Instead, a column of smoke poured from a stack planted into the outcropping above the portal. Myrna pulled a cigarette from her purse, lit up, and waited. More women, some with young children in tow, lined up and joined her. No one expected more than a little inconvenience and maybe even some excitement.
When Garnita arrived and found her sister in the mine yard, her thoughts were on Billy Allen, her boyfriend with
the sexy grin. She knew he’d missed work on Monday, and she hoped he’d dumped shift again. She didn’t want to ask anyone if he’d been down on 5200 that morning. Allen was still married, after all, and Garnita didn’t want word to get back to his wife and children that some woman was up at the mine bawling about the man who belonged to them.
1:30 P.M., MAY 2
4800 Level
IMPOSSIBLY, INCREDIBLY, THE SMOKE CONTINUED TO BUILD WAY down on 4800. But still no cage. Tom Wilkinson was out cold. Flory had seen that look on his passed-out partner’s face before, but only after one beer too many. Plenty of district men had seen the gummy floor of the Big Creek Store up close. Most had probably tasted it. Flory, his eyes burning to the point of tears, didn’t see how Wilkinson would have a chance if he didn’t get some fresh air, and fast. Sweat dripped from his goatee, and Flory’s heart thumped inside his chest like a door knocker, each beat reminding him of his own fright. Something had to be done. Flory knew there was clear air down by the borehole. By then, motorman Dick Bewley, forty, was unsteady and also needed fresh air. Flory put Wilkinson on the top of his motor while Bewley crawled onto the other. Down the drift, the smoky veneer cleared. Flory flashed his cap light and they stopped. He and Bewley carried Wilkinson near a cross-drift where the air was clear.
Flory bent closer and called out Wilkinson’s name and patted his face. Wilkinson looked small and weak, a little boy with stubble on a dirty face. Had Tom had a heart attack? Had he passed out because of some illness? Or was it the smoke? And if it was, Flory wondered almost out loud, why hadn’t it knocked him out as well? He gripped Wilkinson’s shoulders and lifted, trying to snap his partner out of it. He set his self-rescuer aside.
“Can you hear me, Tom?” Flory pleaded, while motorman Bewley looked on between fits of his own coughing. It was undoubtedly the man’s worst nightmare. On his Sunshine job application, he’d written that he’d quit Bunker Hill “to get away from the gas and smoke.”
Wilkinson finally stirred, then coughed. He looked up from under his muck-caked caterpillar eyebrows, and the world had somehow flipped around. Or maybe, somehow, he’d been spun around to the point of disorientation. What had been on his left side now seemed on his right. Down was up, and up was down. He shut his eyes to impede his confusion, to reset his bearings. He had no recollection of his collapse, and no idea that his partner had lugged him to safety.
Flory rested a hand on his buddy’s shoulder. He felt relieved. It probably wasn’t a heart attack. Guys didn’t just wake up from one of those.
“You’re all right,” he said.
Wilkinson nodded.
Though he was feeling sick himself, Bewley removed his own mouthpiece and offered it to Wilkinson while Flory climbed on the motor and started for the station. As he drew near it was immediately evident that things had deteriorated. The crew, knotted in a cluster, still expected help from the upper levels, but their hopes were fading. The first call topside had brought promises but no action. The next call, however, had been extremely unsettling. The line crackled, but nobody answered. Sunshine was a big mine, but as far as the men on the 4800 really knew, theirs was the only level in trouble. Speaking was nearly impossible, and their vision was increasingly impaired, but calm heads somehow prevailed. Since they had two motors, the men decided to leave one at the station with a note indicating that they had found good air down the drift toward the borehole. The rescuers could use the waiting motor to go back and retrieve the crew. No one could see any other options. Climbing out was out of the question. Smoke was everywhere.
Flory returned to the pocket and shared the plan with Wilkinson and Bewley. By then his legs were shaky and he felt light-headed, like the morning after too much drinking and not enough sleep. The three of them waited, talking about what was happening in the levels above. At first no one mentioned it, but all knew something was amiss. Maybe the motor was down or someone else had fallen sick? The crew should have written the note and made it back by then. Bewley said he felt better, and volunteered to check it out. He’d be gone a few minutes. As the motor pulled away, the smoke reappeared and vanished, bringing with it darkness, then light. It was as if someone had pulled a curtain open and shut.
But a few minutes turned into ten, then twenty.
Flory paced in the half-darkness. “Man, this is taking too long,” he said. Staying there seemed stupid; he decided to go down the drift to see what was happening. Wilkinson said he was feeling more like himself and wanted to go, but Flory didn’t see a need for it.
“I’ll go down and see what’s up,” he said. “You stay here.”
About two hundred yards down the drift, Flory caught sight of the headlight of the first motor; the other was cloaked in smoke. Something was wrong, and Flory strained to see more. It looked as though Dick Bewley had flopped backwards on top of the motor, his head hanging off the side of the little train. Flory called out, but he didn’t answer. In the direction of the battery barn, the veil of smoke had lifted a little. He could see the other motor’s light stabbing at the air.
Jesus Christ.
It looked as though the motorman had fallen first, causing the train to stop suddenly, jerking the men around and hurling their bodies off the front end. They were bunched up on top of each other, tangled and stationary. Fingers had clawed at the muck. Cap lamps pointed every which way. Flory froze. A few minutes ago, all of those guys were fine. They were on the way for help. They were going to come back to get us when the cage came.
Flory returned to Wilkinson, adrenaline running through his veins like water through a fire hose.
“Tom, they’re just laying all over,” he said. “Like pickup sticks.” He spoke in fragments, broken by a short pause and then more words. It was more than just an indication of his fear. His childhood stutter reemerged.
“They’ve passed out. We got to go back and do something. Hell,” he sputtered, “even Dick passed out on the track there.”
The news rocked Wilkinson. Bewley hadn’t been gone all that long. A few minutes. Ten at most. And he was down on the track? It didn’t seem possible. Flory led Wilkinson back to Bewley’s body. Neither knew CPR, but Wilkinson had seen someone pound on a man’s chest on a TV rescue show. The two men took turns pressing on the motorman’s chest, shaking him, slapping his face, anything to get him to wake up.
“Come on, you can do it,” Flory repeated as he pressed the heel of his hand on Bewley’s chest.
“Ron, that’s no good,” Wilkinson finally said. “He’s dead. You gotta stop.”
Flory couldn’t. Adrenaline had taken over.
“He’s dead,” Wilkinson repeated. “Stop it!”
Dick Bewley’s eyes were thin white crescents; his eyelids eclipsed his irises. The motorman’s face was red and his body was limp and clammy. They took his limp arms and dragged him away from the motor, his boots cutting parallel furrows in the sodden muck. His eyes were open in a dead stare. Flory was nearly in shock. He couldn’t believe those men had died. The air must have some poison in it, he thought.
The partners returned to their air pocket, their personal safety zone. Flory didn’t say a word about it, but he was scared that the rest of the crew on their level was dead.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” he asked.
Wilkinson, who now realized how close he’d come to dying, could only echo his partner’s thoughts.
“How the hell are we going to get out of here?” he asked.
BACK ON THE SURFACE, AT THE LANDING OF THE STAIRWAY TO THE dry, Sunshine carpenters had built a warren of cubbyholes to hold miners’ dinner buckets while they went upstairs to shower after shift. That day it was nearly empty. Most of the crew, at least the first cage load from his level, should have been out by then. They had a head start and, being on 3700, had the advantage of the man train to take them that mile to the Jewell. Bill Mitchell noticed only three other buckets. He put Waldvogel’s bucket away and went up the stairs. He plugged in his lamp battery, hung his diggers
on his basket hanger, and pulled the chain to send it up to the ceiling. Only two nozzles on the multihead shower pillar were running. The men showering all wondered the same thing. Where was everyone? One of the guys showering was from 4600, and said he’d seen a couple of cages go up ahead of his crew.
“Where are all those men?”
Mitchell knew that the shaft crew had evacuated, too.
“They should be out by now,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. What’s the deal?”
“Maybe they got hung up on 3700.”
One guy speculated that there’d been a wreck.
“Pretty smoky down there, maybe two motors hit head-on.”
By then some miners from 4800 had arrived, but still none of the crew who had been on Waldvogel’s cage. Mitchell dressed and went to the office to call his wife to say he was going to stay at the mine to help with the rescue. Mitchell saw a salary man at the portal and asked if he could put his diggers on and go back down.
“I can run the cage,” he said.
The offer was declined, but Mitchell decided to stay near the portal anyway. Waldvogel needed his inhalers when he got out. Judging by all the smoke coming out of there, he’d need them in a bad way.
ESCORTED FROM THE MINE BY ONE OF LAUNHARDT’S HELMET CREW, Roger Findley found his way to the Sunshine personnel office. He was in shock, but he wanted to let his wife know he was alive. He also had another, far greater, concern. His older brother, Lyle, a thirty-year-old father of two boys and a girl, hadn’t made it out. He was seen last on 5200.
