by Steve Vernon
Which made a whole lot of sense, as much as Franklin hated to admit it. So off Franklin went to gather up as much dead wood as he could bundle into his arms. Harold stayed behind to lay the beginnings of a small campfire.
Harold looked up once as Franklin walked away. He was worried for his friend, but he would not let himself stare too long, because everyone knew that to stare too long at someone leaving was bad luck and a surefire guarantee that you would never see that someone alive again. Which didn’t comfort Harold in the least.
Harold busied himself with clearing away anything that might accidentally burn to prevent the risk of wildfire. He laid rocks about the fire pit and clawed up and scooped out what dry grass, twigs, and birch and pine bark that he could find close at hand.
Franklin soon came back with an armload of sticks. The boys set up their wood, and then Harold retrieved his matches and lit the kindling. With a small patch of light to cut into the oppressing darkness, the boys let out a sigh of relief.
Which was about when a cold wind whooshed down suddenly across the Black Ground. The campfire blew out like a birthday candle. Harold and Franklin huddled in the unexpected darkness.
Franklin reached out impulsively and touched the cinders of the fire. “They’re as cold as December icicles,” he whispered. “They ought to be warm just a little bit, oughtn’t they?”
Which was right about when they heard the sound coming from out of the darkness—a scuttling, like the sound of a thousand crabs moving across a beach of broken clamshells. The wind blew a little harder. Harold and Franklin suddenly smelled a funk, a stench so foul that it stank worse than a thousand mildewed rubber boots turned wrong-side out.
Both the boys froze.
“Look,” Harold whispered. He pointed into the darkness.
Franklin stared in horrified awe as three ancient hags teetered out of the cloying darkness. “Night hags,” he breathed in terror.
Now for those of you who don’t know, a night-hag is what you find left over after a witch is hanged. The witches’ shadows, if they are not properly sprinkled in holy water and holly berries, will rise up and haunt the night, eating whatever they can find in hopes of filling their emptiness.
The three night hags, their backs bent like question marks, scuttled and crawled across the Black Ground, pausing to claw up handfuls of herbs and grass, which they crammed into their constantly chewing mouths. Franklin and Harold could hear the noise of their ceaseless munching, like the sound of horses eating hay.
“I smell boy,” the first old hag said suddenly.
“I smell two boys,” the second hag said as she casually reached up and plucked a small owl from the bough of an overhanging tree and crammed it—feathers and all—into the wood-chipper maw of her mouth.
“I smell them too,” the third hag croaked. “And they’re hiding just behind that alder bush.”
Which was right exactly where Franklin and Harold were hiding.
“Do you think we can outrun those three night hags?” Franklin whispered.
“I’m not worried about outrunning them,” Harold whispered back. “I just figure all I have to do is outrun you.”
The two boys took off like a pair of scalded cats. The trio of night hags followed the boys, not really running but rather passing over the Black Ground like shadows, cutting Harold and Franklin off whichever direction they turned.
“Run the other way!” Harold screamed.
“Which other way?” Franklin screamed back.
In the panic and dizzying confusion of their breakneck run, Harold and Franklin had headed straight to the shore of the dark lake. They looked down into the water and were terrified to see something rising up out of the darkness towards them—something with a goat’s head and a horse’s body and a set of teeth that looked like a mouthful of cutlasses and rusty cleavers.
“The Bochdan!” the boys screamed out simultaneously. They turned to run, only to find themselves facing the three night hags, who were hovering straight toward them.
“We’re going to die!”
And then, as quick as you could say, “snip-snap-gulp,” the Bochdan swallowed the three night hags whole.
The boys stood there in the darkness, their knees knocking together in a state of pure and total fear. Too scared to run. Too scared to even think of running.
The Bochdan leaned down and sniffed at Franklin. “Too skinny-thin,” it said in a voice of tombstone and thunder.
And then it leaned towards Harold. “Go home and grow some more,” the Bochdan told them.
Which is right around the time those boys started running.
In the early eighteenth century, the French colonized a small area around a harbour on the northeastern side of Cape Breton. The plan was to use the little settlement as a source of ready coal for their mighty fortress in Louisburg. They named the spot the “Baie de Glace”—the “Bay of Ice”—because they found that the harbour froze over completely every winter.
By the mid 1940s, Glace Bay, as it became known, had grown into the most heavily populated town in the entire country of Canada. It was a town of coal miners—born storytellers—who told tales of dark deeds that took place in the shadows of the tunnels. Many have these stories have since been lost, but one tale the coal miners of Glace Bay will never forget is the story about a boy named Randy and his daddy’s deal with the Devil.
Randy’s Daddy
Randy’s daddy was a coal miner, picked and culled from a long seam of mining men, none of whom knew the meaning of the word “quit.”
The men had to be built that way. Coal mining was hard, dangerous work and most coal miners died far too young. From father to son, it was a heritage and a legacy that fate poured Glace Bay men into.
“A coal miner is one part owl and one part mole,” Randy’s daddy always told him. “From five in the morning to five at night, he spends his days in darkness rooting for coal at thirty-three cents a ton.”
Thirty-three cents for every ton of coal mined. Less the cost of oil, powder, and timber. Less rent of a dollar-fifty a month. Less a doctor’s fee of forty cents a month. Less a school tax of fifteen cents a month. Less a payment of thirty cents to the man who kept the tally. Less a little more for sundries and the like. Eating cost extra. It’s no wonder that coal is the colour of an empty pocket.
“A coal miner is a perverse thing,” Randy’s daddy always told him. “A coal miner is born in the damp cave of his mother’s womb, and then he starts creeping through the dank, wet darkness of the mine, picking and chipping his way down to Lord-knows-where. You’d think a man ought to know better than that.”
You’d think.
“Tip your hat to the foreman, but trust the poor bare-arsed bugger who stoops and sweats at your side,” Randy’s daddy told him. “Trust the man who tells you where to get off when you’ve gone too far. Trust the man who curses in your face rather than the gentleman you must be polite to for fear of losing a living.”
“Is that true?” Randy asked his daddy.
“It is a true-as-bone fact,” Randy’s daddy replied.
“What’s a fact?” Randy asked.
“Thirty-three cents a ton, for one thing,” Randy’s daddy said. “A coal miner deals in facts. He has to. Because most coal miners have got themselves a family to hold onto. Why else would a man go mucking in the dirt, breathing a sniff of death with every snort he took?”
Randy shrugged an I-dunno-why kind of shrug. “Pride?” he guessed.
“Pride?” Randy’s daddy laughed with a snort. “Pride only goes so far when it comes to filling an empty belly.”
Which is why it probably shouldn’t have surprised Randy when his daddy first told him how he had gone and sold his soul to the Devil himself.
Randy’s Daddy’s Deal
“Your granddad died a year before I was old enough to work the mine,�
�� Randy’s daddy told him. “The tunnel he was working in heaved up and lay down on top of him, burying him beneath a ton or two of Cape Breton coal—which was all the grave he ever got. We buried an empty coffin in the dirt outside the churchyard. Your grandma sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and then she dried her eyes and just walked on.”
And then Randy’s daddy spat. Not being rude, you understand. The fact was, Randy’s daddy had spent so many years sucking on coal dust and poverty that spitting had become just as natural as breathing. He spat black, and at forty-three, his back and shoulders had already curled over into that perpetual stoop of a question mark that passed for a spine in those parts.
“Every year we lean a little closer to the dirt,” Randy’s daddy told him. “Every year we dig a little deeper, looking for sunshine in the shadow of the mine. Coal is nothing more than long-dead greenings pushed down and squeezed hard; nothing but leaves and ferns that once waved beneath the sunlight glinting off of a Tyrannosaurus’s backbone—fossilized sunshine and dinosaur poop. Coal is time, coal is patience, and coal is nothing more than a handful of hardened history just waiting to be dug up and burned in the belly of a woodstove.”
And then he spat again.
How sweet the sound.
Randy’s daddy was a deep one. It was like he spent his entire life working on a single gigantic ponder—always submerged in a sombre solitary state of reckon ing— occasionally surfacing to allow his thoughts and pronouncements to drop upon Randy like slow, heavy raindrops plummeting down upon a rusted tin roof. They echoed and they splashed away, and that’s all Randy really remembered about the man in later years.
The splash and the echo, fading away.
It all started on the night that Randy’s daddy came home reeking of whiskey and grinning like a kid who had just discovered candy—and on a work night, to boot.
“I done it,” Randy’s daddy said. “I done it tonight.”
“What did you do, Daddy?” Randy asked.
“I done it,” Randy’s daddy repeated. “I sold my soul to the Devil.”
Randy stood there on the family front porch, waiting for his daddy to wink at him so that he would know that what his father was saying was nothing more than a coal-mining joke.
Only Randy’s daddy didn’t wink. He just stood there in the candle-lit darkness of the family front stoop.
“I met him tonight on the Hawkins Crossroad,” Randy’s daddy said. “He was standing there tall enough that I thought he was sitting on a ladder. A long man in a long black coat with a set of eyes that burned like a pair of lantern flies. He had the stink of brimstone about him and a fiddle cocked on his elbow and two or three imps playing at his coattails like a pack of frisky cats.”
“You met your own reflection,” Randy told his daddy. “You were seeing rum in your eye and nothing more.” This sounded good coming out of Randy’s mouth, only the more that Randy’s daddy talked, the more certain Randy felt that what his daddy was telling him was the Devil’s own truth.
“He told me,” Randy’s daddy said. “That Devil told me that he was going to bring a mine down on my head in order to steal my soul.”
Fooling the Fooler
The way Randy’s daddy told it to him, Randy could see it all playing out like a dream. He saw that old Devil showing his daddy how the mine was going to heave up like it did with his daddy before him, how all that gas creeping in the mine’s belly was going to rise up like the fluming gorge of a fat man overstuffed. Randy saw miners screaming and darkness coming down and the preacher standing over a row of empty coffins and Momma singing “Amazing Grace.”
How sweet the sound.
“But I fooled the old fooler himself,” Randy’s daddy told him. “I struck a deal with him.”
“How did you do that?” Randy asked.
“The same as you’d deal with any man. I poked him in his vanity. I said an important man like the Devil ought not to work so hard for what could be bought easy. I told him he could have my soul outright if he’d strike me a bargain.”
Randy stared at his daddy’s eyes—just as dark as a shadow falling on a coal-covered face—and he could see that his daddy was telling the truth.
“So what did you ask for?” Randy said, thinking of all the sell-your-soul stories that he had ever heard. “Did you ask him for money? Did you ask for women? Did you ask for drink?”
“I asked him for none of those things,” Randy’s daddy said. “I asked him to help me dig.”
Randy shook his head in disbelief. “Daddy,” he said. “That makes about as much sense as a bucket full of hole.”
“Does it?” Randy’s daddy said. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve poked a silver needle in my finger and I’ve signed his paper in blood smack dab at the bottom of the page. You can work alone tomorrow. From now on I’ll have all the help I need.”
Randy could see that there was no arguing with the man. So come the morning, Randy headed down the tunnel by himself and filled his coal cart just as best as he could. When Randy pushed the coal cart up to the mouth of the tunnel, he was surprised and amazed to see his daddy leaning on three carts crammed chock-full of the thickest slabs of coal imaginable.
By the end of the shift, Randy’s daddy had hauled out over thirteen tons of coal—something like three or four men’s work on a good day. Which made the company pretty happy.
By the end of the month, the boss man had begun tipping his hat at Randy’s daddy instead of the other way around. And why not? Randy’s daddy had paid off what he’d owed to the company store and had even begun putting some in the bank. Mind you, he still kept some in a little a pot under the bed, because Randy’s daddy didn’t trust a banker any farther than he could throw one.
And he still wouldn’t let Randy work with him. So one fine morning, Randy stole after his daddy, keeping to the shadows as he followed him down the hole. What Randy saw down there nearly burned away his eyes.
There was the Devil himself, reaching and peeling slabs of coal just as easily as you might peel rain-soaked wallpaper. A half a dozen imps were loading the coal carts just as fast as they could.
“How deep have we got to go?” the old Devil asked.
“Deeper than this,” Randy’s daddy told him.
And then that Devil grumbled some, but Randy’s daddy wouldn’t let him stop. “Deeper,” he growled.
And then Randy’s daddy looked straight towards the shadow Randy was hiding in as if he could see the boy—which he could. “I see you there,” Randy’s daddy said. “I wondered just how long it would take before you followed me down.”
“So I guess you weren’t lying,” Randy said.
“Did you doubt me?” Randy’s daddy asked.
“Are we deep enough yet?” the Devil called out in a whiny sort of voice.
“You heard me say it yet?” Randy’s daddy snapped back.
Then he turned to his son and laughed out loud. “I got it all worked out,” he said. “I put it in the contract that old Slick Nick here has to keep on digging until I tell him we’re down deep enough. He digs until I say so, and you know there isn’t a man in these mountains who can make your daddy quit. Your daddy is a stubborn man.”
Randy smiled and nodded just like his daddy expected him to, but deep down inside he wondered to himself just how stubborn the Devil was.
The Devil’s Last Word
One month later Randy’s daddy’s tunnel was chewing so fast that the mine had to hire out a logging mill to keep up with the timber beam and strutting. By Randy’s estimate, his daddy’s pet mining Devil was digging over three whole kilometres downward every day and gaining fast.
“I think he’s getting homesick,” Randy’s daddy remarked with a grin.
Only Randy still wasn’t in the grinning mood. “This is a bad business you’re into,” Randy told his daddy. “Hadn’t you ought to be thinking about turn
ing this deal around?”
“And what should I do?” Randy’s daddy asked. “Fall down on my knees and ask that big old bearded boss man upstairs for a little slack on the line? I might as well face facts. I have cut my deal, and I’ll live by it. I’ll die by it too, I expect. You want to see bad business? I’ll show it to you.” And then he hawked up a ball of sputum about as black as the belly of a midnight burial hole.
Randy knew that dirty colour for what it was. Black lung—the stuff that turned young miners into old ones and old miners into dead ones.
“I’m dying a whole lot faster than most of us around here,” Randy’s daddy said. “I’ll play this out until the very end.”
“I guess we live as long as we’re let to,” Randy said. “I expect I’ll walk that road myself, come a day.”
“Not you,” Randy’s daddy said. “You’re going to school.”
“You know that isn’t so,” Randy said. “Where I’m going is back to work.”
“I’ve made my mind up,” Randy’s daddy said. “You’ve got to leave the mine and get yourself some book learning.”
“We need the money,” Randy pointed out.
“For what?” Randy’s daddy asked. “I have just paid the last payment on a piece of land and socked away enough bank bonds to keep your momma in good eating for the rest of her born days. And I’ve already put down some against your schooling.”
“Daddy, you had no right to spend that money on me without my say-so,” Randy said.
“Money is like water,” Randy’s daddy said. “It needs to be splashed around.”
And that’s all there was to it.
Randy argued some more, but once his momma got behind the idea, there wasn’t a team of pit ponies hardy enough to pull her clear of it. So off Randy went to school, travelling all the way to Halifax. He dug into the books and found out that the blackened print of words laid out in long, even rows was as tough a challenge as cracking into any seam of coal you care to name. But Randy stuck with it, because his daddy wanted it that way.
