by Ninie Hammon
He continued along the break past the belt line shaft to the bad air shaft at the far end. He went around to the back side of a coal pillar, sat down and leaned against it. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he removed a pack of Marlboro’s and a butane lighter and set both down in the dirt beside him. Then Lloyd barked out a small laugh. Ever since the first day he went underground years ago, he had longed to smoke in the mine. It was hard on a smoker to go down for a shift and not have a single cigarette for 8, sometimes 10 hours—hard to wait until you was back outside to light up.
Though he was certain he’d never even get the cigarette lit, let alone take a drag off it, Lloyd intended to try.
JAMEY WAS CERTAIN he had never felt and would never again feel any pain hurt bad as this. It felt like somebody’d took a stake and drove it right into his belly, pounded it bam, bam, bam with a sledgehammer.
No! I can’t do that!
But even as he thought the words he knew he had to.
The solution had dropped into his head so clear he couldn’t argue that it was right, that it was the onliest way in the world to get the miners out of the mine before the explosion.
It was like a voice had spoke it into his head. But the voice hadn’t used words, least Jamey didn’t hear words the way you do when somebody leans over and tells you something. It was just a voice and the thought. Not a mean, hateful voice, neither. A sad voice. A voice it didn’t seem like wanted to say it, but had to say it anyway.
Wasn’t but one way to make them miners run out of that mine, the voice had said: Jamey had to kill ValVleen.
The continuous miner would shut off automatically if the level of methane got higher than 2 percent, but it wasn’t running right now and the miner man wouldn’t try to crank it up again until after lunch. By then there’d be no machine to crank and no miner to crank it.
ValVleen was a mine canary—the best methane gauge there was! Old timers still said one bird was worth half a dozen pieces of fancy equipment. A dead mine canary would cause its own explosion, scare the bejeebers out of them miners. Wouldn’t nothing convince them quicker that they’d ought to run for they lives.
And they’d already noticed the air was bad.
“Dang, it’s dusty in here,” the miner man said. “Can’t hardly get my breath.” He turned to the pinner, an old fellow with a white beard that turned black in the mine. “You need to call and tell ’em we got bad air.”
There was a phone box on the wall by the power station four hundred feet back from the face that you could holler into—“outside, outside, outside!”—and soon’s the outside foreman heard you, he’d answer.
The driver of the continuous miner was a big fellow. Too big to be working in a coal mine, the others always said when he wasn’t around. Must have been 6-feet-4 or thereabout; leaning over was powerful hard on him. And he never let nobody forget that for a minute! He was all the time complaining about how his legs went to sleep on him, all cramped up like they was in that little operator’s cage on the side of the machine. Never shut up about it from the minute he went to work until they rode out together on the mantrip when the shift was over. Wouldn’t none of the other miners listen to his complaint about bad air because he was all the time moaning about something. Fact was, him saying they’d ought to call up about the air was the surest way in the world to make sure nobody did.
Seemed like Jamey was hemmed in, like everything was forcing him to do what he couldn’t bear to do.
The others was seated on a piece of old curtain, scratchy burlap, had they lunch boxes open and was eating sandwiches. Jamey was seated off by himself in the dirt, away from the others. He done that sometimes, got off by himself and they didn’t think nothing of it. They sure didn’t notice today because soon’s Lloyd left, they took up right where they’d left off arguing about the game—and the quarterback for the University of Kentucky’s football team.
“Jared Lorenzen’s all icin’ and no cake,” said the shuttle car driver who’d give Jamey the armband that had set him to wondering. “Startin’ quarterback as a freshman…shoot, he’s just a kid, couldn’t find his boxer shorts usin’ both hands and a flashlight.”
“U of L’s fool quarterback got sacked twict last week,” said the pinner. “Coach Mumme knows how to protect Lorenzen so’s he can take his time findin’ a receiver.”
The argument heated up as Jamey’s heart stampeded in his chest. It whacked away so fast he was askeered he was gonna puke. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to grab hold of ValVleen’s cage and not let nobody get near her ever. Couldn’t bear the thought of anybody hurting her, least of all his own self!
I ain’t gonna do it!
But I got to!
No!
The voice spoke again in his head without using words.
You can’t save ValVleen, Jamey. She’s going to die either way. The explosion will kill her if you don’t. What you have to decide is if you’re willing to die with her.
Jamey started to interrupt the voice, say yes, he was sure enough willing to die with ValVleen! But the voice wasn’t finished.
…and if you’re willing to let all these other men die, too.
The voice got real sad again. Sad but stern, too.
Jamey, you have to decide if you’re brave enough to save these miners. And you have to decide right now.
No, I ain’t! I ain’t brave enough…
Will had said he was brave. Brave like his daddy. And Jamey did have the courage to give his own life for the other miners if he had to. But ValVleen’s life? That was harder.
You don’t get to pick your choices, Granny always said. You just got to make them best as you can.
Giving his own life wasn’t one of his choices. His choice was kill ValVleen or let all these men die. And he couldn’t do that. She was only a bird, after all. His bestest friend in all the world, but a bird. An old bird, too, who’d die soon her own self no matter how hard he tried to save her.
Least this way she could give her life for something that mattered.
Jamey picked up the birdcage and turned away so the other miners couldn’t see. He cried silently, huge gulping sobs that didn’t make a sound. He opened the door, put his hand inside and ValVleen hopped onto his open palm. Then he lifted her right up close to his face.
And she reached out and give him a peck on the lip! A kiss. She’d always give you a kiss if you smooched at her, but never before in all her life had she kissed him all on her own.
Kissed him goodbye.
“I love you, ValVleen,” he whispered.
Jamey could see in her eyes she understood. She knew he had to do this. She cocked her head to one side and chirped, a sweet mix of chirr, chirp, chirp, cheep-cheep-cheep, and a string of beautiful warbles.
And Jamey understood her! All these years, he’d listened so careful, tried so hard to understand what she was saying, and he finally did!
“This is a fine way for a mine canary to die,” ValVleen told him sweetly. “Doin’ her job. Savin’ miners’ lives.
Jamey put his finger and thumb around her tiny neck and squeezed gently. She didn’t flutter around, try to get away or nothing. Just held real still, never made another sound.
THE BLANKET OF rain erased the landscape, the houses, even the parked cars along the street. But that was not a totally foreign sensation for Will. He had been on a destroyer once in a driving storm on the North Atlantic. Standing on the deck as the ship pitched up over 30-foot waves and crashed down into the troughs behind them, he couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond the rail he clutched in terror. Then he felt a hand on his arm that yanked him free from the rail and the next thing he knew the boatswain’s mate had thrown him through a hatch and secured the door behind them.
The instant change was startling, from wind and rain to still and dry. And he felt that same sensation now. Not only inside the car as the storm howled outside it, but inside his head and heart as the storm of circumstance raged all around him.
Ragged panic had swelled huge in his chest when he’d first been plucked off the bench and shoved out onto the court to play. Even now, 15 minutes before the final buzzer, Harlan #7 was ahead 27 to nothing. Will knew he had absolutely no chance to win. But he wasn’t afraid anymore. When he came here he knew that if he didn’t make amends, he’d die. So if he had to die in order to make amends…well, that was better than letting booze kill him.
Once he’d made peace with what he had to do, Will was calmed and strengthened by his determination. He would go into that mine after Jamey with the full understanding that he couldn’t save him. He owed Ricky Dan that. He owed fate or God or the mine a life. He’d been paying interest on that debt for 20 years. Today, he’d pay off the note.
Will only realized he was on the Turkey Neck Creek Bridge when he heard the tires on the metal surface—several seconds before he could make out the railing through the rain. But by the time he’d crossed the length of it, the rain had let up enough for him to see a few feet out into the road beyond it. The rain continued to let up as the brunt of the fierce storm passed over the mountain behind him. Will could see a car length in front of him. Then a couple. By the time he came to the turn-off to Harlan #7, he could make out the entrance of the mine through the rain, and the white tent that sat next to it.
Will skidded to a stop and yanked upward on the door handle, but the door remained fast until he slammed his shoulder into it.
The flap on the white tent was open, and he caught a glimpse of the people gathered inside as he raced past it to the lamp house. He jerked the door open and collided head-on with the man on the other side coming out. The force of Will’s body slam knocked the man backward and he crashed into a pile of old helmets, chargers, and broken headlamps. The cigarette he’d been smoking sailed through the air like a meteor.
The man was Hob Bascomb.
“What the—?”
Will ignored him, grabbed a headlamp and a battery pack, then looked around frantically. He spotted a bunged-up old helmet Hob had knocked to the floor. It was red. Well, that’s what Will was, a red hat. He picked it up and turned to run.
Hob had staggered to his feet and stood between Will and the door.
“Will, what in the world—?”
“Get outta my way, Hob.”
“But—”
“I gotta get Jamey!” Will knew he must look and sound like a madman.
“What for? Some’m wrong at home? Is Granny or JoJo—?”
“Move!”
Without waiting for him to respond, Will shoved Hob aside and bolted out the door into what was now a heavy drizzle. He paid no attention to Hob’s cries.
“We can call the face, Will! Get ’em to send him…”
Will didn’t bother to put the headlamp on the helmet, just put the helmet on his head and fastened the battery pack to his belt as he ran.
He thought he’d already fought all the emotional battles in the car, but he was wrong. As he ran toward the mine entrance—a black hole like the gaping mouth of some great, toothless monster—Will couldn’t catch his breath. He began to gasp. The open maw loomed closer and bigger with each running step; it waited there to swallow him whole, to gulp him down into forever darkness and crush the life out of him.
I can’t do this!
Will stopped running, planted his feet to skid to a stop.
Only he didn’t.
The déjà vu was so profound it would have knocked the breath out of him if he weren’t already unable to breathe. Will’s mind thought one thing; his body did another. Just like that day on the train trestle with the black locomotive bearing down on him in a roar of shrieking metal. He’d wanted to run. He’d intended to run. But he’d laid down between the rails instead.
It was the opposite now. He wanted to stop running. He intended to stop. But his legs continued to carry him forward into the hole in the mountainside. All he could do was hold the headlamp out in front of him to light up the rail line he would follow to the face. And to Jamey.
GRANNY STOOD ON her front porch shivering, from cold or scared one, she didn’t know which. JoJo’d tried to get her to stay in the house and dry off, of course, and when she wouldn’t, the child wrapped her up where she stood, went and got the old chenille bedspread off Jamey Boy’s…
Jamey Boy!
Only one other time in her life Granny’d ever been too scared to pray, and memories of that day began to bark around her heels like angry dogs.
She shooed them away best as she could, but she didn’t have the strength she once had. It took a powerful effort not to fall into one of them black pits was all over the hollow after #7 blew, one so deep you couldn’t never crawl back out again. Effort like that plumb wore a body out, and for the first time in her life, Granny had a sense that she was just flat running out of gas.
Everybody come to the end of it eventually. What was it Bowman used say? “God pours life into death and death into life ’thout never spillin’ a drop.” Was that it? Was her time come? Is that what happened to a body, they strength run out and they just stopped breathing?
If that was it, she was ready as she’d ever be. It was a whole lot better than dying of heartbreak, and she was askeered that was exactly what she was fixing to do.
Jamey and Will. Would the good Lord really take them both like this? Snatch them away so’s there was only her and JoJo and a empty house where voices echoed in the dark of night. Dead-people voices.
“Granny, yore shakin’ so! You need to sit yourself down.”
The love and fear Granny heard in JoJo’s voice was so tender Granny liked to started crying her own self. Couldn’t do that, though. If she ever started, she might never stop.
“I’ll pull the rocker right up here to the edge of the steps so’s you can see...” Granny knew JoJo’d caught herself before she said the explosion, but that’s what she meant.
“Leave me be, child.”
Granny never took her eyes for a second away from the black hole in the base of the mountain with a white tent snuggled up next to it. The rain had let up to a drip and a plop here and there. It’d been raining so hard as she was trying to get back to the house from Jamey’s shed she couldn’t see far as she could reach out her hands. When she finally got inside and shut the back door, she leaned against it and hugged herself, relief washing over her in a such a warm flood it made her need to go to the bathroom.
Didn’t last but a second or two, though, before it all come crashing down on her again and she run out to the front porch to search through the pouring rain with eyes couldn’t see good as they once could. Looking for smoke. No, that’d come after. When it was too late.
The pain of them two words liked to stopped her heart. Too late.
She backed up from them words like they’s rattlesnakes’ fangs dripping deadly poison. But truth was, she was already bit. They all was. Soon’s Jamey Boy started carving his arts, it was already too late. Jamey Boy’s arts didn’t never lie.
JAMEY HELD VALVLEEN’S limp body in the palm of his hand; her head dangled the way JoJo’s Barbie’s head done after he accidentally broke it. His whole face was slathered in tears, like somebody’d dumped a bucket of water over his head, and he trembled so violently he could barely hold onto the tiny yellow bird. Warm, but still. So very still. And at that moment, James Bowman Sparrow didn’t want nothing in the world but to die right there his own self.
Wasn’t no experience in his whole life prepared him for the hurt in his chest right now. Then it occurred to him that if life wasn’t done with him yet, he wouldn’t likely get out of it without something else that hurt like this. So maybe he’d ought to have sat down with ValVleen and let this here be the end of it for both of them at the same time.
But he couldn’t do that to the other miners.
He wiped his face on the back of his shirt sleeve. All them thoughts seemed like they took a long time to think, but he knew only seconds had passed since he…
And he had to hu
rry! The whole lot of them only had minutes. He cast one more loving glance at the dead bird in his hand. ValVleen had give her life; he had to make it count!
Jamey took a deep, shaky breath and started to holler.
“ValVleen! Wake up, ValVleen!”
The pinner, who was almost shouting his own self about the UK quarterback, shut up in mid-yell and all the miners turned to look at Jamey. He held the bird’s dead body out for them to see.
“ValVleen’s dead!” he cried. “Lookit! Some’m killed ValVleen.”
There was a heartbeat of stunned silence. Jamey watched fear spread from one face to the next like a fire catching the twigs and bark under the big limbs when Lloyd come to roast hot dogs.
“That there’s a mine canary!” the big miner man said, his voice all airy like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. “A dead mine canary.”
The others all started to talk at once.
“Now, wait a minute—”
“Don’t get all—”
“You don’t know what killed—”
“Where’s the possum light?” asked the pinner man.
“Lloyd took it with him when he went out to talk at that memorial ceremony,” the shuttle driver said.
The words shocked them all into silence. Memorial ceremony. For 27 dead miners. Killed here, in this mine. In an explosion.
THERE WAS A mantrip parked inside the entrance out of the rain. A mechanic was down on his knees beside it with the lid up working on something—had tools spread out on the ground all around him.
Will momentarily considered asking for—or commandeering—the machine to ride down the rail line to the face. But he quickly discarded the idea. It didn’t appear to be operational and even if it was, the guy working on it didn’t look like somebody Will could reasonably expect to win a fistfight with.
