by Ninie Hammon
“Hey, red hat,” the man barked as Will raced past him down the rails. “The headlamp goes on the helmet, not in your hand!”
An instant before Will plunged into the utter blackness, he shot a final glance at his watch. It didn’t have a glow-in-the-dark dial. Eight minutes after twelve. An explosion would rip through the mine at 12:18; he had 10 minutes. He was certain 10 minutes wasn’t near enough time, but he was okay with that.
He surprised three miners eating lunch in the fourth break, where the shaft turned south. The men were seated up against a coal pillar talking.
“Get out of here!” Will shouted as he approached them.
“What?”
“Methane level’s more than 3 percent at the face,” Will lied, but didn’t stop, only slowed down to speak. “They just called.” He swerved around the outstretched legs of the miner at the far end and kept running.
“Then why’re you—?”
“Get out—now!” Will called out over his shoulder. He didn’t look back to see if they’d done what he told them.
Running as fast as he could between the rails, his back scraped painfully across a bent-down strap of metal between roof bolts, most likely holding up a tree stump. He cried out in pain but kept going. And even before he’d gotten deep enough into the mine for the velvet blackness to devour the light from the entrance, Will had figured out that his noble posturing and grand pronouncements, his lofty motives and willing self-sacrifice didn’t mean squat.
His feelings about being in a dark rat hole in the ground hadn’t changed a speck in two decades. If anything, his claustrophobia was far more well-developed now than it had been when he was 18. After all, he’d been exercising it for years—in the narrow passageways and jammed-tight berths of a destroyer. He’d practiced it in drunk tanks in the jails of countless nameless cities, and perfected it waking from blackouts huddled shivering in a drainage pipe or up under somebody’s porch.
But nothing he’d ever experienced held a candle to the weight of an entire mountain hanging inches above his head. Hovering there, breathlessly suspended, eager to stomp down with a massive stone foot to splatter his body in unrecognizable…
I’m not wearing a belt tag.
No belt tag? And he was concerned about that? Under other circumstances, the absurdity of that would have made him laugh. If the mountain came down again, they’d close the mine permanently and never dig any of the bodies out. All the miners—tagged and un-tagged alike—would lie there in the dark until Judgment Day.
He tripped, went down hard on one knee, staggered to his feet and kept running. His shirt and pants were soaked, but he didn’t know if it was with rainwater or fear sweat. Either way, the wet against his skin chilled him, made his teeth chatter in the cold, dank air. His legs ached, his back screamed, his breath raked in and out in heaving gasps, but at least the stitch in his side helped keep him doubled over as he ran. But not far enough. His back scraped over a roof bolt, firing white hot agony down his spine. Will’s shirt was ripped now, his back bleeding, but he kept running.
There was nothing but total, black-ink darkness all around him now, broken only by the bouncing, pallid glow of the headlamp he carried in his hand. In that darkness, he couldn’t gauge his progress. Dark behind, dark in front, he was running on a treadmill down an endless track, getting nowhere, passing one break after another the way a merry-go-round kept passing the same popcorn stand over and over again.
And it was quiet, except for the sound of his scrambling feet. Silent as a tomb.
No, actually it wasn’t quiet. The mountain spoke to him. And Will didn’t want to hear what it had to say. It groaned, squeaked, and popped. It rumbled in anger now and then; once Will actually saw a ripple move across the roof behind the mosaic of ancient ferns. The mountain was outraged by the intrusion of man. It whispered its anger in his ear, hissed its loathing. Taunted him. Threatened him.
But he kept running.
All at once it occurred to Will that he’d never been totally alone in a mine before; there’d always been other miners around. And as panic crawled up the back of his throat on little rat feet, he discovered he wasn’t alone now either.
Out beyond the farthest edge of his light, he saw them. Ghost images. Silent miners, their headlamps as dark as the black holes of eyes in their expressionless faces.
He swung the headlamp beam off to the right and left; the light splintered and fractured off the shiny black coal pillars. There in the darkness down the break they crouched on their heels and stared at him—watched him.
He heard himself begin to whimper, a sound like a kid awakened by a nightmare who’s afraid to call out for Mama because he’s certain the Boogie Man’s still in the room, lurking somewhere there, waiting for a sign of life before he pounced.
A particularly low roof bolt cracked Will’s helmet hard, knocked it off his head and sent him tumbling into the dirt. He instinctively reached out his hands to break his fall and the headlamp he held hit the ground hard.
The light went out. The world went black.
Then Demon Darkness came for him in a rush, eager to do all the nasty things it had always threatened to do.
CHAPTER 38
“WE GOT TO git!” the big miner man cried, jumped up, and without a backward glance began to run down the rail line shaft as fast as he could.
“Watch your helmets!” somebody shouted as the others leapt to their feet and raced after him, ducking low so their helmets wouldn’t scrape against the roof. The helmets were made of plastic, of course, only piece of metal on them was where the headlamp hooked. But still…a spark, the littlest spark…
Jamey ran, too, but had no memory of getting to his feet. Though they was crowded together as they ran, the miners just grunted and panted, didn’t say nothing. But Jamey knew they seen the same thing he did—there was curtains down! No wonder the air was bad. They was running past breaks with no curtains. That was when Jamey felt the first stab of terror in his belly and all of a sudden he was more askeered than he’d ever been in his life. His heart boomed in his chest and he couldn’t seem to move fast enough. It was a long way to the mouth. A long way to run bent double in the dark with an explosion about to get you from behind.
He couldn’t see nothing but his feet and the feet of the scoop driver in front of him, who cried out when he caught his back on a bolt.
The pinner hollered over his shoulder, “They’s a mantrip loaded with lime bags on the track about—”
“You nuts?” roared the scoop driver. “You can’t—”
“It’s faster’n trying to run all—”
“The switch on that thing’s got a short,” the scoop driver panted, “You get near it and the explosion won’t have to kill you—I will!”
They passed by the mantrip and kept running.
WILL LAY ON his belly in the dark. His fingers fumbled frantically around the headlamp, tried to feel—Ouch! He drew his bleeding finger back and stuck it in his mouth. The plate was broken. So was the bulb.
The enormity of his loss hit him so hard he groaned and rolled up in a ball. It felt like a bully had kicked him in the belly with steel-toed miner’s boots.
The light’s gone!
Any minute now the mine would blow. He’d have to coon the rails to find his way in the inky blackness. Cooning the rails meant getting down on all fours and feeling your way along the rails, your hands out in front of you like a raccoon’s paws. In a darkness as profound as being locked inside the coal itself, he couldn’t possibly crawl fast enough to get to Jamey in time—or to save himself, for that matter. They were all going to die down here. Just like the image Jamey had released from the coal.
He hadn’t seen the mural, so he didn’t know any specifics. Did the arts show men blown apart, burned up…or dying alone and afraid, curled up in the dark?
Will lay in a fetal position, whimpering. He had fallen through a crack in the universe into his own worst nightmare. In his wildest imagination, he could ha
ve conceived no horror greater than this. In a coal mine. In the dark. Alone. And doomed.
He was instantly nauseous, rose up quickly onto his hands and knees, and vomited noisily, splattering his breakfast on the ground and his hands. He crawled away from it—which way?—but he could still smell it, mingled with the stench of his own sweat. He kept crawling until he bumped into a coal pillar—edged along it until he couldn’t smell the vomit anymore. Then he felt the contour of the damp rock with his hands so he could turn around and lean against it.
He was blind! Disorienting blind! Up, down, right, left were concepts of the light. Here they meant nothing.
In the profound silence, his panting breath sounded like a winded draft horse. He heard his heart slog away in his chest, banging like a panicked fist on a locked door. He scooted his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He trembled violently; his teeth chattered. But not from cold air and wet clothes. A rusty, notched hatchet of ragged panic had hacked into his belly.
The mountain spoke in the darkness. He heard it creak and groan, a sound like the one his father had made in his sleep, an aching moan of despair. He buried his head in his knees, held tighter, tried desperately not to hear the mountain, not to feel the weight of it above him, bearing down on him, crushing him.
His head snapped up. The ghost miners he’d seen as he ran in the dark—they were out there! Right here in this shaft. Moving silently toward him. Their cold, dead hands reaching out for him, their chilled breath…
He clamped his teeth down on the scream in his throat, grabbed hold of his emotions the best he could. He didn’t want to…cry. But he was so alone and so…
This is the way Ricky Dan died.
That thought slapped him hard in the face.
When the oblivion of alcohol failed to obliterate the images, or when his mind conjured them up in nightmares, Will had envisioned every detail of Ricky Dan’s death. He’d seen him feel his way along the coal pillar on the other side of the belt line, his lungs bursting, straining to draw in a breath. He’d watched him reach the curtained break at last, seconds before he would be forced to gasp. And the curtain was down, the seal blown. He’d seen Ricky Dan sink to his knees, then fall forward on his face. Watched him gasp and suck air and death into his lungs. One breath. Maybe two or three. Coughing violently…flopping around like that catfish in the grass…until finally he lay on his back still. His headlamp barely penetrating the black smoke; his open eyes staring at nothing.
Alone in the dark. That’s how Ricky Dan had died; that’s how Will would die, too.
LLOYD LOOKED DOWN at the possum light. The flame was more than an inch tall now with a bright blue cap. He punched the button on the methane meter. It read 4 percent. Of course, the concentration would be higher in the bad air shaft, but he was sure it’d reached an explosive level at the face. If he didn’t light up soon, something else would set it off before he had a chance. It wouldn’t take much. A tiny spark from an exposed wire on some cable would do it. But it wasn’t time—not yet 12:18. By then, the level would be 6 or 7 percent. This wouldn’t be just any ole explosion. It’d be a big one!
An image flashed into his head. A giant shark lifted out of the sea and chomped down on the back of a boat, eatin’ it, and one of the men in it!
He’d taken the kids to see that movie Jaws years ago. One of the dumbest things he ever done. It scared Norma Jean so bad she didn’t even want to get in the bathtub no more. Jesse started wetting the bed again and they liked to never got him to stop.
But Lloyd enjoyed the movie, would have seen it half a dozen times if he could have. The way he saw it, the shark was a pure being. That fish knew what it wanted and didn’t let nothing nor nobody get in its way. No hesitation, no second-guessing. Lloyd hadn’t never admired nothing in the world more than he did that shark.
And it was a great white, not no little tiger shark. That’s the kind of explosion Lloyd was going to set off. A great white. One that would erase everything in one great ball of fire. One that would produce a lightning bolt he could ride all the way to the gates of hell.
He reached up and switched his headlamp off and watched the darkness leap in to fill up the light space. Then he leaned back and looked out, like a blind man at an absolutely starless night.
He searched around in himself to see if he could find fear. It was all right to be afraid; he’d still do what he come here to do even if he was so scared he wet himself, like Will done that time on the railroad trestle. But he wasn’t afraid—felt nothing at all but an icy calm.
Good. Then his hands wouldn’t shake when he lit the lighter.
THE HAIR ON Jamey’s neck stood up like a mad dog was after him, a beast he couldn’t see that would jump up on his back, knock him down, and eat him alive. He could run faster than the scoop operator in front of him, but he didn’t go around him, just stayed where he was—which was at the tail end of the line of scrambling miners. They’d got out ahead of him and most of them was old men—35, maybe more—and Jamey could probably have outrun them all. But he wasn’t about to blow by the others just because he could. He stayed where he was, moving fast as they was.
And he held a small, limp bird tenderly in his hand as he ran.
The pinner stumbled over a small rockfall, went down, and the scoop operator collided with him, staggered off to the side and kept running. Jamey reached down and grabbed the pinner’s arm, yanked him to his feet. and shoved him forward ahead of him.
“Go’on,” he barked. “It’s comin’. Run!”
Jamey could feel the approach of the explosion the way a bird senses a storm coming and takes shelter before the wind and rain hit. The air felt thicker, and not because of the dust in it. The pinner gasped so hard he spit with every breath, washed the black coal dust right out of his white beard. He slowed down and Jamey ran up beside him, took his arm, and pulled him along faster. His back dragged across the wet roof because he had to stand a little taller to keep hold of the pinner’s arm.
“Can’t slow down now,” he sputtered between breaths. “Ain’t no time left.”
And there wasn’t.
LLOYD FLIPPED THE switch on his headlamp and looked at his watch: 12:18. He pushed the button on the methane gauge. It read 6 percent.
Let’s do this.
He shook a cigarette out of the pack of Marlboros lying beside him on the yellow curtain and ran it slowly under his nose. But something was wrong with his sniffer; he couldn’t smell the cigarette. Things was shutting down, he supposed.
He tried to remember how he’d felt exactly 20 years ago today, huddled in that curtained break, figuring hard as he could how to stay alive. But his mind wouldn’t go there. It was like all them thoughts had been erased. Ever time he looked for the memory, all he could see was a bright white light that near blinded him and he had to look away.
He didn’t know anymore what it felt like to want to live, to yearn for one more breath, one more sunrise, to be so desperate to survive wouldn’t nothing stand in your way. He’d been that person once, though he couldn’t find any actual memories of how that’d felt. He had schemed and then murdered his way out of dying and he was certain there had been a terror-driven desperation in him that made him do what he done. But he didn’t feel that desperation no more. The only thing he was desperate to do now was to conceal his crime, to hide his shame. And to end it. Yeah, he was desperate for it to be over, desperate for the cold darkness of the mine to seep into his ears and eyes and nose and mouth and fill him up like still black water—until the Lloyd Jacobs inside his chest was cold and dark and dead.
His mind had got all herky-jerky on him, like the movements of a bird on a branch; he had trouble putting thoughts together. And he did want to think. I mean, he needed to think of something important as the last thoughts ever was in his head. He tried to remember the words and the melody to his favorite song so maybe he could hum it, but he couldn’t even recall what his favorite song had been. Or his favorite food. Or what the faces
of his children looked like. Or how the sun on his back felt when he sat on the creek bank fishing.
Fact was, he couldn’t seem to find nothing at all in his head, no memories, no wants, no regrets, no fear. Just one great big ole empty.
And then he figured it out. That’s what happened to a man at the end. Wasn’t none of this seeing-your-life-pass-before-your-eyes stuff folks talked all dreamy about. When you come to the last of it, wasn’t nothing left at all. You’s completely used up. So when the cold dark flowed into you, it didn’t have to push nothing aside. There was a nice vacant space waiting for it. And wouldn’t no worms eat up his outsides after he was gone. He’d come from dust, and he was going to return to dust. Poof.
Lloyd scooted away from the coal seam and stood up tall as he could under the low roof. A man had ought to go out of this life standing on his own two feet. He smiled a joyless smile, put the cigarette between his lips, lifted the lighter to the tip of it and flipped the switch.
Everything went white!
His body was hurled backward from the blast for a fraction of an instant before Lloyd Eugene Jacobs was no more.
BOOM!
A mighty clap of thunder, like when lightning struck that stump in the front yard, roared up from the guts of the earth and Granny’s double-wide trailer house began to shake like it had a palsy. Only this time, it wasn’t just her dishes that broke. Her heart broke, too, shattered into a thousand jagged pieces along cracks it had taken all these many years to heal.
The rumbling went on and on, bellowing in a rage beneath the ground in a merciless roar of destruction and despair.
Then it stopped and it was quiet, except for Bucket and the other dogs up and down the road howling.
Granny shook her head slowly back and forth to make it not so, the tears in her eyes blurring the world like she was looking at it through a glass of water.
Smoke began to belch out the mouth of Harlan #7. When JoJo seen it, she put her head in her hands and started to sob. But Granny’s hurt was too deep for something simple as tears.
