Twenty-Six

by Leo McKay

  She turned around and stormed out the door. Behind her the room erupted in applause.

  Meta left school at three thirty and arrived back at her apartment after four. There was a white envelope taped to her door. She removed the envelope and looked around the hallway for a clue as to who might have left it. On the address side of the envelope was carefully printed Mrs. Meta. The writing did not look like Yuka’s. The writer had to have been Kazuhiro, her son. The envelope was thin and flimsy; it obviously did not contain much. She ran a thumbnail under the fold of the flap and extracted a single half-sheet of cream paper.

  Dear Mrs. Meta:

  Mrs. Yuka is hospital. Please call to her.

  This brief message was followed by a telephone number and a room number. She knocked on Yuka’s door to see whether Kazuhiro could give her any further information, but there was no answer.

  The note made the decision for her, the one she’d been avoiding making all day. The first call she made was to Korean Airlines, to use the second half of her L.A.-Tokyo return ticket, and to make the arrangement with Delta and Air Canada to get her to Halifax. She’d tell her principal in the morning that she was taking a couple of weeks off. Family emergency. She could explain it without straying too far from the truth. There was an article a day on Eastyard in the Daily Yomiyuri; it wouldn’t be hard.

  The door of Yuka’s room was ajar and Meta paused in the gleaming hospital hallway outside it, closed her eyes briefly to compose herself before entering. She was relieved to see Yuka no more obviously injured than she’d been the last time she’d seen her. On her way to the hospital she had been steeling herself for lacerations, burns, traction, anything just short of death. All she could see poking out of the sheets was Yuka’s face, which had healed considerably since the last time she’d seen her. The swelling had gone down and some of the bruised flesh had already gone through its darkest phase, was lightening to a yellowish brown.

  Meta knew from experience that the only way to get information from Yuka was to grill her with questions. Otherwise, she could skirt a problem or issue indefinitely. She approached the bedside and sat in the chair there. Carefully she sought out Yuka’s hand, coaxed it from beneath the sheets, and held it.

  “Yuka, what happened? Did he hit you again?”

  Yuka smiled, an action that, in its context, sickened Meta’s stomach. “No,” she said. “It’s same. Same as other day. You saw.”

  “He hasn’t hit you since the other day?”

  She shook her head, no. “Something happens. I don’t know before.”

  “You went to the doctor the other day. There was something wrong that he didn’t know about then.”

  Yuka nodded. “Inside. I am broken inside.” She patted her stomach gently with her free palm. Meta held the other hand more tightly, careful not to squeeze too hard. “A thing inside me is broken.”

  For a moment Meta could not understand. Her struggle to comprehend the words had momentarily blurred the meaning of the gestures to her.

  “Is it a bone?” she asked. “Do you have a broken bone you didn’t know about?”

  Yuka shook her head. “I wake up,” she began miming the actions of her discovery. Her mouth fell open and she pointed into it. “Blood is coming out.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Meta said. “Internal hemorrhaging. Are you going to be okay? What have the doctors said?”

  “They think okay,” Yuka said. “They will make a operation soon.”

  Meta searched her brain for a way of saying exploratory surgery in simple vocabulary. “Is the operation for the doctors to find the problem?”

  Yuka answered yes, but Meta was not convinced the meaning of her question was clear enough.

  “Do the doctors know exactly what the problem is?”

  Yuka was smiling and answered with another yes. Meta realized that with the combination of anxiety, pain, fear, language limitations, and the pain-killing drugs that Yuka had probably been given, she would not find out exactly what was wrong.

  “Does your son know what happened?” Meta asked. Yuka shook her head, still smiling. “Does he know what your injuries are?” Yuka nodded. “Did he ask how you got them?” She shook her head.

  Meta considered asking Yuka if her son needed to know why she was in the hospital. He obviously knew his mother had been assaulted. No one could have been in the same room with her and not come to this realization. Did it not occur to him to ask by whom? Did Yuka not think it important to tell him?

  Meta had been wondering whether or not to tell Yuka about what was going on back in Canada, but that seemed impossible now.

  Yuka’s energy seemed drained from the visit. Meta watched as she drifted off to sleep.

  It was only a few blocks from the south end of the Red Row to the little bungalow that Jackie and Arvel rented, but Ziv noticed a change in the usual sparse traffic on the streets. Already, outsiders were flocking to Albion Mines in the wake of the explosion. He saw three four-door rental sedans go past with what looked like plainclothes Mounties in them. Up in the parking lot of the elementary school, two television news vans were parked side-by-side and facing opposite directions as the drivers conversed.

  When Jackie opened the door and saw Ziv, she pulled him in through the doorway and hugged him, pushing her face into his chest. As he held her, he noticed there was luggage piled near the back door.

  “We want to know how you and the kids are,” Ziv said. “My mother wants you to come to the house.” He could hear the children somewhere out of sight, one of the bedrooms probably, playing with a toy that made a rattling sound.

  “I can’t go down there,” Jackie said. She was holding him so tightly that her words got muffled by his shirt and were difficult to understand.

  “Jackie, don’t be so proud. It’s a time to be with family now.”

  “I kicked him out,” Jackie said. “A lot of times. Look at this,” she pointed at the luggage. “I was going to Halifax today. Stealing away. Leaving. Without even telling him.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Ziv said. “Not now.”

  Jackie stepped back from him. An angry look spread over her face. “How can it not matter?” she said.

  “You’re family, Jackie,” Ziv said. “You’re married to my brother.”

  “I can’t face anyone right now,” Jackie said. “I was sneaking out of here like some kind of criminal. I can’t face your parents. The kids … the kids are all mixed-up. I told them we’d be in Halifax today.”

  “Jackie,” Ziv said. He hugged her against him again. “I won’t tell anyone about the luggage. Just come on down home. Bring the kids. Don’t do this to yourself.”

  “I said no, Ziv.”

  Ziv got home from Jackie’s and sat silently in the living room with his parents. It was as if the fear and panic that had enveloped them had dissipated, replaced now by a lifeless shock and numbness. The only sound in the room came from the television. They’d taken the phone off the hook to avoid the reporters who had been calling incessantly to ask them for a statement. They were uneasy about missing some important news, but the company had promised to update them in person about the status of rescue operations.

  They sat silently before the television, waiting to see something happen, waiting for news of rescue to break.

  Aside from speculation about what had caused the explosion, and whether it had been localized or had gone ripping through all the shafts, one of the first things the media reported was that the mining company did not know who had been working and who hadn’t at the time of the explosion. Within an hour of the mishap, many employees and their families received anonymous phone calls they later realized were from the company. Someone – in most cases it was a young woman on the other end of the phone – asked if the employee in the family had been working the back shift. Ziv looked at his father, but except for a very slight shaking of his head, as though in disbelief, Ennis did not appear to respond to anything that was being said.

  By late aftern
oon, the TV news had turned George Hannah into a prophet. When the Eastyard mine had still been in its planning stages, a news crew had gone to the Albion Mines Miner’s Museum, where the old man worked as the caretaker, and asked him what he thought of opening a new mine on the volatile seams that had been worked in Pictou County for over a hundred years. “You’d might as well build the memorial to the dead right now,” the old man had said, the crest on his Royal Canadian Legion beret glinting in the sun. The camera zoomed in on his face so that its shadows showed every crag and scar. “Just leave plenty of room on it to carve the names in later.” Even the American networks had picked up on the year-old footage, and it was impossible to watch any channel for very long without seeing it.

  At the surface, the TV showed the draegermen reappearing from the twisted portal, black with soot and dust. Shaking. A supply of fresh air had been restored to parts of the number-one deep, but in the areas without ventilation, the air temperature soared to a swelter that made the full draegerman’s gear almost unbearable. With the shaft so badly burnt, the metal supports so twisted and melted, the primary fear of the draegermen was rock fall from overhead. Even a minor collapse under these conditions could prove fatal, since access to machinery and personnel was limited.

  Media were being held at bay some distance from the portal, when it was announced that the relief draeger crew was put together. A reporter from an American network caught up to someone who must have been part of the original crew as he was driving away in his pickup. The man was reluctant to talk, but just before he closed the door of his truck, the reporter shouted: “What’s it like down there?”

  The draegerman rubbed a hand over his face, looked down a moment, then faced the camera. “Hell,” he said. “Except … If you were in Hell, you’d have the peace of mind of knowing you were dead.”

  By the third time this clip was shown, it was already after midnight. Dunya stood up and shut off the TV. “This is telling us nothing,” she said, and neither Ziv nor Ennis stood to turn the thing back on.

  The morning of the second day, after very little sleep, they sat together in the kitchen. Ennis got up and made himself a ragged-looking fried egg, put it in a bowl, and poked at it with a fork, moving it back and forth across its own trail of grease. The three of them sat silently, sipping at black coffee because they were afraid they could not hold down milk. This was the first time in years that the three of them had sat at table together without fighting.

  They did not discuss going to the fire hall. When the coffee pot was empty, they got up from the table, put on their coats and boots, and got into the car together.

  Snow fell lightly as Ennis drove south on Foord Street. The early-morning winter light was dim, and diminished further by the curtain of falling snow that seemed draped over the car.

  “You had a hand in this, Ennis,” said Dunya, her voice quiet, but menacing.

  “For the love of God, woman,” Ennis said.

  “You encouraged that boy to go into the mine.”

  “It was my shift,” Ziv said. “Arvel got moved onto it the day I quit.”

  “Nobody blames you,” Dunya said.

  “Who are you blaming, then?” Ennis said.

  “I can’t see the town clock through the snow,” Dunya said as they drove past the town hall. She pulled back the sleeve of her coat and looked at her watch.

  “I asked you a question,” Ennis said.

  The Plymouth Fire Hall was just across the river at the south end of Albion Mines, only a few hundred metres from the gates of Eastyard Coal. It was still snowing as they approached. Through the heavy gauze of flakes, Ennis could see the crowd of media, cameras, microphones, vans with satellite dishes bolted to the roof. This group was being held back, within sight of the fire hall, but beyond a distance at which anyone on the outside of the makeshift fence of yellow traffic barricades could communicate with anyone in or around the fire hall. Police patrolled barricades vigorously and pushed back newspeople to make way for the approach of the car of a family member.

  Ennis sat bolt upright. He felt like a scab, driving through the throng of cameras and reporters, where a Mountie unhooked a chain and pushed aside two yellow barricades to let the car pass through. He instinctively held a hand at the side of his face so no one could take his picture.

  In the room usually used for wedding dances and community meetings, families hugged each other and wept. There were only two small windows, which let in hardly any natural light. Bare bulbs in round fixtures poured out a glare that was almost audible.

  A big woman in a grey sweatshirt met them when they arrived. Ennis forgot her name as soon as she said it. Sheets of newsprint, painted in a childish way with the names of all twenty-six men, hung on the walls around the room. A small woman with broad shoulders, whom people called Audrey, was taping the last of these to the scuffed gyproc wall, as though in preparation for a homecoming. When he saw Arvel’s name, painted in big letters, a flower where the “e” should have been, Ennis had a vision.

  Blackness turned to glinting half-light in the still atmosphere of the mine below. Overhead, melted steel arches curled toward the floor. Face-down and scorched blacker than coal, Arvel’s body lay in a powdery bath of ashes.

  “I’ll not stay here,” Ennis said, his eyes racing about for something he could rest them on that made sense. Dunya was halfway across the room, a woman from the Catholic Women’s League had an arm around her shoulders and was leading her toward a tray of sandwiches. Ennis made his way to her. “I’ll not stay here,” he said.

  Ziv had driven him home, and as they pulled into the driveway, he tried to change Ennis’s mind.

  “You’ll be alone down here,” he said. “Come back up to the fire hall.”

  Ennis would have none of it. He shook his head and stepped out into the ankle-deep powdery snow on the driveway. He bent over and looked at Ziv in the driver’s seat, shook his head again, and slammed the passenger door.

  When he got inside, he sat at the kitchen table and listened to his silent house. His heel and his tailbone still throbbed from his kick at the fridge two nights ago. He looked at the familiar kitchen. Arvel had lived so much of his life within these walls that he must in some way still be here. Arvel’s voice had vibrated through this air and had been absorbed by these walls. In the future, Ennis thought, there will be a machine that you can plug into a room which will replay every conversation that ever took place there.

  He’d like to believe now that if there had been no explosion on Arvel’s shift, he would have apologized when Arvel had gotten home that morning. But even in his grief, he could not fool himself into thinking he would have done so. He’d never apologized to anyone in his life. For anything. He’d gone to confession in the days when he’d been a practising Catholic, but he’d done it by rote. His trips to the confessional had been little games of scorekeeping, where he’d rattle off a list of sins, prattle his way through the act of contrition, and go home feeling no freer of sin than he’d ever been.

  He rose from the table and took the forty of rum from the cupboard. The furnace came on downstairs, setting up motion in the curtains. In the half-dark of the north window, a few dust motes rose up to the light. He poured Pepsi into a tall glass, then topped that with Captain Morgan. He stared hard at the doorway and tried to will Arvel to appear again in it. He recalled what they spoke of, the last words he would ever say to his son: a threat. He watched Arvel leave again, heard his own voice bellow.

  Ennis was certain Arvel was dead, and thinking of Arvel’s body now, smothered with coal dust far below the surface of the earth, he remembered once having saved his son’s life. The boy could not have been more than five or six years old and the whole family was swimming in the river at Iona Park, south of Albion Mines.

  Both boys had been knee-deep in the water when Ennis had turned away to get a beer from the cooler. When he looked back, Ziv was standing alone, pointing soundlessly downriver to where Arvel was rolling over and over like
a log down some light rapids.

  He recalled running through the shallows and scooping his spluttering son from just beneath the surface. He remembered the exact way he’d held the boy to his chest, and how warm he’d felt against him even after his plunge into the cold water.

  The phone rang. Ennis took a moment to bring himself back to the world, then brought his rum and Pepsi to the table, sat, and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello? Hello?” It was a young man’s voice, formal and rehearsed. The connection was slightly staticky.

  “Hello,” Ennis said.

  “Could I speak to Ennis Burrows, please?”

  “This is Ennis Burrows.”

  “Mr. Burrows, it’s Randolf Meyers calling from NBC television news.”

  “I’ve talked with enough reporters already,” Ennis said. “I’m sorry.” He hung up abruptly. The instant he put the phone on the hook, it rang again, startling him.

  “Hello,” he said warily, ready to hang up if it was another reporter.

  “Ennis, it’s Allie.”

  At the sound of Allie McInnis’s voice, Ennis remembered the argument they’d had at the Tartan. In a flash, he saw himself pushing a beer glass into McInnis’s open mouth. Had that been only two nights ago?

  “I’m sorry,” the two men said in unison.

  Ennis picked up his tumbler of black, syrupy rum and Pepsi and looked at the acid bubbles that rose through it to the top, where they burst into the air. He raised the glass to his lips and drank.