She wouldn’t be there yet. But soon, she’d be out there waiting on him.
Tommy didn’t want to let her down. When he thought about leaving her alone, leaving Jake to grow up without his dad, his heart hurt so much he thought he might scream. No, better not to think of home.
The curtain had created an enclosure about fifty feet square. Not a lot of room for eighteen guys. Not a lot of air, even with the curtain up. The guys without working rescuers would suck up the remaining oxygen in no time.
Tommy watched his father swinging the sledgehammer. Al Betts had come home from the mine every night, black with coal dust and too exhausted to play very much with his son. Tommy had done his damnedest to be different, to make time for Jake whenever he could. But even with the best of intentions, sometimes he just couldn’t.
The tree fort wasn’t finished yet.
Jake had never even asked what would happen if the mine collapsed. At five, the possibility hadn’t even occurred to him yet. Somehow he’d managed to avoid the fear that lay always beneath the friendly conversation of the entire community. Tommy hadn’t been that lucky. He didn’t remember how old he was when he first asked his father about what would happen in a cave-in. He had seen something about it in an old movie on television.
Watching his father now—still so strong and grim while closing in on fifty—he remembered the way the man had softened. He’d crouched down to get even with Tommy and ruffled his son’s hair.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Tom-Tom. Anything goes wrong down there, the Lost Miner will get us out.”
Tommy’s eyes had gone wide. “The Lost Miner?”
That had only been the first time his father told him the story. For years, Tommy had asked for stories of the mysterious, ghostly miner. His father had spun tales, mostly of his own invention, but some of them surely local legend, of a man who had died underground and who would always appear to save trapped miners who called to him. By the age of eleven, Tommy had realized that they were only stories, but some part of him had still believed. When his father decided he was too old for such stories, he had felt a terrible loss.
Al swung the sledgehammer. He turned to glance at Nilsson and the others who were without oxygen packs, then wiped the sweat from his brow. Al Betts was no ghost, and he wasn’t lost, but Tommy thought his old man might be their best hope.
He went over to his father and reached out to take the sledgehammer. “Have a rest, Dad. Let me take a few whacks.”
His father nodded slowly and bent over, winded.
Tommy stared at him. “You all right?”
“I will be. Give it a go, Tom.”
As he turned to go and sit with the others against the coal rib, Tommy called to him. Al came back and put a hand on his arm, gave it a brief squeeze.
“We’re gonna be all right. Just gotta hunker down, now, try not to suck up any more air than we need. Sip at it, make it last. They’ll be here.”
Tommy studied his face, searching for a crack in his father’s mask of confidence but finding none. Maybe it was for his benefit—his and the rest of the crew’s—but right then he thought his father actually felt confident that, even with so little air for so many of them and with the toxins seeping in around the edges of the curtain, they would be rescued in time. Two miles into the mine, out of contact with the surface, Al Betts believed in salvation. Blind faith.
“Hey, Dad?”
Al looked at him over the top of the rescuer’s mask.
“You remember the Lost Miner?”
Tommy thought that, behind the mask, his father smiled. “I’ve been thinking about him, too.”
“Did he have a name? The original guy, I mean. The one who died.”
The older man narrowed his eyes in contemplation a moment. “Ostergaard, I think. Something like that.”
Ostergaard. For some reason, having the name made Tommy feel better. He gripped the handle of the sledgehammer the same way his mind wrapped around the name of the Lost Miner. Something to hold on to.
He swung the hammer against a metal support plate, and the clang reverberated up his arms. Tommy barely noticed his father walking away. Barely noticed anything at all after that first swing. He counted the hammer blows just to keep his mind busy. At thirty-two, he took a break. Rob McIlveen was sprawled on the floor, a t-shirt over his face. He looked asleep or dead, but the rise and fall of his chest made it clear he was still breathing. In the flickering light, Nilsson had gone awfully pale. He had a rescuer covering his nose and mouth now, getting oxygen, but the way he clutched at his chest, Tommy thought maybe he was having a heart attack.
At fifty-seven strikes of the hammer, Jerry Tolland took over. Tommy hesitated, hating the thought of just sitting there waiting to run out of air. But he could barely lift the hammer anymore.
He staggered to the far wall and sat down. After a few minutes he tried to offer his oxygen pack to Randy Wisialowski, but the guy waved it away.
“I just gave mine up a few minutes ago,” he said through the front of his sweatshirt, which covered his nose and mouth. “Besides, you’ve been trying to signal, working your lungs. Wouldn’t be fair to cut off your air now.”
Tommy stared at him a moment, then nodded and slumped back against the wall. He studied the curtain, wondered how toxic the air had become. Above their heads, the tunnel had a thin layer of smoke. Keeping low to the ground was safer, but it wouldn’t save their lives.
“Randy?”
Wisialowski looked up, his reaction time slow, like he’d had too much to drink and might pass out any second.
“Hmm?”
“You ever hear about the Lost Miner?”
“Sure. Everyone knows that story. You don’t grow up with family in the mine and not hear that old tale.”
“So you think it’s just a story.”
Tommy saw the doubt in the man’s eyes. “Of course it is. Jesus, kid, you better just sit there a bit, soak up some oxygen.”
“But if the story’s based on a real guy who died in the mines, how do we know, right? I mean, every legend starts somewhere, right?”
Wisialowski knotted his brows. “Did you miss the part where the guy died?”
Nine or ten guys had taken turns with the hammer before, at last, none of them were strong enough to lift it. McIlveen and Bob Landry had fallen unconscious. Bob had been in and out for a while, but nobody could wake McIlveen.
They didn’t talk much, trying to conserve air. What little conversation took place down there in the heart of the mountain was in whispers, men sharing regrets and fears. Wisialowski talked about the way his drinking had driven his wife, Lorraine, away, and how he would have done it all so differently if he had it to do over. Some of the men were writing notes on scraps of paper from their wallets or on torn pieces of clothing, just wanting to leave something behind, some reassurance or a farewell or a last expression of love. They told each other it was just in case.
Just in case.
Tommy stared across the small enclosure at his father, and Al stared back, never looking down at Nilsson, who lay with his head on Tommy’s dad’s lap, unmoving.
“Christ,” Wisialowski said at one point. “Is he…?”
Al froze him with a look and Wisialowski never completed the question. That grim expression was answer enough. None of the others had been foolish enough to ask. Or, Tommy thought, perhaps they just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the death that had taken place in their midst.
“Ostergaard,” Tommy said.
The name echoed against the stone and the coal rib and the curtain. The men who were still alive and conscious all turned to stare at him.
“What’s that?” Jerry said.
“The Lost Miner,” Tommy said, pulling the mask of his rescuer down. “We’ve gotta call on him. Nobody else is coming, Jer. We’re gonna die down here, we don’t get some help.”
“Are you fuckin’ thick?” Dan Raymo snapped. “We tellin’ ghost stories, now, or you got brain dama
ge from the fuckin’ methane?”
Tommy blinked. His eyes felt heavy. “Gotta call him.” He sat up straighter, looked around at the walls, settled his gaze on the coal. “Ostergaard! You gotta come, man. We need you, now. Ostergaard. We need your help or we’re gonna die down here.”
“Tom,” his father snapped.
Tommy looked at him.
“Shut it, boy,” his old man rasped.
It felt like a slap. He flinched, then hunched down a bit. Tommy pulled his rescuer back over his face. He closed his eyes and whispered the name into his mask, over and over. Ostergaard.
He woke, suffocating. His chest clenched and the muscles in his throat began to seize up. Eyes wide, Tommy reached up and scrabbled at his face, tearing away his mask. The oxygen in his rescuer had run out. He clawed it off and dropped it to the ground. In his mind, he began to roll over and sit up, but his body was sluggish in its reply. He managed to loll his head to one side and then prop himself up enough to look around.
Sometimes he drank a little, but this wasn’t like being drunk. It was more what he imagined it must feel like for people who took too many sleeping pills or Hollywood types into heavy narcotics. The small space between the curtain and the coal rib seemed to shift and blur. His eyelids felt heavy. Nearby, Wisialowski had curled up into a fetal ball, softly crying. Raymo had sprawled onto the stone floor of the tunnel on his face, breath coming in long, shallow hisses, body twitching. Jerry Tolland sat against the wall with his knees up under his chin, arms draped over his legs. Staring at him, Tommy frowned. It took him a moment to understand that Jerry was dead.
“Dad?” he whispered. He gazed toward the far wall, where his father had been sitting with Nilsson. Someone shifted there. In the fading glow of their remaining lights, a hand rose up—his father, signaling that he had not yet breathed his last.
But it wouldn’t be long for Al Betts. Whatever rescue might be in the offing, it needed to happen now. The sledgehammer lay on the floor, forgotten.
Tommy ran out his tongue to wet his lips, opened his mouth in a last prayer. But instead of Jesus, the name that came out of his mouth was Ostergaard.
His eyes felt even heavier. He slumped back to the ground, unable to keep himself propped up any longer. As he lay there listening to the silence, to the weight of the mountain closing around them, he knew that there would be no rescue. They were alone.
Pain began to spread in a band across his chest. Every breath felt more difficult than the last. For several long moments, he succumbed to unconsciousness again. Then a sound made his eyes flutter open—a low moan, accompanied by a hideous choking noise.
Again he rolled his head to the side, searching for the source of that sound. His upper lip curled and for a moment he ceased breathing at all. A man stood in the midst of the enclosure. He dressed in full mining gear but wore an old-fashioned sort of miner’s helmet with a light on the front and a black gas mask beneath it.
A flutter of hope went through Tommy. Him.
Barely conscious, he managed a smile.
Until that figure leaned down and touched Wisialowski on the shoulder, and the crying man went silent and still. No weeping. Not so much as a shudder of breath. And then the strange figure, a coal-smeared silhouette, began to move through the enclosure, pausing to reach down a comforting hand to the other men. As he passed amongst them, he almost seemed to float, and the edges of the figure blurred like heat haze over summer blacktop. And when he touched them, one by one, they became still.
As the Lost Miner moved toward the coal rib—toward the place where he had seen his father raise one weakened hand—Tommy closed his eyes. He heard a rattling hiss of breath and then nothing.
He felt so cold.
Something jostled him awake. Tommy winced at the smell of exhaust. Only vaguely aware of his surroundings, of a sense of motion, he felt the rubber strap against the back of his head and plastic over his nose and mouth.
“Fuckin’ sick irony,” a voice said.
Tommy tried to open his eyes. He caught a glimpse of the two paramedics working to keep him alive, and he heard them talking about him…about the sole survivor of the collapse, and how if those other poor bastards had lived any longer, he wouldn’t have made it either.
“The only reason he had enough oxygen is ‘cause the other guys died first.”
The ambulance went over another bump and he felt himself slipping into darkness once more. Fading to black.
“Babe? You all right?”
Tommy stood just inside the screen door off the kitchen, looking out onto the back yard. June had come so fast. He held a cold beer in his hands the way a child might hold a doll, close against him, fingers wrapped around the neck. Out in the yard, Jake ran through the spray of water thrown by the sprinkler, whipping his arms around and cackling like a lunatic. Katie Hoyt from next door followed right behind him. Their laughter did not make him smile, but somehow it seemed to protect him. He felt like if he could record that sound and play it back while he slept, it might keep the dreams away, the nightmares of suffocation.
“Babe?”
Melissa touched his arm and he blinked, turning to look at her.
“You look like you’re in a trance,” she said, smiling innocently, though her eyes were full of concern.
“I was. Still a little tired, that’s all.”
She kissed his cheek. “Dinner’ll be ready in a little while. You should get Jake in here, get him into something dry.”
Tommy nodded. He took a sip of beer and set the bottle down on the kitchen table, then went out into the back yard.
“Daddy!” Jake called, racing toward him.
Once, Tommy might have caught him and dangled the boy away from him to keep from getting wet. Not now. He let Jake jump up into his arms and hugged the boy to him. His son wrapped his legs around him, soaking his shirt. Tommy actually laughed.
“Sorry, Katie,” he told the girl. “Jake’s gotta come in for dinner now.”
“Can he come out after?” she asked, all wide eyes.
“Sure,” Tommy said. “Why don’t you run on home and we’ll see you in a bit. I think Jake’s mom is gonna make brownies tonight.”
Katie took off across the back yard toward her parents’ deck, arms out as though she was playing airplane. Tommy set Jake down and shut off the sprinkler, then stood and looked again at his son.
“Mom wants you to put something dry on.”
Jake smiled, pointing at him. “She’s going to want you to put something dry on, too.”
“No doubt,” Tommy said. “C’mere, bud.”
He hoisted the boy up again and went up to the screen door, letting them inside. Melissa had been watching from the kitchen window, a wistful look on her face.
“Dry clothes, Jakey,” she said.
“I can do it! I’ll get ‘em!” the boy said, reaching to be put down.
Tommy let him down and Jake tore through into the living room and then they heard him bounding up the stairs. He’d kick his clothes off onto the carpet of his bedroom and put dry clothes on, but that was all right. They’d pick the dirty clothes up later.
Melissa slipped her arms around Tommy and pushed up close. He liked her there, where he could smell her hair and trace his hands along the small of her back.
“It’s been so good for him, having you home for a while,” she said, her breath warm on his neck. “It’s been good for you, too.”
“Yeah,” he said. And that was all.
There were so many thoughts he might have shared with her, but Tommy had never been that kind of man. In that, he took after his father. He would have felt like a fool trying to explain to Melissa that the time he spent with Jake seemed to make it easier to deal with his father’s death, and to make it harder as well. But he wanted every moment he could have with them, there at home, because the doctor had been clear about his prognosis. Another week, two at the most, and he’d have to go back to work.
He’d have to go back down in
to the mine.
Jake came down the stairs and pranced into the kitchen to show off the t-shirt and shorts he’d put on. The shirt was on backwards, but Tommy didn’t mention it. The kid was so damned proud of himself.
The t-shirt had a bunch of trucks on it. Jake loved building things and, even at five, thought the coolest job in the world had to be making bridges and skyscrapers. “I want to build a whole city,” he’d said once, not long ago.
“Good job, buddy,” Tommy said.
“Dinner!” Jake commanded, slipping into his seat at the table and picking up his fork and knife, ready to eat.
“Yes, your majesty. Coming right up,” Melissa said, rolling her eyes with a soft chuckle.
“Then brownies!” Jakey cried.
“But of course.”
Tommy had to control the temptation to talk about the trucks on Jake’s shirt, one of which was a crane. Melissa had already pointed out how much he’d been harping the past couple of weeks on the construction thing. Jake was only five, she’d said. He’d change his mind almost daily about what he wanted to be when he grew up. Tommy had told her that all he wanted was to make sure Jake went to college. No one in his family had ever been to college.
College, somewhere away from West Virginia. Away from the mine.
He wanted his son to grow up to get a job doing something he loved, something that would make him happy. Hopefully. But if not, Tommy wanted Jake to do something he hated. Anything, really, except following in Daddy’s footsteps. Anything except the mine.
But college cost a lot of money. Nobody in the Betts family had ever gotten that kind of education. Hell, Tommy was the first one to finish high school. They were a mining family, like so many others in the area. The odds were against them and against Jake finding a different sort of life for himself.
And so tonight, before bed, Tommy would tell Jake the first of the stories. Oh, he’d been telling his son stories almost every night, the past couple of months. All kinds of stories. But as of tonight, he would from time to time include tales of the ghost of a lost miner named Ostergaard. He would tell them as best he could, make them as real as possible. It wouldn’t be difficult. Jake loved ghost stories. But Tommy had to make absolutely certain that his son believed.
Mister October - Volume Two Page 10
