Rapture's Rendezvous

by Cassie Edwards

  Guilt plagued him, remembering how he had just snuck to stand beside Maria's bedroom door to watch her undress. He had even hidden behind the privy and had watched her through a crack in the wall.

  Something similar to a stabbing sensation made his stomach lurch, knowing that something evil was guiding him to do such unthinkable things. But he knew that it was because his needs to possess a woman had yet to be fulfilled.

  “Then, son, it's time to get your hat readied with your carbide light,” Giacomo grumbled. “There's nothin’ darker than the insides of a coal mine with that carbide light blowed out.”

  “Okay, Papa,” Alberto said, watching men scurrying around, stirring the coal dust beneath their feet, looking like black fog rising into the air. Ponies had been lined up and hitched to posts, ready to start hauling the coal once it was brought to the top. Alberto hadn't noticed before, but one stretch of railroad track lay in the depths of dried, overgrown weeds and ran along the ground to cross the tracks that had carried Alberto and Maria to Hawkinsville. The ponies would carry the coal to the gondola cars of a train oncea day, for the train to then carry and distribute this coal to different sections of the country.

  Alberto pulled his soft-shelled hat more secure on his head, frowning, realizing that this hat with its top made of cloth offered no protection whatsoever against any rocks that might choose to fall on his head. But this was the only hat offered to the miners, so Alberto had no choice but to be the same as the others milling around him … to accept a fate that had been so unjustly handed his way.

  He placed his carbide light onto the hook of the leather bill of his hat, then followed along beside his Papa, who was quiet with worry. His Papa had confessed that he already was ailing with a rupture from the constant handling of the heavy loads of coal. Alberto wondered what other sort of ailments could be an aftermath of working beneath the ground. Would one's lungs have to work harder to keep oxygen pumping through them? Would Alberto become like a bat, preferring the dark to the light?

  “Here's how we get lowered to the city underground,” Giacomo said, stepping up to a mesh-covered cage held upright by a pulley. “Come on, son. Step in beside me.”

  Alberto swallowed hard, looking quickly from one person to another. The faces were docile. The men stood, most with rounded shoulders, in dark, coal-stained clothes. The Italian exchange in morning gossip ceased as the cage began to be lowered, sliding gently into the darkness.

  The shadows being cast against the wall of earth on each side of Alberto from the men's hat lights made him grow tense and his eyes strain. He scooted closer to his father, hearing the heaviness in the way he was breathing. “Papa, are you all right?” he whispered, focusing the dim light from his hat onto his Papa's face.

  “The closeness of the air always seems to grab at my chest,” Giacomo said, openly wheezing now. “I keep hopin’ that my body will adjust. I'm sure in time it will.”

  Alberto began to experience such a tightness himself. He coughed, then reached up and loosened a button at his neck. He felt as though a dead weight was crushing in on him the lower the cage moved into the deepest recesses of the ground. “How much further, Papa?” Alberto said, feeling cold sweat beading his brow, though in truth the air had grown damp and cold.

  A snapping noise above his head and an abrupt halt of the cage made Alberto aware that the pulley had stopped. A trembling rumbled through him, seeing how pitch black it was on all sides of him. He quickly remembered his Papa's warning . .. “There's nothin’ darker than inside of a coal mine with lights blowed out.”

  God. Alberto worried to himself. Even with all the lights each man had on his head, it was still as dark as what hell must be like.

  “Come along, Alberto,” Giacomo said, guiding Alberto by an elbow out of the cage, as the rest of the men crowded out and around them. “Like I said. Stay close.”

  Alberto's eyes widened, now seeing so much more than before as he began to follow alongside his Papa on ground that crunched with scattered coal beneath his feet. The carbide lights were spread out more, on each side of him, reflecting onto beautiful different colors of stalactites and stalagmites, almost taking Alberto's breath away. “I've never seen anything like this, Papa,” he blurted. “Why, it's beautiful here.”

  “This is the underground wonder I failed to mention,” Giacomo said, reaching into a pocket, pinching off a plug of chewing tobacco. He formed it into a ball and poked it into the right side of his mouth, wetting it with his saliva. “But what you'll soon step into ain't pretty at all.”

  “Why, Papa?”

  “It's where we've picked and shoveled away at the earth. Where we've been workin’ at gettin’ the coal out.”

  “But you won't have to disturb this area to get coal,” will you?”

  “Sometime soon. There's lots of coal to be had here,” Giacomo said, now chewing and sucking on his tobacco. He went to a wall and lifted two pickaxes, handing one to Alberto. “We must get to work. Ain't makin’ no money standin’ ‘round beatin’ our gums.”

  Once again, Alberto followed his father, hearing the steady drumming of pickaxes from the other miners who were busy burrowing their way through the earth. Alberto reached up and kneaded his brow. A slow ache had begun in his head and he had just begun his long day of duty. God, he thought. Will I even be able to make it?

  He stopped to look around him once again. Some miners were spraying water from a long, twisted hose onto the face of the coal, to keep the dust down. Others were busy propping up the roof of the ground with timber.

  “This is where one learns to curve his back, son,” Giacomo said, moving into a narrow cavern that looked to be only thirty-six inches high. “You might even have to kneel because of your added height.”

  Alberto stepped into this part of the underground where fresh timber creaked above his head, but not high enough for him to stand erect. As his Papa was doing, he stooped, already feeling the muscles pulling at the base of his neck and spine.

  Shivers rippled his flesh. In this part of the mine, it was even darker than the rest. It had to be the darkest dark there ever was or could be. It was darker than any night. The light on his hat gave him no consolation whatsoever. He now knew that he could never like working in a mine. His goal was to better himself . .. and as quickly as possible.

  “Papa, what did you mean when you said that about making money? How do we get paid for a day's labor?” he asked sullenly.

  Giacomo lifted the pickaxe and swung it heavily against the earthen wall, then another blow, and after another grunted exhaustedly with each jerk of his body. “We get paid by the buckets we fill with coal,” he said, panting.

  “Buckets?”

  “See them? Over yonder? We keep track of them that we fill, then we get paid by Nathan Hawkins.”

  “Can't some lie and say they fill more than others?”

  “Nathan Hawkins knows if there's one less or more bucket at the end of the day. After everyone speaks his number to Nathan Hawkins's representative, he has a way of knowin'. I think there's a spy among us, keepin’ track for that devil. If someone tries cheatin', none of us gets our wages.”

  “God,” Alberto groaned, beginning to work his own pickaxe into the earth once again. He stopped after only three blows, to wipe his brow. “How much per bucket, Papa?” he quickly added.

  “Huh? What's that you say?”

  “How much money do you make per bucket, Papa?”

  “Ain't never the same,” Giacomo grumbled.

  Alberto's heart froze. “What… ?” he gasped.

  “Ain't never the same from day to day,” Giacomo repeated.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Hawkins pays us also by the quality of the coal we've found on a certain day….”

  “That bastard,” Alberto grumbled, now thrusting his pickaxe into the earth, blow by angry blow, imagining it to be Nathan Hawkins. He growled, hitting harder and harder until he felt a firm hand fall onto his shoulder. He stopped and
looked down onto the puzzled face of his father.

  “Alberto, you act like a crazy person,” Giacomo said quietly. “Why are you attackin’ the earth so? You have all day. You must save your energy so it'll last you till we're raised back up into fresh air.”

  “Sorry, Papa,” Alberto said, leaning his pickaxe against his leg, wiping his brow with the back of a sleeve.

  “Now work at a steady pace, son,” Giacomo urged, spitting against the wall of black. “But don't kill yourself while doin’ it. There's enough coal in this here earthen grave to fill many of our buckets.”

  Alberto looked away from his Papa, toward a man who was pushing a shovel over some sort of screen. “Papa, what's that man doing?” he asked, watching more closely.

  Giacomo's gaze followed Alberto's. He flicked a suspender, making coal dust fly all around him, then said, “We have these little screens that you dump your coal that you dig on. You take a shovel and push it over the screen so's your real fine coal falls out on the ground. You can't sell that. We leave it lyin’ here in the bowels of the earth. We only pass the big lumps of coal up to the ponies a waitin'.”

  “Oh, I see….” Alberto said, then felt his heart leap when a loud, thundering blast echoed into his ears. A slow, moaning, rumbling of the ground and walls around him made Alberto close his eyes. He covered his head with his hands, flinching, looking sideways, waiting for the ceiling to come tumbling down upon him. He lowered his hands and turned wide-eyed toward his father, when he heard his father guffawing next to him.

  “Son, you've got to get used to that,” Giacomo said, wiping his eyes with the back of a hand. “What the hell… ?”

  “Just some blastin’ goin’ on up a further piece,” Giacomo said, patting Alberto on the back.

  “Isn't. .. that… a bit dangerous … ?”

  “Not if it's done properly. It's an everyday occurrence. You'll get used to it.”

  Alberto laughed nervously, lifting his pickaxe once again. “I thought the whole damn thing was falling in … that the whole top was coming in on our heads,” he said.

  “I know, son. It took about a week fore I knowed whether to run or sit still. I know. Just be a bit patient. You'll learn in time.” Alberto began swinging the pickaxe again, letting his mind wander to more pleasant thoughts. If he couldn't afford to think of women, then he could think about his card game. He just had to find a place where he could play. It was like an illness… eating away at his insides. ,

  Maria strained and pulled, then lifted the washtub of water and inched her way toward the back door. She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip, feeling muscles straining in every inch of her body. She wasn't used to this type of labor. No. None that she had found on this her first full day in Hawkinsville. She still couldn't believe that she had to walk several blocks to the only faucet allowed this small village of Italians to get her water for everything they needed in the house. And then to have to throw the filth of the water out the back door onto the ground for flies to buzz around so freely? “I hate it,” she murmured. “I just hate it.”

  She kicked the screen door open, then leaned the washtub onto the top step, tipping it so the water could start running over the washtub's edge. She watched the white lathery suds wash along the top of the scales of black earth, then get swallowed up in gulps as they searched out the cracks that reached out like veins on the back of a hand.

  Placing a hand on a hip, groaning, Maria let the washtub tumble downward, to rest awkwardly on its side at the foot of the steps. Breathless, she looked slowly upward, seeing the blueness of the sky and feeling the warmth of the sun. She knew that was something to be grateful for. Her father had told her that November in Illinois was usually a month for the first snowfall, and freezing temperatures enough to make one's bones ache.

  “But this is only the first day of November,” she said, rolling a sleeve up on her dingy cotton dress, feeling the heat of the sun caressing her arm. Her eyes traveled further around her, feeling the need to get away from the drabness of her surroundings. Surely she would only have to walk a short distance from this community to find something besides coal and coal dust. She was anxious to breathe some fresher air . .. see some grass . .. lean against a tree. Only then would she feel the freedom of the soul that she now so longed for.

  “I will,” she said determinedly, rushing back into the house. “I'll take a walk. Surely leaving my chores until later won't matter. I have to see what else this countryside has to offer.”

  Slipping her apron off, she looked down at the dress she now wore. She had chosen not to wear the new dress Aunt Helena had purchased for her. She knew that to do so while working in such filth would mean to ruin it in one day's time. No. She had chosen a simple cotton dress that didn't have any lace or bows to brighten it.

  “Should I change into my newer cotton dress?” she pondered to herself, holding the thick gathers of her dress up into the air, letting it then cascade back around her. “No. I'd best not. It would take too much time. I want to leave now. And I must be ready to get right back to my work when I return.”

  She reached upward and touched her hair. She had already brushed it until it shone. Smiling, she pulled her combs from each side, letting her hair fall to hang loosely to her waist, wanting to relish the breeze of the day, to let it lift her hair from her shoulders, to give it a fresh smell.

  She hurriedly chose a knitted shawl to wrap around her for warmth, pinched her cheeks for color, then rushed through the front door, not stopping to look back. She knew one thing. She wasn't going to go in the direction of the mine. Its tipple was a threatening sight for her. She knew that below it, somewhere beneath the ground, her Papa and Alberto were working with danger. She closed her eyes and shook her head, not wanting to let herself think such thoughts. She had to believe that her Papa knew how to protect himself, and knew that he would protect Alberto before he did even himself.

  “They'll be all right,” she mumbled, hurrying her pace, seeing a small bridge ahead, now knowing just where she was headed. It was the house that she had seen the day before that was luring her onward. She stopped for a moment, cupping a hand above her eyes, seeing the spaciousness of the house that still sat far in the distance. The heat rays from the sun were a wavy haze, distorting her full view, but she could tell that this house was like none other she had seen before. Not even in comparison to the homes owned by the richest of families in the city of Pordenone, Italy.

  This house was of a red brick, two-storied, and had a wide, spreading porch on front, the roof of the porch supported by tall, white, round pillars. This house was Nathan Hawkins's. To go stand in front of it might even mean to get a glimpse of this evil man … a man who she was growing to hate with every fiber of her being. Some way, she would get revenge for herself and the small community of Italians. Some way. …

  Drawing her shawl more securely around her arms, Maria moved onward, knowing that what lay between her and possibly Nathan Hawkins was a wide stretch of tall Indian grass that seemed magically to begin on the other sicie of the small creek that the iron bridge she had just stepped onto led her across. She could hardly wait to move through the blowing gentleness of the grass. Today, it could be compared to an ocean as it dipped and swayed in gentle greenish-yellows, it was such a relief to get away from the coal dust. Even the air around her had changed. She inhaled deeply as she left the bridge and made her first step onto a thick carpet of moss that laced the edge of the creek bed. Then she moved on into the thigh-high grass, now wondering about another house that had been hidden from her eyes by a thick grove of trees.

  She stopped to stare in its direction, seeing that it was of much better quality than the one she now lived in, but yet not at all similar to the brick house that she had been heading for. She looked to the distance, studying the brick house, then glanced back at this white frame house, trying to decide which to seek out first. A sense of adventure made her choose the smaller house, full of wonder as to how anyone had succeeded at ha
ving such a nice house in this area that was supposed to be owned by Nathan Hawkins … a house painted a clean white, with a fence surrounding it on all four sides … a house much nicer than the ones that the coal miners and their families had to live in.

  When Maria reached the trees and began to move beneath the towering oaks, their dried leaves rustled above her head, sounding as though they were heaving restless sighs while the prairie breezes continued to blow its breath onto their faces of brown. A gray-tailed squirrel hopped from a lower limb, then picked an acorn up from the ground and began turning it in circles between its front paws as its teeth worked their way hungrily into the nutty center.

  A sudden eruption of dogs’ barks broke the serene setting that Maria had found herself surrounded by. She tensed and looked hurriedly around her, always having feared stray dogs. She knew that the tall grasses could hide the dogs from her eyes, but that it in no way kept them from smelling her presence.

  She went to stand beside a tree, clutching at its trunk, watching for any sudden movements around her. But nothing. When the barking began again, she ceased breathing for a moment, listening closely, then knew that the dogs had grown no closer or further. She inched her way onward, pushing low branches of trees aside, feeling thorns from the brush that she had moved into nipping at her ankles, then found herself standing in the open, next to the fence that she had seen from afar.

  Two huge brown dogs came racing toward her, yelping and snarling, showing their teeth, but unable to reach her because of the fence that stood so tall between them.

  Maria flinched each time the dogs lunged toward the fence. But she began to move onward, now looking toward the house that sat in the middle of this fenced-in yard. It was two-storied, with drapes pulled shut at each window, and smoke spiraled slowly into the sky from a tall, brick chimney that reached upward from the ground, almost clinging, it seemed, to the side of the house.