The Mine

  THE MINE IS A WORK of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  2016 Antimatter Books ebook

  Copyright © 2016 T.M. Catron

  All rights reserved.

  Print ISBN: 1537456431

  ISBN-13: 978-1537456430

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  Prologue

  THE DANG CANTEEN WAS EMPTY. Joe Peters re-attached it to his belt and wiped the sweat trickling down his forehead and into his eyes. How long had he been stuck in this tunnel, anyway? Seemed like hours. He slid between pillars into another empty section of the coal mine, the glow of his headlamp shifting to the left as he banged his hard hat on the wall. The room ahead turned dark. More sweat poured off him, mixing with the coal dust on his body to create black slime. It soaked his work clothes and pooled in his boots.

  So thirsty. He adjusted his lamp. Twenty years in the mine. Twenty hard-ticking years. And he knew better than to get lost in the old tunnels. But here he was.

  Cool air came up the tunnel from behind, chilling the sweat on his neck. He shivered. Odd—the old parts of the mine didn’t have good ventilation. Those old shafts had been sealed at the top long ago.

  He glanced behind even though he knew nothing was back there. Nothing at all, Joe. Gettin’ jumpy in your old age.

  The top of his hat scraped the roof, bringing down a dusting of coal onto his shoulders. Based on the size of the room he’d just left, he’d gotten lost in one of the oldest parts of the mine, somewhere behind their current operation.

  And he didn’t know how to get back. Unless . . .

  The mine groaned around him. Normal, of course, but Joe’s gut tightened into a knot. He tried to catch the idea working its way to the front of his mind. Think. He looked at the floor, where a boot tread was stamped into the dirt.

  His own footprint.

  With a sigh of relief and a flash of annoyance, Joe wondered why the thought hadn’t occurred to him before. He turned to go back.

  He kept his lamp pointed at the floor, following the footprints back into the tiny room. He crossed it and walked through to the next one, passing through thick pillars of coal into a narrow tunnel. Back in the early days, this room would have only fit a man and a hand-drawn cart.

  The tracks disappeared over smooth stone. He swept the light forward a few feet. There—ten feet ahead they converged with another set of prints. Joe’s heart knocked against his chest at the prospect of someone else being lost down here, too. Then he laughed at himself. It was his own print—he must’ve circled back at some point.

  He turned left and retraced them down another tunnel, passing between more dark pillars. The more he walked, the easier he breathed. Maybe he’d get out of here without anyone noticing he’d been lost. In his improved state of mind, Joe now felt at ease to study the rooms as he walked. Some day they would open up these sections again and come after this remaining coal. Especially with the new machines the company was sending them. Coal-mining wasn’t what it had been in his papa’s day.

  A clattering sound from behind caused him to spin around. Joe looked up at the ceiling, checking for a roof fall. It looked solid. But looks were nothing; it could cave at any moment. And here he was breathing and disturbing the air and the dust. At this thought, a tickle rose in his throat. He tried not to cough, settling for clearing the crud with a low growl.

  Time to move on. He turned back toward the tunnel ahead, ready to get back out to his crew. Something caught his eye. A shift, perhaps. A falling rock. He stared ahead a moment. If the room was about to go . . .

  But Joe didn’t have time to stand there waiting for something to happen. If his way out got blocked, he’d be in a heap more trouble than he was now.

  The air shimmered in the light. He blinked, hard, trying to clear his eyes. When he opened them, his headlamp turned off. The room went dark, a pitch blackness so deep only the pits of hell could have been darker. But Joe knew the darkness. Knew the effect it had on the brain and the feeling of disembodiment that came with it. All miners did. He reached up to jiggle his light.

  Nothing happened.

  He pulled off his hat and turned the lamp toward him.

  But it wasn’t off—it was still shining. A lone star against a black sea, it twinkled at him without casting any noticeable light. He held his hand in front of it. But he still couldn’t see his fingers.

  Joe rubbed his eyes. Must be something wrong—they weren’t focusing right. He breathed deeply, but it didn’t make him feel better. If anything, his ribs were being squeezed together like they were caught in a vice. Inhaling only made the pressure worse.

  Gas—the only explanation. He’d walked into a pocket of methane or carbon dioxide.

  And he was already too far gone to get out of it.

  Another soft crash. This time Joe recognized the sound of coal falling from the roof, even if he couldn’t see it. He turned, dropping his hat and putting his hand on the wall.

  The hat clattered down, landing with the lamp pointing up. It shone up at him like an eyeball peering at him from the darkness. Then the roof cracked, sending a shivering wave through the room.

  The Earth was splitting open.

  Joe forgot he couldn’t breathe and yelled out. What he said didn’t matter. Just that he said it.

  He always knew the mine would get him someday.

  Chapter 1

  ALICE PETERS MADE HISTORY WHEN she walked into the Springwater Mine on Thursday, June 14, 1956. She was the first female miner in Springwater, West Virginia, and one of the first female miners in the country. But no one knew it. The foreman, her Uncle Ray, had put her down as “Al” on her employment form so he could keep his job.

  “You’re not really the first,” he’d said. “Girls have been sneakin’ into the mines to work for long as anyone can remember. Most of ’em dressed like men to do it.”

  But Alice was the first woman to walk into the Springwater Mine with the approval of the section foreman. That first day, Billy Loggins spat at her when Ray wasn’t looking. Loggins was built like a barrel—narrow shoulders and skinny legs, wide around the middle. Afraid of causing trouble on her first day, Alice had kept her head down and followed Ray to the conveyor. Never mind them, she told herself.

  Never mind that she’d grown up around the mine, and that her daddy, Joe Peters, had been Loggins’ foreman for ten years. Never mind that male or female, black or white, once a person entered the mine, they looked like everyone else. The coal dust made sure of that.

  Never mind that Alice didn’t have any other options. That the only family she had was Daddy’s brother, Ray, and that his wife Nancy had kicked her out eighteen months after Daddy died. Nancy had said she wasn’t going to hand out charity to a grown woman who should be working instead of
sitting in a school desk all day reading.

  Nancy had dropped out of school at fourteen to marry Ray. As far as she was concerned, Alice should already be married with five kids hanging off each arm.

  Ten weeks after her first day, on August 23, Alice switched on her headlamp and entered the drift mouth, walking close behind Ray. Ten men followed. None of them spoke to her.

  It was the crew’s daily routine: Ignore Alice on the twenty-minute walk to the coal face, give her a hard time whenever Ray wasn’t looking. Today wouldn’t be any different, even though it was her birthday. If they knew, they’d only make it worse for her.

  Ray had forgotten, and Alice wasn’t going to remind him. What were birthdays for, anyway?

  The belt conveyor lay to the right of the manway. It had just finished running third shift’s load. Soon it would be humming again, and Alice would be walking beside it, shoveling the loose coal that had fallen off.

  They passed great pillars of coal, supported in part by old timber. New timber had been added here and there for safety. Springwater was an old room-and-pillar mine, with winding tunnels and random rooms. Thirty years ago, crews hadn’t even bothered to close off sections once they were done. The resulting labyrinth made Alice feel as if something was behind her, stalking her from the black spaces.

  Dark, narrow tunnels branched off to the left and right, all the way to the new advance. Alice always refused to look into the passages. She’d keep her eyes straight ahead, thank you. It didn’t do to be dwelling on anything other than the job.

  Like most miners, she tried not to think too hard about the dangers of working underground. Roof falls, explosions, and pockets of deadly gas were only some of the accidents waiting to happen. If she thought about it, she remembered how her daddy had died. They’d found him after three days of searching, not far from the advance and half-buried under two tons of coal. If she thought about it, she might not ever go back in.

  And she had to go back in.

  The mountain groaned under its own weight, a reminder that millions of tons of rock sat above their heads. Rumor was they would be getting a roof bolter soon to support the roof without timbers, just like they used at the bigger mining operations to the south. Then the mine would be safer. But for now, the grind was the same for Alice: go in, keep her head low, do what they told her.

  If she didn’t draw too much attention to herself, the days were bearable. Alice made sure she did as much work as any man. She was useful, even if the crew didn’t admit it.

  As soon as the crew reached their section, everyone went to work. Billy Loggins operated the miner. He did his checks and then started it up. The machine whined, then started spinning toward the coal face. When the grinding began, it drowned out the sound of the rock creaking above.

  “You’re workin’ the belt today,” Ray told Alice.

  “I work it every day.”

  Ray nodded. He still felt responsible for her. Wanted her to know the ropes. Wanted her to stick with it. Mainly because he’d put his backside on the line for her to get this job.

  That and he was ashamed Joe had been lost. Ray took responsibility for that, too. Even though everybody knew and Alice knew that Joe had died in an accident, and no one could have prevented it.

  “I just wonder what he was doing, is all,” said Ray, as if they’d been having a conversation about her daddy. He brought it up sometimes, an attempt to get rid of his guilt. Or to punish himself, maybe.

  “I know, Ray.” Alice’s standard response.

  Four hours later, Alice was sweating from shoveling coal onto the belt. Sharp pains shot up her back, her arms, her legs, like they were caught in giant pincers. She gritted her teeth and kept going, slinging the coal onto the conveyor so hard that some of it fell off the other side of the belt.

  Jimmy Mans, a lanky twenty-year-old who liked to be around when Alice messed up, doubled over laughing. “Guess it’s too much to ask for a girl to know that she’s s’posed to get the coal on the belt.”

  “Shut up, Jimmy.” Alice ducked down and scraped her shovel underneath the belt.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up. I been here longer than you—two whole years. And I’m a man. So it doesn’t matter how long I been here,” he said with sudden revelation, “because I’ll always be better at man’s work than you.”

  “Some man,” Alice mumbled.

  “What’s that?”

  “You got a lotta nerve, Jimmy, messin’ with me. You better get outta here before Ray hears you.”

  Jimmy snorted. “One day Ray won’t be here.”

  “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “You know what it means, or are you really that dumb? He’s gonna get fired. Or die like Joe. And then you’ll have to leave, too.”

  “You take that back!” Alice straightened, bringing her shovel off the ground and pointing it at Jimmy.

  Jimmy sneered. “Or what?”

  Alice breathed hard, anger rising up from somewhere deep. He’d gone too far. He could make fun of her. Make fun of her too-big overalls with the cuffs rolled up, her tangled hair, her womanliness (or the lack of it), but not her Daddy. She wanted to wipe that dumb smirk off Jimmy’s face. She pulled back, ready to strike.

  Jimmy grabbed a chain from a hook on the wall, one they used to hoist coal if the belt malfunctioned. He twirled it once, making sure it came close to hitting her.

  “You ain’t got the rocks to fight me,” he said.

  Alice swung, the flat of her shovel landing squarely over his groin. Jimmy dropped the chain and hunched over, squealing, forehead almost touching the ground.

  “Don’t need to have rocks to protect myself,” she said. “Joe figured I’d meet someone like you someday. Guess he was smarter than you ever could be, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy wheezed and stood. His cheeks were wet. And shiny black now, like the coal.

  Alice wanted to taunt him for crying. But she didn’t want to push her luck. Instead she backed away from Jimmy, her shovel still raised in warning.

  Jimmy didn’t speak to her again all day. He didn’t speak to anybody. Alice wished some of the other men had been there to witness. Maybe then they’d ease up on her. But they hadn’t, so they wouldn’t.

  “Want to come up to the house for some supper?” Ray asked when they left the mine that evening. The crew was climbing aboard the bus to take them back to Springwater. Alice sat across from her uncle.

  “Thanks, but I got things to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Things.”

  Since Nancy had kicked her out, Alice had been living in the house at the edge of the Peters’ property. It wasn’t much, a one-room shack left over from the town’s old coal-camp. But it was hers as long as she paid rent. Ray didn’t argue about dinner. He’d only offered to be polite, anyway. Nancy wouldn’t have wanted Alice there.

  Thirty minutes later, after winding up a narrow gravel road, around the ridgeline, then back down the mountain, the bus stopped in Springwater. The only industry here was coal. Everybody either worked for the coal company or sold goods to the miners and their families. So in a way, everybody worked for the company.

  Springwater’s central feature was Main Street, with its obligatory stores lined up on the left and right. The rest of the town was just houses nestled into the winding arm of the valley. A few farms surrounded, flanking Springwater like buffers against the wildness of Appalachia. Proof that the area could be civilized—that’s what Joe used to say.

  Loggins parked the bus in the lot next to company headquarters, and the crew filed out. Jimmy glanced sideways at Alice, but otherwise ignored her with the rest. He would never tell them that a girl, least of all Alice, had caused him to squeal like a banshee.

  Most of them, still covered in coal filth and sweat, headed to Springwater’s only bar for a drink before going home. Alice passed it on her way down the street. Music drifted out from the open door—a Johnny Cash song about Folsom Prison. She liked it. The station played i
t on the radio at least once a night. Maybe they’d play it again when she got home, and she could listen while she was eating. If they played Elvis, she would dance.

  The setting sun bathed the sky in yellow gold. Dark, green mountains towered over them, a constant reminder of the town’s separation from the rest of the world. But Alice was more concerned about her growling stomach than the view. She stopped at the corner grocery and bought a can of vegetable soup and a loaf of bread. Mr. Mercer, the grocer, peered at her over his spectacles as he rang her up.

  She smiled and picked up a chocolate Hershey bar, adding it to her purchases. Mercer grimaced. Alice imagined her mouth looked disgusting with her dust-coated teeth.

  “Special occasion?” Mercer asked, nodding to the chocolate.

  Alice shrugged. It was a birthday treat to herself. But Mercer didn’t need to know.

  “I woulda hired ya, Alice, you know that? You clean up good. Just quit that mine. You make the boys uncomfortable.”

  “If I come to work for you, Mr. Mercer, I ’spect I’ll never get outta Springwater.”

  “You should be thinking about marrying. Then you won’t have to be thinking about getting out of Springwater. The doc’s kid—Charlie Satchel—he’s a nice boy.”

  “Nah.” Alice wiped her dirty face with her dirty sleeve. “Ain’t nobody ever going to marry me.”

  “Not dressed like that, they won’t.”

  For the last ten weeks, town folk had been taking it upon themselves to lecture Alice on her appearance, her job, her uncle, her daddy, her marriage status, and a whole bunch of other things that had nothing to do with them. Maybe they were just trying to help. Maybe they were just busybodies.

  But she couldn’t deny that ever since she began working in the mine, everybody treated her differently than they used to. After Daddy died, people treated Alice as if she would break. Now they treated her as if she were made of steel, unbending and hard and without feelings. In some ways, their attitudes were an improvement. But Alice couldn’t help but feel a little resentful at the sudden shift in her treatment.