Coal Black Blues (16 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Sunlight kissed the mountaintops as she drove down into Coaltown, as the golden light played across the treetops nearest the sky. In the valley, it remained dark as sin and she reached the store before Alexander did. Caroline unlocked the door, turned on the sign and the gas pumps. She started the coffee in the Bunn coffee makers and heated the deep fryers. Before Alexander drove up in his rattletrap, old Buick Park Avenue, she had set up the cash register with seed change for the day.

The retired Marine whistled as he came into the store. “Good morning, Caroline. Lord, girl, you must’ve got up in the middle of the night to get all this done before time to open.”

“Neil’s working today,” she said, with what she hoped would pass as a genuine smile. “I was up and thought I might as well come down. I’m going to get the Accounts Payable out of the way this morning. I’m leaving around noon, though, when Neil gets off shift.”

“Sure. I’m always glad of any help. You made my day start out easy. It looks like it’s gonna be a pretty one.”

“I hope it will be,” Caroline replied. And she did, with all her heart.

She buried herself in paperwork, using the calculator on the desk to add up accounts. Caroline wrote the checks out, one by one, afraid she might make a mistake because she remained so distracted. Twice, she wrote the wrong date and had to tear up the checks before she wrote another.

At seven, she told herself it would be five more hours. Then Neil would arrive and they could leave. Caroline didn’t care if they went to Charleston or if they hiked up into the hills to search for a cedar tree, or if they stayed home and made love until midnight. As long as he came from work with a positive mindset, the trouble she feared would be past and she could relax.

Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing.
She repeated the thought like a prayer and after a while, realized maybe it was. Around seven thirty, she needed a break. Her head pounded from stress and from her intense concentration with the books. Caroline pushed back the folder of remaining bills and rubbed the back of her neck. Her muscles were stiff, her shoulders tight.

She opened the office door and fetched a cold soda from the cool case. Owner or not, Caroline stood in line to pay. She gazed through the windows. All the pumps were full. Several customers were in the store, picking up odds and ends. At the small table, Old Man Trevor, the retired miner, appeared to be besting the retired Baptist preacher from the Mount Hope church at checkers.

He’s old but he’s alive,
Caroline thought.
Miners can make old bones, after all. He’s living proof.
Her mood lightened and she couldn’t wait to point out her revelation to Neil.

A low grumble filled her ears, but Caroline sensed it more than she heard it. Shelves rattled hard enough that a few items crashed to the floor, a jar of peach jam and another of pickles. Sharp and sweet smells mingled in her nose and time paused. No one said a word, but every person in the store glanced around, suddenly wary. Another rumble, stronger than the first, hit and the building shook. Boxes of cupcakes tumbled from the rack. The big plate-glass windows appeared to waver and for a moment Caroline thought they might shatter.

After a few seconds of silence, people began babbling. She heard their voices and couldn’t tell who said what because they spoke the same sentences, ‘What was that?’, ‘What happened?’, and “Did you feel that?’.

Alexander caught her eye and motioned for her to join him behind the counter. Caroline started around it, but she stopped when Old Man Trevor stood up. His eyes were wide, face pale.

“There’s trouble at the mine,” he said. “That was an explosion, probably a cave-in, too.”

He spoke with certainty, knowledge gained from his fifty years or more underground, and no one doubted his word. Several of the people at the store, jumped into vehicles, and left.

Caroline’s heart shuddered so hard within her chest she thought she might suffer a heart attack and die. She put one hand over her chest, as if she could still it. Her lungs refused to draw breath. Someone wailed, a harsh and terrible sound, but she didn’t realize she’d made it until Old Man Trevor grasped her elbow. “Hush that noise. It ain’t helpin’ nobody. Is your man up there?”

She took a breath and scraped a single word out of her mouth. “Yes.”

“Then you’d best git up there and wait,” he said. “If he comes out, he’ll want you.”

Not if, old man, when,
she thought and wanted to scream the words, but she didn’t. Caroline’s breath became rapid as anxiety reigned. This, she worried, might be what Neil’s dark premonition foretold.

“Go on, Caroline,” Alexander told her. He’d turned gray, too. One of his son-in-laws worked at the mine, although she didn’t know if Jeff worked today or not. “I’ll cover the store, long as necessary.”

Her feet had never been heavier as she collected her purse, keys, and coat. Caroline ran to the car, stumbled and almost fell. She turned the key so hard the starter squealed in protest and then took off, driving too fast. Caroline careened out of the parking lot and headed for the road leading to the mine. Since her return, she’d never gone there, hadn’t had any reason, but she remembered. She didn’t think about where to go, just drove as if the devil chased her with a hot pitchfork, and slowed when she got behind a string of vehicles headed in the same direction.

In the distance, sirens shrieked and the line made way for the approaching emergency vehicles. Ambulances, fire trucks, and sheriff’s cars came up with speed and roared around the slow lane to the Coal Central mine entrance. Caroline crept behind the other vehicles, head pounding, and fear clutching her in a vise-like grip. She tried to peer ahead, but could see nothing but the red and blue lights flashing and the string of vehicles ahead of her on the gravel road.

The tipple stood up beside the twin railroad tracks, taller than everything else, still now when everything within the mine had ceased operation. Once she got near to the entrance and the adjacent offices, Caroline pulled the car over behind others and got out. She stood, uncertain where to go or what to do, and gazed around her.

The emergency vehicles flanked the entrance and coal-company employees made a line to keep the curious and concerned back. As she watched, two television news vans from Charleston appeared. More cars and trucks arrived, parking in every available place. The gathering reminded her of the way buzzards swooped down on fresh road kill, to eat and pick. She resented the presence of anyone not connected but knew she could do nothing about it.

Old grannies, skin as thin and brown as parchment paper, moved to join the crowds, leaning on relatives or on canes. One woman advanced with a walker, her face set in determined lines. Young wives with babies carried on one hip clustered together, and men of every age stood together. Caroline recognized old classmates, now miner’s wives, their faces etched with hard lines new since high school. Off-duty miners came and so did young people. Since it was Saturday, kids were out of school and many stood with mothers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, and grandpas. She saw Jackson Curtis standing with two other boys, who resembled him so much they must be brothers, and she remembered his father worked in the mine.

She heard someone call her name and hope flared, only to fade when Caroline realized it was Will, not Neil. He pushed through the crowds and made his way to her.

“Is he down there?”

Caroline nodded.

“Oh, Jesus, I hoped he wasn’t. I might’ve been too, but my wife had our baby Friday morning, a boy.”

She managed to choke out polite words. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. She’s still in the hospital. Her mama’s keeping the kids for us and will take her home if I don’t get back in time.”

An old folk saying popped into her head,
for every death, a birth.
Caroline tried to forget it, but it repeated in her mind. So did the notion the mine emergency might be what Neil had such foreboding about. “Will, you don’t think this…”

Will stopped her line of questioning. “Shit, there’s Daddy. He damn sure don’t need to be down here. Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

Caroline huddled into her coat, arms crossed to keep out the cold and still her trembling. Will McCullough returned in less than five minutes with an old man. She recognized Neil’s Uncle Sammy although he’d aged. He remembered her, too. “Miss Carrie,” he said, in greeting.

“Hello.”

He pointed at Will, his youngest. “I came down here, afraid that one might be workin’ but he’s all right. Now it’s Neil I gotta worry about.”

“I told you, he’ll be fine,” Will told his dad. “Neil’s tough. He’ll hang on until they rescue him.”

Sam McCullough, once a miner himself, with the coal tattoos still visible on his hands, stared at his son. “I pray he does,” he said after a long moment. “I pray he does.”

“You ought to go back home,” Will replied. “It’s cold out here.”

“I’m waitin’ right here.”

Will grimaced and faced Caroline. “I don’t suppose you’d take him back to the store with you, wait there.”

She shook her head and found her voice. “No,” she said. “I’m staying until Neil comes out of that mine. I won’t leave.”

Both men nodded. “I didn’t figure you would,” Will told Caroline. “It was worth a shot, though. Well, hell, I’ll wait, too. I bet we’re gonna have a lot of folks keepin’ us company.”

As the hours passed, more people came. They stood near the tipple and mine office, quiet as Sunday church, sober as if they were at a hanging. Everyone spoke in hushed voices and their faces wore the same shell-shocked expressions of grief. Caroline knew she must look the same. Names of coal mine disasters haunted her. They haunted her thoughts, Upper Big Branch Mine, Sago, and the Darby Mine down in Harlan County, Kentucky. Her grandparents had talked about other disasters, Pond Creek back in 1940 when Granny’s oldest brother, Joshua, had lost his life in the mine. And Caroline remembered her great-grandmother, an ancient woman with gnarled, work-worn hands and wrinkled features who sang about Monongah, one of the worst mining accidents in history in 1907. Grandmammy’s daddy, grandpa, and two older brothers died there.

Fear clutched her guts and twisted them into knots.
I won’t think about the past. I’ll think about Neil. He’ll walk out on his own. He’s coming out of that mine if I have to fetch him myself.
She knew the emergency workers would never let her into the mine, but if she could, Caroline would be down there now, digging at the rubble with both hands, screaming Neil’s name.

As they waited, a few details emerged as one rescue team emerged from the bowels of the earth and another went down. There had been an explosion, probably caused by a methane gas build-up. No one knew why the detectors or alarms had failed to alert the crews. Rubble blocked one of the main tunnels and until the crews could dig through it, no one would know if there were survivors or how many.

At first, Caroline thought the miners would be found by noon, but when midday came and passed without any changes, despair crept over her hopes like an evening shadow. Although the sun continued shining and the sky remained a rich, deep blue, temperatures plunged, and by four o’clock, the wind blew hard with a definite chill.

“There’s a cold front coming in,” Will told her. “I’m taking Daddy home whether he wants to go or not. Do you want to go?”

She shook her head. “I’m staying until Neil comes out. I want to be here when he does.”

The look he shot her brimmed full with compassion and she knew Will was thinking about Neil’s dark thoughts. “It may be a while, Carrie, before we know.”

Caroline refused to imagine what they might know. She focused on Neil walking out of the mine in one piece. She worried, on top of everything else that his PTSD might flare in the stressful situation. Neil would live, though. Anything else remained unthinkable.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll be here.”

Neil’s cousin put one hand on her shoulder, a gesture meant to offer comfort, but Caroline remained hollow inside. “Stay warm if you can. I’ll be back. Do you want anything?”

Neil. She wanted Neil, but Will couldn’t deliver him. “I can’t think of what it would be,” she told him. “But thank you.”

Caroline’s cell phone didn’t get much service between the mountains near the mine. She checked it several times, but the signal never lasted long enough to check messages or make a call. More news trucks appeared, many with satellite hookup, and motored to the front of the main mine entrance. A church van arrived and volunteers began handing out water bottles. Caroline accepted one, but she didn’t open it for a long time and when she did, she took a few small sips. Her throat ached with thirst but if she drank much, sooner or later she would need to find a restroom. Since Caroline didn’t fancy squatting in the weeds and she refused to leave, she planned to put it off as long as possible.

Deep in the valley, dark came down with a swift certainty. Although the last rays of sunshine were visible on the mountaintops, night arrived by five PM. The vapor lights around the tipple, mine entrance, and offices came on, pink and garish. Caroline surveyed the scene. More people had arrived and stood back from where she waited to the railroad tracks and beyond. A string of vehicles lined both sides of the road leading up to the mine. If she had wanted to leave, she doubted she could manage to extract her car.