Coal River (20 page)

CHAPTER 16

A
t two a.m. on Sunday morning, four days after the breaker boys’ funeral, the white-paneled ballroom on the top floor of the Pennsylvania Boarding House and Hotel was dark, save for four flickering oil lamps on two wooden tables. Wool blankets had been nailed over the closed windows, and the air in the room was stagnant, thick with tobacco smoke and the sour odor of human sweat, nervous excitement, and fear. Four dozen glum-faced miners and breaker boys sat on stools and wooden chairs, or leaned against walls festooned with red, white, and blue bunting. All eyes were locked on Clayton Nash, standing at the center of the middle table. On either side of Clayton, six immigrant miners sat in wooden chairs, including Nally, the giant Irishman.

In a back corner, Emma slumped in a chair, avoiding eye contact with those around her. Despite the heat, she fought the urge to wipe the sweat from her brow and neck. She kept her arms crossed, her fists hidden beneath her elbows to hide her hands. Earlier, she’d cut her fingernails to the quick and rubbed her hands with road slag to make them look worn. Still, she worried someone might notice that her pale, delicate fingers were those of a woman. The trousers and shirt she was wearing belonged to Sawyer, and her hair was pinned in a tight bun beneath one of Clayton’s mining caps. Luckily, her feet fit into a boy-sized pair of gumboots, and, with a little help from a chunk of soft coal, she had darkened her brows and given the illusion of faint stubble on her upper lip. She wouldn’t pass for an adult male, but in the dim light, it would be easy to mistake her for an older boy, maybe around the age of twelve or thirteen. Even so, her heartbeat roared in her ears. After seeing how angry the miners got when they saw her at the mine, she was terrified of being discovered.

Clayton had warned her that the miners would be uneasy, worried Hazard Flint and his men might break down the doors and arrest everyone in attendance. If that happened, she would be in all sorts of trouble. But hopefully, in the meantime, it meant less attention paid to her.

For two days she’d begged Clayton to let her attend the meeting, arguing that she couldn’t figure out a way to help if she didn’t understand what was going on. Right now it was all too confusing. Between the immigrants and the miners, the mine owner and the Coal and Iron Police, she couldn’t keep things straight in her head. The fact that the police couldn’t be trusted went against everything she’d grown up believing. And listening to Percy and Uncle Otis, she thought the English-speaking miners were worried the immigrants would take their jobs. But somehow Clayton had gotten some of the native-born Americans and the immigrants to come together, to see they were on the same side. Now he just needed the rest to agree.

At first, he’d been adamant she stay away. But then she threatened to come regardless, reminding him she had gone up to the mine and confronted Otis despite knowing her uncle and the miners would be upset. Eventually Clayton gave in. He told her it was only the second meeting in six months because it had taken that long to spread the word and get everyone to agree to come. At the first meeting, held back in February, four months before Emma had arrived in Coal River, there had been only twenty in attendance. Now it seemed the breaker accident had brought everyone together. There were over twice as many miners in the room. Clayton cleared his throat and addressed the crowd.

“Before we begin,” he said. “I want everyone to take mind of the windows back here.” He pointed at the wall behind him, drawing the audience’s attention to four tall windows beside a brick fireplace. “If Mr. Flint’s henchmen show up, we’re going to hurry out those windows. Outside, there are ladders leading down to the back porch roof, and two more from that roof to the ground. But some of you might have to jump from there. After that, scatter. Understood?”

The miners and breaker boys nodded.

“Good,” Clayton said. He looked around the room, his face serious. “This is the day that marks the beginning of an uprising against Hazard Flint and the Bleak Mountain Mining Company. We’re going to stand up for what is right, throw down our tools, and march against oppression. We’re going to come together to fight for our rights and the rights of our children, and our children’s children.”

A number of miners sat forward, listening intently. Emma sat rapt, goose bumps rising on her arms. She was right. Clayton was a born leader. And he was on the right side of truth and justice.

“You see these men?” Clayton pointed at the new immigrants. “They don’t want to steal your jobs. They’re just men, workers, like you. And right now they’re slaves to the mining company too. Hazard Flint takes money from their wages to pay their room and board. He supplies them with clothes and powder, then takes that out of their pay too. If they get hurt or sick, he takes two dollars out of their pay so they can see a doctor. He even took the price of their train tickets to get here out of their pay! It’s not us against them! It’s all of us, together, against the company! And if we stick together, if we all walk out at the same time, Hazard Flint won’t be getting his coal out of the earth. The coal we dig is not German coal or Polish coal or Irish coal. It is just coal.”

The miners mumbled amongst themselves. Some nodded in agreement, while others crossed their arms and scowled, as if not convinced.

“This man, Nally,” Clayton said, “arrived here at the end of June with the rest of the immigrants. Seven months ago he led a successful strike against the mine owners at Cabin Creek. Now he’s offered to help us.”

Nally stood, his face grave. “Look at those grand mansions in the hills,” he said. “The supervisors’ wives dress with the blood of yer young lads. Mr. Flint makes ye load coal for any price he chooses. Up there on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, we obeyed the laws. Then we went on strike and got twice what we used to get for loading coal. We reduced our hours to nine a shift. I will be with ye, and the Coal and Iron Police, those bloody bastards, will go!”

“How many miners died during the strike at Cabin Creek?” a miner called out. “How many were shot down by the Coal and Iron Police?”

“What about Eagle Hill?” someone else shouted. “Them miners were carrying nothing but the American flag, and the deputies and sheriff met them with rifles. How many miners died that day? Twenty? Thirty? We want that happening here?”

“I’d be a right fool to say there weren’t clashes between strikers and police,” Nally said. “But the police were hired to protect the mines, just like they are here! If ye lads aren’t willing to sacrifice to fight for your rights, maybe ye don’t belong at this meeting. Let me tell you what I saw in ’02, the big strike in the Pennsylvania coalfields. Better than a hundred thousand men and boys dropped their tools, and it didn’t matter what, if they starved or lost their jobs, nobody backed down. A few good men lost their lives, but that’s a whole lot less than would have died in the mines if they’d kept going that way. From what I heard, mining accidents here in Coal River are even more common than in other mines, where they’re bad enough.”

“We hardly know you from Adam!” another man shouted. “How do we know we can trust you?”

“Ye don’t,” Nally said. “But right now you’re trusting your livelihood, nay, yer very lives, to a criminal.”

“Clayton,” the first man said. “You gathered us here. I’ve known you since you were cutting teeth. Most of us here worked with your father. You should be the one doing the talking, not this stranger.”

The majority of the miners nodded, muttering, “That’s right,” and “We agree.”

Nally threw up his hands and sat down.

“All right,” Clayton said. “Simmer down. But Nally’s right. They did a lot in ’02, but it didn’t solve our problems. They cheat us on the scales, and underpay us for the coal we dig. When we finally got them to set a price for a full coal car, Hazard Flint bought bigger cars. Then he hiked up the price of goods at the Company Store. How are we supposed to live like that?”

“The state don’t care,” a deep voice called out. “The country don’t care. The government don’t even care!”

“That’s not true,” Clayton said. “The mine laws are on our side. No breaker closer than two hundred feet from the mouth of the shaft, every mine with an emergency escape in case there’s an accident in the main shaft. Good ventilation. Plus rules on storing blasting powder in the mine, proper working of the breaker, even the kind of lamp oil they give us so we don’t blow ourselves up!” He was worked up now, talking fast. “Got to have proper stretchers, ambulances, the works. There are laws! Hazard Flint just breaks them all!”

Clayton’s anger seemed to energize others in the room. An old man stood in the back row. He wore an eye patch and leaned to one side, as if nursing a sore hip.

“I been working in the mines my whole life,” the old man said. “And I haven’t a whole bone in my body. My skull was fractured, my eye was put out, and one leg feels like it’s made of wood. Last time I was injured, I couldn’t work for six days. On the last day, I got an eviction notice because I was behind on my rent. I asked for one more day because my wife had fallen ill. The police said I couldn’t stay another five minutes. They took me, my sick wife, and my blind mother-in-law down the road, and we took up with a widow and her five boys. It was raining, and the cold worsened my wife’s condition. I didn’t have money to pay for a doctor. A few days later, she died.” He hung his head and sighed, then looked up again. “Clayton is right. It’s time for us to stand up to Hazard Flint.”

A few seats away from Emma, a thin boy of about twelve stood, wringing his cap in his coal-stained hands. “After my pa got sick and died,” he said, “I moved into Widow’s Row and went to work in the breaker. Supposed to get sixty-five cents a day. But they gave me a rent due notice instead, saying I owed nearly a hundred dollars for back rent my father never paid. I’m still workin’ to pay it off.”

This brought grumbles and angry shouts from the miners. Emma could hardly believe what she was hearing. Things were worse than she thought.

Then another man stood. “I don’t know if you all know me, but I been married to the local midwife going on some twenty years now. My wife has held young’uns in her arms and seen them die from tuberculosis, pellagra, and the bloody flux. I saw my own sister’s baby starve for milk while the mine owners were riding around in their fine cars, their wives and children dressed in diamonds and silk, all paid for by the blood, sweat, and tears of the coal miners. I hear the hungry children crying in my dreams. It ain’t right!”

The miners started talking all at once, some shifting in their seats, some standing and shaking their fists. Clayton raised his hand to quiet them.

“I appreciate your stories,” he said. “Our suffering is even more important than the laws.” He glanced at Emma, then looked away. “And that reminds me. We have another fight on our hands. Child labor was outlawed by the anthracite commission, but these boys have got to keep working the mines and the breaker as long as their parents need wages and the coal companies need their labor. Take a look around. Has to be one mine worker in four a boy under the age of sixteen. Plenty of them are seven, eight years old. Here in Coal River, all our boys work in the colliery. I’ve seen boys as young as five in the breaker. If the funeral last week didn’t convince you to put a stop to that, I’m not sure what will. You need to talk to your neighbors and friends, tell them what you’ve heard here tonight. Tell them the only way we can change things is if we stick together. Tell them we’ll be having another meeting, and I want to see them all here. Are you willing to do that much for yourselves?”

The miners and boys nodded in agreement.

“Now go back to work on Monday morning,” Clayton said. “Be good men. I want you to deal fair with every man. There are some good operators, some good bosses, but their hands are tied. We can’t blame them. Let Hazard Flint see you are law-abiding. I have a plan in place, and if we all stick together, Hazard Flint will be forced to do right by us. But you must have patience, my friends, and you must trust me. Now go back, like men, and go to work when you should.”

“Easy for you to tell us to be patient,” one of the miners said. “Last month, I buried my youngest child, and on the day of the funeral there was not one scrap of food in the house with six children to feed.”

“Listen,” Clayton said. “This fight is going on, but not today. And not tomorrow. We’ve got work to do first. Go home, all of you, peaceable, law-abiding. Take a drink—I know you need it. But I may have to call on you again inside of two weeks to make another move.”

Then, just as he was about to remind everyone to spread the word, the thunder of hooves pounded along the dirt road outside and came to a stop in front of the hotel. Moving fast, he and Nally blew out all but one lantern. Everyone stood, careful not to scrape chairs across the floor. Outside, boots stomped across the front porch of the hotel, rattling the windows of the ballroom. Clayton darted to one of the escape windows and pushed it open. Nally and two others opened the other three. Emma made her way toward Clayton, her heart booming in her chest. She moved quickly but quietly among the miners and boys, keeping her chin down. Everyone scrambled out the windows without a word. The wooden ladders thumped against the clapboard siding. When Emma made it to the window, Clayton glanced her way but said nothing. For a split second she froze, her hands on the window casing.

“Move!” Clayton demanded under his breath.

Emma eased over the sill, trying not to think about the fact that the ballroom was four stories up from the ground. Two men were climbing down the ladder, disappearing into blackness. She couldn’t see the porch roof. To her surprise, not being able to see the distance between the window and the roof made her less afraid. That, and knowing if she were caught, she’d be thrown in jail, after which Uncle Otis would either lock her up forever or send her to the poorhouse. Clenching her jaw, she swung herself over the window edge and followed the miners into the darkness. At the bottom of the ladder, she stepped onto the porch roof and moved to one side, her hands against the wall. From there, she could make out the backyard, the flagstone sidewalk, and the circular flower beds filled with struggling roses. Some of the miners and boys were jumping off the roof, landing on their feet, rolling forward or falling backward. She went to the top of a ladder and waited her turn. There was no way she could jump.