Collection 1980 - Yondering (v5.0) (9 page)

At last he did give way to Bert. He dropped on the rocks, his chest heaving, fighting for air. He tried to keep from remembering Mary, but she was always with him, always just beyond the blows of his pick. Probably she did not yet know what had happened to them, what this sudden thing was that had come into their lives.

She would be at work now, and as the mine was forty miles from town, it might be hours before she knew of the cave-in and even longer before she knew who was trapped below. It would be her tragedy as well as his. Joe cursed. Tomorrow they would have gone to the doctor. He was reliable, Frank had told him, a good man and not a quack.

Big Frank knew about Mary. He knew that with every drive of the pick it would be a closer thing for her. There were but four of them here, underground, but outside were Mary and Bert’s wife and kids. It would be a close thing, any way it was looked at. He, Joe, could take it. He had never done anything else, but Mary was in a strange town with no friends, and unless they got to the doctor—

They were fools to have gone ahead when they knew they were taking a chance, but nobody expected anything like this. He had worked in mines most of his life and no trouble until now, and then the roof fell in. The whole damned mountain came down—or so it seemed. When he heard the crash, his first thought was for Mary. He was trapped here, but she was trapped out there, and she was alone.

“Better take a rest,” Frank said. “We’ve got some time.”

Joe sat down, and Bert looked across at him. “We could work in the dark,” he suggested. “That flame eats up air.”

Frank shook his head. “If you can’t see, there’s too much waste effort. You’ve got to see where the pick goes. Try it with the light a little longer.”

Joe’s eyes went to Frank. The big man lay tense and still, gripping the rock under his hand. He was in agony, Joe knew it and hated it. Frank was his friend.

“Will we make it, Frank?” He was thinking of Mary. What would she do? What could she do? How could she handle it alone? It wasn’t as if they were married. “Think we’ll make it?”

“We’ll make it,” Frank said. “We’ll make it, all right.”

“Listen!” Bert sat up eagerly. “I think I hear them! Wasn’t that the sound of a pick?”

They listened, every muscle tense. There was no sound. Then, far away, some muck shifted. Frank doused the light, and darkness closed in, silent and heavy like the dead, dead air. There was no vibrancy here, no sense of living.

They heard Joe get up, heard the heavy blows of the pick. He worked on and on, his muscles aching with weariness. Each blow and each recovery was an effort. Then Bert spoke, and they heard them change places. Standing once more, Bert could feel the difference. It was much harder to breathe; his lungs labored, and his heart struggled against the walls of his chest, as if to break through. Once he stopped and held a hand over it, frightened.

Long since they had thrown the first two picks aside, their points worn away. They might have to return to them, but now they were using another, sharper pick. They were standing in a hole now. Once a flake of rock fell, and Bert held himself, expecting a crash. It did not come.

Rody moved suddenly. Frank lit the light with a brush of his palm. Rody looked at him, then reached for the pick. “Let me have it,” Rody said. “Hell, it’s better than sittin’ there suckin’ my thumb. Give me the pick.”

Bert passed it to him; then he staggered to the muck pile and fell, full length, gasping with great throat-rasping gasps.

Rody swung the pick, attacking the bottom of the hole savagely. Sweat ran into his eyes, and he swung, attacking the rock as if it were a flesh-and-blood enemy, feeling an exultant fury in his blows.

Once he stopped to take five, and looking over at Frank, he said, “How goes it, big boy?”

“Tolerable,” Frank said. “You’re a good man, Rody.”

Rody swelled his chest, and the pick swung easily in his big hands. All of them were lying down now because the air was better close to the muck.

“Hear anything?” Bert asked. “How long will it take them to reach us, Frank?”

“Depends on how much it caved.” They had been over this before, but it was hope they needed, any thread of it. Even talking of rescue seemed to bring it nearer. The numbness was all gone now, and his big body throbbed with pain. He fought it, refusing to surrender to it, trying to deny it. He held the pain as though it were some great beast he must overcome.

Suddenly Joe sat up. “Say! What became of the air line for the machine?”

They stared at each other, shocked at their forgetting. “Maybe it ain’t busted,” Bert said.

Stumbling in his eagerness, Joe fell across the muck, bumping Frank as he did so, jerking an involuntary grunt from him. Then Joe fell on his knees and began clawing rocks away from where the end of the pipe should be, the pipe that supplied compressed air for drilling. He found the pipe and cleared the vent, unscrewing the broken hose to the machine. Trembling, he turned the valve. Cool air shot into the room, and as they breathed deeply, it slowly died away to nothing.

“It will help,” Joe said. “Even if it was a little, it will help.”

“Damned little,” Rody said, “but you’re right, Joe. It’ll help.”

“How deep are you?” Frank asked. He started to shift his body and caught himself with a sharp gasp.

“Four feet—maybe five. She’s tough going.”

Joe lay with his face close to the ground. The air was close and hot, every breath a struggle. When he breathed, he seemed to get nothing. It left him gasping, struggling for air. The others were the same. Light and air were only a memory now, a memory of some lost paradise.

How long had they been here? Only Frank had a watch, but it was broken, so there was no way of calculating the time. It seemed hours since that crash. Somehow it had been so different from what he had expected. He had believed it would come with a thundering roar, but there was just a splintering sound, a slide of muck, a puff of wind that put their lights out, then a long slide, a trickling of sand, a falling stone. They had lacked even the consolation of drama.

Whatever was to come of it would not be far off now. Whatever happened must be soon. There came no sound, no breath of moving air, only the thick, sticky air and the heat. They were all panting now, gasping for each breath.

Rody sat down suddenly, the pick slipping from his fingers.

“Let me,” Joe said.

He swung the pick, then swung it again.

When he stopped, Bert said, “Did you hear something?”

They listened, but there was no sound.

“Maybe they ain’t tryin’,” Rody said. “Maybe they think we’re dead.

“Can you imagine Tom Chambers spendin’ his good money to get us out of here?” Rody said. “He don’t care. He can get a lot of miners.”

Joe thought of those huge, weighted timbers in the Big Stope. Nothing could have held that mass when it started to move. Probably the roof of the Big Stope had collapsed. Up on top there would be a small crowd of waiting people now. Men, women, and children. Still, there wouldn’t be so many as in Nevada that time. After all, Bert was the only one down here with children.

But suppose others had been trapped? Why were they thinking they were the only ones?

The dull thud of the pick sounded again. That was Rody back at work. He could tell by the power. He listened, his mind lulled into a sort of hypnotic twilight where there was only darkness and the sound of the pick. He heard the blows, but he knew he was dying. It was no use. He couldn’t fight it any longer.

Suddenly the dull blows ceased. Rody said, “Hey! Listen!” He struck again, and it was a dull sound, a hollow sound.

“Hell!” Rody said. “That ain’t no ten feet!”

“Let’s have some light over here,” Rody said, “Frank—?”

He took the light from Frank’s hand. The light was down to a feeble flicker now, no longer the proud blade of light that had initially stabbed at the darkness.

Rody peered, then passed the lamp back to Frank.

“There should be a staging down there,” Frank’s voice was clear. “They were running a stopper off it to put in the overhead rounds.”

Rody swung, then swung again, and the pick went through. It caught him off balance, and he fell forward, then caught himself. Cool air was rushing into the drift end, and he took the pick and enlarged the hole.

Joe sat up. “God!” he said. “Thank God!”

“Take it easy, you guys, when you go down,” Frank said. “That ladder may have been shaken loose by blasting or the cave-in. The top of the ladder is on the left-hand side of the raise. You’ll have to drop down to the staging, though, and take the ladder from there. It’ll be about an eight- or nine-foot drop.”

He tossed a small stone into the hole, and they heard it strike against the boards down below. The flame of the light was bright now as more air came up through the opening. Frank stared at them, sucking air into his lungs.

“Come on, Rody,” Joe said. “Lend a hand. We’ve got to get Frank to a doctor.”

“No.” Frank’s voice was impersonal. “You can’t get me down to that platform and then down the ladder. I’d bleed to death before you got me down the raise. You guys go ahead. When they get the drift opened up will be time enough for me. Or maybe when they can come back with a stretcher. I’ll just sit here.”

“But—” Joe protested.

“Beat it,” Frank said.

Bert lowered himself through the opening and dropped. “Come on!” he called. “It’s okay!”

Rody followed. Joe hesitated, mopping his face, then looked at Frank, but the big man was staring sullenly at the dark wall.

“Frank—” Joe stopped. “Well, gee—”

He hesitated, then dropped through the hole. From the platform he said, “Frank? I wish—”

His boots made small sounds descending the ladder.

The carbide light burned lower, and the flame flickered as the fuel ran low. Big Frank’s face twisted as he tried to move; then his mouth opened very wide, and he sobbed just once. It was all right now. There was no one to hear. Then he leaned back, staring toward the pile of muck, his big hands relaxed and empty.

“Nobody,” he muttered. “There isn’t anybody, and there never was.”

O
LD
D
OC
Y
AK

When I reached San Pedro, I was seventeen, passing as twenty-four, and I’d been on my own for two and a half years. I’d skinned dead cattle in West Texas, worked on a ranch in New Mexico, done assessment work on mining claims in Arizona, worked a few weeks with a circus, and had ridden freight trains from El Paso to the Gulf. From there I’d gone to sea, to the West Indies and Europe. At various places where I’d passed through or worked, I’d fought in the ring eleven times and outside the ring twice as often. Being a stranger in town can be rough
.

In San Pedro I had to wait for a ship, so I did whatever came to hand, which wasn’t much. Times were hard, and there were ten men for every job, few of which lasted for more than a few hours. The home guards had all the good jobs, and what we outsiders got was just the temporary or fill-in jobs
.

Rough painting or bucking rivets in the shipyards, swamping on a truck, or working “standby” on a ship were all a man could find. It was not enough. We all missed meals and slept wherever we could. The town was filled with drifting, homeless men, mostly seamen from all the countries in the world. Sometimes I slept in empty boxcars, in abandoned buildings or in the lumber piles on the old E.K. Wood lumber dock
.

There is a neat little bunch of shops on the edge of the ship channel in San Pedro called Port o’ Call, but it stands where that lumber dock once stood and where the ships were where the steam schooners used to discharge their deck loads of lumber brought down from Aberdeen, Gray’s Harbor, or Coos Bay up on the northwest coast. Sometimes those piles of lumber were so placed that they formed a small cave, a shelter from the rain. I used to wrap newspapers under my coat and sleep there with a soft rain falling and the sounds of traffic on the channel
.

Being a seaman with seaman’s papers, I sometimes went aboard those steam schooners hunting work and usually managed to stay for a meal. I remember many of them with affection, although some of the names have faded from memory. There were the Yellowstone, the
Catherine G. Sudden
, and of course, the
Humboldt.
Long after my own experience with the
Humboldt
I heard one of those stories that every seaman enjoys
.

What the captain’s name was, I do not recall, but I knew him slightly. One day I was reciting something by Robert W. Service to a couple of acquaintances, and suddenly a line would not come to me. Then a voice from behind me supplied the line. It was the captain of the
Humboldt.
I thanked him, and after that we spoke when passing. The story I am about to tell was another thing
.

The
Humboldt
had only the one captain in all her years at sea, and when the ship was retired, the captain retired, also. It was taken to a place (at Terminal Island, I believe) and tied up there to be finally dismantled, but on the night its captain died, the old ship broke its moorings and started out to sea
.