Katerina's Wish (13 page)

WITH KURATKO
making his presence known, my house once again drew visitors, the children bringing gifts of worms and grasshoppers so they could watch him strut and crow. I even saw Mr. Johnson pass by once, craning his neck toward my backyard. I stayed out of sight, but afterward when I thought about it, I felt a small satisfaction that he was worried enough to come take a look for himself.

For the next two weeks, everything went back to normal, but with more anticipation than usual, for we had one hen brooding on eggs. Mark said it would take about three weeks before they would hatch. Counting down the days in my head, I wished it would all go a bit faster. I was so eager for the new arrivals to my flock that it was nearly all I thought about, even as I washed and ironed clothes, kneaded bread dough, or endured Mr. Johnson's glares and insults at the store.

July arrived. There were only two or three days left in my reckoning, and I had started checking regularly to see if the eggs
had hatched. I was in the garden with my sisters, thinking as always about my new chicks and planning for how I would feed them, when the air was split by a long, loud screech of metal on metal that raked along my spine like fingernails on slate.

Momma appeared in the back doorway. “What on earth?”

Our eyes locked in the horror of recognition as a muffled boom shook the earth. The mine!

I dropped my hoe and began running, my mother and sisters beside me. We weren't the only ones. Within minutes the streets were filled with other wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters, all running for the mine, all wearing the same expressions of dread.

A choking cloud of dust and smoke was roiling out of the open shaft and enveloping the gathering crowd. It smelled of coal and dirt, burning rubber, and hot metal. We joined a crowd of women gathering near the great framework of the hoist. The thick cables that hauled the mesh cage of the lift into and out of the shaft had snapped, and raw-edged tangles of wire jammed the huge gears of the hoist. Ropes of cable dangled from the framework, sweeping in slowing arcs over the shaft. Beside the shaft, which should have been obscured by the lift but now gaped open, was a small booth where the lift operator manned the levers to raise and lower the lift. It was considered to be a better job than blasting through rock in the deep tunnels below, and the man who held the job was considered lucky. Today that luck had run out. The body of the hoist operator lay crumpled over his levers, his neck twisted back into an impossible position, his body gouged and scored where the broken cables had whipped him as they ripped loose. Four or five other men were sprawled on the ground nearby, gashed and bloodied by the cables, one of them screaming in pain.

My hand went to my mouth to hold back the rising fear and nausea. Crowds were gathering around the bodies, including women crying out their husbands' names. As the man's screams sank to moans, I wrenched my eyes away. Death, I thought, should not be a public spectacle.

My mother had drawn my sisters' faces into her skirts so they couldn't see the carnage. I wished I was small enough for someone to do the same for me. Momma's face was gray and her lips were pressed so tightly together that they were turning blue. I stepped to her and put my arm around her waist, though I'm not sure who I was trying to comfort. She caught my hand in hers and squeezed, her own fear turning her grip into a vise.

“He wasn't on it. He wasn't on it,” she said, as if trying to reassure me, but I knew it was really a prayer.

I looked again at the broken hoist cables and let the same prayer run through my mind. The lift, a mesh cage that lowered men into the mine and brought them back to the surface when their shifts ended, must have dropped when the cables snapped. How far had it dropped, and who had been on it? Or beneath it? I remembered the muffled boom somewhere far underground, and knew that more bodies would be coming out of the mine.

Indifferent to the scene, the mine's automatic whistle blew, reminding all of us that the shift had been changing. All the men were either entering or leaving the mine at this hour. Anyone could have been on or near the lift. Anyone. Papa, or Karel, or Mark.

I looked desperately through the men still on the surface. They were mostly clean—men on the night shift, reporting for duty and not yet into the mine. Already their wives and families were finding them, hugging and crying with relief, but there
was no such relief for me. None of the faces I loved could be found.

Old Jan hobbled up beside us.

“Where are Karel and Mark?” I blurted out, hoping against hope they were late to work today and still at home.

He shook his head, then tipped it toward the mine. Around us, a grim silence was spreading through the crowd, though I could hear women whispering “trapped” or “no other way out.” I could hear men's names, too, names of husbands, brothers, and fathers, spoken like prayers.

I said nothing. My lips were tightening down just like my mother's, and my own determination was all channeling into that one, fervent hope. Papa wasn't on it. None of them were on it!

An alarm bell was clanging now, and mine officials were arriving from their fine houses and offices at the bottom of the hill. They kept well away from the open shaft and the settling dust that might soil their fine black jackets and waistcoats. Workers were gathering around the open shaft, looking down it, and men were climbing into the mangled gear housings of the hoist to examine the damage. Without the hoist, they wouldn't be bringing anyone out of the mine. The crowd of women continued to grow.

We stood for some time, watching and waiting. Finally an official came and pushed us back to a safe distance. He said they were doing all they could, that we would be taken care of, and that we should go home. I did my best to translate his words into Czech for my mother, just as other daughters were doing in Welsh, Polish, Greek, and Spanish. Despite so many tongues, we all wore a universal expression of fear. Questions were thrown back at the man in many languages, but he had
no answers. We refused to go home, so we were left once again to our silent vigil.

“Trina,” Momma said, her words stiff and tight in her throat, “take your sisters home and feed them. Then get them to bed. There is no need for them to be here.”

Although I wanted to stay, I did not protest. I understood her meaning. This was no place for children. They deserved to keep whatever bit of innocence life here still left them. I wanted to be useful in whatever small way I could, so I gently pulled their hands loose from my mother's skirts and began walking toward home.

The town seemed deserted—the houses mostly empty and unlit. I could smell burned food and coffee from more than one house we passed—many wives had been preparing supper and left it, forgotten on their stoves. Whether we knew the families or not, we went inside and removed the scorched pots from the stove tops. I was glad to do something to fight off the helplessness I felt.

Our own supper had been on the warmer when the accident had happened and so was fit to eat, but we were not fit to eat it. I filled three bowls with stew and put them on the table, but we only picked at it, and in the end it went back into the pot. Without our usual bickering, we washed our bowls and put them away. Afterward we sat briefly on the porch in the cool air, but the unnatural silence of the camp weighed too heavily upon us.

“Perhaps we should get ready for bed,” I said.

“When will Papa be home, Trina?” Holena asked.

“I don't know.”

“Will he be here when we wake up?”

“I don't know, Holena,” I said, putting my arm around her
and pulling her to me. It was all the comfort I could offer, and yet it was so little.

Aneshka burrowed her hand into mine. “Say he will,” she begged in a small voice, her usual sassiness gone. I did not know what to say.

“Come on, let's get ready for bed. Fretting won't do any good,” I said.

I helped my sisters into their nightgowns and together we said our prayers with extra fervor. We lay down on top of the covers, for the summer evening was hot. I stared at the ceiling as the room grew dim, afraid to close my eyes and see again the bloody body of the hoist operator, or the dying man on the ground. Neither of my sisters were sleeping either. I turned and looked at Aneshka. She was curled into a tight ball, her eyes squeezed shut. Holena pressed her small body up against me.

“Will you tell us a story?” she asked.

I thought for a moment, but I couldn't make my mind focus, so I told her the first story that I could think of. “Once upon a time, there was a poor fisherman and his wife,” I began. Holena closed her eyes as I told the story, and by the time I finished, she was breathing in soft, steady breaths. As for Aneshka, she hadn't moved at all, but when I came to the end, she whispered something. I tilted my head closer to hear.

“I would wish for Papa to be all right,” she said.

“Me too,” I answered softly.

Tears squeezed from between her closed eyelids and slid down her cheeks. Then suddenly she was convulsing with sobs.

I rubbed her back and told her to be brave, but she only sobbed harder until she at last cried herself into a shuddering sleep.

When both girls were peaceful, I rose silently from the bed
and dressed again. I took the pot of stew, the bowls from the kitchen, and blankets from my mother's bed, and I returned to the mine.

Bright gaslights illuminated the area around the open shaft, and a crowd of men was gathered around the hoist, but I could not tell what they were doing. I could not keep my eyes from trailing back to the hoist controls, so I was relieved that the mangled body of the operator had been removed.

On the edge of the bright light the crowd of women still waited. Among them, I found Momma and Old Jan.

“You must sit down, Momma,” I said. “You must save your strength.” It was the sort of thing I had heard people say in a crisis, though I didn't know what she had to save her strength for. I didn't want to think about that.

I coaxed the two of them away from the crowd a bit and they sat. For each, I filled a bowl of stew, but they had no more appetite than my sisters or me.

“Is there any news?” I asked Old Jan. He shook his head. “The hoist is ruined and the lift cage is gone. They won't be getting anyone out without it. They're trying to get men out of the top levels with ropes and pulleys, but most of the men are in the deeper levels. The top played out years ago.”

“But they have to get them out!” I said.

“They've telegraphed the head office to get a new lift down here, but it will take some time. The gears in the hoist are stripped, too. It will take three or four days to get the parts here and installed, I think.”

“Four days!” I said.

Old Jan squeezed my hand. “Now listen, your papa is a strong man and a hard worker; he'll be all right. He wasn't one to leave his shift before the whistle blew. He wasn't one to
crowd by the lift to get out at the first chance, either. He's probably got some food and water left in his lunch bucket. I imagine he's already bunked down for the night and is sound asleep.”

I smiled weakly at Old Jan. I appreciated his effort, but no matter how much I wanted to believe, I knew this was just another one of his stories—he couldn't know for sure.

“And Karel and Mark,” I said. “Their dinner buckets were full, so they will be fine too, right?”

“That's a good girl. That is how we must think,” Old Jan said, but I saw the pain of uncertainty in his eyes. I looked at Momma. She gave a little warning shake of her head that I knew meant I shouldn't ask, and I pieced together the rest. The lift must have been taking men into the shaft when the cable broke. That meant Papa would not have been on it, but Karel or Mark might have been. And no one on it could have survived. I fought back my tears, but they were coming all the same.

“There, there,” Old Jan said. “We know nothing for certain yet. We have to keep hoping. Keep believing.”

I nodded and wiped my eyes, but not even I could stretch hope that far. This was a far cry from wishing for a few chickens.

Old Jan gave a thankful smile and wrapped one of the blankets I had brought around my mother's shoulders. She clasped it there with one hand, but she said nothing. We sat with her in silence for a long time. Finally, Old Jan patted my hand.

“Go back and get some sleep, Trina. Your sisters may need you. Nothing more is going to happen here tonight.”

“Then we should all go home,” I said.

“I'm not leaving,” Momma said, her tone fierce.

“I'll stay here with her, Trina, until she is ready to go home.”

I didn't want to leave Momma there, but I finally returned alone to our dark house. It felt empty, even as I lay between my
two sisters and listened to their steady breathing. The absence of my parents seemed to fill the house.

I did not sleep much that night. I woke before dawn, at the time Papa usually set off for work. I lay half asleep and waited for the automatic whistle at the mine. It blew, jerking me awake to an empty house, no cooking smells coming from the kitchen. I remembered then, and fear overwhelmed me again, just like it had the first time. I turned to see my parents' bed still empty and unused.

I rose quietly and went to the kitchen. It felt strange to be doing normal chores—lighting the stove, making coffee, measuring out oats—in a world that was no longer normal. And yet, what else could I do?

When my sisters were dressed and fed, I left them to do the morning chores and I took my pan of oatmeal and the coffee pot to Momma and Old Jan at the mine. All was quiet there. No one was working near the shaft or the hoist. The mine officials had declared that nothing more could be done until a new lift was installed, and the workers who were not trapped in the mine had all been sent home. The only people there now were the small clusters of women who had settled into camps on the margins of the scene. In the full daylight I could see just how many there were. The accident, happening as it did when the new shift was entering and the old had not all come out, had trapped more than a hundred men in the mine.