Katerina's Wish (14 page)

“If nothing is happening here, why not come home?” I said when Old Jan had explained everything to me.

“We will wait here for our husbands,” Momma said. “We will not go home and let them forget the urgency of the situation.”

I looked around and saw the grim determination on the face of not only my mother, but of the other women scattered across
the hillside. It was an expression all too common to miners' wives. I could feel it settling onto my own features as well. “Then let me stay today, Momma. I want to help.”

Momma smiled at me, one small flash, before her face turned hard again. “You are a big help, Trina, but I need you most to take care of your sisters.”

I would rather have stayed, but this was not the time to argue with my mother. Once the meager breakfast had been eaten, I returned home.

For two long days, the routine was the same. If Momma and Old Jan slept at all, they did so beside the mine. Holena and Aneshka wanted to help as well, so we started each day with our chores. The n we gathered all the food we could from our garden, our henhouse, and our kitchen. We baked and cooked meals enough to feed not just Momma and Old Jan, but other women, too, who were holding their vigil at the mine. They opened their larders to us so we could prepare pots of food and coffee for ten or fifteen of the women from the Bohemian part of town. Under other circumstances such gatherings would have felt festive, but nothing could dispel the oppressive quiet.

The afternoon of the third day, my sisters and I were in the kitchen shaping dumplings when we heard the whistle of a train approaching camp. With the mine shut down, the train that transported the coal had been silent too. I paused and listened to be sure of what I had heard. It blew again and now I could also hear the chug of the engine. My heart pounded with urgent excitement. This would be the new lift! At last! I dropped the dough and, not even taking time to clean the flour from my hands, I ran to the mine. I was not the only one. Aneshka and Holena came with me, and the streets were once again filling with people—not just women, but men, too, pulling
up suspenders or putting on work gloves as they went.

At the mine, men and boys were assembled into a work crew before the train came to a stop. They got to work at once, unloading the new cables and gears for the hoist, and the parts for a new lift. A mine official came to the hillside where the women were camped and told them to go home, but they refused. In the end, the officials set up a rope barrier that we were required to stay behind.

The grim silence of the past two days was now replaced by urgent action, as every able-bodied man in camp went to work getting the hoist operating and the mine open. Wives and daughters, including me, took turns carrying water and coffee to the work crews so the usual water boys could be put to other tasks. Lights were again set up, and work continued through the night. No one quit when their shift was over. Every man there knew that it could have been him trapped below—that it could be him next time.

The new lift was in place by sunrise, and a cheer went up when the lever was pulled and the hoist gears jolted into action, pulling the cables tight. Still, the ordeal was far from over. The shaft had been damaged or blocked in places by the erratic course of the falling lift, so the descent of the new lift into the mine was gradual. At each level men got off the lift to clear a section of the shaft below before it could descend farther.

It was past noon before they raised the twisted wreckage of the original lift to the surface, and with it, the first of the dead. Like the lift, those who had been on it were crushed beyond recognition. They were laid out by the train track, where ashenfaced women filed by, looking for a familiar patched boot or shirtsleeve to know for certain. The lucky ones came away having recognized nothing; the unlucky collapsed in despair.

Momma ordered me to stay at the rope with my sisters while she and Old Jan joined the line. I was glad to be spared a closer view of the dead, but I could not help watching as Old Jan and Momma moved slowly past them. I did not breathe until I saw Old Jan shake his head and turn away. My hopes that Karel and Mark had not been on the lift rose, and I told myself again that they were all right. They had to be. They were with Papa now, cheering at the sight of the new lift arriving to bring them home!

My anticipation was not to be satisfied so quickly, though. As the afternoon passed and the day grew hotter, we remained in the crowd, watching. Men had been working on three levels in the mine, and it was being cleared of both the living and the dead from the top down. As the day progressed, the line of bodies by the train track grew, and the crowd of waiting women dwindled. Some slipped under the rope and ran, screaming with joy to embrace a man as he emerged, blinking and squinting into the daylight. Others crouched, weeping, beside the tracks, their shawls or aprons over their heads. Those of us still behind the rope waited in tense silence.

By dusk, only a handful of women remained behind the rope, but we were still among them. The lift rose to the surface once again, and the gates opened to pour out more men. One of them carried a body toward the train track. I saw Martina— who had baked a cake for her Charlie just a few short weeks ago—gasp and go white. She seemed to shrink as she watched. Then, with a soundless sob, she pulled her shawl over her head and walked slowly toward the tracks. The knot of fear tightened around my heart, squeezing out my breath. Charlie had been on Papa's crew.

I turned my eyes back to the lift, now descending smoothly
into the shaft. The gears of the hoist stopped turning, indicating the lift had stopped somewhere far below. We waited in silence. A wagon clattered up the street and stopped by the train, driven by Mr. Johnson. Inside it were stacked coffins, their pine boards still fresh and smelling of sap. Mr. Johnson jumped down from his seat and approached the mourning wives and mothers, his sales ledger in his hand. His face was composed in a respectful expression, but it looked too practiced to be sincere. I turned away feeling sick, unsure I could bear one thing more.

Just then, the hoist clanked into action and the cables began to move. The handful of us still behind the rope drew in a collective breath and held it as the lift came into view and stopped, the cage filled with more grimy men. More women slipped under the rope as the men staggered out. The last to come out were Papa and Karel, carrying between them a limp and bloodied body.

Mark.

MOMMA, ANESHKA,
and Holena were under the rope in an instant, but Old Jan stood frozen, staring at the still form of his youngest son. The same shock and fear rooted me beside him. I took his hand, and together we tried to go forward, but it was like trudging through deep water.

Momma and my sisters were already with the men, Momma taking the tragic burden from Papa while my sisters clung to his legs. At once Papa collapsed to his knees, holding the little girls to him.

Momma turned, and I knew she was looking for me.

“Quickly, Trina, go to Jan's and prepare hot water and bandages. Quickly!”

The desperation in her voice broke me from my trance. Water and bandages? Surely it was too late for that. Then I saw Papa on his knees and all the fear came back—he must be hurt too! I let go of Old Jan's hand. I turned and ran, as my Momma had told me to. I wanted to run forever—run from the pain and
from my regret that I had never told Mark how I felt. But I had a job to do, and the living still needed me. Old Jan's house was not far.

Once inside, I lit the stove and began heating water. Then I found clean rags and tore them into strips. I had a mound of them ready when Momma and Karel came through the door with Mark between them, Papa and Old Jan hobbling behind. I saw now that Karel wore no shirt or suspenders. He had fastened his own shirt as a bandage across his brother's chest and secured it there with his suspenders to stanch the bleeding. The makeshift bandage was now brown and stiff with dried blood.

They laid Mark on his bed before collapsing themselves into chairs. I ventured a glance into Mark's face, and to my amazement I saw him wince with pain as they settled him onto the mattress.

“He's alive!” I gasped.

Momma gave me a surprised look. “Of course he's alive—why did you think we needed bandages?”

“I thought— Oh, Papa!” I cried, and like a child threw myself into his arms, sobbing with relief.

Papa held me, patting my hair. “There's my good girl,” he said. “Now get me a drink of water—I'm parched!”

I dried my eyes and hurried to fill and refill cups of water for Karel and Papa as they drank deeply. Old Jan, meantime, was feeling his younger son's forehead and cutting the suspender straps to remove the bandage.

“We were the last group off the lift before the cable broke,” Karel explained. “We were still signing out tools with the foreman when the lift came crashing down. A piece of flying metal caught him across the chest. Something hit his leg, too. He's lost a lot of blood, Papa.”

I went to the bedroom doorway and watched while old Jan peeled back the bloody bandage. Mark groaned and clenched the sheets as the stiff bandage pulled the scab from the wound. New blood bubbled up through the ragged gash that ran for eight inches across his chest.

Papa staggered to his feet. “I'll fetch the doctor,” he said.

“Nonsense, Tomas,” Old Jan said. “You're hardly fit to be standing yourself, and the doctor has worse than this to attend to.” Old Jan turned back to his son and probed the edges of the gash with his fingers before speaking again. “You are lucky, Marek. If it had caught you two inches lower, it would have torn your stomach and we'd have lost you. This is only skin and muscle. Trina, bring me the water and those rags.”

Together we bathed Mark's wounds. Then I did what I could to soothe away the sweat from his brow while Old Jan stitched the edges of the gash shut with a length of thread and a sewing needle that he had heated in a candle flame. I might have emptied my stomach at the sight of the needle pulling through Mark's skin had I eaten anything that day. As it was, I swallowed my nausea and tried to find comforting words for Mark until he passed out from the pain.

When the wound was sewn up, we smeared it with a salve my mother provided and wrapped it with the clean rag bandages. Then Old Jan inspected Mark's leg, which was swollen and blue at the ankle. Another deep gash cut to the bone across the front of his leg, just above his boot. Mark jerked back to consciousness as his father removed the boot, torn beyond repair by whatever had cut his leg.

“Lucky again,” Old Jan said with a look of relief. “If it hadn't been for your sturdy boot, you might have lost this foot. As it is, it's just a deep cut, not even a broken bone.”

I stayed beside Mark until he slept, then I went to the kitchen, where our families were eating supper. I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to finish my meal. My sisters, mother, and I cleared the dishes while my father staggered off to home. When the dishes were all washed, Momma, Aneshka, and Holena followed. I looked in on Mark once again. I thought a bit of color had returned to his face, but I couldn't be sure.

“He'll be all right,” Old Jan said.

I jumped in surprise. I hadn't realized he was standing at my shoulder.

“Are you sure?”

“I've seen men survive worse, and he's as strong as a horse. The only danger now is infection, but we'll take good care of him. Now go on home and get some rest yourself.”

Reassured by his calm, I agreed. It was well past dark as I walked the short distance from Old Jan's house to my own. With each step my weariness grew heavier until I was stumbling across the threshold. I stepped into the bedroom and breathed in the fullness of my family, all of them here and asleep. With a simple, silent prayer of thanks, I settled myself beside my sisters and slipped at once into a dreamless peace.

I slept until the sun was high in the eastern sky and the air was becoming warm and stale. My sisters were still asleep, so I slipped quietly out of bed and padded barefoot into the kitchen. Momma was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and darning stockings.