The Threshold (15 page)

Shorty Miller limped along behind Knut. “Told you, after them angels in the cookhouse give warning, it’s dangerous crewing with that big bastard.”

The word “bastard” came just as Talse had lifted the lamp to Bram’s expression, and the foreman pursed his lips at the reaction he witnessed. “Shut up your head, Shorty, or I’ll have the kid knock out what’s left of your teeth.”

“She’s caved,” Bram said stupidly. What difference did it make if someone called him a bastard when he was as good as dead anyway?

“Another engineering report, Mr. O’Connell? We’d best go have us a look then, hadn’t we?”

The stull they’d all been so suspicious of had held fine. They tramped on past the station, all crowding as close as they could to Talse’s light. The dust hung unmoving now. Bram put his handkerchief to his nose to breathe through. Piles of earth had sloughed to the floor, narrowing their passage and forcing them to spread out more than they wanted. They came to the new end of the drift before they came to the crosscut where the others had worked. Rubble heaped tight to the roof. Knut played the light from top to bottom, side to side. Water covered the tracks, but the air pipe stuck out broken off and clear of the water.

“Think the rest made it?” Shorty asked. No one answered; no one knew. He knelt to the pipe and sniffed, put a hand over the jagged break and tapped his signal with a crowbar. The silence and the crew waited for an answer that didn’t come.

“Too soon.” Knut Talse coughed and the light jumped around on the wall of debris. “They have to organize a rescue. Meantime we’d best plan.”

“Want me to start mucking this?” Bram needed something to do. He kept picturing how cowardly he’d look dying, and Ma’am’s stricken whiteness when she heard of it.

“Where would you muck it to? There is more there than just a little plug, boy. Could go as far as the hoist even, if George and the boys brought it down driving the crosscut. Take days to reach us. You save your strength for living long enough to greet ’em when they get here.” Knut led them back to the station and collected the remaining candles and snuffs from each man. He sorted and stacked all the food in one locker. Then, back a ways where the ground was good and the drift widened, he set them to building two platforms from the timbers the bohunks had been using for drift sets. They nailed a cap box to an upright timber between the platforms to hold a communal light and an empty powder case at one end of each platform for a thunder mug. The spent carbide from lamps that had been dumped near the lockers would serve for deodorizing these crude privies.

When their homes were finished there was room for each man to stretch out and stay up away from the water. Knut portioned each man a bite of sandwich and sent Shorty up the drift with the lamp to signal on the pipe again. “Tell ’em we are fourteen left here.”

Bram had been numb and unthinking while they worked and planned for their survival, but now as he sat with his back against the wet wall in the smothering black waiting for Shorty and the light, the full weight of dread was upon him. He’d always known things such as this happened in the mines. But he’d never really believed it could happen to him.

Shorty came slopping down the drift. “They’re comin’ for us, Talse, but they’re clear back at the hoist like you thought.” No signals from the rest of their crew. It could take weeks to reach here if they had to spile as they went in unsure ground. “John O’Connell’s at the other end.” He handed Bram the lamp. “Better go let him know you’re alive.”

“And don’t steal none of the food,” Knut warned.

But for once Bram wasn’t hungry. The light danced in his trembling fingers as he made his way to the compressed-air line. He bent to tap it lightly but there was no response. He tapped his signal again, two taps—a pause—and three taps. He put his ear right down to the pipe and John O’Connell’s signal came to him faintly. And then Uncle Henry’s. And some of the others he should have recognized but was too distraught to remember. Kneeling in water, holding the lamp carefully, Bram leaned his forehead against the new wall formed by the caved-in roof and sobbed like Uncle Henry had when he brought news of Aunt Lilly.

Pa and the others would work night and day to reach them. When the word was passed of miners trapped, hard-rock stiffs from all over the San Juans would be riding the tram buckets to Alta to lend a hand. There’d be hand drilling and machine drilling going on side by side and around the clock, and more men in the tunnels than could be put to good use. But they’d have to timber some as they went and the level above would have to be shored so as not to come down on this one anymore, and who could say what had happened above that in this rabbit warren of a mountain? And who was to say this cave-in was to be the last? Bram had heard stories of more rescuers than rescuees perishing when she caved again.

The food and candles would last awhile, but not nearly long enough. Water they had in excess and a man could live a long time on water alone. But first he needed air and Bram knew their greatest danger was the buildup of mine gases in this closed-off part of the drift. And then there was still water miraculously working its way through the plug in the passage, as well as dripping through cracks everywhere. How long before it filled up the workings below and stopped draining off, began to fill up their “home” until it drowned them all?

Bram expected a cruel razzing when he rejoined the others. Everyone must have heard his cowardice. But Gus patted Bram’s knee when he sprawled on the platform and old Sully gave him a wink and a nod. Knut put the lamp in the cap box nailed to the upright beam to hold back the black for all of them. A bohunk walked over and offered Bram a chew off his plug. They were all treating him like the baby he was and Bram was bigger than most of them. The tobacco tasted bitter and hot and made him a little sick.

“Bohunk” was a general term for a wave of immigrants from Central Europe. Their poverty and foreign ways kept them somewhat segregated. Bram had thought they all looked alike, like Chinamen did, but he studied them now and realized this was not so. None as dark as the Italians nor as light as the Swedes, they ran the gamut in between. They were generally on the short and stocky side but within a few days he would learn their distinct and separate identities well.

Knut’s carbide gave out and they started on the snuffs, little candle ends that were left of their work candles, while they had more strength to be up and changing them often, saving the long candles till last. The minute one began to flicker, Shorty or Gus would stand ready with another and light it off the last just as it was about to die so they’d have the full use of it. Knut and Sully would take a shift to spell them and Bram would help keep watch. Once they all slept and a candle went out. They carried wooden matches for lighting work candles but with their soaked clothing and the pervasive wet on the air, none would light. Knut felt his way out to the lockers in the station, where he’d seen some matches at the bottom of a metal dinner pail when he’d gathered up the food. He found one that would light, the rest useless.

Now they had to watch the light closely and it added more tension to the waiting. Sleep would have passed some of the time with less pain, but it was hard to do when worrying that the man assigned the candle would fall asleep. Every few hours Knut sent someone up the drift to tap on the air pipe, so the stiffs would know there was still someone alive to rescue.

Bram lay watching the mica crystals glitter in the candlelight and pretended they were winking stars. The red iron stains in the wall made him think of blood and the green and blue and purple flashes of the copper ores brought to mind Mildred Heisinger. Time dragged slower every hour. The bohunks sang songs and mimed bawdy stories that were funny for a while. Gus told a long story that Bram lost track of but he took comfort in the Swede’s beautiful singsong. The tommyknockers were perfectly still now and Sully said it was because the wee people had given up hope for them. The food began to look funny but didn’t smell yet. Knut ordered them to eat it all so it wouldn’t have to be thrown out. Within half an hour they were every one retching violently.

Bram felt it was his insides having the cave-in this time and that his rib cage must be creaking and wrenching like the timbers in the stull had. The sickness lasted long past the time any of them had anything to heave but his guts. The stench added yet another unwelcome odor to the still, putrefying air.

“Any woman even had known better than to save the food past its spoil time,” Knut blamed himself disgustedly, and leaned out over the platform to gag. “I never knowed nothing about food.” When they all lay helpless and sweating and Gus had managed to hold himself up long enough to light the next-to-last candle off the previous one, a heavy shot from the rescue teams caused a concussion that jolted the platforms and put out the light. There was no way to light another now. “They’re shootin’ that heavy, must be hitting big blocks of solid rock,” Shorty bemoaned the obvious. “Don’t look good for us, no sir.”

Brambaugh O’Connell turned into the eternal darkness to choke on sour juices ripped up from his stomach. Inside himself, he cried out for Ma’am.

17

Next to the alley across the street stood a false-fronted saloon lit to the rafters. It took Aletha a moment to recognize it as the building that was still there but boarded up and moved way back on the lot. A sign announced it as the Belmond, and through its storefront windows she could see a great many black-coated men with little round hats. In fact, it looked like every guy in there had bought his clothes off the same rack. There was a lot of noise coming from the place—shouting, jeering, the rumble of men’s voices, the light ring of women laughing.

A couple stepped out of the Belmond. She wore gray from head to toe, but the way she let the man snuggle her neck and the way she tried to hurry him along made Aletha think she must work in the district. The couple had just crossed the alley when they disappeared, the Belmond went dark and moved back on its lot, the dumpster stood where the Pabst-Milwaukee Bottling Works had been, and the ankle-deep mud turned into the flat baked-hard alley again.

“How’d you do that?” Herm said from behind the screen door. “Just appear out of nowhere like that?”

Aletha and Tracy nearly knocked the dishwasher over in their haste to get inside, and Aletha welcomed the familiar odors of cooked cauliflower and detergent. She handed him the rolled-up paper a boy in knickers had shoved at her instead of the flashlight. Herm held it to the light. “‘Dr. Miles’s number one hundred and fifty specific mixture. Guaranteed a sure cure for gonorrhea and gleet. This preparation is prepared according to the formula and will be found a positive cure. It is perfectly safe and harmless as it contains no poisonous ingredients. Prepared by Bartholomew Holder, Apothecary.’” Herm looked up. “What’s gleet?”

“I went out to find you,” Tracy said to Aletha, “to see if I could spend the night in your car too, but being around you is more excitement than the frail Ledbetter heart can stand.”

“What about your boyfriend? Your apartment?”

“We couldn’t come up with the rent and got kicked out. He skipped, left me owing.” She shrugged matter-of-factly but she was still trembling from their time excursion and looked anything but casual. “He never wanted me, just liked being waited on and getting his rocks off whenever he felt like it.”

“Cree’s got my car,” Aletha said, “but we have the keys to his condo.”

“I think your Cree could use a housekeeper,” Tracy remarked when they entered the condominium at the Pick and Gad.

“Help me put enough of it back together so it’s livable for tonight at least.” The place had obviously been ransacked but Aletha refused to answer Tracy’s questions about it. After they’d restored some order and showered, Aletha made tuna-salad sandwiches and coffee.

“Two girls I know rent one of the old cribs in behind the Senate and Silver Bell. They’re leaving town and I’ve got my name in for that crib.”

“Can you afford it?” Aletha sat on the tiled edge of the empty Jacuzzi and cupped her hands around her hot coffee mug. “Without a roommate?”

“No and I had considered you as a roommate, but if I lived with you in a crib I’d probably have a steady stream of long-dead miners at the door, money in hand and their flies open.”

“I’d pay my share and I even have wheels to take us places.” Aletha hurried to refill Tracy’s coffee cup. “Please?”

“Look, I like you. It’s just you scare the hell out of me.” Tracy took a small packet from her purse. “There’s some high-rollers in town this week. Got this as a tip. Want a toot?”

“Do you know what they cut that stuff with?” And while Tracy snorted a line through a plastic straw, Aletha told how she’d landed in a federal prison.

“You shouldn’t go around talking about that kind of past.” Tracy sounded as if she’d developed a sinus condition and cleared it, all in the space of a sentence. “Nobody would suspect it of you, and what people don’t know about you makes them feel better. About you, I mean.”

Aletha felt uncomfortable and began to babble on about Callie’s cat and how she lost him. And about meeting Jesse and Carl.

Tracy pointed the straw at her. “Life before this time mess started happening must seem pretty dull, even considering prison, huh? I think you get high on the danger of it. I think you’re getting addicted to that high. It’s becoming your toot.” She leaned back, her pupils dilating. “What bothers me is, what are we going to tell Barry? We have to warn him. He could step out the back door of the Senate some night and meet face to face with Wild Bill Hickok or something.”

Cree and the Datsun had not returned by morning. Aletha worried even though he’d told her he might not be back. Whoever searched the condo was not a nice sort of person and Cree’d had blood in his eye when he left. She should have checked in with Renata, but she talked Tracy into helping her search for Charles instead.

“You’re looking in the wrong places,” Tracy said. “You got to put yourself in his place. I can remember how I felt in his time last night. Shit scared. He’s probably hiding in some building, not roaming the alleys. Not out getting high on danger like you would be. Now, there’s some old buildings,” she said when they stood outside the Pick and Gad, and pointed across the empty lots where the Big Swede and the Monte Carlo had stood last night, to the rotting outbuildings behind Mildred Heisinger’s house.