One of Us Page 24

  “What happened?”

  “As hard as it is for a father to speculate about the amorous dealings of his daughter, I think it was what you youngsters call hooking up. I don’t think it was serious for either one of them, but then your mother got pregnant and it became very serious.”

  Tommy reaches across the table and pats my arm when he sees my face fall. No kid who comes from a failed marriage wants to know that he was the reason his parents married in the first place.

  “Did you know Fiona was pregnant with Jack when she and Prosperity got married?” Tommy asks, trying to distract me from my gloominess.

  “No.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the day they met?”

  I look up at him and know he must see the curiosity in my eyes. Could there be a story about Prosperity that I haven’t heard?

  “I don’t think so,”

  Tommy grins, claps his hands together, and leans back in his chair, settling into storytelling mode.

  “Each day on the way to and from the pit, Prosperity and his best mate, Kenny Kelly, and all the rest of the miners were forced to walk by the superintendent’s house,” he begins. “It was a lovely three-story affair with a fresh coat of white paint, a picket fence, and a tree-lined path leading to a front door with a real brass knocker. As they passed, their steps would slow and they’d all stare sullenly at the Welsh name on the mailbox, Llewellyn. How they hated this man. But that’s another story.

  “One particular day, he and Kenny were late heading home and were all alone on the road as they approached the super’s house. A girl was leaving it carrying a sewing basket. She had a sweet face and a fine shape to her.

  “Prosperity asked Kenny who she was. Kenny told him her name was Fiona and she was a maid for a family in Barclay but did sewing for other folks, too. He also thought to add that she was an orphan like Prosperity. He knew his friend would find this fact interesting.

  “Prosperity ran after her and tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

  “‘Don’t waste your time. I have my sights set higher than a boy in the pits. Look at me. What do you see?’ she said to him.

  “‘A beautiful girl with a foul disposition,’ he replied.

  “‘Foul disposition? Just because I don’t want nothing to do with the likes of you? That makes me foul?’

  “‘In my book, yes.’

  “‘You’ve never opened a book in your life.’

  “‘That’s only because I can’t read them. Otherwise, I’d be opening them all the time.’

  “This made Fiona smile.

  “‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.

  “‘Prosperity.’

  “‘What’s the name your mother gave you?’ she persisted.

  “‘My mother died before I was born.’

  “‘Before?’

  “‘Before.’

  “‘Mine died after. What about your da?’

  “‘Never knew him. But I’m named after him. James Michael McNab.’

  “‘I never knew mine either. And I got nothing from him. Not even a name.’

  “‘We’ve got a lot in common then.’

  “‘We got nothing in common except our Irish blood.’

  “‘I’d say that’s enough.’

  “She slowed almost to a stop and gave him a look that made his heart beat faster when he realized the meaning behind it. She was paying attention to him.

  “‘You’re a patriot, then?’ she asked.

  “Jimmy was his own country and owed allegiance to no one else, but at that moment he would have marched off to war against any foe she chose.

  “‘I am,’ he proclaimed.

  “‘I suppose you’re too young to run with the Nellies?’

  “Her question surprised him, not only because he was obviously too young but because people rarely spoke the name of the Nellies out loud and definitely not in front of someone they didn’t know well and could trust completely.

  “‘I am too young,’ he said gravely, ‘but I plan on getting older.’

  “‘Would you think of joining then?’

  Tommy stops. He takes a drink of his coffee and closes his eyes. I wait for him to continue the story. He doesn’t.

  “That’s it?” I ask him.

  “There was more, of course, but it starts to drag after that.”

  “So what is the point of the story?”

  “Does there have to be a point?”

  He gets up from the table and stretches.

  “Are you trying to tell me Prosperity joined the Nellies so he could hook up with Fiona?” I press him.

  “Who knows? Although it’s true Fiona was an avid supporter of the Nellies. She thought they were heroes.”

  The phone rings. Tommy grabs up his cane and hobbles into the other room.

  “It’s for you,” he calls out a moment later. “Brenna Kelly. She sounds upset.”

  My mind flashes to last night and our encounter with Scarlet and her fascination with Moira’s shoes.

  “Hi, Brenna. What can I do for you?”

  “Remember you told me you owed me a favor after I gave you a ride the other day?” she says in a rush. “Well, I have a big one to ask.”

  “I can barely hear you. Is that a siren?”

  “Please, please,” her voice breaks off into a clipped sob. “Can you come to the mine?”

  TOMMY COMES WITH ME. We take his truck. I can tell his concern is greater than he’s willing to admit because he lets me drive.

  An alarm is never a good thing, but at least we both agreed what I heard in the background was the chirp of a police car and not the enormous scream of the town’s siren announcing an accident at a mine.

  Tommy’s heard it several times; I’ve only heard it once. I was sitting in my sophomore English class. It began as a low, moaning wail that rose to a shriek, eerily human yet inhumanly immense, as if the earth itself were crying out in pain.

  We all stood, the terrible sound pulling us to our feet, not knowing if we should run or hide or fight. We instinctively knew it meant death, and we were right.

  Twenty-eight men died that day from an explosion in Lost Creek Mine No. 6, including Moira Kelly’s husband, Dave Rosko’s father, and Nora Daley’s son.

  Tommy doesn’t say a word until we arrive at the mine. Nothing out of the ordinary seems to be happening. One police car and Rafe’s car are here, but there are no fire trucks or ambulances or any other emergency vehicles present.

  Rafe’s talking calmly to a few of the miners I recognize from my run here a few days ago. Billy and Troy are drinking coffee.

  Tommy smiles in relief.

  “It’s nothing. Probably someone broke into the office and stole a few paper clips,” he jokes.

  Then he notices Alphonse Kelly. He and Tommy are good friends even though Alphonse is in his early eighties. He’s one of the “kids” as Tommy calls them who hang out at the union hall, except his health has been failing lately. It takes a lot to get him out of his home these days. Tommy knows this, and the sight of the sickly old man in an ancient military-green Carhartt and flap-eared cap standing off to one side of the others, alone and stoop-shouldered, staring worriedly at the gaping black hole in the side of the snowy hill brings his dread crashing back.

  “What’s Al doing here?” he says.

  He barely lets me park the truck before he opens the door to get out.

  I join Rafe and the other men. Brenna is with them, too.

  The air around them buzzes with the energy required to control their combined panic.

  Brenna seems to relax a little at the sight of me.

  “So what’s this favor I can do for you?” I ask lightly, trying to improve the atmosphere as best I can.

  The four other miners I met bef
ore are here, but I notice both of her brothers are absent.

  “We have a situation,” Rafe answers for her.

  “Rick’s gonna blow up the mine,” the one named Todd says.

  “Don’t say it like that,” J. C. counters. “He’s not gonna do it.”

  Dressed in identical coal-stained blue coveralls, steel-toed rubber boots, and battered miners’ helmets with American flag stickers on the sides, the only way to tell the men apart is by their faces and their height.

  Todd’s the shortest of the four, and the youngest, chubby-cheeked with a mustache and a wad of tobacco under his lip. J.C. is taller, looks to be the oldest, and has shrewd gray eyes and a scar that starts beneath his nose and travels down the middle of his chin like someone began to cut his face in half but thought better of it.

  “Rick’s sitting down there with a bunch of dynamite. He says he’s gonna kill himself by blowing up the mine,” Jamie joins in.

  He’s the tallest, wiry, with a goatee.

  “That way his wife and kids will get his life insurance, plus they can sue Walker Dawes.”

  “How is the financial gain part of the plan supposed to succeed since you all know the truth?” I ask them.

  Shawn, dark-eyed, broad-shouldered with an angular face, speaks for the whole group by folding his arms across his chest and shrugging.

  I instantly understand that none of them would ever rat out their buddy, and their buddy knows this.

  “Rick didn’t want any of us to get hurt so he made us all come back up topside,” J. C. further explains. “We wanted to stay. We figured if we did we could find a way out of it. There’s no way he’d blow up all five of us, but Carl said it has nothing to do with numbers. If Rick turns crazy enough to blow up his brother, he’d have no problem blowing up four more guys, so we might as well go.”

  “It made sense to us,” Todd confirms guiltily.

  “So Carl stayed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you try to overpower Rick? It would have been five against one.”

  “He had a gun. He brought this old revolver of his with him in his lunch pail,” J. C. goes on.

  “You don’t want to shoot a gun in a coal mine,” he adds for my edification.

  I don’t know the exact chemistry and physics principles supporting this fact, but I’m willing to take his word for it.

  “So the situation right now is a suicidal man is sitting in a coal mine with his brother armed with a handgun and a bunch of dynamite?” I summarize. “This is awful, but I don’t understand why I’m here.”

  “You’re a shrink.” Shawn speaks for the first time.

  Brenna places her hand on my arm.

  “I thought maybe you could talk some sense into him,” she says pleadingly.

  I glance around at all their faces except for Rafe, who turns away from me and begins unwrapping candy. Tommy—who should be fine with what they’re asking, even happy at the thought that his grandson might be able to save the day—looks dumbstruck.

  The idea is so far beyond possible, I can’t even begin to consider it, then I suddenly realize what they must actually be asking of me.

  “You mean through a phone or a radio?”

  “Nah,” Todd replies. “He won’t talk to anyone willingly. You’ll have to go to him and make him talk to you.”

  “We know it’s asking a lot,” J. C. concedes.

  “Yeah. It takes a half hour in the mantrip to get to the room where we was cutting. Who knows what could happen in the meantime?”

  “Don’t say that, Todd,” Brenna scolds.

  I don’t know what I’m showing on the outside, but on the inside I’ve dissolved into a puddle. I must not look too good, though, because Tommy takes me by the arm and leads me away.

  “Listen,” he says. “I know how afraid you are of the mines. I know about your nightmares.”

  “How? I never told you.”

  “You told me plenty, but you were always hysterical at the time and probably don’t remember.”

  “All these years you’ve known?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “No, it’s not. Those men over there would never be able to put on a suit and testify before a jury or sit down and have a chat with a serial killer. They’d be as afraid of doing your job as you’re afraid of doing theirs.

  “You don’t have to do this, Danny. No one will think less of you.”

  I know he’s right. They wouldn’t think less of me because it’s not possible. Right now they think nothing of me.

  We walk back over.

  “I’ll do it,” I say.

  I expect saying the words out loud will give me some sort of confidence boost, but I’m wrong.

  My heart is already pounding much too fast. My mouth has gone dry and my legs feel weak. I take some comfort in the fact that I’m probably not going to make it into the mine; I’m sure I’ll pass out first.

  “Come on over to the trailer and we’ll get you fixed up with some boots and coveralls,” Brenna says.

  “It’s okay. I’ll go like this.”

  She and all the men look me up and down. Beneath my knee-length slate gray Tom Ford overcoat are dark-wash jeans, an Yves Saint Laurent Henley, a Boss Orange shawl-collar cardigan, and a pair of vintage Prada boots.

  “Your clothes are gonna get ruined,” Todd points out.

  “It’s okay. I want to keep them on.”

  I take off my coat and give it to Tommy.

  J. C. hands me his helmet and also his heavy leather tool belt.

  “I highly doubt I’ll need any tools. Or were you planning to put me to work?” I attempt some levity.

  “It’s for the dog tag.”

  He shows me the brass plate on the belt inscribed with his name and social security number. I know what it’s for. Sometimes it’s the only way to identify a body.

  “You’re Joseph Cameron Hewitt now.”

  “It’s up to you, Danno,” Rafe says, finally weighing in on my decision.

  “Almost forgot,” J. C. says. “Here’s your self-rescuer.”

  He hands me a canteenlike piece of equipment.

  “If something goes wrong you got enough air for an hour.”

  A MANTRIP IS THE flat, battery-powered cart that takes the miners to the face where they’re cutting coal. It rides on rails, and as Silent Shawn and I begin our downward-sloping journey into the inky darkness, I try to think of it as the world’s most horrific amusement park ride: it might end in a stroll down the fairway eating cotton candy and cheesy fries, or it might end in men digging for days only to find bits and pieces of you and a brass tag with someone else’s name on it.

  Top that, Pirates of the Caribbean.

  I try not to look at the walls of black rock speeding past or, more important, at the ceiling. This part of the tunnel is only a little over four feet tall. If I were to panic and stand up, I’d be knocked unconscious. It’s a tempting thought.

  I’ve managed to stay composed so far except for the sweat pouring down my back, dripping onto my face, and oiling the palms of my hands. This reaction isn’t caused by heat. After the miners explained to me that they all wear long johns under their coveralls, they convinced me to take Al Kelly’s coat. I’m glad I did. Along with being dark, cramped, and damp, it’s also cold down here.

  The tunnel suddenly opens into a broader area with a slightly higher ceiling called the mains, short for the main section. I’ve spent enough time listening to my dad and Tommy and other miners talk about their work to recognize that this mine has been dug by a method known as room-and-pillar, in which the coal is removed in a series of rooms or entries with blocks of coal left in to keep the roof from collapsing. I count six numbered entries. Running between each one at about fifty-foot intervals
are the crosscuts that allow access from one corridor to the next. I don’t know how the men keep track of all of them.

  Though a little less claustrophobic, the mains aren’t much of an improvement over the setting in my dreams. Now instead of being trapped in a tunnel, I’m lost in a huge black maze.

  “I appreciate you taking me down, Shawn.”

  “No problem. Can do it in my sleep. Truth be told, most of the time I’m on this thing, I am sleeping.”

  I glance back at him calmly rolling a wad of tobacco around beneath his lower lip and carving at his thumbnail with a pocketknife.

  The boys of my youth jumped off anything, attacked anyone, ventured anywhere no matter how dark or perilous without giving any thought to what harm might befall them. I could never decide if they were brave or stupid until I finally came to realize they were neither; they acted that way simply because no one ever taught them to value their lives. I was convinced it was the same mentality that led them into the mines.

  Watching Shawn, I reassess my findings. All people value their lives and everyone is afraid of dying. It’s a particular manner of death that leads to phobic behavior. Even now as I’m experiencing my worst nightmare in real life, I’m not afraid of dying; I’m afraid of the mine killing me.

  “How far are we going to go underground?”

  “’Bout a mile and a half.”

  “I probably shouldn’t have asked that.”

  “Probably not.”

  I close my eyes and in my mind I start running a mile and a half. I see the road stretching out before me, a pitted gray empty country road with no end in sight.

  I have no idea what I’m going to say to Rick Kelly. Walker Dawes was right when he suggested that I haven’t hung up a shingle and gone into private practice because I don’t care about making people better. I don’t. I have enough trouble dealing with my own problems and those surrounding my family.

  I do what I do because I’m fascinated by the workings of the human mind, especially the minds that have failed society. I want to understand the criminals, crazies, outcasts, and dropouts and their unorthodox, sometimes destructive and violent, almost always unacceptable means of survival.