Three Blows
Mary Jane folded the towel over the check board.
“You can’t walk up to the shaft.”
Eddie stood with his hand against the washstand, listening.
The blows had stopped. In their absence, the room seemed full of lesser noises: the settling stove, Calder shifting his weight, a loose corner of tin lifting somewhere on the roof.
“They’re down there.”
Mary Jane’s fingers tightened on the towel.
“I know where they were.”
“I heard them.”
“From here?”
He looked at her.
She waited for an explanation he could not give.
Calder drew the chair away from the door and sat.
“Tell us how the place works.”
Mary Jane turned toward him.
“The shaft,” he said. “The engine. Who’s watching what. We’ve come this far without much of a plan. I’d like one before we go farther.”
Eddie almost objected.
Then he remembered the driver reaching beneath the wagon seat.
He moved away from the washstand.
Mary Jane looked between them before setting the board on the bed.
“Rusk keeps two men on the landing now. Says it’s to stop anyone wandering into unsafe workings.”
“Mercer?” Calder asked.
“He comes and goes.”
“The man running the engine?”
“Dobb. Usually tends the boilers. Knows enough to raise a load if someone tells him when to stop.”
Eddie pictured a broad back bent beneath an open furnace door.
A red cloth at the man’s neck.
He knew him.
The realization arrived without pain this time, and Eddie held still, grateful for it.
“Does Dobb know about me?”
Mary Jane’s gaze moved to his chest.
“I don’t know what anybody knows about you.”
***
She drew the mine on the back of Calder’s copied warning.
The pencil was short enough that she had to hold it near the point. She marked the engine house first, then the shaft beside it, the office across the yard, and a narrow passage running along the rear of the buildings.
“Coal comes through here. There’s a service door behind the engine.”
Eddie leaned over her shoulder.
He could remember that door sticking in wet weather.
The latch needed lifting before it would turn.
“If we get inside,” he said, “can you lower the cage?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
Mary Jane stopped drawing.
“The first landing’s clear. Below that, I don’t know.”
“Where did the water settle?”
“They wouldn’t let me stay long enough to see.”
Calder studied the sketch.
“You said six men.”
“Six checks.”
“You know their names?”
She nodded.
“Tell us.”
Mary Jane looked up.
Calder kept his voice quiet.
“If we have to ask other men to help, we ought to know who we’re asking them to help.”
She set down the pencil.
“Daniel Keene. Owen Bell. Tomás Varela. Joseph Harker. Will Dacey.”
Her hand moved toward the towel.
“Peter Shaw.”
Eddie watched her mouth tighten around the last name.
“Peter’s nineteen,” she added. “Started last month.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Calder took the pencil and wrote the names beneath the drawing.
***
They left the check board hidden beneath a loose floor plank.
Mary Jane kept Eddie’s brass disk.
She threaded it onto a piece of cord and tucked it inside her shirt.
“Why seventeen?” he asked.
She had been reaching for her cap.
“You gave yours back before you went into the office. Remember?”
He shook his head.
“I thought you were leaving. Then you came to the engine and asked whether the lower crosscut could be reached from the old side.”
Something moved at the edge of his memory.
A passage sloping upward.
A timber with a wedge of pale rock driven beside it.
“I told you the gate was locked,” she continued. “You said you’d have a look anyway.”
“And you gave me a check.”
“If you went below, I wanted you counted.”
She looked down at the hidden disk.
Eddie understood why it had stayed on the board.
No one had seen him come back.
***
Calder went first.
He carried the empty water bucket Mary Jane had given him and walked toward the well with the unhurried stiffness of a man whose business was too ordinary to explain.
Mary Jane followed several minutes later.
Eddie waited behind the assay shed until she reached the coal passage. Then he crossed the open ground.
Every window seemed occupied.
He kept his head down without lowering it enough to look furtive. He had watched miners walk this yard before. He had been one of them. He tried to let his body remember.
A man pushed an empty barrow past him.
A loose wheel screamed.
Eddie nearly turned.
The man spat into the dust and went on.
At the service door, Mary Jane lifted the latch and pulled.
It stuck.
Eddie put his shoulder against the warped board, eased the pressure upward, and felt it give.
She glanced at him.
“You were going to fix that.”
“Still might.”
The words came so readily that, for an instant, they might have belonged to any other morning.
Then they stepped inside.
***
Heat met him first.
The engine house breathed through its open roof vents, drawing coal smoke and steam into the rafters. The great winding drum stood beyond a broad belt, its cable feeding through the wall toward the head-frame.
Oil glistened in the joints.
A spanner lay across a folded rag beside the bearing housing.
Eddie knew where everything ought to be.
He also knew what had moved.
A tin of grease stood on the wrong shelf. The oilcan had been left beside a hot pipe. Somebody had tightened the brake adjustment farther than he liked.
He crossed toward it before Mary Jane caught his sleeve.
Dobb stood at the far end of the room.
The red cloth was there, tied loosely around his neck. Sweat had soaked the back of his shirt.
He saw Mary Jane first.
Then Eddie.
His hand dropped from the valve wheel.
For several seconds, the engine supplied every sound in the building.
“No,” Dobb said.
Mary Jane stepped between him and the door.
“Keep your voice down.”
The man stared past her.
Eddie stopped beside the workbench.
Dobb’s face had gone pale beneath the coal dust.
“They said you’d gone.”
“I came back.”
“No.”
The word was barely audible now.
Dobb backed into the rail beside the boiler pipe and flinched from its heat.
Mary Jane caught his arm.
“Look at me.”
He could not seem to do it.
“Dobb.”
His gaze finally shifted.
She held him there.
“The lower men. Did anybody bring them up?”
He swallowed.
“Rusk said—”
“Did you bring them up?”
Dobb looked toward the cable.
“No.”
***
Calder entered through the service door carrying the bucket.
He took in the room and set it down without a sound.
Dobb saw him and seemed grateful to have a stranger to look at.
“What’s happening?”
“We’re trying to find six men,” Calder said.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Likely true.”
Mary Jane let go of Dobb’s arm.
“Where’s the cage?”
“Surface.”
“Water?”
“Below the first landing. Last I saw.”
“Which was when?”
“Yesterday morning.”
She stared at him.
“You haven’t looked since?”
“They told me not to lower it.”
Eddie turned toward the winding drum.
The blows came again.
He felt them beneath his ribs before he heard them.
Three.
A pause.
Three.
He gripped the edge of the workbench.
Mary Jane saw.
“What?”
“Again.”
Dobb followed his gaze toward the shaft wall.
“I don’t hear anything.”
Eddie crossed to the iron frame where the cable passed out of the building.
He put his hand against it.
Cold moved through his palm.
For one dreadful moment, he remembered the box: the grain beneath his nails, his forehead pressed against the lid.
He pulled away.
The blows continued.
Not from above.
Not carried by the cable.
Somewhere below the foundations, beneath the turning engine and the men pretending their day could continue.
“Stop it,” he said.
Dobb stared.
“The engine. Stop it.”
Mary Jane looked toward the landing door.
Then she moved to the controls.
***
The machinery slowed reluctantly.
The drum settled. The belt slackened into stillness. Steam hissed from a valve, grew thin, and faded.
In the quiet that followed, Eddie heard water dripping inside the wall.
Dobb held his breath.
Nothing else came.
Calder stood beside the service door, listening.
Mary Jane watched Eddie.
He waited.
The silence lengthened until shame began to warm his face.
Perhaps it was only memory.
Perhaps something inside him had learned one terrible sound and would spend the rest of his life repeating it.
Then, beneath his breastbone, something struck.
He closed his eyes.
Three blows.
A pause.
He opened them.
“There.”
Dobb shook his head.
“I didn’t—”
Footsteps sounded outside.
Mary Jane reached for the engine controls, but Eddie lifted a hand.
Too late.
The landing door opened.
A man in a canvas coat stood there with a short length of chain looped through one hand.
“What’s the hold?”
His gaze moved across Mary Jane, Calder, Dobb.
Then it reached Eddie.
The chain slipped against his fingers.
Eddie recognized him only as someone he had passed in the yard.
That was enough.
The man stepped backward.
Calder moved toward him, but the door slammed.
Boots struck the boards outside.
“Now they know,” Dobb whispered.
***
Mary Jane crossed to the shaft entrance.
Eddie followed her into a narrow covered landing, where the cage waited behind a waist-high gate. Beyond its bars, daylight ended in a deep square of black.
A newer check board hung beside the entrance.
Every hook was empty.
Mary Jane saw Eddie looking.
“Later,” she said.
She opened a cupboard beneath the bell cord and took out a lamp.
Across the yard, someone shouted.
Calder reached the door behind them.
“Men coming from the office.”
“How many?”
“Three. One’s got a gun.”
Mary Jane thrust the lamp into Eddie’s hand.
“Can you hold that?”
He nodded.
She leaned over the shaft rail and called down.
“Below!”
Her voice fell away.
Water answered.
A loose drop struck something metal far beneath them.
She called again.
No reply.
Eddie stood beside her.
The blows had stopped.
He could feel the dark beneath the cage as though it had weight.
“Old side,” he said.
Mary Jane turned.
“What?”
“The crosscut.”
The memory opened a little farther.
An unused passage above the lower workings. A ventilation connection. A locked gate meant to keep men away from timber that needed replacing.
“If they got above the water—”
“They could reach the old rise,” she finished.
Calder looked toward the yard.
“Can you get there?”
“From the first landing,” she said. “If the way’s still clear.”
Dobb appeared behind him.
“Rusk’s coming.”
***
Eddie expected anger when he saw the foreman.
Instead, Gideon Rusk stopped at the far edge of the landing and looked at him with such complete attention that the other men seemed to disappear.
He was shorter than Eddie remembered.
Broad through the chest. Clean-shaven. His hat sat square, and his coat had been brushed free of the dust that covered everyone else.
A revolver hung at his hip.
Mercer stood behind his right shoulder.
The bandage on his hand had been changed.
Rusk looked at the lamp Eddie held.
Then at Mary Jane beside the open gate.
“Well,” he said.
The sound of his voice brought the office back so sharply that Eddie felt the edge of the desk against his thigh.
He tightened his grip on the lamp.
Rusk noticed.
“You look poorly, Bone.”
Calder stepped into view.
“My name’s Wynn.”
The foreman did not look at him.
“You’ve brought trouble a long way.”
“I’ve brought a man you had buried.”
Mercer shifted.
Rusk’s expression scarcely changed.
“Mind what you say.”
“I’m choosing it carefully.”
That drew his attention.
He looked Calder over, taking in the farmer’s worn coat, the dust on his boots, his empty hands.
“This is mine property.”
“Then you ought to know who’s still underneath it.”
Mary Jane moved nearer the bell cord.
Rusk saw that too.
“Step away.”
She stayed where she was.
Eddie looked at the revolver.
He remembered Calder’s hand on his arm in the yard.
He made himself remain beside the cage.
“Six checks,” he said.
Rusk turned back.
“What?”
“Keene. Bell. Varela. Harker. Dacey. Shaw.”
One of the men behind Mercer lowered his eyes.
Eddie saw it.
So did Rusk.
“Those men were accounted for.”
“Where?”
“They left.”
“Then let their friends say so.”
Rusk took one step onto the landing.
“Come away from that gate.”
Mary Jane gripped the cord.
Mercer’s hand moved toward his belt.
Calder raised his voice.
“Anybody in this yard who worked with Daniel Keene ought to come hear where he’s gone.”
The foreman stopped.
Outside, a barrow wheel ceased squealing.
Calder turned his head toward the open doorway.
“Or Owen Bell. Or Peter Shaw.”
“Enough,” Rusk said.
But men were already looking.
***
Eddie barely heard them.
A pressure had begun behind his ears.
The lamp flame leaned sideways although no wind reached it.
Beyond Rusk, Mercer rubbed his bandaged hand.
For an instant, Eddie wanted to ask him what the earth had sounded like from above.
The thought frightened him.
He turned toward the shaft instead.
Blackness filled the cage floor.
No.
Not the floor.
The spaces between the planks.
He could see too far into them.
Something pale moved below, not a body, not a face, only the suggestion of distance opening where there should have been a short drop to the timbers beneath.
His knees weakened.
Mary Jane caught his elbow.
“Eddie?”
He heard water.
Breathing.
A man whispering words too faint to understand.
He bent toward the rail.
“Hit it again,” he said.
Rusk’s voice sharpened.
“Get him away from there.”
Eddie scarcely heard him.
“Please.”
The word left his mouth before he knew whether he spoke to the men below or whatever had begun listening with him.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then his heart struck once, hard enough to drive the breath from him.
The darkness beneath the cage seemed to draw tight.
A blow rang through the shaft.
Everyone stopped.
It was faint.
It was distant.
It was unmistakably iron against iron.
Another followed.
Then a third.
Mary Jane’s hand clamped around Eddie’s arm.
Behind them, Dobb whispered something.
The third blow faded into the timber.
This time, they had all heard it.
***
Rusk reached for the gate.
Mary Jane struck his hand away with the bell cord’s wooden handle.
He stared at her.
“You touch that brake,” she said, “and I’ll break your fingers.”
Mercer stepped forward.
A voice from the yard stopped him.
“Let her listen.”
The man who had lowered his eyes stood in the doorway now.
He had taken off his hat.
Another worker appeared beside him.
Then another.
Rusk looked from one face to the next.
“The lower workings are flooded,” he said. “Nobody goes down until I say they’re safe.”
“They weren’t safe when you sent them,” Mary Jane answered.
“That’s enough.”
“No.”
She turned toward Dobb.
“First landing.”
The boiler man looked at Rusk.
For a moment, Eddie thought he would refuse.
Then Dobb backed into the engine house.
Rusk took a step after him.
The man in the doorway did not move aside.
***
Calder caught Eddie before he entered the cage.
“Look at me.”
Eddie turned.
The farmer’s face was pale.
“What happened just now?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the truth.
Calder searched his eyes.
Then he took the lamp and checked its handle before giving it back.
“You come up when she tells you.”
Eddie nodded.
“You don’t go chasing a noise past where you can return.”
Another nod.
Calder gripped the back of his neck for a moment, the gesture brief and awkward.
Then he let him go.
Mary Jane stepped into the cage with a coil of rope over one shoulder.
“You’re staying?” Eddie asked.
Calder glanced toward Rusk.
“Somebody ought to make sure the engine keeps working.”
The foreman stood beyond the gate with Mercer beside him.
For the first time, Eddie saw him without the office around him, without the gun already in his hand.
He was a man among other men.
That would have to be enough for now.
Mary Jane closed the cage door.
The bell rang.
***
Daylight rose away from them.
The cage shuddered along the guides, its iron frame ticking against the shaft timber. Eddie held the lamp close to his chest.
Mary Jane watched the walls.
“Keep your hands inside.”
He had known that once.
He knew it now.
The familiar motion brought back mornings spent riding down with other men, shoulders touching, everyone quiet until someone began complaining about breakfast.
This cage held only two.
The empty space made the descent worse.
Above them, the square of daylight narrowed.
Eddie felt the grave return around his ribs.
He looked at Mary Jane’s boots.
Mud at the heels.
A loose lace tucked beneath one ankle.
Ordinary things.
He stayed with them until the cage slowed.
Mary Jane lifted her hand toward the signal line.
The first landing emerged from the dark.
Water gleamed below its edge.
Far below, he hoped.
He could not tell.
The cage stopped with a jolt.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Mary Jane opened the gate.
***
The first level smelled abandoned.
Not old.
Recently abandoned.
A dinner pail stood beneath a bench. Someone had left a candle stub in a crack between two stones. A coat hung from a timber, its sleeves turned inside out.
Mary Jane took the lamp while Eddie stepped across.
His boots met wet boards.
The shaft continued down behind him.
He did not look.
“This way.”
She led him along the wall to a narrow passage half hidden by stacked lengths of rail.
Beyond them stood an iron gate.
A new padlock shone against the rust.
Mary Jane stared at it.
“He did change it.”
Eddie looked through the bars.
The passage rose into darkness.
Somewhere ahead, water ran with a low, continuous hiss.
“Your spare?”
“Fits the old one.”
She took a small key from inside her shirt and let it hang beside the brass check.
For a moment, her shoulders sagged.
Then she handed Eddie the lamp.
“Hold it higher.”
She examined the staples driven into the timber.
The old wood around one had split.
Eddie set the lamp on a dry ledge and helped her move a loose rail.
Together they raised its end against the staple.
The first pull did nothing.
On the second, rust flaked from the iron.
On the third, the timber gave with a sharp crack.
The gate swung inward.
They stood breathing in the sudden quiet.
Then, from somewhere beyond the rise, a voice called.
“Who’s there?”
Mary Jane seized the lamp.
“Keene?”
A cough answered.
Then a man began to cry.
***
They climbed toward him through air thick with damp stone and the sour smell of men who had waited too long in the dark.
Eddie could hear movement now.
A boot dragging.
Someone trying to stand.
Mary Jane lifted the lamp around a bend.
Three men huddled on a narrow shelf above the passage.
One lay beneath a coat.
Another covered his eyes against the light.
The third stared at them with his mouth open, too exhausted to trust what he saw.
Mary Jane knelt.
“Daniel.”
The man caught her wrist.
He held it as though she might be taken away.
Eddie crouched beside the one beneath the coat.
Warm skin.
A shallow breath.
Alive.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, the man watching from the wall had recognized him.
“Bone?”
“Yes.”
The man’s face twisted.
“We heard—”
“Later.”
Eddie looked past him into the dark.
Three men.
Six checks.
“Where are the others?”
Keene’s grip tightened around Mary Jane’s wrist.
“The water split us.”
“How far?”
He shook his head.
“We kept knocking. Sometimes they answered.”
Eddie listened.
Only water.
Mary Jane was already untying the food parcel.
“How long since you heard them?”
Keene looked at the lamp.
“We lost the candle.”
Eddie stood.
Behind him, one of the men whispered a prayer over the bread.
He walked to the edge of the shelf.
The passage beyond sloped down beneath black water. Its surface reflected the lamp in broken yellow pieces.
On the far side, darkness rose again.
Eddie put one hand against the stone.
At first, there was nothing.
Then a faint impact touched the bones of his fingers.
One.
A long pause.
Another.
He leaned closer.
From beyond the flooded passage, a man was still striking the wall.