Beneath the Apple Leaves(7)
He pressed the pen harder into the paper. The mine company controlled all. They owned the houses; they owned the wood in the forest and the coal underground; they owned the bank and school and post office. They owned the miners and the food they ate. Andrew would not be owned.
A tap came to his shoulder and he looked up, startled. The classroom was empty save for Miss Kenyon, who hovered over his desk. He hadn’t even heard the other students leave. “Want to tell me what you’ve been working on for half the day?” she asked.
He handed her the college application and she smiled. “Good.” She read through his answers and folded the paper neatly. “You deserve better, Andrew. You’re a special young man.” Miss Kenyon was only a few years older than he and a slight blush came to her cheeks with the compliment. “I’d like to write you a personal reference, if I may.”
“I’d appreciate it. Thank you.”
“I’ll do it today, then mail it out for you.” She reached for a handkerchief just as a sneeze erupted. “Sure enough, caught my first cold of the season.” The coal stove in the corner had chilled and she shivered. “Would you mind refilling the coal chute for me before you go?”
Outside the school, Andrew returned the shovel to the toolshed. Two tiny shoes jutted out from behind a skinny oak tree. He inched his way over to the child, wiping his sooty hands on his trousers. “Denisa, what are you still doing here?”
The little girl shrugged her shoulders and didn’t look up. Andrew knelt in the cold grass to meet her at eye level, waited for her to speak. She shrugged again and finally raised her weary face. “Jus’ tired.”
Andrew glanced at the thin dress and the scratches and bruises along her stockingless legs. “You eat supper?”
She shook her head.
“Breakfast?”
The tiny shoulders shrugged again. Andrew scratched his temple. Denisa was the youngest of ten children, her mother a widow who worked a ten-hour laundry shift at the boardinghouse. Andrew opened up his food pail, pulled out the sandwich crusts he was saving for the hogs. “It’s not much, but—”
Denisa grabbed the bread and stuffed the crusts into her mouth, chewed fiercely in case one tried to escape. She swallowed, licked the crumbs from her lips, shamefaced.
He tapped her on the knee. “Come to our house from now on. If you’re hungry, you come over, all right?” The girl nodded, her tongue dabbing the corner of her mouth for a final morsel.
Andrew turned and curled his back. “Now, up you go, girlie.” When she didn’t move, he slapped his shoulders. “Come on! Giddyap time.”
The tiny hands clutched his shoulders as she climbed upon his strong back. He glanced back to a full grin as she wrapped her arms around his neck and he straightened, supporting her legs with the crook of his arms as he took off with a bouncing trot.
Along the road, his worn boots crushed the pebbly ground toward the first houses of the patch. He breathed heavily against the steely air and hoped the child was warm enough. The air promised snow and he glanced into the gray sky expecting to see flakes.
A whistle cut the air in two.
The shrill tone pierced the eardrum. Denisa’s nails dug into his shoulders. Movement stopped. Breathing halted. Eyes turned automatically toward the blank distance of the mine center.
The whistle wailed again.
Denisa started to weep; four of her brothers were down there. Andrew put her to the ground, his heart thundering in his chest. He clutched her by the shoulders. “Go home, Denisa. Do you understand?” She nodded stiffly, her chin wrinkled. “Only home.”
He let go of her shoulders and then he ran. The sound of his boots running thumped in his head, chased him. There were no thoughts. Just running forward. The pounding of his feet below, the brown houses blurring. Running. Running.
Andrew did not go home. There was no need. Everyone would be at the mine. The whistle blew again and his insides fell. Gray smoke billowed into the sky. Andrew rounded the corner where the next line of houses lay sunk in the valley, one by one, like wooden dominoes. The crowds rushed—waves of mothers, children, men. The mine police—the yellow dogs, they were called—were shouting, barking, pushing people aside for the ambulance wagons.
Andrew weaved through the bodies, looked for his mother when the first surge of miners crawled out of the black hole. Smoke rose and curled feebly, the choking fumes wafting through the air and stinging the eyes. A woman screamed. Crying, waffling in and around the gray clouds, seeped into the air and shuddered the earth. Through crowding bodies and pushing elbows and hips, Andrew rushed the mine entrance. A policeman grabbed him by the backs of his arms. “You can’t go in there!”
“My father’s down there!” He struggled against the thick arms that held him tight. He thought of Kijek; he’d be down the shaft with the mules. “I work here!” he shouted.
An explosion. The ground rattled under their feet. The policeman let go, whistled frantically, waved more officers forward.
“Andrew!” Carolien Houghton floundered from the crowd, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to her, her body shaking in spasms. “He’s not out yet.” Her voice fluttered high, then dropped. “Okay. It’s okay. He’s just behind. He’s coming, Andrew. He’s coming out. I know it.”
Blackened men trickled out, coughed and choked and stumbled to find oxygen. The crowd loosened. The stream of miners emerging dwindled. The ambulance wagons sat idle, the horses stiff and immobile with waiting. The dark, moving figures slowed like the last drips from a well pump.