Prologue: BOOM!
Thursday, First Week In June, 1950’s
The smog pollution in the sky keeps any natural midday light from filtering in brightly, even on top of Mount Washington, the home of the Pittsburgh Coal Mining Company, one of the most active and profitable mines in all of the country. The six-hundred foot mountain which is located along a sharp ridge beside the river below, looks dead and barren itself. It acts as an outer border, encasing the city on one side, where miners are chiseling away in caverns to scrape together a living.
Multiple inclines built along the side of the mountain for easy transportation to the bottom to get to the trolley station, that can then transport passengers into the city or into a tunnel under the mountain whisking you away. The railroad is also alongside it, the tracks that reside just along the river’s edge and with the city beyond.
Coal is being extracted from the Adit, an opening in the side of the mountain and the tipple that extends high above over the railway, like a bridge that goesnowhere to dump coal into rail cars or to be shipped off either up or down river by barge.
The white tunnel concrete entry that leads to the shaft and the lift that carries workers about four-hundred feet down into the mountain is deserted until the end of shift when the men return to the surface by the cage, and switch out with the night crew arriving to work. The company town in the surrounding area is leisurely with workers that are off shift and their families that can’t afford to live off property, going about their day like any other.
BOOM!
Everything rattles like the earth is about to open up. Glass windows shatter in buildings, homes, and the church that sits on the edge of the property, the mountain edge and surrounding patch town. The cliff begins to slide with rocks, dirt, and coal falling to the tracks, road, and the river below. The tunnel entry and its shaft is spewing thick black smoke making it look like the entrance to Hell itself coughing up toxic breath. The Adit and the Tipple falls in and collapses on itself and on to the railroad below, being buried in the process.
A blaring alarm sounds with men running to the company office, dressed in their jumpers. Not far behind them, women and children start to arrive in a panic with kids crying and screaming, being held back by a man in a panic himself, for the love of his life is down in the heart of the mountain.
And there is nothing he can do about it.
one
Getting Shafted
Jim
Thursday, Two Weeks Prior, May 1950’s
The cage rattled in the dim light from the two bulbs as it descended down a dark shaft of the mine. The claustrophobia never got easier in the scariest elevator you could possibly ride. The metal cage was open to the elements as you were lowered. We have barely made a ways down and I already feel dirty. It didn’t help that I was stuck in this lift with another 9 men that either haven’t washed well the night before as I could smell them or they haven’t washed their jumpers in a while.
Lazy ass fuckers.
Everyone is quiet like it’s an unspoken rule that there is no talking until you reach the bottom. Not even from my best friend and work partner David,who always had something to say, but it’s fine by me. It gave me time to get my head on straight.
When the cage banged the bottom, puffing a small dust cloud, the doors swung open with force on rusty hinges, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Tom, my boss who is usually safe in the office on the surface, is waiting for us. He’s a guy in his fifties with thick salt and pepper brown hair and an average size belly from frequenting Bigham Tavern, the nicer of the bars you can frequent in the area. He rarely sees the inside of the mine unless he must, which tells me something is about to happen.
As he said hello to everyone when they passed, he stopped me and David with hesitation. “Good morning, Jim. David. A word.”
The tension from the cage ride down came back in full force. David and I glanced at each other, and gave him a squinty look asking,“What did you do now?”.
We’ve been best friends since meeting on the job nine years ago when we got partnered together. He is a short, muscular Italian with black curly hair, a big barrel chest, thick thighs and arms, all of it covered in a sexy fuzz. But his looks don’t match his personality as he is a hyperactive jabber box and gets easily excitable or expressive.
“Sure,” I responded, the hair on the back of my head at attention, expecting the worst.
“We have two new men starting today. A father and son pair. I am splitting you two up to get them acclimated to the team. The son has no experience as he’s right out of school. By the looks of him, he’s going to need a lot of work. He doesn’t look like he’s built for this type of exertion.” The entire time he was talking, he looked wary of his surroundings.
“Damn it!,” David exclaimed, grabbing Tom’s full attention. “Come on Tom. We have been together forso long. You are going to ruin a good team. Why don’t you split Richard and Dan? They shouldn’t be paired together anyway, the bastards.”
“Because,” he huffed a sigh. “I don’t need those two to taint the newcomers. Especially the youngin’.”
“Will we get partnered back up after their intake period?” I asked.
“We’ll see. You know things change fast around here. It’s going to take time to get Charles up to full speed.”
I glanced at David again to get the vibe he was putting off, and felt deep down that this was the end of the road for us working closely with one another.
David looked at Tom with indignation. “Who are you putting with me?”
Tom gave me the most intense gaze, like he’s trying to read my mind to help him decide who he was going to partner with me. “Jim, take the dad. You have more of an old soul and will get along better with him.”
