“Think about it,” Cord winks. “I’m sure somewhere inside that dense head of yours, you’ll figure it out.”
The air around us sizzles, the mood changing. The mine does that to you. Something about staring down a black abyss that leads you hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the earth in a slot just big enough to stand in will sober up the goofiest of men. Doesn’t matter how many times you do it. Repetition does not help. It’s an unnatural motion, a trip to hell every damn time.
“You okay?” I ask Cord. His outburst was a little over-the-top, even being that it was directed at Pettis.
“Yeah. Just a lot of shit I’m thinking about. You know how it goes.”
“What about you?” I ask Jiggs. “Your head on straight?”
“I haven’t slept in two nights. I’ve fought with my wife for about fifty-two hours straight. Yeah, I’m great.”
“Is she still talking about moving?”
“Fuck, she’s on the phone with realtors, her mom, going through ads trying to find me a job down there. I just can’t get through to her.”
“Her heart is in the right place,” I say.
“I know,” he mutters, his head hanging. “I just feel like everything is falling apart.”
The rails of the buggy scream as it hits the top. We greet the first four men to make it out before we look at each other. As foreman, I go first. Cord, Jiggs, and Grunt, a guy that doesn’t speak in words, just grunts, join me in the buggy.
No one says a word, not that we could hear it anyway. With every foot we fall below the surface of the ground, my chest tightens a little more. The air gets a little damper. The darkness more suffocating. The sound of the equipment below louder.
The shaft is narrow and low, just big enough for equipment to get in and out. It feels like it shrinks as we sink farther into the Earth.
I close my eyes and picture Elin, wondering what she’s doing. In my mind, she’s curled up on our bed, her reading glasses covering her eyes, a stack of papers on her lap. She looks up at me and smiles, her hair falling over her shoulders.
The equipment is still running, barking and howling, a hellish sound that makes perfect sense for the setting, once we hit bottom. Reluctantly, I part my eyes and let them adjust to the absence of light.
Climbing out of the cart, I nod to the next four to leave from the first shift, my boots sinking in the mud. It squishes around my weight, sliding up the bottom of my bibs.
“Fuck,” I hiss, looking up to the Yoder, the foreman just getting off. “It’s wetter than fuck down here.”
“Yeah,” he says, his face so black from the soot and mud that I can only see the whites of his eyes. “It’s really fuckin’ damp. I called up a few hours ago because I’ve not seen a hole this damn wet in my whole life.”
I pick up a boot and the mud falls off in globs. “This is gonna be fun.”
“But hey,” Yoder says, smacking me on the back, “we’re back to work.”
“Yeah,” I say, letting out a half-laugh, “we’re back to fuckin’ work.”
Yoder goes off to wait for the buggy to come back down to pick up him and the last three guys. I find the Dinner Shack—a picnic table on a sled—and lay out my report. Ignoring the shrill of the machines and the dim light and the putrid smell of coal, I study our objective.
“It’s gonna be hell,” Jiggs says, clasping my shoulder with his hand. “You ready for this, Bossman?”
I just nod. Because there’s no other way to put it: four-hundred feet below ground is a hell all of its own.
ELIN
Forty-eight.
Forty-nine.
Fifty.
I watch as each minute ticks by, the clock primed to roll over to four a.m. My lids are heavy, my eyes burn, but they refuse to close.
It’s adrenaline, I’m sure. Ty didn’t call once he left the house, although I was sure he would. He’d usually send a text from the Bath House before they went down. But tonight, he didn’t.
I went to Lindsay’s earlier in the evening and she made nachos and we ate them in the nursery while we chose a paint color. I was surprised she is going to do a nursery with the way she’s been talking about Florida. But I needed the distraction so I didn’t ask questions. Jiggs has no opinion on decoration, only that the baby has a framed photo of his baseball hero, Lincoln Landry, on the wall somewhere in the room.
We chose a really pretty dove grey and a pale yellow that will be beautiful whether it’s a boy or a girl and easily accented with blue or pink, as required.
“I love this,” I say, holding the winning color sample against the wall. “It’s going to be perfect.”
“I love it too.” She brushes a strand of hair off her shoulder. “I know I’ve been a little crazy about moving and stuff.”
“Yeah, you have. Why, Linds?”