Red Helmet

  “Why do I have do that?”

  “Because that’s the proper way to do it. You’re still a red cap. I’m educating you.”

  “You’re nuts, Cable. That’s another reason I love you.”

  “There are too many reasons for me to count why I love you.”

  “Awww . . .”

  Then came a dull roar and Song was astonished to see the curtain that led to the beltway suddenly catch fire. A hot wind blew past its remnants. Black smoke billowed around them. “Get going, Cable,” she urged. “I’ll be right behind you. Go!”

  Cable crawled to the shuttle car and dragged himself up on it. He struck his splinted leg on the frame and stifled a scream. Then, inch by inch, he pulled himself up until he was on the boom. “Ready!” he called out.

  Song knelt and steadied the blaster in her hands. Her helmet light was dimming, its battery dying, its yellow glow just bright enough for her to see. She was so intent she didn’t hear the heavy boots behind her, but she did feel the kick of one of them in her back. She was slammed face-first into the gob.

  “Hey, girl!” Bum yelled maniacally. “How ya doin’?”

  She’d dropped the blaster. Song reached for it. Bum, holding a number four shovel in his right hand, stepped in front of her and picked it up first. “What were you going to do with this?” Following the wires, he walked around the corner of the entry, then walked back. His body was twitching.

  “How much meth have you taken?” Song asked.

  “Enough to keep me high and alive, girlie girl,” he said. He walked around the pillar until the spot of his light landed on Cable stretched out on the shuttle boom. “Hey, Cable, old teammate. You don’t look so good. What’s the plan?”

  “There’s about ten million gallons of water behind that face, Bum,” Cable said. “If we blow it, there’s a good chance we can put out the fire.”

  Bum began to laugh. He kept laughing until he had nearly lost his breath. He beat on his legs and shook his head. Finally, he said, “Aw, we don’t need to do that. They’ll pump down foam to put it out. Probably in, oh, I don’t know, a day or so. Good thing I’ve got lots of SCSRs. I found a whole cache of them. Looks like Petroski and his boys been squirreling them away.”

  “The fire’s coming this way,” Cable said, keeping his voice calm and modulated. “It’ll kill you before anybody can get in to put it out.”

  “I’ll take my chances. At least until I see you and that girl die. Ever since I met her, she ain’t been nothing but trouble, just like you.”

  “Bum, think about it. All I’ve ever done is be good to you. Why would you want to see me die?”

  “Are you asking me why I hate you? Well, let me see. Maybe because you gave me a job, a job where you could lord the fact you’re the mine superintendent over me for the rest of my life? Just like you made all-county linebacker while all I got was kicked in the butt?”

  “High school was a long time ago, Bum.”

  Bum disconnected the wires from the blaster, then tossed it down. He walked beneath the boom and shined his light up at Cable. “Tell me about it. I’ll think about you when I’m old, Cable, and you’re dead.”

  Cable tensed, readying himself. “Blow the face, Bum, or you’ll burn up with us.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll find me a little hole somewhere. Are you suffocating, Cable?” Bum giggled and did a little dance. “Oh, I’m going to tell everybody how sorry I was that you died. Maybe I’ll write a book, be on Oprah. Oh, gol-l-lee, Oprah, if I had only known where my old buddy Cable and his stupid little wife were holed up, I’d have brought them an SCSR. I’ll even shed a tear on national TV for you two.”

  Cable pushed himself off the boom and landed on Bum. Bum grunted, staggered, then fell with Cable on top of him. “Blow the face, Song!” Cable yelled while desperately trying to hold his old friend down.

  Song crawled to the blaster and found the wires. She attached them, then twisted the key, but nothing happened. Desperately, she looked over at Cable and Bum. Bum had managed to roll Cable over and was sitting on his stomach. Bum’s fist was raised to smash into Cable’s face. “Say good night, Cable,” he said.

  With the last ounce of her strength, Song picked up the shovel Bum had dropped, then walked over and hit him as hard as she could in his face. Bum flopped over and went very still. Song kicked him for good measure, then stripped him of his SCSR, and handed it to Cable. “Get up on the boom again,” she commanded, too spent to be polite.

  Song went back and picked up the blaster, unscrewed the terminals, pulled the wires loose, and ran the ends through her mouth. Spitting out gob, she reconnected them. She turned to see that Cable was back up the boom. “How many times am I supposed to say fire? Oh yeah. Three times. Here goes. Fire, fire, fire !”

  Song turned the key.

  THE FLOOR TREMBLED in the control room. “What was that?” Joe Hawkins demanded.

  Einstein and Bossman exchanged glances while Mole raced to the seismograph. “Another explosion,” he said, after a cursory inspection of the screen. “Afterwards, a tremor, like a little earthquake.”

  “I think they just did what Birchbark said they were going to do,” Einstein said.

  Hawkins stood up. The miners in the room were surprised to see that he had his chin up and was grinning. “Gentlemen, I’ll tell you who did it. My Song!”

  IN THE EBONY depths, a small spurt of water began to grow. Then, with awesome force, a wall of water erupted like a gigantic geyser that turned into a monstrous wave. A tide of black water roared forth, first encountering a continuous miner, which it swept aside as if were a toy. It rolled on until it struck a shuttle car and flipped it over and over. The miner and shuttle car, tangled together, became wedged, creating a partial dam. Diminished only slightly, the great black wave turned the corner and raced toward the second shuttle car where Song desperately clung to Cable’s outstretched hands.

  Forty-One

  3:21 a.m., Wednesday

  Mole made the announcement. “Birchbark says all he’s getting is steam out of the entry borehole.”

  “Is that good?” Hawkins demanded.

  Einstein pulled the telephone away from Mole. “What about the borehole at the face?” He listened, then said, “Let me know if it changes.”

  “What’s going on?” Hawkins demanded.

  Einstein turned toward Song’s father. “The entire end of the mine is flooded.”

  “I’ll ask you again. Is that good?” Hawkins demanded.

  What passed for a joyful expression on Einstein’s face faded until it had returned to its usual grim countenance. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “If they were able to get above the water and hang on, maybe . . .”

  THERE WAS A FRENZY around the governor, who had made herself available just outside the mine office. “Is it true?” the media demanded. “Is the fire out?”

  Governor Godfrey, having just consulted with Einstein, allowed as how it might be.

  The reporter named Geraldo had been doing his homework. “Governor, over the last hours, and I mean no disrespect, I assure you, we’ve heard all about the love story between Cable Jordan and Song Hawkins. But isn’t it true that you and Mr. Jordan were also romantically, even sexually involved?”

  The governor glared at Geraldo until he seemed to melt. “That is certainly not the truth. Cable and I are friends. That’s common knowledge and everything else is mere gossip. After my dear husband passed on, Cable was nice enough to squire me around to a function now and again, but our relationship was always entirely proper. We were more like . . . cousins. Yes, that’s it. When I saw Cable and Song together, I recognized instantly they were meant to be together. It is so saddening to me that they opted for annulment. I tried to talk them out of it. If this situation unfolds as I hope, I pray we will see these two fine young people back together.”

  A few of the West Virginia media people applauded the governor. They had never heard such an astonishing story told so convincingly. On
e nudged the other. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?” There was a subdued ripple of laughter that neither the governor nor the national media caught.

  Joe Hawkins came out on the porch, and the media spotted him and came running. They thrust their microphones in his face. “One at a time, boys, and ladies,” the old pro said. “I will answer your questions gladly. Just don’t yell them at me all at once. The only thing I want to say is I love my daughter. She is strong, very strong, and I believe she is still alive.”

  Hawkins looked up and found his eyes landing on the face of the governor of West Virginia. Her eyes were as blue as the Caribbean and he found himself falling into them.

  “Excuse me, fellas,” he said, coming off the porch and pushing through them. “There’s someone I would like to meet.”

  ON THREE BLOCK, the combined rescue teams got the word that the fire was out. They cheered. Fresh oxygen tanks had been brought up. They were ready to go, including the red caps, now accepted as part of the crew.

  “Holy smokes!” Mahata cried out as he aimed the beam of his light toward Four block. A river of water was coming their way. There was no time to run. In seconds, they were up to their knees in it. They held hands to stabilize themselves and leaned against the force of the flow. After a few minutes, they saw with relief that the water wasn’t getting any deeper. Shorty called Einstein and told him the situation. “Can we get that scoop loader now?” he asked.

  “When the water goes down,” Einstein said.

  Shorty looked around his group and they looked back. “There’s a scoop loader on Two East,” Shorty said. “That section’s higher than the main line and the return. It should be dry.”

  “I’ll get the dang thing,” Blackjack said.

  “We also need Doctor K,” Shorty advised.

  “The power’s off,” Mahata said. “How could she get down here?”

  Shorty thought it over, then gave Einstein a call. “What now?” he demanded.

  “We need Doctor K down here,” Shorty said.

  “When we turn the power on, I’ll send her down.”

  “Einstein, every second counts. Just turn the power on to the manlift long enough to get her down here. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Einstein was silent for a while, then said, “All right. That makes sense. But don’t go any farther than you are right now unless I give you the word.”

  Shorty crossed his fingers. “Oh, don’t worry. We wouldn’t think of it.”

  Shorty hung up and looked around the rescuers. He chose Justin. “Justin, go to the bottom, then escort Doctor K back here. Can I trust you to do that?”

  “You bet you can!” Justin took off.

  “That’s a good boy,” Shorty said.

  “No, that’s a good man,” Mahata said. Shorty had to agree.

  THE WATER LEVEL kept dropping. Cable and Song clung to one another. “You did it,” Cable said.

  Song’s SCSR was gone, ripped from her face by the flood. She hacked and coughed until Cable stuck his mouthpiece into her mouth. “Come on, baby. Breathe!”

  Song had nothing left. She was completely spent. She took several breaths from Cable’s SCSR, then spat out the mouthpiece and put her head down to sleep. “G’night, Cable,” she said. “I love St. John, but I don’t want to snorkel any more.”

  “We’re not in St. John, Song. We’re in the mine. Wake up. We’ve got to find Bum’s stash of SCSRs.”

  She blinked awake when he pushed the mouthpiece back between her lips. “They had to be washed away,” she said around it.

  “Not if they were in a manhole. Go look for them.”

  “Leave me alone, Cable. You’re a terrible boss. You keep making me do things I don’t want to do. I’m going to take a nap. I deserve it.” She let the mouthpiece fall out of her mouth again.

  Cable stubbornly pushed it back. “Don’t give up, Song. Please. We’re going to get through this. I’ve always known we would. It’s our destiny.”

  She opened one eye. “My favorite Jim Brickman song.”

  “And he wrote it for us, even though he didn’t know it at the time.”

  Song tried to look at Cable, but his face was blurred. Her eyes were failing her, she thought, but then she remembered she had on her goggles. She pushed them onto her forehead. “I think I’ve changed my mind,” she said groggily. “I don’t like being a coal miner any more.”

  Cable tried to chuckle but he didn’t have the strength. “Too late,” he said. “You’re trained now.” He took off his helmet, unclipped the battery from his belt. “Here, I sill got some juice in my battery.”

  “No, Cable. I haven’t earned a white helmet. I want a black one.”

  “Take it. You own this mine. I guess that gives you the right.”

  Song took off her helmet and handed it to Cable. “Don’t lose it. It matches my lipstick.”

  “Song?”

  “Hmm?”

  “We’re breathing a lot of carbon monoxide. Go after the SCSRs.”

  “Slave driver.”

  “I thought I was the superintendent of your heart.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Bum probably holed up around the belt. Look for the SCSRs there.”

  “All right, Cable. I’m going.” She thought to kiss him, but didn’t have the energy.

  Song crawled down off the boom and into the mud. She was shivering from being wet. She looked around for Bum, hoping that she wouldn’t have to see his body. She saw no sign of it, probably flushed away by the awesome torrent of water. She headed for the belt, but the going was slow, the sticky gray mud sucking at her boots with every tortured step.

  When she finally reached the belt, she began to search the manholes. She was surprised and delighted when she found the sodden box of SCSRs in the first opening. She fired a fresh one up for herself, clipped two to her belt, put a couple more under her arms, and headed back to Cable.

  “Not so fast, girlie girl.” Rising up out of the gloom like a black goblin was Bum. “Thought I’d drowned, didn’t you?”

  Song aimed her light at him. Bum’s face was bloody, his nose smashed by the shovel when she’d struck him. He also sported a broken-toothed grin around his mouthpiece, and his eyes were wild and crazy. He was also holding a slate bar. “You know, I’m going to have a little fun with you before I kill you,” he said. He grabbed his groin. “Gonna join the mile down club, you and me are.”

  Song tossed down the SCSRs and backed away. “We’re only eight hundred feet deep, Bum.”

  “All right. The eight-hundred-foot club. What does it matter?”

  Song turned out her light and ran. Bum laughed and shot the beam of his light after her. “You can only go so far, girlfriend,” he sang.

  Song ran until she found herself beside a scoop loader. She climbed aboard and settled into its seat.

  Bum laughed. “Stupid red cap. That loader’s been underwater. It won’t start.”

  Song looked up at the roof. “Well, Lord, here we go again,” she said. “This one’s for me and for Cable. Same reason as before.”

  Song pushed the start button and the dashboard lights flashed, dimmed, then brightened. She pushed the throttle forward. Bum saw the big machine groan, its tires tearing out of the mud, and then trundle in his direction. He ran. Song turned and twisted with him, catching him just as he came to rest with his back against a rib. She lowered the bucket and roared straight at him, stopping just short of running its sharp edge into his chest. “Don’t kill me!” Bum screamed. “Please! Oh, have mercy!”

  “Crawl into the bucket,” Song ordered.

  “Why?” Bum asked, wiping his shattered nose with the back of his hand.

  “I’m not going to tell you again, Bum. Crawl into the bucket or I’m going to cut you in two.”

  Breathing heavily, his face wreathed in fear, Bum crawled inside the bucket. “What now?” he whined.

  “This,” Song said and pulled the lift lever to the stops. The bucket
slammed into the roof, trapping Bum within a prison of steel and stone.

  Song de-energized the scoop and climbed off it. She walked until she found the spare SCSRs and came back. Bum was scrabbling inside his cage and screaming. “You can’t leave me in here!” he wailed. “I’ll suffocate!”

  “Tell it to someone who cares,” Song muttered, and kept going.

  THEY FOUND SONG and Cable beside a shuttle car. They were sitting in the muck, leaning against one of the big tires. Cable had his arm around her and Song was snuggled against his chest. Inexplicably, he was wearing her red helmet and she was wearing his white one. She had the mouthpiece of her SCSR in her mouth. He didn’t.

  Doctor K took their pulses, then touched Song on her shoulder. When Song didn’t react, the doctor lightly shook her. Song’s eyes slowly opened. She blinked a few times, then, as Doctor K watched, light and life came back into her eyes. A small smile formed on her lips.

  “Doctor K. You’re here.” She looked up and saw the rescue team members standing around, then picked out Chevrolet, Ford, Gilberto, and Justin among them. “Hi, fellas,” she said sleepily.

  Song turned and looked up into Cable’s face. His eyes were closed. “Cable? Look who’s here. They’ve come for us at last.”

  “Song . . . ,” Doctor K began.

  Song moved her hand to touch Cable’s cheek, the one with the dimple. “Cable?” she asked. “Cable?” she demanded.

  “Come help me with her, boys,” Doctor K said to the red caps. “Quickly now.”

  “No, please,” Song said, running her hand across Cable’s mouth. “Breathe, sweetheart.”

  “Stay back,” Justin warned the rescue team members who were crowding in too close.

  “Please, Cable,” Song begged.

  “We love her,” Chevrolet explained to the others. “She’s the best of us.”

  “Please, no. Oh, God,” Song cried.

  “We’ll take care of her,” Gilberto said.

  And they did.

  Forty-Two

  It was a story that had briefly captivated a nation, but now it was at an end. Three weeks had passed and most of the reporters, anchors, correspondents, stringers, and strap-hangers of the media were gone from Highcoal, much to the relief of the little mining town. The satellite trucks, generators, trailers, and vans that supported them were gone too. The tale of the mine explosion, fire, and underground flood beneath the winter-bare hills of Appalachia was but one of a never-ending reality series reported by the American media for urban dwellers who were gratified to discover there were still real people in the heartland accomplishing real things.