Faith, Hope, and Ivy June (26 page)

“If it was a cave-in, I’ll bet it was the tunnel left of the south entry. My uncle said last week that the roof needed shoring up, but nobody fixed it,” said George Wilson.

Ivy June didn’t want to hear that, and her heart raced. She’d heard Papaw say once that it wasn’t the thought of death so much that made his blood turn cold—it was the fear of being trapped hundreds of feet inside a mountain with no way out.

“… that slate come down on you, you don’t even hear it,” a man was saying.

Ivy June left the others and restlessly paced the room, stopping every so often to ask someone a question, but no one had an answer. The folding table at one side now supported a platter of sliced ham and a casserole of macaroni and cheese. The fragrance of fresh coffee filled her nostrils. But no one seemed to be eating except the photographer, who made a sandwich out of ham and a roll, then hurried on out to his car.

“Ivy June!”

Ivy June wheeled about, and there was Mammaw, a frenzied look on her face. Ivy June was shocked when her grandmother grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

“W-what?” Ivy June stammered.

“Where you been? I’ve not enough on my mind to worry about?” Mammaw declared, and suddenly she pulled Ivy June toward her and hugged her, crying.

Daddy came in the door, his face drawn. “Mrs. Murphy came up to get us, Ivy June, and said we were to stop by the school and pick you up. Mr. Gordon, he didn’t know where you was, or Catherine, neither. Said you were told to wait in the cafeteria till we got there.”

“I … I couldn’t,” Ivy June said. “I just c-couldn’t.”

“They saying anything yet?”

“No. Where was Papaw working, Mammaw? What tunnel was he in?”

Mammaw shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Week before, he was working the north main, but he just didn’t say….”

“Sit down, Ma,” Daddy told her. “Don’t upset yourself any more. We forgot your nerve medicine, remember.”

“Lord, and I-don’t-know-what-all,” Mammaw said, lowering herself onto a pew, then grabbing at Catherine’s hand as Cat saw the family and came over. “Ruth’s there at the house with the boys looking after Grandmommy, and Jessie, I ’spect, will be here shortly, she hears the news.” Mammaw dug in her sweater pocket for a hand-kerchief and wiped her eyes.

Catherine sat down in the pew in front, turned so she could talk with them. She looked helpless and out of place, but Ivy June could feel nothing for Catherine just then, could feel only her own terror and helplessness.

Off in the distance, they could hear a siren coming—from the direction not of the town but of the mine. Everyone pivoted toward the door as the ambulance raced past, the flash of its red light momentarily spotting the walls of the church. That meant that
some
one was alive.

The white-haired man in the leather jacket, holding a cell phone to his ear, limped to the front of the sanctuary. Ivy June could tell he’d been a miner—the nicks on his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose where rock had fallen. Miners’ tattoos, folks called them. People immediately surged toward him, but he pocketed the cell phone and held up one hand. An immediate hush fell over the room.

“I’m going to give it to you straight, folks, and this is all I know,” he said. “Charlie Sizemore’s at the mine now, and we’re going to keep trading places till—”

“Just get on with it, Brady!” a man called out.

The white-haired man nodded, and his face looked pained. “There’s been a flood at the mine. They drilled into water.”

Gasps and cries traveled around the room.

“Oh, my Lord Jesus …,” murmured Mammaw.

The man named Brady continued: “There were twenty-nine men on the morning shift, and seven of them working the north passages. Three men were in the number one room, four working the number two. One of the men, Les Crowley, was washed out into the main entry and was grabbed by another miner near the mouth. They escaped by riding the conveyor belt the rest of the way out.”

“Who pulled Les out?” a woman called.

“I don’t know, but Crowley’s on his way to the hospital and he’s conscious, so maybe he’ll be able to tell us what happened. We’re guessing somebody cut into trapped water. They’ve got one pump going and more equipment on the way.”

“Just one pump?” someone shouted.

The room was filled with more questions, exclamations, but all Ivy June heard right then was Mammaw’s breathless “Spencer can’t swim.”

A man standing next to Brady held up his hand for attention: “Remember, y’all, Brady used to work at the mine, so don’t hold him accountable. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have no news a’tall.”

The crowd quieted some then.

“What about the men working the south passages?” somebody asked.

“They’ve got ninteen men up the main straight trapped on high ground, and they’ve been told to stay put till the pumps bring the water down,” Brady said. Then, “Hold on a minute.” His cell phone was ringing and he held it to his ear. Then he turned once more toward the crowd and said, “The second man on the conveyor belt was Smit Wilson, and he’s okay.”

“Hey, George!” some of the kids cried, and Ivy June saw the relief on the boy’s face.

“Give us the names of the men they know are alive,” a woman pleaded.

“We’re trying to get that now. Charlie’s down at the mine checking. As soon as he calls, I’ll tape the names on the door back there,” Brady said, motioning to the Bible study room.

Ivy June clutched her daddy’s arm. “Where could all that water come from, Daddy? Underground river or something?”

“Probably an abandoned mine next to this one,” he said. “Sometimes they fill up.”

“And nobody knew it was there?” Ivy June said, angry tears filling her eyes.

Someone else asked the question: “How come they didn’t know water was there? How come they was drilling where it wasn’t safe?”

“We’d all like to know that,” Brady said. “Could be they had a faulty map, or management didn’t do an accurate survey—I’m not the one to ask.”

“Is there a rescue team there now?” Daddy called out.

“They’ve called for one, but I don’t know who they’ve got,” said Brady. “They don’t get here soon, I swear I’ll go in there myself.”

Ivy June tried to imagine her grandfather crawling to escape the rush of water, when it even took him a while now to get up out of a chair.

Most of the time, he’d told her once, he was squatting down or bending over in tunnels not more than four feet high. Or he was crawling on his hands and knees. A sixty-four-year-old man had no business at all doing something like that. If it was the big coal company he’d worked for as a young man, he’d said, they wouldn’t have taken him on at this age. But when they had mined what they wanted and closed operations, they’d sold to a small company that went in to get what was left. The small company wanted experienced men, and if you had a pulse, Papaw once said, they’d take you, long as you didn’t complain.

Why
hadn’t
he complained? Ivy June wondered. Why hadn’t he done something else? Each time he went into the mountain, he was taking a chance.

She cried.

Darkness fell, and a cold rain drummed on the church roof. More casseroles arrived, along with cakes and freshly baked pies. The sanctuary smelled of fried chicken, sausage and sauerkraut, wet concrete, and mud from the boots of men who tramped back and forth from their fruitless trips to the mine. Many relatives sat in their cars outside the church, too numb to come inside, listening for news on their car radios.

Catherine tried to help out by dialing the mine office herself on her cell phone. If they answered, she was ready to hand the phone to Ivy June’s dad. But always the line was busy, as Brady had warned them all that it would be.

Feeling she could no longer stand the suspense, Ivy June got up to use the restroom, then impulsively walked out the side door and set out blindly along the road toward the mine, pulling her jacket up over her head. But when she reached the roadblock, a policeman stopped her.

“Where you headed, miss?” he asked, aiming his flashlight in her direction.

“My grandfather’s down there,” she said, weeping.

“I’m sorry, but only emergency crews can go by right now,” he told her. “We’ve got some bulldozers coming to clear a path for a drill rig.”

“You don’t know what it’s like!” Ivy June said angrily. “Just waiting and waiting and not knowing anything …”

“Well,” he said, “I do know what it’s like. My son’s down there.”

Ivy June stopped, chastened, and then, unable even to say she was sorry, she turned away, her tears mixing with rain. Her father was coming toward her.

“Come inside, girl,” he said, leading her back toward the church.

“Daddy,” she cried in a small voice, “if anything happens to Papaw, what are we going to do?” And as soon as she said it, she regretted the question, for, looking up, she saw that her daddy’s face was as sorrowful as she’d ever seen it. He didn’t answer, only squeezed her hand.

How could this be happening the day after Catherine’s mom had her operation? What were the chances that these two girls, the only ones in the exchange program—the first Thunder Creek had ever had—would have something bad happen to their families almost on the same day? Trouble wasn’t supposed to come in fours, with the fourth being worst of all! It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t even likely, and yet—it was real.

Catherine was standing on the church steps, motioning toward them. “Come inside!” she called. “They’re going to read names.”

Daddy sat down in the pew beside Mammaw, Ivy June next to him and Catherine on the end.

Brady stood before them, holding a sheet of paper. His face was grave, and the room was still as a mountain.

“I just got back from the mine,” he said, “and here’s what we know: we have three miners aboveground, including Smit Wilson and Les Crowley; Tom Reeves is the third. Got nineteen men trapped but alive and accounted for—they got through once on the voice-activated phone—five men missing, and two men dead. The families of the two have been notified, and I’m sorry to report the names of Easter Preston and Mose Hardy.”

“Not Mose!” Mammaw gasped.

Some people began to cry. It was a name—both names—that Ivy June had heard mentioned now and then. She could not even blink. She waited.

“Here are the five who are missing,” Brady continued. “And remember, folks, there are lots of places these men might be.” He looked down at the list again, “Eldon Potter, Ted Hatfield, Eli Dodd, Spencer Mosley, and Bill McClung.”

“Oh, Ivy June!” said Catherine. But Ivy June had her face buried in her daddy’s sleeve, and he embraced his mother.

The Red Cross set up some cots at the back of the sanctuary, and a few more down by the altar. They also handed out blankets and aspirin.

Lying on a wooden pew, Ivy June made a pillow of her blanket, then shared head space on it with Catherine, each girl pointed in the opposite direction.

Ivy June didn’t think she could sleep. Wondered if she would ever sleep again, but woke only once in the night when she felt someone cover her up. She opened her eyes in the morning to the sound of rain still falling and saw that her daddy had placed his jacket around her shoulders. Mammaw slumped in one corner, her head tilted back, a pillow under her neck, snoring softly.

When Ivy June went to the restroom at the back of the church, she found a bottle of mouthwash and paper cups, courtesy again of the Red Cross. She and Catherine drank orange juice at the long table, now bearing doughnuts and sticky buns. Mammaw woke, and while Catherine was putting together a breakfast for her, Ivy June went outside to look for her father. He was there on the front steps, smoking, talking to the other men.

“Any news?” she asked.

Daddy shook his head.

“Least they’re lettin’ some of us past the barricade now,” one man said. “They got four turbine pumps going, and a borehole going to the nineteen men trapped in the south tunnel, ‘cause that voice-activated phone they got down there keeps goin’ out.”

“And … the men in the north tunnel?” Ivy June asked.

Daddy shook his head. “There’ve been no other bodies washed out, Ivy June. That’s all we know.”