One of Us (23 page)

Dressed in identical coal-stained blue coveralls, steel-toed rubber boots, and battered miners’ helmets with American flag stickers on the sides, the only way to tell the men apart is by their faces and their height.

Todd’s the shortest of the four, and the youngest, chubby-cheeked with a mustache and a wad of tobacco under his lip. J.C. is taller, looks to be the oldest, and has shrewd gray eyes and a scar that starts beneath his nose and travels down the middle of his chin like someone began to cut his face in half but thought better of it.

“Rick’s sitting down there with a bunch of dynamite. He says he’s gonna kill himself by blowing up the mine,” Jamie joins in.

He’s the tallest, wiry, with a goatee.

“That way his wife and kids will get his life insurance, plus they can sue Walker Dawes.”

“How is the financial gain part of the plan supposed to succeed since you all know the truth?” I ask them.

Shawn, dark-eyed, broad-shouldered with an angular face, speaks for the whole group by folding his arms across his chest and shrugging.

I instantly understand that none of them would ever rat out their buddy, and their buddy knows this.

“Rick didn’t want any of us to get hurt so he made us all come back up topside,” J. C. further explains. “We wanted to stay. We figured if we did we could find a way out of it. There’s no way he’d blow up all five of us, but Carl said it has nothing to do with numbers. If Rick turns crazy enough to blow up his brother, he’d have no problem blowing up four more guys, so we might as well go.”

“It made sense to us,” Todd confirms guiltily.

“So Carl stayed?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you try to overpower Rick? It would have been five against one.”

“He had a gun. He brought this old revolver of his with him in his lunch pail,” J. C. goes on.

“You don’t want to shoot a gun in a coal mine,” he adds for my edification.

I don’t know the exact chemistry and physics principles supporting this fact, but I’m willing to take his word for it.

“So the situation right now is a suicidal man is sitting in a coal mine with his brother armed with a handgun and a bunch of dynamite?” I summarize. “This is awful, but I don’t understand why I’m here.”

“You’re a shrink.” Shawn speaks for the first time.

Brenna places her hand on my arm.

“I thought maybe you could talk some sense into him,” she says pleadingly.

I glance around at all their faces except for Rafe, who turns away from me and begins unwrapping candy. Tommy—who should be fine with what they’re asking, even happy at the thought that his grandson might be able to save the day—looks dumbstruck.

The idea is so far beyond possible, I can’t even begin to consider it, then I suddenly realize what they must actually be asking of me.

“You mean through a phone or a radio?”

“Nah,” Todd replies. “He won’t talk to anyone willingly. You’ll have to go to him and make him talk to you.”

“We know it’s asking a lot,” J. C. concedes.

“Yeah. It takes a half hour in the mantrip to get to the room where we was cutting. Who knows what could happen in the meantime?”

“Don’t say that, Todd,” Brenna scolds.

I don’t know what I’m showing on the outside, but on the inside I’ve dissolved into a puddle. I must not look too good, though, because Tommy takes me by the arm and leads me away.

“Listen,” he says. “I know how afraid you are of the mines. I know about your nightmares.”

“How? I never told you.”

“You told me plenty, but you were always hysterical at the time and probably don’t remember.”

“All these years you’ve known?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“No, it’s not. Those men over there would never be able to put on a suit and testify before a jury or sit down and have a chat with a serial killer. They’d be as afraid of doing your job as you’re afraid of doing theirs.

“You don’t have to do this, Danny. No one will think less of you.”

I know he’s right. They wouldn’t think less of me because it’s not possible. Right now they think nothing of me.

We walk back over.

“I’ll do it,” I say.

I expect saying the words out loud will give me some sort of confidence boost, but I’m wrong.

My heart is already pounding much too fast. My mouth has gone dry and my legs feel weak. I take some comfort in the fact that I’m probably not going to make it into the mine; I’m sure I’ll pass out first.

“Come on over to the trailer and we’ll get you fixed up with some boots and coveralls,” Brenna says.

“It’s okay. I’ll go like this.”

She and all the men look me up and down. Beneath my knee-length slate gray Tom Ford overcoat are dark-wash jeans, an Yves Saint Laurent Henley, a Boss Orange shawl-collar cardigan, and a pair of vintage Prada boots.

“Your clothes are gonna get ruined,” Todd points out.

“It’s okay. I want to keep them on.”

I take off my coat and give it to Tommy.

J. C. hands me his helmet and also his heavy leather tool belt.

“I highly doubt I’ll need any tools. Or were you planning to put me to work?” I attempt some levity.

“It’s for the dog tag.”

He shows me the brass plate on the belt inscribed with his name and social security number. I know what it’s for. Sometimes it’s the only way to identify a body.

“You’re Joseph Cameron Hewitt now.”

“It’s up to you, Danno,” Rafe says, finally weighing in on my decision.

“Almost forgot,” J. C. says. “Here’s your self-rescuer.”

He hands me a canteenlike piece of equipment.

“If something goes wrong you got enough air for an hour.”

A MANTRIP IS THE
flat, battery-powered cart that takes the miners to the face where they’re cutting coal. It rides on rails, and as Silent Shawn and I begin our downward-sloping journey into the inky darkness, I try to think of it as the world’s most horrific amusement park ride: it might end in a stroll down the fairway eating cotton candy and cheesy fries, or it might end in men digging for days only to find bits and pieces of you and a brass tag with someone else’s name on it.

Top that, Pirates of the Caribbean.

I try not to look at the walls of black rock speeding past or, more important, at the ceiling. This part of the tunnel is only a little over four feet tall. If I were to panic and stand up, I’d be knocked unconscious. It’s a tempting thought.

I’ve managed to stay composed so far except for the sweat pouring down my back, dripping onto my face, and oiling the palms of my hands. This reaction isn’t caused by heat. After the miners explained to me that they all wear long johns under their coveralls, they convinced me to take Al Kelly’s coat. I’m glad I did. Along with being dark, cramped, and damp, it’s also cold down here.

The tunnel suddenly opens into a broader area with a slightly higher ceiling called the mains, short for the main section. I’ve spent enough time listening to my dad and Tommy and other miners talk about their work to recognize that this mine has been dug by a method known as room-and-pillar, in which the coal is removed in a series of rooms or entries with blocks of coal left in to keep the roof from collapsing. I count six numbered entries. Running between each one at about fifty-foot intervals are the crosscuts that allow access from one corridor to the next. I don’t know how the men keep track of all of them.

Though a little less claustrophobic, the mains aren’t much of an im
provement over the setting in my dreams. Now instead of being trapped in a tunnel, I’m lost in a huge black maze.

“I appreciate you taking me down, Shawn.”

“No problem. Can do it in my sleep. Truth be told, most of the time I’m on this thing, I am sleeping.”

I glance back at him calmly rolling a wad of tobacco around beneath his lower lip and carving at his thumbnail with a pocketknife.

The boys of my youth jumped off anything, attacked anyone, ventured anywhere no matter how dark or perilous without giving any thought to what harm might befall them. I could never decide if they were brave or stupid until I finally came to realize they were neither; they acted that way simply because no one ever taught them to value their lives. I was convinced it was the same mentality that led them into the mines.

Watching Shawn, I reassess my findings. All people value their lives and everyone is afraid of dying. It’s a particular manner of death that leads to phobic behavior. Even now as I’m experiencing my worst nightmare in real life, I’m not afraid of dying; I’m afraid of the mine killing me.

“How far are we going to go underground?”

“’Bout a mile and a half.”

“I probably shouldn’t have asked that.”

“Probably not.”

I close my eyes and in my mind I start running a mile and a half. I see the road stretching out before me, a pitted gray empty country road with no end in sight.

I have no idea what I’m going to say to Rick Kelly. Walker Dawes was right when he suggested that I haven’t hung up a shingle and gone into private practice because I don’t care about making people better. I don’t. I have enough trouble dealing with my own problems and those surrounding my family.

I do what I do because I’m fascinated by the workings of the human mind, especially the minds that have failed society. I want to understand the criminals, crazies, outcasts, and dropouts and their unorthodox, sometimes destructive and violent, almost always unacceptable means of survival.

Rick, who was described to me before I began my descent as the most normal of normal guys, a nice, easygoing family man who hardly ever raises his voice and whose only vice is an inexplicable love of rap music, is exactly the kind of man who should value his life but has decided he doesn’t want to survive, while Carson Shupe would have done anything to survive including murdering young boys; it was the only thing in his mind that gave him a reason to keep getting up in the morning.

We finally come to a stop. Alongside the fact that every inch we’ve traveled looks exactly the same to me, the ins and outs of the mains have me completely confused. If I were to be left alone, I could never find my way out of here.

I try to push this thought out of my mind and fill it with bright, airy, generous images. Everything I come up with centers around my mother: the beautiful summer day we painted our garage Pepto-Bismol pink; the colorful cookies we used to make to share with our neighbors; her sitting in Tommy’s rocking chair near the sunny front windows knitting another addition to her rainbow coalition of hats.

Shawn gets off the mantrip and motions for me to follow him. The ceiling has become low again. He moves quickly, even gracefully, hunched over like a gorilla, using his miner’s hammer as a walking stick.

I try my best to keep up with him and to keep my panic at bay. Everywhere I look I see nothing but black nothingness, yet I know I’m surrounded by something impenetrable.

In the light cast by our two helmet lamps I think I see movement. I’ve been placing my hands on the moist rock walls to help keep my balance. I drop them to my sides.

“Are there rats down here?” I ask Shawn.

“Haven’t seen any, but we got spiders big as Labrador retrievers.”

I hear him chuckling to himself.

A face suddenly appears out of the gloom, reminding me so much of the faces seared to the seam wall in my nightmare that I almost faint.

I jerk back and bump into the wall that I’m convinced moved and I jump forward to get away from it.

The two men pay no attention to me.

“How’s he doing?” I hear Shawn ask Carl Kelly.

“Not good. He’s not himself.”

“Brenna got Danny Doyle to come talk to him. He’s a shrink, you know.”

A moment of silence passes while Carl considers this new development.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, but I’m willing to try anything. What are you gonna say?” he asks me.

“I don’t know.”

“You know he’s got a gun.”

“Yes.”

“He’s right over there.”

They point into the midnight abyss of solid black rock. I see nothing.

I maneuver my lamp until I can make out a miner sitting against a wall. He has his own lamp turned off.

I tap my helmet.

“What if all the lights go out?”

Shawn spits a stream of tobacco.

“Then you’ll be in the dark.”

I join Rick Kelly, concentrating on the task at hand and trying to ignore once again where I am. It’s not easy.

“I’m Danny Doyle,” I say to him, taking a seat next to him. “Tommy’s grandson. We met here at the mine a couple days ago.”

“Oh, man,” he unexpectedly wails. “They sent me a shrink. I’m not crazy.”

“No one thinks you’re crazy.”

“Then why’d they send me a shrink?”

“Your family and friends thought maybe I’d have better luck talking to you. Since that’s my job, getting people to talk just like”—I pause and look around me at our dungeon surroundings—“this is your job.”

“Not for too much longer. Tim’s bankrupt. He’s going to close down.”

His face and clothes are covered in soot. He’d blend in completely
with the coal behind him if it weren’t for the white rings around his eyes and the emotion shining in them.

He suddenly looks as frantic as I feel.

“Who knows about this?” he says. “Who’s out there? Does my wife know?”

“Just the guys on your crew, Brenna, and your dad’s here, too.”

“My dad? He’s sick.”

“Your dad loves you.”

“I know my dad loves me. I don’t need a shrink to tell me that. I’m not fucked up.”

I glance at the handgun sitting in his lap and the pile of dynamite lying next to him.

“No one thinks you’re fucked up,” I assure him.

“You made a long trip for nothing. I don’t feel like talking.”

“Don’t you think you owe them an explanation?”

“They can figure it out.”

“That’s the thing about suicide. The person doing it thinks the people they leave behind will understand, but they almost never do.”

“I got no way to make a living. My wife’s got no way to make a living. We got kids and bills,” he says, ticking off the reasons.