Secrets of the Heart (32 page)

She thought about Meggie constantly and found it unbearable not to know how she was doing. Finally, one day when Tom was at the mine and Caleb was at school, she decided to write to Hennie again and ask her to look in on Meggie. She had not written to Hennie since she’d married Tom for fear he would see the return letter.

She’d just have to chance it now.

On a Thursday night in early May, Tom, Kathleen, and Caleb were playing one of Kathleen’s Irish games at the kitchen table.

“You know, Tom, I just remembered something,” Kathleen said. “A couple of weeks ago, when you were out of town, the pastor and his wife came by again and said they wished we’d come visit their church some Sunday.”

“I’m not surprised. They’ve been trying to get me to come ever since
I
met them.”

“I don’t much care to go, but maybe we should, just once…you know, so they won’t keep asking us.”

“Tell you what, Kathleen, let’s do it this Sunday and get it over with. Maybe that’ll get the preacher off our backs.”

On Sunday after the morning service, the Harneds walked home in silence, both Kathleen and Tom lost in their own thoughts.

Pastor Humbert had preached salvation plain and clear, giving the gospel of Jesus Christ with power. He warned sinners of the danger of dying in their sins and spending eternity in hell. A few people had responded to the altar call.

Caleb had listened intently to the fiery preaching and walked along in the same silence that hovered around his parents.

The next day at noon, Kathleen answered a knock at her door and looked into Donna Mitchell’s smiling face.

“Hello,” Kathleen said, opening the door wide. “Come in, Donna.”

“I’m on my lunchtime,” Donna said, “so I can only stay a minute. I just wanted to tell you how good it was to see you and your family in church yesterday.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you be coming back again?”

“Oh, I expect we’ll be back sometime.”

“We’d sure love to see you come on a regular basis.”

Kathleen hunched her shoulders. “Maybe, someday.”

“Hank sure loves working for Tom. They get along so well.”

“And Tom thinks the world of Hank. He’s a hard worker, and Tom appreciates it.”

“I’m a little concerned with them working so deep in the mountain now. I imagine you are, too.”

Kathleen frowned.
“How
deep?”

“Hank says they’re about two hundred and fifty feet in.”

Kathleen smiled weakly. “Tom knows I was worried about that when he was employed by Mr. Comstock. He’s probably not said anything about it because of that.”

“No doubt. Hank assures me they’ve taken every precaution to make it cave-in safe. Well, I must get back to the hotel. Just wanted to tell you how glad Hank and I were to see you in church yesterday.”

That evening at the supper table, Caleb sat quietly while Kathleen talked to Tom about safety measures at the mine. Tom assured her that his mine tunnels were braced with heavy timbers, just like Henry Comstock’s. There was always a possibility that something could go wrong, but it was unlikely.

When that discussion ended, Tom eyed his preoccupied son and said, “Caleb, you’re not talking, which is very unusual for you. Is something bothering you?”

The boy looked up timidly and said, “What’s hell?”

Tom and Kathleen looked at each other, nonplussed.

“Where did you hear that word?” Tom said.

“At church, yesterday morning. Pastor Humbert said if people didn’t get saved they’d go to hell, and there’s fire there.”

“Has this been bothering you, Caleb?” Kathleen asked.

“Yes, Mommy.” The boy paused. “What does it mean to be saved?”

Kathleen looked to Tom, who said, “Caleb, hell is where real bad people go when they die. You don’t have to worry about that.”

The child cocked his head to one side. “But Pastor Humbert read from the Bible that everybody is a sinner, and that Jesus died on the cross so sinners could be saved from hell if they would ask Him to come into their heart and save them.”

Toms felt a prick of irritation. “Did Mrs. Humbert read you those kinds of things from the Bible when you stayed with her?”

“No, sir. She talked a lot about Jesus, but she didn’t say anything about hell. She read me stories about God making the world, and about King David killing that big giant, and about Noah in the ark, and Jesus dying on the cross, and things like that.”

Tom changed the subject abruptly and talked about going on a family picnic the next Sunday.

At bedtime, Caleb brought up the subject again when Kathleen was tucking him in. Kathleen told him everything was all right. He didn’t need to worry about hell, but he did need to get to sleep.

The next day, Kathleen went to the post office as usual about one o’clock in the afternoon. There was a letter from Hennie O’Banion. She ripped it open as soon as she was on the boardwalk.

Hennie had been able to peer through the fence and get a good look at Meggie. The child was fine but looked a bit unhappy. Hennie felt sure it was because Meggie missed her mother.

Kathleen wept when she read those words. Drying her tears, she finished reading the letter, which closed off:

Kathleen slipped the letter back in the envelope and mumbled,
“Hennie, I love you too, but you might as well give up. I’m just not interested in your beliefs, nor Pastor Humbert’s.”

When she arrived home, her first inclination was to burn the letter, as she had done with the previous one. But as she held it in her hand, it struck her that the letter was her only physical contact with Meggie. It came from Chicago. Instead of burning it, she placed it in a shoe box in her bedroom closet. Tom never opened her shoe boxes.

O
NE DAY IN EARLY
J
ULY
, Kathleen Harned was watering her flower garden at the side of the house while Caleb and two boys from down the street played cowboys and Indians in the front yard.

She chuckled to herself as she watched the boys at play. Caleb’s friends were both dark-headed, but it was Caleb who was the Indian.

Suddenly there was a sound of galloping hooves and the rattle of a wagon. The boys stopped their “gunfight” to watch the wagon as it raced down the street and stopped in front of the Harned house. The two horses that pulled the wagon were snorting, and their coats had a sheen of sweat.

Kathleen recognized Jack Wilmot, one of Toms miners, as he leaped from the wagon seat. The look on his face made her heart skip a beat.

“Mrs. Harned!” he gasped. “There’s been a cave-in at the mine!”

“Oh, no! Is—”

“Tom and four other men are trapped!” said Wilmot as he drew up, panting. “Hank Mitchell told me to come and bring you back with me! The other four wives are being picked up in another wagon.”

Kathleen’s face drained of color as she asked, “Is Tom—are the men alive?”

“We don’t know, ma’am.”

Sheer terror lanced her heart as she called to Caleb. When he reached her side she said, “Son, we have to go with Mr. Wilmot. Dads trapped in the mine.”

Caleb sat between his mother and Jack Wilmot while the wagon bounded and fishtailed on the dusty road as it headed due north.

“Jack,” Kathleen said above the thunder of hooves and rattle of wagon, “how deep are Tom and the other men trapped?”

“About two hundred feet, ma’am, as best we can tell. Most of the men had come out of the mine to eat lunch. Tom and the other four had stayed in for a few minutes to shore up a large wooden beam that was slipping. Apparently that beam gave way and came down.”

Kathleen felt sick all over and began praying silently,
O dear God…don’t let Tom be dead! I lost Peter suddenly…please don’t let it happen to Tom!

“The rest of our men, along with about forty from other mines, are working as fast as they can to dig them out, Mrs. Harned.”

Caleb began to cry. “Mommy, I want Dad to be all right. He will, won’t he?”

Kathleen closed her eyes for the barest instant to get a grip on her own fear. Opening her eyes, she pulled Caleb onto her lap and said in a slightly unsteady voice, “Your father will be all right, Caleb. He’s probably already been rescued by now. You heard Mr. Wilmot say there are lots of men working to rescue him and the other men.”

The boy’s body was trembling, but he seemed to grow calmer as he laid his head on her shoulder.

Kathleen wished she could believe what she’d just told Caleb.

Inside the mine, Tom Harned lay on his back with the fallen beam across his pelvis. The darkness was so thick he could feel it. He moved his arms and found dirt and rocks piled on both sides of him. He’d tried to move the beam, but it wouldn’t budge.

After the cave-in, Tom called out to the other men who were in the mine with him but got no response. Dale Roy, Ed Harris, Stedman Stewart, and Darrold Manley all were young men with wives and small children. He hoped they were still alive.

One thing he knew: he was trapped in a small enclosure, and there was no air getting in.

He was sweating profusely, and hot pain wrenched at his muscles.
Inability to move his body was bad enough, but the stygian darkness was almost unbearable. And then there was the silence—the eerie dead silence that hung in the black hole like a pall.

Tom strained to push away panic and suppress his ragged breathing to conserve oxygen.

He wondered if someone had gone after Kathleen and Caleb. Or did they even know yet about the cave-in? And what about the wives and children of the other four men?

Time seemed to drag, yet there was no way to know how much time had passed.
Maybe it’s night already. Maybe—

It was getting harder to breathe.

He listened for any sound of voices or scraping of shovels. Nothing but silence except for the sound of his own labored breathing.

Tom wished he could tell Kathleen and Caleb just one more time that he loved them.

It was getting harder to fill his lungs with air. He strained against the weight that held him to the tunnel floor, but the huge beam was not about to budge.

His thoughts flashed to Pastor Bruce Humberts sermon the day they had visited the church, and the times Hank Mitchell had tried to get him to open his heart to Jesus. He had not listened to Hank, either.

And now Thomas Harned was about to die. He would go into eternity to face the God who had sent His Son to die for sinners. Tom had foolishly and stubbornly rejected Jesus Christ, thinking that to become a born-again Christian was to become a wild-eyed fanatic.

Even Caleb’s questions at supper one night floated to the forefront of his mind. “What’s hell?”
Hell is where I’m going!
Tom thought, his throat going dry. How wild-eyed would he be when he dropped into that awful place?

He clenched his fists in helpless terror and rolled his head back and forth on the floor of the tunnel. “O God! O God!” he gasped. “Don’t let me die and go to hell!”

Suddenly he thought of the passage that both Hank and Pastor Humbert had shown him in the Bible:

With his fists still clenched, Tom Harned laid claim to the Scripture promises and called on the Lord Jesus to save him. He asked to be forgiven all his sins. Admitting that he was a sinner, he threw himself on the mercy of the One who had said, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

On the other side of the heap of rock and dirt—some thirty to forty feet thick—the miners labored frantically, calling out to the trapped men as they shoveled their way deeper into the mountain.