The Deep Dark (17 page)

Follette wondered why the men across the drift just stayed put. He could see them through gauzy air.
Why don't they get over here?

“I'm going to catch the next one,” Joe Armijo said, backing away to the fresh air.

“You can squeeze in here,” Markve called out, urging Ace Riley's partner to get on. Armijo refused. He was hacking badly and didn't think he could make it up the shaft just then.

“I'll get some air down at the grizzly,” he said, retreating behind the thickening black curtain.

A young miner, a kid, appeared in the smoke and said that he was going to go with Armijo to get some air, too. This time Follette wouldn't hear of it.

“Get in!” he said.

The kid backed into the cage, and Follette swung his arms around him. There were at least fifteen or sixteen men crammed on the twelve-man cage. Follette hoped nobody would move behind him, or he'd fall down the shaft. He could see the other men across the station, still standing there. Markve planted his feet on the muck pile on the floor, and the cage took off. A hundred feet from 3100, a miracle of sorts materialized—a sudden rush, a band of fresh air. Markve took a deep breath. Never in his life had he tasted anything as sweet. Not honey on a spoon. Not the freshest milk poured from a bottle topped with a plug of cream.
Those things would be sour compared to this air,
he thought.

There was smoke on 3100, but nothing like they'd seen on 5000. Foreman Gene Johnson and shifters Virgil Bebb and Charlie Casteel yelled for the men coming from the cage to get out to the Jewell. Howard Markve went over to help Bob Goff, though he really didn't know what he could do. Goff needed a doctor. He was slumped against the rib; his body was swaying. Others were gagging and coughing. A few crumpled to the ground. Markve kept coughing, and every time he did, he let more smoke into his lungs. One of the bosses told Markve and Follette to leave Goff and get going.

“We'll take care of him,” he said.

Markve trailed the others down the drift. He felt woozy. What was happening in the mine didn't seem real.

About that time a motor came into view, and the motorman called for the men to jump into the empty cars. Markve and Follette rode together. Three-fourths of the way to the Jewell, they hit another gust of sweet, fresh air. The motorman ordered everyone out of the cars, and returned to 10-Shaft. Follette helped steady Markve as they walked out. If the motorman hadn't come just when he did, Follette doubted that Markve would have made it out. He was convinced that some of those men left back at the station didn't have a fighting chance. He hoped the motorman would get to them in time. Bob Goff's twenty-nine-year-old wife had already lost one husband in the mines. It didn't seem fair that she'd have to suffer that again.

B
UZ
B
RUHN,
D
EWELLYN
K
ITCHEN, AND A FEW OTHERS STOOD BY
the shaft on 5000; the smoke seemed lighter in color, more or less white. In the midst of it all, Bruhn noticed a man standing by the grizzly with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The miner was talking, smoking, and casually holding his self-rescuer as if it were a dinner bucket. On the station, miners talked about what under God's green earth could be burning?

And suddenly, Byron Schulz appeared.

“Get on,” the young cager said.

“On
wha
t
? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Get on the cage.”

Tentatively, Bruhn stepped through the smoke. It was right there. Eight or nine guys were aboard, some in a bad way, while others seemed fine. Bruhn reached back for Kitchen and pulled him through the smoke. By then the cage was full; men held each other with viselike determination. No one was going to fall through the open doors. A few seconds later the cage disappeared up the shaft. Men closed their eyes to shut out the stinging cloud. There was nothing to see anyway; smoke blocked the pulsating lights that signaled the changing levels. Only decreasing air pressure and the give of the cables indicated they were moving. At the station, Gene Johnson commanded in the center of a black cloud, barking out directions. He punched his hands through the smoke in the direction of the old hoist room, about a hundred feet from the shaft. Some muck cars were lined up there behind a motor. Several men were already aboard, and others climbed in.

Buz Bruhn couldn't find Dewellyn Kitchen. The miner he had yanked aboard wasn't his partner after all. It was a tall, thin young guy with a mustache who'd just come back from Vietnam, some kid who had been in the mine no more than three or four days. One of the other guys from 5000 called over that Kitch had stopped to remove his false teeth so he could put them in his dinner bucket, something he did every day. Bruhn knew another cage would get back down to 5000 and pick up the rest of the crew. He'd meet his partner in the dry.

Bruhn's mouth was afire. The BM-1447 was a red-hot poker. He removed it for a few seconds of relief. His lips and tongue had been burned.

“Buz, the motor's there,” Johnson said. “Go get on it.”

“Can I give you a hand?”

Johnson shook his head. “Get on the motor and get out.
Now.”

O
NLY ONE MAN WAS ON THE STATION AT 3100 WHEN
D
ELMAR
Kitchen and the others stumbled in. It was Charlie Casteel. The twenty-nine-year-old shifter, a former Air Force airman second class, stood like an apparition next to the shaft. The beam of his lamp scratched at the thickened air before stabbing at Kitchen's raining eyes. Casteel did not hold a self-rescuer. Kitchen carried his, believing after the burst of cool air on 3550 that the device was not necessary. It took only a second to see that he was wrong.

“Get through that door!” Casteel shouted. But Kitchen remained inert. He didn't know what the boss was talking about. Up to that moment, he'd never set foot on that level. He was lost.

Casteel kicked his voice up more and worked his smoke-sore lungs. “Get through that door and don't look back. Just keep going!”

Though he was unsure of what he was doing, and the fire—wherever it was—had laid a veil of smoke obscuring everything, Delmar Kitchen plowed ahead as fast as possible. His lungs burned. He could see faint red lights, like burning embers of a campfire, and he knew to follow them. He pushed open an air door, and more smoke charged in. By then, Kitchen had given himself over to only one thing. He would not look back. He would save himself. He had three children and a wife, and the smoke was coming for him like some kind of unrelenting monster. His partner, Anderson, was a few steps behind, but if others were following, it was unknown to him. He traced the tracks and moved as fast as he could, clenching the self-rescuer in his mouth. He knew he didn't have much of a chance.

Throughout the mine, in pockets and stations where they waited, miners were trapped and unaware of the extent and the whereabouts of the fire. They didn't know that the 3700 level was in worse shape than the 3100. None could conceive of what was happening above wherever they were. Thousands of feet of rock separated them. Each crew was isolated, each man in some way alone.

12:46:30
P.M.,
M
AY
2
5000 Level

T
HE SOUTH CAGE ARRIVED ON 5000 WITHOUT A CAGER.
I
T HAD BEEN
sent down to get shift boss Bob Anderson and miner Merle Hudson—and the other men who had missed it or had stayed put by the grizzly, taking in gulps of fresh air that became increasingly smoke-filled. No one got on this time. The cage hovered for fourteen minutes. Then it left the level for the last time.

3100 Level

A
MILE IN NEARLY COMPLETE DARKNESS OFFERS NO REAL SENSE OF
time. Each step was at once timid and desperate. A man couldn't be sure where he was, but wasting time to figure it out wasn't possible. Delmar Kitchen never looked back. Not once. He'd been told to get his ass out of the station, and he meant to do just that. No matter what he encountered, he'd keep moving forward, holding the self-rescuer to his face and trying to see where he was going. A moment of relief was only that, a fleeting respite from eye-searing smoke. It appeared to thin and thicken in patches, as though it were a solid that coagulated along the ribs of the drift. The effect was cruel. Every time it cleared, there was the false hope that the worst was over. And then he was back in it again. Kitchen used a free hand to rub the smoke, sweat, and grimy tears from his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut even as he continued his run in the dark. Relief came as the smoke dissipated a bit between 5-Shaft and 3-Shaft. But would it last? Would the smoke return as it had before? His legs trembled, and he wasn't certain how much farther he could go. He didn't understand why he felt so strange. Was it the smoke or shock?

Tom Watts fell in the muck. Though his body gave out, his brain processed an eerie and peculiar sight. He could see
under
the smoke; a layer of fresh air a foot high insulated the track rails. It was good air. Watts got up, and found the smoke growing thinner as the he traveled west down the drift. He stopped at the old timber station not far from 4-Shaft.

“I can't go much farther,” Watts said, “without taking five.”

At the station, men watched and waited for more of their buddies to arrive. A soft, hazy light of a motor pierced the smoke down drift, growing brighter and larger. The motor's cars were stuffed with men. Bob McCoy, in the last car, was in grim shape. The fifty-six-year-old had been on the cage up from 5000. He was propped up in a car with another miner, fighting to hold a self-rescuer in place.

Ace Riley's muscles pumped, pulling taut the fabric of his soaked T-shirt. He felt dizzy and weak. As he lifted himself from the muck car, he lost his balance and fell. Pain shot through his body, but he didn't cry out. He just lay there watching. It was like he was viewing a slow-motion replay from a TV football game. Miners moved with seemingly hurried motions, but at a protracted pace. Riley saw Launhardt and his crew running with backpacks, but they didn't seem to be getting anywhere. He scanned the drift. Men were all around, scattered like fallen leaves. A few were receiving oxygen from tanks brought from the machine shop. One fought off his rescuers, saying he didn't want a “damn mask” over his face.

“You're trying to kill me,” he said, shoving a mechanic away.

Finally, at the station, Delmar Kitchen was even more confused, nearly disoriented. He couldn't understand why he had difficulty walking, even after a couple of mechanics gave him a blast of oxygen.

McCoy struck a match and took a drag off a cigarette. Without any apparent warning or reason, McCoy fell to the ground. Everyone was utterly dumbstruck. He'd just come from a smoke-filled drift and one puff of a cigarette knocked him to the ground? What caused that? They pulled McCoy to his feet and shook him, snapping him out of his stupor.

Out of the twenty-five men working on 5000, sixteen had made it to the Jewell.

B
ACK AT THE 3100 STATION, MEN CONTINUED COMING OFF THE
cage, gagging and gasping. Some held BM-1447s to their mouths, and others either hadn't been given one or had given up on the tuna-can-sized unit. Roger Findley steadied himself by the shaft. The nineteen-year-old counted the crew emerging from the curtain of smoke. Forty-nine men stumbled off the cage before the last cage zoomed to the station, returning empty. The cage was lowered another time, to the 5000, but once more returned without a soul. Findley was growing dizzy and doubted he could hang on much longer. His nose sent out streamers of mucus, and he could hardly see through the water in his eyes.

“I can't take the smoke no more,” he called over to Gene Johnson. “I'm going to head out of here.”

The foreman nodded. “We'll see you, Roger.”

Findley picked up an oily rag and didn't look back, but he knew that ten or more men were still sitting around the station, coughing and waiting. One guy was eating his lunch. Very nearly overcome by fear and the burning-rubber-smelling smoke, the cager made it another 150 feet before he tumbled in the darkness. Reaching to pull himself up, he felt the form of a human body. Then another.
What th
e—
?
He started moving again only to fall a second time. There were bodies of several men, maybe a dozen or more. He could hear several making gurgling sounds as life seeped away. Findley called out names, but none moved. He wasn't a big man, at only five feet five, but he was muscular and in good shape. Still, he couldn't lift those miners. He couldn't do a damn thing for any of them. At the junction of two drifts, Roger Findley grabbed a whiz-bang and directed its flow to a fallen miner's face. What else could he do? He went on.

12:53
P.M.,
M
AY
2
5800 Level

A
FTER MORE THAN A HALF HOUR OF BEING IDLE, THE NORTH COMPARTMENT
of 10-Shaft's double-drum moved once more with about ten men from 5800 and 5600 on board, bound for 3100. Among the group were Delmar Kitchen's father, Elmer; Bob Launhardt's buddy from the Talache gold mine, Duwain Crow; and a Mullan man named Doug Wiederrick.

One of the three would make the ultimate sacrifice.

1:01
P.M.,
M
AY
2

Jewell Hoist Room

S
OMETHING HAD HAPPENED TO THE HOISTMAN AT
10-
S
HAFT ON 3100.
Surface hoistman Lino Castaneda didn't know what the problem might be, but he knew someone had to get down there and run the hoist, or the men wouldn't be able to get out of the mine. He dialed the Kellogg number of another Sunshine hoistman. That was a bold move. No one was supposed to call in another employee unless directed to by a shifter. In the culture of Sunshine Mine, no one ever second-guessed a higher-up or did anything that cost the company money without getting approval. Castaneda didn't care. He'd pay the man out of his own pocket. But the phone just rang and rang.
Come on, answer!
He thought of another hoistman, but that guy lived in Coeur d'Alene. He couldn't get there in time.