The underdwelling

He was a real sweetheart, that Maki, running Boyd down and telling him how lazy he was and how he just wouldn’t last, the whole time chewing on a sandwich and laughing. It didn’t bother Boyd, though. He laughed right along with him and that pissed Maki off to no end. Once again, Boyd was showing no respect for the game and how it was played.

But Boyd didn’t care about any of that nonsense, he was just glad to be busy, glad to be straining and sweating and getting dirty. It beat the hell out of standing around, feeling the rock above him and all those endless, snaking tunnels below. He couldn’t shake that feeling he’d had in the Dry Room, like maybe this was the worst thing he’d ever, ever done. He was simply too aware of the dripping water and the creeping shadows, the darkness pushing in, the grim subterranean aura of the place.

It all reminded him about his old man.

He’d died when Boyd was fifteen years old over in the old Mary B. mine across town. They were cutting a drift and the passage caved in, crushing him and three others to death. Boyd’s old man loved the mines. It was his thing. He’d worked at three or four different ones. And when he wasn’t underground, that’s all he talked about. When he was laid off, he worked in the woods, on commercial fishing boats, even sold cars, but all he thought about was getting back underground.

It was just in his blood and that was that.

His own father, Boyd’s grandfather, had worked this very mine back in the days of carbide lamps. He died when Boyd was six or seven. But the mines were all he talked about, too. Back then, they didn’t use water and steam to cut down on the dust from the rock drills and they didn’t have gas masks. The result being that Grandpappy Boyd was barrel-chested from silicosis and it was a great effort for him to breathe. He had to put his whole body into it to draw a single breath. He died in a hospital bed when he was eighty gasping for air like a trout on a riverbank. An ugly, awful way to die.

But Boyd didn’t tell Maki about any of that. He was the old hand, the tough guy. And for the time being Boyd was okay with that. For the time being.

After about three hours, Maki called for a break.

They sat there staring at each other, chewing on pasties, the traditional Cornish meat-and-potato pies which had been brought over in the 19th century by miners from Cornwall, England and had become something of a local staple in Upper Michigan through the years. In the old days, the miners down in the shafts used to put their pasties on shovels and heat them with candles. But they were just as good cold.

Boyd was grimy and sore, but it didn’t bother him a bit. The food tasted great and he felt very good, every muscle in his body perked up and randy.

“This the life for you, cookie?” Maki said. “No, I don’t think so. You ain’t got the balls or the brains for this line of work.”

“If you say so.”

“And I do. You won’t make it.”

Boyd looked him dead in the eye. “Sure, I will.”

“You’ll fold.”

“You can’t throw anything at me I can’t take.”

Maki didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. Because, see, he knew it was true. He knew damn well that Boyd was shaping up just fine and that bothered him to no end. Boyd was strong and he was a fast learner and he’d worked under guys like Maki plenty of times. In six months, Boyd would know more than he did and in a year Maki’d be asking him questions. And Maki knew it, too.

“Real tough guy, eh?” Maki said. “Well, that’s good, tough guy, because I made you a date down on Eight, the new level. You’ll be cutting drift down there, cleaning up after the charging crew. Dangerous work, cookie.”

Boyd snapped the lid of his lunch bucket closed. “So let’s get to it and quit with the jawing already.”

Maki liked that even less. He was half-way through his pasty and Boyd was stealing his break time from him. And not only that, Boyd was stealing his stage. He thought working drift would make Boyd piss yellow in his boots, but it wasn’t working. Boyd wanted it.

“Well?” Boyd said. “Let’s go.”

Maki threw his half-eaten pasty in his bucket and called Boyd a mouthy little sonofabitch and then they were on their way up the ladder road, making for the main shaft. The whole way, Maki was doing everything in his seriously strained repertoire to intimidate Boyd and put the scare into him.

But it wasn’t working.

Boyd was scared, all right. But not of Maki. Not of his stories.

It was something else and that something didn’t have a name.

5

“You never know what’s going to happen in a drift,” Maki was saying. “Sometimes the charges misfire and they blow your arms off. Sometimes you tap into a pocket of gas and it’s Goodnight, Irene. Sometimes there’s cave-ins. Guys get squashed flat, cookie. I seen it once. A guy, friend of mine, crushed between two slabs of rock. All that came running out was something like red jelly. Those cave-ins happen all the time. Probably happen to you. Then I’ll get stuck scraping your ass off the rocks.”