I flew through the air, landing on the floor in the middle of the car with a cracking sound.
That was a fast sixty seconds.
Seven cars to go.
Reaching for my hat, I shook my head and looked up to see Fry still there holding the young woman. “Get her out of here.”
The sound of the car somewhere ahead filling with coal was so loud now I could hardly hear myself, but he had and replied, “What about you?!”
“Don’t worry about me, I can climb out on the board.” My eyes scanned the darkness of the car until I saw the end of the thing leaning against the corner and another buried in the snow and pointing toward me—broken in half.
I sighed deeply and probably loud enough for him to hear. “The board broke; maybe I can just climb out as it fills?”
“A hundred and twenty tons of coal?!” He shook his head violently. “It’ll be like treading quicksand, and two inches of this stuff the size of a door weighs hundreds of pounds—it’ll crush you like an egg!”
Rolling to my side, I pushed off and stepped over to see that the thing had broken in half at a knothole, probably where I’d been standing. I held the broken end up where Fry could see it, his eyes wide. “There’s another board lying on the back car. Get Jone off of here, then get that board and throw it down to me, and I’ll take care of the rest!”
He looked over his shoulder to where I hoped the board still lay, shifted Jone, and disappeared over the edge.
I dropped the piece of broken board and even thought about kicking it, but the way things were going I’d have only broken my foot. I massaged my arm, which actually helped make it feel better.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think Fry could get the board, but first he had to carry the woman to safety, then retrieve the two-by-twelve, and get back up here with it—a tall order at best.
Just as I was thinking of what to do, the cars shook, and the pieces of board clattered together.
Six cars to go.
I stretched my jaw and looked around, trying to figure some way of getting out of the damn car, but could see nothing that might assist—one thing I was sure of, this board and I were through.
I walked from one end to the other, looking for some sort of hand- or foothold, but it was useless; the loading and unloading of the coal had polished the insides like mirrors.
Looking up at the chutes, I could still see only the sporadic bulbs and machinery of my death; like treading quicksand—those words had stuck in my head. I stood in the feathery drifts of snow and, figuring I’d at least save myself the embarrassment of getting the crap beaten out of me when the cars loaded again, placed my back against the bulkhead.
I was leaning against the cold metal, closing my arms around me in an attempt to keep warm, and thinking about all the ways in my life that I thought I’d go, this not being one of them—squashed like a mouse at the bottom of a coal bin.
I looked up, hoping to see Fry but knowing there was no way that he could’ve accomplished his rounds that quickly.
The high-rail truck continued to blast its horn, but with the sound of the coal dumping into the empty cars, there was no way that they would ever be heard.
I’d always thought that I was a pretty capable guy with the ability to take care of myself in just about any situation, but it was possible that I’d finally met my match with a hundred tons of black rock.
That flight from Gillette would have one empty seat, and the red-eye flight from Denver would leave without me, and the car waiting for me in Philadelphia would never take me to the maternity room at Pennsylvania Hospital.
A promise, the most important in my life, would never be kept.
I would never get to see my grandchild.
There was suddenly a vibration in the back pocket of my jeans, almost like a reoccurring thought attempting to get my attention. I reached down and pulled out Vic’s cell phone.
The screen was cracked, but there were two bars, and I punched the button as fast as I could. “Hello?!”
“Are you on your way to the airport?”
I choked with a croaking laugh as I cupped my hands around the phone. “Cady?!”
“I can barely hear; where are you?”
I looked around and yelled, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”
“Daddy—”
The cars rattled, and I lost my footing but not the phone.
That was a fast sixty seconds.
Five cars to go.
“Cady, I need you to do something, and I need you to do it quick!”
She suddenly sounded exasperated. “How quick? I’m kind of busy having a baby here—”
“Like in the next four minutes, as if my life depended on it! Which it does!” I yelled into the phone, attempting to override the noise of the coal cars and the high-rail’s horn. “I need you to call Black Diamond Mine in Gillette and tell them it’s an absolute emergency that they stop loading the train in their yard—right now!”
“And what do you want me to tell them?”
“To stop loading coal!”
“Right now?”
“Now!”
“Do you have the number?”
“No, I don’t have the damned number! Cady, look it up and call them right now or else I’m going to be killed!”
“Okay, you don’t have to yell . . .” There was a pause. “What do you mean killed? Where are you?”
“At the bottom of a coal car that they’re filling right now—call!”
“Oh, my God—”
The phone went dead, and I was at least pretty sure that I’d conveyed the immediacy of the situation. I quickly dialed 911 and was soon speaking with the dispatcher for the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office, the same woman I’d spoken with before. “The Black Diamond Mine, out near Arrosa!”
The train shifted again, leaving me standing in the middle, where I’d just been.
Four cars to go.
“And you want us to tell them what?”
I stared at the phone and then cupped it back to my ear. “To stop filling the coal cars. There must be some kind of emergency number that you can use to get through to them!” I stood there looking up at my impending hundred-ton doom.
“There’s an administration number, would you like me to call that?”
I held the phone to my forehead, attempting to send brain waves telepathically through the air. “No, they’re not going to be in the offices this time of night, and it’s New Year’s Eve, for Pete’s sake; how about an operations manager or the loading facility?”
“Sir, can you move to another spot? The place where you are is awfully noisy . . .”
I held the phone back out and looked at it again, suppressing the urge to bounce it off the metal walls.
“Lady, I’m standing at the bottom of a coal car, and if you don’t get through to someone in the next three minutes they’re going to drop a hundred tons of low-sulfur, anthracite coal on my head like I’m at the bottom of a mine! Now, would you please try and get through to someone at the Black Diamond so that that doesn’t happen? Please!”
I hung up, figuring that if this was the last three minutes of my life, I didn’t want to spend them extraordinarily annoyed.
Walking to the front of the car like a caged prisoner on a three-minute death row, I scanned the walls again, hoping for any kind of irregularity that might provide me with a way out. Seeing nothing, I walked to the back of the car and looked up at the spot where Fry would hopefully appear.
The sound of the coal dropping only a few cars away was so deafening I doubted that anyone would hear me if I called them, but I felt like calling Cady again to tell her all the things she already knew.