He could predict the routine and prepare for it. His graduate students would come in excited. They’d find what and who they had in common before deciding whom they’d befriend. They’d listen to him for a few days, then begin to think they know more. He’d settle them down. Some might think about leaving, but they’d all stay. They always did, because by the second or third week, they’d actually find something interesting and it would reinvigorate their sense of purpose.
Hooking up usually hit week three. When partners changed in week five, an uncomfortable silence would fall over the camp. McCauley had the solution for that. A wild night at the bar; laughter, and talk about the sexual and mating habits of the dinosaurs. The detailed descriptions always brought laughter and obliterated the walls that had invariably gone up or the silos where they’d retreated.
The rest of the term would become a pure joy of discovery, growth and understanding. No one returned to grad school the same. Friendships would be forged for life. In some cases, marriages.
McCauley had seen it all over the years. He closed his eyes and focused on each of the students’ vitae. He believed that some would eventually make significant contributions to the field of study. Others could become more effective teachers because of the experience. And the remaining students? Still an enigma. They might give it all up or…he didn’t know.
Colin Kavanaugh couldn’t sleep. He kept going over reports he’d recently read. Maybe there was information he hadn’t valued correctly. Damn the old man, he thought. He’s right. He vowed to go back, study everything and learn.
Seven
It could have been 1713, not 1913, for all that the Welsh town offered. Little had changed for the lives of the citizens except that now they worked in the mines. Since the discovery of coal in the late nineteenth century, the people of Senghenydd and its neighboring areas went to work underground extracting fifty-six million tons of coal each year.
Like most small mining towns in the hills of Wales, Senghenydd was quaint and rural. Nothing bucolic or romantic. The people hungered for work, and the work made them hungry. And the work was grueling. That was life — chosen or inherited. Men were slaves to the bituminous coal, an unforgiving, dangerous employer. Women bore babies, prayed that their husbands would return for dinner, and fed them if they did.
There was also God and country. God, country, and family, to be precise. Those were the tenets most people lived by and voted for. In that order. Their faith couldn’t be shaken, no matter how difficult the job was or how devastating a mine disaster might be. They would always return to God, country, and family. The order of things.
The man who drove a 9.5 horsepower Standard Rhyl over the dirt roads through the Aber Valley to the mining office came to preserve such order.
He was two inches taller than six feet, with a Roman square jaw, piercing blue eyes, and jet black, wavy hair. The man hid a muscular build inside a loose-fitting, already dusty gray jacket with matching pants. He knew right where to go. Past the engine and the machine houses. Past the sheds. Nearby was the tipple-tower, a skeletal iron structure that covered the mouth of shaft #1. Soon he’d take the lift down, but first he walked up the metal steps to the single-story, ramshackle field office. The flimsy spring-hinged door snapped shut behind him, creating a loud bang.
“Mornin’,” he said.
“Nothin’ good about it,” replied one of the two men in the room.
The snarky remark came from the forty-five year old plump, balding, short, irascible company general manager lazily sitting in the far end of the room. Another man sat at a desk working, perhaps cooking the books. He offered no comment.
“I didn’t say there was. Just ‘mornin.’ I’m Anthony Formichelli, Regional Inspector of Mines. Here to look at things.”
The man in front stopped and looked up from charts he was going over. He established eye-contact with the visitor for a fleeting moment, then broke it off.
“Go away,” bellowed the man from further back. You fuckin’ assholes were just here last week.”
“He was scheduled,” Formichelli stated.
“And he received ten pounds for doing nothing and going away. One hundred times a miner’s day wage.”
“Yes. Well, I’m the unscheduled guy. And I’m here.”
“Okay how much do you want? Twenty? Don’t you people ever think you’ve gotten enough?”
“I’m not here to take your money, Mr. Dwyer? It is Mr. Dwyer?”
“It is. Wilem Dwyer. If you’ve not come for sterling what are you here for?”
“Mr. Dwyer, I’m here to examine a portion of your mine.”
“You’re crazy. None of you guys ever really want to go down. That’s what the money’s for. So you don’t. Not today. Not ever.”
“Today is different,” Formichelli said in an uncompromising voice.
“Why is that?”
“Because eighty-one died in 1901 and you had another disaster recently with nothing to show for it.”
“Coal. We have coal to show for it. That’s what we do here. Dig coal out of the damn ground. We get our hands dirty. You guys do it by gratefully taking our payoffs.”
“I didn’t come for a payoff. We’re going downstairs together.”
Dwyer decided to be coy. “Look, I get it. You don’t want to take it in public. So we do it down there.”
“We do what I need to do in your mine.”
“For Christ’s sake, there’s nothing but coal. Fuckin’ tons of coal. Save yourself the trip. I’ll give you thirty-five!”
“I’ll forget about your bribe so long as we go now. If you don’t, then I’ll see to it that you’ll never have the opportunity again. I’m sure someone else would be happy to become General Manager. Like…” Formichelli nodded to the man with his head in his papers, his inside contact he’d met only a week before.
“Okay, okay. The main shaft good enough?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I want to see your new excavation. I believe you call it Lloyd George, the new spur off Central Link.”
“How?”
Formichelli didn’t let him finish the question.
“It’s my job to know.”
“Look,” Dwyer argued as he reached into a till box. “I’ll give you forty-five. How about fifty-five? You go away richer than when you arrived. And alive.”
Formichelli pushed his overcoat aside and revealed a sidearm. His hand went to the weapon. “You’ll take me all the way to Lloyd George. If you don’t…” he glanced over to the other man again. That’s where he left the thought.
Dwyer’s number two stopped his work. His eyes darted nervously, but his reaction was unseen by his boss.
“We’ve hardly broken through. Not much to see. Come back in two weeks. We’ll start all over,” Dwyer said, trying unsuccessfully to get rid of the visitor.
“Today,” Formichelli replied. “Now.”
Dwyer gave the stranger a long hard look. He was serious. Serious enough to kill.
The rickety mine shaft elevator started with a jolt.
“Uncomfortable?” Dwyer observed.
“Not at all.”
Formichelli had been in coal elevators and deep into caverns, wells and caves throughout Europe and even in America. But Dwyer was right. The rides always gave him the willies.