Whimple noticed Justin Miller, the Chronicle editor, shinnied halfway up the goddamn watertower shooting photographs of the jam. Oh man! Mayor Muffs It. Historic Mess Muddles Mayor. “I’ll go get a buncha guys to help.”
The air course was not a straight track; the four men kept running into falls, would have to backtrack, sometimes as much as a hundred or hundred fifty feet, locate another course, and travel down that one as far as they could before they struck another fall. No markings, no light, air laden with a torpid calm that argued with their own urgency — they kept flashing into stupid arguments about which way they were going, got confused, swore at each other. Strelchuk didn’t mind the blood or the thigh stub so much now, but carrying Ely Collins was hard work, and old Pontormo refused to help, said he’d wrenched his shoulder when the thing went off. “We better loosen the tourniquet again,” Juliano gasped, and Mike didn’t argue. They set him down, not so gently as at first. Didn’t matter. He was completely out. Strelchuk felt for Collins’ pulse: still there.
“He ain’t gonna make it.” Juliano sighed, breath husky.
Strelchuk knew what was on Juliano’s mind. It was on his mind, too. But they wrapped the corners of the batticecloth around their wrists again, hefted the old man up between them, and started off. “Come on, Pontormo!” Strelchuk cracked through his teeth. “We’re getting goddamn tired of always waiting around for you!”
* * *
By the washhouse, Mayor Whimple found three men and sent them back to help Wallace. The grounds were swarming with miners, women, kids. In the offices, he commandeered the phone and called the state highway police and the National Guard. Took him nearly a quarter of an hour just to get the operator. When he swore at her, he could hear her break down and cry. He told her he was sorry and to relax, but no matter what to keep this line open at all times. In the Iamphouse, he borrowed lights to guide the traffic. They told him about a hundred guys had come up already, so there were less than two hundred down there now. Pop Hendricks showed him the board full of tags. Most of the ones who had come up were waiting to go back down on rescue crews. One group was going down bareface now. Another hundred from the day shift had shown up. They said that mine rescue teams from five or six towns around were on the way, but they’d never make it through the traffic on time. One ambulance had arrived, beating the pack, bringing a doctor and some nurses. Then a Salvation Army woman in a uniform that reeked of mothballs got his ear and complained that they had a tent set up and food was on the way, but it was stalled somewhere in the jam. Miller’s assistant, Lou Jones, overheard a nurse tell him that the hospital panel bringing bandages and medications had not arrived, and the guy nodded significantly, asked him what he was doing about it. Whimple felt like telling that fat snoop to go to hell, he didn’t like him anyway because Jones always called him Pimple, but instead he replied, “Everything we can.”
They inched. And finally they stopped. Between gospel songs and Andre Kostelanetz, the radio told them there had been 307 men on the night shift and that the cause and extent of the disaster were unknown. Angela Bonali prayed fervently, counting on her fingers. The others in the car respected her private ceremony; they talked only to each other.
Then two woman ran past them, panting like horses. Angie recognized the girl, Elaine Collins from her freshman class at high school. Angie jumped out of the car, called out: “Elaine!” But the girl, whether she heard or not, did not turn around. Then, for the first time, it occurred to Angie that her Daddy might not be dead after all, that he might yet be saved. But she had to hurry. Ahead of her, the two women set the pace, but it was tempered by the longer distance they had had to cover. Angie could still pass them. She had to, to save her Daddy. She broke into a dead run.
While men heaped oxygen tanks, timber, shovels, and canvas alongside the cages, mine supervisor Barney Davis led the first crew down. Night mine manager Dave Osborne, two firebosses, and miners Pete Chigi, Sal Ferrero, Ben Wosznik, and Carlo Juliano. Juliano and Wosznik had brothers on the night shift, Ferrero was Angelo Moroni’s brother-in-law, and Big Pete Chigi was an old standby in emergencies. Pressed soaked rags against their faces. They had to get fresh air into the hit workings.
Mario Juliano said he thought he saw another light flick off a near wall. Strelchuk said that carrying the old preacher was turning him batty, referring of course to the birds. It was a trick the bounce of lights often played, but nobody ever expected an old vet like Ely Collins would ever be bugged by it. Juliano swore he’d seen it. And then, a couple minutes later, they all three saw it: a pair of headlamps bobbing toward them in the dark. Didn’t realize how dusty it was until they saw what was between them and those lights. “Hey!” they cried out. “Hey! Who’s there?” They lowered Collins and ran to meet the two coming. It was Lee Cravens and his triprider Pooch Minicucci. Jesus, was Mike glad to see those guys!
“Where you’uns headed?” Lee asked, soft Southern slide tilting his voice, though he was a West Condoner by birth. Little guy, angular, goodnatured, but not the brightest lad in the county.
“We thought we’d try to reach the old number one portal, or otherwise go south to the fifteenth and take Old Main out,” Strelchuk explained. It began crowding in on him then that these guys were coming from the way they were going.
“Ain’t no good thetaway,” said Lee, whipping his lamp momentarily back over his shoulder, then pausing to spit through his teeth. “We jist come from there. All fulla gas and we seen they was a lotta flame down toward the fifteenth. Doors all busted out and guys dead. Me’n Pooch is lucky even to be here.”
“It was a wough sonuvabitch,” confirmed Pooch.
“Well, we can’t go back neither,” said Mario Juliano. “It’s all caved in back there, and the gas is washing in in buckets.”
“It musta wipped out the whole mine!” whined Pooch.
“Where’s the rest of your outfit?” Juliano asked. “Bonali and the other guys?”
“I dunno,” said Cravens. “They was foolin’ around. I don’t reckon they made it.”
“If you damn bastards have only hurried!” Pontormo cried bitterly, and then he calmed down and said, “Well, it don’ make no difference.”
They led Cravens and Minicucci back to show them Ely Collins, and explained how they had lopped the leg and all. Cravens was pretty upset by it. He examined Collins’ leg carefully, eased the tourniquet, fussed with the bratticecloth. “I know you done what you could,” he said, as though apologizing.
“There wasn’t nothing else to do,” Strelchuk said. “I didn’t want to leave him back there.”
“No, you done good,” Cravens said softly. Seemed like he might be crying a little.
Air blast at the door into the main air course was so stiff, they had to shove and tug each other through it. Like crossing some terrible threshold. Even Tub Puller needed help. But from there on, they knew, it was a coast home. Cokie Duncan even thought his knobbed rheumatic knees felt better. Bonali informed him with mock sarcasm that there never was anything wrong with them, all they had needed all along was exercise.
Old Red Baxter, gravelly voice rumbling acidly out of his deep belly, agitated in the old style, waxing blistery on the lousy mine management, the absentee swindlers in the East who fattened themselves on the flesh of the workers, and that criminal Barney Davis — Baxter said they ought to march out in a body and straight into the offices, grab the first one of them they found, if it was that traitor Davis so much the better, and lynch the devil. Jowls atrernble, long red hair curling under the back of his helmet, small eyes lit with wrath. Antiquated fans, no dust down, not one piece of equipment that might not set the mine off, worse lighting and stupider timbering than they had thirty years ago.