Big Pete Chigi emerged, blinking, trailing a smoky dust, ahead of the stretcher and let fall the bolt: “Bruno. We were too late for the others.”
Bodies mashed at the portal. No one seemed to understand. “Who is it?” they cried. “How many?”
Miller, in the press, held the speedgraphic high over his head, sighted by guess, caught the prostrate figure of Giovanni Bruno being carried out, Father Baglione, the Catholic priest, coal-smudged and helmeted, following. Mine supervisor Barney Davis. The company doctor.
“Collins?” they cried.
“Juliano?”
“Dead. Dead. Dead,” said the exiting miners.
Miller saw a white face amid the blackened: Jones. Good man! Saw Chigi turn aside, glance over at Miller, then slip away with Jones. Bruno! Not even on the list!
Bruno! Miller changed film over his head, pivoted just in time to see the girl, her head still covered, standing isolated and as though unaware, about thirty feet away. Miller elbowed free of the mob, sighted hastily, but just as he fired, a Salvation Army woman thrust her broad ass in the way. He cursed aloud, sidestepped toward the waiting ambulance. They were easing Bruno into it. The girl started forward and he raised his hand.
“Pardon me, miss!” he said, and punched the shutter, just as the blanket settled to her narrow shoulders. He reloaded and said, “My name is—”
“I already know it, Mr. Miller.”
“Can you—?”
“I’ll be at the hospital with my brother.” She spoke briefly with the ambulance driver, and he jumped out to clear a way for her. Inside, in the back, Giovanni Bruno stretched unconscious. Father Baglione and a couple miners had crowded in. The miners clambered out, let the girl replace them. And they were gone. Miller had forgot to get a second photo.
Someone jostled him hard, nearly knocked the camera from his hand, and a voice said, “I seen Tuck, Paw!” Miller lifted the speedgraphic steadily, focused, recorded the tall silent grief of the two men, Lem Filbert and his Dad, both in miner’s clothes though both had left the mines, both with damp black faces.
Miller got Barney Davis aside, asked about Bruno.
“I don’t know, Miller. We found him knocked out, up on a ledge, away from the others. Like they didn’t know he was there or something.”
“What shape is he in?”
“Terrible. Should be dead of afterdamp like the others.” Davis eased off his helmet. His burry white hair was black from just above the ears down. Miller offered him a cigarette, lit it for him. Davis had a way of gazing off like a movie hero contemplating the sunset as the curtain falls.
“What do you figure?”
“Luck.”
“What about the others?”
“They’d been dead awhile.” Davis gazed off.
“You going to reopen, Barney?”
“Can’t say. Probably. Haven’t thought about that yet.” He flicked his smoke’s ash with one finger nervously. “Oh, by the way, you seen any of the Collins people out here?”
“His daughter.” Miller glanced around, spied the Nazarene group at prayer, but Elaine was not among them. “Looks like she’s gone.”
Davis stuffed his fingers into his shirt pocket, came out with a small scrap of paper. “I picked something up down there. Maybe you’d like to deliver it.” He handed it to Miller. “Found it by Ely Collins’ hand. One of Collins’ legs was gone, apparently something had fell on it and broke it off. Looked like he’d been dead for some time.”
Miller read the scrap, pocketed it, smiled. “Thanks, Barney, that’s great.” Took a couple informal shots of Davis.
“Fair shake on the coverage, Miller.”
“Sure, Barney. As always.” Davis meant the company was not to be blamed for the disaster and he was not to be blamed for the delay in reaching the trapped men, but Miller played no sides, took favors like Collins’ note in stride and let the chips drop. “Come by the office tomorrow or Tuesday, we’ll have a talk.”
Davis nodded and gazed off.
On the way back to the Chevy, Miller was stopped by the correspondent from UP, just arriving. “Hey, there, Scoop!” he shouted, virtually in Miller’s ear. “Jesus! What’s up, buddy? I just heard—” His eyes were red-rimmed, still baggy with sleep. Cigarette trembled in his fingers. Miller knew just how he felt.
“Brought one up alive, just took him to the hospital.”
“Yeah, shit, I know that, Chief. But who was it?”
“Guy named … guy named Lou Jones.”
“Lou Jones? Where’ve I heard that—?”
“Out here probably. You maybe met his wife, fat old—”
“Oh yeah! I know the one! Big fat one. They had some kids or something, didn’t they?”
“Eight, I think. No, nine. I’m not sure. Better say nine.”
“Yeah! Nine! Great! Jesus, these fucking mining families, eh? What’s their address?”
“I don’t know, but they’re at the hospital. Press conference first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Not till tomorrow.”
“Right. Jones is in sick shape.”
“I’ll bet. I couldn’t live through a conference now anyway.” He laughed and, because he was expected to, Miller joined him. Miller turned to go, but the UP rep grabbed his arm. “Hey, wait, Chief! I forgot! Was he conscious?”
“Who — Jones? Hell, no!”
“Jesus, thanks, scooper! You don’t know how I appreciate it!” He pounded Miller cheerily on the back, turned to run back to his car. Miller had seen the portable phone hookup in it.
“Hey! Hold on!” Miller called. The slap on the back had pissed him off. The UP guy braked, swung around, staggering like a wounded pigeon. “I forgot to mention that Jones was apparently reading his prayerbook when he fell unconscious. They found it beside him when—”
“Oh yeah? Hey, shit! That’s a helluva great angle! Thanks, Chief! Come on over to the town flophouse tonight, I’ll buy a round!” And he ran off at full gallop toward his car.
Gray trees wail flying by, cars blink. Inside the ambulance, all is white, preamble to the race’s object. Only her brother is black, his long gentle fingers black, his fragile eyelids black, his distant breath comes: blackly. His face is spattered with dried blood. Whose—? Then West Condon bursts upon them with a thump and a scream. Out the back window, she sees a small scrap of white paper lifted in the wake of the ambulance — suspended, it flies away from them and turns a corner. Does it fly still? It is impossible to know.
Big Pete was standing like a mountain, still in greasy work denims, still reeking of underground sweat, just inside the door of the Chronicle, when Miller arrived. Miller greeted him warmly, shook his thick hand. Jones bumped through the swinging door from the back shop, lit with one of his uncommon smiles. Changed his whole goddamn face. “Four columns,” he announced.
“Terrific!” Miller said. He asked fat Annie, who bulked by her frontoffice desk like an obedient recruit, to make out a check for twenty-five dollars to Chigi, and, waiting for it, made an impatient moment’s small talk with the man. Enormous guy with black curly hair and big Mediterranean eyes, his face minstrel-black with coal soot, and when he blinked, as he just did, his eyelids looked starkly white. The digging out of mashed and rotting bodies made most men sick, but Chigi was a stoic down there and much admired for it.