“Yes, that’s all right.”
They sat down. He put his arm around her, put his mouth against her lips.
It was late afternoon before she decided that her family might be looking for her and that she had better go back. She had an uncle in the camp, it seemed, and they had come as much to see him as to see the fire. She snickered when she remembered she hadn’t seen either. They both snickered. They walked slowly back, their little fingers hooked together. He asked if she would like to go with him to one of the places along the road to get something to eat, but she said they had brought lunch with them, and would probably stop along the beach to eat it, going back.
They parted, she to slip into the crowd unobtrusively; he to get his mess kit, for the supper line was already formed. As he watched the blue dress flit between the tents and disappear, a gulp came into his throat; it seemed to him that this girl he had held in his arms, whose name he hadn’t even thought to inquire, was almost the sweetest human being he had ever met in his life.
When he had eaten, and washed his mess kit and put it away, he wanted a cigarette. He walked down the road to a Bar-B-Q shack, bought a package, lit up, started back. Across a field, a hundred yards away, was the ocean. He inhaled the cigarette, inhaled the ocean air, enjoyed the languor that was stealing over him, wished he didn’t have to go to work. And then, as he approached the camp, he felt something ominous.
Ike Pendleton was there, and in front of him this girl, this same girl he had spent the afternoon with. Ike said something to her, and she backed off. Ike followed, his fists doubled up. The crowd was silent, seemed almost to be holding its breath. Ike cursed at her. She began to cry. One of the state police came running up to them, pushed them apart, began to lecture them. The crowd broke into a buzz of talk. A woman, who seemed to be a relative, began to explain to all and sundry: “What if she did go with some guy to look at the fire? He don’t live with her no morel He don’t support her — never did support her! She didn’t come up here to see him; never even knew he was up here! My land, can’t the poor child have a good time once in a while?”
It dawned on him that this girl was Ike’s wife.
He sat down on a truck bumper, sucked nervously at his cigarette. Some of the people who had guffawed at the ice-cream-cone episode in the afternoon looked at him, whispered. The policeman called over the woman who had been explaining things, and she and the girl, together with two children, went hurriedly over to a car and climbed into it. The policeman said a few words to Ike, and then went back to his duties on the road.
Ike walked over, picked up a mess kit, squatted on the ground between tents, and resumed a meal apparently interrupted. He ate sullenly, with his head hulked down between his shoulders. It was almost dark. The lights came on. The camp was not only connected to county water but to county light as well. Two boys went over to Ike, hesitated, then pointed to Paul. “Hey, mister, that’s him. Over there, sitting on the truck.”
Ike didn’t look up. When the boys came closer and repeated their news, he jumped up suddenly and chased them. One of them he hit with a baked potato. When they had run away he went back to his food. He paid no attention to Paul.
In the car, the woman was working feverishly at the starter. It would whine, the engine would start and bark furiously for a moment or two, then die with a series of explosions. Each time it did this, the woman would let in the clutch, the car would rock on its wheels, and then come to rest. This went on for at least five minutes, until Paul thought he would go insane if it didn’t stop, and people began to yelclass="underline" “Get a horse!” “Get that damn oil can out of here and stop that noise!” “Have a heart! This ain’t the Fourth of July!”
For the twentieth time it was repeated. Then Ike jumped up and ran over there. People closed in after him. Paul, propelled by some force that seemed completely apart from himself, ran after him. When he had fought his way through the crowd, Ike was on the running board of the car, the children screaming, men trying to pull him back. He had the knife from the mess kit in his hand. “I’m going to kill her! I’m going to kill her! If it’s the last thing I do on earth, I’m going to kill her!”
“Oh, yeah!”
He seized Ike by the back of the neck, jerked, and slammed him against the fender. Then something smashed against his face. It was the woman, beating him with her handbag. “Go away! Git away from here!”
Ike faced him, lips writhing, eyes glaring a slaty gray against the deep red of the burns he had received that morning. But his voice was low, even if it broke with the intensity of his emotion. “Get out of my way, you! You got nothing to do with this.”
He lunged at Ike with his fist — missed. Ike struck with the knife. He fended with his left arm, felt the steel cut in. With his other hand he struck, and Ike staggered back. There was a pile of shovels beside him, almost tripping him up. He grabbed one, swung, smashed it down on Ike’s head. Ike went down. He stood there, waiting for Ike to get up, with that terrible vitality he had shown this morning. Ike didn’t move. In the car the girl was sobbing.
The police, the ambulance, the dust, the lights, the doctor working on his arm, all swam before his eyes in a blur. Somewhere far off, an excited voice was yelling: “But I got to use your telephone, I got to, I tell you! Guy saves a man’s life this morning, kills him tonight! It’s a hell of a story!” He tried to comprehend the point of this; couldn’t.
The foreman appeared, summoned the third shift to him in loud tones, began to read names. He heard his own name called, but didn’t answer. He was being pushed into the ambulance, handcuffed to one of the policemen.
Coal Black
From up the entry came a whir, the blackness was shot with blue sparks, a cluster of lights appeared and approached. Lonnie opened the trap and the motor passed through. He closed the trap, sat down, and wished he was a motorman. Then he debated whether to eat one of his remaining sandwiches, but decided to wait awhile. Then he whistled “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.” It was one of the three tunes he knew, so he whistled it again. Then he just sat there, and found this pleasant. Of course, you might not have found it pleasant to be alone in a tunnel so dark its coal walls sparkled by comparison, with only a carbide lamp to see by and nothing whatever to keep you company. But he minded neither the dark nor the solitude: he was so used to both that he hardly noticed them.
As for the tunnel, it had its points. It was always the same even temperature, winter or summer; the air was fresh, the intricate system of blowers and traps taking care of that. He had helped dig it, shore it, and wire it, so that it seemed a part of him — as the whole mine did for that matter. For this was the only world he had known in all his nineteen years; and he was just as at home in it as you are in your world, and found it just as familiar, just as real, just as satisfying to the soul.
After a while he heard something on the other side of the trap. Instinctively he looked at the rails. If a rat scuttled by, that meant run for his life; for a rat knows, before anybody else knows, when something is about to crack, and it is time to move, and move fast. But no rat appeared, and in a moment he got up, opened the door in the center of the trap, and peered through. At first he saw nothing. He unhooked the lamp from his hat and shot the light around. Huddled against a toolbox, her face smeared with coal dust, her dress torn so that in places her skin showed through, was a girl he judged about sixteen. She stared at him, then began to whimper: