Daylight was so Dazzling
Mary Incontro
When
the mine collapsed, Sharon Jensen was home, rubbing her baby’s sore gums with a
Q-tip soaked in teething gel. The phone rang. It was someone from the mine
giving her the hard news. Sharon’s husband, Beau, might have been working
outside the area of collapse or he might be trapped inside. They would know
more later. Sharon hung up the phone and squeezed her eyes shut. She sat still
this way for some time, blanking out the news she had just received. If I don’t
move, she thought, then this didn’t happen. The boys started to cry. Slowly,
Sharon stood up. She gave four-year-old Jesse his favorite stuffed bear and
propped a warmed bottle into Jared’s mouth as he sat in his baby seat on the
kitchen table. When the kids settled down, Sharon called her mother.
“Mom? Is Mary Beth home from school yet? I need her to come over here and watch the kids. There’s a cave-in at the mine.” Sharon reached for the bottle sliding out of Jared’s mouth and gently replaced it. “I’ve got to get over there now. No, I can drive. Tell her to hurry, please.” She glanced quickly at Jesse to see whether he had been listening, but her slim brown-haired son was talking to the bear.
Seventeen-year-old Mary Beth, flush from running three blocks, came in the door, gave her sister a hug, and said, “You go, now. Don’t worry about the kids."
Sharon grabbed her bag and keys and ran out to her VW wagon. “Start for me, baby,” she prompted the car as she tossed her purse in the back between the two child seats. Beau had been promising to take the car in but, as usual, other things got in the way. The car started right up. Sharon tore off for the Pennington mine.
She turned on the car radio to the local news station: “Rescue workers now racing to the scene. . . . Nine miners believed trapped . . . sounded like an explosion . . . . One miner who escaped . . . worst cave-in he’d ever seen.” Sharon snapped off the dial. This can’t be happening, she thought. Dear God, please don’t let Beau be inside. Please, God, let Beau be waiting for me when I get there. Please, God, please. But she knew that if Beau were safe, he’d have called her on her cell phone. She reached suddenly for her purse, half-hoping she had forgotten to bring the phone. But there it was. Fully charged. And still as a stone.
As she approached the mine, there were cars everywhere, rescue vehicles with flashing red lights, news trucks with satellite dishes, all knotted together. Sharon saw ahead that police officers were turning cars away. She spotted Roy Dawes, the county sheriff who worked with her daddy when he was alive. “Hey, Sharon,” said Dawes. “You OK?”
“Roy, is Beau inside?”
“We don’t know who’s inside yet, Sharon. You need to drive on up to the school. That’s where the families are going.”
Oh, God, she thought, this is really happening.
The next couple of hours were a blur. By ones and twos, the miners who had escaped or who had not been inside the mine at the time of the collapse, the miners who were safe, walked into the school gymnasium, walked straight into tearful reunions with wives and mothers, fathers, siblings, kids. By six in the evening, the number of family members inside the gym had dwindled. They stared blankly at one another, knowing now who was trapped inside. Sharon knew she should call her mom and Mary Beth, but she was overwhelmed with exhaustion. Her slender arms felt heavy and she was sure she wouldn’t be able to form words. Looking around, she felt like a refugee. Quiet but efficient Red Cross workers were already there, setting up cots and blankets, laying out trays of sandwiches, and plugging in giant urns of strong black coffee.
At around 7:30, Harvey Pennington, owner of the mine, entered the gymnasium to speak to the anxious families. “Folks,” he said, “I don’t know how much you know yet, so let me tell you what happened. At around 2:45 this afternoon, a portion of the mine collapsed about 1200 feet from the entrance. A group of eight miners saw the collapse. They all got out. Nine miners were deep inside at the time of the collapse and are still trapped.” He went on – “first priority. . . make contact . . . air and food . . . rescue efforts” – but Sharon heard little after “still trapped.”
She thought of Beau that morning in the kitchen. He’d left with a thermos of hot coffee, his lunch pail and a quick kiss. His blue eyes danced when he smiled and said, “See ya tonight, babe.” She had wanted to mention the overdue electric bill, but Beau was out the door before she got the chance. Now she felt an odd buzzing in her head. Her stomach hurt and she felt like she might throw up. She lay down on a cot for a while but sat up when she heard a group of people praying loudly in a circle near the free-throw line. She decided to drive home for the night.
On the kitchen counter, Sharon found a note from her sister: “Took kids to Moms. We’re fine. Get some rest. MB.” Thank you, she thought, and went to her room. She lay down on her bed and smelled Beau in the sheets and pillowcases. He had to be alive.
They just had to find him. She cried herself to sleep holding one of Beau’s socks that was tangled up in the bedspread. She didn’t sleep long. She had what Beau called “the nips,” the constant list of troubles that kept her awake nights. Tonight it was this: if Beau doesn’t make it, what will we do? How will I pay the mortgage? We’ll have to move. But the house needs repairs. Paint, drywall, leaky toilets. We’ll lose our health insurance. I’ll get a job. Lord, how will I pay for daycare? Jared is just a baby.
Worst of all was the thought of Beau trapped underground. Sharon had seen a movie once about a young woman who was buried alive. The movie had scared her to death, the look on the young woman’s face in unremitting darkness, as she scratched at the crude box that enclosed her, her eyes growing wider, the screams, the gasping for breath, the realization that she was trapped and would suffocate, die a horrible death, no chance, no prayer for escape.
She wondered if Beau had air where he was and water, if he was scared, if he thought he was going to die. Hang on, baby, please, please, please hang on. The darkness in her bedroom was heavy. She felt short of breath and unable to keep still. She threw off her blankets and opened a window, breathing in the clean scent of the night breeze. The moon was a bright sliver in the blue-black night sky. The moon that Beau couldn’t see.
At around six in the morning, Sharon got up and took a shower. She used Beau’s toothbrush, not wanting it to dry up. While dressing, she turned on the TV in her bedroom to see if there was any news. She watched the perky news anchors discuss the “mine disaster” in the same tones of voice as their ensuing description of some Hollywood starlet’s latest arrest for DUI. It was all the same to them.
Daylight was just beginning to lighten the morning sky as Sharon drove through town on the road to the gym. The streetlights were still lit but beginning to dim. It was a gentle time of day, before everyone was up, before bad news would seem real. Sharon saw crudely made signs hanging on buildings and in yards: “Pray for the miners.” “God bless the miners and their families.” “God is in our hearts and mines.” They will find them today, she thought. They will. She reached for her cell phone, feeling strong enough at last to call her mom.
The gym was more crowded this morning, the morning after the mine collapsed. More relatives streamed in. The wives and families of the rescue workers were now here. Many of the miners who escaped the cave-in had volunteered to help dig. No one knew this mine better than they did and the miners trapped inside were their brothers. The rescue work was dangerous. Another cave-in was possible as there was no knowing how much damage the earlier collapse had caused the mine’s structure.
Sharon sat on a lower bleacher as if waiting for the game to begin. She thought of Beau as a high school sophomore on the junior varsity team. He was tall, all legs, running down the court, winking at her for luck between free throws. She watched families hugging, talking, praying, eating donuts, drinking coffee. She was alone. She had asked her mother to keep the kids with her so Mary Beth could go to school. To do anything else would suggest that everything would not turn out all right. There was no one to call in Beau’s family, really. His parents were dead and his brother in jail. The last time they spoke to Brett he wanted money. “What for?” asked Beau. “You got a casino in the stir?” “No, man, my shoes wore out.” Beau sent him a hundred dollars, money they could have used to fix the VW or pay bills.
Sharon watched Mary Lou Jessup, a woman she knew from church, walk slowly into the gym. Mary Lou weighed over 300 pounds and pulled a portable oxygen machine alongside her. She was 50 years old but looked much older. Sharon didn’t know Mary Lou very well but knew that her son was a miner and that she had lost her husband in a cave-in some years back. Seeing Mary Lou was an odd comfort to Sharon. Surely, God wouldn’t let Mary Lou suffer two grievous losses to the mine.
As Sharon sipped coffee, staring at a spot on the gymnasium floor where she and Beau had once danced too close at a high school sock hop, she felt an arm enfold her. It was her mom. The high school had closed for the day, she said, since so many students were from mining families, and Mary Beth was watching the kids. Sharon cried with relief at her mother’s gentle touch.
“Oh, Mom, I don’t want Mary Beth to have to stay home all day with the boys.”
“She wants to, honey. This is somethin' she can do.” She held her daughter's hand in hers. "Gettin' any sleep, hon?"
"Not much. I keep thinking -- " Her voice caught. "Oh, Mom, what if -- ?"
"Remember what your grandma used to say, Sharon? 'Frettin' in advance is a pure waste of time.' Beau's all right, honey, unless we find out different. If anyone can get through this, Beau can. Never saw a man loved his family more."
Just then, Harvey Pennington walked in and the room went still. “Folks,” he said, “I want to be sure that you all are as comfortable as you can be here. We may be in for a long haul.” He described how they would drill a hole into the mine to locate a shaft, an open space, where the miners might be. They would insert a pole into the shaft with a camera at the end of it and a microphone. Sharon’s mind drifted as he went on: “ . . . if the miners are there. . . if they have air . . . it will take three or four days.” Three or four days to get them, she thought. If they find them at all.
“Everything that can be done is being done,” said Pennington. “We will bring them out alive.” A nervous female voice from the back of the crowd: “Have you heard any sounds from inside?” Everyone there knew that miners, when they’re trapped, are trained to make tapping noises so that rescuers will know they are alive. “No, we haven’t, ma’am, but . . .”
Sharon remembered when she and Beau had talked about this, had talked about the possibility that he could be trapped someday. He showed her, with the handle of a dinner knife on the U-shaped pipe under the sink, how he would tap. Beau was tapping the beat of a song and made her guess which one it was. She couldn’t – it was “Inagadadaveda” – and then she tried, tapping out “Love, love me do. . .” Beau guessed it right away.
Shortly after Pennington left, Sharon got into her VW and followed her mom’s car out of the gymnasium parking lot. She couldn’t just sit around and wait. She needed to see her boys. As she drove, she practiced her smile, recalling how she had learned to fake emotions in drama class in college. She hadn’t thought about college in a long time. She was sorry she’d never finished. She’d had such hopes for a career, a big house, designer clothes, but in the end she had come home to Beau.
When Sharon walked in the door of her mom’s house, Jesse jumped into her arms and pulled her down to the rug to build Legos with him. Jared, the baby, was more subdued, almost as if he knew something was out of place. Sharon held him in one arm, as she played on the floor with Jesse’s plastic blocks. Jared’s large blue eyes never left her face. His expression reminded her of Beau. Beau, when he was sad, when he thought that she would leave him. She had gone to college hoping Beau would follow her. She had begged him not to work in the mines, but it was in his family, in his blood. Beau loved the mines, she knew that now, the darkness, the quest, the sheer physicality of the work, even the danger. He loved emerging in the late afternoon, when daylight was so dazzling it could almost make him cry.
The days that followed took on a curious air of tension mixed with tedium. Each morning, Sharon drove to the gym where dozens of people maintained their nervous vigil. The crowded gym felt to her like a waiting room in the intensive care unit where you hoped for good news, but expected the worst. Occasionally she tried to talk to women she recognized, another wife or someone's sister, but the look of pain in their eyes frightened her more than sitting alone. Though she'd lived in this town most of her life, Sharon felt like an outsider looking in, watching expectations rise and fall in unsteady rhythms.
Harv Pennington’s reports became less frequent, and more unnervingly repetitious: No news yet. Miners not found. Another hole drilled. No sounds from below. Still, Pennington projected hope. There was enough food and water to last several days, he told the families. The miners were well-trained to survive.
Five days after the mine caved in, Sharon entered the gym where by now the familiar smells of leather and perspiration commingled – permanently, it seemed – with the aromas of strong coffee, chicken wings, and baked ham. “Hi, Joe,” she said to her neighborhood grocer, as they walked together through the gym’s double doors. “Let me help you with those.” Joe handed her a carton packed with boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts, Beau’s favorite, and put his free arm around Sharon’s shoulder. Members of the community were unceasingly generous, bringing food and comfort at all hours.
Pennington’s morning briefing was over. Sharon looked around. There was a prayer circle under the visiting team’s basket, its members holding hands and chanting softly. She envied them their faith. A few women sat in the bleachers knitting. Some folks read books or the morning paper. Others paced the hard gym floor waiting for updates.
Sharon walked over to the tables set up by the wall for coffee. She placed a cup under the urn and pulled the lever, the steady flow of the hot liquid calming her somewhat. A tap on her shoulder startled her. She turned around to face Toby. Toby! Though Beau was her boy friend in high school, Toby was her secret crush, the boy she loved in college, who cheated on her, then left for the west coast. The boy she never forgot, now ruggedly handsome, somewhat out of place here with his ponytail and sandals.
“Toby, what are you doing here?”
“Hey, Sharon. Just got here yesterday. It’s dad’s birthday. He’s been sick, so we all came home. I heard about the mine, and Beau inside.”
“Oh, Toby.” Sharon let him hug her, his embrace so familiar as though six years had not passed. When Toby left school for California, Sharon had curled up inside herself like a snail in its hard shell. She married Beau a year later.
“Let’s walk,” she said. Sharon poured Toby a cup of coffee and they walked out to the parking lot in back of the gym, a semi-private area roped off from the media. They sat on a park bench, fixed in concrete since a time long ago when the parking lot was a skating rink. How often she had sat on that bench lacing up her skates, reaching out to Beau to steady her on the ice. Toby talked about his father, long retired from the mines, now battling emphysema. Sharon listened to him speak, savoring the familiar timbre of his voice. As Toby spoke, he held her hand, stroking it with his thumb.
They sat quietly for awhile, then Toby looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow, I’m on a rescue team. I’ve got training this afternoon so I’ll know what to do. Will you be here tonight?”
“Not planning to. I usually stay for the last briefing, then go home.”
“Any chance I could see you later? Maybe get a drink, or coffee even?”
“You know, I’d like that,” she said. “Just to get away for an hour or so.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead and walked over to the pickup truck he had borrowed from his brother. He opened the door then turned back and gave Sharon a small wave of the hand before driving away.
Late that night, Sharon and Toby sat side-by-side in a booth at Bingo’s Bar & Grill, ten miles west of town. Sharon had chosen the place. She didn’t want to run in to people from town, didn’t want them to get the wrong idea. She just needed to get away for a bit. It was dark inside and smoky, and they’d both had several beers. Bingo’s usual crowd of good ol’ boys sat at the bar watching baseball on ESPN without any sound. A jukebox played country music.
“I fall to pieces. . .”
They found it easy to talk. Sharon told him about Beau, how scared she was that he wouldn’t be found alive. She talked about her boys, how it felt to be a mom. She wanted to know more about Toby. He spoke of his job in a winery in Sonoma valley, how he loved walking among the redwoods. He was building a cabin that would use solar heat.
It was late and Sharon felt woozy. Toby’s left leg was touching her right leg. It felt good. “Ever get married, Toby? I don’t see you bein’ alone.” She rubbed the frost on her glass with her index finger.
“Came close once. Didn’t work out.” Toby edged closer to her on the bench seat.
“What went wrong?”
“Only one thing, Sharon. She wasn’t you.”
“You had your chance.”
“I should’ve taken it.” He put his hand on her thigh. “You scared me, Sharon. I knew what you wanted.”
“All I wanted back then was you.”
“Forever, though. That’s the part that scared me. I felt trapped.”
Sharon’s eyes widened. Her stomach clutched. “Oh, God, don’t say trapped.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Toby, I’ve gotta go, really. I shouldn’t even be here.” She started to get up. Toby pressed her down gently and kissed her, a long, deep kiss. She leaned closer into his arms before pulling away, guilt taking the edge off her intoxication. What the hell am I doing? She pushed him gently away. “I’ve got to go now, Toby. I need to get home. Please.”
He walked her to his truck. They drove to Sharon’s house without speaking. As Toby drove, Sharon looked out the passenger window, tears rolling down her face, thinking of Beau, of kissing Beau, of kissing Toby, wondering if she would ever again feel quiet inside.
The next morning, Sharon was still in bed when she heard the front door open and Jesse’s voice call out, “Mommy! Mommy!” He sounded agitated. The boys had spent the night at grandma’s. She glanced at the clock. It was a little after seven.
“Just a minute!” Sharon needed an aspirin. She pulled on her robe and went into the living room, tying the robe’s sash around her waist. She knelt down and reached for Jesse.
“Now, what's all this noise about?”
“I’m sorry,” whispered Mary Beth. “He saw something on TV.”
“What is it, Jess?”
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?”
Sharon scooped up her young son and pulled him onto her lap on the sofa. “Jesse, you know your daddy works in a mine under the ground, don’t you?”
Jesse nodded, staring at her.
“Well, a few days ago, some rocks fell and your daddy is stuck inside. But there are a lot of people working to get him out so he can come home.”
“Is he OK, mommy?”
“Yes, baby.”
“Will he come home?”
“Yes, baby. That’s why I go to the mine every day, to be there when daddy comes out. So he knows we’ve been waiting for him all this time.”
“Take me with you.”
“Honey, I need you to stay with grandma and Mary Beth to help with Jared."
"No!" he shrieked. "I want Daddy!" He grabbed onto her leg, his fingernails pinching her skin.
"I know you do, baby." Sharon picked him up and pulled him into her arms. "We all want Daddy home. But please, you need to stay with grandma. You need to take care of your brother. He needs you, Jess."
When Jesse quieted down some, Sharon handed him to Mary Beth, who nuzzled his hair with her nose. “Come on, sport, let’s go get some breakfast so your mommy can get going.” Jesse squirmed away from Mary Beth to put his arms around his mother’s neck. Sharon kissed him. “I love you, darlin’. I’ll see you later today.”
“Sorry,” Mary Beth whispered again over her shoulder as she carried Jesse out the front door.
“Don’t worry about it. Thanks, sis.”
Hope frays at the edges, she realized. The center is the last to go.
That morning, Pennington’s briefing was terse: no news, still working, no sounds from inside. Sharon scanned his face for traces of optimism but saw only a tired, gray man.
Toby would be at the mine by now to join the rescue efforts. Sharon felt she had two men at risk. She took a cup of coffee outside and sat on the park bench where she and Toby had sat the day before. She thought about last night at the bar. Why did she kiss him like that? Why did it feel so good? Would Beau just keep slipping away, taking pieces of her heart along with him? She glanced over at the new housing development a quarter of a mile away. She thought of the people inside the houses, living normal lives. Going to work, walking to school, buying groceries. Not living a life stopped dead in its tracks.
What if Beau doesn’t make it, she wondered. Tears stung her eyes. She thought of Beau’s steady hand with the boys, his arms and legs wrapped around her in bed. When she tried to picture a life without him, the image blurred, lost focus.
Back in the gym, Sharon sat in her usual spot in the bleachers and prayed with a fresh urgency. Without warning, there was a noise in the distance. A man in overalls standing near Sharon seemed to hear it first as if, like a hunting dog, he could hear sounds shriller than human ears could detect. It was a siren. No, two or three or more sirens, coming in their direction, toward the gym. Two small children rushed to the entrance of the gym that faced the road, noses pressed like puppies against the double glass doors to see what was happening. As more people moved from their seats, the sound grew louder and then deafening as four ambulances sped past the gym, heading for the mine. The sound diminished with distance and then stopped abruptly as the ambulances reached their destination, the cessation almost more startling than the earlier loud roar.
From her bleacher seat, Sharon looked at all the people now moving about, some crying, some praying, many talking on cell phones. Looking down, her eyes fixed on a piece of knitting that was left behind in haste, the yarn a cornflower blue, shapeless but tightly woven at one end. As Sharon watched, the weight of the knitting needles pulled the working end of the piece over the side of a bleacher. One needle fell to the floor with a distinct clang and the whole thing began to unravel.
“Mom? Is Mary Beth home from school yet? I need her to come over here and watch the kids. There’s a cave-in at the mine.” Sharon reached for the bottle sliding out of Jared’s mouth and gently replaced it. “I’ve got to get over there now. No, I can drive. Tell her to hurry, please.” She glanced quickly at Jesse to see whether he had been listening, but her slim brown-haired son was talking to the bear.
Seventeen-year-old Mary Beth, flush from running three blocks, came in the door, gave her sister a hug, and said, “You go, now. Don’t worry about the kids."
Sharon grabbed her bag and keys and ran out to her VW wagon. “Start for me, baby,” she prompted the car as she tossed her purse in the back between the two child seats. Beau had been promising to take the car in but, as usual, other things got in the way. The car started right up. Sharon tore off for the Pennington mine.
She turned on the car radio to the local news station: “Rescue workers now racing to the scene. . . . Nine miners believed trapped . . . sounded like an explosion . . . . One miner who escaped . . . worst cave-in he’d ever seen.” Sharon snapped off the dial. This can’t be happening, she thought. Dear God, please don’t let Beau be inside. Please, God, let Beau be waiting for me when I get there. Please, God, please. But she knew that if Beau were safe, he’d have called her on her cell phone. She reached suddenly for her purse, half-hoping she had forgotten to bring the phone. But there it was. Fully charged. And still as a stone.
As she approached the mine, there were cars everywhere, rescue vehicles with flashing red lights, news trucks with satellite dishes, all knotted together. Sharon saw ahead that police officers were turning cars away. She spotted Roy Dawes, the county sheriff who worked with her daddy when he was alive. “Hey, Sharon,” said Dawes. “You OK?”
“Roy, is Beau inside?”
“We don’t know who’s inside yet, Sharon. You need to drive on up to the school. That’s where the families are going.”
Oh, God, she thought, this is really happening.
The next couple of hours were a blur. By ones and twos, the miners who had escaped or who had not been inside the mine at the time of the collapse, the miners who were safe, walked into the school gymnasium, walked straight into tearful reunions with wives and mothers, fathers, siblings, kids. By six in the evening, the number of family members inside the gym had dwindled. They stared blankly at one another, knowing now who was trapped inside. Sharon knew she should call her mom and Mary Beth, but she was overwhelmed with exhaustion. Her slender arms felt heavy and she was sure she wouldn’t be able to form words. Looking around, she felt like a refugee. Quiet but efficient Red Cross workers were already there, setting up cots and blankets, laying out trays of sandwiches, and plugging in giant urns of strong black coffee.
At around 7:30, Harvey Pennington, owner of the mine, entered the gymnasium to speak to the anxious families. “Folks,” he said, “I don’t know how much you know yet, so let me tell you what happened. At around 2:45 this afternoon, a portion of the mine collapsed about 1200 feet from the entrance. A group of eight miners saw the collapse. They all got out. Nine miners were deep inside at the time of the collapse and are still trapped.” He went on – “first priority. . . make contact . . . air and food . . . rescue efforts” – but Sharon heard little after “still trapped.”
She thought of Beau that morning in the kitchen. He’d left with a thermos of hot coffee, his lunch pail and a quick kiss. His blue eyes danced when he smiled and said, “See ya tonight, babe.” She had wanted to mention the overdue electric bill, but Beau was out the door before she got the chance. Now she felt an odd buzzing in her head. Her stomach hurt and she felt like she might throw up. She lay down on a cot for a while but sat up when she heard a group of people praying loudly in a circle near the free-throw line. She decided to drive home for the night.
On the kitchen counter, Sharon found a note from her sister: “Took kids to Moms. We’re fine. Get some rest. MB.” Thank you, she thought, and went to her room. She lay down on her bed and smelled Beau in the sheets and pillowcases. He had to be alive.
They just had to find him. She cried herself to sleep holding one of Beau’s socks that was tangled up in the bedspread. She didn’t sleep long. She had what Beau called “the nips,” the constant list of troubles that kept her awake nights. Tonight it was this: if Beau doesn’t make it, what will we do? How will I pay the mortgage? We’ll have to move. But the house needs repairs. Paint, drywall, leaky toilets. We’ll lose our health insurance. I’ll get a job. Lord, how will I pay for daycare? Jared is just a baby.
Worst of all was the thought of Beau trapped underground. Sharon had seen a movie once about a young woman who was buried alive. The movie had scared her to death, the look on the young woman’s face in unremitting darkness, as she scratched at the crude box that enclosed her, her eyes growing wider, the screams, the gasping for breath, the realization that she was trapped and would suffocate, die a horrible death, no chance, no prayer for escape.
She wondered if Beau had air where he was and water, if he was scared, if he thought he was going to die. Hang on, baby, please, please, please hang on. The darkness in her bedroom was heavy. She felt short of breath and unable to keep still. She threw off her blankets and opened a window, breathing in the clean scent of the night breeze. The moon was a bright sliver in the blue-black night sky. The moon that Beau couldn’t see.
At around six in the morning, Sharon got up and took a shower. She used Beau’s toothbrush, not wanting it to dry up. While dressing, she turned on the TV in her bedroom to see if there was any news. She watched the perky news anchors discuss the “mine disaster” in the same tones of voice as their ensuing description of some Hollywood starlet’s latest arrest for DUI. It was all the same to them.
Daylight was just beginning to lighten the morning sky as Sharon drove through town on the road to the gym. The streetlights were still lit but beginning to dim. It was a gentle time of day, before everyone was up, before bad news would seem real. Sharon saw crudely made signs hanging on buildings and in yards: “Pray for the miners.” “God bless the miners and their families.” “God is in our hearts and mines.” They will find them today, she thought. They will. She reached for her cell phone, feeling strong enough at last to call her mom.
The gym was more crowded this morning, the morning after the mine collapsed. More relatives streamed in. The wives and families of the rescue workers were now here. Many of the miners who escaped the cave-in had volunteered to help dig. No one knew this mine better than they did and the miners trapped inside were their brothers. The rescue work was dangerous. Another cave-in was possible as there was no knowing how much damage the earlier collapse had caused the mine’s structure.
Sharon sat on a lower bleacher as if waiting for the game to begin. She thought of Beau as a high school sophomore on the junior varsity team. He was tall, all legs, running down the court, winking at her for luck between free throws. She watched families hugging, talking, praying, eating donuts, drinking coffee. She was alone. She had asked her mother to keep the kids with her so Mary Beth could go to school. To do anything else would suggest that everything would not turn out all right. There was no one to call in Beau’s family, really. His parents were dead and his brother in jail. The last time they spoke to Brett he wanted money. “What for?” asked Beau. “You got a casino in the stir?” “No, man, my shoes wore out.” Beau sent him a hundred dollars, money they could have used to fix the VW or pay bills.
Sharon watched Mary Lou Jessup, a woman she knew from church, walk slowly into the gym. Mary Lou weighed over 300 pounds and pulled a portable oxygen machine alongside her. She was 50 years old but looked much older. Sharon didn’t know Mary Lou very well but knew that her son was a miner and that she had lost her husband in a cave-in some years back. Seeing Mary Lou was an odd comfort to Sharon. Surely, God wouldn’t let Mary Lou suffer two grievous losses to the mine.
As Sharon sipped coffee, staring at a spot on the gymnasium floor where she and Beau had once danced too close at a high school sock hop, she felt an arm enfold her. It was her mom. The high school had closed for the day, she said, since so many students were from mining families, and Mary Beth was watching the kids. Sharon cried with relief at her mother’s gentle touch.
“Oh, Mom, I don’t want Mary Beth to have to stay home all day with the boys.”
“She wants to, honey. This is somethin' she can do.” She held her daughter's hand in hers. "Gettin' any sleep, hon?"
"Not much. I keep thinking -- " Her voice caught. "Oh, Mom, what if -- ?"
"Remember what your grandma used to say, Sharon? 'Frettin' in advance is a pure waste of time.' Beau's all right, honey, unless we find out different. If anyone can get through this, Beau can. Never saw a man loved his family more."
Just then, Harvey Pennington walked in and the room went still. “Folks,” he said, “I want to be sure that you all are as comfortable as you can be here. We may be in for a long haul.” He described how they would drill a hole into the mine to locate a shaft, an open space, where the miners might be. They would insert a pole into the shaft with a camera at the end of it and a microphone. Sharon’s mind drifted as he went on: “ . . . if the miners are there. . . if they have air . . . it will take three or four days.” Three or four days to get them, she thought. If they find them at all.
“Everything that can be done is being done,” said Pennington. “We will bring them out alive.” A nervous female voice from the back of the crowd: “Have you heard any sounds from inside?” Everyone there knew that miners, when they’re trapped, are trained to make tapping noises so that rescuers will know they are alive. “No, we haven’t, ma’am, but . . .”
Sharon remembered when she and Beau had talked about this, had talked about the possibility that he could be trapped someday. He showed her, with the handle of a dinner knife on the U-shaped pipe under the sink, how he would tap. Beau was tapping the beat of a song and made her guess which one it was. She couldn’t – it was “Inagadadaveda” – and then she tried, tapping out “Love, love me do. . .” Beau guessed it right away.
Shortly after Pennington left, Sharon got into her VW and followed her mom’s car out of the gymnasium parking lot. She couldn’t just sit around and wait. She needed to see her boys. As she drove, she practiced her smile, recalling how she had learned to fake emotions in drama class in college. She hadn’t thought about college in a long time. She was sorry she’d never finished. She’d had such hopes for a career, a big house, designer clothes, but in the end she had come home to Beau.
When Sharon walked in the door of her mom’s house, Jesse jumped into her arms and pulled her down to the rug to build Legos with him. Jared, the baby, was more subdued, almost as if he knew something was out of place. Sharon held him in one arm, as she played on the floor with Jesse’s plastic blocks. Jared’s large blue eyes never left her face. His expression reminded her of Beau. Beau, when he was sad, when he thought that she would leave him. She had gone to college hoping Beau would follow her. She had begged him not to work in the mines, but it was in his family, in his blood. Beau loved the mines, she knew that now, the darkness, the quest, the sheer physicality of the work, even the danger. He loved emerging in the late afternoon, when daylight was so dazzling it could almost make him cry.
The days that followed took on a curious air of tension mixed with tedium. Each morning, Sharon drove to the gym where dozens of people maintained their nervous vigil. The crowded gym felt to her like a waiting room in the intensive care unit where you hoped for good news, but expected the worst. Occasionally she tried to talk to women she recognized, another wife or someone's sister, but the look of pain in their eyes frightened her more than sitting alone. Though she'd lived in this town most of her life, Sharon felt like an outsider looking in, watching expectations rise and fall in unsteady rhythms.
Harv Pennington’s reports became less frequent, and more unnervingly repetitious: No news yet. Miners not found. Another hole drilled. No sounds from below. Still, Pennington projected hope. There was enough food and water to last several days, he told the families. The miners were well-trained to survive.
Five days after the mine caved in, Sharon entered the gym where by now the familiar smells of leather and perspiration commingled – permanently, it seemed – with the aromas of strong coffee, chicken wings, and baked ham. “Hi, Joe,” she said to her neighborhood grocer, as they walked together through the gym’s double doors. “Let me help you with those.” Joe handed her a carton packed with boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts, Beau’s favorite, and put his free arm around Sharon’s shoulder. Members of the community were unceasingly generous, bringing food and comfort at all hours.
Pennington’s morning briefing was over. Sharon looked around. There was a prayer circle under the visiting team’s basket, its members holding hands and chanting softly. She envied them their faith. A few women sat in the bleachers knitting. Some folks read books or the morning paper. Others paced the hard gym floor waiting for updates.
Sharon walked over to the tables set up by the wall for coffee. She placed a cup under the urn and pulled the lever, the steady flow of the hot liquid calming her somewhat. A tap on her shoulder startled her. She turned around to face Toby. Toby! Though Beau was her boy friend in high school, Toby was her secret crush, the boy she loved in college, who cheated on her, then left for the west coast. The boy she never forgot, now ruggedly handsome, somewhat out of place here with his ponytail and sandals.
“Toby, what are you doing here?”
“Hey, Sharon. Just got here yesterday. It’s dad’s birthday. He’s been sick, so we all came home. I heard about the mine, and Beau inside.”
“Oh, Toby.” Sharon let him hug her, his embrace so familiar as though six years had not passed. When Toby left school for California, Sharon had curled up inside herself like a snail in its hard shell. She married Beau a year later.
“Let’s walk,” she said. Sharon poured Toby a cup of coffee and they walked out to the parking lot in back of the gym, a semi-private area roped off from the media. They sat on a park bench, fixed in concrete since a time long ago when the parking lot was a skating rink. How often she had sat on that bench lacing up her skates, reaching out to Beau to steady her on the ice. Toby talked about his father, long retired from the mines, now battling emphysema. Sharon listened to him speak, savoring the familiar timbre of his voice. As Toby spoke, he held her hand, stroking it with his thumb.
They sat quietly for awhile, then Toby looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow, I’m on a rescue team. I’ve got training this afternoon so I’ll know what to do. Will you be here tonight?”
“Not planning to. I usually stay for the last briefing, then go home.”
“Any chance I could see you later? Maybe get a drink, or coffee even?”
“You know, I’d like that,” she said. “Just to get away for an hour or so.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead and walked over to the pickup truck he had borrowed from his brother. He opened the door then turned back and gave Sharon a small wave of the hand before driving away.
Late that night, Sharon and Toby sat side-by-side in a booth at Bingo’s Bar & Grill, ten miles west of town. Sharon had chosen the place. She didn’t want to run in to people from town, didn’t want them to get the wrong idea. She just needed to get away for a bit. It was dark inside and smoky, and they’d both had several beers. Bingo’s usual crowd of good ol’ boys sat at the bar watching baseball on ESPN without any sound. A jukebox played country music.
“I fall to pieces. . .”
They found it easy to talk. Sharon told him about Beau, how scared she was that he wouldn’t be found alive. She talked about her boys, how it felt to be a mom. She wanted to know more about Toby. He spoke of his job in a winery in Sonoma valley, how he loved walking among the redwoods. He was building a cabin that would use solar heat.
It was late and Sharon felt woozy. Toby’s left leg was touching her right leg. It felt good. “Ever get married, Toby? I don’t see you bein’ alone.” She rubbed the frost on her glass with her index finger.
“Came close once. Didn’t work out.” Toby edged closer to her on the bench seat.
“What went wrong?”
“Only one thing, Sharon. She wasn’t you.”
“You had your chance.”
“I should’ve taken it.” He put his hand on her thigh. “You scared me, Sharon. I knew what you wanted.”
“All I wanted back then was you.”
“Forever, though. That’s the part that scared me. I felt trapped.”
Sharon’s eyes widened. Her stomach clutched. “Oh, God, don’t say trapped.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Toby, I’ve gotta go, really. I shouldn’t even be here.” She started to get up. Toby pressed her down gently and kissed her, a long, deep kiss. She leaned closer into his arms before pulling away, guilt taking the edge off her intoxication. What the hell am I doing? She pushed him gently away. “I’ve got to go now, Toby. I need to get home. Please.”
He walked her to his truck. They drove to Sharon’s house without speaking. As Toby drove, Sharon looked out the passenger window, tears rolling down her face, thinking of Beau, of kissing Beau, of kissing Toby, wondering if she would ever again feel quiet inside.
The next morning, Sharon was still in bed when she heard the front door open and Jesse’s voice call out, “Mommy! Mommy!” He sounded agitated. The boys had spent the night at grandma’s. She glanced at the clock. It was a little after seven.
“Just a minute!” Sharon needed an aspirin. She pulled on her robe and went into the living room, tying the robe’s sash around her waist. She knelt down and reached for Jesse.
“Now, what's all this noise about?”
“I’m sorry,” whispered Mary Beth. “He saw something on TV.”
“What is it, Jess?”
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?”
Sharon scooped up her young son and pulled him onto her lap on the sofa. “Jesse, you know your daddy works in a mine under the ground, don’t you?”
Jesse nodded, staring at her.
“Well, a few days ago, some rocks fell and your daddy is stuck inside. But there are a lot of people working to get him out so he can come home.”
“Is he OK, mommy?”
“Yes, baby.”
“Will he come home?”
“Yes, baby. That’s why I go to the mine every day, to be there when daddy comes out. So he knows we’ve been waiting for him all this time.”
“Take me with you.”
“Honey, I need you to stay with grandma and Mary Beth to help with Jared."
"No!" he shrieked. "I want Daddy!" He grabbed onto her leg, his fingernails pinching her skin.
"I know you do, baby." Sharon picked him up and pulled him into her arms. "We all want Daddy home. But please, you need to stay with grandma. You need to take care of your brother. He needs you, Jess."
When Jesse quieted down some, Sharon handed him to Mary Beth, who nuzzled his hair with her nose. “Come on, sport, let’s go get some breakfast so your mommy can get going.” Jesse squirmed away from Mary Beth to put his arms around his mother’s neck. Sharon kissed him. “I love you, darlin’. I’ll see you later today.”
“Sorry,” Mary Beth whispered again over her shoulder as she carried Jesse out the front door.
“Don’t worry about it. Thanks, sis.”
Hope frays at the edges, she realized. The center is the last to go.
That morning, Pennington’s briefing was terse: no news, still working, no sounds from inside. Sharon scanned his face for traces of optimism but saw only a tired, gray man.
Toby would be at the mine by now to join the rescue efforts. Sharon felt she had two men at risk. She took a cup of coffee outside and sat on the park bench where she and Toby had sat the day before. She thought about last night at the bar. Why did she kiss him like that? Why did it feel so good? Would Beau just keep slipping away, taking pieces of her heart along with him? She glanced over at the new housing development a quarter of a mile away. She thought of the people inside the houses, living normal lives. Going to work, walking to school, buying groceries. Not living a life stopped dead in its tracks.
What if Beau doesn’t make it, she wondered. Tears stung her eyes. She thought of Beau’s steady hand with the boys, his arms and legs wrapped around her in bed. When she tried to picture a life without him, the image blurred, lost focus.
Back in the gym, Sharon sat in her usual spot in the bleachers and prayed with a fresh urgency. Without warning, there was a noise in the distance. A man in overalls standing near Sharon seemed to hear it first as if, like a hunting dog, he could hear sounds shriller than human ears could detect. It was a siren. No, two or three or more sirens, coming in their direction, toward the gym. Two small children rushed to the entrance of the gym that faced the road, noses pressed like puppies against the double glass doors to see what was happening. As more people moved from their seats, the sound grew louder and then deafening as four ambulances sped past the gym, heading for the mine. The sound diminished with distance and then stopped abruptly as the ambulances reached their destination, the cessation almost more startling than the earlier loud roar.
From her bleacher seat, Sharon looked at all the people now moving about, some crying, some praying, many talking on cell phones. Looking down, her eyes fixed on a piece of knitting that was left behind in haste, the yarn a cornflower blue, shapeless but tightly woven at one end. As Sharon watched, the weight of the knitting needles pulled the working end of the piece over the side of a bleacher. One needle fell to the floor with a distinct clang and the whole thing began to unravel.
