It's Harwick

Bobby Harlan was my best friend for nineteen years. I want you to know that. I want you to hold that between your teeth before you walk into this story.

His mother used to say I was her second son. She didn't say it with violins. She said it between cans of beans at the grocery checkout. On the phone at two in the morning. She set it down like a plate on the table. Obvious. Normal. Here's Jimmy, here's Bobby, here's dinner. Bobby would've laughed. He found the knot in the sentence. The place where it hurts. And he pulled on it just enough to pull a laugh.

But Bobby is dead.

There's nobody to fold the sentences now. Nobody to find the splinter and laugh. There's just me. What I kept. What I can't get down on paper.

Before I tell you my story, I need to tell you about Harwick and the mine.

Harwick isn't a place you live in. It's a place that lives in you. You're born with something already in your throat. The mountain on your back. A name on a list nobody showed you, nobody asked you to sign.

My father went down. His father before him. In our family we didn't say I want. We said I'm going. It wasn't a choice. It was an inheritance. Like the color of your eyes. Things like that weren't passed down with fine speeches.

If I don't tell you this, the rest is going to look like madness. A bad chain of events, a bad night, bad luck. That's not it. It's the logic of Harwick. A logic that lived too long underground, used to the dark, used to the tight, to the dull sounds that come from everywhere and nowhere. It rises back to open air deformed. Damaged. But it rises. And it hasn't forgotten you.

My grandfather arrived in Harwick in 1930. He was seventeen with a suitcase. The mine was hiring. He'd found a place. That's what he used to say. I found a place. The place had found him too.

Harwick had two thousand three hundred people when I was a kid. Now it's seventeen hundred. That's not a census. That's a body count. You wear down. You disappear in thin slices. You end up on the hill with one more name in the granite. That's the most common exit around here. The road promises. The granite keeps.

Some leave. Buy a pickup and swear on everything they've got that this time it's for real, this time they're not coming back.

Shelly wanted to leave for Portland. At night we'd be lying in bed and she'd pull out the notebook. The spiral notebook with the columns and the tight figures and the pages so dog-eared at the corners they wouldn't lie flat anymore. She'd erased and rewritten so many times there were holes in the paper. A little shop. A storefront. People walking in and buying stones to feel better. Amethysts in little velvet pouches. She said you could heal the past with them. That the hurt of grandparents lodged itself in the bodies of grandchildren and the stones dislodged it.

Me, I didn't like the stones. They felt like a joke that cost too much. A business for people who have the time to get better.

But I loved Shelly when she believed. Her belief kept her back straight and that's rare, here. She was the only person I knew who still allowed herself to imagine a smell other than coal.

Shelly could be mean. One evening she told her sister you chose to stay, I'm not going to die here. She said it peeling carrots. Like it was nothing. Like dying and staying were the same thing and she'd known it all along.

We put money aside. We were getting close to the number. And the car would break down. Or the landlord would raise the rent. Or grandpa needed diapers and diapers for an old man cost a lot, except a baby, at least, grows. And Portland would slide back a month. Then six. Then a year. Harwick doesn't hold you with chains. Harwick holds you with bills.

Most people let go of the idea of leaving. It's cheaper. Less dramatic. Less painful in the moment. They call it settling back in. They say home. They say it the way you say prison, same tone, no laughter, no attempt to explain.

Bobby used to say you're still here. Every morning. At the mine. You're still here. I'd say yeah. He'd say Portland's which way again. I'd say west. He'd say west is that way and he'd point at the locker room wall. I'd say that's the wall, Bobby. He'd say I know. That's exactly what I'm saying. He gave me shit about the crystals. Gently. He'd say Jim, you're gonna sell rocks to hippies. I'd say that's the plan. He'd say that's a shit plan. I'd say you got a better one. He'd say no. It wasn't empty silence. It was full silence. Full of fatigue and dust and something we didn't have and couldn't name. Around us the showers were running and boots were slapping on wet concrete and the guys were already coughing, before they even went down they were already coughing. And we'd stand there one second longer than the others. Standing. As if standing without speaking was the only way not to collapse.

And then he'd say bring me back an amethyst when you're a millionaire. I'd say which one do you want. He'd say the biggest. The most purple. The one that erases karma. Bobby used to say one day I'm gonna get buried standing up so at least I'll be in position to go to work the next morning. I didn't always laugh at his jokes. That one I should have.

It already smelled bad, that joke.

Coal dust doesn't just get you dirty. It moves in. Under the nails. In the ears. Between the teeth. In the folds you never see yourself but others do. It sticks to the hollow of your neck. You come home, you scrub, you let the water run until the boiler gives out, and she, your girlfriend, your wife, whoever, the one who's still there, she says: you've still got black right there. You go back. You scrub harder. The water burns. There's still some left.

After a while you stop talking about it. Not because it comes off. Because you understand.

It's not on you anymore. It's in you.

The mine doesn't cover you. The mine dyes you. It takes the skin first, the surface, what everyone can see, and then it starts going deeper. Slowly.

And one day you're black all the way down to where nobody can scrub.

My grandfather's name is Virgil.

I say is because the name still circulates. Because my mother says Virgil this, Virgil that, because the name still has a practical use. But him. Him is something else.

Him has been on the porch for eleven years.

They put him there the way you put a piece of furniture that's too heavy. A busted couch you can't carry anymore and can't throw out so you leave it where it is and make do. They gave him a cushion. A blanket in winter. They'd give him a patch of sun. The sun didn't care. Virgil didn't care either.

His eyes are open, but there's nothing behind them that catches. No gaze. No recognition. You walk past him and he doesn't look at you. He looks through you. Sometimes a fly lands on his eyelid and he blinks. Once. Slowly.

The light is there. But nobody's been home for a long time.

In 1974, tunnel 6 collapsed.

In Harwick you know the numbers the way you know bible verses. You repeat them. You recite them. You don't question them because thinking too hard would make you sick, everybody knows that.

Virgil and five men stayed under for twenty-two days.

Twenty-two days without sky. Twenty-two days breathing air that runs out, that shrinks, that becomes something other than air. Three came back up alive. The other two came back up differently.

Nobody says the words.

But everybody knows.

The children know. Especially the children. Nobody told them but they know. It passed from one kid to the next the way lice pass and swear words and things you shouldn't know at that age. Old Carter on the porch ate two men in the mine. He's their Boogeyman. Except their Boogeyman is real and lives at the end of the street and his daughter puts a blanket on his knees every morning. They tell it in half-whispers, snickering, elbowing each other, and then they step back when they walk past the house. As if Virgil was going to stand up. Shame comes later. Shame is a grown-up thing. Children just have the truth.

Their mothers don't always slap them. Often they just look at them. A long look.

Their families are still here.

They walk past our house. We cross them at the grocery store. At the gas station. In the church parking lot on Sunday morning. They say hello. The words come out. The mouth opens, the words come out, it's polite, it's proper, it's Harwick.

But the eyes.

The eyes stay somewhere else. As if they were still looking at the black mouth of tunnel 6. As if a part of them never came back up.

My father's name is Calvin. He got black lung at twenty. Usually that's a fifty, fifty-five thing. The exit price. You pay on your way out. My father paid on his way in. As if the mine had read his last name and decided not to wait. He left the mine. He found a church. He preached well. He had that broken voice that makes it sound like every word costs something and people like that on Sundays. They like to feel it costs. They like you to pay in front of them, a few minutes, then they go home for lunch. He coughed between verses. He coughed during prayers. God had just kept the seat warm. He died at forty-three and I was sixteen and I sat on the porch next to Virgil and said nothing. Virgil said nothing. We said nothing together for a long time.

We'd been putting money aside for two years. Two years of the number going up and something bringing it back down. And then one Tuesday the number held. Eight thousand dollars. Shelly closed the notebook gently. The way you close a trap. She didn't smile. Not right away. She put her hand on the notebook and she waited. As if she didn't believe the number was going to stay.

Bobby came over that evening. With a case of Busch Light and a cake from the Dollar Mart. The frosting said Happy Retirement because it was that or Happy Birthday and Bobby had decided Happy Retirement was funnier. The beers were warm. Shelly put the cans in the freezer and Bobby said ten minutes. After three he cracked one open. He said patience is for people going to Portland. I got nowhere to go so I drink warm. We ate the cake in the kitchen. The frosting left blue traces on our fingers. Bobby's lips were blue after two slices. He raised his can and said to you two. That's all. To you two.

We had the money. We had the date. We were leaving in ten days.

Virgil died on the fourth.

He died and I felt nothing. That's the thing. Virgil had been dead a long time already. The body had just taken a while to understand. Mom cried. I don't know what she was crying for exactly. The man on the porch or the man from before the porch. When Virgil died Harwick changed its breathing. I felt it the way you feel a change of pressure in the air. In the way the neighbors said sorry without lingering. As if since 1974 the town had been waiting for the last witness to close his eyes. The monster was dead. Except the monster was an old man on a porch who couldn't even hold a spoon.

The salesman said you don't want your father to be cramped in his last bed. Cramped. My grandfather who had survived twenty-two days in a hole where you couldn't raise your arms. Cramped. I almost laughed. The casket was cherry wood. The wood had a dark red color. The varnish smelled new. Clean. Everything Virgil hadn't smelled like in a long time. The brass handles. Cold when I touched them. The inside was satin. Cream. Soft like nothing we own in our house. It's the most beautiful object a member of our family has ever owned. And it's for putting a dead man in.

The price was written on a little card: $7,850.

Mom said that's my father. I said Mom, that's Portland. She said Portland will still be there in six months.

The casket was big. Wide. Deep. We put ten days in it. We put the road in it. We put Shelly's storefront in it, the spiral notebook, the columns of figures, the dog-eared pages. We put the little velvet pouches in it. We put Portland in it.

To pay, I signed on for one more week at the mine. I told myself I'd get over it. I told myself a lot of things, back then.

Seven days. Seven descents.

I shouldn't tell you this like it's a detail. It arrives like a detail. It arrives cleanly, between two things, while you're looking the other way. You sign. You date. You hand back the pen.

And it's done.

I signed.

And something started that day that I didn't see start.

Two days before, we'd heard cracking.

Not movie sounds. Little dry snaps, like a board working in the cold. Crumbs of rock falling from the ceiling. Fine. On the shoulder. Down the collar. You'd tap your finger, look at the dust on your nail, and do what you always do.

You'd say it was nothing.

The foreman said: it's the rock working.

He said it chewing his gum. The rock's working. That's what they say in Harwick when they don't want to say: the rock is going to kill you. Working. As if the rock had a paycheck.

I could have refused to go down.

I could have said no. I could have made a scene, set the helmet on the table.

But I was thinking about the casket. About my mother. About Shelly. I was thinking about Portland.

I said nothing.

I took the helmet. I took the lamp. I went down.

On Monday, the rock finished its work.

The ceiling came down at eleven fourteen.

I know because Bobby had just checked his watch. He had this thing he did, the wrist turned toward him, a quick glance, as if looking at the time could make it move faster. He said: fuck, four more hours.

He said that.

And then the ceiling came down.

A sound. Not even really a sound. A ripping-out. And then the dark. I couldn't hear anything. My hands were searching for something to touch. The air had changed.

In the dark, Bobby said: "Jim."

Just my name. Not "help." Not a sermon. Jim, as if he wanted to check I still existed.

And his cough is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard in my life.

There were six of us in the tunnel. After the sound there were two. Bobby and me. The other four were under the rock. We knocked against the rock: three hits, pause, three hits, pause. We pressed our ears to it. We waited for an answer that never came. We knocked anyway, because knocking is doing something, and doing something is not dying right away.

Then we stopped knocking. We saved our strength. We were thirsty. We were hungry. We counted our breaths. Water ran down the wall, slow, cold. We pressed our mouths against the rock and drank. Like animals. We didn't look at each other when we did it.

The water tasted like iron and the iron tasted like blood and at some point in the dark the difference between the two disappeared.

Bobby cracked jokes until his last breath, on the tenth day.

— Seven days, Jimmy. That's all you had left.

— I know.

— Seven days and you were out. You survived two years of mine to get buried the last week.

— You done?

— I haven't even started. Portland, which way again?

— Bobby, now's not the time.

— West is that way.

— You can't see a thing, Bobby.

— I know. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Bobby went quiet for a second. In that second I heard his breath and his breath was smaller than before.

— It's the same joke, Jim. Except before, the wall was the locker room. Now, the wall is the mountain. But you, you're still on the same side.

— That's not funny, Bobby.

— No. It's Harwick.

Then Bobby went quiet. Dehydration does that. It shuts you off floor by floor. First the legs. Then the arms. Then the voice. The last floor was the voice. Bobby shut off and the silence fell.

And the hunger. I wish I could tell you it left with Bobby. But the hunger stayed. And Bobby stayed too.

Grandfather had believed in Harwick. My father had believed in God. Shelly and I believed in stones. We'd believed that if we put enough numbers in a notebook the notebook would finally become a door. Three generations. Three ways of negotiating with the same hole.

On the eleventh day, the silence in tunnel 6 sounded exactly like the one Virgil had brought back with him in 1974 and had never been able to set down.

I understood now why he never spoke again.