The Canary

I could still hear their screams at night. The screams of grown men being buried alive by tons of rock, soot, ash, wood, and whatever the fuck all was in that mine. I didn’t know the names of most of them, only the ones I shared a tent with at camp, Mack, Joe, Charles, Mason… and they were all dead. Forever buried in that silver mine.

That day had started like any other. Wake up at four in the morning, eat stale biscuits, drink black coffee, grab your tools, and head out to the mine. You kept to yourself, you make your money, and at some point you have enough to move on.

They were all there for different reasons. Some of them were there to provide for their families.

The mines paid well after all.

Mack hadn’t stopped talking about his little girl who’d just been born several months before.

“She’s gonna be a beauty just like her mother.” He said as he showed off a picture of his newborn little girl.

He must've shown us that photograph a hundred times.

He’d been looking to earn some money to save up for a bigger house. Others, like Joe were looking to pay off debts, what those debts were, it didn’t really matter, we weren’t there to judge.

Charles had been sending money home to his sick mother.

No one knew why Mason was there, only that he had eight dollars socked away in an old coffee can and the rest was who knows where. Though we had suspected he had a favorite prostitute at the saloon. We all got along in our tent, we played cards, smoked cigarettes, and occasionally shared a tin of beans or went out to the nearest saloon for a brew.

That morning had been no different than any of the others. We had had our breakfasts the good ole coffee and biscuits, grabbed our tools and lunches and had quietly made our way to the ten foot wide dark opening into the belly of the earth; the only light being the ones attached to our helmets and the lanterns attached to the lines that had been put up along the dug up path.

There had been no indication or warning of what was to come later that day.

It was hot inside and the air was thin. There was no sunlight. The only thing that mimicked the sun was the damn canary…that damn canary that accompanied them everyday to make sure none of us died from toxic gas. We worked from dawn until dusk, our eyes rarely saw the sun. We'd go in before the sun was up and come out after it was gone. Some days the only thing that reminded you the world still had daylight in it was the damn canary, who we'd named Ray. Looking back, the irony wasn't lost on me. I stood at the entrance of the collapsed mine, the only survivor, while that little ray of sunshine fluttered around me.

I replayed it in my head a million times. I’d been doing my job, focused on my pickaxe as the man next to me used the air drill. I can still hear it. Charles and Mason had been sitting down eating their lunch and joking around with some other guys who were messing with Ray’s cage. I hadn’t seen where Joe or Mack were. From the corner of my eye I could see they’d been getting the dynamite ready, they were going to do a blast, like they had multiple mornings before. Just a standard, typical day.

That’s when I heard it. The words that spared me.

“Ah dammit Ray got out!”

Someone had opened Ray’s cage to give him some bread and he’d taken the opportunity to shoot out towards the entrance.

As if something had taken over my body I had put my pickaxe down and taken off my gloves.

“I’ll get him.”

I didn’t know what had compelled me to volunteer to go get the damn bird but all I remembered was chasing it down the tunnels as it flew further and further away from the group.

Everyone took this job for a reason. Mine? I wanted to disappear. I didn’t care about the money, nor did I have debts or anyone depending on me. I just needed a place to stay and money to get my necessities.

I had no one. This was all I had. They were all I had.

The last thing I remembered as I was running through the tunnels after the little yellow speck was the unholy bang of the dynamite going off behind me piercing the ear drums, along with the shaking of the loose rock, screams of panicked men and the surge of fear through my body that then made me run forwards instead of backwards. The loose dirt falling in front and in the back of me, the particles of rock cutting into my exposed skin as it devoured the entire mine.

I didn’t think, I just ran. I ran until I saw the white light at the end of the tunnel. The sun and then… ringing… blurry… the sun stung my eyes as they attempted to adjust to the sudden light change and the ringing in my ears made my head hurt.

I stumbled out of the mine into a clearing, I could feel my heart in my throat as I was struggling to catch my breath. The world was spinning, the earth crunching beneath my boots and I could still hear the screaming in the back of my head and then… silence. A deathly silence, no wind, no birds, just silence. I turned around to look for the opening of the mine.

Collapsed. Gone.

The wide open ten foot dark hole, the entrance that many men had entered every morning had been swallowed whole, taking everyone, except me with it. Ray fluttered by and disappeared into the woods. I often wonder if he knew…