Sinner's Prayer

*SINNER'S PRAYER*

At some point or another they just gave up. They had found a
sledgehammer and they traded it back and forth. Just like John Henry
driving spikes into tack they stood on the other side of the earth
whaling shots into the coal rib. The idea was to make a noise. Hopefully
the rescue teams could hear a reverberation and pinpoint their location.
The man with the hammer couldn't wear an air tank. The straps would pin
his shoulders back to far. The others would share the oxygen in that
man's machine. But eventually they would hear the dull brassy "ping"
that those tanks make just before the supply is drained. They put the
hammer down then and they looked around at one another. Twelve men who
had just decided to die.

Ironically, the people who die in coal mines are not the "humble
American worker" you tend to hear about. At least not in the communities
where they live. For the rural poor, mining jobs are synonymous with
upper middle class respectability. Of course in central Appalachia
"upper middle class" means something very different than it does here.
It means your car runs most of the year or that your house is reasonably
free of ants. Its hard to get a job mining these days. You don't open
the newspaper to the classified section and expect to see a "help
wanted" listing. Its more like an exclusive club that only opens the
books occasionally. My cousin got hired on because he'd been a terrific
basketball player in high school. A childhood friend got lucky because
his dad used to drink with the mayor. You've got to have connections.
Not just anybody gets to do this kind of thing.

They sat in a circle while the gas started to rise. You aren't
supposed to smell methane but it turns out that you can, at least when
there's this much of it. The man named Jackie Weaver led them in a
"sinner's prayer."
"/Oh god I know I am a sinner. I know I have sinned O
lord./
/ I know that I deserve the consequences of my sin. I
accept that/
/Jesus Christ is my Lord. I know he is my savior. Amen."/

They found some tarp and wrote letters back to their family.
Some wrote in pen. Some wrote with the coal. They started to die then.
One man who'd been sitting on a wheelbarrow just keeled over like he'd
been pushed. The others shut their eyes and tried not to breathe. The
"consequences of their sin" was everywhere now. As strong and inevitable
as sunshine pushing past clouds.

The way I heard it, Little Red Riding Hood was saved by a coal
miner. I remember being seven or eight and attending the UMW strikes out
in Harlan and Letcher county. A few of these routinely ended in
gunfights but that was no big deal. My heroes growing up were the roving
pickets. The men who blew up scab workers by smuggling dynamite in mason
jars of pickled bologna. For my family, there was no higher vocation
than a miner. Not a soldier, not a firefighter, not a preacher. Coal
miners turned the lights on, I was reminded only about six times a day.
Of course when I became working age I did the only natural thing: I ran
three thousand miles away and never again spoke to my family. This
winter when I watched those thirteen men die on television along with
the rest of the country, I felt an immobilizing pain. A long time ago I
heard someone say that "the jury is in and you are the verdict." I was
found guilty and not guilty enough.


The Seattle Times ran a picture a few weeks ago. It was a
picture of the tarp that those men had written on just before they
asphixiated. One of them wrote the words "it wasn't bad, I just went to
sleep." Imagine that. Dying inside a mountain, a testament to a life and
culture that society has forgotten. The rescue teams that you were
promised never showed. The country you built grew up and never came
back. And you aren't angry. Instead, the only thing you want is to make
sure that your family knows you didn't die in pain. You can't stand the
thought of them thinking that you suffered.

There was another picture in the paper as well. A sad solitary shot
of the hammer those men had found. The nine pound hammer that was strong enough to kill John Henry hadn't been able to save those Sago miners. No one ever heard the sounds that they made. Maybe they hadn't been been
loud enough. Maybe they couldn't be. Of course John Henry died trying to
build a railroad with his bare hands. He committed suicide with that
sledge but it was a suicide that proved his life. Perhaps, the real sin is to not matter. To submit to the acceptable tragedy. To live your life only as a series of passing days and not as a statement, a testimony to your origins and hopes. If this is us, then in the end we are endless headstones, anonymous under the stone weight of our own name. Last winter those men swung that hammer hoping, someone, anyone, on the other side of that mountain could hear their voice. Just like John Henry, they were trying to show the world that they were there.