Harsh Judgment

Anthony slammed the door of the truck behind him and buttoned his blue flannel shirt to ward off the cold. Over the low, green, rolling hills, the first rays of the dawn glinted off the morning frost. He began to hike up the gravel road to the godforsaken coal mine.

At the top of the hill, Anthony stood in line to grab a blackened hardhat and an air pack from behind the peeling wooden sign that read: Reeve's Hill Mine. Established 1952. Then he went to the open-walled elevator that creaked 1200 feet down the dusty shaft.

"Mornin', Ant'ny," a voice behind him yelled over the squeaking elevator. Anthony looked back at Stephen, who grinned at him while trying to adjust the chinstrap on his hardhat. "Lovely morning, aint it?" he asked.

"Yeah, and I can't imagine any other place I'd rather spend it," Anthony yelled back sarcastically.

"Amen," Stephen said. He shook his head and mumbled an old Catholic prayer for protection as the elevator continued to descend into the depths of Hell. "How's the family?" he asked when the elevator clanked to the bottom of the mine.

"Still poor," Anthony replied. Stephen nodded in understanding. "It's the modern plague, you know."

"I haven't seen the locusts yet, at least," Stephen said, beginning to laugh.

"How's your family, Stephen?"

"My dad died last night," the young man said. He turned away and sniffed. "The lung cancer got him. He spent his life in these mines and it killed him ten years after his retirement." He choked back a sob.

"I'm so sorry," Anthony said, patting Stephen on the back. He pushed Anthony's hand off his shoulder.

"Bein' sorry won't do any good, Ant'ny. I just gotta get outta here." The two men walked toward the back of the mine, winding through a labyrinth of massive, coal pillars and three hundred other miners. "Coal mining has killed two generations of my family and I don't want it to claim a third." He made the sign of the cross and then returned to wrestling with the strap of his hardhat.

"I wish we could get out," Anthony agreed solemnly. He hated mining, hated the hours, hated the labor, hated the pay.

Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength.

Roy was already drilling holes for the explosives in a wide, black column just a few feet from the property line. Roy was always in the mine early; he had been since Reeve's Hill opened fifty years ago. He was old and brawny, his white hair and beard were gray from decades of coal dust that never washed out.

"We'll all be out of a job in a few months," Roy growled over his shoulder. "She's used up all of the land, ya know."

"I know it," Stephen said as he readjusted his hardhat again. "You keep tellin' us, Roy." Roy set down the heavy drill.

"We're retreat minin', now," Roy growled again, grabbing the charge from Anthony and shoving it into the hole he'd drilled. "When we get all of the coal out of these pillars, she'll cave-in and we'll be out of a job."

The three men dodged down the long, dim corridor of stone as the blast shook the old mine. They emerged from behind the safety of a nearby pillar with shovels in hand. Three rusty carts were pushed down the track to them, which they began to fill with anthracite coal.

"It's not as if there's no other work," Stephen remarked. Anthony stopped shoveling. Roy started shoveling faster, allowing lumps of raw coal to tumble back down to the rough floor. Stephen stopped talking when realized the sensitivity of the subject.

The carts were hauled out of the dusty grave and three other miners came over to the gashed pillar with the bolting machine to brace the ceiling. Anthony glanced up at the gaping crack along the top of the pillar. The machine finished driving the bolt into the ceiling and then the other miners dragged it to another column.

Roy picked up the drill and stomped ten feet along the jagged pillar, where he started to drill another hole. Anthony tossed the pack of explosives on onto his shoulder and followed the old man. Stephen called for another three carts.

Anthony kicked aside the a piece of worthless shale, breaking it into two pieces that looked like bricks, like the old, terra cotta bricks that made up his house thirty miles away on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. It was built into one of the countless low tributaries of the Appalachians. It was shaded by a knotted birch and was infested with ivy that spread over the windowpanes and draped in front of the doorway. The lightning bugs began to flash when he came home in the evenings. He would stomp up the worn sidewalk each night, only to kiss his wife good bye when she hurried off to the streetcar station to get to her job at the steakhouse downtown. He would yawn while she ran down the street in high heels and their baby boy would take his first shaky steps and point out the lightning bugs in the grass.

Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.

"Gimme the charges, da frick," Roy growled as he gestured to the bundle of explosives on Anthony's shoulder. He blinked a few times and dumbly handed the deadly charge to Roy, who placed it in the hole and dragged Anthony by the collar of his flannel shirt around the corner. "I've been in this mine for thirty years, save Christmas and Easters, and never have I had to work with two bigger morons!" Roy ranted. He would've kept yelling but was cut off by the explosion. They took up their shovels and stumbled back to the pillar through the blinding coal dust that burned their eyes and throats.

"The dust shoulda cleared by now," Roy coughed.

"The air shaft back here must have collapsed!" Stephen spat. A few moments later, the dust cleared enough to allow them to see the scattered lumps of coal, even though the air was still black and stifling.

You can't drift off like that, Ant'ny!" Roy scolded after scooping a particularly heavy shovelful of anthracite coal into the car with a grunt. "You'll get yourself killed, dammit." Stephen winced at the curse and looked heavenward.

"I never knew you cared," Anthony replied. He looked into Roy's serious brown eyes and stopped to wipe the sweat off of his face and neck. Around them, he could hear the groans of three hundred other men who had nowhere else to go. He could hear the clank of three hundred other shovels and the creak of three hundred other carts being dragged back to elevator for Judgment.

"I don't care about you. I care about me," Roy growled. He brushed the coal dust out of his thin, white hair. His hair floated an inch above his polished, brown scalp, making the great man seem bigger than he already was. "If you do somethin' stupid, you could kill me, too!"

"He's right. It'd be a shame to miss the picnic when Reeve's Hill closes," Stephen added with a forced tone of confidence.

"I'm not gonna be here when the mine closes," Anthony said. He leaned his shovel and the heavy air pack on the pillar wall. The carts were pulled back up the track to the elevator, screeching into the distance.

"Are you plannin' on gettin' killed in the next couple of months? 'Cause I aint," Roy grumbled. He walked another ten feet down the side of the pillar, getting ever closer to the property line and away from the mouth of the mine.

"No, sir. I'm gettin' a real job in the city," Anthony replied. The three other miners came over again to bolt the ceiling. The crack was growing and their steps kicked up the deadly coal dust into the suffocated air.

"Mining's a real job," Roy said, sitting on the ground and lighting a cigarette with a match. Stephen sat down beside him and sipped coffee from a thermos he hung from his belt.

"I mean a job where I can say 'good bye' to my family in the morning and not have to wonder if it's the last time I'll ever say it."

"That's when faith comes in handy," Stephen said, looking up at the other man, silhouetted in the glow of the spotlights. "Do you go to church, Ant'ny?"

"No, I never did," Anthony said, shaking his head. He sat down on Stephen's right.

"I go to the Saint Paul Catholic Church in town. If you're not busy next Sunday, stop in." Stephen stood up as three more carts rolled toward them. "It helps."

Roy dropped his cigarette and stamped out the flames when it ignited the thick layer of coal dust on the floor. He picked up the drill and started another hole. Stephen unbuckled the strap on his hardhat and continued to reposition it on his blonde head.

I have hated them that regard lying vanities: but I trust in the Lord.

Anthony handed the third charge to Roy. Lucky Number Three.

"Look," Stephen said. The other two followed his line of sight ten feet up to a vein of translucent quartz embedded in the surrounding coal and shale. It seemed to shine with an inner glow, soft and pale in contrast with the harsh fluorescent spotlights that lit the mine and cast deformed shadows. "It's a shame we'll have to blow it up," Stephen continued.

"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Roy grunted, loading the charge into the hole in the wall. The three miners ran around the corner just as the explosion screamed through the cavern. The combined force of the exploding dynamite and coal dust shattered several of the surrounding pillars. Anthony felt the inferno of coal dust on his back and saw Stephen's hardhat fly past his head with the flaming specks of dust. The massive blast shook loose huge slabs of stone that pinned Anthony down and buried him as the mountain sank to its knees. He didn't see the flaming dust envelope him and didn't hear the three hundred other men run for their lives.

Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.

Anthony was under a heavy pile of rubble. Shards of limestone and shale cut into his arms and legs. He slowly wormed his way out of the debris and blinked to get the dust out of his eyes. He coughed to force out the black coal dust that flooded his lungs.

He crawled along a cramped, unstable passageway to a small, round shape. It was Stephen, wrapped around a large boulder-sized lump of coal and limestone. His head was bleeding. His hardhat was probably buried close by.

Another shape dragged itself along the floor toward them, swearing and coughing across the little cave. It was Roy, dragging his bleeding leg.

"Are you all right, Roy?" Anthony sputtered while pressing on a gash in his leg. Roy propped himself up next to Stephen. "Are you okay?"

"Hell no, boy!" Roy yelled. He put his air mask to his mouth and nose, took a deep breath, and then passed it to Anthony. "A shovel tore up my leg real bad." The old miner tried to rouse Stephen, who was stroking his gold cross necklace and staring blankly at a nearby pile of rock. Roy held open Stephen's mouth and Anthony held the oxygen mask to his face. Stephen coughed and thrashed, wheezing and gasping.

"I can't see," Stephen rasped, still trying desperately to breathe. He unsuccessfully tried to sit up and then vomited off and on for the next half hour or so.

"He's got a bad concussion," Anthony told Roy, who was still trying to get his flashlight to work. "We can't let him fall asleep." The old man nodded and bit his lip as he tied his jacket sleeve around his wounded leg.

For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed.

For hours or days, they sat in silence. After hours of sharing, the air pack ran out of oxygen. There was no way to know how much time had slipped away like the two-inch carpet of dust and ashes in their cell. At regular intervals, Anthony and Roy exchanged the responsibility of keeping Stephen awake.

Stephen stared into the unchanging blackness and began reciting the first verse of Psalm 31: "'In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.'"

"We're not getting out, Ant'ny," Roy grunted. He seemed larger than usual, a giant in a mouse hole. "We're too far down and it's been too long. We're not getting out." The great man, easily a head taller than Anthony, twice as wide, and three times as strong, was silent, then. For once, he could find nothing to say.

Stephen continued reciting the Psalm: "'Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for a house of defense to save me.'"

Anthony stared at the ceiling of their rough cell, and thought of his home in the poor suburbs of Pittsburgh, only thirty miles away. The house that he would never come home to. The house where his son would try to catch lightning bugs. He wouldn't be there to see him actually catch one, or to see him walk on his own.

Roy shook Anthony awake to assume his shift with Stephen, who still wouldn't speak, except when quoting the Bible. He started reciting the verse from where he left off. The words were muffled by the thick air and still reverberated off the jagged walls.

"'For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me.'"

The air was thick with coal dust and carbon dioxide. Anthony couldn't keep himself awake, and he tried to fight off the unconsciousness and death that beckoned to him. He was tired from the very act of breathing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stephen slump into a slab of shale. A piece of quartz fell from the low roof onto his blood-caked blonde hair. Its inner light illuminated the crown of the martyr who had been stoned to death.

Anthony was jerked awake. He looked at Stephen on his right and Roy, either asleep or unconscious, on his left. Anthony tried to wake Stephen, but he was limp and unresponsive. "What have I done?" Anthony thought. That would be their grave, 1200 feet beneath Reeve's Hill, PA.

Not long afterward, Anthony inhaled nothing but coal dust. Vivid thoughts wandered in the dark cavern of his mind. They might have been memories, might have been premonitions, might have been hallucinations. He saw his wife and son dressed in black and crying. He heard Stephen mumble: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my God.

The startlingly bright light woke Anthony like a splash of ice water. Silhouettes moved about, talking about two survivors and strapping harnesses around the three miners.

"I'll see you at church," Anthony whispered to Stephen. "I'll be there for the funeral."

The silhouettes lifted them up a long tunnel braced by thick boards of plywood. Anthony avoided looking at the blinding light and instead looked at Roy, groaning and coughing on his left, and Stephen's body on his right. Then he looked down and saw a round stone slide shut over the mouth of their cell to hide the empty tomb.

THE END

(Psalm 31:1-10 and Acts 7:60)