D.C. Troicuk

Overburden

God fashioned the first man out of the dust of Eden. But there exists a breed of man made of a dust blacker than this, the dust of eons ago, though it was not dust then, but a murky oblivion that time compressed into solid night. The men who descend daily to those sunken remains of primeval forest feel it still. The overburden that transformed it, transforms them. This is a breed not made by God in a single day, but formed by a man’s own overburden — the unceasing oppression of tons of earth and ocean water upon the ceiling of his heart. He is a man such as this who stands staring down into the small fire burning in his kitchen stove.

Roddie MacSween sifted through these ideas, his thoughts not phrased as eloquently as he believed the poetic images deserved. He was a smart man, quick with concrete information, awkward when it came to concepts and emotions. A man of few and simple words, he could rarely do justice to the complex impressions that swept over him at times like this, when the constant accusing voice inside him stilled and the feelings were all he had.

He held his cold morning hands, blue-veined and arthritic, to the open port, rubbing them one over the other. Below, the bed of kindling ignited a shovelful of coal at its dusty perimeter, sending up a sulfurous cloud. In minutes, energy subdued for three hundred million years would be released as heat to this chilly September day.

Roddie MacSween — Doc, they called him — had not entered this world as black dust any more than Adam had entered as clay. But black dust he became. Day in, day out, for thirty-two years he had ingested the dust for lunch with Kam sandwiches and Maple Leaf cookies. He drank it with cold, over-sweetened tea from the mickey bottle that fit with a flat-curved neatness into his back pocket. He inhaled it with every breath until, like the prehistoric seam he worked, he slowly petrified — became a creature of the mine, his lungs crusted, his heart made hard and dark with a hidden anger that released, when it did, in a slow, hot burn. The dust ground into his pores, branding ownership with blue scars on his hands, at his temple, in places people never saw. Once, he had driven a pickaxe through his left foot and there, he supposed, the dust had even penetrated his ruptured cells because afterwards he noticed that, even to the naked eye, his own blood sample looked darker than the others in the rack lined up for testing.

And yet, after the years he had considered utter misery, years that had gone by like eons, he missed the routine of the mine. Some days he believed he would trade his remaining days on earth for one last ride to that hell — down the rake with his buddies, forty minutes of vulgar camaraderie over a hand of tarabish, forty minutes stolen out of the shift by travel time to the wall face where the seam was being worked. That daily ride, the human contact of it, had been even more significant when, as Deputy Mine Examiner, his duties sent him into virtual isolation to pace off the miles of ordered underground roadway he inspected for safety hazards and air quality.

He knew the caverns of the north wall complex as well as the upstairs hall of his own house. Yet, with every monotonous shift, his eyes craved substance, searched the darkness ahead for some reference point and, never quite convinced that the next intersection was not a turn into utter oblivion, his mind charted his progress on a mental map. Before passing through each wooden air trap, he chalked his initials and the date on the man-door. This procedure, as official as a notary’s seal in the event of an accident, was for Doc a validation of his own existence.

He stepped through, needing a conscious reminder that the barrier had been erected not to conceal some subterranean black hole, but to redirect maximum ventilation to the areas where men were currently working.

The lamp on his hard hat showed him the way, but his way was always and only a tangible void, a black tunnel at the end of the light.

War had focused his vague, juvenile image of himself as a man to one involved in some healing occupation: male nurse, physiotherapist, something that would sterilize the gangrenous souvenirs his mind had picked up in the mud and trenches. Fresh back from Europe, recovered from a foolish barracks accident but unscathed by Hitler’s army, he had openly bragged about his three-year stint as a medic, but never spoke of the risks — to the lives of those he had saved, to his own future career — the risks of performing procedures he was not qualified to tackle.

The same young women who had ignored him in youth listened, rapt and silent, as he embellished accounts of gruesome operations he had witnessed under impossible conditions, and of the miraculous recoveries that followed. He had never thought past a hospital job before, but the new attention made him cocky. Soon he was telling them he had set his sights on the top of that pyramid of medical professions, believing it himself.

For four long years Doc had kept a running tally in his head of the army pay he sent home for safekeeping and an image of a brand new shiny blue Chevrolet with himself behind the wheel. But he’d had to pry the bank book out of his mother’s hands. She was confused. Wasn’t this money the government provided his parents, in consideration of the son they had contributed to the war effort?

What was left would barely cover his first year’s tuition. Angry and deflated at first, Doc resurrected faith. It was a start. And the army would help him out.

His old man had other plans. He would get his son on at the pit. Roddie would work with him, shoulder to shoulder. Make him proud.

Doc was lucky to get on at Caledonia. Lucky to get work at all, they all told him. He knew it himself. So each day, trying to be grateful for his meagre pay until the fall term at Dalhousie, he donned the same filthy pit clothes he had worn the day before and descended the deep. And if the dream of becoming a doctor was like heaven to him, the heat radiating up into the mine from the molten core of the earth was a constant reminder of the hell he must endure in order to get there.

Before long it felt irreverent, taking his lofty dream down there with him where no living thing could take root. Instead, he sent it up on the wash-house hook with his day clothes and there it hung, untended, as airy and frivolous as a dandelion gone to seed awaiting the merest breath of wind.

His retirement routine had evolved to this: tend the garden, read the paper, drive Theresa to the mall. While she scouted for the ultimate bargain, Doc methodically paced off the enclosure of the mall, the same room-and-pillar formation he knew from the mine, one long central corridor with parallel side tunnels shooting off in either direction. Mentally he chalked the perpendicular passageways, the click of his cane on the terrazzo floor drawing him into the past, stirring up the questions of a young man, now old, whose dreams had been thwarted.

Mickey Porter elbowed him in the ribs. “If life’s a bowl a’ cherries, b’y, then what’m I do in the pit?”

A shiver shocked Doc’s body as he swung around, dodging hands that groped for him from out of some unearthly darkness. The blue-black bodies had raced through his sleep again last night. These were not night-dwellers, but cried out from his stream of consciousness at every turn. He would like to have believed they were nameless, faceless spectres, but he knew. He knew who they were, knew them by name, knew their families. He saw them in the eyes of their fathers, their brothers, their sons. He rarely met those eyes anymore. More than he feared his own death he dreaded the stiletto death wish in their warm hellos, the slash of violent reproach in passing nods of greeting.

Some, like Mickey, he knew too well to avoid. They stopped him in the mall to shoot the breeze or tell a joke and, without missing a beat, Doc grinned and lapsed into the local vernacular.

“How she goin, b’y? On the back shift again?”

“Yeah, and can’t get a wink of decent sleep,” Mickey growled cheerfully. “And you, you got’er made, you old bastard.”

Doc laughed shortly, not fully meeting Mickey’s eyes, but glancing there, where the affable ignorance of the role Doc had played on that fateful night reproached him more severely than if the man had placed his large hands about his throat and squeezed until relief came in the form of that other blackness.

Yes, they thought he had it made, retired for seven years already, and only fifty-eight. He had used an old war injury as an excuse to accept a pre-retirement package, not entirely untrue. The doctor had warned him for a long time that his bad knee couldn’t take the punishment. In the last couple of years the Officia1’s cane he used to sound the stone roof provided an additional support on his rounds of the north wall, a necessary insurance against those times when the knee gave without warning.

Mickey’s grin called him back to the reality of the mall. “Hey, b’y, you with me or against me?”

“I was just thinking —”

“I tried that once. Hurt like hell.” He chuckled. Doc was silent, watching the people pass. “Seven years today, Doc.”

Mickey let the words slip out of him, natural as breathing, a soft echo of the phrase that had been passing through Doc’s mind all morning. He did not need a calendar to place the date. In his mind, a year was a circle starting and ending at this point. The cycle of his life revolved in sync with it.

“He woulda been thirty-four next month, my boy.”

Doc nodded. “I’m sorry, Mickey. Maybe I — if I could’ve done it different —”

A tide whose period was twelve months, one that had come seven times now, surged against his throat, threatening to swallow him up and drown him.

Mickey gave him a reassuring slap on his back. “Nobody coulda done nothin, Doc. But thanks.”

Doc dampened a flare of anger at Mickey’s ignorant forgiveness. “It was my wall,” he said.

Mickey shrugged uncomfortably. “How were you supposed to know?”

“It was my job to know,” Doc snapped. “It was my job to —”

The temperature was rising, the mall closing in. Above him a skylight admitted full, bright sun, but around the perimeter of his vision the light was failing. Figures who, a moment ago, were strolling the mall now seemed to be coming at him from all directions, bursting into the closing lens of consciousness, all with accusing faces, with eyes that knew what Mickey Porter did not.

He made for a nearby bench protected from the glorious sunlight by a net of ficus branches. Embarrassed by his weakness, he fiddled with his cane. Through the roar in his ears he could clearly distinguish the unyielding tap of its copper tip sounding the terrazzo.

The Deputy’s cane, his own, rapped the cement floor of the wash-house. Doc tripped up a ginger tabby, one of several cats that came every night looking for scraps. He flung it aside with his boot.

The manager and clerk were waiting grim-faced, warned by the staccato click. When Doc had no time for the strays, something had to be up.

Doc set down the Clanney — the lamp whose flame was an omen he read like a mystic reading an oracle. He knew what Frank thought, that it was about as accurate as a crystal ball. He felt the burn of ridicule along his back as he scratched his report into the book with a dull pencil, anticipating his defence, reviewing the facts in his mind.

In the presence of methane gas, a slender yellow sheath encompasses the normal blue naphtha flame inside the Clanney’s glass case. The height of the sheath indicates the percentage of gas. But it is not merely the presence of gas that creates the danger. It is the ratio of methane to oxygen that is critical. There must be sufficient oxygen to feed the explosion, enough gas to fuel it. When seven to fifteen per cent of the air is composed of methane, an explosion that could be measured on the Richter scale might be initiated by something as incidental as the spark of metal on metal. A concentration as low as two per cent signalled conditions dangerous enough to evacuate the mine.

Today, almost half an inch of yellow surged up from the burning blue bud. No, the measurement wasn’t scientific, not like the new electronic sensor they were coming out with. But Doc wasn’t sure he could trust a gadget that acted without an innate regard for human life.

“You gotta shut ’er down, Frank,” he said with resolve as he turned around.

Frank nudged Dannie, the clerk. “Get me that report, will you?”

Dannie sidled away, reluctantly accepting the bogus dismissal.

“I can’t do that, Doc, and you know it.”

“One and three-quarters, Frank,” he stated solemnly, referring to the percentage of the lethal gas. It was as close to the limit as he had ever seen. It scared the hell out of him.

Unmoved, Frank walked over, nudged the report book toward Doc. “Kenny’ll open a few traps, clear it out.” Doc tapped the pencil; staring him down.

“We lost two days’ production last week from that pan-line breakdown,” Frank said. “You rather be responsible for four hundred men on the welfare when the company shuts ’er down for good? ’Cause that’s what they’re gonna do if we don’t keep production up.”

They heard a file drawer close and Dannie shuffling restlessly about in the inner office.

“Let’s keep that just between you and me, for now.” Frank nodded conspiratorially, with an affected look of concern for the common good.

Doc could second-guess Frank, but he didn’t know for sure. Of four mines, this was the last left in this town. The others had closed not for lack of coal but when the proportion of work hours to travel time became unprofitable, when two hours or more were lost in transporting each shift of men from the surface to the workable coal face. But who knew what other criteria management used, what production quotas they required?

Doc pictured the line of faces that had passed down the rake with him that morning: Sam, supporting both his mother and his mother-in-law; Reggie with nine kids under the age of eleven; John R. whose house burned to the ground last winter, and no insurance; every one of them with his own tale of woe. He reached for the pencil and swore to God this would be the last time he would give in to that bastard. Somehow, next time he would dig deeper, find that place in his heart where courage and youthful dreams were stored together.

“So, are we shuttin down or what?” Dannie wanted to know.

“Nah!” Frank guffawed. Taking the pencil from Doc’s hand, he pressed the lead firmly into a conspicuous dot, embedding the lie forever into the page. “Doc put the decimal point in the wrong place, is all.”

Desperation saturated every pore as Doc scrubbed the coal dust off his body that day. More worn and raw than he’d been in years, he emerged from the wash-house a wounded animal and returned home to bleed anger into the family. Theresa, made over-sensitive by a separate issue with her sister, retaliated with such a vengeance that Doc slunk away ashamed, knowing she should have been the balm that soothed him, knowing it was his own fault that she had never been that to him.

Later, he found her in bed, crying. She hadn’t done that since she went through the change. He turned to her, a darker form against a dark pillow, wanting to vent his rage, not at her, but with her. But how could he say the things he wanted to without making her party to the conspiracy?

A rare torrent of emotion raged through him, a flash flood that filled him to bursting. He should have stood up for what he believed. He should have told them. He should have at least been able to tell her. He remembered a strong young man who had helped save the civilized world, who, if he had not always acted with courage, had returned from the war charged with it. That was what he was feeling. Recognition of it spurred him to action. He cursed the hour that prevented it, and settled for resolution.

By God, he would do it. Tomorrow. Walk into the office, right up to Frank’s ugly face and tell him he had endangered the lives of his buddies for the last time. He would take this action, be a buddy to all of them.

Buddy. On the surface you might never give the man the time of day. Underground, he was your best pal. Your lifeline. Your saviour if the situation called for it. And you were his. Linked by danger and experience, you shared the darkest places imaginable, as if the tunnels you burrowed opened parallel passageways into your souls, as if in the sharing of your daily tasks you touched together something unspeakable, an ultimate truth that no outsider could ever hope to comprehend.

He thought of Theresa lying beside him, cold and tense, and he smiled in the midnight gloom. She was his buddy too, his surface buddy.

The burden on his heart eased. He reached for Theresa’s hand lying outside the blankets. He held on, tightly, expressing all the will of his heart in his touch. Her fingers warmed and relaxed and when she turned to come into his arms, he knew the apology was complete.

Tomorrow, then.

Doc was wide awake at the blare of the whistle, his chest pounding. He willed the long note to stop. Please, God, let it be the shift whistle or the double blow to announce that the shift would not work. But on and on it went, an unbearable wail riding the silent night, alerting the town to emergency.

He pulled on a pair of pants over his pajama bottoms and was in the pit yard before he realized he was still wearing his corduroy slippers. He burst into the chaos of the crowded wash-house, grabbed the man nearest the door.

“Where?” The single word was all he could get out.

The man shrugged him off, not hearing over the din.

He asked again, loudly: “Charlie! Where is it?”

“Four north.” The informant eyed him cautiously. “Your wall, ain’t it, Doc?”

He nodded weakly.

“Musta built up pretty quick,” Charlie said, letting him off the hook even then.

Again, the faint movement of his head, another acknowledgement of the conspiracy to which he was now, irrevocably, a full partner.

Other miners, roused like Doc from their beds, waited alongside frantic families. They exchanged glances with Doc, with each other. A resolute shake of the head needed no explanation. Coulda been my shift.

It was hours before anything happened. The first draegermen to come up were assailed by a dozen men in the same breath. “How many?”

They were grim. “Don’t know,” said one. “Fifteen come up. The ambulance will take the worst, but we could use a hand if anybody knows first aid.”

The word spread back through the milling throng until it reached Doc’s ears.

Bent over an injured man, his medic experience was fresh as all those yesterdays ago. But there was an element missing, something he had once had in the grasp of his heart. He could work no miracles here, only wait helplessly with the others and, from time to time, hold a small paper cup of water to a dying man’s lips.

“Come on, buddy, take a drink.”

Mickey pressed a styrofoam ridge to Doc’s lips. He drank. It was lukewarm tap water, reeking of chlorine. What he needed was a good shot of black rum. He forced himself to swallow.

“I gave them water like that. Just like that. In little paper cups.”

Doc talked down the mall, and Mickey looked in that direction. “Who?” he asked, mystified.

“Your boy. The others.”

“Jesus, Doc. You still beatin yourself over the head with that? It was seven years ago, b’y. Let it go.”

Doc shook his head. “I killed them all, Mickey,” he said hoarsely. “The five of them.”

He took another swallow and looked up into Mickey’s silent, looming presence.

“Get a grip, b’y. Nobody’s to blame.”

Doc bent his head, slowly shook it, unabsolved. Now, as during the hours of vigil seven years before, he tried to imagine, to put himself underground when it happened. The explosion deep below the surface was not beyond his imagination. Surely it must compare to what happened inside him that night when he had imploded, when he had become what time made of some ancient forest on this very site eons ago, a shallow blackened thread that once was a man named Roddie MacSween.