A Place Called Freedom (1995)

8

THE FIREDAMP SPREAD WITH TERRIFYING SPEED.

At first the blue tinge had been visible only when the candle was at roof level, but a few minutes later it appeared a foot below the roof, and Mack had to stop testing for fear of setting fire to it before the pit was evacuated.

He was breathing in short, panicky gasps. He tried to be calm and think clearly.

Normally the gas seeped out gradually, but this was different. Something unusual must have happened. Most likely, firedamp had accumulated in a sealed-off area of exhausted workings, then an old wall had cracked and was rapidly leaking the dreaded gas into the occupied tunnels.

And every man, woman and child here carried a lighted candle.

A small trace would burn safely; a moderate amount would flash, scorching anyone in the vicinity; and a large quantity would explode, killing everyone and destroying the tunnels.

He took a deep breath. His first priority was to get everyone out of the pit as fast as possible. He rang the handbell vigorously while he counted to twelve. By the time he stopped, miners and bearers were hurrying along the tunnel toward the shaft, mothers urging their children to go faster.

While everyone else fled the pit, his two bearers stayed—his sister, Esther, calm and efficient, and his cousin Annie, who was strong and quick but also impulsive and clumsy. Using their coal shovels the two women began frantically to dig a shallow trench, the length and breadth of Mack, in the floor of the tunnel. Meanwhile Mack snatched an oilcloth bundle hanging from the roof of his room and ran for the mouth of the tunnel.

After his parents died there had been some muttering, among the men, about whether Mack was old enough to take over his father’s role of fireman. Apart from the responsibility of the job, the fireman was regarded as a leader in the community. In truth Mack himself had shared their doubts. But no one else wanted the job—it was unpaid and dangerous. And when he dealt efficiently with the first crisis the muttering stopped. Now he was proud that older men trusted him, but his pride also forced him to appear calm and confident even when he was afraid.

He reached the mouth of the tunnel. The last stragglers were heading up the stairs. Now Mack had to get rid of the gas. Burning was the only way to do this. He had to set fire to it.

It was evilly bad luck that this should happen today. It was his birthday: he was leaving. Now he wished he had thrown caution to the winds and left the glen on Sunday night. He had told himself that a wait of a day or two alight make the Jamissons think he was going to stay, and lull them into a false sense of security. He felt sick at heart that in his final hours as a coal miner he had to risk his life to save the pit he was about to quit forever.

If the firedamp were not burned off, the pit would close. And a pit closure in a mining village was like a failed harvest in a farming community: people starved. Mack would never forget the last time the pit closed, four winters ago. During the harrowing weeks that followed, the youngest and oldest villagers had died—including both his parents. The day after his mother died, Mack had dug up a nest of hibernating rabbits, and had broken their necks while they were still groggy; and the meat had saved him and Esther.

He stepped out onto the deck and tore the waterproof wrappings off his bundle. Inside was a big torch made of dry sticks and rags, a ball of string, and a large version of the hemispheric candle-holder the miners used, fixed to a flat wooden base so that it could not fall over. Mack stuck the torch firmly in the holder, tied the string to the base, and lit the torch with his candle. It blazed up immediately. Here it would burn safely, for the lighter-than-air gas could not gather at the bottom of the shaft. But his next task was to get the burning torch into the tunnel.

He took another moment to lower himself into the drainage pool at the bottom of the shaft, soaking his clothes and hair in the icy water to give him a little extra protection from burns. Then he hurried back along the tunnel unwinding the ball of string, at the same time scrutinizing the floor, removing large stones and other objects that might obstruct the movement of the blazing torch as it was drawn into the tunnel.

When he reached Esther and Annie, he saw by the light of the one candle on the floor that all was ready. The trench was dug. Esther was dipping a blanket into the drainage ditch, and now she quickly wrapped it around Mack. Shivering, he lay down in the trench, still holding the end of the string. Annie knelt beside him and, somewhat to his surprise, kissed him full on the lips. Then she covered the trench with a heavy board, closing him in.

There was a sloshing sound as they poured more water on the board, in a further attempt to protect him from the flames he was about to ignite. Then one of them tapped three times, the sign that they were leaving.

He counted to one hundred, to give them time to get out of the tunnel.

Then, with his heart full of dread, he started to pull on the string, drawing the blazing torch into the mine, toward where he lay, in a tunnel half full of explosive gas.

Jay carried Lizzie to the top of the stairs and set her down on the icy mud at the pithead.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“I’m so glad to be above ground again,” she said gratefully. “I can’t thank you enough for carrying me. You must be exhausted.”

“You weigh a good deal less than a corf full of coal,” he said with a smile.

He talked as if her weight were nothing, but he looked a little unsteady on his legs as they walked away from the shaft. However, he had never faltered on the way up.

Daybreak was still hours away, and it had started to snow, not in gently drifting flakes but in driving icy pellets that blew into Lizzie’s eyes. As the last of the miners and bearers came out of the shaft, Lizzie noticed the young woman whose child had been christened on Sunday—Jen, her name was. Although her child was only a week or so old, the poor woman was carrying a full corf. Surely she should have taken a rest after giving birth? She emptied the basket on the dump and handed the tallyman a wooden marker: Lizzie guessed the markers were used to calculate the wages at the end of the week. Perhaps Jen was too much in need of money to have time off.

Lizzie continued to watch because Jen looked distressed. With her candle raised above her head she darted among the crowd of seventy or eighty mine workers, peering through the falling snow, calling: “Wullie! Wullie!” It seemed she was searching for a child. She found her husband and had a rapid, frightened conversation with him. Then she screamed “No!” She ran to the pithead and started back down the stairs.

The husband went to the edge of the shaft then came back and looked around the crowd again, visibly distressed and bewildered. Lizzie said to him: “What’s the matter?”

He replied in a shaky voice. “We can’t find our laddie, and she thinks he’s still down the pit.”

“Oh, no!” Lizzie looked over the edge. She could see some kind of torch blazing at the bottom of the shaft. But as she looked it moved and disappeared into the tunnel.

Mack had done this on three previous occasions, but this time it was much more frightening. Formerly the concentration of firedamp had been much lower, a slow seep rather than a sudden buildup. His father had dealt with major gas leaks, of course—and his father’s body, as he washed himself in front of the fire on Saturday nights, had been covered with the marks of old burns.

Mack shivered in his blanket sodden with icy water. As he steadily wound in the string, pulling the blazing torch closer to himself and to the gas, he tried to calm his fear by thinking about Annie. They had grown up together and had always been fond of one another. Annie had a wild soul and a muscular body. She had never kissed him in public before, but she had often done it secretly. They had explored one another’s bodies and taught each other how to give pleasure. They had tried all sorts of things together, only stopping short of what Annie called “making bairns.” And they had almost done that.…

It was no use: he still felt terrified. To calm himself he tried to think in a detached way about how the gas moved and gathered. His trench was at a low point in the tunnel, so the concentration here should be less; but there was no accurate way of estimating it until it ignited. He was afraid of pain, and he knew that burns were torment. He was not really afraid to die. He did not think about religion much but he believed God must be merciful. However, he did not want to die now: he had done nothing, seen nothing, been nowhere. He had spent all his life so far as a slave, If I survive this night, he vowed, I will leave the glen today. I’ll kiss Annie, and say good-bye to Esther, and defy the Jamissons, and walk away from here, so help me God.

The amount of string that had gathered in his hands told him the torch was now about halfway to him. It could light the firedamp at any moment. However, it might not catch fire at all: sometimes, his father had told him, the gas seemed to vanish, no one knew where.

He felt a slight resistance to his pull and knew that the torch was rubbing against the wall where the tunnel curved. If he looked out he would be able to see it. Surely the gas must blow now, he thought.

Then he heard a voice.

He was so shocked that at first he thought he was having a supernatural experience, an encounter with a ghost or a demon.

Then he realized that it was neither: he was hearing the voice of a terrified small child, crying and saying: “Where is everyone?”

Mack’s heart stopped.

He knew instantly what had happened. As a small boy working in the mine he had often fallen asleep during his fifteen-hour day. This child had done the same, and had slept through the alarm. Then it had woken up, found the pit deserted, and panicked.

It took Mack only a split second to realize what he had to do.

He pushed aside the board and sprang out of his trench. The scene was illuminated by the burning torch and he could see the boy coming out of a side tunnel, rubbing his eyes and wailing. It was Wullie, the son of Mack’s cousin Jen. “Uncle Mack!” he said joyfully.

Mack ran for the boy, unwrapping the sodden blanket from around him as he went. There was no room for two in the shallow trench: they would have to try to reach the shaft before the gas blew. Mack wrapped the boy in the wet blanket, saying: “There’s firedamp, Wullie, we’ve got to get out!” He picked him up, tucked him under one arm, and ran on.

As he approached the burning torch he willed it not to ignite the gas, and heard himself shouting: “Not yet! Not yet!” Then they were past it.

The boy was light, but it was hard to run stooping, and the floor underfoot made it more difficult: muddy in places, thick with dust in others, and uneven everywhere, with outcroppings of rock to trip the hasty. Mack charged ahead regardless, stumbling sometimes but managing to keep his feet, listening for the bang that might be the last sound he ever heard.

As he rounded the curve in the tunnel, the light from the torch dimmed to nothing. He ran on into the darkness, but within seconds he crashed into the wall and fell headlong, dropping Wullie. He cursed and scrambled to his feet.

The boy began to cry. Mack located him by sound and picked him up again. He was forced to go on more slowly, feeling the tunnel wall with his free hand, cursing the dark. Then, mercifully, a candle flame appeared ahead, at the entrance to the tunnel, and Mack heard Jen’s voice calling: “Wullie! Wullie!”

“I’ve got him here, Jen!” Mack shouted, breaking into a run. “Get yourself up the stair!”

She ignored his instruction and came toward him.

He was only a few yards from the end of the tunnel and safety.

“Go back!” he yelled, but she kept coming.

He crashed into her and swept her up in his free arm.

Then the gas blew.

For a split second there was an ear-piercing hiss, then there was a huge, deafening thump that shook the earth. A force that felt like a massive fist struck Mack’s back and he was lifted off his feet, losing his grip on Wullie and Jen. He flew through the air. He felt a wave of scorching heat, and he was sure he was going to die; then he splashed headfirst into icy water, and realized he had been thrown into the drainage pool at the bottom of the mine shaft.

And he was still alive.

He broke the surface and dashed water from his eyes.

The wooden decking and staircase were burning in places, and the flames illuminated the scene fitfully. Mack located Jen, splashing about and choking. He grabbed her and heaved her out of the water.

Choking, she screamed: “Where’s Wullie?”

He might have been knocked unconscious, Mack thought. He pushed himself from one side of the small pool to the other, bumping into the bucket chain, which had ceased to operate. At last he found a floating object that turned out to be Wullie. He shoved the boy onto the deck beside his mother and clambered out himself.

Wullie sat up and spewed water. “Thank God,” Jen sobbed. “He’s alive.”

Mack looked into the tunnel. Stray wisps of gas burned sporadically like fiery spirits. “Away up the stairs with us,” he said. “There might be a secondary blast.” He pulled Jen and Wullie to their feet and pushed them up ahead of him. Jen lifted Wullie and slung him over her shoulder: his weight was nothing to a woman who could carry a full corf of coal up these stairs twenty times in a fifteen-hour shift.

Mack hesitated, looking at the small fires burning at the foot of the stairs. If the entire staircase burned, the pit might be out of commission for weeks while it was rebuilt. He took a few extra seconds to splash water from the pool over the flames and put them out. Then he followed Jen up.

When he reached the top he felt exhausted, bruised and dizzy. He was immediately surrounded by a crowd who shook his hand, slapped his back and congratulated him. The crowd parted for Jay Jamisson and his companion, whom Mack had recognized to be Lizzie Hallim dressed as a man. “Well done, McAsh,” said Jay. “My family appreciates your courage.”

You smug bastard, Mack thought.

Lizzie said: “Is there really no other way to deal with firedamp?”

“No,” said Jay.

“Of course there is,” Mack gasped.

“Really?” Lizzie said. “What?”

Mack caught his breath. “You sink ventilation shafts, which let the gas escape before ever it can accumulate.” He took another deep breath. “The Jamissons have been told time and time again.”

There was a murmur of agreement from the miners standing around.

Lizzie turned to Jay. “Then why don’t you do it?”

“You don’t understand business—why should you?” Jay said. “No man of business can pay for an expensive procedure when a cheaper one will achieve the same result. His rivals would undercut his price. It’s political economy.”

“Give it a fancy name if you like,” Mack panted. “Ordinary folk call it wicked greed.”

One or two of the miners shouted: “Aye! That’s right!”

“Now, McAsh,” Jay remonstrated. “Don’t spoil everything by getting above your station again. You’ll get into real trouble.”

“I’m in no trouble,” Mack said. “Today is my twenty-second birthday.” He had not meant to say this, but now he could not stop himself. “I haven’t worked here the full year-and-a-day, not quite—and I’m not going to.” The crowd was suddenly quiet, and Mack was filled with an exhilarating sense of freedom. “I’m leaving, Mr. Jamisson,” he said. “I quit. Good-bye.” He turned his back on Jay and, in total silence, he walked away.