Freshwater Literary Journal 2022

Mary Hickey Life’s Work That tapping sound, so faint when I first heard it, now echoes in my mind louder than the roar of the excavation equipment’s engines, or the undulating whine of the new drill the mine owners brought here yesterday. We have to get them out! was my only thought as we set the drill in place when it arrived and readied it to run through the long night ahead. A storm was predicted for later on and a light rain was already falling, but that was no reason for us to stop the search, or delay the drilling.

Every so often the drill stalls, and we have to pull it up, and then un-jam whatever has blocked its progress. During these times while the engine is throttled down, I can still hear that tapping sound emanating from the depths of the flooded mine. I hear it especially clearly while the miners’ families are here with me. Tonight they bring me hot coffee and fresh biscuits in the wee hours, and one of them also hands me an umbrella, though my work coat is rugged and weatherproof enough that I don’t need it. I thank them, they thank me, and then they hug me and one another silently beneath the storm-clouded sky, black as coal over the mountains and the mines.

The police and the many volunteers who came to help us in the beginning have drifted away one by one, saying they can no longer hear the tapping. The newspaper reports have shrunk to a couple of paragraphs on the inside pages.

Their writers say it’s been days, maybe even weeks, since any sound came from that hellish chamber where the miners were buried alive when the great wall of water breached its man-imposed boundaries and overwhelmed them.

But I stay on, and keep digging, drilling and hoping. I can stay as long as I want, because I’m the foreman and it’s my job to rescue my men if I can. The mine’s owners tried to stop me by reassigning the people working with me, but the howls of protest from the families, the town, and the press were probably heard all the way to Charleston, the home of their home office. So I’m still here, with equipment and a crew.

The decision to send those miners down that deep shaft was made by men above me in the chain of command, but their fate is partly my responsibility. I suspected the shaft was unstable and that a flood was a real possibility, but I didn’t protest or object to the orders from on high. In similar fashion, none of the miners questioned my order that they descend into that dark hole which they had good reason to fear could become their final resting place.

I will never abandon them, and their families know that. I can rightly be accused of complicity with those who hold the keys of money and power, but it will never be said that I left those men down there to die.

I stay because I still hear that tapping. The mine’s owners no longer try to stop me or send me home, because they know I always will.

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