Prince Valiant Works the Black Seam

Junior squinted into darkness as he stood at the edge of the gaping hole they called a coal cave, careful not to let his feet touch the makeshift jimmy track. Men and equipment, picks and shovels, brushed aside his every attempt to get to his father. Of course, the men going in and out were just a small part of the problem. They were only digging and shoveling and making a life from the ground up.

"Hey, Prince Valiant." The voice was gruff with understanding, solid with sensitivity, and layered thick with England. "Real cracka dawn, your fathah is. Jus go straight down. There's a good lad."

Miles. Miles Croier.

Junior stepped aside. Miles' pick clock-clock-clocked as he dragged it behind him. He chucked it into the ground, leaned on the pole handle.

"Jus down that iddy biddy hole there, mate." Miles spat something black into the thick coal air.

Junior rocked on his heels, dancing at the edge of the abyss.

"Ain't gonna gittiny better, there, Princy."

Junior kicked at black soot, his fifty-cent loafers getting scuffed and covered with coal blackness. His mother had told him, when she was watching him pack his few things in the cardboard suitcase, not to get his nice things all dirtied up going to the mine again. Your father know what he need to know; you jus needs to git yo behind down ta that bus station. And he had meant to, truly, honestly, but there was time. There had to be. He had to try. Again. She was right. He was getting dirty. But what did it matter? He came from coal and, no matter where he went, no matter what happened at the college, he'd still be just coal and dust. He would always be about the coal.

"You done him a picture, Junior-boy?" Miles understood. He was irritated, but he understood.

Junior nodded, looking at the squat, black British man through still-adjusting eyes. His father said he, Miles, was secretly union, sent from outside the Company to rile up the weak minds who don't want to do a day's work for a day's pay fair and square. After Matewan, breakers be everwhere ya looks. They come in heah, with they fancy-talk, lookin like wunna us, actin like wunna us, but they ain't wunna us. They ain't starvin like the resta us. Easy enough fo em ta say go slow, start comin in at a decent hour an leavin at a decent hour, start learnin ta read fo youself, start learnin ta say no, not until I'm treated like a mans. They ain't half dead limpin round here, four five six chillen and a roof what ain't no damn good for nothing. Can't even understand him half the time. Junior's father didn't want Miles at the camp at all, but decency stilled his complaints. After all, where's a black man supposed to find work, especially if he's some foreigner, if not in a mine?

"He's in that new vein you all opened up the other day, Princy," Miles said. "Have an hour or so for they gets enough men down there an he's gone. Best git right on it."

Junior nodded, switched his helmet light on, and climbed aboard a car loading up with tools and miners. He nestled into the unforgiving steel of a nearby seat, jerked as the car moved forward, his eyes now fully adjusted to the no-light.

Now I've Learned My Ay, Bee, Sees

Willie's index finger, his good one, his only one, staggered up one of the capital ay's legs, hurried down the other, tapped the cross bar a few times.

"Ay," Junior said.

"Ay," the older man repeated, slowly, reverently. He was almost afraid to let the knowledge go. All of the book-learning was new enough to confuse him. Many of those little marks, those letters, made words when put together in certain ways, and he had learned many words. It...