Rockton Hills #2

She stood, as she had stood for six days, looking, praying, and waiting. The breeze cut through the sweaters, coats, and rain gear draped on her thin body. The steady drizzle in the chilly autumn air penetrated to the marrow of her bones. Pamela Moline would not give up. Looking around her, she saw only one other woman braving the elements. Her apprehension had barely allowed her to take note of her surroundings since the beginning of it. She shook her head as if waking from a dream, but the air still had a dream-like quality with the foggy mist of the early morning covering the valley and the wooded hillside. The gnarled trees gave no reality to the scene; their leaflessness only adding to the barrenness. As she came to the realization that the crowd was no longer milling about, with its confusion and its wailing and its steady roar, she went over the events of the past six days in her mind.

Her husband, Hugh, had left on that Sunday at about eleven o’clock to make his midnight shift. Hugh was a mechanic in the 2 North section of the Rockton Hills #2 Mine. Pamela got the call at about nine o’clock the next morning while she was giving her two-year-old, Stan, his bath. The words came back to her. “Mrs. Moline, there has been an accident.” A veil of terror had covered her mind; a clouded angst overwhelming her until six days later when she saw an old woman standing about twenty yards away, weeping. She had been unable to make any response to the caller, but just listened as the unknown voice continued. “Your husband is trapped, but we are hoping for the best. We hope to have the men out within a few hours.” There seemed to be nothing left for the caller or Pamela to say. She hung up the phone. She dried and dressed Stan and took him and Sally next door to Mrs. Johnson. “Mrs. Johnson, there has been an accident. I need to go to the mine. Can I borrow your car?” Everything seemed short and simple, as well as disconnected and hazy, as she recollected events in her mind. She had taken Mrs. Johnson’s old Chevy and driven to the mine. A sizeable crowd had already gathered. Women were crying and children were crying. The shift foreman, in his black mine clothes, circulated among the crowd, his blackened face showing white streaks from the corners of his eyes. He had spoken softly. “Mrs. Moline, there are twenty men in there. All we can do is wait and pray.”

“He was right,” Pamela Moline thought, “and that is all I have been able to do these last six days. Oh God!” Sometime after the shift foreman left her, Pamela remembered hearing his voice again. He was talking to the superintendent. “Damn engineers!” was all she heard of the conversation.

She stood or sat on the benches outside the pit mouth the rest of that first day, picking up bits of conversation about what had happened. It seemed that the continuous miner had punched through into an abandoned mine, which had been filled with what was probably millions of gallons of water. The first few days, nobody would confess that there seemed to be no hope, unless it was hope for a miracle, but Pamela could see the despair in the eyes of those around her.

Pamela did go home that first night. She was a mother. Paul Morgan, who had been scheduled to work the day shift, was able to drive the family’s pickup home for her, and she drove the Chevy back to Mrs. Johnson. Her mother’s sister had arrived to help with the children. She slept a short, fitful, nightmare-filled sleep, and was at the mine by daylight every morning from then until Saturday.

She dimly perceived that, during the week, hope diminished in those around her. And now it was Saturday and there was only one other woman braving the elements to greet her man’s body. The...