Mother Lode (8 page)

She walked down the hill, as Walter walked
up. An hour later, she still hadn’t found him. Catherine was at
sixes and sevens. She started back up the hill, by a different
route, and rounded back to the house to see if he had come home. It
was quiet, so she started off again, this time up the hill. A half
hour later, Walter called to her.

“The search is over, ma’am. I found
him.”

“Where?”

“Up in the copse, asleep in the grass.”

But Jorie was crying, rubbing his arms.

“What’s wrong, Darling?”

He looked at Walter and said nothing.

“Tell me.”

It wasn’t until she was getting him ready
for bed that Jorie relayed how Walter had tied him to a tree, and
left him there.

“Don’t let him know I told you, Mummy. He
said if I did, next time he’d shove me down the privy hole.”

“Oh, good lord.”

She held him to her for a few moments,
assuring him no such thing would happen.

When she told Thomas later that evening, he
was able to get a confession from his older son. Walter was whipped
soundly, but Catherine was not satisfied. That night she wrote in
her diary:

July 19, 1888

I do not trust Walter. Always I must be on
the alert to make certain he does not harm my Jorie. The lad is
dishonest and mean-spirited. He frightens Jorie, and I fear some
day may do him real harm. Oh, how I wish he didn’t live with
us!

Jorie awoke to his brother leaning over him.
“Get up.”

“What? Why?” he asked still half asleep.

“Come on. Get up.” Walter pulled him out of
bed.

“Where are we going?”

“You’re going in here.” He pushed Jorie into
the closet. “This is where you’ll spend the night, ya hear?”

“You can’t do this to me!”

“And if you dare tell yer ma or let out a
sound, next time I’ll throw ya down the mine shaft, where you’ll
fall all the way down to hell.”

Jorie heard the closet door close and the
key turn. In total darkness, he began to cry quietly.

“Please, Walter, let me out.”

There was no answer.

“Please!”

Finally realizing there would be no help,
Jorie pulled some clothes off the hangers and made a bed for
himself on the floor. He woke to the sound of mice scurrying about;
fear and cold kept him awake for hours.

Early in the morning, he was startled by the
door opening suddenly, blinding him with daylight.

“Get out of there. And ‘member, I told you,
not a word to yer ma.”

This time Jorie took the warning to
heart.

An urgent knock brought her to the door,
where a lad of about fourteen stood. “Would you be Mrs. Radcliff,
Ma’am?”

“Yes.”

“It’s up at the mine, Ma’am. An
accident.”

“What happened?” Catherine’s hand went to
her face. “Is my husband hurt?”

“You’d best come up to the agent’s office.”
The boy ran off.

Catherine hesitated. Should she wake Jorie
and take him with her on the gelding, or leave him sleeping? The
urgency required a swift decision.

She turned to Walter. “You watch your
brother, and if there’s anything amiss when I come back, I’ll take
a brush to you myself!”

Saddling up Thomas’ horse as quickly as she
could, she tore out of the stable, taking the steep road straight
up to the Hill.

Walter watched his stepmother disappear in a
blur of dust. He crept up the stairs and listened by the room where
Jorie was sleeping. Hearing nothing he opened door.

“It’s time to get up.”

Jorie rubbed his eyes. “Where’s my
mother?”

“She had to go up to the mine. She told me I
was in charge.”

“What are you going to do?” Jorie sat up,
twisted the sheet in his hand.

“Play a game with you. Come on. We’ll have a
cookie first.”

Timorously, Jorie followed Walter
downstairs. His mother wouldn’t leave him— he knew she wouldn’t.
“Mummy!” he yelled as loud as he could.

Walter laughed. “I told you she wasn’t
here.” He reached into the cookie jar. “Want one?”

“We’re not supposed to.”

“Suit yourself.” Walter stuffed half of the
large oatmeal cookie into his mouth, soon followed by the
other.

“Let’s go down the cellar. It’s cool there,
and we can play miners.”

“I don’t want to.”

“How come?”

Jorie twisted his mouth. “You’ll tie me up.
Or lock me in down there.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. Cross my heart and
hope to die.”

Walter grabbed Jorie’s hand and led him
around the side of the house. “Stop your snivelin’, ya big sissy.”
He lifted the cellar door that lay at an angle against the
ground.

“Get in there. I can’t hold the door up
forever.”

“I don’t want to.”

“It’ll be fun. Go on, get in.”

“No!”

“Here, I’ll help you.”

With that Walter pushed Jorie into the
cellar. “Down you go, down the shaft.” As he let go of the door it
slammed shut.

Down the dark hole, falling, falling,
falling.

Jorie began to scream.

In a few minutes Walter returned and climbed
into the cellar himself. “I’m back. Stop yer bawlin’.”

“Let me out, Walter. Let me out!” Jorie
cried.

“Don’t be skeery. We can pretend we’re in a
real mine.”

“I hurt my knee.”

“Miners get hurt all the time. Helena’s
husband lost his whole arm.”

“Please let me out, Walter,” he begged.

When Catherine arrived at the agent’s
office, Mr. Ahlers and the laborer who’d helped to bring him up
were with her husband. Thomas lay unconscious on a stretcher; a
rivulet of blood lay in the crease of his forehead.

Catherine stared in agonizing disbelief. “Is
he—dead?”

“No, he’s not.” Clark Ahlers said. “He’ll
come around soon.”

“Why hasn’t the doctor been called?” she
snapped.

“If you’ll just be patient, Ma’am, the
doctor’s on his way.”

“Get me some soap and water; I’ll clean him
up myself.”

“Your husband will be all right. Just a
nasty bump to his head.”

“How did this happen?” Catherine knelt
beside her husband, studied his wound.

“He went down the mine in the skip and got
struck by a loose overhead timber.”

“The skip! That’s suicide. Why didn’t he
ride the man-car?”

“The man-car only operates at the beginning
and end of the shifts, Mrs. Radcliff. The rest of the time the
rails are used by the skips to carry the rock up. So if anyone
needs to get in or out of the mine they have to use—”

“My God!” Catherine bent over her husband,
dabbed her handkerchief on his wound. “Aren’t there any safety
precautions?”

“Ma’am, a mine’s a dangerous place. Your
husband knows this.” Mr. Ahlers said.

The laborer chipped in, “We lose about a man
a week in all manner of accidents.”

Mr. Ahlers glared at him.

“They’re usually miners though, or
trammers,” the young man finished lamely.

“The mine should be closed until proper
precautions are taken!” Catherine stated.

Mr. Ahlers turned to the laborer. “You can
go back to work now.”

“We’ve finished sorting the rocks in the
shaft house, sir. Mostly mucking out poor-rock today. Not much
copper a’tall.”

“There’ll be more brought up by now. Go
report to your captain.”

The laborer left, and Mr. Ahlers turned to
Catherine.

“Ma’am, with all respect,
the
Portage
has
the best safety record in all of Copperdom.”

By the time Doctor Carlyle arrived, Thomas
had come to.

“You’ve done a fine job preparing my patient
for me,” the doctor smiled at her. “I could use a nurse at the
company clinic, if you’re interested.”

Catherine ignored this. She thought he ought
to be apologizing for being so late.

Thomas sat up, felt his head gingerly. After
getting his bearings, he said, “No need to trouble yourself
further, Catherine. Go along home now.”

“Not without taking you with me.”

“It’s only three o’clock.”

“Go ahead, Radcliff,” Ahlers said. “Your
wife is quite right. Go home and take it easy.”

They climbed into Thomas’ buggy, with the
gelding tied to the back.

As Catherine took the reins, she said, “I
was very worried, believe you me. What a relief to know that
nothing serious happened.”

Walter handed Jorie a spade. “We’re going to
find copper here,” he said. “Start working. We’ll stope it out,
just like a real mine.”

Walter struck the wall several times with
the rock. Jorie imitated him, hitting it with his spade.

Walter looked around, saw a wheelbarrow.
“Here, we’ll use this to haul the rocks.”

He brought the oversized barrow to the coal
pile. A shaft of light from the dirty window fell upon the
boys.

“Come on, fill it with all the rock we
busted out today. You have to do that ‘cuz you’re just a trammer.
You have to pick up rock and put it in here.

“I don’t want to.”

“I’m the miner. It’s my job to find the
veins of copper and choose what to blow up. When I set off the
dynamite, there’s going to be a big explosion.”

“Walter, let’s get out now! I want to go
home.”

“You are home, dummy. Come on. Let’s see who
can get the most in the barrow.”

When it was full, Walter instructed, “Lie
down here, next to the coal pile, and check the ceiling for falling
rock and cracks.”

“No.”

“You don’t want a cave-in, do you? Buried
alive—is that what you want?”

“I’m not the miner — you are,” Jorie
injected.

Walter thought a moment. “Well then — you be
the captain. It's his job to check.”

The house was unnaturally quiet. Catherine
went to Jorie’s room, then called to the boys and got no
response.

“Thomas, they’re gone! I left Walter in
charge of Jorie—something’s happened!”

“Perhaps they went to catch polliwogs,”
Thomas offered. “You go to the creek and I’ll see if they’re down
by the well.”

Catherine started in the direction of the
creek.

“Oh, my God!” What if
Walter had taken Jorie to the lake
?
As Catherine rounded the house, the open cellar
door caught her eye.
Why was it
open?

“Jorie!” she called down the stairs.

There was no answer. As she crept down the
steps her mouth went dry and her throat tightened. The sight caused
her to gasp. The coal, usually piled high to the window, and
restrained at the bottom by a low wooden corral, had overflowed its
banks and spilled out on the dirt floor.

“Jorie!” she called. “Walter!”

Still no reply. Her toe caught against a
jagged piece of rock in the uneven floor, and sent her sprawling
forward on her face. When she was back on her feet, she ran up the
steps and toward the well.

“Thomas! They’ve been in the cellar playing
in the coal,” she spat out between gulps for breath. “But they’re
not there now.”

Her eyes widened in fear as a sudden thought
crossed her mind. Thomas caught it, and they were off running back
to the cellar. They fell on their knees and began raking the coal
with their hands, throwing chunks to one side and the other.

A patch of pale blue caught Catherine’s eye,
and digging more furiously than ever, she uncovered Jorie. He was
as black as the substance that covered him.

Lifted from the rubble, he seemed not to be
breathing. Catherine held him, pounding him on the back. His head
rolled back and he lay still in her arms. At last, as she ran to
the house with him, he gasped for air.

Thomas called out for Walter. Had an
avalanche of coal buried them both? He fell to his knees again,
pushing the coal aside as more cascaded from above. Finally
satisfied that Walter was not under the coal, but wanting to make
sure he wasn’t hiding, Thomas poked his way around other parts of
the cellar. In the late afternoon, the light was so scant it was
hard to make out shapes. He dare not light a candle amidst the
highly inflammable coal dust in the air. The sudden splintering of
glass startled him. Groping in the dark he’d knocked over a bottle
of his home-made wine. He stood still and waited in the silence,
hearing only the chirp of a lone cricket somewhere in the dark
recess.

He was about to leave when a chunk of coal
slipping down the pile caused him to look up. Near the top and to
the side of the fading shaft of light two eyes gleamed in the
darkness. He went closer and held the candle high. There,
camouflaged by the coal dust that covered him, crouching like a
feral cat, was the form of Walter.

By the time Catherine got him to the house
Jorie was crying hysterically, taking in great gulps of air, while
his whole body shook. As she held him, he first coughed up black
phlegm, followed by his lunch.

Blackened as he was, she couldn’t tell what
injuries he had, beyond almost suffocating. She could see a trickle
of blood drying on a gash on his forehead, and a huge goose egg.
She put water on the stove to boil and dragged out the washtub.
While she waited for it to warm, Catherine rocked him in her
arms.

Thomas came in as she was bathing Jorie.
“How is he?”

“It’s the jerky way he’s breathing that
bothers me most.”

“Any broken bones?”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly she looked up. “Where’s Walter?” It
was the first she’d thought of him.

“On the veranda. He needs a bath too.”

“Well, you do it, when I’ve finished here.
Where did you find him?”

“On top of the coal pile.”

“He needs to be punished for taking Jorie
down there. They both could have been killed in that avalanche of
coal.”

Finally she took Jorie out of the bath. He
wasn’t very clean, but the rest would have to wait. She wrapped him
in a blanket, put iodine on his cuts, and carried him upstairs to
bed.