Man Descending

there wasn’t a day I didn’t wish I’d gone to school and could sit in an office in a clean white shirt.” Sometimes he can’t remember what he wants to be, a farmer or a pencil-pusher.

The cage. He’s always going on about the cage. It’s what the men at the mine call the elevator car they ride down the shaft. They call it that because it’s all heavy reinforced-steel mesh. The old man has this cage on the brain. Ever since we were little kids he’s been threatening us with it. Make something of yourself, he’d warn us, or you’ll end up like your old man, a monkey in the cage! Or: What’s this, Gene? Failed arithmetic? Just remember dunces don’t end up in the corner. Hell no, they end up in the cage! Look at me! My old man really hates that cage and the mine. He figures it’s the worst thing you can threaten anybody with.

I was in the cage, once. A few years ago, when I was fourteen, the company decided they’d open the mine up for tours. It was likely the brainstorm of some public relations tit sitting in head office in Chicago. In my book it was kind of like taking people into the slaughterhouse to prove you’re kind to the cows. Anyway, Pop offered to take us on one of his days off. As usual, he was about four years behind schedule. When we were maybe eleven we might have been nuts about the idea, but just then it didn’t thrill us too badly. Gene, who is about as subtle as a bag of hammers, said flat out he wasn’t interested. I could see right away the old man was hurt by that. It isn’t often he plays the buddy to his boys, and he probably had the idea he could whiz us about the machines and stuff. Impress the hell out of us. So it was up to me to slobber and grin like some kind of half-wit over the idea, to perk him up, see? Everybody suffers when the old man gets into one of his moods.

Of course, like always when I get sucked into this good-turn business, I shaft myself. I’d sort of forgotten how much I don’t like tight places and being closed in. When we were younger, Gene used to make me go berserk by holding me under the covers, or stuffing a pillow in my face, or locking me in the garage whenever he got the chance. The jerk.

To start with, they packed us in the cage with twelve other people, which didn’t help matters any. Right away my chest got tight and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Then the old cables started groaning and grinding and this fine red dust like chili powder sprinkled down through the mesh and dusted our hard hats with the word GUEST stencilled on them. It was rust. Kind of makes you think.

“Here we go,” said Pop.

We went. It was like all of a sudden the floor fell away from under my boots. That cage just dropped in the shaft like a stone down a well. It rattled and creaked and banged. The bare light bulb in the roof started to flicker, and all the faces around me started to dance and shake up and down in the dark. A wind twisted up my pant-legs and I could hear the cables squeak and squeal. It made me think of big fat fucking rats.

“She needs new brake shoes,” said this guy beside me and he laughed. He couldn’t fool me. He was scared shitless too, in his own way.

“It’s not the fall that kills you,” his neighbour replied. “It’s the sudden stop.” There’s a couple of horses’ patoots in every crowd.

We seemed to drop forever. Everybody got quieter and quieter. They even stopped shuffling and coughing. Down. Down. Down. Then the cage started to slow, I felt a pressure build in my knees and my crotch and my ears. The wire box started to shiver and clatter and shake. Bang! We stopped. The cage bobbed a little up and down like a yo-yo on the end of a string. Not much though, just enough to make you queasy.

“Last stop, Hooterville!” said the guide, who thought he was funny, and threw back the door. Straight ahead I could see a low-roofed big open space with tunnels running from it into the ore. Every once in a while I could see the light from a miner’s helmet jump around in the blackness of one of those tunnels like a firefly flitting in the night.

First thing I thought was: What if I get lost? What if I lose the group? There’s miles and miles and miles of tunnel under here. I caught a whiff of the air. It didn’t smell like air up top. It smelled used. You could taste the salt. I’m suffocating, I thought. I can’t breathe this shit.

I hadn’t much liked the cage but this was worse. When I was in the shaft I knew there was a patch of sky over my head with a few stars in it and clouds and stuff. But all of a sudden I realized how deep we were. How we were sort of like worms crawling in the guts of some dead animal. Over us were billions, no, trillions, of tons of rock and dirt and mud pressing down. I could imagine it caving in and falling on me, crushing my chest, squeezing the air out slowly, dust fine as flour trickling into my eyes and nostrils, or mud plugging my mouth so I couldn’t even scream. And then just lying there in the dark, my legs and arms pinned so I couldn’t even twitch them. For a long time maybe. Crazy, lunatic stuff was what I started to think right on the spot.

My old man gave me a nudge to get out. We were the last.

“No,” I said quickly and hooked my fingers in the mesh.

“We get out here,” said the old man. He hadn’t caught on yet.

“No, I can’t,” I whispered. He must have read the look on my face then. I think he knew he couldn’t have pried me off that mesh with a gooseneck and winch.

Fred, the cage operator, lifted his eyebrows at Pop. “What’s up, Jack?”

“The kid’s sick,” said Pop. “We’ll take her up. He don’t feel right.” My old man was awful embarrassed.

Fred said, “I wondered when it’d happen. Taking kids and women down the hole.”

“Shut your own goddamn hole,” said the old man. “He’s got the flu. He was up all last night.”

Fred looked what you’d call sceptical.

“Last time I take you any place nice,” the old man said under his breath.

The last day of school has always got to be some big deal. By nine o’clock all the dipsticks are roaring their cars up and down main street with their goofy broads hanging out their windows yelling, and trying to impress on one another how drunk they are.

Dad sent me to look for Gene because he didn’t come home for supper at six. I found him in the poolroom playing dollar-a-hand poker pool.

“Hey, little brother,” he waved to me from across the smoky poolroom, “come on here and I’ll let you hold my cards!” I went over. He grinned to the goofs he was playing with. “You watch out now, boys,” he said, “my little brother always brings me luck. Not that I need it,” he explained to me, winking.

Yeah, I always brought him luck. I kept track of the game. I figured out what order to take the balls down. I reminded him not to put somebody else out and to play the next guy safe instead of slamming off some cornball shot. When I did all that Gene won – because I brought him luck. Yeah.

Gene handed me his cards. “You wouldn’t believe these two,” he said to me out of the corner of his mouth, “genuine plough jockeys. These boys couldn’t find their ass in the dark with both hands. I’m fifteen dollars to the good.”

I admit they didn’t look too swift. The biggest one, who was big, was wearing an out-of-town team jacket, a Massey-Ferguson cap, and shit-kicker wellingtons. He was maybe twenty-one, but his skin hadn’t cleared up yet by no means. His pan looked like all-dressed pizza, heavy on the cheese. His friend was a dinky little guy with his hair designed into a duck’s ass. The kind of guy who hates the Beatles. About two feet of a dirty comb was sticking out of his ass pocket.

Gene broke the rack and the nine went down. His shot.

“Dad’s looking for you. He wants to know if you passed,” I said.

“You could’ve told him.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Lemme see the cards.” I showed him. He had a pair of treys, a six, a seven, and a lady. Right away he stopped to pocket the three. I got a teacher who always talks about thought processes. Gene doesn’t have them.

“Look at the table,” I said. “Six first and you can come around up here,” I pointed.

“No coaching,” said Pizza Face. I could see this one was a poor loser.

Gene shifted his stance and potted the six.

“What now?” he asked.

“The queen, and don’t forget to put pants on her.” I paused. “Pop figured you were going to make it. He really did, Gene.”