A miner reckoning

My first ever fiction piece. A story about dark Appalachia and the meaning of sacrifice

This is my first ever fiction piece. Pressing the publish button came with extra trepidation this week. Your feedback, positive and negative critique alike is greatly appreciated. I usually thank my editors at the end of my post, but they deserve extra attention this week. My dearest thanks to

Steven Foster

,

Camilo Moreno-Salamanca

, and

Tommy Dixon

- thank you for helping me explore a new medium and find my voice.

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Ivy thumbed the crisp corners of Little House in the Big Woods, as shadows cast by autumn foliage grew longer across her pages.  She could barely see the tiny black print but she didn’t need to. She could recite those words like she could recite the truest things about herself. Her name. Her birthday. The day of the week her mother died. The time her brother was born. Her favorite novel. 

Abigail Ivy Louis. 

The first of November, 1936. 

Wednesday. 

12:01 am. 

Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

Her index finger and thumb were guided by the slightest of indentations of page corners as the sound of Fowler toads rose in a baritone chorus around the red oak her back lay propped against. 

It was time to go. The melting auburn sky blended with the rich chestnut hues of fall, hid the foot trail back home amongst the woods. 

She was new to these parts. The deepest parts of Appalachia where the people are few and far between and the folklore runs deep. 

Her father, brother, and her recently moved into a three-bedroom cottage with walls the color of the deepest river and windows laced with sheer cafe curtains. The beds were dressed in a colorful mosaic patchwork made of quilting cotton. And the wood-burning stove, that drew pink from her cheeks, wrapped its incandescent arms around her on the coldest of winter’s evenings. The three of them walked gingerly across the mahogany floors, wiping away the tracks of the day’s labor, and sweeping the crumbs of sourdough bread from every crack and crevice. They weren’t used to this. Fancy living. The house felt more like an art museum showcasing 18th-century indigenous art than a home. It’ll take some breaking in, Ivy’s dad would say in a gruff voice drawn raspy from years of Camels resting on his bottom lip. But Ivy wasn’t convinced. 

Soon after Ivy’s Ma and her granddad Pap passed away, they received a once-manilla envelope smudged with black fingerprints. The envelope was addressed to Ma with the words After I’m gon’ written in Pap’s shaky script across the front. The envelope was chock-full of crumpled bills with the same black smudges, and at the bottom, a singular iron-rusted key with a barely legible address tag hanging by a red thread. Ma never saw any money. Any real money like the green bills Pap stashed in bundled wads in that dirty manilla envelope. Just miner's dollars that could only be used in stores owned by the mine companies. Pap was a coal miner just like his Pap and the Pap before him. Ivy’s dad was the first to break the bloodline of filthy, back-breaking work that ran through the Louis family. Each generation living a life as destitute as the last. Ma missed Pap’s hidden fortune by a few days. His last breath was stolen by black lung three days after cancer took hers. 

Ivy and her brother, Red, couldn’t be in the new house without crumbling beneath an anvil of guilt. Guilt that they gained the fortune their mother never knew she had. Guilt that they lived a life she could never have dreamed of. A life with clean water and clean air. A life they mustn’t lie awake at night listening for the mine sirens to erupt, notifying the town of a collapse. Guilt that they lay warm in bed at night and she lays cold and rotting in the back yard of their old shack you could barely call a house in rural Kentucky. 

For 15 years, wherever Ivy was, Red was there too staring at her with large, adoring eyes. They spent most of their time in the forest, romping in creeks and coming home filthy and bruised. They woke every morning to feed their chickens together. They went to bed at the same time each night to read aloud The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When Ivy cried, he always patted her dusty blonde head of hair and with a crooked-tooth smile said, It’ll be alright big sis. Sometimes she got annoyed that she could always hear his floppy rubber boots sloshing right behind hers on wooded trails, but when the grief of their mother’s death started drawing them apart, she longed to hear him call WAIT UP as she stepped over the threshold of their back yard into their happy place.  

Her grief kept drawing her into the wilderness. Into the Nantahala forest that densely cornered all sides of their new cottage, but Red’s drew him into the closest bar called the Outlaw littered with men who fit the bill. Rowdy folk, mostly coal miners with skin tinged so black only the whites of their eyes and teeth were visible through their caked faces. Ivy can’t remember the last time he patted her head or told her anything was gonna be alright. Now he just smelt like booze and bad news. 

As Ivy rose to trek back home, her hand sunk into a cushion of decaying leaves. The air was cold on the backside of her nicest pair of overalls that were damp from where her mud-caked boots stuck against her inner thighs. 

In Kentucky, Ivy shared the same well-worn trails as the whitetail. She understood the movement of cottontails and eastern squirrels. She could navigate those woods blind by running her fingers across the bark of Sugar Maples and Black Walnuts. Even a mile from home she could see the smoke of their cracking chimney over the sparse Eastern pines. Those woods were predictable and comfortable. Loving like her mother. Kind like her father on his better days.  But these woods, the Appalachian woods, changed at every hour of the day. Not the same in the morning as they were at dusk. The mornings were whimsical. The kind of forest Ivy imagined held fairies and trolls. The evenings were foreboding as if hiding the shadows of red-eyed creatures. At all hours of the day, one too many wrong steps off your path and you might never find your way back. 

When the sun's going down like a big 'ol tater, you come right back home, Red said sternly like clockwork when she pulled her rubber wading boots on each day signaling her departure into the fingerlings of oak limbs. He was younger than her by just a year though he liked to pretend he was the older and wiser of the two. This is the way he cared for her now. Sternness filled his once adoring eyes.   

The wind cut through her wool long-sleeved shirt as she gripped Little House in the Big Woods close to her chest. She squinted through watery eyes searching for the tracks she made in the high noon sun. But the hastening wind drew in clouds so dark that even the oak she sat at as the sun dipped in the sky smudged into darkness. 

Well, I can’t see the potatoes anymore. Sorry, Red. Ivy said agitated at herself for losing track of time while starting to pace in the direction she thought home.

She walked and high-stepped and sidestepped over the thorny ground thicket wincing each time a black briar snagged her shin. Tucking the large hardcover book under her armpit, she put both hands in front of her to feel her way through the narrow channels of large spindly trunks. The bark all felt the same - rugged striations with cold sticky sap. She balanced her way over mossy lopsided slopes of fallen oaks and crunched acorns beneath her boots. Overgrowth swung back into her face, snatching her hair then sprung back into nothing but dense autumn air saturated with the early chill of winter. 

She remembered this. She remembered that the forest got thicker before it got thinner. And so onward she pressed until her hand slid across something non-rough like decades-old tree bark. It was paper. She could tell by the crinkling ripple sound it made. The same as her book pages in the wind. Unable to see through the blackness of the night, it wasn’t until her nose was nearly against it that she could make out the words “No Trespassing” in bold, black print. 

That’s odd. Ivy thought to herself. I’ve been in these woods every day for the past eight months and I’ve never seen this sign.

Her stomach clenched into a state of unease. Much more frustration than panic. She had been walking for an indeterminable amount of time in an indeterminable direction unsure if she was closer or further from the sweet, earthy scent of logs in the wood burner. 

But that small clench quickly twisted, gripping her insides so tightly it stole her breath as she stepped a few paces beyond the “No Trespassing” tree and heard a faint siren bellow and soften somewhere yonder. Ivy froze to stone as the faint sound of dogs barking accompanied the wail. But unlike the siren, the growl and snap of angry dog mouths crescendoed. The, just a few minutes prior, deadly silent air was now howling horizon to horizon. 

Ivy’s rubber boots became unrooted and she ran with fury. Thorns dug deep into her fair skin drawing thin lines of blood down her arms and thighs. Her wool sleeve got stuck in muscadine vine ripping Little House in the Big Woods from her balmy palms and contrary to everything she knew to be true about herself, she didn’t stop for even a second to feel the ground for its fabric green hardcover. 

Panic coursed through her body like moonshine. Blurring her vision and muddying her mind. Her will to break out of the trees she always considered friends was the only thing keeping her legs, heavy as cement bricks, from halting. She didn’t dare stop but her tiring legs became less nimble. Her shin struck stone sending electric jolts of pain to every nerve ending. Losing control of her body, she stumbled, her hands catching her head from hitting protruding tree roots. The smell of iron flooded her nostrils making her woozy. She couldn’t draw herself to find the source of warmth that pooled beneath her waist. 

She lay unmoving. The pack of dogs was so close she could hear the strike of their paws in unison against pebble-strewn dirt. But before they were close enough to come into view, Ivy heard the word HALT explode from somewhere deeper in the labrynthine forest. The voice was deep and rugged - foreign yet somehow strangely familiar. He drew out the “A” for what seemed like a long minute before that deadly silence hung suspended beneath the treetops again. The trotting of dogs stopped. The toads silenced. The wind fell dead.

Ivy’s breath was caught in the silence. A figure emerged from the smudges of tree bark, moving like a phantom. Her hands pushed her weak body away from the figure, her legs dragging flat across the ground beneath her. Against her palms, the earth felt sandy. Softer than the root-strewn dirt she was just running over. She lifted her hand to her face, unable to differentiate between her fingers and darkness.

Soot, she thought in disbelief and whirled her head around her body trying to make out her surroundings. 

What is happening? she tried to speak but the words remained trapped in her throat as the sliver of a waning crescent moon came out from behind thick clouds, ever so slightly illuminating her surroundings a hazy silver. Picks littered the ground like acorns and shovels were staggered in random mounds. A broken conveyor belt was cracked at the seams, spilling onto the forest floor like unwound ribbon. 

As the figure drew closer, Ivy's eyes were drawn to the only visible part of this man. The whites of his eyes. She could only see the rest of his body when he was directly in front of her. He wore a tattered uniform and a hard hat with a cracked headlamp. Both stained with a thick residue of coal. A face creased from age and agony. A beard so bushy a sparrow could make a home of it. 

Pap? Ivy said.

His eyes that bore the weariness of a tattered soul, met hers that bore sheer terror. 

Ivy, the figure said, you’re not supposed to be here. He coughed like Pap always coughed. Raspy and wet. The sounds of mucus and old age. He spit, but there was no splat. 

What is happening, she demanded. The terror crept up her throat squeezing her words out in high-pitched shrills. She wondered if she was dead. She must have hit her head on those roots. This can’t be real. This can’t be real. She muttered and she pressed herself further away from the spectral figure that stood unmoving in front of her. 

He squatted to Ivy’s level. His voice softened to the velvet baritone that soothed her to sleep for so many years. 

I can explain, Pap began slow as molasses. 

I made a pact a long, long time ago. 

When yer Mama was just a little girl, I worked in these here very woods. This, he said gesturing to the grounds, used to be an old mine. Deep River Coal Field. Long gon’ now, he said between rugged hacks. Explosions from dust ‘er somethin’ destroyed the place. Killed all the men underground. ‘Bout forty or so and ‘bout thirteen above ground. By the time the dust settled, I was the only one left with my head attached to my body. Trees’ve mostly covered it up now. But it was a bloody mess. My right arm was danglin’ from my body, I thought I’dve lost it. 

You see, he continued, I got out alive that day but it didn’t come free. 

I always heard old folklore growing up. Miners tales. ‘Bout what happens when you die in a mine. I dismissed ‘em. Not one for ghost stories. But as the tale is told, a dead miner’s soul is tethered to the earth by their unfinished work. The miner's soul, too burdened by sacrifice, never rests. And in those old tall tales, a guardian among the men is always chosen - a protector of some sort for the miners and their legacy. This guardian protects the land. Keeps trespassers from disrespecting the miner’s restin’ place. Usually scarin’ hunters off, wanderers n’ such. And I guess gran’daughters. 

So as I lay there dyin’. Bleeding out through my stump of an arm goin’ in and out of consciousness. A black figure appeared from the glistening ashes, hazy behind the mirage of heat. I couldn’t focus on him, could barely hold my head up I was losing so much blood. The fire blazin’ in my periphery was the only thing I was sure was real. Thought I was hallucinating until I could feel his cold breath against my sweat-drenched, tear-soaked face. His voice sounded ancient. Rough but wisened if ya know what I mean. He told me he could save me. Promised to spare my life if I was willin’ to make a sacrifice. 

He paused. Ivy wanted to speak but constricted by confusion and fear, she lay motionless, her lips drawn tight and her eyes plastered wide and unblinking. Realizing she hadn’t drawn a breath since pap, or ghost pap, or whoever it was started speaking, she inhaled sharply like she had been submerged under water for over a minute. 

Wha..wha…what was the sacrifice? she forced out. 

Well, he said. He stopped to contemplate how to explain this part. 

Silence soaked into the dense air.

Well, he said to me he would spare my life and I would receive the wealth of the mine. But one day when I died of natural causes, I would become the guardian of this mine, the protector of those fifty’sum souls. My soul would never rest.

I laid my head on a pillow of soot and closed my eyes hopin’ when I opened ‘em, this crazy man with the cold, dead breath would be gone. As I felt the last bit of life draining out of me, I heard his soft footsteps crunch steadily away from me. So, knowin’ I had nothing to lose I shouted through airless breaths to a man I was sure as a hound on a hot trail I was hallucinating. 

He turned to face me. His words over the fire’s crackling rage were muted. He said, “Die or live eternally among the grounds of your long-lost brothers?” 

Live, I said, before everything went dark. 

If it wasn’t for yer mama at home, I’d rather just have died that day. Ain’t no head on my body worth watchin’ all my brothers die and livin’ with that mem’ry. Yer mama, she was the only thing left livin’ for. 

I was hopin’, he said with his face twisting into sadness, that she would get this fortune when I died so she could live a good life. A slow translucent tear trickled down his dusty face shining like a diamond against all that was black. 

The words Pap were all Ivy could muster. Her eyes pooled too with tears that heated her frozen cheeks. 

A solemn wind whispered through the crispening leaves, carrying with it the echoes of the miners' stories, their laughter, and the sounds of pickaxes against coal. The spectral pack of dogs that hadn’t yet broken their fierce and protective scowls, started to dissipate. A flurry of soot whisked and trailed into the wind in tiny tornadoes until it was just Ivy and Pap among the remains of the mine. 

Wha…what can I do? Is there anything, anything at all? Ivy asked, her voice muddled with grief and desperation - her heart too big to bear this, her heart too big to not try and absorb his pain. 

But Pap shook his head, the whites of his eyes blurring left to right.

Ivy thought of those mahogany floors, the patchwork beds, the warmth of the wood-burning stove, and reckoning settled in. 

It didn’t feel like an art museum, she thought to herself. That reverence she and her dad and Red felt when they were in the embrace of their home was larger than art. It was reverence for lives long gone. For love and loss. For fifty miners and her Pap’s eternal sacrifice. They could feel that sacrifice, heavy like a boulder, protective like a mother, warm like the whisper of blue flames. 

Pap watched this reckoning flood into Ivy’s eyes. 

You can’t come back here he said, with a solemn slowness. But I’m glad you’re here right now. I’m glad I got to see you one last time my dear Ivy girl. 

Ivy sniffled. Her grief and desperation for warmth drained her of the right words. I love you is all she could muster between barely audible gasps.  

At that moment, somewhere over the treetops, Ivy heard her name shouted and screamed. 

IIIIIIIIvvvvyyyy. IVY. IIIVVVYY. Where are you? 

Red and Dad, she muttered. I have to get back, Ivy said settling into the comfort of Pap’s eyes, no longer constricted with fear. 

Pap reached behind himself, down to that black-as-tar forest floor, grabbing Little House in the Big Woods and handing it tenderly to Ivy’s thin, pale hands. His eyes burned back, I love you too.  

On still trembling legs, she pressed herself to stand again. She went to hug him, to bury her head in his knotty beard. Just as her arms raised to his round sides, his spirit slowly dissipated too, sparkly black dust lifting into the wind leaving behind the scent of burning oak. The aroma sweet and smoky. 

The smell of sacrifice, Ivy thought to herself.

She lingered there for a few moments staring up at the twinkly sky. The crescent moon, no longer hidden by thick charcoal grey clouds, lit a small patch of ground through the foliage. She walked towards the sounds of her name rustling through twiggy limbs. The symphonic croak of toads rose again, bouncing like falling rain. Her eyes dropped to her feet as she sidestepped and high-stepped, the ground no longer black. The remains of the mine, gone like pap. Rugged roots banged her shins and thicket snagged her overalls until she found herself back to her oak tree. The underside of yellowing leaves glowed golden. 

I’MMM FIIIINE. Ivy shouted back to Red and her dad, following their voices until she found their warm, gruff hands. Falling into their embrace, her nostrils burned of booze and tobacco. 

Where were you? They both demanded, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her tiny frame. Concern blazed into their drunken eyes. The same concern that blazed when Pap spoke of Ma. 

There was no good answer to this question but the truth. But Ivy realized that she didn’t know how to tell the truth. She was still processing for herself. Like one of those dreams that felt too real to be imagined, she was floating in a world of emotions too difficult to carry down to earth. Intangible like all that glistening black soot that was gone like a gust of wind. She decided to hold those secrets to herself for now. They wouldn’t believe her anyway, she thought. 

I fell asleep under my tree, she said with wavering confidence. 

But they didn’t question her. They didn’t care. She was safe. 

Before wrapping an arm around her dirty shoulders, Red patted her matted head of hair and said, It’ll be alright big sis. Just don’t scare us like that again. His voice soft but protective. Like the voice of a guardian. 

—

When she woke the next morning, the house smelled smoky sweet. She rolled on her sore side, wincing from the burn of raw skin against cool fabric. On her bedside table lay Little House in the Big Woods with a large black handprint wrapped around the spine. 

October 19th, 1938, she thought to herself, the day Pap taught me the meaning of sacrifice.

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