Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [72]
Another plank wall, another tunnel, empty this time, with only a pair of rails leading into it, incomplete radii cut off in darkness, disappearing long before whatever center it was they were drawn toward. The opening closed, they sank deeper, groaning. The rock that had once been yellowish now threw gleams of greenish black from its wet surfaces. “We’re into the serpentine here,” Oliver said to Prager.
Down, down. The air was more oppressive. With its lingering taint of creosote it reminded her of breathing tincture of benzoin from a croup kettle.
“Next level,” Oliver said. “Anything wrong?”
“No. Oh no.” But she was glad when the constricted shaft opened out into another tunnel. Mr. Kendall, watching the floor come up, yanked on the bell wire and the skip shuddered and rattled to a halt. The groaning died; there was a lonely sound of dripping water. When they had helped her out onto the uneven floor, Oliver scratched a lucifer match on his seat and lit her candle, Mr. Prager’s, his own. In the enlarged bloom of light she could see for some distance down the timbered drift with its toy rails converging toward a vanishing point that was simultaneous with total blackness. Down this drift, with Kendall walking ahead and the others steering her by the elbows, they made their way. Inevitably she thought of Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, and up on top Tregoning, Charon of this vertical Styx; but the thought of how silly it would sound to speak that thought made her blot it out. About used up, I should think, Oliver might say.
Their shadows climbed the walls and bent across timbers, spread, folded, disappeared, reappeared. Kendall and his shadow blotted the tunnel ahead. Her feet were already wet, she had difficulty walking on the ties, she slipped on wet wood and twisted her ankles among uneven stones.
How far? As if she had spoken aloud, Oliver said, “It’s only a little way on. Listen, maybe we can hear them.”
The three of them stopped, but Kendall’s boots went on clattering. Then he too stopped, his candle turned back on them. “What is it?”
“Listening to the voices of the mine,” Mr. Prager said. “Hold it a minute.”
They stood. The candles grew almost steady, the tunnel enlarged around them. Stillness, drip, stillness, drip drip, then “Hear them?” Oliver said.
“No.”
“Put your ear against the wall.”
She pushed her hat askew and leaned her cheek against wet rock. “I don’t . . . oh, yes! Yes, plainly!”
Tak, said the stone against her straining ear. Tak ... tak ... tak . . . tak. Then it stopped. She held her breath until the sound resumed. Tak . . . tak . . . tak.
“Understand their language?” Mr. Prager said.
“Is it a language? It’s more like a pulse. It’s like the stone heart of the mountain beating.”
Mr. Kendall laughed, but Prager said, “Capital, capital. Put it in your sketch. Actually, you know, it’s the Tommyknockers.”
“The who?”
“Tommyknockers. Little people who go through the mine tapping at the timbering to make sure it’s sound. Ask any Cornishman.”
“You’re teasing me. What is it really?”
Oliver leaned so that she felt his warm breath as he started her forward again. “Drillers’ hammers. They’re drilling blast holes.”
A new sound was growing in the tunnel, a distant rumble. Through Mr. Kendall’s scissoring legs she saw the rails light up as if fire were in them. A double, widening streak of red gleamed toward her and was blotted. The sound came on. Mr. Kendall turned, and Oliver and Prager pulled Susan to one side. “Car coming,” Oliver said. “Stand against the wall.”
The sound swelled, bounced from wall to wall, was projected down at her from the roof. She had a panicky feeling that the mere vibration of wheels on rails might shake the timbering down, and she understood instantly and completely why a race of men who lived their lives in mines would have to invent such helpful creatures as Tommyknockers. A drop of water fell on her bare arm and she jerked, with a little bitten-off exclamation. “Plenty of room,” Oliver said, misunderstanding.
Noise and light approached, the hollow mountain hummed, the light resolved itself into a candle on a hat, another on the front of the heaped square ore car. It approached, was there, rumbled past, and the leaning man pushing it turned his curious face and she recognized him: a Mexican boy she had seen numerous times, the brother of the crippled carpenter Rodriguez. Rumble, glow, glimpse, and gone, the dim luminousness moving along the roof timbers, the sound diminishing.