Chapter 1
one
Getting Shafted
Jim
Lazy ass fuckers.
Everyone is quiet like it’s an unspoken rule that there is no talking until you reach the bottom. Not even from my best friend and work partner David, who always had something to say, but it’s fine by me. It gave me time to get my head on straight.
When the cage banged the bottom, puffing a small dust cloud, the doors swung open with force on rusty hinges, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief.
Tom, my boss who is usually safe in the office on the surface, is waiting for us.
He’s a guy in his fifties with thick salt and pepper brown hair and an average size belly from frequenting Bigham Tavern, the nicer of the bars you can frequent in the area.
He rarely sees the inside of the mine unless he must, which tells me something is about to happen.
As he said hello to everyone when they passed, he stopped me and David with hesitation. “Good morning, Jim. David. A word.”
The tension from the cage ride down came back in full force. David and I glanced at each other, and gave him a squinty look asking, “What did you do now?”.
We’ve been best friends since meeting on the job nine years ago when we got partnered together.
He is a short, muscular Italian with black curly hair, a big barrel chest, thick thighs and arms, all of it covered in a sexy fuzz.
But his looks don’t match his personality as he is a hyperactive jabber box and gets easily excitable or expressive.
“Sure,” I responded, the hair on the back of my head at attention, expecting the worst.
“We have two new men starting today. A father and son pair. I am splitting you two up to get them acclimated to the team. The son has no experience as he’s right out of school.
By the looks of him, he’s going to need a lot of work.
He doesn’t look like he’s built for this type of exertion.
” The entire time he was talking, he looked wary of his surroundings.
“Damn it!,” David exclaimed, grabbing Tom’s full attention. “Come on Tom. We have been together for so long. You are going to ruin a good team. Why don’t you split Richard and Dan? They shouldn’t be paired together anyway, the bastards.”
“Because,” he huffed a sigh. “I don’t need those two to taint the newcomers. Especially the youngin’.”
“Will we get partnered back up after their intake period?” I asked.
“We’ll see. You know things change fast around here. It’s going to take time to get Charles up to full speed.”
I glanced at David again to get the vibe he was putting off, and felt deep down that this was the end of the road for us working closely with one another.
David looked at Tom with indignation. “Who are you putting with me?”
Tom gave me the most intense gaze, like he’s trying to read my mind to help him decide who he was going to partner with me. “Jim, take the dad. You have more of an old soul and will get along better with him.”
“Fuck! Come on, Tom. Don’t stick me with the kid,” fumed David.
“It’s fine Tom,” to appease them both, and I placed a hand on David’s shoulder. “I’ll take the kid. It is probably a better outcome if you put David with someone who will help ground his immature ass,” I said, giving David a smirk, to which he then gave me the finger.
“Fine. With that decided, come back to the top and get them so I don’t have to come back down here.
I like working the office for a reason,” Tom says as he looked around at the jagged walls of the mine with a haunted facial expression, stripped tree trunks holding up the ceiling, and the passage strung with wires of lights to help illuminate the space.
His history with the mine was a mystery to a lot of us, but I knew he was down here during the tragic mine fire fifteen years ago.
We loaded back into the cage and ascended to the top, exiting through the opposite side of the cage from where we entered it.
From there, we walked the short tunnel until we saw daylight in an overcast state.
After grabbing our chit number off the board, we walked the twenty-five yards to the company office, an old shack of a building constructed of sheet metal, plank board and stone.
It’s only one room with two desks and inside were two men with Susan, the office assistant.
Dread immediately set in when I got a look at the kid. He’s lean with no extra muscle with a face that’s smooth and a sharp jawline, while his dad looked like he was born and bred for the work, with a defined body that’s toned but had started to go soft with age.
How did this man raise a kid and not prepare him for this kind of life?
They both have dark brown wavy hair, almost black.
While the kid’s hair was flowing forward in a stream like cascade that really frames his face, his dads was pushed back, cut shorter around the sides and was greying at the temples.
The kids' eyes were crystal blue, a color that didn’t belong where we were about to go.
I took off my helmet and scratched an itch in my own short cropped dark, dirty blonde hair, already filled with grit. My scalp, where it’s shaved close along the sides, was already dirty with a layer of dark dust from only being down in the mine for all of ten minutes.
Tom entered behind me and announced our arrival, “Hey Susan, how was intake?”
She twirled around with her hands on her hips and an arched eyebrow, “About time. I ran out of paperwork for these gentlemen ten minutes ago. I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to bring them down there myself.”
“Susan, don’t you dare think about going down there,” Tom bantered back. “That mine would never survive your strong and forceful command.” He turned to look at us over his shoulder, “Gentlemen, this is Mike and Charles, your trainees.”
“Charlie is fine, sir,” said the kid with nervousness and hesitation, his voice quiet. He had an alto tone, sounding light and bright.
“Okay. Charlie,” Tom said, taking the correction.
“You are going to be partnered with Jim, here. Mike, this is David. You’ll be with him.
David, move to room one for today and tomorrow.
Check in with Will to let him know about the reassignment.
” Then he looked back at the new men, “These two are some of my best, but if you have any questions that they can’t answer, you know where to find me. ”
“More like ‘find me’…” Susan sasses which made Charlie smile for the first time. It’s radiant with a dimple on his right cheek. I hoped this job didn’t dull his shine like it did me. Maybe David should have taken him. At least that way their personalities would have been safe together.
“And if you come to the office and it’s locked, it means Susan, Will or I are not in. We keep it locked, even during shift, because of sensitive items that we store. There is a little box right outside the door to leave notes for us to get later,” Tom explained.
“Okay, let’s get this day done with,” David said with a side eye, still none too pleased to be split up.
I headed outside with David behind me. I stopped and turned and before I could introduce myself officially to them both.
Mike got close to me with a pleading look and in a whisper that rumbled, “Take care of my son. Don’t let anything happen to him.
Don’t let the other men hassle him too much.
If I had it my way, he wouldn’t be going down there. He isn’t made for this.”
“If he doesn’t want to be down there, Mike, then why is he? This could create a dangerous situation in an already dark environment.” Now I really was none too pleased about the kid going into the mine.
“Because I want to be down there,” Charlie said, stepping forward with confidence, standing straight, shoulders back like he’s ready to prove himself.
“Dad, would you stop already? You are going to get us shafted before the ink dries on the paperwork. This isn’t the first impression we needed to make.
I’m already the shrimp of the lot. Let it rest.”
“Fine,” he gruffed, turning around and walking toward the mouth of the tunnel that’s painted white like it’s supposed to present a welcoming space, with David following him.
I turned to Charlie to tell him to come along but his hand was extended. “It’s nice to meet you, Jim.” I shook his clean, silky hand that hadn’t ever seen a day's work, compared to mine. I hadn’t even touched a tool yet, and I’m already grey and gritty. “It will be a pleasure to learn from you.”
The look in his eyes was sparkling with a shimmer of a mist in a heavenly sky. It was hard to look away. The smoothness of his hand against mine was like a calm static creating a magnet, pulling me to him. Why was I getting so engaged with him?
I ignored my thoughts and his introduction. “Do you have any personal belongings or a lunch pail?”
Charlie’s head dipped, his cheeks shading. “No. We didn’t bring anything with us today. We are still unpacking from the move.”
“Let’s catch up before they leave without us,” I sighed, forcing myself to pull away and turn to walk to the tunnel.
I stopped at the chit board to hang my number fourteen in its place and turned to tell Charlie to hang his up for attendance and safety when he already had. Looking at me with a mix of pride, excitement and fear, we breathed one last fresh breath before going down the shaft in hell’s cage.