Light to the Hills: A Novel (44)
“Knockers?” Amanda asked. Sass bunched the quilt in her fists and held it tight in front of her, so just her eyes peeked out. Myrtle bawled and paced.
“Yeah.” Finn leaned over and fed a few more sticks of kindling into the stove. “This right here’s your job,” he teased, “but since you’re slacking, I’ll pitch in. Tommy-knockers. Little miners. Mountain ghosts. Little underground people that do things.”
Finn tore his eyes from the fire and looked at Amanda, gauging. When she said nothing, he continued.
“They can be good or bad. Lots of times before a cave-in or explosion, you hear things in the walls, a knocking and creaking, pops and moans. The mountain kinda talks to you thataway. It can jangle your nerves pretty good. Lotta fellers say that’s the tommy-knockers warning you, giving you time to get out. Or could be they’re the ones causing it in the first place. You never know if they mean good or bad, so you try to get on their good side, leave ’em pasties or a bit of something from your dinner pail. They say the Cherokee used to talk about the same kinda folks roaming the mountains, so likely there’s something to it.
“Anyhow. The knockers started up. Didn’t give much warning that day. All’s we had was a creaking and cracking and then whoom—the timbers holding up that ceiling splintered and flew ever’ which way, and the whole thing came down at once.”
“How awful,” Amanda breathed. Her hand flew to her mouth and shook there as she imagined the horror of it, all the dust and rock.
“Me and Feather and another feller were just outside the room itself, so we got some of it, enough to smash this leg up good and knock Feather plumb off his feet. I could hear some of the fellers calling from the other side of the fall. I told ’em I was getting help. I told ’em to hang on. Course I was just lying there under a big slab myself, not going nowhere. I told Jasper—the other feller in there with me—to unhook them cars and pull what he could off Feather so he could stand. Poor beast was shaking and trembling all over, all cut up from his ears to his tail. I told ol’ Jasper to just grab onto his traces and let him go. So much dust in the air you couldn’t see your hand in front o’ your face even with the headlights on. Feather drug him out far enough where others could get to us. Guess Jasper told ’em what happened and where to go. Told ’em to take care of ol’ Feather ’cause he sure enough took care of us, and that’s all she wrote. I don’t remember much after that till I woke up at home.”
“Those poor men,” Amanda said. Sass sat quiet as a mouse, the quilt damp from the tears that ran down her face.
“Six good souls,” said Finn, his voice wavering. He swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “Daddy was down there working to pull ’em out. That’s how he came to hurt his arm. Ones that didn’t die outright waited out the rescue. Two of ’em had wrote notes to their families before they smothered finally. Enough to break your heart clean in two. Willie Harmon had a pay stub in his pocket, and he wrote on it, ‘Boys, trust Jesus and never work in the coal mines,’ to his two young’uns at home.”
“Oh, Finn, I’m so glad you got out. Selfishly, I’m glad.” Amanda’s eyes shone in the firelight. “Thank you for telling the story.” She placed her hand on his arm and rested it there.
“That’s the first time I told it,” Finn admitted. “Those words been banging on my insides, wanting to be let loose, for a while. I don’t know why I was spared, why the knockers let me go with just a tattoo and a busted leg. I’ve yet to find that out.”
Outside, a piercing crr-ack! echoed through the night, followed by a crashing as if a great beast shook the trees. Sass and Amanda both jumped, and even the sleepy horses startled in their stalls, their ears swiveling forward. Another crack, and another, loud as a gunshot. It came from all around them in the woods, an ambush of noise. Finn shuffled to the door and opened it, and an icy blast of wind pushed against him, seeking a way in. Under the bright moon, the woods sparkled like crystal. Each branch on every tree, down to the smallest tips, was coated with several inches of ice. As he scanned the woods, it happened again, and he realized the sound was the cracking and shearing of limbs under the weight of that frozen water, crashing to the ground and breaking lower branches as they fell like glass in a shatter of ice shards.
“The trees are falling to pieces,” he said.
“Finn,” Sass called. “I think Myrtle’s ready.” Sass stood on the lowest rail of the heifer’s pen and leaned over. Myrtle had gone down and lay on her side.
“Dip some more buckets o’ water, Sass. Never mind Cricket. With the sky falling out there, I don’t want you to get knocked on the noggin running to the house.” The three of them sprang into action. Finn shut the barn door and lifted a pair of chains from the wall. Amanda slipped inside the pen, and Myrtle raised her head but didn’t attempt to rise; she had more pressing matters to deal with than a stray human in her space.
Amanda knelt by Myrtle’s side. Ripples of movement in the cow’s belly showed the calf was alive and active. Amanda could feel the contractions come and go under her hand; Myrtle’s belly would harden into rigid knots and gradually relax. Birthing was as old as time. She remembered—how could she not?—the night Miles was born and how she’d labored on and on, not in the barn on the straw, but much the same, helpless to stop the process, wanting it to end and anxious for the coming child. Frank had been gone that night—in fact, she’d sent him away—and unlike Myrtle, she hadn’t had the comfort of a soothing voice or gentle hands.