"Third Stool from the Rear": Part III

Third Stool from the Rear

"Jaxon tell you Ernie just about got his ticket punched today? Yeah, bruised hell out of his left shoulder and cracked his hat but he won't miss a shift.

"He's been running the motor for Jaxon this week and thought he'd speed things up by adding some cars to his train...they only been pinning three on at a time because of that steep grade by 8 raise...hard to stop 'em and you got that air door to open just before you get to the dump hole...they have to keep that end pressured to keep the gas back in the cracks...you ever stand by one of those cracks when the door's open? Air whistles out of 'em a gale, I'll tell you, just a couple of good whiffs and you don't know whether your asshole's punched or bored...inspectors took some samples of it to test an' it ain't got enough oxygen in it to keep a toad alive.

"So old Ernie pins an extra car on and he stops it without any trouble...they make a couple of runs and he pins on another so's there's five cars in his string...Jaxon tells him that's enough to finish mucking out but Ernie says it will take at least six and he can handle 'em so he drags another off the switch.

"They're comin' past 9 raise and the rail ends are really clickin' so Jaxon begins throwin' fines under the wheels of the end car and it ain't slowin' down a'tall...that ore's nearly all lead so they probably got 16-18 tons pushing against that little Mancha motor then they hit the steep grade and it's Katie bar the door.

"Jaxon's still tryin' to derail the end car and Ernie's flashing' his light at him but they both know the air door's goin' to be scattered from hell to breakfast and Ernie's goin' to be somewhere among the pieces. Jaxon said it sounded like a four hole burn when the motor hit the door then it was so dusty he couldn't see the end of his nose...the front car spilled enough to derail the second one and it stopped the whole shebang so Jaxon crawls over the mess expecting to find Ernie rolled up into a bloody ball but he's scrunched up against the control box under some tarpaper and half the door laughin' his head off. He was in the paratroopers, yuh know, knocked out a German tank all by hisself an' got a Silver Star for it...guess a little collision like that ain't gonna scare him none.

"They got a breather while Bill Kroll built 'em a new door...funny thing about that...Art told Bill which door it was and the old bugger remembered every measurement and had a new door, ready to be hung, within an hour."

Printed page 21.

"Low Pressure Waterworks"

He had been panting and slavering, pacing and shaking for well over an hour when he paused by the dining room table, stretched out and began urinating on the carpet, a steady green flow like a fast leak from a radiator filled with Prestone antifreeze. The old Husky has been deathly afraid of lightning and thunder since he was a pup. He can sense the change in air pressure when a storm begins building and knows arcs of direct current electricity will be putting patterns on the windows followed by the dreaded thunder that hurts his ears.

I had fair warning and time to push him out the back door before he reached a full head of foam but I couldn't believe my partner would pull such a stunt after so many years of telling us with vigorous shaking of his head and body movement that his bladder was full and needed to kick a bush. A puddle formed and was starting to soak in before I recovered enough to tell our cook that her dog was shampooing her carpet.

We used nearly a full roll of paper towels to soak up most of his output after she led him to the door and scolded him for such a vulgar infraction of house rules. I was less offended. I couldn't help but remember a time in the late 1940s when I was listening to Bernie Soward, ex-sailor and storyteller from the old school, relate his version of the battle of the Coral Sea. There had been another storyteller of considerable renown in the town of Creede but Tex sort of worked himself around the edge of the truth like he was afraid he might fall in whereas Bernie started square in the middle of the truth and worked his way out. He had an air of credibility from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

It always took Bernie a long time to finish a story. He sometimes came through the back door to get the proper atmosphere and introduce characters before he could weave in all the parts for the most dramatic finish. His animated construction of the naval battle with Japan was an exceptionally long tale but I was too drunk to go home and not drunk enough to join the brawlers wasting blood on the sidewalk outside the Rainbow Bar & Grill and speckling the right sides of a Desoto and Buick Roadmaster parked too close to the action. I listened to Bernie and drank more.

When he dropped his hands that had been tracing wakes of the light cruisers and destroyers picking up survivors then belched, loudly, so I wouldn't notice the tears in his eyes I knew the gripping account was over. I headed to a single toilet in the rear to relieve myself. The door was locked and from the agonized sounds behind it someone was puking up his toenails. I knew it would be a long wait. I struggled back to the bar, bought Bernie a double and slipped out the front door where I eased my way around two bystanders on the sidewalk trying to get spattered by blood from a big fellow getting the worst of it from wild swings of a young, husky miner. Next day at work, when one of the crew asked if they saw the big fight, they could boast, "We didn't just see it, we were right in the big middle of it."

I had nearly forgotten how badly I needed to pee until I got to a grocery store under the north end of the Elks Hall. I was spread eagled with my hands against the brick wall where gravity produced a steady stream foaming from the lower bricks to a seam in the sidewalk, ponding midway, then spreading to the next section where it meandered out and found its way off the west edge. I was proud of that stream. I was thinking to myself how much it was worth in dollars and cents, mentally calculating the cost of the beer and whiskey that made up the bulk of it when I saw two ladies walking toward me.

They veered off the sidewalk and I heard one giggle and say, "I think that's Johnny Jackson."

The other one snorted "Ugh, if Glen was still town marshal he'd put him in jail and throw away the key." Drunk as I was I knew there was no way in hell I could improve my image with those women so I let nature take its course until my bladder was empty and I felt capable of putting things away.

Printed pages 22–23. "Glen" refers to Glen Archer, foreman, named in several earlier stories, here recalled in an unrelated capacity as a former town marshal.

"Bernie Folds His Sails"

Bernie Soward wasn't just a sailor. He was a miner and a damned good one. Bernie and Harry Larson, lifelong friends, leased the Silver Horde mine in Sunny side district in the 1930s. They ran into a pocket of rich silver ore and got healthy in a short time. Healthy, in mining, is when you recover your investment and have enough left over for a quart of good whiskey.

Bernie was a timberman and part-time mule skinner when I worked at Commodore 5 tunnel. There was a stretch of loose ground where a raise had been driven to an upper level and Bernie was assigned to stull and lag over some 30' of roof. When the job was done and Bernie was taking a breather the foreman came by, looked the timbers over carefully and told the old tar, "That's as nice a job of timbering as I've seen in a long time."

Bernie flipped his cigarette in the mud of a drainage ditch and answered, "You don't have to blow wind in my sails, I always do good work."

In his last days Bernie owned a liquor store, something he had been working toward since he was a young man and he died in that same liquor store which, also, was something he had been working toward since he was a young man.

When we buried Bernie Soward we gathered at the Rainbow Bar & Grill to reminisce and toast the last of the great story tellers. Melvin "Red" Johnson, another damned good miner, turned to me and said "When you bury me all I ask of you bastards is for one of you to tell the preacher that old Red was a good son of a bitch."

If that was good enough for Red it's good enough for me.

Printed page 23.

Third Stool from the Rear

"Whattya think of that drifter they hired last week? Come from Nevada, they told me...Kinky said he worked in a couple o' mines around Silver Peak where they got a union.

"I.D. put him with Ted Duggins in 3 vein his first shift. He was waitin' by the column to pack it to the face while Ted was puttin' the primers away...Ted walks up an' flips the Leyner over his left shoulder then grabs the column with his right arm and starts down the track, yells to the new hand "grab the shoes and blockin' and come on...so here's old Ted packin' somewheres around 250 pounds and this joker struggling behind him with 40 pounds of blocking and column shoes.

"He'll learn a few things from Ted if he sticks around long enough...George was unloading their powder when Ted grabbed the Leyner and column...hell, I've seen him do it a hunnert times...I saw him haul a buzzy up 50 feet of ladder into a stope with the hoses connected and it weren't no chore for him...so George is watchin' this new hand and says he looked like a real asshole for a minute but every mine is different an' I guess in those union mines they have to get help if anything weighs over 50 pounds...he'll learn with Ted that all you have to do is hand him the tools and stay out of his way."

Printed page 24. "I.D." is given no fuller name.

Mine Is Not to Question Why'

He had been under General MacArthur's command in the Phillipines when Japan struck. He was captured by units of the Japanese Army and endured the "Bataan Death March" to a port where they were transported to the Japanese mainland.

Six years after the ordeal on Bataan and two years after repatriation Clarence Martin signed on with Emperius Mining Company to become a miner. I never learned the circumstances that led him to Creede, Colorado but I was just starting a stope from a lower level in the Amethyst Mine and needed a mucker. Glen Archer introduced me to Clarence and asked me to break him in.

There was no breaking in with Clarence. He was no stranger to hard work. As soon as he learned to cope with a carbide lamp on a hardboil hat while wielding a square point shovel to erase a pile of broken rock we were on our way: 80 cans per shift, 20 tons of silver ore hoisted over 200' to the haulage level where muleskinners transported our production to outer ore bins.

We rested on powder boxes at lunch time, using the same carbide lamps for illumination as we arranged our lunch pails on other boxes. My fare was nearly always the same, a thermos of coffee, two sandwiches, cookies or cake and fruit. Clarence might have a couple of raw potatoes with a slice of cabbage one day, a tomato, onions and apple the next. I asked if he couldn't set his alarm a few minutes earlier and have time to fashion a real lunch with sandwiches. "All I dreamed about when I was in that camp in Japan was vegetables," he advised me. "I made up my mind that when I got home, if I ever did, I would have all the vegetables I wanted for the rest of my life."

Glen Archer, the foreman, was appreciative of hard workers and moved Clarence to another level where he didn't have to ride cans. He never complained about being lowered or hoisted on sump buckets but after cheating death so many times as a soldier he plain didn't like hanging on the end of a small cable. I saw him only in passing after that but I asked Paul Weaver, a hoistman who worked with him, if he still carried raw potatoes and cabbage for lunch. Paul said he had also seen carrots and turnips in his pail.

The company was abandoning upper levels of the Amethyst and lowering all the equipment where it could be hauled outside for repairs and then transported to Commodore 5 tunnel where work on two veins was being rapidly expanded. Clarence Martin was with a crew cleaning up in 60 raise and fell 130' to his death.

Wherever you are, Clarence, I hope you have raw potatoes, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, turnips and onions in your lunch bucket each day.

Printed page 25. The title is printed with a closing quotation mark but no opening one, kept as printed; "Phillipines" is printed as shown, a misspelling of Philippines.

Third Stool from the Rear

"I never thought much about dying until I saw Whitey all crumpled up and dust covered on that ladder...seems like they could of had a stretcher and blanket to cover him up...guess they've always carried them out that way but it just doesn't seem right to me.

"Clarence didn't look like that...looked like he'd just gone to sleep or something...didn't have a cut on him that you could see...broke his neck and some ribs on his right side when he hit the bulkhead...guess neither of them had to suffer any but it just wasn't the same seeing Whitey all blown to hell...part of his skull was still stuck to what was left of his hardboil when it came out of the chute.

"I didn't like farmin' but I'm going to pick up my diggers tomorrow and check it to them...I'd rather be hoeing potatoes than go back in that hole and think about Whitey every time I loaded out a round or spit a fuse."

Printed page 26. This vignette follows directly from "Mine Is Not to Question Why," reflecting on Clarence Martin's death alongside an earlier, unnamed-elsewhere death of a miner called Whitey.

Third Stool from the Rear

"Old Archer fired that hotshot from Idaho yesterday."

"Hell he did?"

"Yeah, he caught him crapping in the Albion drift...well, he didn't actually catch him in the act...when he come up on him he was covering it up with both feet like a cat but Glen could smell it and told him to pick up his time.

"I never liked that shifty eyed bastard anyway, always bragging about how much ground he broke in every mine he had been in...he damn sure didn't break any records here...you see that chute pocket he drilled out? Had so many holes in it all he had to do was yell at it and it would have fell in."

Printed page 26.

Third Stool from the Rear

"I hear you're batching again, Bill."

"Nah, I'm eating supper at Pearl's and breakfast ain't no chore."

"When's Ruby coming back?"

"Damned if I know. I don't even know why she left...we've had worse fights than that and she got in some pretty good licks...she told Millie I pulled her hair and kicked her in the belly...hell...I never kicked her or pulled her hair. I clipped her a pretty good one and she fell into the stove but I never kicked her. I had to go to South Fork to get our car...she left it there and the fella in the bus depot said she bought a ticket for Los Angeles...she has an aunt there."

"Hey Bill, the depot agent has a telegram for you, says it's important and wants you to get right down and pick it up."

"Thanks Woody, pour us another while I'm gone."

"You're white as a sheet, Bill, bad news?"

"Ruby was killed in a car wreck in California and someone has to go out to escort her body home."

"Damn, I'm sorry, Bill, how are you fixed for money?"

"I'm hurtin' Jack. Ruby took all our cash and I drew all I had comin'."

"Let's see what we can do for you...hey Woody, Bill's gonna need some money to go bring Ruby back, let's all chip in."

"Thanks fellas, I won't forget it. Can one of you drive me to Monte Vista? I can probably get a Greyhound from there."

"Anyone heard from Bill?"

"Not that I know of...he was supposed to call Gladys so she could arrange for the funeral but she told me she hasn't heard a word from him and it's been over a week."

"Well I'll be damned, look just who walked in the door...you're the warmest looking corpse I've ever seen, Ruby."

"Ah, she was the one sent the telegram, she wanted to come home and didn't have the money so I guess we all been suckered, huh. Now don't any of you worry, we're going to pay back every dime you loaned me, aren't we Ruby? Say, Woody, could you loan me a twenty until payday?"

Printed page 27. Bill and Ruby are given no surnames; Bill's account of striking Ruby is left exactly as printed.

"Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics"

Good trammers were worth their weight in gold to a producing company. Tommy Phillips, foreman, had two top notch trammers that could pull their weight in any mine in the nation. Fred Seyfried averaged 40 tons daily from stopes on 7 and 9 levels. Bill Horning ran a close second but could never quite catch Fred. If Bill pulled 45 tons from the chutes Fred would have 48 tons. If he had an exceptionally good run with 50 tons Fred would manage to bar out 54 tons.

Tommy ran the hoist to bring his crew from the lower levels. First thing he asked Bill each day was his tally on tramming. On this day, late in August, Bill replied, "Nine an' seven."

"Ninety-seven," Tommy gasped, "you must have had nothing but fines, gawd, I can't wait to tell Freddie, he'll never believe it." Bill was fishing his lunch bucket and canteen from the skip and didn't answer.

Next to come up were Hoot Moore and Pat Patten followed by Jack Kehr and Fred. As soon as Fred was clear of the skip Tommy asked him his tally. "I believe I only got thirty-eight today," he replied.

"Old Bill told me he pulled ninety-seven today...he must not have stopped for lunch...I can't remember anyone tramming that many cars."

Fred shook his head, "I can't believe that, hell he was blasting every thirty minutes to an hour."

"I told him you wouldn't believe it," Tommy answered.

When they gathered for the man trip out Tommy yelled to the end car where Bill was perched, "Freddie doesn't believe you trammed ninety-seven cars today, Bill, tell him I'm not kidding, will you?"

"Sure Tommy, I got nine cars before lunch and seven after, that's nine an' seven isn't it Freddie?"

Bill Horning and Fred Seyfried carried on their friendly competition in tramming until the mine closed. Bill was never able to catch Fred and Tommy was still puzzling over Bill's arithmetic.

Printed page 28. "Pat Patten" is confirmed as Gene "Pat" Patten by the roll of top team miners in Part V.

Third Stool from the Rear

"How's Tommy doing?"

"He looks good. They ran some tests on him and decided he didn't have a heart attack...he told me they'd probably release him tomorrow and he thought he'd be back in the hole by Monday.

"Says he won't be going camping with old Carroll again...Carroll took him and Gene to Lost Lakes for a weekend of fishin'...weekend of drinking was more like it...they had nearly a quart left when they headed back so they drank it comin' down Long Canyon...they were drunker than hell when they reached the road and galloped up to Gene's house yelling and waving their hats...woke the kids up and scared Jody...she just got to the window to see what the hell was going on when Gene fell off his horse and was rolling around in the dirt...when she saw he wasn't hurt she come out with his .44 revolver, hooked the front sight in his belly button and pulled the trigger a couple of times before he could take it away from her...he knew she didn't know how to load it but he couldn't remember if he had unloaded it the last time he had it out...sobered him up right fast.

"Tommy nearly crapped his pants...thought she was going to kill them all and that's when he began having chest pains...he said Gene was scared too, sweat was just pouring off him...old Carroll was sitting there with one leg over the saddle horn laughing...when everything settled down Carroll told Tommy he didn't think it was sweat he saw running down Gene's pants legs."

Printed page 29.

Third Stool from the Rear

"Shorty told me the Wintz brothers and Paul Davis made 134 feet last month in that three compartment raise they're driving on the Dean fault. He was pretty pissed off...said he'd rather tape up anybody in the mine than those birds...Alvie is all business and don't like the little fart holding them up...well, he likes to visit and thinks a foreman is supposed to keep contractors in line...Oates and Scooter hung him up by his bib overalls on a stuck steel in the Kanawha drift when he pricked around with them...he tried to tramp them but Crawford thought it was funny as hell.

"Paul's an engineer...know that? Yeah, he's got a degree but would rather mine than run a transit...he mined in Grass Valley before he came to Creede...showed us how to drill a burn cut first crack out of the box. I guess the rock's harder in Grass Valley than it is here an' they don't use anything but three or four hole burns...it's a helluva lot easier than swinging up to drill down holes.

"Shorty said they kept the timber up except for the last 12 feet and he couldn't get to the back 'cause the stulls were so far apart...those long legged buggers earned every inch of it but they won't live long eatin' that smoke...guess they're gonna lease a block of ground on C level when they finish the raise...they better learn to push a pencil faster than that bookkeeper or they'll lose their ass."

Printed page 29.

Third Stool from the Rear

"You see Stanley since the wreck? I saw him last evening...migawd, he looks like he went through a meat grinder...wouldn't wonder but what he lost some of that hide when he got home.

"Didn't hurt Burt none a'tall. He told me they'd been socializing' in the valley and before they knew it is was two o'clock in the morning...they decided to call it a day before their wives sent out a posse. They hit that curve by Masonic Park going' like a bat out of hell, went into a side skid then straight up the inside bank...Burt wouldn't tell me who was driving but it's a fair bet he was behind the wheel.

"Ripped off the left front wheel somewhere along the way before she flipped plumb over and lit topside up...threw Stanley out when she rolled and he was layin' on the bank while Burt rode 'er on down...the lights were still on so he knew the battery was okay...couldn't see past the hood and it wouldn't latch...he banged her a couple of times then rustled up a rock from the ditch to hold it an' all this time old Stanley's layin' there on the hillside wondering where in hell they are and what's happened.

"It's three o'clock by this time and so dark they can only see where the lights are shining on the river but Burt thinks they can drive what's left of the car home so he skids Stanley off the bank and rolls him in the back seat...wanted to put him in front but that door won't stay closed and he sure doesn't want him to fall out again the way he's groaning.

"Guess the engine took right off but all the car wanted to do was go in a circle so 'round and around they went 'til it run out of gas...mailman found them on his way to Creede an' was checkin' them out when a well driller from Monte Vista drove up...he looked at the hole in the road that broken axle made as they spun around and says to the mailman...'couple more feet and I believe they'd have hit water.'

"Those buggers will be on a short chain for a long time."

Printed page 30.