Whistling Past the Graveyard (8 page)

“‘Weren’t your fault,’ I told him. But Hack shook his head. ‘I ain’t saying it is. And I ain’t losing sleep ‘cause I feel guilty about being on
this
side of the grave when all my family was taken by death. No—the bosses killed all those men—killed my own brothers, two of my cousins. Killed ‘em sure as if they blew the mountain down with dynamite. Killed ‘em by digging too deep in a played-out mine. Killed ‘em by greed, and that’s an evil thing. Greed’s one of the bad sins, Mary Ruth, one of them seven deadly sins, and it made my brothers sell their souls to old Scratch himself.’”

“I didn’t know Granddad was so religious. He never went to church when I was a kid. Not even on Easter and Christmas.”

“I suppose,” said Granny, “that he lost the knack. Seen a lot of it after the collapse, just like I seen a lot of folks suddenly hear the preacher’s call before the dust even settled. Since then, though…well ain’t no one in this holler don’t believe in the Devil anymore, so the unbelievers have started believing in God by default.”

“Was there an investigation?” asked Joshua. “Did the authorities ever determine that the mining company was at fault?”

“Investigation?” Granny laughed. “You got a city boy’s sense of humor, son. No, there weren’t no investigation. And even if someone wanted to investigate, there weren’t no way to do it.”

“Why not? I’ve read a lot about mining, and a structural engineer could do a walk-through look at the shoring systems, the drill angles, the geologist’s assessment of the load bearing walls of the mountain, and—”

“No one’s ever going to do any of that.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause they’d have to cut through a million tons of rock to take that look.”

“They could just examine the areas dug out when the bodies were removed.”

Granny studied him for a moment. “Your granddad didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

She sighed. “Those dead men are still there, son. The company never dug them out.
Nobody
ever dug them out. That whole mountain’s a tomb for all those good men.”

Joshua stood up and stared at the darkness again, looking toward Balder Rise. The wind blew from that direction, carrying with it the soft moan. “God,” he said softly.

“Oh, God didn’t have nuthin’ to do with what happened that day,” said Granny. “Your granddad spoke true when he said that it were the evil greed of the mining company that brought the ceiling down. They dug too deep.”

“That’s something Granddad said a couple of times, and now you’ve said it twice. What’s that mean, exactly?”

“The mining company was fair desperate to stay in business even though most of the coal had already been took from old Balder. They kept pushing and pushing to find another vein. Pushed and pushed the men, too, tempting ‘em with promises of bonuses if they found that vein. Understand, boy, miners are always poor. It’s really no kind of life. Working down there in the dark, bad air and coal dust, it’s like you’re digging your own grave.”

The moan on the wind came again, louder, more insistent. The black trees seemed to bend under the weight of it.

“The company kept the pressure on. Everybody needed that vein, too, because the company
owned
everything. They owned the bank, which means they held the mortgage on ever’body’s house and that’s the same like holding the mortgage on ever’body’s souls.” She shook her head. “No, a lot of folks thought the Devil himself was whispering in the ear of ever’body, from the executives all the way down to the teenage boys pushing the lunch trolleys. Infecting them good-hearted and God fearing men with their own greed. Spreading sin like a plague. Makin’ ‘em dig too hard and too deep, with too much greed and hunger.”

“Digging too deep, though—you keep saying that. Do you mean that they over-mined the walls, or—?”

“No, son,” she said, “that ain’t what Hack meant, and it ain’t what I mean.”

“Then what—?”

The moan came again, even louder. So loud that Joshua stood up and placed his palms on the rail so he could lean head and shoulders out into the night. Granny saw him shiver.

“You cold?” she asked, though it was a warm night.

“No,” he said, without turning. “That sound…”

Granny waited.

“…it sounds almost like a person,” Joshua continued. “It sounds like someone’s hurt out there.”

“Hurt? Is that really what it sounds like to you?”

“Well, it’s something like that. I can
hear
the pain.” He shot her a quick look. “Does that sound silly? Am I being a stupid city boy here, or—?”

“You don’t sound stupid at all, son. That’s one of the smartest things you’ve said. You know what’s happening?” she asked. “The city’s falling clean off you.”

He studied her.

“It’s true,” she said. “Your daddy might have been born in the city and you might have been born and raised there, too, but you still got the country in you. You still got some of the hills in you. You get that from ol’ Hack, and I bet he was always country no matter how many years he lived in the city—am I right or am I right?”

“You’re right, Granny,” said Joshua. “No one would ever have mistaken Granddad for anything except what he was. He…loved these mountains. He talked about how beautiful they were. How they smelled on a spring morning. How the birds would have conversations in the trees. How folks were simple—less complicated—but they weren’t stupid. How he wished he could have stayed.”

Granny closed her eyes for a moment, remembering Hack. Remembering pain. Remembering the horror of that collapse, and all the things that died that day. Those men, her love, this town.

“Is something wrong?” asked Joshua.

She opened her eyes and rocked back so she could look up at him. “Wrong?”

The moan cut through the air again. Louder still.

“I suppose you could say that nuthin’s been
right
since that mine collapsed,” she said, and Granny could hear the pain in her own voice. Almost as dreadful as the pain in that moan. “Close your eyes again and listen to that sound. Don’t tell me what it ain’t. Listen until you can tell me what it is.”

Joshua closed his eyes and leaned once more on the rail, his head raised to lift his ears into the wind.

After a full minute, he said, “It sounds like a person…and that clinking sound…that’s definitely something metal.”

She waited.

Joshua laughed. “If it was Christmas, I’d say it was Old Marley and his chain.”

When Granny did not laugh, Joshua opened his eyes and turned to her.

“That’s from the—”

“I know what it’s from, son. And it ain’t all that far from the mark.” She sucked in some smoke. “Not a chain, though. Listen and tell me I’m wrong.”

He listened.

“No, you’re right. It’s, um…sharper than that. But the echoes are making it hard to figure it out. Almost sounds like a bunch of little clinks, almost at once. That’s why I thought it was a chain; you know, the links clinking as it blew in the wind.”

“But it ain’t a chain,” she said, “and it ain’t blowing in the wind. Ain’t echoes, either.”

There was a stronger gust of wind and the moan was much louder now.

Joshua pushed off the rail and walked down into the yard. He stood with his hands cupped around his ears to catch every nuance of the sound. Granny dropped her cigarette butt into the empty coffee tin and lit another.

The moaning was so loud now that anyone could hear it. So loud that anyone could understand it, and Granny watched for the moment when Joshua understood. She’d seen it so many times. With friends, with her own daughter—who screamed and then ran inside the house to begin packing up her clothes and her babies. She hadn’t come back.

Granny had seen a parade of people come through, stopping as Hack had stopped, wanting to say goodbye. Only one of them ever came back. Norm McPhee wandered back to the mountains after spending the last fourteen years in a bottle somewhere in Georgia. He came back to the holler, back to Balder, back to Granny’s yard, and he stood there for an hour, his eyes filled with ghosts.

Then Norm had walked into the woods, found himself a quiet log to sit on, drank the rest of his bottle of who-hit-John, took the pistol from his pocket, and blew his brains all over the new blossoms on a dogwood tree.

Granny smoked her cigarette and wondered what Hack Tharp’s grandson would do, because she could see his body language changing. He was slowly standing straighter. His hands fell slowly from behind his ears. His eyes were wide, and his mouth formed soundless words as he sought to speak the thoughts that his senses were planting in his head.

He turned to her. Sharp and quick, but his mouth wasn’t ready to put voice to the thought that Granny could now
see
in the young man’s eyes.

“I can hear them,” he said at last.

Them.

“Yes,” she said.

“It’s not just one sound, and it’s not an animal. There are a
lot
of them.”

“Yes,” Granny said again.

Something glistened on Joshua’s face. Was it sweat?

“Granddad said that forty-nine people died that day. Mostly men, a few kids.”

“Yes,” she said once more.

“All of them digging down in the earth,” said Joshua, and his voice sounded different. Distant, like he was talking to himself. Distant, like the wind. “All of them, digging like crazy.” His eyes glistened. “What did Granddad say? You just told me… That those men were so obsessed with earning that bonus that they went crazy, picking and digging like the Devil was whipping them.”

“And then that whole mountain just up and fell,” agreed Granny softly.

“It killed them fast. Killed them before they could get with God.”

She nodded.

“Like the mouth of Hell opened up and swallowed those boys,” Joshua said, his voice thick, his eyes filled with bad, bad pictures. “God.”

“I already said it,” whispered Granny. “God didn’t have nuthin’ to do with what happened.”

The moans were constant now. The voices clear and terrible. The metallic clinks distinct.

Joshua laughed. Too quick and too loud. “Oh…come
on
! This is ridiculous. Granny, I don’t mean any disrespect, but…come on. You can’t expect me to believe any of this.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

That wiped the smile off his face.

“Granddad left because of this sound, didn’t he?”

Granny didn’t bother to answer that.

The moans answered it.

The clank of metal on rock answered it.

“No,” said Joshua. “You want me to believe that they’re still there, still down there in the dark, still…digging?”

Granny smoked her cigarette.

“That’s insane,” he said, anger in his voice now. “They’re dead! They’ve been dead for years. Come on, Granny, it’s insane. It’s stupid.”

“Son,” she said, “I ain’t told you none of that. I ain’t told you nuthin’ but to listen to the wind and tell me what
you
think that is.”

The voices on the wind were filled with such anger, such pain.

Such hunger.

The incessant clanks of pickaxes against rock were like punches, and Joshua actually yielded a step backward with each ripple of strikes. As if those pickaxes were hitting him. More wetness glistened on his face.

“Granny,” he said in a hollow voice. “Come on…”

Granny rocked in her rocker and smoked her cigarette.

“All these years?” asked Joshua, and she could hear how fragile his voice was. It had taken three weeks of the sound before Hack had up and left. A lot of folks played their TV or radio loud and late to try and hide the sound.

One by one, people left the mountain. Took some only months; took others years.

Joshua Tharp stood in the yard and winced each time the wind blew.

He won’t last the night,
she thought.
He’ll be in his car and heading back to the city before moonrise.

“All these years…digging…”

His eyes were suddenly wild.

“Has…has…the sound been getting
louder
all these years?”

Granny nodded. “Every night.”

“’Every night,’” echoed Joshua. He stood his ground, not knocked back by the ring of the pickaxes this time. Granny thought that either he had found his nerve or he had lost it entirely.

“I ‘spect one of these days they’ll dig theyselves out of that hole.” She paused. “Out of Hell.”

The picks rang in the night.

Again and again.

Then there was a cracking sound. Rock breaking off. Or breaking open.

Joshua and Granny listened.

No more sounds of pickaxes.

There were just the moans.

Louder now. Clearer.

So much clearer.

“God…” whispered Joshua.

“God had nuthin’ to do with the collapse,” said Granny. “And I expect he’s got nuthin’ to do with this.”

The moans rode the night breeze.

So loud and clear.

Author’s Note on “Flint and Steel”

Max Brooks wrote one of the landmark zombie novels of all time,
World War Z.
I know Max and he’s a cool cat and a talented writer. When he reached out and asked if I wanted to write a story for an anthology he was editing, I said sure before I even asked what it was. Turns out he was not editing a zombie book. Max was editing an anthology of novellas set in the world of GI Joe. Yeah,
that
GI Joe.

Understand, when I was a kid (I’m older than Max) GI Joe was twelve inches high, fought in World War II, and hadn’t even gotten his legendary kung-fu grip. I’d never played with the smaller and more sci-fi Joe characters. So I wound up getting a ton of toys and comics in the mail, and sat like a happy, overgrown kid playing with them and learning about the world of the Joes, while binge-watching the cartoons. I had a blast…and it was work related so, you know, it wasn’t me having a second childhood. Ahem.

Max did not want kid stories, though. He wanted edgy, weird-science action thrillers. So that’s what I wrote.