A methane gas explosion has ripped through the mine, collapsing the shaft where I’ve been working and rendering me unconscious. When I come to, I find that I am bleeding profusely and the stabbing pain in my extremities tells me that I have suffered multiple fractures. Light still shines from the headlamp on my mining helmet, though, and searching the darkness, I see that my shift mates have not been as lucky: they are buried deep beneath the rubble of the decimated shaft. Had I not gone back to grab a pick from the coal car, I would have surely suffered the same fate. My only hope is to survive long enough for the brave men of the mine rescue team to find and evacuate me safely out of this hell hole.

At least that was the situation I was envisioning as I lay in the trampled underbrush of a makeshift tunnel, my head resting on a loose slab of coal. I’d been recruited by my father, who was in charge of the mine rescue program, to act as one of the “victims,” and, as always, I was hoping for a worst-case scenario. Thank God you’re here, I’d think as a rescuer checked my limp wrist for any sign of a pulse. Quick! There’s no time to lose: fit me with a gas mask before I draw my last breath. Oh, and while you’re at it, you might as well patch my eye and wrap my head in compression bandages. A sling or a splint on at least one major appendage would also be a nice touch, and if there’s any chance of being fully immobilized, I’d love a ride out on that stretcher of yours.

***

As a thirteen-year-old, I may have let my imagination run wild during practices, but I was well aware of the risks involved with working in a coal mine. A few years earlier, in the spring of 1970, a mining accident had nearly claimed my father, and he was fortunate to have escaped with only a crushed leg that was reconstructed with a series of steel pins and rods.

When I first became a regular fixture around the mine at the age of seven, I didn’t possess this healthy respect. Having already attained the level of Fire Boss, and well on his way to becoming a Pit Boss, my father would sometimes allow me to accompany him to work on the weekends. While he was in his office doing paperwork, I’d hang around the washhouse, among the dimly lit rows of metal lockers and cinder blocks wallpapered with coal-smudged Playboy centerfolds, visiting with the miners who had just come off shift. Masked by a thick layer of coal dust, with only the whites of their eyes and their remaining teeth showing, the men were unrecognizable, their voices indistinguishable, and it wasn’t until they emerged fresh-faced from the showers that I was able to place their names.

Being in the company of these ragtag miners, I was transported into my own version of Alice in Wonderland. It was, to me, a fantastical world, populated with madcap characters speaking nonsensical jabberwocky in foreign accents. No tea was ever served at their party, but there was plenty of rye whisky to be had, stored in the corners of their lockers in stainless-steel flasks. I sat next to them while they snapped wet towels at one another and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, listening intently as the room filled with their fascinating tales of life underground.

Every time my father came to collect me, he was magically transformed into a grinning Cheshire Cat, responding good-naturedly to the many whimsical questions I had for him. Why, sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. The only time his mood changed was when I expressed my desire to follow him down the rabbit hole. “The mine is dark and dangerous,” he’d say. There’d be an ominous tone to his voice, the sort you might adopt when warning a child against playing with matches or talking to strangers. “It’s not a place for little kids.”

“But I want to work with you someday.”

My father would look at me and sigh. “Not if I can help it, you won’t. There’s a heck of a lot of better things that you can do with your life.”

One particular day, though, as we drove home in his work truck, I refused to take no for an answer, and when my incessant pestering stretched his patience to the limit, he snapped at me. “Jeez!” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not taking you down into the mine.” He reached over and turned off the radio. “You got that? It’s just not a safe place.”

After that, except for the creaking of the rusty seat springs whenever the truck hit a pothole, the cab went silent, and so I figured that I’d better change the subject. “How come there aren’t any pictures of Mom at work?” I asked.

“Pictures? What kind of pictures?”

“Like the ones in the washhouse.”

My father chuckled. “Oh, those pictures. I guess your mother’s a bit too camera shy for that kind of thing.”

On again went the radio, and, drumming his palms against the steering wheel, my father hummed along with Glen Campbell singing about being a lineman for the county, but it wasn’t until Tammy Wynette was halfway through her D-I-V-O-R-C-E that he finally spoke again. “How about this?” he said. “What do you say I take you down into the mine next weekend? But you have to promise not to say anything to your mother, because if she finds out, I’m a dead man.” He peered at me out of the corner of his eye and winked. “It’s just between you and me. Nobody else. Deal?”

I bounced up and down on the cracked Naugahyde seat. “Deal,” I told him, adding that his secret was safe with me. Then I drew my fingers across my mouth, zipping my lips shut.

***

The following Saturday morning my father took me to the lamphouse and outfitted me with a miner’s helmet, and after donning his own, he grabbed a safety lamp and led me toward the No. 2 mine. When we reached the entrance, he switched on my headlamp, illuminating the massive timber beams lining the gaping black hole. “OK, kiddo, let’s go check it out,” he said, giving me a gentle shove from behind. “Lead the way.”

Step through the looking-glass!

The reinforced ceiling and walls quickly closed in, smothering me, and I was forced to crouch in order to keep my balance along the uneven, sloping ground. The fresh spring air soon turned acrid, and a fine dusting of coal invaded my lungs and permeated my skin, as if the oppressive darkness were digesting me, swallowing me whole.

My father shuffled slowly and deliberately behind me. “Had enough yet?” he asked. Then I stepped into a puddle, and when the resulting splash released a scattering of rodents, my cupped hand failed to muffle my high-pitched, girlish shriek, and I collapsed whimpering into the grimy wetness.

My father’s laughter echoed down the shaft, and his dentures lit up in the dark. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

I stepped through the Looking-Glass

Now I’ve fallen on my ass

This was supposed to be such fun.

Oh my! I’m in a muddle

Soaking wet in this puddle

The time has come to turn and run!

***

When the rescue team appeared, their helmeted and gas-masked heads bobbing in time with the clanging oxygen tanks strapped to their backs, I flailed my arm feebly to alert them of impending danger. Blood pressure dropping rapidly, I thought, my eyelids fluttering as the captain conducted his safety checks. Losing consciousness. Must…hold…on. Once the all-clear was given, one of the team members checked my pulse with one hand while retrieving an index card from his jacket pocket and handing it to me with the other. DISLOCATED RIGHT SHOULDER, the card read. SLIGHT HEAD CONTUSION.

That’s it? A bum shoulder and a bump on the noggin? I flipped the card over, searching for any mention of the types of major injuries I’d been rehearsing for the last hour, but found nothing. Being the boss’s son, I’d been hoping for a meatier role, something that I could really sink my teeth into. A compound fracture or a damaged spinal cord would have been nice, perhaps with some internal bleeding on the side. But what was done, was done. I still had a job to do, and after reminding myself that there are no small parts, only small actors, I shook off my initial disappointment, determined to turn this bit part into the best performance of my life.

After checking for a possible concussion, the rescuers bandaged my head wound and wrapped my disabled arm in a sling, securing it tightly against my chest. Each procedure was punctuated by a series of comforting gestures designed to keep my spirits up. You’re lucky to be alive, I imagined them telling me with their supportive head nods and assuring hand pats. Oh, sure, I was battered and bruised, but having stared down death and survived its most vicious gut punch, I would now live to see another day. You must have horseshoes up your ass, their eyes seemed to say.

The only line of dialogue occurred near the end of the scene when I went off script and improvised, asking the team to finish off their rescue mission in style by heroically carrying me out on the stretcher. Their breathing rhythmic and precise, the rescuers momentarily considered my request before turning away, stone-faced, their silent indifference translating to “Sorry, bud, but you’re shit out of luck on that one.”

“Close-up on the kid’s face, the anguish, the horror, annnd…cut!” the director residing in my mind’s eye said. “Magnificent work, pure genius. All right, everybody, take five. That’s a wrap.”

***

The horn sounded, signaling the end of practice, and while returning to the mine rescue station, I felt a slight tugging sensation coming from the back of my right shoulder. Figuring that a pebble had somehow lodged itself under the triangle bandage, I asked Eddie Latvala to check it out. Eddie was the youngest member of the team, and I was under strict orders never to address him as “Mr. Latvala.”

“Eddie,” he’d command, the way you might when teaching a dog to “sit” or “shake a paw.” “It’s Eddie. Mr. Latvala makes it sound as if I belong in an old-folks home or something.” Upon correcting myself, he’d smile and rub the top of my head, saying, “That’s a good boy,” but always stopped short of giving me a good scratch behind the ears or rewarding me with a Milk-Bone.

“Turn around so I can have a look-see,” Eddie said, and after releasing the top knot of my sling, he lifted my T-shirt. “Your shoulder’s gibbled, all right, but it’s not from a pebble. There’s a friggin’ wood tick munching away back here. Give me a second, and I’ll take care of that little bastard for you.”

Eddie reached into his shirt pocket and took out his cigarettes, tamping the deck twice against his palm before lighting a fresh one with the pack of matches that he dug out of the tinfoil wrapping. Inhaling deeply, he narrowed his eyes and extended the cigarette toward me. “Want a puff?” he asked, and when I held out my hand, he cuffed me on the back of the head. “Don’t be crazy. I was just kidding around. Your dad would shoot you and me both if I gave you a smoke.”

I apologize for the cuff,

But it seems as though you’ve called my bluff.

I was just giving guff,

And as they say, “Enuf’s enuf!”

If you took a single puff,

Your father would be in a huff.

Then we’d both be looking ruff,

So quit trying to act so tuff!

Then he struck another match, and, after extinguishing it between his thumb and forefinger, he instructed me to hold still, adding, “Dr. Eddie is about to perform an operation.”

Gibbled, for sure,

But I have the cure:

Surgery without a cleaver!

You’ll be fine,

Without any sign

Of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

“Come on out of there, you little son of a bitch,” Eddie said, brushing the hot tip against the tick’s rear end. “That’s right, come to Papa.” Once the head was completely clear of the skin’s surface, he flicked the tick onto the floor, where it lay on its back with its legs squirming in the air. “There, that should do the trick. Go ahead and give it a good squish. Kill the sucker dead.”

I gave my shoulder a good rub. “No,” I said. “It’s OK, let him go.” I didn’t think the tick deserved to die, and, if anything, a good scare was probably all he needed to learn his lesson. After all, he really wasn’t to blame. Like me, the only thing he could be considered guilty of was sticking his nose somewhere that it didn’t belong.

– Michael McGrath

Author’s Note: “Getting the Shaft” is from my collection of humorous personal essays that I refer to as Tales from the Velveeta Underground.