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Coal Dust Is White
A Novel of Ambition and Greed, Love and Lust, Power and Atonement
By IRWIN SAGENKAHN
Abbott Press
Copyright © 2012 Irwin Sagenkahn
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-0573-5
Chapter One
The next five years passed rapidly. In Chicago, Uncle Martin was in failing health, and it took all of Josiah's ability to manage the store. He made many friends. Whatever money he made went to take care of Uncle Martin. Sarah ran the house and looked after Uncle Martin as best as she could, but he was so infirm that they finally had to hire a nurse. Sarah had to work in the store to do her share. Holding everything together was a struggle. Simon was now eleven years old and going to school.
The frequent letters between the two families had now finally dropped off to nothing. The women had been doing the writing, each discussing how difficult adjusting to life in America and meeting new friends was. Of the two families, the Walshes were more enthusiastic because Josiah was learning the grocery business and meeting new customers daily.
However, Elizabeth and John Richards were having a tough struggle. He wasn't making very much money in the mines, and after paying the company store and the rent, there just wasn't much left over. They were hoping for the day when they'd be able to save their pennies and accumulate enough for their own small home. Steve was eleven, and Martha was nine years old.
To help out with the family income, Steve did pick slate during the summer months at the breaker near the colliery where his father worked. He earned sixty-six cents a day separating the unwanted rock, bone, and slate from the chunks of coal. Steve wasn't a tall, big-boned boy, but he was all muscle and hard as nails. He would tell his mother and father, "Someday, I'm going to get you out of all this."
* * *
One day, word that a cave-in had occurred spread like wildfire down the company street. It was a sunny morning in late fall, with cool, crisp air. The women came flying out of the houses like birds do when they've been sitting in a tree and it's disturbed. They wore aprons and ran helter-skelter toward the colliery and shaft where the miners went down into the bowels of the earth. The anxiety of a rock fall challenged these women. They never said a word but would stand in bunches, some tearful, some dry-eyed, but never sobbing until the cage bringing up the injured or dead came to the surface. Then there was a sudden rush to the stretchers, as the men were carried to the ambulance horse carriage that would either take them to the hospital or their homes for burial.
When the cage came up this day, Elizabeth Richards, nervously twisting her apron, was in the group of women. The word was passed swiftly and quietly, "It's Bill Thomas and John Richards, both crushed in a fall of rock."
Elizabeth quickly rushed to her husband's side and pulled the blanket away from his face. She fell prostrate over his body, and hugging his limp head and covering his misshapen face with kisses, she sobbed, "Oh no, John, no, John; it can't be."
Three other women finally went over to Elizabeth and pulled her away from John's body. They walked back to their house to help handle the grief involved with the accident. "Now you've got to be brave, Elizabeth," they told her. "You've got two children who'll be home for lunch shortly. You don't want them to see you like this, do you?"
Elizabeth sat on the couch in the gray living room with the pink curtains she had sewed. She looked far out in space and said repeatedly, "What's the use of it all? What's the use of it all?"
The other women broke the news of John Richards's death to both Steve and Martha when they came home from school for their noon lunch. Martha ran crying to her mother's skirts, but Steve never said a word nor shed a tear. Instead, he walked out of the house, up the street to the colliery, and stood by the cage that had brought his father's lifeless form to the surface of the earth. He walked over to the horse-drawn carriage that still held his father's body. He demanded to see the damage the fallen rock had done to his father's head and face. He wanted to see the bloody, misshapen broken skull. What he saw stirred all the anger and pent-up hatred stored within, and he coldly stared around him. Unshaken, he walked back to the house, saying to himself, "Someday I'm going to get even for this!"
* * *
After the funeral, it became apparent to Elizabeth that she could no longer live in the company house. She had no choice but to look for a job as a domestic, which wasn't too hard to find at the time.
The coal company found her a job as a housekeeper for one of their company's minor officers, Henry Gillis, the same man who'd met the family at the train station when they'd first arrived five years earlier. He had a nice home and a furnished basement. When Elizabeth was interviewed for the job, he said to her, "You can live in our furnished basement with your two children. That way, you can be with them and they can continue their schooling. The basement has two small bedrooms and of course you can use our kitchen for your meals."
Elizabeth had no alternative but to accept.
When Josiah Walsh heard of John Richards's death, he wrote to Elizabeth urging her and the children to move to Chicago to live with them. His letter said in part, "I'm quite sure that we can get you a job, and at least we'll all be together again."
But Elizabeth was much too ashamed of her fate and never answered the letter. She didn't respond to the next three letters Josiah wrote, and all correspondence ceased.
Chapter Two
Josiah wanted to go to Coal City to visit Elizabeth and the children, but the pressure of his own economic plight prevented him from going. The families, who had known each other all of their lives and who had come to America with such high hopes, gradually drifted apart.
In 1900, ten years after the Walsh and the Richard families had come to America, both Simon and Steve were sixteen years old. Each boy was graduating from high school, Simon in Chicago and Steve in Coal City. Josiah and Sarah often talked about Elizabeth and the children. But each letter Josiah wrote came back unopened. The only reason, he thought, was that she might have remarried. Except for an occasional conversation between husband and wife, the Richards family ceased to exist for the Walsh family.
At that time, soon after Simon's graduation, Uncle Martin finally died. The family grieved, but his passing did relieve a great amount of tension and financial distress.
"Now," Josiah said to Sarah, "maybe we can take a vacation on the train to Coal City. What a surprise it would be if we saw Elizabeth."
Before the plans could be completed, Josiah took sick with terrible headaches. He had them constantly during Uncle Martin's illness and had diagnosed his own trouble as the pressure of the grocery business. When the family doctor did finally make a diagnosis, Josiah had a brain tumor.
* * *
In about six months, he was dead. Sarah was beside herself.
But Simon said to her, "Mother, I'll work in the store with you. Between the two of us, we should be able to make a good living. I'm out of high school now, so we don't have to worry about me going to school any more. I wasn't going to go to college anyway but would probably have a job someplace. It will be better for both of us."
Reluctantly, Sarah agreed. It wasn't what she wanted; she'd had secret hopes of sending Simon to college. They both worked in the grocery store they now owned and managed to make a comfortable living.
* * *
In Coal City, Elizabeth had developed consumption. The five years of living with her family in the furnished cellar had taken its toll. Although the rooms were clean, they were damp in winters and summers. She finally passed away not long after Steve had finished high school at sixteen. He was left with his fourteen-year-old sister, Martha.
After the funeral, Steve approached his mother's employer and said, "Mr. Gillis, I'm sixteen years old now and finished with high school. I want you to get me a job in the mines, so I can rent one of the company houses again. My sister can go to school and take care of the house." He showed Mr. Gillis his huge hands, already scarred and calloused from picking slate. "I want to work in the mine."
Gillis, a minor mine official, said that he would do what he could. A week later, he told Steve it was all set up. "Quite by accident, your old home is available. It's the only house we have right now. I don't know if you'll like it."
Steve coldly said, "Well take it and move in immediately. I'll be ready for work tomorrow morning!"
* * *
Steve matured in 1902. He had been working in the mines for over a year when the great Anthracite Coal strike of 1902 occurred. As soon as he'd begun work as a miner, he'd realized the only way for him to rise above his lot was to become a union activist. He was young, brilliant, and a dedicated worker. His father had been killed in the mines, and his mother had died indirectly from the hazards of coal. This pent-up hatred built up such energy within his young body that nothing or nobody dared stand in his way. He dug coal with a vengeance, attended union meetings with a vengeance, and lived with a vengeance. When mining coal, his output was greater than any of the men working with him; at union meetings, he was outspoken in his complaints to his union leaders about supporting safer working conditions and higher pay; and when out on a Saturday night at a local bar, he was the magnet around whom his fellow miners congregated. He was developing his leadership skills.
He also decided to further his education by attending night school, taking business and law courses. The winter of 1902 was extremely rugged without work. Though Steve was unemployed, he wanted to see the fight through to the finish. Although he was only eighteen years old at the time, he rallied the men to rise to the challenges. His fiery speeches told them of his own family's struggle and of how he'd lost his father and mother.
"Men," he shouted, "too many of us have lost family members in mine accidents that should never have happened. We risk our lives on a daily basis, working in unsafe conditions that need to be fixed, and besides, we are underpaid for the type of work we do. We have rights that need to be addressed!" Steve was directing his wrath at Bill Rogers, one of the young union officials. Looking directly at Bill, he shouted in anger, "You do not fight for your men!"
Steve Richards pushed the men, saying that the only way to win this struggle was to hold on to their ideals. President Theodore Roosevelt finally had to mediate, and the confrontation was ended. When the strike was over, Steve had risen to new heights and was respected by all the men. He was a tough nut to crack, and nobody dared cross him.
* * *
In the spring of 1902, Martha graduated from high school. Steve had never noticed her as a grown-up before. But when he attended graduation exercises, he noticed she was a fairly attractive young lady. She was nicely developed with firm, round breasts, but she had much of the same hatred for life that Steve exhibited. His discussions of their plight and of his plans had influenced her thinking. Besides she loved, respected, and admired her older brother. He had been her mentor ever since their father's death. The Walsh family of Chicago had faded from both Steve and Martha's minds, as if they had never existed in the first place.
Steve was very active. He worked a full twelve-hour shift in the mines, attended night school, and attempted to become a union official representing the men.
Martha was very busy attending a local business college. She had more freedom and began dating. She met Bill Rogers, a young man who worked in the mines. He was about ten years her senior. They fell in love and decided to keep the fact they dated a secret because they feared Steve's reaction.
Bill told her one night, "Sweetheart, you know that I'm very active in the union, and I believe there's going to be a contest between your brother and myself. Maybe it would be better if he knew about us. It might eliminate some grief and bitterness. He's a very ambitious young man and will stop at nothing to gain his goal."
Martha disagreed with this approach. She knew the union fight involving Bill and her brother was the primary reason for their secrecy. The friction between Rogers and Steve had reached such a pitch that Steve did nothing but talk about that dirty bastard.
When Steve learned that the men might vote in Bill Rogers again as their union representative because he was older, more mature, and better able to talk to the company officials concerning their problems, he decided to act. Two days before the election, Steve met with two of his closest friends—two big, tough miners—and said to them, "I want you two to give Rogers a beating he won't forget. Don't kill him, but put him in the hospital so he won't be around for the election. That way, the men will think he's run out on them. Don't let him see your faces. Hit him from behind first. Don't bother to see me until after the election."
Steve's two goons did what he had asked. They came close to killing Bill Rogers, rendering him unconscious for four days with a skull fracture. When the election was held, Steve had his underground spread a rumor that Bill Rogers had left town when the campaign got too hot. His scheming worked, and Steve was elected in a landslide.
When Bill Rogers finally regained consciousness, he never said a word about the attack to anybody. He assumed Martha had trapped him because the beating had taken place after one of their dates. After he had recovered sufficiently and was released from the hospital, he quietly left town. He never said good-bye to Martha. Bill Rogers felt he was lucky to escape with his life.
* * *
Martha was beside herself for a month. She inquired all over about Bill Rogers's whereabouts. If anybody knew anything, they wouldn't talk. When she finally told her brother about her affair with Bill, she asked him, "Do you know where Bill could have gone or what could have happened to him?"
Steve answered with a shrug of his shoulders, "I could have told you he was a no-good bastard. He just ran away at the first prospect of a fight."
The matter was now closed but not forgotten. Martha began a slow withdrawal into a shell from which she never recovered. She began molding a hatred for her fellow human beings that was nurtured by Steve's own unwholesome attitude. When Steve got the union job, she began work as his secretary, staying close to him. If she suspected anything about her brother having anything to do with Bill's disappearance, she never spoke about it.
While Steve was going to night school, he had built up a close friendship with a Dan Connors. Dan was taking the same prelaw course as Steve. But Dan didn't have to support himself. His father was a miner, and his mother did housework by the day. Dan's parents knew they couldn't improve their own lives, but they had great respect for the law and wanted their son to be a lawyer. By the time Dan finally became a lawyer, he had built a firm friendship with Steve.
While going to college, Dan began dating a girl from a very wealthy family in Coal City, whose father had a great deal of influence. When Dan finally received his law degree, he got married, with a built-in law practice ready for him. His father-in-law's friends practically assured his way into a high-income bracket.
While Dan was moving ahead, Steve was becoming a more and more influential union official.
* * *
In 1910 on a cold, wintry night, Dan called Steve on the phone. Dan said, "There's something important that has come up that needs to be discussed. Can you come over with Martha and we'll have dinner?"
Steve said to Martha, "Dan would like the both of us over for dinner tonight—something urgent. Can you make it?"
She looked up and nodded her head.
That night, Steve and Martha went to the Connors home for a candlelit steak dinner. Afterward, the men went into the drawing room, lit cigars, and had Cherry Heering Liqueur. While the men were alone sipping their drinks, the women were in the dining room conversing.
Dan finally said, "Steve, I got you over here for a reason. How'd you like to go into the coal mining business—be an operator yourself? You know all the ropes from the miner's angle, and I believe you can handle the management end. You seem very capable in your negotiating sessions."
Steve didn't say anything, but he thought in dead silence. He had known that one day an opportunity would come facilitating his rise to the top. Representing the men in the union was one thing; he could succeed that way, but it would be a long, tough haul. This was something different. The men all thought he was dedicated in his concern for them. But his motivation was only mortal and went as far as his own self-interest and preservation. He thought the men might not respect him anymore, but frig the men; they didn't mean a good goddamn. I'm interested in one person, Steve Richards.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Coal Dust Is White by IRWIN SAGENKAHN Copyright © 2012 by Irwin Sagenkahn. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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