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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504915915 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 06/15/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 364 |
| File size: | 512 KB |
About the Author
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Trapped Under Coal Valley
By Terry Brazier
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Terry BrazierAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5049-1592-2
CHAPTER 1
July 1903 Coal Valley, Illinois
Seth's eyes nervously searched the surrounding hills for any sign of movement. The July afternoon sun baked the nearby bricks lying in the drying area, and the air was humid with just a bare hint of a breeze. Seth's short shirtsleeves were soaking wet with perspiration from wiping his forehead. His wet sleeves had begun to cling to his armpits giving off a ripe odor of sausage and limburger cheese from his lunch mixed with his crusted perspiration.
He knelt down and pried the foliage apart from the tangled weeds circling a cluster of rocks near the brick drying area. The weeds gently swayed like the delicate fingers of a ballet dancer. His hand fell upon a squirming, furry object; and he felt the tongue of the creature on his palm. A small squeak permeated the thick afternoon air. Seth fondly grabbed the creature's body and slowly stroked its underside – more squeaks.
Seth asked in a soft voice so no one would hear, "Have you been a good boy, Albert?"
The rat stared up at Seth and seemed to understand. At least Seth thought so, and the affirmative nod of Albert to Seth's question further reinforced Seth's belief.
Seth gave Albert a hunk of leftover cheese from his lunch and placed him back in the small depression within the cavity between the rocks. He replaced the leaves and branches to camouflage Albert's hiding place once more.
In a loving voice he said, "Take your afternoon nap, Albert, and I'll get you on the way home tonight."
Seth Jessup was fourteen years old. He was small for his age. He wore his brown hair long over his ears until his dad decided it was time to have it cut. His dad performed the trimming duties with a pair of sheers his father had used on him as a boy. His most distinguishing characteristic was his eyeglasses that sat atop his rather beakish nose and slightly magnified his bright brown, intelligent looking eyes. He had long since got used to the other boys calling him four eyes. He'd just remark, "All the better to see you with; four eyes are definitely better than two."
He had quit school to work in the brickyard. The company was hiring anyone that wanted to work including kids that lied about their age but looked like they could handle the physical demands of the job. The company employed over 300 people. In less than one year, St. Louis would be the site for the World's Fair; and the Coal Valley Press Brick Company had gotten the contract to furnish all the bricks for construction of the structures needed. Twelve kilns were operating at full capacity. It was hot and dirty work but not unlike most of the jobs in the brickyard when by the end of the day, a worker might lose several pounds to perspiration but gain five percent of their body's weight in wet clay clinging to their limbs and torso. His job was that of an off-bearer, someone who removed the filled moulds from the moulding table, took them to the drying area, removed the bricks from the moulds, and placed them on a level bed of sand. Then he would return the mould to the table and wet and sand it to receive the next brick from the brick moulder.
The temperer, Carl, was delivering a load of clay from the pug mill or soaking pit. This was where the clay was prepared to the correct consistency with the help of mules walking the endless path around the mill.
Delivery of the clay to the soaking pit came from a bluff nestled in the hills about one-half mile southwest of the brickyard. A steam shovel was excavating the shale pit located at the base of the rolling hills that made up the topography in the area. In the early days, men used a pick and shovel to excavate the clay before mule and wagon transported it over dirt roads to the pug mill. Truck transport was beginning to replace animal power. The roadway was hilly, twisting like a snake and full of potholes with shale trucks too heavy to be traveling them.
After checking on Albert, Seth had just returned the mould to the moulding table when Carl said derisively, "Hey, squirt, don't forget tonight about seven o'clock."
Carl Hoff was nineteen with a straggly growth of beard and long, stringy hair drawn back in a ponytail that dangled over one knotty shoulder. His pencil thin physique and six foot frame belied his agility and strength that were required to be a temperer at the brick company. He had been the temperer since his promotion from off-bearer several years earlier. It was even dirtier work than Seth's job, but it required more skill as Carl made sure the clay received the correct preparation to obtain the perfect consistency for the moulding process.
Seth never forgot what Carl had told him about the wet clay being your friend. Carl had said that he purposefully covered himself in clay to keep himself cool and sunburn free. He had attended a Barnum and Baily Circus when he was kid; and while he was exploring the Big Top from the back lot, one of the elephant keepers said the elephants liked to wade in the mud to keep themselves cool. With Carl's slim frame, it really didn't take him long to spread mud over himself. Some of the other workers accused him of keeping the same mud on for weeks. Carl would get angry and say, "I take a bath every week whether I need one or not." Seth tried to emulate Carl and his mud ritual; but his mother, Barbara, would have none of it and made him go to the flooded shale pit to clean himself off before she'd allow him into the house. Seth decided it was too much effort but he still thought it was a good idea.
Seth watched as Carl delivered the wet clay to the assistant brick moulder who was called the "clot". The clot prepared a lump of clay and gave it to the brick moulder who was the key to the operation and the head of the team. The brick moulder and his assistant would stand at the moulding table for the entire day making 3500-5000 bricks each day. The brick moulder took the clay and rolled it in sand and dashed it into the sanded mould. He would then press it with his own hands. Seth enjoyed watching him and the skill it took to form the bricks with his hands with such consistency and in such large quantities.
Seth eyed Carl and waited until he had unloaded his clay. He didn't want the moulder to take notice as he'd scream at him for not keeping his mind on his work. When Seth thought he was out of earshot, he asked, Carl, "Any chance of having a couple cold ones tonight?"
"If you think you're worth it kid," Carl sarcastically said. You better make good on your promise or else."
The older boys at work had just accepted Seth as a drinking partner.
"I will, Carl. You'll see," replied Seth.
Seth's age had been a factor in the other boys allowing him to drink with them. It wasn't a matter of any minimum drinking age as there were no laws as such. A kid could only get into trouble if he got drunk and became unruly. It was more of a concern that he wasn't yet old enough to appreciate a good brew and that it would just go to waste.
The other boys didn't know that he had developed a taste for beer early on and had started drinking beer long before any of them. Seth had fond memories of his visits to his Uncle Jake's home when he was just a little kid about three or four. The first thing he would do, while the adults were busy greeting each other, was to sneak onto the storage area by the back door where no one could see him. It was there that Uncle Jake and Aunt Elizabeth stored their empty and unopened beer bottles. He would lift each empty bottle to his lips and drink the last of the warm dregs. The thought never occurred to him to open a fresh bottle. In his defense, though, he was just a dumb little kid.
Most of the day at the brickyard, Seth worked by himself with the periodic visits to the brick moulder to pick up a new supply of bricks to be dried. The brick moulder was quite a bit older than Seth so there was no camaraderie between them.
The older people at the brickyard: the brick moulders, the steam shovel operators that mined the clay, and the guys that fired the bricks didn't have much to do with him. They were all married and had families and were always talking about their kids.
Seth's most loyal buddy that he spent the most time with was a friend that no one knew anything about, not even his parents. He just happened to find him by accident one evening while he was looking through the old trash dump. The musky scent of rodents pervaded the fenced grounds of Coal Valley Waste Management. In the far corner of the property, animals had dug a hole under the fence – probably, wild dogs seeking a meal. Seth found it easy to slither under the fence and poke around in there in the evening. You never knew what you might find. One time he had found a neat pocketknife with a pearl handle.
There was one particular night, though, that stuck out in his memory above all the others. The temperature had been dropping precipitously since the afternoon sun began to be swallowed by the earth. The night air, thick with mist and laden with the fragrance of crops and vegetation, was drifting in. It was then that he heard a commotion and happened to see Mia, one of Henrietta's cats that had found a nest of rats. The mother rat looked like it had put up a gallant fight, but Mia had exposed the buried nest and managed to kill the mother rat and eight of her brood. Mia was just about to finish off the last of the youngsters when Seth arrived and gave her a good swat with his foot before she could bite off the baby's head.
Seth took the pink, blind, and still hairless baby home with him, fed it milk through a tiny eyedropper, and started to carry it around with him in his shirt pocket. It seemed to be smart enough to lay low when it detected other people present. When it became too big for Seth's shirt pocket, he carried it to work in his lunch pail and then made a little hole with camouflage surrounding it near his work place. When no one was watching, Seth would visit it throughout the day, pet it, and give it a little attention. At quitting time, Seth would gather it up and they'd go home together. Albert, the name that Seth selected for him, was turning out to be quite smart.
Seth and his friend played games together. Albert loved to play hide-and-seek. Seth would give Albert a minute to hide and then announce, "Ready or not, here I come." Because Albert was so small and could hide in really small places, Seth seldom found him.
Seth would make a big show of looking for him and then act like he was really mad when he couldn't find him. He would say, "Okay, Albert. I give up. Show yourself."
Albert would scamper out from his hiding place all excited, jumping up and down, and even turning a few summersaults. To reward him, Seth would rub his belly. Albert made squeals of delight as he rolled on his back.
When Seth was with his human friends, they liked to talk about girls and the next practical joke they would play on the miners. The youth at the brick company didn't share the same good will that the adults at both organizations enjoyed. The Brick Tile and Terra Cotta Workers Alliance and United Mine Workers Association actually worked closely with one another. The brick company used the shale from the mines in the construction of the bricks, and the brick company aided the mine in eliminating a worthless byproduct of coal production. It was a symbiotic relationship. Seth and his friends at the Coal Valley Brick plant didn't like several things about the miners. They made more money because they had a stronger union than the brick company, and the Coal Valley Coal Company treated them better. It was cooler underground and they even had ventilation fans. If those weren't enough reasons to be jealous of the miners, the younger mine workers were all ass-holes.
Yea, thought Seth with anticipation. The new practical joke that he had planned would get those little farts' attention. The brick boys would finally get even; and more importantly, he would earn the respect of the older brick boys and Carl.
CHAPTER 2Seth was anxious to meet with his work buddies that evening, but he had some preparations to make. First, though, he had to take a hot bath in the old washtub in front of the fireplace. To conserve on the time needed to pump more water and to heat it over the fire, he would always allow his father, Pete, who had returned from the mine, to take his bath first. After his dad was finished, Seth would allow some of the dirt to settle at the bottom and then he'd hop in the tub. The arrangement worked quite nicely. As soon as he changed into some clean jeans and T-shirt, he crept under his parents' company home to retrieve his secret weapon.
Seth had dug a pit in an area about eight feet by three feet and two feet deep and then placed a wire cage he had constructed inside of the hole. He removed the thin blanket from its top to reveal a brown wave of motion underneath. He had been raising the rats for the past eight months and had caught the original six rats in traps he had made and placed around the city dump. He was hoping to get a mixture of both sexes and figured correctly that he would, by sheer chance, have at least one male and one female. He had read about rats in several zoology books he'd found at the Edwardsville Public Library. It was one of the oldest libraries in Illinois having been chartered in 1823 and about a thirty-minute bike ride from his home in Glen Carbon. Some rich guy named Andrew Carnegie had just donated a bunch of money to make the library even bigger. Seth enjoyed visiting the library every couple of weeks and looked forward to their new renovation. He hoped, someday, Coal Valley could have its own library.
His rat research had revealed that you could tell the sex of a rat by checking out their underside. Female rats have 12 nipples on their chest while the males have very large testicles for their size. Brown rats became sexually active at four months, and they could have as many as 2000 descendants from a single pair of rats if left to breed unchecked for only a year. Seth could hardly believe that, but looking at that squirming sea of rats confined in his cage, he didn't doubt it, now, one bit.
Seth tried to feed them some garbage at least once each day; but sometimes, he would get too busy and just plain forget. It was then that he noticed that they would turn to cannibalism – the older, larger rats eating the younger, smaller ones. The newborn babies that were still pink, hairless, and blind were the most susceptible to the carnage from their older, larger cousins. The babies' mothers would put up a show of defense with their squeals and snapping jaws, but they were no match for the plethora of hungry vermin that snapped back. He wondered if he didn't feed them at all, if they would reproduce faster than they ate each other. It would be an interesting experiment, he thought; but he wasn't willing to sacrifice the cute newborns to such a violent death.
One experiment, though, that Seth had been performing was to test the leadership ability of his friend around the other wild rats. He didn't really expect any surprises as he thought the wild rats, since they outnumbered his friend, wouldn't take kindly to his intrusion into their mist. They might even exhibit violent aggressive actions toward him. He was pleasantly surprised when the other rats seemed to treat Albert with a greater degree of respect than they did their own family members by allowing him a greater space between him and the other rats. They allowed Albert to eat first if Seth placed a small amount of food in the cage. They would wait patiently for their turn before pouncing on the food scraps. During these experiments, Seth would observe carefully to make sure his friend wasn't harmed. After the experiment, Seth would remove Albert from the cage. By the squeals of the other rats, it almost seemed like they were sad he had left. Seth wondered if the other rats afforded Albert more respect because of Albert's association with him, a powerful figure with the rats, or if it were something inherent in Albert. Maybe, someday he would learn the answer.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Trapped Under Coal Valley by Terry Brazier. Copyright © 2015 Terry Brazier. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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