The Underdwelling

14

They’d been at it a good six hours that was closer to seven and Russo was feeling the heat. It was coming from every direction—the media, the families, the mine execs. Felt like every damn last one of them was standing on his back. He rubbed his aching neck and swallowed a couple Tylenol. He watched the men widening the drift, the constant sound of jack hammers and rock drills, the hiss of steam and thudding of limestone chunks being shoveled into metal cars. It was all making his head pound.

He rubbed his eyes, then his temples.

Everything down here echoed. Banging and booming, clanging and ringing out. Russo lit a cigarette and motioned Corey, the shift boss, over.

“Well?” he said.

“We’re making progress, but I’m guessing it’ll take us most of the day to widen that drift so we can get the raise borer in here,” Corey told him. “If that shaft is just filled up with loose limestone, we can drill through it like cheese, but…”

Russo glared at him. “But?”

Corey shook his head. “You know same as me. If it’s just loose rubble, we can drill it in three, four hours with a reamer bit. Even cutting four-hundred feet we’ll have her in eight hours… but we don’t know what happened down there. Whole goddamn earth might have moved. Limestone is unstable. If we have to cut through solid rock it’s gonna take days.”

“And more likely weeks,” Russo said, spitting.

Weeks. Weeks down there for chrissake. Russo pulled off his cigarette and watched Corey making his way up to the drift, hollering orders and telling the diggers to keep at it. He stood there, wondering what it was like for them down there. He remembered the time he’d been trapped below. Even now, it made his flesh crawl.