In short order bacon, biscuits, gravy, eggs over easy and homemade jelly in huge portions were placed before him. RJ was given a glass of milk and had to hide a smile at the the thought of it. He honestly couldn’t remember drinking a single of glass of milk in the past ten years. He also had a tall glass of well water but he drank sparingly from it, now slightly suspicious of what it might contain.
Aunt Chrissy would not sit at the table with him but nibbled from the stove and tested the bacon to see if it was OK to serve. She even dipped a warm biscuit in the bacon fat, caught RJ looking and laughed as she turned away, blushing. It was probably the first color hed ever seen in her cheeks and he was struck by how pale she was compared to his other relatives. As a child he was confused by the things his relatives did and said in this house and it was hard to ask questions even now. Those quirky things that didn’t make sense were just how things were and left at that.
Granmaw Selkirk remained at the table and make a big show of smelling each item of food as it arrived but she did not take anything for herself. Occasionally she would take a small sip from her coffee, wetting her lips but nothing more, just going thru the motions. RJ thought hard back thru his memories and couldn’t recall a single time he’d seen his grandmother eat anything. It was not tradition in her house to feed the men and the women folk at the same time so it was not unusual for her to have been absent once RJ had sat down. He rolled his eyes over another cup of coffee and admonished himself for getting wrapped up in this bizarre story. If he thought about it, he hadn’t actually met one relative on this trip who was completely normal. But maybe to themselves they were maybe all this superstition and crazy X-file belief system they had going WAS normal for them and it was only because his perspective was now from the outside that he found them so strange. Not for the first time since this visit started RJ found himself wondering what his life would have become if he hadn’t been in such a hurry to leave West Virginia? He dabbed up more gravy with his last bite of biscuit and asked “How do you know of these things if they happened so long ago?”
Aunt Chrissy stopped, the tin dipper from the bucket of well water half way to her lips and looked at her mother. When Granmaw Selkirk said nothing she sat it down slowly and said “We’ve been piecing it together for many a year. There’s no written record, nothing that can be traced back that far but the story has been told unchanged from generation to generation…Orally.” She paused as if the word caused her pain. “The Selkirks have worked these hills as far back as anyone can remember. But much was lost once coal was discovered here.”
Granmaw Selkirk sat quietly drawing circular shapes on the table with a bony finger. RJ watched her her as the silence built up between them, then she abruptly pointed at RJ and asked “Do you know when coal was first discovered in West Virginia?”
“Not exactly, I have a feeling they found coal here even before the Civil War?”
“Close enough. There is a long break in our records like Chrissy said, during the dark times when the Covenant was not observed. Brother Selkirk, he lived a long life and a pious one but eventually he had to die as we all do. Someone took over in his stead but it never really got back up to speed. The indians were driven away and the story of brother Selkirk was lost for hundreds of years. White folk didn’t go very deep under the hills, they found what they wanted right near the surface. And that was coal. And they blew it up, dug it out, and carted it away with no thought that there would be anyone else about to lay claim to it. Since the 1750s a steady stream of coal has been taken from West Virginian hills and its been the death of many a good man like your Grandfather George Selkirk Jr.
“Oh RJ, it was not a good time for them or us. Whole families were lost here and many places in the Below were made unlivable or completely collapsed and cut off by the taking of the coal. The Covenant was long broken and while I daren’t call it a war, a lot of anger was taken out on the coal miners. For those Below thought the very layer of darkness that had protected them for centuries was being stolen away from them. All sorts of evil was worked to drive us away. And by us I mean all of us here above ground.”
Granmaw Selkirk gestured her hands around as if patting the soil, the ground, the land all about her. “Safe mines were made to collapse, clean air was poisoned and even water was re-routed to wash them…us away. But it did no good, we just brought more men, more sticks of dynamite, and machines big as a house to drag off every bit of coal we could get our hands on. No one in daylight knew of Brother Selkirk, or of the Covenant.”
“So how did you come to know it, or hear the story from someone else?”
Granmaw Selkirk smiled a toothless smile and said “My grandfather’s grandfather. Mason Stamper Selkirk. He brought an end to the hostilities, though it cost him his life.”
RJ screwed up his face. “My…Great great great Grandfather…no wait, add another great in there…he did what exactly?”
“He was a coal miner from right here in Dunlow but he moved out and worked the Boss Hosie mine in the southern part of the state where Wayne, Mingo, and Lincoln counties meet. The west fork of Twelvepole has its start right near there and they used a water wheel to pump out the lower levels. He married an Irish girl newly arrived and they settled down. By all accounts he had a good life till the cave-in.
“He was trapped inside that mine with 15 other men and he was the onliest one to come out alive and that was by strange circumstance. See they were closing off a section of the mine–robbing it as they say before abandoning it entirely–and Mason was the last to leave that section. It was the furthest back of the whole mine, a mile from the entrance which was about as far back into the mountain as they dared go in those days. He was looking for his matches and his lamp when the roof began to working and there was a far off rumble followed by the worst sound a miner can imagine. Thunder underground! The last sound many a man ever hears down there.
“When he dug himself out and got his senses about him, he found he was trapped behind 40 feet of mother rock and coal with a broken leg. He had no real hope from that exact moment but he kept his head and felt around to find his pick and there was nothing for it but to say a prayer and start digging. Some men might have lain down to die right then and some would have wept and pulled their hair. But Mason didn’t, he started to dig and sing to keep his spirits up. He sang a merry tune or two and others what he remembered from church or his mother’s side. He dug in the dark, scooting along and singing loud and long maybe hoping he would be heard on the other side. And heard he was but not by the other miners they were all dead. He dug for hours or days, how would he know? He uncovered a horse’s body, one of several that was used in the mine, and it saddened him to the point that he stopped digging and spoke a little prayer over it, dragging it gently aside as best he could with a broken leg and removing the ruined harness. He sank down at the back of the little space he had, sang some nonsense childhood song about a reluctant pony and prepared to meet his own reward.
“The people of Below, they were never far away, and they heard him singing prayers for a dead horse because it was them that had caused this whole mess in the first place you see? Now though they had themselves a problem. As you already know, these people put a lot of stock into song, and there were those among them who had been taught the songs Brother Selkirk had brought with him, songs that they knew the tune of but not the meanings of the words like I said. They began to wonder among themselves if he was a priest too, if he was at long last another Brother Selkirk or a member of his order come back to honor the Covenant? This discussion went on, some taking the side of caution, some wanting to kill him outright. And all the while the air he had was being used up. Ah but then he did something that settled it for them, can you guess what that was?”
RJ closed his eyes and tried to picture himself sitting alone in the dark with a dead horse, a broken leg, and a miner’s pick. He sipped his coffee but found it cold and pushed it away. “Well if I was playing DnD, I’d probably say I eat the horse!” He shrugged and smiled trying to lessen the mental image, but his Granmaw was not sidetracked.
“I see. Well now. Let me ask you this. What’s the one thing that they say you should never ever do in a mine?” Before RJ could form an answer Aunt Chrissy leaned in to take away his cup and plates. She said “Whistle! It’s bad luck to whistle in mines RJ, always has been.”
Granmaw Selkirk thumped the table. “Chrissy! I wanted to hear what the boy would say to that! You already know this story so hush up and let RJ hear it thru, please!” RJ watched his rebuked aunt retreat into the sitting room and snatch up a bible as she headed for her room. He was suddenly glad he didn’t live with a retired schoolteacher. He leaned his head on his elbow and asked half jokingly “What’s wrong with whistling? The vibrations cause harmonics and crack the rock?”
“No RJ, nothing so dire. But remember our family and many many others who came here for work came from Ireland, Scotland, even Wales and they brought their beliefs with them. From the earliest times that men have worked the rock they were advised two things: One: not to bring women into a mine, and two not to whistle lest they drive away the Good Luck Spirit that lives in each mine or rather everywhere underground.
“Uh huh…and these people living in the mine, what did they do when they heard him, Mason? When they heard him whistle?”
“Say ‘Them that live Below.’ They wouldn’t live in a mine RJ any more than you would live in a graveyard. Here’s where luck was on his side. Those priests Brother Selkirk met hundreds of years before, they whistled to each other, no one else among them are allowed to. I think that’s why they took Brother Selkirk to meet their priests in the first place. I don’t know if this prohibition somehow got to the miner’s back home or its just lucky happenstance. In fact I asked that selfsame question when I first heard this tale and you know what they told me? They said ‘That’s neither here nor there.’ The point is, this affected enough of them to decide the issue. They would spare his life, but they would not make open contact. Memories run deep as underground rivers with Them that Live Below and time passes or not at all. I often smile thinking about my great granddad whistling some tune that was more likely ‘Rigs o Barley’ or ‘Devil among the Tailors’ than it was anything of a religious nature and that’s what got him spared.
“They were none too gentle about it though. They let him pass out from lack of air and then came into the mine and took him from Warriormine where the entrance was…that’s down on highway 16 near the state border…clear up here to Moses Fork just a few miles shy of where he was born. And they came all that way underground. That drive’ll take you over 2 hours by car RJ, so you can imagine how long it would have taken to walk. Mason woke to find himself in the crook of a holler, cold and wet, and covered with clay with the cold breath of a cave breathing out over him. But he was alive. All he had with him was the clothes on his back and the broken harness from the horse. So he made a splint from a dogwood tree and worked his way back towards his momma’s house. His father had long Passed Over from the black lung. His wife Louisa was there too and they were all mourning his loss and those other 15 fellas in the mine collapse and you could have knocked them over with a feather when he limped in the door, every one of them!”
Granmaw Selkirk chuckled to herself and began to sing some nameless tune to herself. RJ thought maybe the story was over for now and quietly slipped away to the bathroom. He washed his hands in the cold water basin staring at all the faded and curling photographs tucked into the edge of the mirror’s frame. He had no idea how far back they went, or even if the hilly country in the background of the photos…the mines they showed…were here or back in Ireland, Scotland maybe? He suddenly felt very tired and leaned his forehead against the cool glass. In the reflection he could see back into the kitchen. His grandmother was sitting there hands folded in her lap. She turned her head toward him and reached out for him, gesturing to the seat next to her. The seat was a wooden hand carved bench of some old, dark wood. RJ remembered when both he and his two brothers could fit on that bench. Soon as he was settled his Grandmother began again, her voice softer now, almost conspiratorial. Aunt Chrissy had not resurfaced.
“Mason had been missing for a week and soon as they got him all cleaned up and fed they had a revival right there. Even set up a prayer tent to celebrate his being spared. He got asked lots of questions about how he survived, and some of the folk who lost men in the mine wanted him to lead them back the way he came, but he kept the location to himself and told everyone God had led him out. It was the talk of the year and people said he had a blessed life from that day on. Once things had calmed down and he got his wife and mother alone he told them what he remembered about his escape, about voices and songs and him being carried thru the dark for days on end. He had a vivid memory or vision of someone whistling in his ear over and over, as if calling him back from the edge of death.
“His wife and mother did not agree completely on what should be done, as wives and mothers often find themselves disagreeing on the subject of the husband. His wife Louisa became convinced that he had been aided by the Fey, by the faerie folk that live under all mountains and that he should make some gift, an offering to them as thanks for saving his life. This Mason agreed to do though his mother was one of God’s strong women and advised against it. They took his father’s wagon and told his mother that he would do as God saw fit. But when they got close to the place where he woke up he stopped the wagon and made his way up the hillside to the cave entrance and sat down some goods. Just to be sure you see? He brought with him blankets and a miners lamp, a toy horse and a wooden top, and some good whisky. Remember his leg was broke, and it agonized him sorely to manage these items up the hill. So much so that before he started back down the last time, he decided the faerie folk wouldnt miss a swallow or two of whisky. Ahem! He was a long time on the hillside and his wife who was waiting with the wagon was very worried about him. For a while she could hear him singing somewhere up on the hill and then just a whistle from time to time, and then just silence. But she was still a superstitious girl fresh from a small irish village after all, and she wouldn’t have the courage to go looking for him till the next morning.”
RJ smiled and said “I’m guessing he had more than a swallow of whiskey just then, didn’t he Granmaw?”
“A considerable amount, by all accounts! In fact he passed out and woke the next morning with his wife glaring down at him, angry that he had kept her waiting all night while he put a drunk on. She felt he had made light of her beliefs and gave him a good piece of her mind I’m here to tell you!”
RJ chuckled at this and looked past his grandmother to see Chrissy was standing near the curtains of the spare bedroom, silently listening. She made no sign that she noticed RJ looking in her direction. RJ thought she looked like an actress waiting for her cue to come on stage. The image of her standing there the night before, preventing RJ from bursting out onto the porch came back to him and he frowned and looked away, feeling just a tiny bit manipulated by the whole thing. His grandmother said nothing till he looked back, as if sensing where his mind was wandering to, then she carried on, touching RJ’s hand to keep his attention.
“But then they noticed the blankets and the lamp and the whiskey–what was left of it–was gone! In it’s place there was a rolled up piece of flattened mushroom and a stone carved cane. The cane was intricately carved and made of a single piece of rock, trending up into a crystal where it had a rounded top rubbed smooth enough to see into, and there was a pocket of water trapped inside. No one has seen its like before or since.”
RJ looked back at his grandmother and thought about this last piece of info. “The cane was made of rock, and it had a crystal full of water on the top? That sounds…well unlikely.”
Granmaw Selkirk leaned across the table and tut tutted at RJ “Much of what you’ve heard this night sounds unlikely young man, but this I can prove. That cane was precious to Mason Selkirk, and he carried it till the day he died. Then it passed to his son and so on down to my husband, and it is still in our family, still in this very house!”
RJ stood up and tried to apologize quickly, not meaning to question his grandmothers story, not meaning to offend but Grandmaw Selkirk tossed her head over her shoulder and called out “Chrissy! Bring Mason’s Crutch in here so RJ can see it.”