R. Saunders - Underground and Radioactive

Continuing on to the manway, I saw no light down the raise and no light anywhere else, for that matter. I should have at least seen a glow. Again, that was odd, but stranger things had happened, so I turned around and walked back up to the face to finish drilling the round.

When I got back to the face, Stutts asked me, “Who was that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone, and nobody was in the raise.”

“It had to have been somebody,” said Stutts.

“I know, but there wasn’t anyone around, so whoever it was must have been in a big hurry to get out of here.”

We went back to work drilling, with Stutts looking puzzled and me happy not to have been bothered by whoever it had been.

About an hour later, I was just about finished drilling when Stutts again motioned to me that there was a light down by the manway. Getting annoyed, I again stopped drilling and headed back toward the manway. As before, the light vanished.

This time, determined to see who was visiting us, I used my previous expert experience of getting down manways quickly and descended to track level. When I got to the track, there was no visible light anywhere to be seen.

I even turned my light off, knowing that the pitch black would show the light of any other person no matter how far down the drift they were. Nothing.

Well, this is a little odd, I thought.

Just then the warning lights on the back started flashing to indicate that a motor was coming my way.

I ducked back into the manway as the ore cars started passing by. When I saw the motorman, I motioned with my head lamp to stop, and he did.

“Did you see anyone walking along the drift?” I asked.

“Nope, didn’t see anyone” was the motorman’s response.

“Somebody was up in the stope just now. You haven’t seen a boss wandering around?”

“Nope, but he might have been in a cutout and I missed him, or whoever it was.”

“Yeah, OK. Probably. Thanks.”

The motor continued on, and I climbed up the manway and back to the face, where Stutts, as before, wanted to know who it was.

“Who was it?” he asked.

“I didn’t find anyone, and I went down to the track.”

“That’s impossible,” he said.

“You would think so, but I’m telling you nobody was there.”

Stutts seemed nervous at first and then acted as if he thought I was messing with him. Had I liked Stutts more, messing with him would have been a possibility, but in this case I didn’t and it wasn’t. He was a fairly good helper but didn’t have a great sense of humor.

I figured it had to be a shift boss, a lost laborer, or a geologist. True, I hadn’t found whoever it was, but it was somebody. No doubt about that. That was the end of the excitement for the day, and soon the shift ended.

The following morning at 4:00, we were back at it. This time we were drilling a hole for the rock bolt to install the block for slushing out our muck pile. In the middle of drilling the hole, Stutts motioned that we again had another visitor down by the manway. Now this was very unusual, because it was an odd hour and unlikely that a shift boss or geologist would be roaming around.

Very annoyed this time, I told Stutts I wasn’t going to check it out again and that whoever it was could come on down to see us if he wanted to, but I wasn’t going back there again.

Stutts said he would go look this time, and that was fine with me. I watched him head back and saw his lamp, but the other light again vanished. Then Stutts vanished as he bolted down the manway to catch up with whoever it was.

A short while later I saw the glow of a light come up the manway and then a brighter light head toward me. It was Stutts, who reported that he couldn’t find anyone in the stope or on the track drift.

I could see Stutts was really doing some thinking. So was I, and my thoughts were of what I’d been told many times by Cal: it just doesn’t pay to be doing too much thinking. It was then that it dawned on me that maybe the reason Stutts was still a helper after so many years was that he had been thinking.

We continued to work that morning until around eight. That was when the light again appeared. I had had it with the light and ignored it this time. Whoever it was could come on down and see us or not. If they, or it, wanted to play games, I didn’t want any part of it, and they could just keep going away or disappearing in whatever way they had managed to avoid us. But poor Stutts was really getting excited.

Running back down the stope at full speed, Stutts was determined to get to the bottom of it. Again, I saw the light vanish, and again Stutts went down the manway looking. When he came back he appeared to be shaking and talking about how there had to have been somebody there, and where did they go? I didn’t know and didn’t care, but evidently Stutts did.

We didn’t see the light again that shift, but poor Stutts was not much use to me the rest of the day, nervously looking around and not seeming to be interested in much else other than the mysterious light. That was the last day Stutts worked as my helper.

After the shift Stutts told me he was not going to work with me anymore. “That fuckin’ place is haunted,” he told me.

“Well, if it is, whoever it is doesn’t mess with us, so who cares?” I replied.

“I care, and I ain’t workin’ no fuckin’ haunted stope.”

In the cage on the way to the surface, Stutts told me he was going to see Shotgun and ask to be taken out of the 812. Thinking that might be a good one to see, I decided to tag along.

Explaining the light we had seen to Shotgun, Stutts began talking about how the stope was haunted. I don’t know if Shotgun thought I had done something to convince Stutts there were some strange things happening in the stope, but with all his experience underground, I doubted it. I thought maybe Shotgun had even seen something like what was happening in the 812 before.

When Stutts was done jabbering, Shotgun had me explain the light. I told him that, yes, it had been there but kept vanishing, just as Stutts said. I went on to say that whatever it was did not bother me and was not hampering my work, adding that I just didn’t care about whatever it was causing the light.

Frustrated, I didn’t care that Stutts was standing there, so I told Shotgun, “Stutts is fucked up, and he’s not helping get the work done, so if he wants out, it’s OK with me.” That was enough. Stutts was taken out of the 812.

The following morning, I was introduced to my new helper, Daniel Ortiz. I had worked with Daniel before on some small jobs around the station the year before. He was a nice guy, diminutive appearing but deceptively strong with a good attitude. What I appreciated most was that he just did the work and didn’t talk very much.

Daniel had moved up to miner’s helper in good time but, like Stutts, had already worked with two other miners in the past few months. A pattern was developing whereby I sure did seem to be getting the helpers who maybe nobody else wanted.

Why whoever had made the decision thought Daniel would be able to handle the work in a timber stope where we were building eight-to twelve-foot square-sets is another mystery I’ll never figure out. Normally the shorter guys were working pillar stopes, where finesse and knowledge matter a lot more than physical strength.

I knew immediately that whatever future Daniel had working underground, it was not going to be in a timber stope. He was willing to try and a hard worker but just not able to consistently lift heavy timber, as I soon discovered. It also seemed he had a little bit of a spiritual streak in him.

As Daniel and I walked back to the stope, I wasn’t thinking about the light and how Daniel might react to it. We had a few sets to build that day, and I was wondering how, Daniel being such a short guy, would we be able to set the eight-foot-long cap timber on eight-foot-high posts?