Kaaron Warren - All You Can Do is Breathe

Stuart lay trapped underground for five days before the tall man appeared and stared into his eyes.

He thought he sensed movement. Flicked on his caplamp. “Barry? Did you make it through the wall?” but there was no one.

There was something though, in his face so close he pulled back and banged his head on the rock behind. He shouted, mouth open, squeezed his eyes shut. He’d never felt such terror, not even when his daughter had fallen into the pool and they didn’t notice for god knows how long.

This was a man. Something like a man. Tall, elongated, the thing looked deep into his eyes. It reached out and almost took his chin with its bony fingers, keeping his head still, paralysing him even though it wasn’t actually touching him.

Stuart could smell sour cherries, something like that. It made him hungry, and that hunger somehow beat out the terror.

He pulled his head backwards. The man nodded, stepped back, and was gone.

Within a minute or two, Stuart was sure he’d imagined it. Though he had words in his ear: “See you soon, Stuart.” He was sure he’d heard those words.

It felt like the walls were getting closer, but he kept testing by stretching his arms and the distance was the same. The part of the mine he was working had collapsed so quickly, it seemed like time stopped and froze and when it started up again, he was surrounded on all sides by rock.

Barry, his workmate, was on the other side, but he’d heard nothing from him for twelve hours now.

Thank god for the luminous hand on his watch. The kid gave it to him for father’s day years ago and even at the time he’d been thrilled. You don’t always get that with father’s day presents.

It wasn’t what you’d call a worker’s watch. It was full of gadgets, like the watches of the office men who drove to work each day, passing him as he stood, cold in the dark, at the bus stop with the other miners. Their cars blinked with gadgets.

This watch kept perfect time, and followed the date, and the hand provided a warm green glow in the pitch black. At home he had to keep it in his bedside drawer at night because the light kept his wife awake. But he could still see the thin green line across the top of the drawer where the light escaped.

Since the walls came down, he’d slept sporadically, waking a couple of times thinking he was home in bed, because of the glow. He’d covered it up with his lunchbox and only a small line escaped.

He had his caplamp but he really didn’t want to use that. There’d been mine rescues lasting two weeks and he wanted to know he could have bright light if he needed to. He knew they wouldn’t give up. They never left a body underground, mostly because they didn’t want it found much later.

He had his GPS so they knew where he was. He could see Barry’s blip, too, but that didn’t mean he was still going. Just his GPS.

Stuart stretched his legs and arms out and in, counting to a hundred. His wife was always on at him to do more exercise, so she’d be pleased to see him do this. His water and food had run out on the third day. He knew there was no sense keeping the food. It’d just go off and make him sick. Some gritty water dripped down the wall. Licking it made his tongue ache it was so cold and there wasn’t enough of it. He pissed into his water bottle and knew that drinking it wouldn’t kill him. He pretended it was lime cordial, the sour stuff, not the sweet.

Foodwise he knew he could last without for a while, but it didn’t help the hunger pains. Lucky his wife packed him heaps and there was Barry’s lunch as well, on Stuart’s side of the wall where Barry couldn’t get to it.

He’d tried moving the rocks but it just caused more of a tumble no matter where he took the rocks from. He wanted to keep trying but his instincts told him just to leave it.

Bugs skittered about and he could eat them. The strap of his lunch box was leather and he chewed on that, making jokes that it was about as good as his sister-in-law’s roast dinner. If he got out, he’d make that joke and people would write it up and his sister-in-law would be famous for her bad cooking.

Stuart tried to sleep when he figured it was night time outside, to keep a routine going. It was hard without a change of light and with an empty stomach, and he hadn’t done anything to wear himself out. Usually he’d drop into bed after a shift and a feed exhausted. On a Saturday, if he hadn’t been in the mine, he and his wife might have sex, but it wasn’t something he thought about much.

He thought about it now.

He spent a lot of the time with his eyes closed but he tried not to think about the dark. Instead, he went through football matches he remembered.

It was seven days before they found him. Nowhere near the record, but enough to have a media frenzy going on. As they were getting close they’d managed to get a tube through to him, and sent him notes from his wife and daughter and bags of glucose. They dropped some biscuits down, too.

“I was hoping for a meat pie,” he called up the tube. He could talk with his mouth close to the tube, tell them shit he wanted his family to know. Tell them all the jokes he’d thought up while he was down there. Nothing worse than a joke without an audience. They called questions down, like, “Are you scared?”

“Naah, I’m not scared. I’m fearless! Nothing scares me!”

He asked them about Barry and they said they were working on it. Ever since the long man had visited him, Stuart had had a bad feeling about Barry. He thought perhaps that was Barry’s ghost and he felt bad about screaming. He wished he’d said, “G’day, mate,” whatever.

It was overcast when they pulled him out, but still far warmer than inside the mine. It meant he didn’t have to squint because of the sun. His wife Cheryl was there, and his daughter Sarah, and for a long time he couldn’t talk, just held them and cried. He’d never actually cried before, not since he was a little kid, anyway, but this he couldn’t help. He thought he’d never see them again and he loved them, loved them hard. Sarah looked so beautiful, so grown up for her thirteen years. Underground he’d imagined her future. In his darkest times, like the hours after the long man disappeared and he felt like giving up, he imagined her future. Who she’d be, what she’d do, who she’d marry. What her kids would look like. He dreamed it all in case he didn’t get to see it, and now, there she was.

His rescuers were there, too. None of them keen to go home. Dirty-faced, exhausted, he couldn’t believe how happy they were to see him. He knew he’d have to live well, every day of his life, to justify what they’d done.

“Where’s Barry? Did you get him out yet?” he asked once he’d had a warm drink. They loaded him into an ambulance although he said he felt fine.

“They haven’t got Barry yet,” Cheryl said, but her eyes were downcast and he knew she was fibbing. She didn’t do it very often and he thought only to protect him. Like the time half the mine was shut down and the wives knew about it first. And the time Sarah had broken her arm because of the kid next door. Cheryl didn’t want to tell him that because she knew how angry he’d be, but he didn’t do anything about it. The kid was never allowed in their front door again, but that was it.

“I’d rather know than not know,” he said.

There were news cameras, people with microphones and others with notepads.

“Why do you think you survived?” they shouted at him. “Why you and not Barry?”

The tears took again at that and Cheryl squeezed his hand hard. The ambulance crew shut the door and then it was a week in hospital before he had to face the questions again.