“Some of them were widening the hole between the shaft and the chamber. Others were wriggling through. Some acted drunk. Others acted as if they were having convulsions.
Some ran across to the pit and threw them-selves into it, laughing. The Lushan brothers saw a man and a woman fucking each other-I have to use that word, it was the furthest thing in the world from making love- with one of the statues held between them. In their teeth.”
Cynthia exchanged a startled look with Steve.
“In the shaft itself, the miners were bashing each other with rocks or pulling each other out of the way, trying to get in through the hole first.” He looked around at them somberly. “I saw that part. In a way it
was funny, like a Three Stooges show. And that made it worse. That it was funny. Do you get it?”
“Yes,” Marinville said. “I get it very well, David. Go on.”
“The brothers felt it all around them, the stuff that was coming out of the chamber, but not as anything that was inside them, not then. One of the can tahs had fallen at Ch’an’s feet. He bent to pick it up, and Shih pulled him away. By then they were about the only ones left who seemed sane. Most of the others who weren’t affected right away had been killed, and there was a thing-like a snake made of smoke-coming out of the hole. It made a squealing sound, and the brothers ran from it. One of the white men was coming down the crosscut about sixty feet up, and he had his gun out. ‘What’s all the commotion about, chinkies?’ he asked.”
Cynthia felt her skin chill. She reached out for Steve, and was relieved when his fingers folded over hers.
The boy hadn’t just imitated a gruff bossman’s tone; he seemed actually to be speaking in the voice of someone else.
“ ‘Come on now, fellows, gettee-backee-workee, if you don’t want a bullet in the guts.’
“But he was the one who got shot. Ch’an grabbed him around the neck and Shih took away his gun. He put the barrel here”-David poked his forefinger up under the shelf of his jaw-”and blew the guy’s head off.”
“David, do you know what they were thinking when they did that?” Marinville asked.
“Was your dream-friend able to take you in that far?”
“Mostly I just saw.”
“Those can tah things must’ve gotten to them after all Ralph said. “They wouldn’t have shot a white man, other wise. No matter what was going on or how bad they wanted to get away.”
“Maybe so,” David said. “But God was in them too I think, the way he’s in us now. God could move them to his work, no matter if they were mi en tak or not because-mi him en tow-our God is strong. Do you understand?”
“I think I do,” Cynthia said. “What happened then, David?”
“The brothers ran up the shaft, pointing the foreman s pistol at anyone who tried to hold them back or slow them down. There weren’t many; even the other white guys hardly gave them a glance when they ran by. They all wanted to see what was going on, what the miners had found. It drew them, you see.
You do see, don’t you?”
The others nodded.
“About sixty feet in from the adit, the Lushan brothers stopped and went to work on the hanging wall.
They didn’t talk about it; they saw picks and shovels and just went to work.”
“What’s a hanging wall?” Steve asked.
“The roof of a mineshaft and the earth above it,” Marinville said.
“They worked like madmen,” David went on. “The stuff was so loose that it started falling out of the ceiling right away, but the ceiling didn’t give way. The screams and howls and laughter coming up from below. . . I know the words for the sounds I heard, but I can’t describe how horrible they were. Some of them were changing from human to something else. There was a movie I saw one time, about this doctor on a tropical island who was changing animals into men-”
Marinville nodded. “TheIslandofDr. Moreau .”
David said, “The sounds I heard from the bottom of the mine-the ones I heard with the Lushan brothers’
ears- were like that movie, only in reverse. As if the men were turning into animals. I guess they were. I guess that’s sort of what the can tahs do. What they’re for.
“The brothers . . . I see them, two Chinese men who look almost enough alike to be twins, with pigtails hanging down their sweaty bare backs, standing there and looking up and chopping away at the hanging wall that should have come down after about six licks but didn’t, looking back along the shaft every two or three strokes to see who was coming. To see what was coming. Pieces of the ceiling fell in front of them in big chunks. Sometimes pieces of it fell on them, too, and pretty soon their shoulders were bleeding, and their heads-blood was streaming down their faces and necks and chests, as well. By then there were other sounds from below. Things roaring. Things squelching.
And still the roof wouldn’t come down. Then they started seeing lights farther down- maybe candles, maybe the ‘seners the crew-bosses wore.
“What-” Ralph began.
“Keroseners. They were like these little lighted boxes of oil you put on your forehead with a strip of rawhide. You’d fold a piece of cloth underneath to keep your skin from getting too hot. And then someone came running out of the darkness, someone they knew. It was Yuan Ti. He was a funny guy, I guess-he made animals out of pieces of cloth and then put on shows with them for the kids.
Yuan Ti had gone crazy, but that wasn’t all. He was bigger, so big he had to bend almost double in order to run up the shaft. He was throwing rocks at them, calling them names in Mandarin, condemning their ancestors, commanding them to stop what they were doing.
Shih shot him with the foreman’s gun. He had to shoot him a lot before Yuan Ti would lie down and be dead. But the others were coming, screaming for their blood. Tak knew what they were doing, you see.”
David looked at them, seemed to consider them. His eyes were dreamy, half in a trance, but Cynthia had no sense that the boy had ceased to see them. In a way, that was the most terrible part of what was happening here. David saw them very well … and so did the force inside him, the one she could sometimes hear stepping forward to clarify parts of the story David might not have fully understood.
“Shih and Ch’an went back to work on the hanging wall, digging into it with their picks like madmen-which they’d be before it was over for them. By then the part 7 of the ceiling they were working on was like a dome over their heads”-David made curving gestures with his hands, and Cynthia saw that his fingers were trembling “and they couldn’t reach it very well with their picks any more. So Shih, the older, got on his younger brother s shoulders and dug into it that way. The stuff fell out in showers, there was a pile almost as high as Ch an Lushan’s knees in front of them, and still the ceiling wouldn’t come
down.”
“Were they possessed of God, David?” Marinville asked. There was no sarcasm in his voice now.
“Possessed by God? What do you think?”
“I don’t think so,” David said. “I don’t think God has to possess, that’s what makes him God. I think they wanted what God wanted-to keep Tak in the earth. To bring the ceiling down between them and it, if they could.
“Anyway, they saw ‘seners coming up from the mine. – Heard people yelling. A whole mob of them.
Shih left off on the hangwall and went to work on one of the crossbar supports instead, hitting it with the butt of his pick. The miners coming up from below threw rocks at them, and ‘~ quite a few hit Ch’an, but he stood firm with his brother on his shoulders. When the crossbar finally came down, the ceiling came down with it. Ch’an was buried up to his knees, but Shih was thrown clear. He pulled his brother out.
Ch’an was badly bruised, but nothing was broken. And they were on the right side of the rockfall-that must have seemed like the important thing.
They could hear the miners-their friends, cousins, and in the case of Ch’an Lushan, his intended wife-screaming to be let out. Ch’an actually started to pull some of the rocks away before Shih yanked him back and reasoned with him.
“They still could reason then, you see.