I.

The alarm went off at five. Will Hudson turned it off without opening his eyes. He lay in bed for three minutes, listening to the house breathe—the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, the furnace clicking in the basement, the wind moving through the pines outside. Then he got up.

He dressed in the dark. Jeans, flannel shirt, work boots. The same clothes every day. The same routine. He went downstairs, filled the coffee pot, and waited for it to drip. The kitchen was small and cold, and the window above the sink looked out at the mountain, which was grey and shapeless in the pre-dawn light.

He drank his coffee standing up, looking at the mountain. The fog hadn't burned off yet. It clung to the slopes like a blanket, thick and white and unmoving. Will thought about the fog. He thought about how it would burn off eventually, by ten or eleven, and the mountain would be visible again, and then it would be hidden by clouds, and then by rain, and then by fog again.

He finished his coffee. He put the cup in the sink. He went back upstairs and got his lunch pail.

II.

The drive to the mine took forty minutes. Will drove an old Ford that had more rust than paint, and the heater worked only if you hit the dashboard with your fist. He hit the dashboard. The heater worked.

The mine was a mouth in the side of the mountain, black and wide, exhaling a steady stream of grey dust into the morning air. Will parked, got out, and joined the line of trucks filing toward the entrance. He counted twelve trucks ahead of him. Twelve trucks, each carrying twenty men, each man going down into the earth for eight hours to pull coal out of walls that had been there for three hundred million years.

He clocked in. He took the elevator down. The descent took six minutes. Six minutes of darkness, of pressure building in his ears, of the world above disappearing bit by bit until all that existed was the hum of the elevator and the smell of diesel and sweat and rock dust.

At the bottom, he joined the other men walking to their work faces. The tunnel was low—sometimes he had to bend, sometimes he had to crawl. The air was hot and thick, and the rock walls sweated. Will picked up his pick and walked to his face, which was a section of coal seam about eight feet wide and thirty feet long, stretching back into darkness.

He started swinging.

The work was simple. Swing the pick. Hit the coal. The coal broke. Load it onto the conveyor. The conveyor carried it up the tunnel to the shaft, where it would be lifted to the surface, loaded onto trucks, loaded onto trains, loaded onto ships, burned in power plants three states away, turned into electricity that would light houses and factories and hospitals that would never know his name.

He swung the pick. He hit the coal. The coal broke.

At seven, he took a ten-minute break. He sat on a rock and drank water from a dented canteen and watched the other men do the same. Old Jack was there, sixty years old, his face a map of wrinkles and coal dust, his hands swollen and deformed from forty years of this work. Tommy was there too—thirty years old, coughing, his cough deep and wet and wrong. Tommy had been diagnosed two weeks ago. Coal dust lung. Five years, the doctor said. Maybe less.

Sam was there, twenty-five, the youngest of them, saving money for a pickup truck, saving money to take his girlfriend to the beach. His girlfriend had broken up with him last week. She found a man in Denver. Sam didn't say anything about it. He just swung his pick and drank his water and stared at the coal wall.

Will swung his pick. He thought about his wife. Mary had left three years ago. She took the kids to Ohio. She said she couldn't live with a man who couldn't talk. Will understood. He didn't know how to talk. He had spent twenty years in a tunnel, and the tunnel had taken his words and given him silence in return.

III.

The shift ended at four. Will climbed the elevator, walked to the locker room, showered, changed, and walked to the parking lot. Twelve trucks. Twelve men. All of them grey with dust, all of them tired, all of them walking toward their cars with the same slow, heavy step.

Will drove to the bar. He sat at the counter, ordered a beer, and drank it in twenty minutes. He ordered another. He sat and watched the television mounted in the corner, which was showing a football game neither he nor anyone in the bar cared about.

Old Jack sat next to him. They didn't speak. They never spoke at the bar. Jack ordered a beer. Will ordered a beer. They drank. The television kept playing.

At seven, Will went home. His house was small—two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that smelled permanently of fried food and coffee. The walls were thin. The roof leaked. The paint was peeling. He turned on the television and sat on the couch and watched whatever was on. He didn't really watch it. He just needed the noise.

His phone rang at eight. It was Mary.

"Will, it's me."

"Hi."

"The kids want to know when you're coming to visit."

"I don't know, Mary."

"You don't know or you're not going to?"

"I don't know."

A pause. The kind of pause that contains everything unsaid.

"They're seven and nine, Will. They're not babies anymore. They're going to start forgetting what you look like."

"I know."

"Then do something."

"I don't—there's nothing to do."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"Goodbye, Will."

"Goodbye, Mary."

The phone went dead. Will sat on the couch and watched the television. The football game was over. A commercial was playing—something about insurance. Will didn't listen to it. He looked at his hands. They were swollen at the knuckles, scarred from years of handling rock and steel and coal. He thought about the pickaxe on the mantle. His father's pickaxe. His father had died in a cave-in twenty years ago, and Will had brought the pickaxe home and put it on the mantle and never touched it again.

IV.

The next morning, the alarm went off at five. Will turned it off. He lay in bed for three minutes. He got up. He dressed. He made coffee. He drank it looking at the mountain.

The fog was still there.

He drove to the mine. He clocked in. He took the elevator down. He picked up his pick. He started swinging.

At seven, he took a break. Old Jack was there. Tommy wasn't. Tommy hadn't come to work in three days. Will assumed he was sick. He hoped he was sick. He didn't want to think about what else Tommy might be.

Sam was there. His girlfriend had called him. She was coming back from Denver. She said she had made a mistake. Sam nodded when Will told him. He didn't smile. He didn't frown. He just nodded and drank his water and went back to work.

Will swung his pick. He hit the coal. The coal broke.

At four, he showered. He changed. He walked to the bar. He drank two beers. He watched the television. He went home. He watched the television. His phone didn't ring.

At ten, he went to bed. He lay in the dark and listened to the wind outside. It was moving through the pines, moving through the hills, moving through the empty valleys and the filled ones and the ones that had been filled and then emptied again by mining and then filled again by time.

He thought about the pickaxe on the mantle. He thought about the fog on the mountain. He thought about Tommy, who might be dead or might be dying in a hospital somewhere, coughing up black phlegm and counting his days. He thought about Sam's girlfriend coming back from Denver and whether it would last. He thought about Mary, in Ohio, with their children, wondering if her ex-husband was alive or dead, wondering if it mattered.

He thought about all of these things and then he stopped thinking about them, because thinking didn't change anything. The coal needed to be pulled. The trucks needed to be driven. The beers needed to be drunk. The television needed to be watched. The bed needed to be slept in.

The wind moved through the pines. The mountain stood grey and silent against the sky. Somewhere, a train horn sounded, long and low and lonely, and then it was gone.

Will Hudson closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Tomorrow, the alarm would go off at five. The fog would be gone, or it wouldn't. The mountain would be visible, or it wouldn't. He would drive to the mine. He would swing the pick. The coal would break. He would drink two beers. He would watch the television. He would go to sleep.

This was not a tragedy. This was not a comedy. This was not a story.

This was a life.

--- OTMES Objective Code: OTMES-v2-QJW-06-6D9FBF-E1047-M9-T061-C7EC E_total: 10.48 | Dominant Mode: M9