The Alien Corn

AN ATLANTIC STORY

by TOM HANLIN

THIS story is about the time I was seventeen and worked on the night shift in a pit. Working in a pit was all the kind of work I knew, the night shift was the only kind of shift I could get, and staying where I was, was the place where my kind of people stayed. Where I was born and brought up, you got it shoved down your throat that you ought to be thankful that any work came to you at all. When none came your way, you just moved some other place.

Well, I was seventeen and this was some other place. I used to leave my lodgings every night at ten o’clock and arrive back about eight in the morning. I was six months in this place, six months during a spring and a summer, and I only got proper sleep at the week-ends.

During the week I hardly slept any more than two or three hours a day, even though I lay some days the whole time in bed. I was so tired I couldn’t think to get out of bed, and because it was daylight I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep because my body had always been accustomed to sleep during the night and refused to switch over. When I’d be going out at night, I was ready to lie down anywhere.

That was always the worst part of it, going out at night. I’d leave my lodgings and catch a bus at the end of the street. And evening would be over the town and in the street, the long, calm summer evening, with people loitering along in the cool of the street, people living ordered lives that led to sleep when sleep is natural. I’d meet girls, arm in arm, chatting as they passed in their summer dresses, cool and sweet-looking in their summer dresses, passing heedlessly, leaving behind them scent, and an ache in my heart as if happiness had passed.

Then I’d go and catch the bus, weary with sleep. I’d have heavy steel-shod boots on. I wore thick moleskin trousers, and a jacket a railwayman had thrown away. On my shoulder was a knapsack that contained four pints of water, a pint of tea, and half a dozen thick slices of bread and margarine.

When I’d step into the bus everybody would edge away from me. In the window of the bus I’d catch a glimpse of my dour face, with its menacing expression, which was a lie, for I was anything but tough. I was just a kid, weary with fatigue; lost, because nobody had taught, me anything, and I hadn’t yet got to the stage of finding out anything for myself.

At the edge of the town I’d get off the bus, and I’d half a mile to walk over a rough field-path to the pit. There was a miners’ row I’d pass, and the people would be on their doorsteps sitting in the evening sun. I could see fires burning cozily in the houses; children playing from door to door.

Reaching the pit I’d go to the lamp cabin and get my electric lamp, a heavy metal affair you carried in your hand. Then I’d go over to the explosives chamber, which was apart from the pit, and get a can of explosives. A long iron stairway stretched upwards to the pithead. I’d sit here, on the pithead, waiting until it was time to go below. I could see for miles around. The fields were green if there were oats in them, and yellow if it was hay, and these green and yellow fields were like an old patchwork rug undulating to where the hills merged into the sky.

Then the pitheadman would come and I’d step onto the cage with the other miners. At the bottom of the shaft I’d three miles to walk to my place of work, three miles through low and muddy tunnels, with the air hot and smelly. As I was striding along with my head bent, this was where all the sleep and weariness got knocked out of my bones and muscles.

There were a dozen other men going to the same section, and we all raced to our work as if there was a prize for the winner. Between racing as we raced, and walking easily, there was only about ten minutes difference, and walking was easier on the bones. Ten minutes was neither here nor there, but we raced. Don’t ask me why. Why does the sun shine or the rain fall? I don’t know, it’s nature. Why should men race to their work without any compulsion? I don’t know either, it’s human nature.

As I trotted along, that lamp and that can of explosives began to feel like a ton weight each. Sweat sprang out all over my body and dripped constantly from the end of my nose. A pain would gather between my shoulder blades; it wouldn’t shift. It would remain in the one place and it was torture.

2

ARRIVING at the entrance to the section we worked in, we’d all sit down for a minute or two, wiping the sweat from our faces, drinking water and making brief remarks. Then we’d go in each of us to his separate tunnel. At the face of each tunnel was an overhanging lip of rock. The rock was as hard as road metal, and you had to drill a hole four feet deep in it.

I’d drill this hole with a hand boring machine. I’d put up a thick prop from floor to roof, which had to be set in such a way that pressure from the face of the rock would drive it tighter. Between the prop and the face of the rock, I’d fix my hand boring machine. This had a long thin barrel that contained a screw. A box-like mouth at the other end held a drill. A handle was affixed to the screw. The barrel ended in a steel spike that stuck into the prop. The teeth of the drill were placed in a depression I’d made in the face of the rock with my pick.

Having fixed the machine, all I had to do was to pull the handle. That was all. I’d just to do the hardest job in the world. With every pull of the handle, the screw would emerge a little from the barrel. The tight prop into which the barrel was spiked couldn’t move backwards, so the teeth of the drill ground into the hard rock. Pulling that handle drew on every pound of my weight and every muscle and bone I had. Three or four strokes was all I could manage at a time. Then I’d have to rest, leaning on the handle, my head bowed over it, waiting for strength to flow back to my muscles. Then I pulled until they were emptied of strength.

That’s how it went on all night. Every three or four strokes would pare off about an eighth of an inch of rock — and the hole had to be four feet in depth. From the seam-high passage that ran right and left of the tunnel I was in, I could hear the grunts and groans of the men on both sides of me, working the way I was working, grinding their drills into the rock.

After I’d been boring for some time, strange things would happen when I rested. My arms would float. I’m not telling any lies. I’ll say it again. My arms would float.

When I let them fall from the handle of the machine, without any direction on my part, both arms would rise from my sides into the air. They would stay there for a second or so, before they finally grew heavy and sank back again. I could watch them do it, as if they didn’t belong to me, as if they belonged to somebody behind me.

I’d kneel down after this had happened, weary with an awful weariness. I was aware of the lids and rims of my eyes — they were rubber pads that were no part of me, but had been fitted there. There was what felt like a thick mica film casing my lips, tasting salty, so that when I shut my lips, this substance kept them apart. I knew the roof of my mouth: it was a hot, hard sponge. Sweat ran down my jaws; it ran down my legs and my hips, causing itches. My brain knew the outlines of all the bones in my body, and they were all weak, my legs, my back, my shoulder blades. And all the time my heart was thudding in the soles of my feet. I could feel it in my wrists and the joints of my spine, thudding away as if it was inexhaustible.

I’d kneel thus in the dimness, with the light behind me, my head in my hands, feeling the strength soaking down through my shoulders to my biceps and wrists. This was happiness.

The mere cessation of movement was happiness. Scenes and images having little relation to each other would craze through my head. There were people who slept in beds at night, soft beds in scented rooms. They didn’t know thirst or weariness. The lids and rims of their eyes were their own, not rubber pads that had been fitted there. Their arms didn’t act without instructions. These people were unconscious of their bodies, because their bodies had no occasion to talk back.

Then I was watching black trees against a bright night sky as I had once seen them. Then I was back at school again. I was back at school in my bare feet and I could feel the rough boards under my feet. I could hear the breathing of the other children around me, and the rustle of papers. Afternoon was lying in the dusty lanes outside the schoolroom and I was saying again the poetry I said then — Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. . . .

The same images formed in my mind now as I knelt in a pit with the sweat on my face, as formed then. I saw a tiny figure standing on a quay which was made of glass, and towering crystal waves breaking around. That’s what that poem meant to me then; that’s what it means to me to this day.

These images that the poet had given me would float around in my mind, crazily and happily, and I knew I wasn’t born for death either. These images were something beyond what I knew and what I saw and what happened to me. Death would come to what I knew and what I saw and what happened to me, but these images were a message from that place beyond death and flesh, telling me that for the real me, there was no death.

Then I’d open my eyes and come back to where my body was; it was a thousand feet from the surface of the earth, my shadow on the side of a tunnel.

3

THUS the night would pass in sweat and toil, and before morning I’d have that hole drilled and packed with explosives. The fireman would come and fire the shot, and I’d sit outside in a branch tunnel, eating my bread and drinking tea.

At this time I’d sneak out and drink the pony’s water. Out at the haulage point there was a little black and white pit pony. It was brought along from the stables at the shaft bottom, to draw odd trucks during the night. A bag of chop and a small barrel of water were always brought with it. That pony was always thirsty when it returned to its stable. It was thirsty because I stole its water. That pony knew what I was doing and it hated me. It used to rear and whinny and kick when it saw me approach its water barrel. And there was never anybody around to come to its aid.

I’d go back into my tunnel to see what the blast had done, and to build and stow the debris in the empty seam at each side of the tunnel. If the blast had shaped both sides into the semblance of a tunnel, then I wasn’t long making the place ready for the coal hewers coming on the day shift. When it was finally cleaned up, there was the great luxury of doing nothing, the great luxury of sitting looking at my work, knowing I wouldn’t be called upon for another sixteen hours.

Then I’d put on my jacket and my haversack and walk along the mine tunnels towards the shaft bottom, walking in the darkness and dreaming. For this was a great time for dreaming, now that work was over and sleep lay ahead. This kind of life that I hated, well, it would go on for a little while, and then it would end. Then happiness, which was everything as it should be for me, would begin, and as time flowed on, continue without interruption.

When I reached the pithead there was always the same thrill. There was the sun shining. It was shining on the green and yellow fields, shining on the rows of trees that marked off the fields, on the winding roads that cut through them. It was shining on the distant hills and the pits that were dotted around. And the sky was blue with maybe a white puffball here and there. There would always be a wind blowing, a cool wind from the west and the sea. And as I looked on all these things, the same wonder always started inside me. I suppose it’s because you can’t appreciate heaven until you’ve had a taste of hell.

How can you know the magic of sleep when you’ve never known weariness? or the magic of water when you’ve never known thirst? or the great sweetness of things like bread and potatoes if you’ve never been hungry? How can you know the magic of earth until you have been absent from it, only to return on a spring morning?

I’d think of these things as I stepped into the bus, packed with morning faces that had slept in soft beds while I toiled. And standing in the passage, I’d look at these blameless folk with cynical contempt, for I had been where they could never be, and had endured what they would never have to endure.

I knew this when I stepped off the bus and walked down the street, and saw through the baker’s window the moving angelic forms of white-clad girls. They left no ache in my heart now. It was right that they should be where they were, and be what they were; it was right that I should do what I did, and be what I was. For if the things I did must be done, then it was right that I should do them and endure them, for they would break others, but they would never break me.

I’d go to where I lodged, and wash leisurely and eat leisurely. I’d go into my room, which had a sloping ceiling because it was under the roof. Lying in bed I could see through the window to the street below, with housewives passing and children going to school. My eyes would close and open as I tried to fight sleep and sweet surrender.

I was always sure to awaken two or three hours later, and then the misery of being unable to sleep would begin, and the misery of all that happened last night drawing nearer and all to be gone through again.

That’s how it was then, twenty-odd years ago, and maybe you’ll ask what’s the point of putting down all this, now that it belongs to the past and I’ve got over it.

Well, the point is this. That was the time I should have been living my youth, and I didn’t know it. Now it’s gone, and can never be lived. And because what happened to me then is happening now, wherever there are coal mines. There are boys rotting away their lives, as I rotted mine, and like me they don’t know it. It’s happening in America, in Europe, all over the world.