“Don’t you dare form a union!” Jack Lipton shouted down the mining hole at Steve and Jim, the two miners who had been discussing the idea for weeks with their colleagues, one of whom, sucking up to Lipton, told him. “You’re lucky to have a job at all, in this economy. If you go on strike, I’ll replace you all!”
“We have a perfect legal right to get organized,” Steve shouted back up at Lipton. “You know that perfectly well. The working conditions down here are atrocious! I don’t think I even need to prove how much worse the working conditions are for your workers in your many fracking operations, Mr. Lipton.”
“And the pay nowhere near compensates for the bad conditions here,” Jim added. “Beyond whoever squealed on us, the vast majority of us miners agreed to unionize. We’ll work to rule.”
“And replacing us with scabs won’t stop us!” Steve said. “We’ll convince the scabs to join us. It won’t be hard, once they see how bad it is down here. You’ll see, Mr. Lipton.”
“You ungrateful bastards!” Lipton shouted.
“Ungrateful,” Steve snorted. “We’re grateful to be still alive down here in this hell—“
Just then, everyone felt a brief tremor.
“We’re about to be reminded of how dangerous it is down here,” Jim told Steve. “We may not be grateful for much longer.”
Another, stronger and longer tremor shook everyone.
“Oh, God,” Steve said.
Lipton’s foot slipped a little too close to the hole. “Jesus!” he said after almost falling in. He backed up a bit.
Immediately after that, Steve, the further up of the two miners, flew out of the hole, screaming. He fell on the ground to the right of Lipton. No bones were broken, but the arm, hip, and leg that hit the ground were in great pain. He was groaning and rubbing his sore spots.
“What the hell happened?” Lipton asked.
“I…don’t know,” Steve said in a scratchy voice.
“Aaaaah!” Jim screamed as he flew out of the hole in the same way. He hit the ground, with a grunt of pain, to Lipton’s left.
Stepping back twice towards the hole and looking at the two hurt men, Lipton asked, “What could possibly have vomited you two out of the hole?”
The two men shook their heads.
“Me,” a deep, booming voice called out from the hole, causing all three men to shudder. Then powerful sucking came from it.
Steve and Jim slid closer to the hole, but Lipton got sucked in screaming. The sucking stopped, and the two men could hear Lipton screaming and knocking against the rocky walls of the mine, falling in deeper and deeper, until his screams ended.
Steve and Jim just sat by the mouth of the hole in complete silence, shaking. They looked at each other.
“What the hell just happened?” Jim asked.
Steve shrugged, still shaking. Then he remembered his wife’s warning to be ‘especially careful’ over the next few weeks. Then he remembered her ‘pagan nonsense,’ and thought, No…I ain’t gonna go there. I certainly don’t wanna talk about it with Jim. He’ll think I’m nuts…which I’m starting to think I am, too.
“I guess we gotta search for Lipton,” Jim said. “If anyone dares go down there, that is.”
Steve shook his head. “Not me.”
A search was conducted soon enough.
“C’mon,” the foreman said to those further down the hole. “Keep looking.”
Lipton’s body was never found…not even at the deepest point of digging.
Near that area, though, a miner’s light shone on the stony, muddy wall.
A man’s face, carved in the mud and rock as if by a sculptor, was smiling.
Infinite Ocean 