THE IRON THROAT
Tillie Lerner
THE WHISTLES
always woke Marie.
They pierced into her sleep like
some guttural voiced metal beast, tearing at her; the sound meant, in
one way, terror.
During the day if the whistle blew, she knew it meant
death-somebody's poppa or brother, perhaps her own-in that fearsome
place below the ground, the mine.
"Gcddam that blowhorn," she heard her father mutter. Creak of him
getting out of bed. The door closed, with yellow light from the kerosene
lamp making a long crack on the floor. Clatter of dishes. Her mother's
tired, grimy voice.
"What'll ya have? Coffee and eggs. There ain't no bacon."
"Don't bother with anything.
Haven't time. I gotta stop by Kvater-
nicks and get the kid. He's starting work today."
"What're they going to give him?"
"Little of everything at first, I guess, trap, throw switches, maybe
timberin' ."
"Well, he'll be starting one punch ahead of the old man. Chris began
as a breaker boy." (Behind both stolid faces the claw claw of a buried
thought-and maybe finish like him, buried under ~laty roof which an
economical company had not bothered to timber.)
"He's thirteen, ain't he?" asked Marie.
"I guess.. Nearer to fourteen."
"Marie was tellin me, it would break Chris' heart if he only knew.
He wanted the kid to be different.
Get· an edjiccation."
"Yeah? Them foreigners do have funny ideas."
"Oh, I dun no. Then she says that she wants the girls to become nuns,
so they won't have to worry where the next meal is comin' from, or have
to have kids."
"Well, what other earthly use can a woman ha"e,
I'd
like to know."
"She says she doesn't want 'em raising a lot of brats to get their
heads blowed off in the mine.
I guess she takes Chris's . . . passing
away 'pretty hard.
It's kind a affected her mind.
She keeps talking about
the old country, the fields, and what they thought it would be like here.
-'all
buried in da bowels of earth," she finishes.
