THE IRON THROAT
5
Mazie lay under the hot Wyoming sun, between the outhouse and
the garbage heap. From the ground arose a nauseating smell. .Food had
been rotting in the garbage pile for years as there was no such thing as a
~arbage collection.
There was no other place for Mazie to lie, for the:
one paten of green in the yard was between these two spots. She pushed
her mind hard against the things half known, not known.
"I am Mazie
Holbrook," she said softly, "I am a knowen things.
I can diaper a baby.
I can tell two ghost stories. I know words and words. Tipple.
Edjicca-
tion. Bug dust. Superintendent.
My pappa can lick any man in this here
town. Sometimes the whistle blows and everyone starts a runnen. Things
come a blowen my hair and it's soft, like the baby laughing." A phrase
trembled into her mind, "Bowels of earth." She shuddered.
It was mys-
terious and terrible to her. "Bowels of earth. It means the mine. Bowels
is the stummy.
Earth is a stummy and mebbe she ets the men that come
down. Men and daddy gain in like the day, and comin out black. Earth
black, and pops face and hands black, and he spits from his mouth black.
Night comes and it is black. Coal is black. It makes a fire. The sun is
makin a fire on me now, but it is not black.
Some color I'm not a
knowen, it is," she said wistfully, "but I'll have that learn in someday.
Pappa says the ghosts down there start a fire. That's what blowed Sheen
McEvoys face off so it's red. It made him crazy. Night be a comen, and
everythin becomes like under the ground.
I think I could find coal then.
And a lamp like poppa'~ comes out, but in the sky. Momma looks all
days as if she thinks she gain to be hearin something. The whistle blows.
Pappa says it is the ghosts laughin'
cause they have hit a mil11 in the
stummy, or on the head.
Chris, that happened too.
Chris, who sang
those funny songs.
He was a furriner.
Bowels of earth they put him
in. Callin it dead.
Mebbe it's for coal, more coal. That's one thing
I'm not knowen. Day comes and night comes and the whistle blows and
payday comes. Like the flats runnin on the tipple' they come, one right a
floowen the other.
Mebbe I am black inside too. Tne bowels of earth
...
I am a knowen things, and I am not knowen things, and. somethings
I know, but am not knowin ...
sun on me, and bowels of earth
under ....
"
(Andy Kvaternick stumbles thru the night.
The late September
wind fills the night with lost and crying voices, and drowns all but
the largest stars.
Chop, chop, goes the black sea of his mind. How wild and stormy
inside, how the shipwrecked thoughts plunge and whirl.
Andy lifts
his face to the stars and breathes, frantic, like an almost drowned
man.
