What's Your Name

One.

The nearest miner on the rope put down his crib tin.

I knew what was happening. I wasn't confused. Crib, and what working during crib does, and that I was working, and that it was going to kill me. All of it. And my hands kept hauling anyway.

Two.

"Iven!" Bea was shouting. "Iven, stop!"

"He can't," said Gus. "He can't. I told him to."

Three.

Ansel took a step toward me and stopped. At morning crib he'd lifted Hester and sat straight down with her, one second and done. My hands were locked on a rope with a full cart on the end of it. Getting me off would take hauling, a lot of it, and hauling is work. I watched him understand that. He stood there with his big scarred hands open and couldn't do anything with them.

Four.

The miner stood up.

Then another one, further down the rope. Then two more on the slope. Their lamps were all on me. I could feel them on my face.

Five.

The cart came up another yard. My hands went on, over and over. They didn't shake. They didn't hurt. They'd never been so steady in my life.

Six.

Tobin ran at me.

When the crib whistle went he'd sat down on the rails a few yards below me, with Pim, the way you're supposed to. Now he was on his feet and running back up, slipping on the coal, shouting my name.

"Iven! Iven, let go, come on, it's..."

He stopped.

He was right in front of me, close enough to touch. He was looking at my face, and something had gone out of his.

"It's..." he said. "I..."

Seven.

"What's your name?" said Tobin.

He looked frightened. He was staring at my face as if he'd lost something in it.

People forget my name. Dora at the desk. Clerks. Men in the queue. Never Tobin. Not once.

I opened my mouth to tell him, and the rope pulled, and I hauled.

Tobin looked at me for one more second. I saw him decide. I saw him decide it didn't matter.

"You came and got me," he said.

Eight.

He had my shovel in his hand, the one with the split handle that I'd given him that morning. He swung it at the lamp on the front of my helmet. The glass broke and hot oil hit my face, and I shut my eyes, and the world went black.

No light. No rope. No carts. Nothing in front of me at all.

No work in sight.

My hands opened.

The rope tore away through them and raced back over the drum after the cart, whipping, and I was standing right where it swung. Tobin grabbed me round the middle with both arms and hauled me off the rails. He was small and skinny and he pulled with everything he had. We went over backwards together onto the coal, and the rope cracked past where my head had been. Somewhere below, Pim threw himself clear.

My hands lay open on the coal, empty and aching. After nearly three hours they were mine again.

Nine.

When I opened my eyes, I could see the other lamps. Bea's, at the edge of the slope. Pim's, coming up the rails. And the miners', all of them, turning.

Away from me. To Tobin.

Tobin had swung a shovel during crib. Tobin had hauled me off the rails. Tobin had been working.

Gus had said it hours ago. Put his lamp out. Ansel had said it was too dangerous on a loaded rope. Tobin had waited until it was more dangerous not to.

He'd known. He'd sat at crib that morning and said it himself, out loud, so it would go in. So during crib, working kills you. He'd known, and he'd done it anyway.

Ten.

They took him.

They didn't hurry. They came down the rope and up the slope and they put their black hands on him, on his arms and his shoulders and his coat, very carefully, the way you'd pick up a child who'd fallen asleep somewhere he shouldn't. And they walked him to the wall.

He didn't fight. He didn't scream. He was counting.

"Eleven," said Tobin. "Twelve. Thirteen."

Counting the lamps. He couldn't stop. He never could.

The wall went soft where they touched it, black and wet. They walked him into it.

"That isn't true," I said.

I was on my knees on the coal. I said it the way I'd said it at the gate, with all of me, and I meant it more than I've ever meant anything.

The rule flickered.

I felt it go. All along the slope, every lamp stuttered at once, and the hands holding Tobin went loose. Just for a heartbeat. His arm came free. I saw it, a pale shape against the black, reaching back.

I grabbed for it in the dark.

I missed.

Then the heartbeat was over, and the rule came back, and the hands closed again, and the wall closed after them. It was smooth black coal from the floor to the roof, the same as all the rest.

He was still counting when it closed. I heard "Fourteen."

The start whistle blew.

The long one. The end of crib. All over the haulage, the miners stood up, went back to the rope, back to the carts, back to work. The humming started again.

I was kneeling on the coal.

Bea got to me first. She put a shovel in my hands. Her own one. She closed my fingers round the handle with her fingers, hard, and held them there.

"Dig," she said.

I dug.

I didn't see who else was crying. I couldn't see anything outside Bea's lamp. I dug at the coal on the rails and I didn't stop, and nobody looked at me, and I didn't care if they did.

At the top of the slope, by the drum, one lamp hadn't moved the whole time. It was in the same place now that it had been when the crib whistle blew.

Tamsin had watched all of it, and she hadn't moved at all.

Later, Pim was working next to me.

His lamp was shaking. His face was wet under the dust, in long clean lines.

"Remember his ladder joke?" he said. His voice cracked in the middle. "The ladder. He told it about a thousand times."

"Yeah," I said.

And I went to find it.

It was there somewhere. I was sure of it, the way you're sure which pocket your keys are in. A joke about a ladder. Tobin told it at the Rumour Desk on Sunday, and on the train, or near the train. He told it at crib today, and I laughed. I laughed so hard I had to cover my mouth.

I remember laughing. I remember my hands over my mouth, and his face, pleased with himself, saying See? It's good.

I couldn't find the joke.

There was a ladder in it. A miner, maybe. That was all. I went round and round it, and there was nothing there. Only the place where it had been.

Pim was looking at me the way he had over the pies.

"It's fine," I said. "It's fine. Dig."

He dug.

Somewhere far away, up a passage I couldn't see, a dry and careful voice was reading out loud. It read one name. I couldn't hear what the name was.

It didn't read any others.