Preface
“Back to work, you lazy boy!” shouted the angry, obese overseer, glaring at the snoozing boy who lay awkwardly along the ground at the foot of a massive pile of coal. The boy, as young as ten years, seemed the opposite of young itself. His youth was concealed behind a mask of pitiful health, his face shrouded by a filthy collection of coal powder which had become a paste upon contact with his sweat. The hair beneath his soiled work cap had a peppery mesh of black and his natural auburn color. His cap, with a heavy light adorning its front pressed down onto his face, further obscuring his already contorted eyelid and brow. His bent limbs, also slightly misshapen, had been sprawled in unusual angles until he had begun to rise.
Exhausted from his many long hours and long days of dreaded work, he had nodded off again. His eyes half opened as the annoying man griped at him from across the room. Ignoring the threats being thrown at him, he urged his unwilling body to crawl up from its deep slumber, simply for the sake of keeping the job though he hated it so. Finally coming to a rough standing position after a long, lethargic rise, he turned away from the overseer to tend to his job. His torn and disgustingly dirty clothing was darkened with heavy exposure to the atmosphere of the deep coal mine, and his gloves were smothered with the black substance.
Slowly, he reached to the ground and retrieved his shovel, which was also ashen with the black rock, and lazily pushed it into the pile of coal next to him. He scooped out as much coal as was possible for him to carry, and clumsily dumped in into a mine cart which was set off the tracks next to him.
After what seemed like hours, but had lasted only a few minutes, a young man approached, pulling an empty mine cart. This boy was seven years older than the one displacing the coal pile, and was clearly much more muscular. However, he still appeared just as drained by the hard work. He approached the younger boy and placed the fresh cart next to the one being used, which was nearing its fill of coal. Without any exchange of words, the two boys performed their jobs as prescribed by the overseer. The younger shoveled a final scoop into the used cart, and the older placed in on the tracks. The younger then continued to shovel the coal, using the empty cart, and the older proceeded to exit from the hall through which he had entered, pulling his new payload.
Breathing in heavy amounts of wet, grotesquely scented, ashy clouds of black, the boy grew tired again very quickly. The temperature down in the depths of the mine was extremely high, contributing to his fatigue, and many of the men had stripped down to all but their caps in order to keep the heat out of their bodies. The young boy had not been used to bareness around other people, and could never quite get himself accustomed to working around naked men.
His brother, who had been the one to exchange the carts, was making his way out of sight into the cloudy darkness, wearing no more than his cap and undergarments. The young one had intentionally kept his eyes away from his older brother while they worked together. He knew that as his brother neared the surface, he would put on some more clothing. Meanwhile, the heat trapped beneath the young one’s clothing, the long hours of work, and the horrible atmosphere were bringing a wave of total exhaustion over him.
Weary beyond wit’s end, he found himself once more lying down on the ground, submitting himself to rest.