I was watching all the deaths on the television where so many children died the horrible death when the mountain of coal dust fell down on them. This is my version of it. This first image is mine and is of a coal man carrying a bad of coal...
It’s the man from the blue deep and here he comes dragging his stone with his voice put on like a bassoon and all immaculate he is too with ever a side window in his pocket to see out of.
And I see Julie Best has been caught behind the sheds again one time too many and now wears her Sunday best for forgiveness, but she won’t get it from him, oh no, bloody swine that he is and her with a bleeding heart too.
And they say never settle for second best, but if you do that you settle for nothing, so you end up settling for anything, like Julie Best who caught one behind the bike sheds, always the bike sheds, I wonder why? And we all know who it was that done it on her. Better to kiss the stone. And she’ll be all big and round soon and blushed.
Of course, round here they don’t let their girls out because they know they won’t come back a virgin, and half of them get knocked up first time, then it’s off to the doctor quick. If only they’d let them out to be inoculated by the world they’d be alright.
And those old men, who sit on the stone all ready to jump in and not a tooth left between them, what could they possibly see that’s worth seeing for them? And that’s maybe why they sit there supping their sup and already in the grave.
And Mrs. Iles the Englishwoman turned native now, always wearing black for her dead husband who was buried in the mine one day and never found again; they say his bones turned to coal to be shipped off on the coal trains to be burnt to dust in the steel mill.
Yes, Mrs. Iles and a neighbour who cackle back and forth over their black sheets that can never be got clean and not a dustbin between them.
Just outside the village is the coal mine with its horn twice a day, where the men go to work strong and come out weak and black and coughing and all this under the towering mountains all around the village.
And their religious god the biggest stone of all, a perfidious masquerade that traps them forever in its blessings and won’t let them out, ever.
But what chance have I got to escape this, the stone is too heavy; so I will stand on my head until I fall over.
And Jones the undertaker, making his boxes, and what else would he do? And make one for yourself Jones, there’s a good man; and all the while starving for a smile, but who would smile around there?
And the pub where they all go, like a second home it is full of their tragic spirits whether they’re there or not; a piece of themselves they leave wherever they go until that stone is closed over them forever and their spirit fades away, but until then they will drag it around and spread their news until their bones crumble.
One day it rained a lot and kept on raining and then the mountain fell down and buried most of the village and those who were left were never the same again. All my friends gone in one day and me home bad and eating ice cream that turned to stone in my belly when I heard the news.
The mine owners said it was an act of god and never took responsibility even though it was their coal mountain that fell down; but then, how can you compensate the dead?
Grief like this can never be measured; it turns the heart to stone that no god of man can ever mend.
This is the village of the stone and there’s no young here, where we’re all buried as soon as we come out, the babies crying for the stone in their mother’s milk placed there by all the generations of the black dust come before, that black granite of their hearts nailed to their breathing into every space until there’s no space left to go that is not a tomb of their doing.
I see all this and more and cry: oh wake up my soul, this doom is not yours to endure where the spiders scream and the boys with their matches to burn some hapless toad and watch it squirm in delight, no, wake up my heart or forever close the stone of this place over you.
Fly, fly from here, and leave the stone behind.
Addendum:
When I showed this to my mother to read she kept it, wouldn’t give it back and gave no explanation.
She died two years ago now and I found this again after 50 years, in with all her important papers. It was the first thing I ever wrote.
My mother was the last of them from the village at that time, all the others are gone now, except Julie Best who escaped to America with her son, and me of course. I hitch-hiked out one day on the only road in a big car that was going to the city and after I got to the city I just kept on going.
This isn’t much of a story I know, but it was my first and so I thought I’d share it as it should have been done all those years ago.
I still miss my friends and forgive them now their faults, maybe the toads won’t, but I do. I forgive me too for writing this, and perhaps my mother was right and I should have left this to be burnt with all her things as her body was cremated when I laid her memory to rest.
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