Walk With Me In Hell

Chapter Three

First, Helen tried questioning the local sheriff’s office about her brother, but she got nowhere. They had no record of Henry in town at all, and when she tried to get them to take down his information and file him as a missing person, the policeman on duty dismissed her request. He said the same thing that the authorities had already told Helen’s parents. Henry had probably just moved on to another mining town, and there was no reason to suspect anything was wrong. After all, it had only been a few weeks.

Frustrated, Helen left the sheriff’s office and asked the clerk at the hotel where the local mining office was. However, it turned out that Haventown didn’t have one central mining office, as Helen had assumed. Scattered throughout the town were half a dozen different offices run by different companies with very similar names. The Arizona Mining Company. The Arizona United Mineral Corporation. The United Mining Company of Arizona. Helen didn’t have a clue where to begin, so she simply picked the first mining office she came to.

“You must have some sort of schedule or itinerary,” she insisted, putting her hands on her hips. “How else can you keep track of which men are working in which mine?”

The office manager, a balding man with jittery hands, adjusted his glasses and shrugged again. He seemed to be the sort of man who shrugged a lot. “I’m sorry, but those decisions are made by the mine supervisors. They coordinate with each other on a daily basis. We don’t keep track of individual work assignments here in this office.”

“Well, who does keep track of them?”

“No one, as far as I know. Like I said, they organize the work teams on site. I don’t believe anyone keeps records for that.”

“You don’t keep records for who’s during the work?” Helen said incredulously.

The manager sighed and shrugged again. “Ma’am, please understand. All of the men who work in the mines are independent laborers. They are not employees of our firm. Every week we have new people coming and going, and we can’t possibly keep track of every single person. Whatever workers show up to the mines on a given day are simply divided into groups and given their assignments by the mine supervisors. It’s all very informal.”

It took a few more minutes of back-and-forth with the manager before Helen learned that the mine workers were not paid a regular wage at all. They were given a very small cash payment at the end of the work day, and each team was given a small percentage of whatever dark stone they had mined, which they could exchange in town for money or services. The mining company did not keep any employment records whatsoever. The only thing they kept track of was the amount of dark stone taken from each mine. The supervisors would typically assign the best workers to the most productive mines, where they could make the most money for themselves and the company. But the other workers assigned to the used-up mines might spend all day with nothing to show for it.

The constant influx of new people made more sense now. Many of the workers would likely spend days or weeks assigned to the worst mines, while barely making any money at all. It was no surprise that so many of them moved onto other towns, where the mines were new and they might get a head start on discovering a fresh vein of dark stone.

“Okay,” Helen said in frustration. “So you’re saying I need to talk to one of the mine supervisors?”

The manager shrugged once again, like a nervous tick. “I suppose I could give you the names of the supervisors, but they’re promoted and reassigned on a regular basis. You said the gentleman you’re looking for –”

“My brother.”

“Yes, your brother. You said he was working in Haventown a month ago? I doubt that the same mine supervisors would still be working this area. I know for a fact that just last week, two of our supervisors were sent to some new mines near a town west of here. I could give you the name of the town –”

Helen had enough. She stormed out of the office and went back outside, walking past a group of dirty, haggard men standing in line at another door. It was getting late by now, the sun starting to set in the distance. Helen guessed these men had just come from the mines to receive their daily cash payment, which would barely be enough to pay for a meal.

She stood in the street and took a few deep breaths to calm herself. She couldn’t believe that the mining operations didn’t keep any records on their workers. The office manager didn’t actually come out and say it, but it was obvious that the companies didn’t even know who was working there at all. Anyone who showed up to work was given a job to do and paid at the end of each day, without any records whatsoever. Helen had hoped to learn which mines Henry had worked at, but it was obvious that she wouldn’t learn anything from them. All the mining companies cared about was how much of that dark stone they could scrape out of the earth, and their workers were just a disposable part of that process.

She looked at the line of men shuffling one at a time into the office. They looked like broken men, their backs hunched and their eyes on the ground. They were the weakest and slowest of the mine workers, and therefore assigned to the worst and least productive mines. Most of them probably had not found any dark stone at all. It horrified Helen to imagine her brother – so energetic and full of life the last time she saw him – standing in such a line, beaten down by the back-breaking labor of mine work.

Helen was not going to learn anything from the mining companies. She didn’t even think it was worth her time to check at the other offices, for they would tell her the exact same thing. They had no records, no information on her brother, and no time for her questions. How in the world could she hope to track down her brother if no one in this cursed town even knew he had been here?

Making up her mind, she walked back toward to the office and approached the miners.

“Excuse me,” she said. “My name is Helen Mosely and I’m looking for my brother, Henry. He worked here in Haventown a few weeks ago. Do any of you remember him? He was twenty-two years old, clean-shaven, and he had blonde hair like mine. He wore a pendant just like this one,” she said, and paused for a moment to fumble with her collar. She pulled out a small pendant hanging around her neck. It was an oval-shaped piece of polished steel with a fancy letter M engraved on it in curly script. Their father had made one for each of his children as a family signet.

“Do any of you remember a man named Henry Mosely?” she asked again.

A few of the men looked away or shook their heads with a muttered apology. “Sorry, no.” “I don’t recall.” “Nope, sorry.” They seemed uncomfortable or even embarrassed to have to respond, as if the thought of a missing worker shamed them personally.

She expected as much. “Well, like I said, my name is Helen Mosely. I’m staying at the Johnson and Sons Inn,” she said, tucking the pendant back into her shirt. “If any of you remember anything about Henry, please come and see me.”

She turned and walked off. One of the other mining offices was down the street. If she couldn’t get any information from the people in charge around here, she would talk to the people at the bottom. Surely, someone working at the mine would remember Henry and know what happened to him.

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