Woodcutter's Revival by Jerry Slauter

her had not brought any relief, only intensification of the condition.
    As he began to dream, he saw her walking toward him in a white gown, carrying a bouquet and wearing a veil. He awoke in a cold sweat. The excitement of such unexpected happiness quickly turned into despair as he realized the cold, dark emptiness of the room. Although fatigued, now he could not go back to sleep. He tossed and turned. The harder he tried to sleep, the wider awake he became. “How could she ever be attracted to me?” he thought. “Her dad owns this town. I am a stranger here. She knows nothing about me except that I needed a job when I went to work in her dad’s mine.”
    Once he finally drifted off to sleep again, morning came quickly. As Raymond arose, he felt as though he had not slept at all. Raymond lit the lamp by his bed. As he regained his conscious thoughts, he said to himself, “It’s only Thursday. The week is only half over.”
    He also reasoned, “If I am going to leave after a month, like I planned, that would be a week from tomorrow. Oh well, I am more than half way through.”
    Raymond had been in the shaft for about two hours when he heard the alarm. All he knew about the alarm was it meant there had been trouble in one of the tunnels and get out as quickly as possible. The community was situated in such a way that everybody could hear the whistle – similar to a locomotive whistle with a longer blast and shriller.
    The whistle was mounted on the steam engine which drove the conveyor system. The ominous sound shocked Raymond as he had never heard it before. Once he realized, by the duration of the blast, that is was the warning, the sound became extremely annoying.
    As he found his way out of tunnel number two, he could see dust still settling around the entrance of tunnel number four, the most recent shaft to be dug. There was a crowd of miners gathering around the semi-sealed opening. Some of them, like him, were from the crew of tunnel two. Most of them came from the other shafts or the smelter. There seemed to be some commotion and disbelief as people began to define the situation and determine a course of action. Raymond stopped beside one of the onlookers, “What happened?”
    â€œThe shaft collapsed. There are still two in there.”
    Then the foreman, Mr. Peters began organizing the onlookers. He told them to form two lines. The people nearest the opening began to hand rocks and debris to the person next to them and so on, down the line. This method seemed to be the best method to clear the debris in the fastest manner possible. Raymond, noticing that a great amount of the debris consisted of small rubble, began looking for a shovel and a wheel barrow. He also enlisted the efforts of Daryl, next to him, to grab the second shovel.
    As he dug and removed the small debris, he could see a pick and bigger tools were needed. He enlisted another participant from the debris brigade to dig, while he looked for some bigger tools. Everybody else seemed to know what to do and worked quickly and without speaking. There was no time to wonder if their efforts would be futile. Most offered silent prayer while they worked.
    They had to hope the two miners were alive, had enough air and had been in a secure place when the slide occurred. They worked for at least an hour, which seemed like an eternity. The slide did not appear to extend inside as it appeared from outside. As they inched their way into the dust and rock-filled shaft, there was some room near the top of the shaft where debris had not lodged into the top shelf. The small space extended several feet of the length of the shaft and all the way across.
    Finally, about fifteen feet into the shaft, they reached a space where the slide began to diminish. It seemed they had dug through the greatest concentration of the debris and were now beginning to dig away from the center of the collapse. One of the rescuers shined a light