Read Past All Dishonor for Free Online Page B

house by way of this mine?”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “And the owner, he knows?”
    “I’m the owner. I’m Jack Reiner.”
    “... How about that ride?”
    “You’ll see.”
    We went inside and he lit a lantern, and it was a great big room, two or three stories high, with a rectangular opening in the middle of the floor big enough to drop a ship in. It was the mine shaft, in four parts, with lifting cages at the top of three of them, and nothing at the top of the fourth except an iron rail to keep you from falling into the meanest hole I’d ever seen in my life. So of course that was our hole. And after we’d put on a couple of suits of overalls he took out of a closet, and put on miners hats with candles in them, and lit up, we started down a ladder that ran down beside a lot of pipes and stuff that he said were connections to the pumps. It was a rocky trip down, specially for one that had had as much to drink as I’d had, but after a while we reached a level place he called a station, and stepped off the ladder, and went in a tunnel that led off from the shaft. Then we stooped and squeezed until we got past a string of little mine cars that were standing there, and he told me to get in the front one—that is, the one furtherest from the shaft. Then he lifted the coupling pin, kicked out the chock, and hopped in himself. First we rolled slow, but then we got up so much speed our candles went out. Then we went roaring through heat and steam and hot water dripping in our eyes and all of it pitch dark until I was scared so bad I didn’t think I’d live till we hit, if we ever did, We did soon enough, when we fetched up against a bumper with a bang that almost knocked my teeth out. We did some more climbing, and then I saw where we were. The argument was still going on in 17, but we were behind it now, on the downhill side, and it was above us. On D Street, on the downhill side, the houses were all built on stilts, and hung out over the mines thirty or forty feet in the air. The lowest cross brace of 17 was three or four feet above my head, and I sat him on my shoulders and he caught it and went on up. I jumped and caught it with my finger tips, and skinned the cat some kind of way and got my knees over, and then after a little pushing and pulling we were both on the back porch, peeling off the overalls, which we hung on the rail. He laughed and said: “Hell of a lot of work for just a little fun, isn’t it? Like the one they were telling at Donelson. The general and the major and the captain were arguing how much of it was work and how much fun, so they put it up to the private that was striking for them. He says: ‘It’s all fun. If there was any work attached to it, you’d have me doing it.’”
    “Were you at Donelson?”
    “With McClernand. Cold enough to freeze the ears off a brass monkey, too. I lost a toe. That’s how I got my discharge.”
    “I had a brother with Buckner.”
    “You secesh?”
    “... I might be. Why?”
    “Biloxi’ll love you.”
    “I haven’t met her.”
    “Wait till she finds out.”
    She kissed me when Reiner told her, and then she really carried on. She was a dark, good-looking woman of forty, maybe not quite so old, with the same slim hips Morina had, big breasts pushed up high by her corsets, paint on her cheeks, and a funny way of talking that was half Gulf and half French. Her fellow was named Renny and he played the piano, and his friend was named Haines, and had a sweet tenor voice that made you cry. For me she had him sing Dixie and Maryland, My Maryland, and when a lieutenant hollered shut up with them goddam secesh pieces she grabbed up a sword with an ivory handle and engraving on it that had been made for a Mississippi general killed at Shiloh, stuck the point in his belly, and told him to get up and apologize. Then everybody laughed, and Reiner told him it was Biloxi’s way and he might as well get up and apologize or get the hell out. So he said he’d be