“Above ground, the miners’ families waited for word. Passing much of the week sequestered from the news media, they huddled together in an open-air warehouse on the mine’s sprawling property, eating pizza, whispering consolations to each other, and sometimes praying.”

The weather – tuned as it is to the irony of things – is beautiful. The sun comes up in the mornings the way I remember it when we were kids: happy and clear. I get here early. Don’t want to miss anything. Don’t know what else to do. None of us sleeps. I say hello to Mitch, who is always here before me. It must be dark when he gets here. Mitch has a son in the mine. Or had, maybe. Maybe had. We do not know how to say these things to each other, so we just sit and watch the sun come up from behind the little ragged woods at the edge of the property. Then more of us show up, a dozen or so in all. We stay close to each other even though there is plenty of space.  We are like a small tribe of pagan worshipers on open ground.

By mid morning someone has the radio on.  It’s a small plastic thing with barely any speakers.  The reception is garbled and static-y. Even when you’re close, voices sound broken and you can’t tell what they’re saying.  So we settle on the oldies station. Someone is humming a little, which helps fill in the spaces between sounds.  There are birds everywhere this time of year.  You can hear them up in the maples.  The maples have just started to give out leaves.

Around noon we get the kid with the flower tattoo and the feint smell of that old rough soap mama used to wash us with. He’s about thirteen and he brings the pizza.  Pizza seems like the most wonderful, ordinary thing.  We each take a slice.  The pizza is warm.  By this point the sun is high up and there is nowhere to get away from it.