“I knowed it would be all right, soon as I got inside. I felt easy, like they was nothing to fear. And guess what I seen, over by the haulage way? Mushrooms! Growing up just as pretty as you please, there in the dark and the dust. I tell you, hit was a sign from God. He was saying, ‘See here how the least of these creatures can prosper in this place. And wont I take care of you?’”

I filled his plate, put the fork in his hand.

“Hit’s a powerful noise when the powder blows. But when we cleared the coal out, I knelt there a minute and I thought, ‘They aint never been a human being stood in this place before.’ Hit was like discovering a new part of God, like being able to touch something precious. And to feel the mountain all round, to be closer to its heart than I ever did think was possible—”

I sat across from him and toyed with my food.

“And when I was picking slate I come on the outline of a fern that had growed right in the rock. You could count ever leaf on it.”

“You talk to the other men?”

“We talked over our dinner pails. They was right shy about it. They’re afeard of what the guards might think about meetings. So I said I’d speak to the superintendent and git permission to study the Bible over dinner. They’s some are interested in it.”

He wanted to make love that night but was too tired for it, so I cradled his head and stroked his temples as he fell asleep.

The superintendent saw no harm in a daily Bible study and prayer session. He thought it might uplift the men, take their minds off their petty troubles and help them work harder. The company preacher at the Felco Methodist Church was strictly Sundays only and most of the miners didn’t attend his services anyway. Albion was a Godsend, the superintendent declared.

After a few months, men came to our house on Wednesday evenings for prayer meeting, and brought their wives and children. When a member of the meeting was killed in a roof fall after the boss sent him into a section the men had complained of, Albion read to them from the book of Exodus. One man mentioned the union, speaking quiet, his eyes skipping around the room like he feared to be arrested at any moment.

“Let’s talk about it some more,” Albion said, and they did. Their numbers grew until they filled all four rooms of the house, sitting cross-legged on the beds and on the floor. Albion had to stand at the kitchen door and turn in all four directions to be heard when he spoke. I waited for the guards to evict us, but no one came.