Episode 3: The Covenant: Barlo, Kentucky 1917: Part Three

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences.

So listener discretion is advised.

The earth, she feeds us.

Generations of fire damp, bituminous and volatile, black breath, burning or burial, we belong to her all the same.

Respirator and headlamp, overalls and steel toes, dress rehearsal for a last Sunday shift.

We do not speak ill of her that sustains and consumes us, wrap ourselves in her womb, smothered in promised security.

We all know that the only light in the deep dark is a paycheck.

So hush.

Count your blessings, boy.

Roof over your head, food on the table, diesel and grease, work boots on the porch, crippled back,

crumbling joints, and silence.

Company and even union

tuck you in,

shut you up,

leave you to rot.

God damn it,

you'd better be grateful.

I'll walk the easy hills

and leave these dark valleys

For I can't stay now in the lands unknown

Down the easels of

I will walk so often.

I can feel the winds now.

Hold your ghost.

Barlow, Kentucky, 1917.

Chapter 3:

The Covenant

When Old Old No.

7 collapsed in the summer of 1917,

the men who had been on the picket line protested unfair pay in an unsafe workplace sprung into action to do what they could.

Several men, including Eddie and Pinky Avery, of whom we've spoken before, ran into the mine to help douse the initial blaze that broke out on level three.

when the shouts of fire reached their ears.

None of them held any love for the scabs who'd come to work the mine during the strike.

Mostly black men and city boys from up Cincinnati way, but you don't just let men die like that.

Or to be fair, you don't let your only means of supporting your family burn up.

This strike wouldn't last forever.

Everybody knew that.

And at first, it seemed like they'd avoided the worst of it.

They smothered the fire and carried a few of the scabs outside, mostly just woozy from the smoke.

Although one boy had burned his leg real bad, he might lose it.

Once the foreman determined the fire was out and the fire boss had called the all clear, they hollered at the men who'd run outside to escape the flames to get back to work.

They picked up their helmets and their lamps and headed back down into the dark.

Just another day on the job.

Fire was always a danger and they all knew the risks.

And they took the jobs.

Just to be safe, a few men volunteered to go deeper into the black maze of tunnels, looking for any others who might have succumbed to the smoke.

Wasn't even an hour before the secondary explosion ripped through number seven, spewing black smoke from its gullet and knocking the men on the picket line to their knees.

When the men of Barlow regained their feet, this time they all pitched in, running toward the mine to save what could be saved, which wasn't much.

Of the 62 men inside Entrance 1 that day, they managed to pull nine men out of that black hole and into the light.

Three non-union workers from out of town and six union boys who showed up for work that day.

They carried the screaming and the dead back to town on makeshift stretchers, hastily improvised from larger signboards and the shirts from their own backs.

The church was the only sensible place to take them as the town's only meeting hall.

No piss aunt little town like Barlow had a hospital back then, or even would today come to that.

The church had light and it was clean.

Miss Ruby Garvin, the pastor's wife, kept a tidy house and that extended to the Lord's house as well.

And the families of the few local men who chose to enter the mine that day would find their way to the tabernacle of the Elder Covenant anyway, in search of news or prayers.

Pastor Cletus Garvin had ministered to the needs of Barlow for the past seven years.

An uncertain shepherd, he had preached the gospel, officiated the weddings, and said the last words over the men and boys the mine claimed, often burying a mostly empty box with a pair of work boots and a headlamp in place of a body lost far below.

Cletus had listened to the town's secrets and seen the darkness that gathered in the hearts of even the most upright citizens.

Life on the seam was hard, and it could make hearts hard.

He knew only too well the dangers of body and soul face deep underground, as he'd been a miner himself for many years before the mountain let him go.

Well,

it let him go as much as it ever does.

But no one ever really gets away, now do they?

Back in the winter of 1909, right around Christmas, Cletus had taken sick.

The wheezing cough that had begun to plague him in recent years grown into a flimmy, choking thing that stole his breath and stained his handkerchiefs with black slime.

By springtime, he'd dropped 50 pounds.

at least 20 of which he really could not afford to lose and he was coming home so weak and short of breath that Ruby insisted he he see the company doctor.

Against his better judgment, Cletus went to see the man, a fussy little Yankee in a pristine white coat, bow tie, and shiny hard-soled shoes that looked like they'd never touched the muddy tracks that passed for streets around Barlow.

The doctor listened to his heart and lungs.

made notes on a yellow legal pad as Cletus told him how he'd been feeling.

He listened and he nodded.

He stepped out of the room just for a a moment and returned 15 minutes later with the mine's foreman Kyle Watts.

Together, they told Cletus that he had the black lung and he wouldn't be able to do the only work he'd ever known anymore.

The company would have to let him go.

The boss says you and Ruby can stay in the house, though, Kyle told him, not unkindly.

and you'll have your pension.

Pension?

A meager sum compared to a working man's full pay was almost laughable.

Cletus had no idea how he and Ruby would make ends meet.

See, the Garvins had been blessed with seven children, four boys and three girls, and only the eldest two were grown.

Both of them, Cletus Jr.

and Lily Ruth, were married and out of the house now.

They had families of their own to provide for.

The house was something, though.

At least they wouldn't be out in the cold.

Not yet, anyway.

Kyle agreed to let Cletus finish out the week, and so he did.

The burden of his responsibilities and extra weight on his shoulders as he dug deep into the mountain on those last few days.

He was sick.

Sick and tired, so very tired, and he began to worry how Ruby would get on without him.

His thoughts running circles like a rat in his brain, chewing.

Chewing, chewing to find a way out.

He found himself wandering deeper into the mine, away from the other myth,

where he could work uninterrupted, alone with his thoughts.

Cletus had almost begun to hope he might die there in the mine before his shift was done.

If he died on the job, why, the company would take better care of Ruby and the kids.

They'd at least get a little bit better pension, and Ruby would have one less mouth to feed once they laid him down in the ground.

I mean, hell, that's where he he spent his whole life anyway.

And it was there,

down deep in the mine,

alone with his growing despair, it's where Cletus first heard them speak his name.

At first he thought the whisperer might have come from Edgar Avery,

last man he'd seen down here.

Passed him on his way into the tunnel hours ago.

I'm here, he called.

That's you, Eddie!

But he got no answer.

And when the whisper came again, Cletus realized it was coming from further down the mine, not behind him.

He shone his light down into the darkness, wandering further down and around a bend, thinking some dummy got himself lost.

Who's down there?

He called.

You need help?

At first, there was nothing more.

And Cletus thought he might have imagined the voice he'd heard.

As he started to turn back, though, the voices, for there were many as it turned out, not just the one,

began to speak.

They told him they could help him.

They could take away the pain and sickness and make him strong and whole again.

Cletus chuckled uneasily, thinking he must be hearing things that years of living and breathing black dust finally got to his mind as well as his lungs, but the voices knew things.

They knew where he got the scar that twisted around his right thumb and into the meat of his palm.

They knew what had happened to his little sister,

why she had to leave the county all those years ago, knew what his father had done.

When Cletus was convinced of their power, when, sobbing, he begged them to stop offering their proofs, they once more offered to help him.

In return,

they asked for service.

The voices would not restore his life only to have him bleed it away again in old number seven.

They needed a man on the outside,

and he would be that man.

A lifelong member of the Tabernacle of the Elder Covenant, the local Pentecostal house of preaching, Cletus had served as a deacon for years.

He'd never shown much gift for preaching, but the voices helped with that, too.

And soon he began delivering sermons filled with a righteous zeal that seemed divinely inspired to the people of Barlow.

So when Pastor Reeves died suddenly in an unfortunate hunting accident later that year, Cletus was asked to take his place.

The voices rarely placed outright demands on the new pastor.

Well, not precisely, anyway.

There were days he barely felt their touch on his mind at all, and others he heard them more clearly, often not giving orders, but making suggestions,

improvements to certain turns of phrases in his sermons, interpretations of Bible verses he might not have considered on his own, and truth to tell, Cletus' congregation certainly seemed to cleave to this new style of preaching, their eyes glowing with the fervor in the light of a gospel of fire and brimstone and blood.

It was Pastor Garvin who introduced a practice of speaking in tongues to the Elder Covenant's congregation, though it was a common one in these hills, and most were familiar with it.

The harsh, disconsonant sounds that the pastor wrenched from the throats of his flock grated against his eardrums and caused his stomach to churn with bile, yet he could not deny their power.

Combined with the laying on of hands, perhaps anointed with oil or smeared with the blood of a calf or goat.

Well, they had the power to heal,

or in some cases,

to kill.

Though Cletus liked to think those times were a mercy, a quick death wrapped up in a frenzy of religion as opposed to a slow death from the black lung or the cancer.

And if the ones the word saved had a tendency to come back not quite

unchanged well

there was always a price to be paid

say amen

so when the dying men from number seven were carried into the church on that muggy august morning the tabernacle of the elder covenant also sprang into action ruby garvin fetched candles and dried herbs from the cupboard sent the women of the congregation home to gather whatever spare linens could be found The men folk consulted with Pastor Cletus,

who let the voices guide him with regard to how much would be required from which one.

And to their credit, none of his congregants argued.

Those asked simply nodded grimly and went home to fetch a pig, chicken, goat,

in one case a family dog.

for the sacrifice.

Now while his congregation went about their preparations, Pastor Garvin took a moment to himself, sitting quietly on a pew in the very back of the church to listen to the voices, to learn what he'd be tasked with this day.

Now over the course of his service, Cletus had been asked to do many things that didn't set well with him, though he told himself it was for the good of his family and his wife.

the good of his neighbors and congregation.

But the visions they showed him that day,

that last day,

froze his heart and turned his stomach with fear and sickness.

This he knew would do no good for anybody.

Not in Barlow,

not in this world.

There is a curse upon my everywhere,

cannot escape

darling.

Hey family, welcome back to Barlow and welcome back to 1917.

We're still chasing those answers, still trying to answer that one question that haunts us from the first time we get up to the last time we lay down and that's how did we even get here in the husk of a town a hundred years gone from the worst disaster in kentucky mining history but yet it feels like the body is not even cold maybe next episode will give us some answers probably

not

Old Gods of Appalachia is a production of deep nerd media Our intro music is written and performed by Landon Blood.

Our outro music is by those poor bastards.

Today's episode was written by Cam Collins and performed by Steve Schell.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

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