Quotation

On one side, COAL KEEPS THE LIGHTS ON, and opposite them on the other side of the walk, was the same sign with words crossed out and one written in that said COAL KILLS. === They drilled holes in the rock above the veins, and blew charges to get the coal out. Otis’s house—still a thousand feet down the mountain—would shake and pictures of his dad and Marion’s kin would fall off the wall. He’d told her, “By the war, they was a hundred and thirty thousand miners diggin coal in Kentucky. Now they’s a few dozen up there scrapin it out with Cats. It ain’t like coal mining no more. === Otis came out of his house and crossed the yard to where Boyd Crowder and some coal company man in a suit of clothes were looking at Otis’s fishpond: the pond down to barely a foot of water, fish floating dead in a scum of coal dust.