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Harry Wood by John Foulcher
Harry Wood worked in the mines, digging his way out of poverty, finding in his twenties an empty foreman’s place.


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Once, he told us, he fired a man for fooling with the ropes, and the union went out for weeks. He held on, though, and they sank back to the sleek coal caves one man shot,
breathing again the air invisible from rock.

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And one time collapsing the moment he started, the mine nearly took him, he heard them say, “Wood’s gone”, as the shovels rattled in the earth.



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Now he’s bought the farm, and every year before market he herds the steers in by himself, pricks at their tubs of meat with a current-charged bar until they panic and take the long unbroken slope creaking into the truck.

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Kangaroo bones pocked with skin and maggot bubbles of flesh ed...

Posted by: Tricia F. Doyle

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