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The boon that Earl brings back from the mines restores the world—it is the elixir, in a physical and symbolic sense, that gives light to the world. Coal is burned to create energy, powering light bulbs, heat pumps, ovens, refrigerators, incubators, electronically mediated communication… An inky substance that shines bright: brought from darkness into light, it brings light to the darkness.

Through his experiences in the mines, Earl also experienced an Apotheosis similar to the Tar Baby story of African American traditions, or the story of the Future Buddha and Sticky-hair. For some miners, the tar baby battle comes quickly within the mines, in rock falls where, like miner Donzil Cutlip, both arms, multiple ribs, and the entire body is

squeezed out, pressed against the tar-colored body of the caved-in mines (Cutlip). For Earl, this battle comes later, in a slow process of giving up his five weapons (his left leg, his lungs, and now his heart—in essence, losing the body completely) to bring him to realize the

lightning within him. This lightning, as Earl understands it, is the Christ within him—his belief that his salvation is in his abiding faith in Jesus. With this assurance, he says “I’m a winner either way,” whether he dies or lives through his heart-transplant operation:

Earl: Once that ye minin’ days are over / as far as havin’ great health and everthing you don’t, because ye lungs are / affected, in / many different ways. It’s the dust. And you’re uh, / and I had pneumonia / three, two or three years ago…

And that was after, they done pulled me out. And I had double pneumonia.

And uh / I really did, / that, I / that’s the only time in my life—and I got so ashamed then— that, I asked God / to just let me die…I mean I couldn’t breathe, Ihurt.

And then I got, I got to thinkin’ / that, “You’ve [God has] got no right to do this.” And uh / I’d, but down deep / I said, “God I’m yours.”

And, I mean when it did, it uh

it just hit me there, “Hey look, I’ve still got a reason for you, Earl!”…

It’s been eight years, two weeks, I mean two months and one week right now that my back, that’s why I had to come out, that

I mean it was messed up, it

Hannah: From / bein’ like this all day long (Hannah bends over, Earl nods)

Earl: What happens, uh, / what is known as degenerative disk disease

sets up. What it is, once they start to rupture, / it’s a chain reaction is what it is. And uh, they kept tellin me / for two and a half years,

“You need to get out a the coal mines.”

Well, I ran into somethin like I told ye, something I loved. It was different, Ienjoyed it, it was hard work.

And I, like I said, my family / I’s lookin at them. I got to take care a my family. The longer I went down under, the more damage I done to my back…

They [doctors from Birmingham and Vanderbilt] come down, Hannah, to see if [I] might not qualify / for another heart.

And [when] they said that it, it hit me a little

hard and I, I looked at the people, and I said “I don’t want to do that.” And he said, uh, “Ye heart is really,”

he said, “Earl, it’s, it’s not the best.” I said “Well,”

I said, “Why don’t you all want to do it here [in Kingsport]?”

He said, “Like you said,” he said “when it come down to a transplant—” I said “No.” I said, “People please listen to me. / Don’t send me back home.”

I said, “I don’t want to die in front of my wife and my children.”

And I said, “If that has to come,” and I said “I want you all to do it over here [in Kingsport].” But he said there

he says, “If you come down there [to Birmingham]—” and I said, “No, I don’t want a transplant.

Even, if I was to qualify,” I said “God’s the one that gave me the heart, and if it’s worn out, I accept that.”

I said, “Cause the shape my lungs are in,” I said, “the coal mining’s done and eat me up and everthing else, that,”

I said, “my lungs or my body would reject.”

111 done the open heart on me.

And uh, he come over there the night before and he looked at me and he said “Earl?” I said, “Yes sir?”

He said, “Are we still on / for in the mornin’?” I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “Are we really

still on?” And I said, “Why shouldn’t we be?”

And he looked at me and went to shakin’ his head and he said, “Earl I wished I had some patients,”

he said, “was much better shape than you are and had that / attitude.” I said, “I’m gonna tell you something.”

I said, “Where ya’ll keep tellin’ me I can’t survive surgery,” I said, “I don’t feel that way.”

And I said, “Doctor Malik,” I said, “you might not

believe, you might not want to hear what I’ve got to say but I’ll still tell ye that,” I said, “they’s one thing that you’ve got to understand.”

I said, “If God leaves me here,” I said, “I’m a winner.”

I said, “If He takes me on, I’m a winner that way.” I said, “Either way I’m a winner.” And that man looked there just like, “Man you are a fool!”

And, and I said, “I’m gonna be alright.”… And the way I look at it today.

I said, “I don’t deserve to be alive.”

I said, “I don’t deserve one precious drop of Jesus’s blood.”

His miners’ blood, distinct itself from other people’s blood as described through his

narrative, is redeemed by another blood, of which he feels he “do[es]n’t deserve one precious drop.” By delving into the mines, which destroy his body but transform his consciousness, Earl engages in the “energic process of transformation within the Self” (Von Franz 136, Jung 128-9). As Campbell writes, “the hero is the conscious vehicle of the terrible, wonderful Law, whether his work be that of butcher, jockey, or king,” or miner (Campbell 239).

Those listening to the hero’s story “are oriented to the Imperishable in

themselves...Though he had feared the terrible hag, he had been swallowed and reborn. Having died to his personal ego, he arose again established in the Self” (243). Having died to his own ego, sacrificed to and in the mines, Earl rises established in the Self that is both balanced (androgynously) in the feminine (his anima), and assimilated into the Self; having faced the hag (his own dismemberment, a rending of his members), he is reborn (through that “precious…blood”). It is this story that pervaded our conversation—Earl’s union with the Self through his own dis-memberment and rebirth (according to the Christian myth)—and it is this story, that “wonderful Law,” that he repetitively and performatively tells again and again. This is his “Testimony,” in the language of his church: his story as a humble hero who has answered the call, journeyed among helpers and tests, and emerged bearing the lamp of

hope—a burning coal brought out of the darkness of the mines that physically, spiritually, and symbolically for Earl is the light of the world.