Who Was Zeke Pluto?

It was Oliver's recollections that sent Stakel to the archaic microfiche and an obscure note in the Mining Gazette's vital statistics section.

As it turned out, Lina refused to die. Yes, they had disconnected the tubes and ventilators; but horribly, and incredibly, Lina lived on!

Lina was in a deep coma; and while her treatment was not up to millennial standards, it was enough to sustain her. The local conservatives, like county prosecutor Hill Paquette and Judge Toivo Manu, were livid in their conviction that withdrawing treatment was tantamount to turning on the gas chamber. When it was found that Lina was pregnant, the heated debate regarding the moral efficacy of withdrawing treatment became a moot point. It was decided that the early development of the fetus growing inside her took precedence over the wishes of Lina's immediate family. Their plea that the Judge consider the best interests of all concerned fell on deaf ears. This appeal was dismissed on the grounds that no one could know what the child might determine as its own best interest. The fact that the child was the offspring of a murderous sociopath and a brain dead mother seemed to bother the community less than the abstract idea, the noble lie, that a fetus in its earliest embryonic stages has a set of inalienable rights.

Although the idea of attaching a sensibility to Lina's state, as she experienced it, was no doubt a flawed way of looking at things. She was fed liquid nourishment by a pump that forced food via a tube that passed through her nose down the back of her throat and into her stomach. Her bladder emptied through a catheter inserted through her vagina. From time to time this brought on infections which required dressing and antibiotic treatment. Her stiffened joints caused her limbs to rigidly contract so that her arms were tightly flexed across her chest and unnaturally contorted her legs. Reflex movements in her throat caused her to vomit and dribble. Of all of this, and the presence of members of her family who took turns visiting her, Lina had no consciousness at all. The part of her brain that enabled consciousness had turned to fluid. Her body lived, but not in the sense that the most pitifully handicapped human being has a life.

And so the child was born. The boy was christened Zeke Pluto Flately, the ill-fated and then unknown redeemer of cruelty.

Zeke had a pedigree of tragedy. Besides Lina's brother's drowning, her maternal grandmother had died in the 1913 Calumet fire stampede. Human disaster often seems senseless, but nothing quite equals the ache associated with the events at the Italian Hall in Calumet on Christmas Eve 1913. The families of striking copper miners had crowded into the hall's second-floor ballroom in a show of mutual support during an otherwise difficult holiday season.

Someone in the throng yelled "fire"! Panic ensued. The horrific crush was on. Children and adults alike surged toward the exit, which was down an enclosed stairway with doors that opened inward. Those at the fore were unable to pull the doors open before the human crush filled the narrow passageway. How did they die? Their lungs and brains were deprived of oxygen. After the grim task of untangling the bodies the death count stood at 74. 63 children were among the dead. One of whom was Lina's grandmother. Her fraternal Grandfather, Otis Flately, had died in the Ishpeming mining disaster of 1926.

Lyle Liljeroos, author of The Depths of Grief: U.P. Mining Disasters, had a grandfather, Rutherford Mills, who survived the tragedy. The Upper Penninsula's deep iron and copper mines have always accounted for their share of misery, but what happened on the morning of November 3, 1926, is particularly sorrowful. What stuck in Liljeroos' memory was his mother's telling him that she had never eaten a pasty since that grim day. According to the archives Liljeroos cites, it was on that fateful morning that workers in the upper level of the mine unknowingly ruptured the rocky wall of an underground lake. Water cascaded down the shafts and drifts, creating a vacuum that pulled walls of rock down on miners working hundreds of feet below. As the water rose swiftly in the shaft around him, one man, Liljeroos' grandfather, survived by climbing some 800 feet. Fifty-one others died. The historical documents include a particularly gut-wrenching photo of the mouth of the water-filled mine. Floating amidst the general debris left behind were hundreds of disintegrating pasties, sadly banal reminders of the miners who had perished.

These were the stories that informed the Ezekial Pluto Flately origin myth. Of the unknown sociopath who had fathered this son, not much could be said at the time. Since the child's paternity has never been officially determined, it can only be surmised that it was Guerre. What can be said with some certainty is that the boy was given over to foster care.