He told his friend Joecy repeatedly that he didn't want to die. In bed that night, H lost feeling in both of his arms. The pit boss watched, and, when he had finished, told Thomas that H had saved his life.

H picked up his own shovel in one hand, Thomas's in the other, and shoveled enough to meet both men's quotas for the day. Thomas had been so weak and scared of being killed that on his first day he collapsed to the ground in tears. One day, H was partnered with a white man named Thomas. Most of the other people working in the mines were black men who had been arrested for small crimes, though sometimes a white man would be brought in. His memories of freedom grew fainter, but he held on to his memories of Ethe. There were other dangers in the mines: collapses and explosions could kill men by the hundreds. His arms and shoulders burned constantly from exertion, but he saw that men who didn't shovel enough were whipped harshly, sometimes until they died. Starting then, H spent his days down in the mines shoveling coal. H told them that he was a free man, but the pit boss threatened him with a knife. When it was H's turn to be examined, the chief deputy and pit boss talked about how big he was and how much to pay for him. One boy was so young and scared that he cried and peed in his pants while being examined. When they got to the coal mine site, the pit boss examined each of the men. Because he couldn't pay the fine, H was chained to a line of men the next morning and sent off to work in the coal mines outside of Birmingham, Alabama. H only had five dollars, and he said he couldn't call anyone to get more, thinking of how his woman Ethe wouldn't help him now that he had cheated on her.

H spent four days in jail before the guards told him he could leave after paying the ten dollar fine. They talked for a few minutes about the end of slavery and white people's continuing ability to get any black man they wanted arrested, and then H's cellmate fell asleep. After the police left, he talked to his cellmate about his supposed crime: looking at a white woman. H, a sharecropper, protested as four policemen arrested him and put him in a jail cell.

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