The coal cellar was in the basement behind a wooden door. A room with no windows and a pile of coal against the wall. Black and shining. The coal truck came and the driver opened the iron door in the sidewalk and the coal slid down the chute and hit the cellar floor and the sound was like a river of stones. The whole building knew when the coal arrived. The coal cellar was the building's stomach. You fed it and it kept everybody warm.

The super shoveled coal into the furnace. Every morning before dawn. The shovel scraped the floor and the coal hit the fire and the fire roared and the heat climbed up through the pipes and the radiators clanked and the building woke up warm. The super's hands were black. His face was black. The coal dust got into everything. The walls of the cellar were black. The ceiling was black. The light bulb hung from a wire and the light came through the dust like a headlight in fog.

Kids played in the coal cellar. That was forbidden. The coal was dangerous and the coal was irresistible. You hid behind the pile and the coal shifted and you were covered and your mother knew because you were black from head to foot and the bath took an hour. The coal cellar was the best hiding place in the building because nobody wanted to go down there. The best hiding places are always the ones nobody wants.

The coal cellar smelled like the earth. Because coal is the earth. Compressed trees from three hundred million years ago. Ferns and swamps pressed into rock. You were burning forests from before the dinosaurs to heat your apartment on Avenue B. The coal cellar connected you to a time so deep you could not imagine it. Every shovelful was a million years burning.

They converted to oil. Then to gas. The coal cellar became a storage room. Bicycles and boxes where the coal used to be. The iron door in the sidewalk was welded shut. The chute filled with concrete. The building forgot it ever ate coal. But the walls of the cellar are still black. You can paint them and the black comes through. The coal remembers even when the building does not.

See also: Coal Bin, Boiler Room