Coal River

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  Pearl narrowed her eyes. “What’d you come here for?” she said. “You need something?”

  Emma cleared her throat and smiled again, hoping she looked friendly. “Well,” she began, “you know those canned goods you been finding on your doorstep? I’m the one who’s been leaving them.”

  Pearl stopped bouncing the baby and searched Emma’s face. “How come?” she said.

  “I know it’s a struggle,” Emma said. “I know the mining company doesn’t pay enough. And I know the Company Store charges too much for the things you need for your family.”

  “I don’t got the money to pay you for that food,” Pearl said. “I didn’t ask you for nothing.”

  “No, no,” Emma said. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want your money.”

  With a doubtful look on her face, Pearl took a seat in a kitchen chair, lifted the baby to her shoulder, and patted his back. Her hands were chapped and calloused, her fingernails ragged and dirty. “Ain’t nobody does something for nothing,” she said. “So what do you want?”

  “I want to help,” Emma said.

  Pearl let out a bitter laugh. “Well then, you better get on back where you came from. You ain’t got any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I know,” Emma said. “But I’m hoping you can explain it to me.” She pulled out a chair and sat at the table. “I saw two boys leave here this morning. So you have two other sons?”

  Pearl stopped patting the baby’s back. “What do my boys got to do with this? They do something wrong?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. If you don’t mind me asking, how old are they?”

  “Tanner is eight,” Pearl said. “He’ll be nine in three weeks. Jasper is ten.”

  “And they work for the mining company?”

  Pearl frowned. “I don’t see how—”

  “Do your sons work in the breaker?”

  “Tanner does. But Jasper is a spragger.”

  “What’s a spragger?” Emma said.

  “Only the fastest boys can be spraggers,” Pearl said. A flicker of pride lit up her tired face. “They’re the ones who control the speed of coal cars as they roll down the slope.”

  “How do they do that?”

  “With long pieces of wood they jab into the wheels,” Pearl said. She made stabbing motions with one hand. “The wood locks the wheels and slows the cars.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “I s’pose it is. Mining is a dangerous job.”

  “Did you know Hazard Flint is breaking state law by letting your boys work in the mines?”

  Pearl took the baby from her shoulder and stood. “I’m done talking.”

  “Oh no,” Emma said. “Please. You’re misunderstanding me. I’m not trying to get you in trouble.”

  “Get me in trouble?” Pearl said. “I already got enough trouble, trying to keep these little ones fed.”

  “I can see that,” Emma said. “That’s why I left food on your porch. That’s why I’m up here talking to you today. I want to help you and your family. I want to help all the miners and their families.”

  “I don’t see how talking is going to help,” Pearl said. She sat back down again, setting the baby in her lap. “My pa started out as a breaker boy, then worked in the mines for years. When he got too old to dig coal, he went back to work in the breaker as a boss. Before he died of the black lung, Doc said he got so much of that old black coal dust in his lungs, it turned them like concrete. If we could of taken a hammer to them, it would of been like breaking a dish. I sat by my pa for three weeks and watched him die. Reckon my husband and sons will die of the same thing. They start out in the breaker and end up there. Twice as a boy and once as a man, that’s the poor miners’ lot. It’s just the way it is.”

  “How long have your sons been working?”

  Pearl shrugged. “Three, four years.”

  “Did the mining company ask for their birth certificates before they hired them?”

  Pearl dropped her eyes.

  “Did they?” Emma said. “Did they know your boys were so young?”

  Pearl lifted her gaze and glared at Emma, her eyes glassy. “You see this house?” she said. “You see that barrel of potatoes over there, that tin of flour? My boys have to work in those mines, or else we wouldn’t have enough food. We wouldn’t have the money to pay our rent, and the mining company would turn us out!”

  “I understand that,” Emma said. “But don’t you worry about your boys getting hurt or killed? A breaker boy died just the other day and—”

  Pearl jumped up from her seat, put the baby on her hip, marched across the room, and yanked open the front door. “You’ve outstayed your welcome. Best be on your way.”

  Emma stood, her mind racing. She had to prove to Pearl that she was on her side. “What about school?” she said. “Who is teaching your boys to read and write?”

  “Ain’t no need to read and write to dig coal from the earth.”

  “But don’t you want more for your children?” Emma said. “Don’t you want them to have a choice about what they do for a living?”

  “Miners’ children don’t go to school,” Pearl said. “Been that way for as long as I can remember.”

  “What if I could teach your children to read and write? Would you like that? I could come in the evenings, a few nights a week.”

  Pearl shook her head. “My boys are too tired for schooling by the time they get home. After they get cleaned up and have a little something to eat, they usually go to bed.”

  “But don’t you see?” Emma said. “They deserve more. If you and the other mothers stood together and refused to let your boys work under such dangerous conditions—”

  “You know what happened to the last person who stood up to Hazard Flint?” Pearl said. “He got thrown in jail. His wife and three kids was put out of their house! Last I heard, the mother and youngest died of pneumonia, and the rest of the kids was sent off to an orphanage. Now you tell me if that’s any better than what I got right here.”

  “But if you all stick together. If you all . . .”

  Pearl jerked her chin toward the porch. “I got work to do,” she said.

  Emma put her bag over her shoulder and went to the door. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “And I’m sorry if I upset you. That wasn’t my intention. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  “Reckon I won’t,” Pearl said.

  Emma stepped across the threshold and turned to face her. “Can I just ask you one more thing?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know Michael Carrion and his grandmother Tala?”

  “Never heard of them,” Pearl said. She started to close the door, but Emma put out a hand to stop it.

  “If you tell me your husband’s name,” she said, keeping her voice low, “I’ll be sure to mark your store bill paid this week as a way of thanking you for your time.”

  Pearl stared at her, as if trying to decide what to do. Deep lines creased her forehead. After a long moment, she started to close the door again, her expression softening. The baby started to wail. “Roy Sinclair,” she said in a weary voice, and shut the door in Emma’s face.

  By eight o’clock, Emma had spoken to a dozen or more women. Most were too afraid to stand up to the mining company or worried about losing the extra income from their sons, while others were downright hostile, telling her to get out of their house and never come back. In some sections of the village, they spoke German, Polish, or Italian, and she couldn’t make herself understood. At every new door, she held her breath when she knocked, wondering if she would find Jack, and Clayton’s home, on the other side. Then again, maybe Jack spent the day at someone else’s house while Clayton worked. She thought about asking someone where Clayton lived, but changed her mind. Knocking on his door by accident would be one thing. Looking for him would be quite another.

  She did ask where Michael and Tala lived, but no one seemed to know for sure. One woman said
they were on Widow’s Row but had been recently evicted. Another said Tala was shacked up with an old widower, but she didn’t know which one. The most common story was that Michael and Tala lived in a makeshift shed in the woods, moving from one section of the forest to the other, only coming into the village to trade potions, tinctures, and animal hides for food. The one thing everyone agreed on was that Michael was indeed a deaf-mute.

  To Emma’s dismay, each shanty was more desperate and sparse than the last, filled with dirty children in worn clothing, gaunt wives and mothers with calloused hands and weary eyes. Some shanties housed ten to twenty people—widows, young children, orphans, old ladies, and sick and crippled men. Everyone agreed that things were not good, but they weren’t sure what to do about any of it. A few brave women hoped aloud that there would be a strike, and mentioned Clayton as a possible leader.

  On the porch of the last shanty on Scotch Road, a rail-thin woman with matted hair snatched a tin of tea and a jar of honey from Emma’s hands, then hurried back inside without closing the door. Emma hesitated on the threshold, unsure of what to do, then followed her in, closing the door behind her. The woman scurried over to the coal-fired stove and, with quick birdlike movements, pried open the tin of tea, poured hot water from an iron kettle into a milky white cup, then added some tea leaves and a spoonful of honey. After that, she poured hot water over a rag in a bucket, handed the bucket to Emma, and led her toward the back of the shanty. All the while she was talking fast, with a thick Italian accent. Her name was Francesca, she recognized Emma from the Company Store and thought she was pretty, and she’d been living in Coal River for five years.

  In a narrow back room, a willowy boy lay covered with a thin sheet on a wooden cot, his chest rattling as he struggled to breathe. His corn silk hair lay tousled on the stained pillow beneath his head, and his skin was a deathly shade of ash. A dog-eared Bible sat between a water-filled basin and an earthen crock on a bedside table, along with a set of rosary beads and a grainy photo of a handsome man in an oval frame. Moving slowly now, Francesca set the mug of tea on a table, took the bucket of hot water from Emma, and set it beside the cot. She gently wiped the boy’s brow with a cloth, rewetting it in the basin of cool water.

  “Questo è Nicolas,” she whispered. “We are fearing the black lung. He has breathing problems since he came into this world, but nothing like this.” She helped Nicolas sit up, propping more pillows beneath his head, then sat on the edge of the bed and offered him a spoonful of tea. “He worked so hard the last four years, just like his father. But last week he . . .” She paused, her chin trembling. “He crollato, collapsed.”

  Emma stood watching, not knowing what to do or say. How she wished she had those last few drops of laudanum now, to ease the poor boy’s suffering. Francesca spooned the tea between his pale lips, catching any drips with gentle fingers. After the fourth mouthful, Nicolas coughed and shook his head, whispering that he was too tired to stay awake. Francesca set the tea down and wiped damp strands of hair from his forehead. With shaking hands, she pulled the sheet down from his bare torso, exposing ribs that stuck out beneath his white skin every time he drew in a breath. She opened the earthen crock and applied a poultice of elderberries, dandelion leaves, slippery elm bark, and yarrow to his chest. Then she wrung the hot water out of the rag in the bucket, laid it over the poultice, and drew the sheet back up beneath his chin. She stood and kissed him on the forehead.

  “He must rest,” she said. She led Emma back to the kitchen and offered her a chair. “Grazie for the tea and honey. It will surely help.”

  “You’re welcome,” Emma said. “I’m so sorry your son is ill.”

  “Grazie,” Francesca said again. “We pray for a miracle, but I . . .” She shook her head, her lips quivering.

  Emma took a deep breath, wondering if she should leave the poor woman alone. “Do you have any other children?”

  Francesca smiled thinly and held up two fingers. “Twins.”

  “How old?”

  “Seven,” Francesca said. “I had another. He was two, blond like his brothers, just learning to speak.”

  Emma steeled herself for more terrible news. “Where is he now?”

  Francesca crossed herself. “With our Father in Heaven,” she said. “He had . . . How do you say it?” She patted her chest with an open hand.

  “Pneumonia?”

  “Yes,” Francesca said. “Last winter.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Emma said. “And the twins? Where are they?”

  Francesca eyes filled, and the corners of her mouth pulled down. “They are working,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “In the breaker?”

  Francesca nodded.

  Emma decided not to say anything about Hazard Flint breaking the child labor law. Poor Francesca already had enough troubles, grieving for her two-year-old and caring for Nicolas. Surely, she wasn’t up to staging a rebellion. Then Emma had another thought. “If you don’t mind my asking, did you make the poultice for Nicolas?”

  “No,” Francesca said. “I would not know how. I traded our last loaf of bread for it.”

  “Traded? With who?”

  “She was a . . . How do you say, Indian?”

  “An older woman?” Emma made a pulling motion beneath her ears, indicating hair. “With white braids?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where she lives? Or how I can find her?”

  “No,” Francesca said. “But her granddaughter lives across the way, near the far end of the next lane.”

  “Does her grandson live there too?”

  Francesca shook her head. “No,” she said. “He is with the grandmother in the woods. Some people are afraid. They make it too hard for him to stay.”

  “Afraid of who? The grandson?”

  Francesca nodded.

  Emma leaned forward. “Why?”

  “They say he is not right in the head.”

  “In what way?”

  “It’s just what I heard.” Francesca shrugged. “My husband is not happy about me trading with the Indian woman, but I have to do something. We are trying to save money to buy real medicine for Nicolas, but we have no rain for the garden and must buy food. Nothing will grow this summer. I don’t know what else to do.” She wrung her calloused hands.

  Emma swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the burning lump in her throat. In her mind’s eye, she did a quick inventory of the knickknacks and decorations in her uncle and aunt’s house, wondering if there was anything she could sell to buy medicine for Nicolas—the porcelain ballerina statue on the fireplace mantel, the Italian vase in the dining room, the silver candelabra in the parlor, Aunt Ida’s ivory brooch. Then her heart dropped. It would never work. Aunt Ida might not notice food missing from the pantry, but she would certainly notice if any of her prized possessions disappeared. And where would Emma sell a ballerina statue anyway? Maybe she could steal a dollar or two from the store till. Only to buy medicine, to save a life. No, that was too risky. Percy counted the cash register every day without fail. Then she remembered walking past Percy’s bedroom on her way to the linen closet. Once, he’d left his door open partway, and she could see his dressing table. On the dressing table, a silver platter lined with red felt held his wallet, his pocket watch, a handful of shiny change, and a stack of bills held together with a gold clip.

  “How much money do you need?” Emma asked Francesca.

  A few minutes later, Emma left Francesca’s shanty and made her way toward the next lane. If she couldn’t find Michael and Tala, maybe she could get answers from Tala’s granddaughter. At the first house, a woman with ruddy cheeks stood on the sparse grass of the front yard, using a pair of rusty scissors and a broken comb to cut a boy’s hair. Her hands were red and chapped, as if they’d spent too much time in hot water. Emma recognized her from the store. The boy, aged seven or eight, was sitting on a peeling blue stool in short pants and bare feet. Both his arms were missing past the elbow. Two toddlers played
on the porch with sticks and a grime-covered ball, and a baby napped in a wooden cradle. A young girl, about ten, sat on the porch steps looking down at a book in her hands. Surprised, Emma stopped in her tracks.

  “Nice day,” she said to the girl’s mother.

  The woman nodded and kept trimming the back of the boy’s hair. The boy tried to look up at Emma while keeping his chin down.

  “Is that your daughter on the steps?” Emma said.

  The woman glanced over her shoulder at the girl and said, “Yes.”

  “Does she know how to read?”

  “No, she just looks at the pictures.”

  “What if I could teach her? I could teach your boy too, if you’d like.”

  The woman stopped cutting and straightened, eyeing her suspiciously. “What for?”

  The girl got up from the steps and came over to stand by the woman’s side. She smiled shyly at Emma, the book held to her chest. On the cover was a lion with a red mane and green glasses. It was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  “Just because,” Emma said. She looked down at the girl. “Would you like to be able to read your book?”

  The girl nodded, her hazel eyes sparkling.

  “I can’t pay you,” the woman said.

  “You don’t have to pay me anything,” Emma said. “I’ll do it for free, if that’s all right. I enjoy teaching children to read.”

  The woman lowered her brow, thinking. Then she said, “I s’pose that’d be all right.”

  “Can I come in the evenings then, sometime after supper?”

  “I don’t see why not.” For the first time, the woman smiled.

  Emma thanked the woman, said good-bye, and kept walking. Finally she was getting somewhere. Between the girl with the book and her brother, two other girls, and Francesca’s twins, she had six students. Maybe when the rest of the mothers heard that other children were learning to read and write, they would come around. Despite Emma’s heavy heart, she looked forward to the first lesson. She couldn’t wait to see the children’s eyes light up when she read to them. Right now she only had two appropriate books from Aunt Ida’s library: Anne of Green Gables and The Wind in the Willows, but they were a start. Maybe, like the hazel-eyed girl, some of the other children had books at home. And it would be easy to steal pencils and paper from the Company Store to teach them to write. She could start the lessons tomorrow, after she finished helping Cook clean up after dinner. The one good thing that had come out of upsetting her aunt and uncle by going up to the mine and being seen with Clayton was that they no longer cared, or noticed, when she went to bed extra early. It would be easy to sneak out and go up to the miners’ village without them knowing.