by Homer Hickam
Jake said, “There’s problems, sure, but they’re manageable.”
“The UMWA hasn’t signed up to it yet, Jake,” Mr. Dubonnet said. “We’d like to study it some more.”
“Study it to death, you mean,” Jake said hotly. “Meanwhile the whole world mines coal cheaper while West Virginia falls behind.”
One of the men in the group by the pillar detached from it and came over. It was Dad. His light shined in my face. “What in the ever-loving hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
Jake said calmly, “I brought him, Homer.”
Dad’s spot of light hit Jake in the face and then came back to me. He pulled me out of the other men’s lights. “Sometimes you confound me.”
I didn’t know if that was a compliment or an accusation. “Jake made me come,” I said, just in case it was the latter.
“Did Jake put a gun to your head?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I didn’t think so.” He kept his light in my face for a moment longer. “If you don’t tell your mother, I won’t, either,” he said, and then his light flashed away.
Jake and Mr. Dubonnet broke off from Dieter. Jake motioned for me to follow. We headed back to the man-trip. Jake slapped the top and off we went. I presumed we were heading out. Jake put his light in my eyes. “Sorry if I got you in trouble with your dad,” he said.
“You haven’t seen anything. When Mom hears about this, she’s going to kill me and then come after you.”
“What if you don’t get through that header?” Mr. Dubonnet suddenly asked.
“Then we’re sunk,” Jake said. He leaned over, his hands on his knees, and looked Mr. Dubonnet in the eye. “John, I’m going to level with you. The steel company’s already ordered me to shut down 11 East. That’s why I was sent back to Coalwood, to pull the plug on it.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I believe in long-wall mining. And because I don’t like spending a bunch of money for nothing. We made a major capital investment in this operation, John. Major. If we quit now, Olga Coal Company is going to take a financial bath and the steel company is, too. I’m not sure we’ll survive it. We either make this long-wall conversion work or we’ll be selling this mine within a few months. After that, who knows? Whoever buys it could shut it down, sell it off for scrap.”
Mr. Dubonnet looked dubious. “If that’s so, why did they tell you to shut down 11 East? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep going?”
Jake studied his hands. “Because the steel company managers are scared. They want to stop Olga’s bleeding before it breaks them, too. I was supposed to be their messenger boy, but when I got down here and saw what Homer was doing, I told him to keep going. He’s close, John. Real close.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m a capitalist, John. Come from a long line of them. I want my company to make money so it can keep on doing what it does. You’re a union man. You want to keep your members working. If we work together on this, everybody is going to win. You go out on strike, it’s all over, for me as well as for you.”
Mr. Dubonnet scratched his nose. “Maybe you’ll sell Olga to somebody better, somebody more friendly to the union.”
“You heard what Sonny told you, John. You know it’s the truth. You won’t find a better man than Homer. He’s hard but he knows what he’s doing and he looks out for his men.”
“They’re my men!” Mr. Dubonnet shouted over the shriek of the man-trip’s wheels as we took a curve.
Jake shouted back. “They’re Homer’s men, John. You’re kidding yourself if you think anything else!” The wheels quieted to a low rumble as we trundled down a straight stretch of track. Jake lowered his voice to match. “You tell them what to do when they’re at the union hall. Homer tells them what to do in the mine. That’s the difference. Coalwood men are coal miners, first and always, not union stiffs.” Jake shined his light outside the man-trip, flashing it down other entries as we rattled by. “You want to gamble on somebody else coming in, go ahead.”
For a while, Mr. Dubonnet watched the timbers blur past. Then he turned off his lamp and crossed his arms and lowered his head.
At the surface, Mr. Dubonnet stalked into the bathhouse without another word. I stayed back with Jake. “Why did you make me go with you?” I asked.
Jake smiled. “John Dubonnet is so jealous of your dad I kind of figured he’d get you off talking about him. What you told him about your dad was better than anything I could have said.”
So Jake had used me. I started to say so but then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead, I asked, “Why is Mr. Dubonnet jealous of my dad?”
Jake laughed. “Because he’s in love with your mother. He always has been. Since high school, I think.”
I considered and dismissed Jake’s comment. Such a thing was beyond my imagination. I just wanted to know one thing that Jake Mosby could tell me. “How is it that you’ve changed so much? You seem different, somehow.”
“Grown up, you mean?”
There it was. “Yes.” It was an accusation.
He took off his helmet and ran his hand through his dirty brown hair. “I don’t know. It had to happen sometime.” He smiled his old Jake smile but then fell into contemplation, his eyes traversing the mountain behind the mine as if it held the answer he was looking for. “I’ll tell you,” he said after a bit. “My parents didn’t do it, Korea didn’t even do it. It was your dad who did it. He got to me.”
I wasn’t expecting that answer. “How?” I demanded.
Jake plopped his helmet back on and shrugged. “He kept after me, making me learn even when I didn’t want to. He ground me down, I guess you might say.”
“Like a wheel,” I said, Reverend Richard’s Bible story popping into my mind.
Jake pondered. “Yeah, I’d say so. Like a wheel.”
I turned away and began walking home. “Hey, Sonny,” Jake called, “aren’t you going to wash up?”
I ignored him and kept walking. I had decided Mom would see me the way I was, my face as black as the deep pit she hated. There was no use hiding it from her. Coalwood would tell her, anyway. All the way home, I kept thinking about Jake. Some wheels are used to shape, some are for grinding. My father was a grinding wheel and he’d ground down my friend, turned him into somebody I hardly knew.
24
THE STARVATION ARMY
WHEN I GOT home, it was no surprise at all that Mom was standing on the back porch waiting for me. “Well, well,” she said, “my son the coal miner returneth. If there is so much as an atom of coal dirt on you in one hour, I shall forget how hard it was to birth you and cut my losses. I still have my daddy’s pistol, you know.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“I know what happened. Go. I don’t want to see you until you’ve got a clean face.”
I looked down the fence line. There were no women standing there—yet. But soon, in that miraculous way Coalwood had, the adventures of Jake the jokester, John the union boss, and Sonny the moron going down in the mine would be all over town, and probably with it the secret of long-wall mining on 11 East. I wondered if that was what Jake had in mind all along. Coalwood’s back was up against the wall, and Coalwood better know about it, company secrets or no. I was certain I was going to be the butt of the story, little Sonny Hickam dragged down into the mine by Jake the steel company man only to be chased out by his daddy. That’s the way the gossipers would turn it around. I’d been around long enough to know that.
As I trudged to the basement steps for my penitent shower, Poteet came over with something in her mouth. She spat it out on my boots. It was a dead mole. I didn’t know whether it was a gift or a sign of her disrespect at my appearance. I caught sight of the Christmas tree Dad and I had dragged in. It hadn’t moved an inch except maybe sagging a bit in its corner. Mom was piling seeds on the picnic table nearby to feed the birds. There must have been at least a hundred of them—chickadees, tufted titmice, house sparrow
s, cardinals, and nuthatches—all eating like there was no tomorrow. Everything in the mountains must be starving, I thought. The Christmas tree looked lonely, but it wasn’t abandoned. Birds were using it as a staging area for their assault on the picnic table. I still felt sorry for it.
I went down into the basement and began the process of scrubbing the coal off me, concentrating on my face. Coal miners went around looking like Cleopatra if they didn’t work really hard at getting the dust out of the moist crevices around their eyes. I used Lava soap and ended up getting it in my eyes. It burned like heck, the start of a long series of punishments, I suspected.
When I came upstairs, I looked for Mom to let her inspect my cleanliness, but I didn’t see her. Maybe she had gone down the row to see Mrs. Sharitz or Mrs. Keneda. I went upstairs to my room to reflect on the day’s events. Daisy Mae raised her fuzzy head when I came into the room. She had been sleeping on the bed. She yawned and then curled up and went right back to sleep. I thought about joining her. It had been a long day, beginning with a rocket launch and ending with a trip to the bottom of the Coalwood mine. But there was too much buzzing around in my mind to sleep, so I sat down with a piece of notebook paper and a pencil and began to do some rocket work, the calculations I needed to produce a drawing of a smooththroated rocket nozzle. Calculating angles was hard enough, but curves were even harder. Not only were the mathematics tricky, but drawing the result was going to be tough, too. For one thing, I would need some way of making a smooth arc to describe the throat to Mr. Caton. Engineers used a variety of instruments for this, but I didn’t have them. I made a first run on the calculations but gave up trying to make a drawing. I was bone tired and, besides that, I was frustrated by not having the right tools.
Then I remembered that I was also supposed to plan the Christmas Pageant. I hauled out my list of problems and added to it two things: Curved throat and Christmas Pageant. I still thought there was something missing. What was it? I crossed off Billy, at least. That gave me some satisfaction even though I hadn’t personally done anything to solve his problem.
I was getting my second wind. I decided to draw up a list of things that would have to be done for the pageant even though I didn’t see ever pulling the thing off. I started writing everything I could think of, trying to remember what had been done during previous pageants. I also thought about what we might do to make it a little different. When I looked at the result, I shook my head. It was impossible in the short time left. Then I heard Mom call me down to supper. I threw my pencil down. Launching rockets and working in the coal mine, especially on the same day, can give a growing boy quite an appetite.
When I entered the kitchen, there was no Dad, but there was Mom—and Jim. My enthusiasm surprised even me. “Jim!” I erupted joyfully.
“What?” He was stuffing his mouth full of potato cake. Two huge bags of laundry with his name on it were piled next to the basement door.
“You’re home!” I had a huge, silly grin on my face. I was really glad to see him. I didn’t know why but I just was. Jim, good old Jim!
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you okay?”
Mom looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “You want to hug your brother, Sonny?” she asked. “I’m sure he won’t mind.” Her remark brought me back to some semblance of reality. I cringed and Jim did, too. Mom waved me to my chair. “Did you know Sonny’s decided to work in the coal mines, Jim? He started today.”
Fortunately, Jim had gone back to eating and wasn’t paying any attention to her sarcastic remarks. I kept my head down and didn’t reply, either. I knew better than to help Mom stir her own pot, especially when I was the stew meat.
After supper, I went back upstairs. I sat down and continued working my calculations, even though I wasn’t in the mood for it. I was about to just give up and go to bed when Mom pushed open my door. “You’ve had a pretty long day, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, letting a little pitifulness creep into my voice. It was a tactic I didn’t even have to think about. Vast experience with Elsie Hickam told me that a little pitifulness might lead to sympathy and then—home free.
No such luck this time. “It’s about to get longer,” she said, without a trace of sympathy in her voice. “I need a chauffeur to Welch and you’re it. Jimmie’s going to do his own laundry and he’s got a ton of it.”
My brother doing his own laundry was perhaps the most difficult of all the day’s events for me to comprehend. “Why do I have to drive you to Welch?” I asked.
I waited for her to tell me “Because I said so.” Instead, she smiled and said, “Because you, Sonny boy, just got drafted into the Starvation Army.”
I almost didn’t see it until it was too late. I slammed on the Buick’s brakes and skidded toward the buck standing in the middle of the road just past New Camp. We slid up next to it, its eyes bright coals in the headlights. Mom braced herself with a hand on the dash, but at the last instant the deer bounded out of the way. We watched its white tail flipping into the darkness. Mom sat back, holding her heart. “I didn’t see it, either,” she said. Then she said, “It was so skinny I could count its ribs.”
My heart was pounding. Shakily, I started the Buick again and eased up a short straight stretch before beginning the long series of turns that would take us to the top of Welch Mountain. I still didn’t exactly know where we were going and why.
Mom was still upset over the deer. “The poor animals,” she said. “They’re starving, even the birds. It’s terrible the way a little less rain in the summer can cause so much trouble for the critters in the winter.”
I remembered something I’d learned in biology class. “Coach Mams taught us that everything on the planet is connected—the air, water, weather, animals, and people. If one gets out of whack, all the rest do, too.”
When she didn’t respond immediately, I knew she wasn’t so sure of Coach Mams’s concept. She said, instead, “Well, I can’t keep enough bird food out. I’ve never seen the like. Especially since your dad dragged in that old tree. They sit in it and demand food all day long.”
I didn’t particularly want to stay on the topic of hungry animals because it wouldn’t take long, I figured, before it led to Chipper. I cast around for a change in subject and lit on what I thought would be a safer one. “Jim and I could decorate the tree,” I offered. “Even if you’re going to Myrtle Beach.”
Mom crossed her arms. “I’m not going to Myrtle Beach. How could I go down there after you dragged me up Six Hollow and showed me all that mess?”
“Really?” I couldn’t help but grin. Mom was going to be home for Christmas! I never imagined that such a thing would be a reason for joy. I mean, that’s where she was supposed to be, wasn’t she? But this year it was a wondrous revelation. But what did Six Hollow have to do with it? There was a mystery.
She appraised my grin. “Well, I’m glad you’re pleased . . .”
“Yes, ma’am!” I chortled.
She continued in a bitter voice. “. . . that I can’t do something that might have allowed your father and me some future happiness.”
I dropped my grin, wiped it clear off my face. It appeared I was on dangerous ground with just about any subject I chose. I drove on. Welch Mountain was just one curve after another, back and forth, back and forth. As we crested the top of the mountain and started the dizzy spiral downward, I decided to go ahead and get the worst subject out of the way. I figured I might as well. I couldn’t see how I could make it worse than it was. “I promise I won’t ever go down in the coal mine again, Mom,” I said.
To my surprise, she laughed. “Oh, Sonny, I knew you were going before you went. Jake asked me first. You really think he’d risk me coming after him?” She barked out another short laugh. “I know his game.” She was quiet for a moment and then said, “I thought it would be good for your dad to see you down there. You on your own, not because he made you go but because you wanted to see what he was doing. Sorry if i
t didn’t work out. Just like last year with you and your dad and Poppy. I keep trying to figure out how to get you two close and it keeps backfiring on me.”
Driving to Welch in the cold darkness had already reminded me of Poppy. “Dad was right to be mad,” I said. “I acted like a coward. I just couldn’t stay in that room.”
“Sonny, I wouldn’t have stayed in that room with those two Hickams for a million dollars. You did better than I would have done, better than just about anybody. Nobody’s blaming you.”
“Dad is,” I said bitterly.
“No, he’s not. He got mad at you because he just lost his dad and needed to take it out on somebody. He knows that and I bet he’s ashamed of it. Only thing about your dad is he forgets to tell you what he feels, especially when he’s been wrong. So I’m telling you now. Take Poppy off your list. Your dad’s not mad at you and wherever Poppy is, he isn’t, either. That much I know.”
Her words filled my heart and I could feel a warm sense of redemption flooding my mind. Dad had forgiven me. I didn’t need to hear it from him. Mom was good enough. Then something else she had said struck me. My inner warmth vanished. “My list?” I said aloud. “You looked at my list?”
“Sure,” she answered. “It was in your desk drawer. Why wouldn’t I look at it?”
I was outraged but knew better than to show it. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe because it was at the bottom of the drawer under a bunch of other stuff that belongs to me.”
Despite my careful response, she caught a wisp of my true feelings. “Sonny, as long as you live in my house, anything you bring into it is fair game. But, before you ask, no, the reverse isn’t true. Adults have things that kids aren’t allowed to see.”
“Is there some sense to that?” I asked, emboldened by my anger.
“No. It’s just the way things are. Let me tell you something. Someday you may have kids of your own. You’ll want to know what they’re up to and you’ll do just about anything to find out. When they get mad about it, you tell them ol’ Granny Elsie Hickam taught this to you: Parents can do any dang thing they want if it’s to make sure their kids get brought up right. That’s the way God set things up and no amount of crying and whining can change it.”