by Homer Hickam
Holly Faye giggled and put her head on his shoulder. Roy Lee’s eyes flashed in the rearview mirror. I gave him my best innocent look. He grinned. Good ol’ Roy Lee. The Big Creek lovemaster was in his glory.
The Big Creek gym was ablaze with crepe paper but the lights were turned down as far as the chaperones would allow. Swaying couples danced before me. I sat alone and watched from the auditorium. The Big Creek gym was unique. It was actually a big stage with auditorium seating. Curtains allowed it to be sectioned off into a smaller stage for play productions. For basketball games or dances, it could all be opened up. It was kind of fun, sitting and watching and listening to the music, provided by a colored band out of Bradshaw. They were good and getting better as the night proceeded. Every so often, they’d take a break, disappear, and then come back, looser to the bone. I suspected you wouldn’t have wanted to strike a match near their breath, though.
After a while, I started feeling a bit sorry for myself. Everybody seemed to be having a lot of fun. I wondered how Ginger was doing over at the Welch dance. That thought didn’t cheer me up. I was thinking about sneaking out and thumbing home when a vision of loveliness appeared at the edge of the stage. “Sonny?” It was Melba June Monroe.
“Right here,” I said.
“What are you doing down there?”
“Roy Lee forced me to come.”
Melba June made her way down the steps and edged between the seats, which wasn’t easy in her full-skirted, pastel-blue, mostly ruffles and lace party dress. I also noticed it was tight at all the right places above her waist. She sat down beside me, and my legs were suddenly covered with ruffles as her dress lapped over the chair into my lap. She sighed. “My date sure is boring,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I replied.
“I read about you in the paper today.”
“Basil is a great writer. He’ll use three adjectives when one will do. I admire that.”
“I liked what he wrote about you.”
“I’m glad.”
“Sonny?”
“Uh huh?”
“Do you think Roy Lee would give me a lift home? I don’t want to go with Holder.”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because I guess I’d have to share the backseat with you,” she replied demurely. “And I wouldn’t want to crowd you.” She fluttered her long eyelashes.
“You wouldn’t crowd me,” I promised, although I hoped she would.
She moved closer to me, my lap piling up with even more ruffles and lace. Her voice got throaty. “I just love your rockets.”
If Basil had been there at that moment, I would have hugged him, no matter what Roy Lee would have thought of it. Instead, I stretched and let my hand kind of creep along the top of Melba June’s seat until it brushed against her bare shoulder. She leaned back, so I got a full touch of skin. I suddenly pitied the angels in heaven. I was going to get to sit with Melba June Monroe in the backseat of a car in the dark. I thought: Merry Christmas!
26
THE SECOND SON
COALWOOD HAD BEEN anticipating it for months. Carol Todd and Jimmy (Slug) DeHaven’s wedding was to be the social event of the year. Carol was one of the prettiest and nicest girls in Coalwood. She had taken a job with the coal company as a stenographer, but she was a lot more than that. She had the responsibility to keep track of all the mine’s records, to write letters for Dad and the other managers when they were too busy to do it themselves (which was nearly all the time), and generally keep all the paperwork flowing for the company the way it was supposed to. Slug DeHaven was something of a homegrown junior engineer. He had survived Dad’s boot camp and then taken a position on Olga Coal’s engineering staff. Everybody in town agreed that it was important to give Carol and Slug a good send-off in life. Dad promised to leave 11 East long enough to go to the wedding. At the direct request of Carol’s mother, Mr. Dubonnet promised to hold off one more day before he took his miners out on strike. It was declared a day of peace, if not rest. Mom was going to spend the whole day at the church helping to decorate.
The wedding was to be officiated by a new pastor. There had been some last-minute turmoil when Reverend and Mrs. Schrieber had packed their bags and left town. They had left behind a letter in the parsonage. It wasn’t a nice letter. I heard later there were words in it like “old-fashioned” and “mean-spirited citizenry.” Hurried phone calls to Methodist headquarters in Charleston resulted in the assignment to Coalwood of one of their most experienced and respected preachers, the Reverend George Clay, who had taken temporary lodging in the Club House.
I slept in until around ten o’clock that morning. I was tired but feeling pretty good about myself. Melba June had helped a lot in that direction. By the time Roy Lee dropped Holly Faye off at her house and then drove Melba June to Bartley, I’d pretty much been kissed until my lips were sore. When we had come up for a breath, Melba June had asked me if I would take her to the junior-senior prom in the spring. I couldn’t think of a better idea. The Big Creek lovemaster was proud, mostly of himself. “Worked out just like I planned,” he snickered when he let me off at my house.
While I was having breakfast in the kitchen, Sherman and Quentin came by. Quentin had double-dated with Sherman and had spent the night at his house. He was going to hang around for the wedding, too, then hitch back to Bartley on Christmas Eve. He was pleased when I told him I’d turned over the nozzle drawing to the machine shop. He seemed otherwise in a contemplative mood. Maybe Mary Kay Yates had something to do with it, I thought. “How’d your date go, Q?” I asked.
Sherman chuckled. “All the way over to the dance, Quentin explained to Mary Kay the principles of magnetism and interacting currents. On the way back, she explained it to him.”
Quentin blushed. “It is remarkable, is it not, how darkness, warmth, and going around curves in the backseat of a car can stimulate the libido?”
Sherman smirked. I had no room to poke fun at Quentin. I’d sort of discovered the same thing myself with Melba June.
“You got the Christmas Pageant plan done?” Sherman asked.
I handed it over. He whistled. “You think you’re Cecil B. DeMille or somebody?”
“If we’re going to do it, we should do it right.”
Sherman fussed over my plan for a bit, making some suggestions. I wrote them down. Nothing was going to get done today, anyway. Everybody was gearing up for Carol and Slug’s wedding. “Tomorrow,” Sherman said. “We’ll get going then.”
“The union will probably be on strike tomorrow,” I pointed out. “And there’s no way we could possibly do all this in a day even if the company agreed to help. It just can’t be done.”
Sherman frowned at me. “A lot of people used to say that about us and our rockets, too.”
I refused to be anything but logical about the pageant. “We just don’t have time to do everything, Sherman.”
“Then we’ll do what we can in the time we have,” he answered reasonably. “Don’t give up before you start!”
I knew Sherman was right, but I was too proud to confess it. I tried another tactic to bring him in on my side of things. I put it in the form of a statement wrapped in the pure cloak of righteousness. “This is what I believe,” I said nobly. I jutted my chin forward. “If you can’t do a thing perfectly, it’s not worth doing at all.”
Sherman stared balefully at me, then shook his head. “I can’t argue with that,” he said grimly.
I thought I would be happy if I made Sherman agree with me, but I wasn’t. It was just another one of those instances when I got exactly what I wanted, and then knew it wasn’t what I wanted at all. I watched unhappily as he got up, put on his coat, and limped out of the kitchen.
Quentin pensively regarded me. “You know, Sonny boy,” he said, “there’s an evolutionary principle for what happens when an animal reaches perfection.”
I leaned my head on my hand. “And what would that be, Q?” I asked tiredly.
Qu
entin got up, pulled on his jacket, and jammed a toboggan on his head. “It perishes,” he said, and then followed Sherman. The slap of the screen door on the porch was like a slap in my face.
I spent most of the day in the basement loading a casement with zincoshine, preparing it for the new curved nozzle when and if Mr. Caton could build it. While I was there, Dad came in from the mine to get ready for the wedding. For a man who’d hardly slept for weeks, he seemed spry enough, although there was perpetual worry on his face and he was coughing a lot, his condition probably aggravated by all the extra coal and rock dust he was having to breathe on 11 East. Jim came down in the basement to greet Dad with a request for the Buick. Dad turned him down flat. “If you take the Buick, how will your mother and I get to the wedding?” Dad asked. When Jim didn’t answer, Dad said, “You can go with us and Sonny.”
I piped up, “I’m going with Roy Lee!” For a teenager, there was nothing more humiliating than to go anywhere in the backseat of your parents’ car.
“But I have a date for the wedding,” Jim explained to Dad. “She can’t get over here unless I go get her.”
Dad stripped and climbed in the shower and started the water running. “The answer’s no, Jim. Sorry. Why don’t you just take a Coalwood girl?” He pulled the shower curtain closed.
Jim stared unhappily at the shower. “Did you tell Dad you’re quitting college yet?” I asked, careful to keep my voice below the noise of the running water.
His eyes shifted to me. “I’d forgotten what a little creep you really are,” he said.
“And I’d forgotten what a big jerk you really are,” I said back.
“Idiot.”
“Moron.”
“Sister.”
“Bonehead.”
We turned away. We had said too much, our insults the closest we could come to showing affection. I hoped I wasn’t getting soft on my big brother.
When I came upstairs, I found Mom on the Captain’s porch looking outside. She’d just gotten back from her decorating at the church. She was watching Jim standing on the shoulder opposite the gas station. He was dressed up, a long overcoat over a suit and tie. He had his thumb out. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Jim’s thumbing?” It was an unheralded event. I hitched all the time, but Jim always said it was like begging.
“He looks cold,” Mom said. “I wish he had on his gloves. I wonder who his date is?”
I knew because I’d seen them together at the Christmas Formal. “Her name is Patsy Hoops. She’s a junior.”
“Where does she live?”
“Yukon. Do you think Jim and Patsy are going to thumb back to Coalwood?”
Mom gave me a dirty look, fully earned. “That isn’t funny.”
I agreed. But I did wonder how Jim was going to get back to Coalwood with his date. He had to have a plan.
“Go upstairs and look on Jimmie’s dresser,” Mom ordered me. “I laid out some new gloves for him. He must’ve forgotten them.”
“Did you get me some new gloves, too?” I asked.
“The last pair of gloves I got you, you took them down to Cape Coalwood and ruined them.” Mom huffed out a laugh. “I don’t think so.”
I climbed upstairs to Jim’s room and sure enough, his new gloves were lying out in plain view, a nice pair of brown leather ones. I didn’t think Jim had forgotten them. I thought he just wanted to look cold. I had to take my hat off to my brother. It was a pretty smart move. In only a matter of few minutes, I bet to myself, Mom would turn to Dad (who was hiding behind the Welch Daily News) and say “Homer, we could catch a ride down to the church with somebody. Let Jimmie have the car.”
When I got back downstairs with the gloves, Mom was just coming off the porch into the living room. “Homer,” she said, “why don’t we go down in your company truck? Then Jimmie can have the Buick.”
I was off a little on my prediction, but not by much. But then I saw it didn’t matter, anyway. Jim was climbing into a car. He had given one last plaintive look in the direction of the house, but honor demanded that he get inside the ride that had stopped for him. I pointed and Mom looked. “Oh, good,” she said, but she didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
Then, nearly as soon as Jim’s ride disappeared around the curve just past the mine, it started to snow. “Look!” I said.
“Oh, my good Lord,” Mom said.
The snow got heavier as it got darker, and pretty soon it started to stick and build up on the fence. Mom kept going back and forth to the Captain’s porch to look out toward the tipple to see if cars were still on the road. “We should have let him have the Buick, Homer,” she said. It had been her mantra for the last hour.
“He’d still have to drive through the snow,” Dad said, pointing out the obvious. He had switched to a Reader’s Digest, too small to hide behind.
“The Buick’s heavy,” Mom said. “It’s got traction.”
Dad put up a stout defense. “Um,” he said.
By six o’clock the snow had really started to pile up. Mom couldn’t put off getting dressed any longer, so she went upstairs to her room. She reappeared in a pale green wool suit with a pretty yellow rose corsage pinned to it. The official wedding colors were green and yellow. Dad had put on his rarely worn church clothes, a charcoal-gray suit with a black tie.
Mom gave one last worried look up the road toward the mine. I hadn’t noticed any cars coming from that direction for over an hour. The snow on the road sparkled under the tipple lights’ harsh glare. “We should go after him in your truck,” she told Dad.
“Where would we look?”
Mom had no answer. “We should have let him have the car,” she said again.
“Let’s go, Elsie,” Dad said. “Jim can take care of himself.”
“Let’s call the state police,” Mom said suddenly.
“And tell them what?”
Mom couldn’t answer his question, but she gazed longingly at the home phone, which had been installed during the summer. The home phone was rarely used, but theoretically it was a connection to the outside world, perhaps even to the state police, which had an outpost in Welch. I often looked at the home phone and wondered what Wernher von Braun’s number was. Somewhere on the other end of the thin wire that went out of the back of that telephone sat the greatest rocket scientist there ever was. I never got the courage to pick it up to see if he was really there.
Mom and Dad finally left, the Buick slowly turning the corner and heading down toward Coalwood Main. Roy Lee wasn’t due to pick me up for another hour. He didn’t see any reason to be early. We couldn’t get at the cake until after the ceremony was over anyway.
I went upstairs to dress. I decided to wear the same clothes I’d worn to the Christmas Formal even though the collar on my shirt was smudged with lipstick and the sport coat smelled of a certain girl’s perfume. To change my ensemble a little, I put on a peacock-blue tie. When I was in the bathroom looking in the mirror to tie it, I heard an odd but very loud noise—abrupt and metallic—coming from the direction of the tipple. The house hadn’t shaken, so I didn’t think it was a mountain bump. I went into my room and looked at the gas station. In its lights, I could see the snow still coming down. Then I looked up at the tipple and I saw a bright light pointing up from the creek that ran alongside the mine. The company had built a stone wall to channel the creek at that spot. I puzzled over the light for a moment and then noticed skid marks through the snow on the road. That’s when I realized a car had slid off the road and into the creek. I could see no movement, no one on the road, nothing but the headlight flaring up out of the creek.
I flung open my closet, grabbed my pea-coat, and ran outside through the front gate. Before I got more than a couple of steps, my feet slipped out from under me and I fell flat on my back. Loafers weren’t much good on fresh snow. I picked myself up and began to shuffle, trying to maintain traction. As I neared where the car had gone off the road, I saw a woman appear out of the shadows. I shuffled up to her, my loafers full
of ice and snow. “Hey, you all right?” I called.
The tipple light caught her face. It was Patsy Hoops. I looked down into the creek. The car was upside down. “Where’s Jim?” I demanded.
Patsy just looked at me. Oddly, she wasn’t wet. “Where’s Jim?” I demanded again, and then I saw that the passenger side of the car was open but the driver’s door was shut. The dark water of the creek rumbled menacingly around the half-submerged car. Patsy must have climbed up on the bottom of the car to get to the road. That meant Jim was still down there!
I stepped up on the low rock wall to see what I could see. I teetered there for a second, and then my loafers slipped on the ice and I went howling into the creek. I tried to clutch rocks to slow my backward voyage downstream, but they were too slippery. Then my back thumped up against a boulder and I desperately clung to it.
I heard shouts. There were men on the road, running past, heading for the car. They didn’t see me. “Help!” I called hoarsely, but they kept going. “Help,” I gasped, the shock of the freezing water all but robbing me of my voice.
I heard someone on the creek bank. Then I felt the collar of my coat tighten around my neck. Somebody pulled me out. Whoever it was had to be strong. I was thoroughly water-logged. I crawled to my knees to see him going back up the bank and over the low wall. I struggled to follow. I’d lost my loafers, and my coat felt like it weighed ten tons. There were people at the spot where the car had gone off the road. Where was Jim? Maybe he was still in the car, drowned! I pushed my way through them. I recognized Tug and Hug. It was the hoot-owl rock-dusting crew. “Jim,” I gasped at them. They looked at me with wide eyes. “Jim.” I pointed at the car, my teeth chattering so hard it took about five seconds to utter the single syllable.
“What?” Jim said, and when my eyes coalesced on one of the men, I saw it was actually my brother. Not even his tie was askew.
I, however, was a total wreck, loaferless, pea-coat thick and stiff with ice, my pants soaked and torn and freezing to my legs, and my blue tie frozen at an angle away from my chest. “Did—did—did . . .” That’s all I could get out between my chattering teeth.