by Homer Hickam
I could hardly wait to make my announcement to one and all.
Guess what, everybody? Merry Christmas and I quit! Laugh at me now, why don’t you?
I heard a skittering sound, and then a dark form moved ominously toward me from the deep shadows of the forest. The snow interfered with my vision. It was even sticking to my eyelashes. I wiped at them and peered in the direction of the shape that kept coming toward me. A sudden gust of wind blew the snow swirling away, and I saw it was the buck.
It stopped, stamped its hooves, and stared at me. It seemed to be making an accusation of some sort. “What?” I asked it. Its bones were so sharply etched that I half expected them to poke through its skin. “I don’t know what you want,” I told it. “I quit.”
The buck blocked my path, as if it still hoped that I would do something, or say something. When I just stood there, it turned and walked slowly away, going up the trail into the woods that led past Cuke Snoddy’s house. There was still a single light in the front window, but just as the buck disappeared into the shadows, the light abruptly went out. I pondered the sudden darkness. Had someone in the house seen me or the buck? Was that why they had turned the light out? But then I thought—What do I care? I had better things to worry about. I shook my head and turned toward home. I had a worthless list to tear up. It was so funny I felt like laughing out loud. That list had always needed just one word on it. I’d finally figured out what it was: Dad.
Dad.
Merry Christmas, Dad. I quit.
28
ONCE LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SNOW
I WOKE THE next morning, the day before Christmas Eve, in serenity. I had a clear conscience, a clear mind, and a clear conviction. I was a quitter. I savored my quitting and thought of all the quitters I knew or had ever heard about. Going back to the beginning of history, there was that pharaoh who started building his pyramid and then just chopped it off at the top. Was he any deader than the pharaohs who’d built their pyramids all the way up to the stars? I didn’t think so. Another fine example of a renowned quitter was Christopher Columbus, who had been heading for China but called it quits just because he ran into America. The assembled Congress of the entire United States thought so much of Columbus, they’d created a holiday in his name. And, oh, yes, there was old Napoleon, who had thrown in the towel at Waterloo and scurried back to Paris with his tail tucked between his legs like Dandy during a thunderstorm. France had built that big quitter a fine tomb and went on about how great he was to this day. There were almost too many famous and great quitters to count. And what about those so-called heroes who didn’t quit? What had they gained? Davy Crockett at the Alamo, Scott at the South Pole, and Joan of Arc came to mind. Every last one of those no-quitters had been beaten down and destroyed. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that quitters were the real winners. I wallowed in my newfound wisdom.
Outside my window was nothing but white, and it was still snowing. I saw some miners walking past our house, swinging their lunch buckets, heading for the mine. I saw my dad coming out from the yard to join them. How silly they were, I thought. Couldn’t they see it was time to quit 11 East? I pitied them, especially my dad. He thought that all he had to do was work himself to death and all would be well in Coalwood and everywhere else. Poor, poor man. I even felt benevolent toward him for thinking me stupid. Sometimes, people like my father who didn’t know how the real world worked thought there was something wrong with quitting and quitters. I knew so much better. I smirked at the sight of him.
Dad looked down Main Street. The other men had stopped, and they were looking, too. Then they went on, heading for the tipple. Dad took a few steps after them, then stopped to look down Main Street again. He called out to the men, but I couldn’t hear what he said. One of them in a white helmet—I recognized Mr. Blankenship—said something, and Dad shook his head. He walked back toward the house. I decided to get up. I could hardly wait to tell everybody I’d quit. Maybe I’d get to tell it to Dad first. He’d like that. He’d already given up on me, anyway. Might as well make it official.
I heard the sound of his company truck starting up in the back alley and caught sight of him in it, easing on around the curve, heading down toward Coalwood Main. I idly wondered where he was going. I’d decided to quit being curious, among all the other things I was going to quit doing.
Mom was in the kitchen. She’d just come in from feeding the birds. There was snow melting in her hair. “I quit,” I said in greeting.
“So do I,” she said, obviously not understanding the vast import of my declaration. “Those birds are going to eat me out of house and home.” She had her coffeepot going full bore, its mellow fragrance filling the room. She poured herself a cup. “Want some?” she asked laconically.
“I don’t drink coffee,” I said. “You won’t let me.”
She eyed me, then poured me a cup. She went back to the table and slid the cup across the table and nodded toward it. “Have a seat,” she said.
I sat and picked up the cup and sniffed it. The aroma was wonderful. Then I took a sip and screwed my face up from its bitterness. “Yuk.”
“Something new for you to learn,” she said. “What sometimes smells sweet tastes bitter in the trying.”
I wasn’t going to be tricked away from the message I’d risen to deliver. “I quit,” I said once again.
She blew into her coffee. “What are you quitting?”
I hadn’t completely made up my mind exactly what the details of my quitting were, so I improvised. “Everything.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Sonny, you’re into so many things, it would be easier to go ahead and do them than to stop.”
“I still quit,” I said firmly.
“Let me guess,” she said tiredly. “Things haven’t worked out for you quite the way you hoped, is that it? Well, I guess they haven’t worked out for me, either, but you don’t see me quitting.”
I felt reckless. “You were going to go to Myrtle Beach.”
“Yes, to do a job. So what?”
I could see I wasn’t going to convince her. I fell back on my original message. “I quit,” I said.
She nodded. “Tell me what you’re quitting.”
“Building those blamed rockets,” I said. “Worrying about my grades. Hoping you and Dad will like me as much as you do Jim. Trying to get Dad to believe I’m not generally stupid. That’s just for starters.”
“Okay,” she said. “Fine by me. But what are you going to do with all your spare time now that you’ve quit this other stuff? I’m not going to have you lying around the house doing nothing. Come to think of it, I’ve got about a million things for you to do. I’ll make you a list. You can start by going down in the basement and shoveling coal in the furnace.”
I got up and poured the coffee down the drain in the kitchen sink. “Why don’t you give this kind of trouble to Jim?” I demanded. “He quit, too, you know.”
“He did?”
“You know very well he quit college,” I reminded her, as if she needed it.
“I heard you told your dad that last night. Wherever did you get such an idea?”
She was playing with me now, like Lucifer with a mouse, and I wasn’t going to let her get away with it. “Mom, you know where I got it. From Jimmie!”
She waved my words away. “Oh, yes, well, I guess your brother did say something like that when he was home for Thanksgiving, but that lasted about as long as Pat stayed in the army. Jim’s not going to quit. He’s not the type. I guess you are but he’s not.”
I could see I was going to have to depend on Napoleon, Columbus, and a pharaoh whose name I couldn’t think of for my good bad examples. Mom stopped me before I could do it. She pointed at the basement door. “Get on down there and shovel coal. While you’re at it, now that you’re not going to make rockets anymore, clean up my laundry, won’t you? And throw away that moonshine!”
I headed for the basement, not certain how quitting had managed to put me
so quickly to work. “On second thought, Sonny,” Mom called after me, “don’t throw away John Eye’s stuff. The way this snow’s piling up, I might need it to while away the hours.”
I went down into the basement, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work shoveling coal. Lucifer, Dandy, and Poteet were all huddled next to the furnace. I had to step over them to get to the coal pile. I heard the back gate open and footsteps coming down the basement steps. Dad came inside, glanced at me, and kept going. He looked nervous. More than that, he looked scared. He marched up the stairs to the kitchen. Although I had decided to give up being curious, I recalled that I needed to tell Dad that I had quit. That was the excuse I needed. I threw down the shovel and followed him. “Oh, Homer, no!” Mom was saying as I came through the kitchen door.
“I sent Tag down to sort it out,” Dad said. “There will be a crowd soon enough.”
Mom was sitting with her legs splayed in her chair as if they had suddenly given out. She put a hand over her eyes and turned away. “I just can’t believe it.”
I couldn’t control my curiosity. I guess I was addicted to it. “What is it?” I demanded.
Dad kept his eyes on Mom. “It’s none of your business,” he said.
“Oh, it is so, Homer,” Mom said. She dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “Sonny, your dad just found Dreama Jenkins murdered.”
Murdered! I had no words to respond. Murdered was something that happened on the television or in movies or in books, not in Coalwood! Murdered!
I found my voice. “Who did it?”
“Cuke,” Dad said. “Who else? When he didn’t show up for work, I went down to his house to get him. I found her but no Cuke.”
“How? Why?” Curious-Cat-Satisfaction-Brought-It-Back was definitely alive and well.
“Hunting knife,” Dad said grimly. He shuddered. “It was still in her.”
“I saw a light in Cuke’s window last night!” I erupted. Mom and Dad stared at me. “There was this buck and he went up by Cuke’s house. And then the light went out just as I looked and—” I stopped. Had that been when Cuke murdered her? I had no way of knowing, but I would have put money on it.
Mom rose from the table. “Take me down there, Homer.”
Dad shook his head. “No, Elsie. You’ve got no business there.”
“Take me. She was a Gary girl. I owe her that much, to make sure she’s handled right.”
“It’s not pretty, Elsie.”
“Take me.”
Dad gave in and took her. As she left, bundled up, she pointed at her bird feeder, already nearly empty of seeds. “After you finish stoking the furnace, Mr. Quitter, take care of my birds.”
I did as I was told and then put on my coat, a toboggan, and some galoshes. Jim came downstairs, and I told him what had happened. He threw on a coat, too, and we headed down Main Street just as fast as we could walk. “I hear you’re not quitting,” I said.
“I was leaving, not quitting,” he corrected me. “Anyway, I told Dad and he said Hickams never quit. It isn’t in us to quit.”
“Even when it’s a good idea?” I asked.
“Especially then, apparently,” Jim said grimly. “Guess I’m going to stick it out. I signed a contract and I have to honor it. That’s that.”
When Jim and I got to Cuke’s house, a crowd had formed. I found Roy Lee, Sherman, Quentin, and O’Dell standing together. Billy wasn’t there, and I didn’t expect him to be. It would take a little time before they heard about this up in Six Hollow. Jim went over and stood with Billy Hardin and some other boys in his class who were home from college or the military for Christmas. “Your mother and dad went inside,” Roy Lee said when I walked up. “Tag and Doc’s in there, too, and also Jake.”
“Why Jake?” I asked.
Roy Lee shrugged. He didn’t know.
Everyone stood in knots, chewing the event over. The snow was still falling steadily, sometimes so hard you couldn’t even make out Cuke’s house at all. Cleo Mallett and her followers were in one group. “It don’t surprise me none,” she said while her ladies nodded in agreement. “You let in trash, you get this kind of thing. Well, good riddance, I say. She was nothing but a harlot.”
Mrs. Mary Alice Cox heard her and came over from the knot of Coalwood school teachers and husbands. “Cleo,” she said sweetly, “an ignorant mind can be tolerated as long as it is silent. Kindly keep your trap shut or, by God, I’ll shut it for you.”
“Don’t you dare—” Mrs. Mallett yelped, but when it sank in that she was talking to a Coalwood teacher, she clamped her jaw shut and kept it that way. She knew very well who ultimately defined Coalwood society, and it wasn’t the Coalwood Organization of Women.
I spotted Frank and Rollie. Rollie was sitting on a snowbank, his head between his knees. I could see he had thrown up on the clean, white snow. I figured he must have been out drinking all night. Frank stood beside him, his hand on Rollie’s shoulder.
For Curious Cat, Mr. Dubonnet and his union men looked to be having the most interesting discussion. I walked over near where they were standing. “This is the end of 11 East,” Leo Mallett was saying. He seemed subdued, perhaps mortified by his wife. “Without Cuke,” he continued, “they can’t get through that rock header.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Mr. Dubonnet said. He patted his coat pocket. “We’re going out on strike as of today and staying out. Orders from headquarters.”
“I wonder what was on the other side of that header,” another man said. It was Mr. Bradley, the motorman who’d taken us to 11 East.
Mr. Dubonnet shrugged. “Another one, probably. It was all a fairy tale from the beginning.”
I walked over to Frank and Rollie. “What’s wrong with Rollie?” I asked.
Frank gave me a forlorn look. “Unrequited love,” he said. “Well, it might have got requited. Rollie’s a gentleman. He never told me for sure.”
Rollie kept his head down and said nothing. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
Frank nodded toward Cuke’s house. “Rollie and Dreama . . . they were seeing each other.”
“Are you serious?” I demanded.
Rollie raised his head. His face was pale, his eyes red. Snot ran out of his nose. “I loved her,” he said. “She was the sweetest little woman I ever knew. Now, she’s gone.” He lowered his head again. “All gone,” he sobbed.
Frank looked at me and shrugged. Rollie put his hands to his face and moaned. The Book of Love had struck again, I thought. Then I found myself thinking of the rest of the poem Roy Lee and I had quoted so merrily the night before. It wasn’t a children’s poem about the beautiful snow, not really. There was more to it than that.
Once I was loved for my innocent grace—
Flattered and sought for the charms of my face . . .
Once I was pure as snow, but I fell,
Fell like the snow flakes from heaven to hell . . .
Merciful God, I’ve fallen so low!
And yet I was once like the beautiful snow. . . .
“I’m sorry, Rollie,” I said, and wandered off, finding myself alongside a knot of coal company engineers. Love and Dreama weren’t what they were talking about. They had the same thing on their minds as the union men. “Cuke was going to blow the header today,” Mr. Cassell said.
“Man may be a murderer but he’s the best powder man in the state,” Mr. Keefler added.
A memory stirred somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind. I knew another good powder man, now that I thought about it. When the BCMA had first built its rockets, we’d used black powder with little success until that man had advised us how best to handle it.
“I know a good powder man,” I said.
The engineers looked at me and then went back to their conversation. “The steel company is going to shut it all down, anyway,” Mr. Keefler said. Mr. Keefler was an engineer who wore a white beard, one of the few bearded men in Coalwood. He had been with the company since Mr. Carter’s days. “If we don’t
blow it today, 11 East is dead.”
“I know a good powder man,” I said.
“I never seen so much rock in all my born days,” Mr. Keefler went on. “But I think we were close to busting through. Just a little bit of powder in the right place might have done it.”
“I know a good powder man,” I said.
“Or brought the whole thing down on our heads,” Mr. Cassell said.
I was just about to advise them that I knew a good powder man when I heard someone cry out, “Here they come!” It was Roy Lee. I went back over to stand with the Rocket Boys to watch what I knew was going to be something people in Coalwood would be talking about for a very long time.
The door to Cuke’s house opened and the mine rescue team, identified by the green crosses on their helmets, shuffled outside with a stretcher covered with a gray blanket. Mom walked, almost regally, beside it. A Gary girl was seeing another one home. A coal company truck, chains on its tires, waited at the bottom of the path to receive the body.
“Where will they take her?” Quentin asked.
“All dead people are supposed to go to Welch,” Roy Lee advised. “Coalwood’s got no place for bodies.”
Sherman said, “I doubt if anybody is going to Welch today, not with all this ice and snow.”
Roy Lee shrugged. “Maybe they’ll take her to Doc’s office, leave the window open or something. It’s cold enough to freeze her, I guess.”
Dr. Hale came up alongside Dr. Lassiter, taking him by the arm. He led him off to the side of the road. I thought to sneak over there, hear what they were saying, but then I saw Reverend Richard join the two. He looked like he’d just dropped in from Siberia. He had on a long black coat with a white fur collar and what appeared to be a white rabbit sitting on his head. It was actually his hat, a big fluffy thing. Little would spot me if I got too close, I decided, so I stayed back. He leaned in toward the two doctors and said a few words. Dr. Lassiter scratched his head and then nodded. Dr. Hale shook Little’s hand and then walked over to the truck and got in the cab. Dr. Lassiter followed, climbing in beside him. Little walked over to the truck, observed Dreama’s body, then bowed his head. His lips moved, saying a prayer, no doubt. I thought if I ever got killed, I sure wanted the Reverend Little Richard to say the words over me. It was my opinion that nobody was more likely to get you into heaven than that man.