by Homer Hickam
She faced Billy and me, and her lips were pressed together in that way she had when she’d made up her mind about something. “But that’s for another time.” She pondered the undecorated Christmas tree. “You two want to know what you can do? I’ll tell you. Do the impossible. It seems like a good day for it.”
I puzzled over her words, and then I knew what Mom wanted me to do. It was impossible, of course, but I couldn’t wait to do it.
32
THE KINGS OF COALWOOD
IT TOOK FOURTEEN feverish hours of work by at least a hundred people to complete the necessary preparations. By then, it was already nine o’clock at night. While my assembled army moved up and down Main Street, we shared the road with a growling convoy of company trucks. A company bulldozer had first opened up Main Street, then the road going past the tipple, and then Six Hollow. The trucks were filled with grit dug out of the Six slack dump. The bulldozer turned toward Welch Mountain, the trucks following, men on the back shoveling the coal tailing off onto the road. It made a nasty mess but it provided traction. Jim and Mom drove behind the trucks, the Buick gradually turning gray from the wet slack. The procession slowly disappeared up the road past Substation Row toward New Camp and the mountain.
According to my plan, everybody had something to do. Quentin and Billy took on the lighting and pyrotechnics. They went to work in my basement laboratory. Sherman and Roy Lee were put in charge of the players. Sherman helped Roy Lee put chains on his car and they started their visits, explaining to each person what role they’d been assigned. Everyone enthusiastically joined up except my dad, who was still asleep and would stay in bed all day. When Dad was finally roused and told what we had done and the part he was to play, he resisted it. “I’m no actor,” he said, but then he gave in when I told him what Mom was doing. Mom was doing her duty and he was going to have to do his, too.
O’Dell was put in charge of general scrounging. Red drove the garbage truck to take him around. O’Dell was after as many extension cords and as much electrical cabling as he could find. I also asked him to see about taking care of the snow on the Club House lawn and maybe somewhere for the audience to sit. Mr. McDuff and Mr. Lindley took on the carpentry work and didn’t bother asking for the necessary company paperwork. The same was true for the machine shop. Mr. Bolt said he’d get right on my designs and called in a half dozen of his best men. Soon, the machine shop was afire with activity, sparks flying from welders and the buzz of saws and lathes.
All day long, we gained momentum as more and more people became aware of what we were doing. Ginger took charge of the music after puzzling over my plan. “Do we dare do this to traditional Christmas music?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. I felt as if I was in a state of grace. She said she’d get right on it.
When construction of the sets began on the Club House lawn, there were more people trying to help than there was room. Mr. McDuff finally had to send some of them home. With the help of half the people of Frog Level to push when they got stuck, O’Dell and his brothers and Red transported the spoiling hay bales from Trigger and Champion’s barn to act as seats for the audience. Little kids shoveled snow all day to make room. A hay bale, it turned out, was as comfortable a seat as there was.
There was no set time for the pageant to begin. It would start when it was ready and not a moment before or a moment later. People seemed to understand we were putting together something more than a Christmas pageant. It was a celebration of Coalwood.
As the shadows lengthened, Billy and Quentin arrived from the lab with their hardware. They reported wonderful news: Two big Salvation Army trucks had arrived, a filthy Buick leading the way. The convoy had turned up toward Six Hollow. Snakeroot, Mudhole, and Frog Level wouldn’t be forgotten, either. No child was going to lack for food or Christmas presents in Coalwood this year.
The audience started to arrive in twos and fours and then entire families. They walked in from all the sections of Coalwood and settled in on the hay bales. Some of the men had come straight from the mine after a cleanup shift on 11 East. They still wore their helmets and coal-smeared clothes. Their wives sat close to them, and their children clung to their legs, heedless of the dirt. The snow had stopped, but then it started up again. The blackened roads started to pale, then became a pristine white once more. Every so often, there would be the noise of a small avalanche coming off the post office or church roofs. Nobody worried. There was a cheerfulness in the air, a deep and pleased contentment that overcame the damp cold of the snow.
I saw Roy Lee riding the bulldozer on the road toward Frog Level. “Where’s he going?” I asked Quentin.
“Part of my plan,” he said, his hands a blur as he spliced electrical wire.
“What plan would that be?”
“I’ll do my work, you do yours,” he snapped.
Except for the glow from a single lamp, the Club House was kept dark so as to not distract from the pageant sets on the lawn. There were two sets, a manger and a tower. The manger had an open front and a canted roof. The tower was set on the other side of the lawn and was about fifteen feet high. The snow was packed down around the sets so there was room for the players to move.
As the last-minute preparations swirled around the Club House, and the people gathered on the hay bales or stood in the street, there was still the occasional hammer put to nail. I saw Billy Mahoney, just in a few days before from college, come from behind a set, his coat dotted with sawdust. All the boys and girls who had left Coalwood but were home for a visit from college or the military or jobs in far-off places had enthusiastically turned out to help. I looked around, picking them out. Billy Hardin and Eddie Auxier could be seen moving a sawhorse off, to hide it behind a bush. Claudia Allison, dressed in jeans, emerged with a bucket of nails and disappeared into the shadows. The Todd boys, Johnny and Bill, hammered the final boards into place on the tower and reported to Mr. McDuff, who reported to me.
Quentin and Billy were in the final stages of wiring two electrical breadboards. The breadboards were two squares of plywood with electrical leads and switches. They were marked with a number corresponding to the places in my script where lighting or pyrotechnics was needed. Their plan and equipment were simple and crude, which gave me some hope that they might actually work.
Mom arrived with Jim. I was too busy to talk to them. They took their seats on a hay bale up front. She looked exhausted. Jim looked proud.
I felt a soft shoulder nudge mine and looked and saw that Dorothy Plunk was standing beside me. The other girls of Linda DeHaven’s snowed-in slumber party were taking their places on the porch. They were going to sing a medley of doo-wop Christmas songs while the audience gathered. Lynn Ridenour, Janice Taylor, Eleanor Marie Dantzler, and Guylinda Cox, all college students, joined them. Dorothy said, “I hear you’ve got a girlfriend. I’m jealous.”
I found myself staring into eyes that were like deep blue lakes. Our faces were just inches apart and she moved in closer. “You know where to find me if you ever need me,” she said. She kissed me on my cheek, a quick peck, and then went up on the porch with the doo-wop girls. I saw Emily Sue give me a look from the porch with a knowing smile. I wonder, wonder, who, do-do-do, who wrote the book of love?
I heard a distant thunder down toward Frog Level. I was puzzled. A thunderstorm during a blizzard?
Quentin said, “Anytime you want to stop romancing and help out would be much appreciated by Billy and me.”
Mrs. Dantzler sat down at the Club House piano, which had been moved out on the porch. The doo-wop girls began to sing softly as she played, then louder as their confidence built. They went through “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Blue Christmas,” and “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” while Quentin and Billy worked feverishly on their equipment. I did what I could, stringing extension cords and testing lights. Tug and Hug came by and pitched in, too.
Finally, when Quentin and Billy said their preparations were complete, I went up on the Club House porch
and huddled with Ginger. “Are you ready?”
“I was born ready.”
“Then I guess it’s time.”
“This is going to be fun,” she said.
“It has been so far.”
I looked out over the audience that grew by the minute. The street was crowded with people from the Big Store all the way down to the Community Church. I wished that Reverend Richard could see it. I had stopped by during the day and invited him and his church to the pageant, but he said they were having Christmas Eve services and a dedication of his new windows. The windows were still covered with canvas, so I couldn’t see what was so special about them. “We’ll come up directly just as soon as we’re done,” he said mysteriously. I showed him my script, and he puzzled over it for a while. As he did, my confidence cracked a bit.
“Is it wrong, Reverend?” I asked worriedly.
He handed the script back and then took off his glasses, slowly folding them with his long, delicate fingers. He inserted the glasses into his coat pocket and patted the pocket. It was as if he needed a moment to choose the right words. “For this story, every place is Bethlehem,” he said softly, “and every time is now. It is not wrong. Some will say it is brazen. But it is not wrong.” Little’s face was creased by a sudden smile. “God will laugh, of that I am certain.”
I had looked past him then, up toward the crest of Mudhole Mountain. He caught my gaze. “Miss Dreama’s home now, Sonny. Mr. Dantzler donated her a box of pine and men of my congregation dug her grave. She has a good place to rest, and a fine view of mountains and sky.”
As the girls finished their songs on the porch, I thought about Dreama and imagined the snow, the beautiful snow, covering her “good place to rest.” There was rich soil on Mudhole Mountain. When the snow melted, and spring warmed the hills, her grave would be covered by mountain phlox and fire-pink dancing in the light, blown by gentle southerly breezes. I thought she’d like that.
The Community Church choir, dressed in their maroon robes, gathered on the Club House porch steps. Ginger blew softly into a pitch pipe and the choir warmed their throats. Mrs. Dantzler began to play and then the choir began to sing. They started with “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and the crowd quieted to hear the familiar words. Except they were not entirely familiar.
O little town of Coalwood,
In the Appalachian hills so steep; Your men go down every day
To mine your coal so deep.
Yet in your depths there shineth
A light the best there be,
You’re tough and hard at times, it’s true,
But you’re the place for me.
At the end of my revision of the ancient, reverent classic, there was a low murmuring in the audience, then a few chuckles, then a pleased hum. I took a deep, relieved breath. They liked it. I would have been happy with a simple lack of outrage.
Mr. McDuff had built a low wooden stage for the speakers at the bottom of the porch steps. Billy threw the switch that turned on a small spotlight, scrounged by O’Dell from the mine. It lit the stage, and Sherman greeted one and all and gave a prayer, a short, easy one asking for the guidance of the good Lord and a hope for peace everywhere. Billy threw the second switch, and a dim light came on within the manger set. It was filled with straw. Champion’s head poked through a window. He was placidly eating from a bucket. It was filled with carrots, scrounged from the vegetable section of the Big Store. Sherman’s voice rolled across the assembly:
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Governor Underwood up in Charleston that everybody should go and visit their home town for a reunion. And all went, every one into the town where they were born.
As the choir quietly began to hum, I threw another switch and a small spotlight came on at the top of the manger. Slug DeHaven, wearing a miner’s helmet and work clothes, stepped into the spot. He held Trigger’s bridle. Trigger was wearing a wreath of Christmas greens around his neck and bells on his harness. He stamped his feet, somehow knowing that he had a good part. His bells jingled prettily. Sherman kept reading.
And a man named Joe who had to go upstate to work because of the economy came unto the city of Mr. Carter, which is called Coalwood in McDowell County, because Joe had been born there, his father a miner as was his father’s father.
Slug led Trigger into the light. Sitting sideways on the saddle was Carol, his new bride. She and Slug had been trapped in Coalwood by the snow, their Myrtle Beach honeymoon put off on account of winter. Carol was dressed in a plain cloth coat and a kerchief around her head. Both hands gripped the saddlehorn. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Carol up on Trigger, but now that she was aboard, she didn’t plan on coming off by mistake. Trigger whinnied at Champion, and Champion withdrew his nose from his bucket long enough to prick up his ears and snort.
Joe brought Mary with him because he loved her. She was pregnant and probably should have stayed at home. But Joe wanted her to see Coalwood, the town where he’d been born and raised. He was proud of it. It was filled with hardworking, God-fearing people and he knew he and Mary would be safe there.
Slug led Trigger and Carol over to the Club House steps. Mrs. Davenport, her hands crossed in front of her, waited for them. Slug mimed speaking to her, and she shook her head as if to say “no.”
But there was no room for them at the Club House, there beinga bunch of junior engineers down from Ohio to learn how to mine coal, and Germans come to teach Coalwood miners how to mine the long-wall way. But wait, the Club House manager said . . .
Mrs. Davenport raised her finger theatrically and pointed toward the manger set.
There is a mule barn in Coalwood. It is old and no one has used it for many a year. It was here old man Carter kept his mules, which he loved exceedingly, and from where they were sent away to be rendered when he sold the company. There you will find shelter. I even have the key.
Mrs. Davenport held up a key and Slug took it and led Trigger over to the manger. He helped Carol, still maintaining a grip on the saddlehorn, to the ground. O’Dell slipped out from behind a bush and took Trigger’s reins and moved him discreetly away. His bells jingled into the darkness. Champion whinnied after him. Slug and Carol took up seats on hay bales positioned in the manger. Billy turned the lights down.
And lo, it was Mary’s time so she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in a Salvation Army blanket, and laid him in the straw.
The light came back on, revealing a cradle between Slug and Carol, and in it was a real baby boy, loaned out by a mother from up Snakeroot Hollow. You could just see her coat as she disappeared around the corner of the manger. Every once in a while, she’d peek out from behind to make certain her baby was all right.
Carol rocked the cradle, looking at the baby, her face aglow with the love only a young woman can show for a child. The baby, dressed in blue, slept. It was a good baby. Sherman and Roy Lee had picked the right one for the part. I just hoped they hadn’t given it any of John Eye’s magic stuff to keep it quiet. I wouldn’t have put it past Roy Lee.
Billy brought another light up, this one on the tower. Eight men, dressed in their mining clothes, stood in front of it, fiddling with their batteries and lamps as if preparing to go down into the mine.
It was time for Quentin’s first pyrotechnics. A puff of smoke erupted from the top of the platform. It was a small bucket of rocket candy. I gleefully smacked Quentin on his back. “It worked!” I whispered furiously into his ear.
“Of course, old boy,” he shrugged.
From the smoke appeared Linda DeHaven on the platform. She was wearing a white robe and big paper wings. She waved away the smoke and then raised her arms in a blessing while the choir sang the special words to “The First Noel.”
On this Noel the angel did say
Was to certain poor miners
With scrip for their pay
With scrip for their pay, it was a hoot-owl shift
Huddled at the tipple await
ing the lift.
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel
Born is the babe whose story we tell . . .
Sherman continued:
And there was up the road at the Number One Portal the hoot-owl shift putting on their lamps and batteries and getting ready to go inside.
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them at the man-hoist, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and being coal miners they were duly impressed but not afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy for unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in a Salvation Army blanket, lying in Mr. Carter’s old mule barn.
The choir then burst into “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” the words modified according to the idea that Sherman had put into my mind when we watched the little fawn die on Sis’s Mountain, that neither place nor time is without meaning to God, only the story He wishes to tell.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King!
Peace in the coalfields, and mercy mild,
Company and union reconciled.
Joyful, all ye miners, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With the angels yell out good,
Christ is born here in Coalwood.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King!
When all the voices died away, Sherman proceeded:
And it came to pass, the miners said one to another, Let us now go down past Tipple Row on Main Street and past the school and the Big Store and the Club House and the Community Church and Snakeroot Hollow and the machine shops; let us go even unto Middletown before Mudhole and Frog Level and stop at the old mule barn, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
And they came with haste, swinging their lunch buckets, and found Mary and Joe and the baby just as the angel said they would.