by Homer Hickam
WHEN I got home, the black phone—the one connected to the mine—was ringing. I answered it. “Your dad wants you up here,” Wally said.
“What for?” I asked cautiously.
“The estimate for the Buick is ready.”
“Estimate?”
“You did tell your dad you would pay for the repairs to his car, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t serious.”
Wally laughed. “He thought you were. Looks like you managed to tear off the oil pan and knock the engine nearly off its mounts.”
I gulped. “Is it going to cost a lot of money?”
“Well, those Welch mechanics aren’t going to do the work for free.”
Wally could really irk me. “I’m on my way,” I snapped.
I found Wally at his desk. A quick glance through the open door showed that Dad wasn’t in his office. “Where is he?”
Wally ignored my question and slid a sheet of yellow paper across his desk. It was the estimated bill from the Buick dealer in Welch, to the tune of $135.78, approximately $135.78 more than I had to my name. Reluctantly, I confessed that fact to Wally.
“Your dad will pay the dealer after the repairs are complete,” he said, shrugging, “and then you will pay your dad. That’s the deal.”
I looked at the bill again. One little rock had done all that? “Tell him I’ll send the money after I get work.”
Wally shifted in his old chair, making it squeak. “And what work might that be? Are you going to launch rockets and charge admission? Maybe ten people would be willing to give you a buck for that.” He gave me a sly grin to show me how clever he thought he was.
I considered making some sharp retort but decided Wally wasn’t worthy of my wit, not that I had any. I walked down Main Street, trying to get a fix on things. I hadn’t gone more than ten yards before Coalwood’s garbage truck pulled up beside me. I hauled myself inside the cab. “You look like a boy who needs a ride,” Red Carroll said, his big, droopy, hound-dog eyes giving me the once-over.
Red Carroll, rocket boy O’Dell’s dad, was never far from a smile, and his tongue stayed in his cheek a lot, but he had the reputation of being a solid man, always ready to help somebody who needed it. He was also one of the few grown men in Coalwood I called by first name, don’t ask me why. “You sticking around town for a while?” he asked after finding a gear to get us moving.
“Looks like,” I muttered.
“O’Dell’s doing great in the air force,” he reported as he swerved around Mrs. Jack Rose, who’d stopped her car to chat with Mrs. Fleming, out for a walk with her son Zack. “As soon as he finishes electronics school, he’s off to Germany. I’m real proud of him.”
“So am I, Red,” I said. I was envious, too. At least O’Dell knew where he was going, and was seeing some of the world while he was at it.
“Well, come see me sometime, Sonny,” Red said as he let me off at Coalwood Main. “Beaulah still cooks a great supper. Be proud to have you.”
I thanked Red most sincerely and then walked through the center of town, my mind churning. I walked and thought down to the Community Church, turned around, and walked and thought some more past the Club House and the Big Store. Off-shift miners on the Big Store steps watched me go by, then turn around and walk back again. One of them was Hub Alger, who was about my age and had decided to make a career of the mine. “You’re making us dizzy, Sonny, going back and forth,” Hub said.
“I’m trying to figure something out,” I replied, stopping to slouch against the wall.
He offered his pouch of Red Man. “Wanta chew?”
“No thanks.”
Pick Hylton, another miner, said, “What are you trying to figure?”
“How to get some money.”
He laughed, as did the others. “Sonny, you ever figure that one out,” he said, “you let us know!”
I sat with Hub and Pick and the others for a while, listening to their mine gossip, mostly about what foreman was doing what to whom. I got offered pretty much every kind of chewing tobacco known to mankind while I was there—Red Man, Brown Mule, Bull Durham, Mail Pouch, and 3 Black Crows—but I had never been a chewer. When the men weren’t talking, they were spitting into paper cups, given to them for free by Junior inside the drugstore. By their talk, the mine was busy, causing a lot of work to be done in a hurry, just as I had suspected. The men, I noted, studiously avoided mentioning Tuck Dillon, and I didn’t bring the subject up. After a while, Hub had to go and the others broke up the knot, and I went back to walking until I found myself standing in front of the Union Hall. I looked at it for a long time. That little corner of my mind that sent me off in tangents sometimes gave me a kick in the pants by recalling something my old buddy Roy Lee had once told me when I was complaining about this or that. “If you don’t want to get run over, Sonny, you need to get off the road.”
Maybe, I thought, it was time I got off one road but onto another—my own.
I took a deep breath, and marched inside the Union Hall. I found Mr. Dubonnet at his desk. He looked up. A slow grin spread across his weary face at the sight of me. I signed the papers he shoved in my direction. “Come back tonight,” he said. “It’s the weekly meeting. We’ll get you joined up.”
I DIDN’T go home. I sat on the rock wall in front of the Club House and dozed in the sun a bit and then wandered up and down Club House Row until at last it was seven o’clock, the time designated for the union meeting. The Union Hall glowed with lights. It had once been the Norfolk and Western train depot before the tipple had been moved to Caretta and the tracks through Coalwood Main had been taken out. It was a single-story wooden building with the trapezoidal-shaped roof characteristic of the old stations. The place quickly filled up with men sitting in a sea of folding metal chairs. In front of the room was a table with union officials around it. Mr. Dubonnet was there along with Mr. Mallett, the union secretary. Mr. Mallett, plump and rosy-cheeked, was a nice man, although his two oldest sons were dumb brutes with a history of trying to beat me up during strikes. He also had a wife who could arm-wrestle with Rocky Marciano and win.
I found a chair in the rear of the hall. A few men took note of me and fell to whispering. I pushed my thick, horn-rimmed glasses up on my nose and crossed my arms and settled back into my chair, just as if I had made a habit of attending union meetings nearly every day.
After a short while, Mr. Dubonnet gaveled the meeting to a start. There was some old business, a droning report of the minutes by Mr. Mallett, and then the first new business came up, which was the induction of new members. Mr. Dubonnet consulted his list. It was apparently a short one.
“Sonny Hickam,” Mr. Dubonnet intoned. “Come forward.”
As I walked down the aisle, I could feel the eyes of every man in the hall on me. There was a low murmur among them. As I stepped up to the table, Mr. Jocko Paraganni, a retired miner, rose and whispered something in my ear. I couldn’t make it out. “What?” I asked, but Mr. Paraganni just gave me a toothless grin.
In a ponderous tone, Mr. Dubonnet said, “Sonny Hickam, you have just taken the first step required to enter the brotherhood of the United Mine Workers of America. You are to keep the motto you’ve just been told by the sergeant at arms secret unto death.”
“The secret union motto seals you to us for life,” Mr. Mallett added.
“But I didn’t hear—” I began, but before I could finish my protest, I was interrupted by Mr. Mallett going on to say how important it was that I never, ever reveal the secret motto. When I started to say again that I still didn’t know what it was, I was drowned out by a rumble of agreement from the assembled men. I gave up, figuring maybe I could ask somebody later what it was. Of course, when I thought about it, if nobody was supposed to tell it, how would I ever find out what it was?
“Bobby Likens, please step forward,” Mr. Dubonnet intoned.
Bobby came up, gave me a terse nod, then faced the congregation. He had a square-jawed, bantam-roost
er look to him that, along with wire-rimmed spectacles, caused him to resemble a young Teddy Roosevelt. His sandy hair was cut short in a crew cut, and he was wearing a smart checked shirt, trim khakis, and penny loafers, as befitted a true college boy. Mr. Paraganni leaned over and whispered into his ear, and Bobby looked puzzled. I suspected he hadn’t heard the secret motto any better than I. For all I knew, maybe that was what Mr. Paraganni intended.
Mr. Dubonnet had Bobby and me raise our hands and he read us the union oath. It sounded like Bobby and I were supposed to be henceforth more loyal to the union than anything else in the world, even the United States of America. Although I didn’t entirely go along with it, I went ahead and swore. A lot of the men in the building had gone off to fight in World War II and Korea. Their oath to the union hadn’t stopped them, and I figured it wouldn’t stop me, either.
“Welcome, brother,” Mr. Dubonnet said, and clasped my hand. “It’s good to have a Hickam back in the fold of the working man.”
“Hear, hear!” came the shout from the assembly.
“You’ve made a man’s decision tonight, Sonny,” Mr. Mallett said in a soft voice. “A very brave thing, I swan.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You may call me Leo.”
“We’ll hear from our new brothers now,” Mr. Dubonnet said, and nodded to me.
I was still slightly dazed by what I’d done. “I guess this means I won’t be beat up by union boys anymore,” I said weakly.
That got me a laugh, and I decided to quit while I was ahead. “I’m happy to be a member,” I mumbled, and then shut my mouth. Mr. Dubonnet nodded to Bobby.
Bobby shrugged, and said, “You all know me and my parents and my brother Jack. I grew up here, played football, basketball, and tennis, studied hard in school, and never gave anybody much trouble. Next year, I’ll be going to medical school, which is going to cost way more than my parents can afford. I’m here tonight because I need a job, not because I’m in love with the union. If anybody has a problem with that, let’s get it out in the open right now. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the mine.”
Bobby tightened his fists at his hips and waited out his audience. Nobody saw fit to argue with him. I was impressed by his willingness to stand up and say what he thought, even though I doubted the need for it. “Thank you, Bobby,” Mr. Dubonnet said dryly. “We appreciate your honesty.”
Bobby shook some proffered hands from miners sitting up front, and then he got around to saying something to me. “Thanks for taking the job, Sonny,” he said. “They weren’t going to open up the program unless they got two boys.”
“Do you think we did the right thing?” I wondered.
“I know I did,” he said, jutting out his jaw and pushing his spectacles up on his pug nose.
I pushed my glasses up on my nose, too, and then let out a worried breath. “My folks are going to kill me.” It came out pretty much a whine.
He inspected me. “You know, Sonny,” he said, “when I was a boy, I never hung around with you much, but I heard some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like you could be a bit of a wimp. I hope that’s not true. You and me, we’ve got to stick together this summer.”
“I’m no wimp,” I squeaked.
“In that case,” he said, “you might want to stop sounding like one.”
His duty done, at least by his lights, Bobby Likens strode up the aisle and out of the hall. I watched his back with narrowed eyes. I’d heard some things about Bobby Likens, too, like he could be a real arrogant snot. At least three good retorts to his crack about me being a wimp bubbled up into my brain, worthless now that he was gone.
Mr. Dubonnet gave me the elbow. “Got you told, didn’t he? Got us all told, for that matter.”
My heavy glasses had sneaked down my nose and I pushed them back into place. “I don’t need to be told anything,” I grumped, then went back to my chair in the rear of the assembly and tried to let my brain catch up with all that I’d done.
Mr. Dubonnet surveyed the audience and announced, “Bernie, now it’s your turn. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”
Bernie Trulock walked up the aisle between the folding chairs. Bernie had grown up in Coalwood and I knew him fairly well. He’d married one of the Campbell girls, I recalled. He was a thin, limber-looking young man. Either he’d forgotten to shave or there was a mustache trying to bloom on his upper lip, too. “Doc here?” Bernie asked as he came up front.
“I’m here, Bernie,” came the reply. Doc Lassiter emerged from a corner of the room. Like everything and everybody in Coalwood, Doc looked older and smaller than I remembered. As always, he carried his black doctor’s bag.
Doc came to stand in front of the assembly. “Welcome, Doc,” Mr. Dubonnet said.
“We’ll see how welcome I am,” Doc muttered.
Bernie began a little speech wherein he declared Doc was an awful doctor, always had been, and went on and on about some money Doc had charged him for his wife being sick “with just a little old cold.”
“Thank you, brother,” Mr. Dubonnet said when Bernie wrapped up. During the entire verbal blistering, the doctor had listened with a passive expression on his face. In fact, he seemed downright bored by Bernie’s diatribe, enough so he’d even looked at his watch once as if he had an appointment, which, considering the demands on a coal camp physician, he probably did.
Mr. Dubonnet turned to the doctor. “Now, help me out here, Dr. Lassiter. It’s in the union contract that the company will provide your services to every man and family member if they pay five dollars a month per family. According to his pay stub, Bernie here has done that.” He fingered another piece of paper. “But it says here you’ve charged the B. Trulock family forty-seven dollars and eighty-two cents since April seventh. Would you please be so kind as to explain?”
Doc Lassiter pursed his lips, rocked in his polished black leather shoes. “I have a higher oath than even your union contract,” he said with just a trace of distaste for the last two words. “A doctor has a duty to his patient to keep treatment confidential.”
“Well, there ain’t no sense to this, Doc,” Bernie maintained, his voice rising an octave. “You gave my wife a little old shot or two, that’s all.”
“I gave you a shot, too, Bernie,” Doc said, his voice becoming a little hotter.
“Yeah, but I warn’t even sick!” Bernie blared. “You’re just trying to make money off me on the side, you old fool! I ought to kick your butt!”
Mr. Mallett had been writing in a notebook as hard and fast as he could go, but at Bernie’s threat, he stopped and looked up sharply. Mr. Dubonnet fixed his mouth into a straight line. “Bernie, there will be no threats here. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this.”
“Aw, crap, John,” Bernie growled. “This old quack’s trying to steal my money. That’s the long and the short of it.”
Doc retained his dignified posture. “My answer remains the same. I have a duty of confidentiality.”
The door slammed in the back of the hall and everybody turned to look. It was Mrs. Trulock. Her skirt swished as she walked down the aisle. I noted she wore brown and white shoes—saddle shoes as they were called—probably left over from her high school days and indicating that money was in short supply in the Trulock household. She went all the way up front and then turned around and faced us. “Go on, Doc,” she said. “You tell it. You got my permission. Tell it all.” She glanced at Bernie. “Go on, tell our shame.”
“What you talking about, woman?” Bernie growled.
Mr. Dubonnet quieted the resulting hubbub from the assembly. “If there’s something to tell, Doc,” he said, “I think you have Mrs. Trulock’s permission.”
Doc shrugged. “I am treating Mrs. Trulock for a venereal disease,” he said. A low murmur shot through the hall. He waited until it ran its course. “Mrs. Trulock asked me to give Bernie a shot and tell him it was for the flu. She also told me to charge what a doctor in Welc
h would charge for the shots, said it wasn’t right to take the company for something this wretched.”
While Doc was talking, Mrs. Trulock’s hands gradually crept to her face. After he was done, she sobbed in them while Bernie stood stock-still, white as a ghost. “Woman,” he said.
“If you don’t stay out of those damn old whorehouses in Cinder Bottom,” she said from within her cupped hands, “you’re going to kill us all with disease, Bernie Trulock.”
“Woman,” he said once more, but his hands went to his face, too.
It was so quiet in the hall that all I could hear were the choked sobs of the Trulocks. Some of the men looked particularly grim, but whether it was for the Trulocks or Doc or from fear that maybe they had picked something up in the Keystone houses, too, I couldn’t say. I felt ashamed and embarrassed, as if I were listening in on a family argument.
Mr. Mallett had kept his pencil poised during all this but now slowly started writing again. Mr. Dubonnet was the first to speak. “Bernie,” he said quietly. “I think you have your answer.”
Bernie took his hands away from his face and made to touch his wife on her shoulder, but she twitched away and then walked back down the aisle. The door slammed behind her. Bernie pulled himself out of his slouch, stood as straight as he could. “Yeah” was all he said, and then he followed his wife.
A long silence followed, again broken by Mr. Dubonnet. “Doctor Lassiter, I’m afraid we owe you an apology,” he said stiffly. “You have always been a source of great comfort to our brotherhood, willing to get out in all kinds of weather to see to our pain. On a personal note, I would trust my health to you quicker than to any doctor alive at the fanciest hospital in the world. Coalwood is lucky to have you. I promise you this union will not trouble you again.”
Doc Lassiter nodded, picked up his bag, and made his way down the aisle. Before he got far, a man started clapping and then everybody joined in. Doc Lassiter did not acknowledge it. He just left the Union Hall with a straight back, his black bag swinging.
Then I thought of something and chased after Doc. I caught him at the edge of the road. He eyed me carefully. “Well, Sonny Hickam, I thought I’d seen everything until I saw what you did tonight.”