by Homer Hickam
“Yes, sir. Can you get me out of it?” I was half serious.
“Not at all. I think it’s just the thing for you. Turn the boy into a man, eh?”
“Can I be a man after I’m dead? First, Dad’s going to kill me, and Mom won’t be far behind.”
That made him laugh. “Nothing happens to anybody which he is not by nature fit to bear.”
I hoped he was right. “Doc, I have a question for you. How did Nate Dooley break his wrist?”
His grin disappeared, replaced by a frown. “Sonny,
despite what you just saw and heard, I don’t discuss my patients with anyone not in their immediate family.”
Although Doc sounded adamant, the fact is I sincerely doubted him, due to personal experience. I had once fallen into a hole full of scrap steel and suffered a deep cut, nearly bleeding to death in the process. Doc had sewn me up, but before I made it home, most of the town knew every detail, down to how many stitches I’d received.
“I just want to know how he broke his wrist, sir, not anything else,” I said judiciously.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” the doctor said icily.
“Why?”
He cocked his head at me. “You know, boy, just because you’re a member of the union doesn’t give you the right to question your betters out on the road at night. I said I can’t help you because if you must know, I didn’t set Nate’s wrist. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a baby due to arrive any minute up Snakeroot Hollow. It’s Estelle Franklin’s first and she’ll need some hand-holding.”
And with that, Doc marched off, leaving me scratching my head.
9
THE CLUB HOUSE
I OWED Dad the courtesy of telling him what I’d done, so I tried to stay awake until he came home. I watched the Tonight Show until I fell asleep on the couch. Although I was convinced that I mostly tossed and turned all night, somehow Dad came home, turned off the television set, and left again without me knowing it. Surely that meant he didn’t know I’d joined the union. Otherwise, he’d have woken me up and yelled at me about it. No matter what, the yelling was going to be long and loud when it came, not only from Dad but Mom, too, and I just wanted to get it over with.
My breakfast—Wheaties soaked in sour milk—didn’t help my mood, but I forced myself to eat some of it, then headed down to Coalwood Main to start the processing with the company. I felt like I was one of those buffaloes I’d seen in the cowboy movies that got started on a stampede and went right over a cliff. Just as I’d never gone to work in a mine, the buffalo had probably never jumped off a cliff, either. Who knew for certain the result? Mr. Buffalo and Mr. Sonny Hickam just went ahead and kept going.
My first stop was Olga Coal Company’s administrative office beside the Big Store. I went into the door marked GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT. This was Mr. Bundini’s office. Carol Todd DeHaven, Mr. Bundini’s secretary and assistant, looked up from her desk as I entered. She knew exactly why I was there and immediately produced all the forms I needed. She asked if she could see my freshly inked union card. “Never thought I’d see this day,” she remarked, looking the card over. “What did your daddy say?”
I told her I hadn’t seen him since I’d joined the union. “Well, he knows about it,” she said. At my raised eyebrows, she said, “He has to sign off on every man coming to work.”
While I filled in the necessary forms, I got the chance to reflect anew on what I’d done and also wonder why Dad had let me do it. I started hoping that maybe it was all a big joke and maybe Dad and Mr. Dubonnet would suddenly step around the corner, laughing at me. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. The next thing to do, Carol said, was to go to the Big Store. She gave me a list of equipment I needed. “I have to buy all this stuff?” I asked. It was a revelation that the company didn’t provide all the things a man needed to work in the mine. I’d never thought about it. “I don’t have any money,” I confessed. In fact, I was $135.78 in the hole, which was the reason I’d gotten into this mess in the first place.
“The store will give you credit and deduct it from your paycheck,” Carol answered with a reassuring smile.
I went into the Big Store and back to the counter where the mine equipment was kept. Mrs. Anastapoulos, the clerk, gave me an uncertain look when I appeared and showed her my list. “I’ll need credit,” I said.
“What new miner don’t?” she answered, and then sent me to the office window to get signed up.
“You want some cash money, too?” the clerk asked.
“How about one hundred and thirty-five dollars and seventy-eight cents?”
He laughed, although I wasn’t sure if he knew what the joke was. He probably did, though, considering the efficiency of Coalwood gossip. He gave me twenty dollars in scrip, company money good for spending only at the company store.
Mrs. Anastapoulos had all my stuff laid out when I got back. “I already have some hard-toe boots at home,” I said, hoping to save a dollar or two.
“How old are they?” When I said I didn’t know, she replied, “Well, these boots just got approved by the union, so they’re the kind you have to have.”
I knew better than to argue, so she wrote me up for the new boots, a pair of leather gloves, a black helmet, and a cylindrical aluminum lunch bucket. She showed me how the lunch bucket worked. The top part held the food, the bottom part the water. “You’ll need work clothes if you don’t have any,” she continued, and then dragged out two pairs of khaki pants and shirts. She seemed to know my size. She wrote up the ticket. “Take it to the clerk,” she ordered.
I looked at the amount. Sixty-two dollars. When I came outside, a huddle of miners sitting on the store steps saw me and what I was carrying and started singing:
You load Sixteen Tons, whadaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
“You’ll be sorry,” Pick and Hub and the others chorused.
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered under my breath.
At the house, I went upstairs, put down my purchases, and sank down on my old bed. I looked around and it felt as if the room were condensing all around me. I had the sudden opinion that I was going to go crazy if I stayed there. But where could I go? Then I thought, I’ll call my mother, beg her to come and save me! She will fix everything! Why, she’ll probably even sock John Dubonnet in the nose for getting me into this mess!
But I knew I couldn’t do it and it wouldn’t help, even if I tried. When Mom found out what I’d done, she would be more likely to order me murdered than take up for me. She’d probably have Dad killed while she was at it. We were both in trouble with her, that much I knew. But that would show her what kind of trouble we were capable of without her, wouldn’t it? Maybe she’d even come home! But my next thought was in the opposite direction. I was so thoroughly messing up, she would never come back, or want me with her in Myrtle Beach, either. Was it possible for me to make things any worse? Oh, yes, indeed. That I could always do, and so I did.
I looked out the window, toward the tipple, a wisp of vapor rising from the shaft, and gathered my courage. It was time to act like a man, even if I wasn’t one. Bobby Likens’s crack about me being a wimp was still digging at me. It was time to stand up and be counted, even if I didn’t know all the numbers. All right, I thought, I’m a miner, so I might as well live like one, too. I gathered my few pitiful things in a cardboard box and marched out of the house and headed down Main Street. This time, nobody picked me up. It was as if the passing drivers knew this was a journey I had to make on my own.
I arrived at the Club House, climbed up the stone steps, and went into the high-ceilinged foyer. The breeze from opening and closing the door caused the massive crystal chandelier overhead to tinkle. The warm aroma of fried food filled the air. Mrs. Floretta Carbo, a stout colored lady, emerged from the kitchen. She was the Club House manager and I knew he
r fairly well. She was in the choir at the Mudhole Church of Distinct Christianity, the Reverend Julius “Little” Richard’s church. When I told her why I was there, she gave me a hard look but didn’t argue. “This way,” she said, her hands in the pockets of her starched white apron.
She led me up the stairs to the third floor and then down a long, dark hall. She produced a key from her apron and opened one of the heavy oaken doors to reveal a small room with a white porcelain sink, a narrow bed with a thin mattress, a round wooden table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs. A small window looked out on the road between the Club House and the Community Church. Down the hall, she said, was the bathroom, which included a bathtub and a shower.
“Rent is twenty-six dollars a month,” she said, “which includes breakfast and supper. Breakfast is served six to eight. Supper’s six to seven. Give me your bucket and I’ll pack your lunch for an extra dollar a day. Anytime you’re here, you get hungry, the kitchen’s yours. Leftovers will be in the fridge or on the counter beside the stove. I’ll do your laundry, a dime for each piece unless it’s a pair of coveralls, and they’re a quarter. There’s a laundry bag in the closet with your room number on it. Leave it in the foyer on your way out. I don’t make up your room. Make your own bed every day and keep your room straight. I’ll be leaving you clean sheets every Tuesday, put the old outside the door that morning. There’s a broom, a mop, a vacuum cleaner, and some dust rags in the closet down the hall. That’s it. You want the room?”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
“You want me to pack your lunch?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She studied me, her hands gathered in her apron. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
I fiddled with the hand mirror on the tiny table by the sink. “No, ma’am. I just know I’m doing it.”
“You want me to tell you what I think?” When I shrugged, she said, “Quit now before you get hurt. I know that’s what your mother would want. She and I have always been special friends, I mean as best we can, her being the mine superintendent’s wife and all.”
“She’s always spoken highly of you,” I said, which happened to be true.
“What do you weigh?” she demanded. “A hundred and forty pounds or so, I’ll bet. Those jobs they do down there, they ain’t easy. Takes some heft to do them.” Her face clouded. “My mister was killed in the mine. His motor flipped and crushed him. Everywhere you look, there’s some tight place where you can get a leg or an arm took off.”
I knew she was right. “My Poppy—my granddad—got both his legs cut off in the mine,” I said.
“There you go. You’d better quit. It’s not hard. Just walk across the road and tell Carol DeHaven you made a mistake.”
“I swore an oath to the union,” I said, reflecting on how nearly everybody who gave me advice, from college deans to the Club House manager, was always after me to quit. Apparently, I was making a career out of being wrong.
Mrs. Carbo wasn’t done. “The union won’t protect you from falling slate and mountain bumps,” she said.
“No, ma’am, I guess not. But I can’t quit. I have to keep going.” I started to tell her why and even had my mouth open to do it, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t certain of the reason myself. It was all a mush.
She cocked her head and sighed. “You may call me Floretta,” she said. “If you’re going to be a working man, might as well call me like they do.”
“Yes ma—Floretta. Thank you.”
She gave me a long study, maybe thinking to give me more advice, but then she shook her head and led the way back downstairs. She handed over the guest registry and a chit for a month in advance and I signed them both, leaving me in debt to Coalwood for another twenty-six dollars not even counting future laundry and lunches. I had been in town for less than a week but I was on a roll, not all that difficult when you’re headed downhill.
10
THE ENGINETTE
THE THIN blanket on my Club House bed had not been enough to keep me warm through the night, even in June. I had discovered the wind tended to whistle down Snakeroot Hollow after dark, flowing over the Club House like a giant natural air conditioner. I climbed out of bed, trembling in the predawn chill, and drew on my new uniform of khakis and hard-toe boots. The smell of eggs and bacon beckoned me downstairs. As I reached the bottom step, Floretta came out of the kitchen, carrying a silver tray with covered dishes and a steaming coffeepot.
She gave me a curt glance. “You better go eat, boy, and get on up the road. You don’t want to be late your first day at work!” Then she continued down the hall to where I knew Dr. Hale, the company dentist, kept his residence. When I’d been a newspaper boy, I had gotten the opportunity to peer inside Dr. Hale’s quarters when I’d gone to collect my fee. Compared to my spartan room, it was an ornately decorated palace.
In the main dining room I found two men waiting with forks and knives in their hands, paper napkins tucked in at their necks. There was a look of quiet desperation on their faces. I knew them immediately for junior engineers, the pride of the steel mills and the scourge of Coalwood. Junior engineers were sent down to Coalwood by the Ohio steel company that owned us, to get some seasoning and maybe learn a little about coal mining. After they were done with their stint, usually lasting about six months, they went back to Ohio to learn how to squeeze dimes, or some-such. The two boys gave me a look, dismissed me as unworthy of their concern, and resumed their vigil. Floretta soon rewarded them by appearing with dishes of scrambled eggs, biscuits, and bacon balanced on her arms. She was apparently working alone. She set the plates down, then withdrew as they fell upon the food like starved wolves.
In a minute, maybe less, not a morsel was left, leaving me with a still-empty plate. I scraped back my chair and went into the kitchen, carrying my plate with me. Floretta was all arms and elbows. “I know, I know,” she said. “Those boys would eat a dead cat if I put it out.” She tossed in a three-inch-thick slab of bacon with one hand, then cracked a half-dozen eggs open with the other. In a couple of minutes, she loaded up my plate and sent me on my way.
I withdrew to the far end of the table. Floretta rushed in behind me, laden with more grub. After a round of snorting and belching and slugging back about a gallon of coffee between them, the young men took a moment to consider me. “Are you a new miner?” one of them asked. He was a twirpy-looking boy with short blond hair.
I considered him for a moment, then said “Yes,” and left it at that. Even though they were older than me and college graduates, junior engineers never rated a “sir” from anybody in Coalwood, no matter how lowly that Coalwoodian was. Now that I thought about it, I guessed there wasn’t anybody in Coalwood much lower than I was.
“First day at work?” the young man demanded.
I chewed my bacon. “Yes.”
The other junior engineer, a skinny youth with slicked-back black hair and a pug nose, eyed me suspiciously. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Homer Hickam,” I said. It was technically the correct answer.
The two looked at each other. “My, how you’ve changed,” the blond one said. “No, really, what is it?”
“What’s yours?” I asked, swigging from a steaming mug of coffee that, even though I’d liberally diluted it with cream, was still the deepest and richest I’d ever drunk. I figured I’d be awake for at least a week. Its caffeine molecules were already swaggering through my veins.
“I’m Ned Bean,” he said. He nodded toward his companion. “Victor Vance. We’re engineers,” he declared with some pride. “You’d be advised to be nice to us. We’re management, you know. Now tell the truth. What’s your name?”
I decided to give him a straight answer, just to be nice, not because I cared about them as “management” or in any other way. I knew the rugged life they were living while going through my dad’s killer boot camp for engineers. It had sent more than one junior engineer scurrying back to Ohio with his tail well tucked. “I’m Sonny H
ickam,” I said. “Homer Hickam’s son.”
“Homer’s boy?” Ned looked me over, then squinted suspiciously. “What position do you play?”
“I’m not the one who plays football,” I replied with a sigh.
Victor scratched his head. “Homer Hickam has two sons? I never knew that.”
I wasn’t surprised. Everybody in the county and the state knew my famous football-playing brother. Although winning a gold and silver medal at the National Science Fair had given me some fame, it had been short-lived. “I’m the illegitimate son,” I said to stir their pots. “I’ve come back to claim my inheritance.”
Victor and Ned leaned forward. “What inheritance?” Victor wondered.
For some reason, I had always enjoyed taunting junior engineers. Maybe it was because they were so simple or maybe it was because I was. “You don’t know about the Hickam family fortune?” I demanded.
“No!” they chorused.
I made an attempt to look mysterious and went back to eating my breakfast, chewing very slowly. Some junior engineers were a challenge, but Ned and Victor were about as dull as butter knives.
Floretta came back into the dining room, carrying four lunch buckets, one of which I recognized as mine by its fresh store-bought gleam. She set them down on the table, then eyed the grandfather clock across the way in the parlor. “You boys better hurry, especially you,
Sonny.”
I wondered who the fourth bucket was for, but then I heard someone coming down the stairs. When I looked to see who it was, there, to my amazement, dressed in standard junior engineer’s clothes—khakis tucked into knee-high lace-up hard-toe boots—was none other than—a girl.
And what a girl! I stared at her, and maybe that was why she put her hands on her hips and stared back, her eyebrows raised. Her thick black hair was pulled back into a long braided pigtail. The way she stood there in her high boots, I couldn’t help but think of Wonder Woman, the comic strip heroine who flew around in a glass airplane. The wide miner’s belt at her small waist was pulled in tight, and it looked to me as if she had tailored her khakis to fit all her curves. I guess I was gaping because as Floretta swung by to hand the woman a cup of coffee, she said, “Hey, boy. Be careful you don’t catch no flies.”