by Homer Hickam
“I’m sorry,” I grunted. I didn’t know why she was so mad.
She huffed, then seemed to subside. “How’d you like working with Big Jeb?”
“I never had so much fun.” Then I asked, “Is it true he has two wives?”
“Big Jeb’s business is colored folks’ business,” she said.
“But you talk about me all the time,” I said. “Isn’t that white folks’ business?”
“Some roads go only one way.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Who are you to say what’s fair or not? Be careful or I’ll slap you silly.”
“I don’t think I’d feel it right now,” I confessed.
Floretta finished her kneading and put the cap back on the bottle of the foul-smelling liquid. Then she applied some salve from the tin on my foot blisters. It felt wonderful.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Possum grease.”
“Really?”
She chuckled. “Why do you care as long as it works?”
“I was born curious,” I answered.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” she said.
“And the possum, too,” I quipped.
She finished layering on the salve and pushed the top back on the tin. “That’ll do you,” she said. “I’ll bring up a food tray later.”
“You don’t want me to come to the dining room?”
“The way you stink? I don’t think so!” She laughed herself out of the room.
I WOKE the next morning to the shrill rattle of the alarm clock on my bedside table. It sounded like a giant metal hornet. I flailed at the thing and knocked it off the table, where it bounced once and happily kept ringing. I threw my blanket down to smother it. The little key in the back of the clock must have gotten tangled because it produced a strangled little bing and—thank the good Lord—stopped.
I waited until my heart stopped pounding, then eased my legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. I took stock of my body. It felt like somebody had spent the night hitting me with a board. I wrapped a towel around my waist and lurched into the hall, my thighs screaming bloody murder. My head also hurt and my feet announced they still had their blisters, too.
When I returned to my room, I found my work clothes, all washed and nicely pressed, beside the door. I was too stiff to pick them up, so I opened the door and kicked them inside. After much grunting and groaning, I managed to get myself dressed. Limping, my blisters complaining as they rubbed against my boots, I went slowly downstairs. I entered the dining room just as Floretta came in from the kitchen with a huge plate of steaming eggs, bacon, toast, and hashed potatoes. She set it down in front of Ned and Victor, who, surprisingly, just stared at it. “Did my liniment help?” she asked me.
“I don’t know.”
She frowned. “It takes a while to get the kinks out sometimes.”
“I think I got more than kinks,” I groaned as I eased myself into a chair. The junior engineers just stared straight ahead, their faces kind of green-hued. “What’s with them?” I asked her.
She huffed. “Got themselves drunk as mules last night. I put them to bed myself. You boys need to stay away from that John Eye liquor, you hear?”
Ned and Victor nodded sadly, then both of them grabbed their mouths and rushed out of the room. I watched them go and then forgot about them. I had my own problems. I dug into breakfast. At least my appetite was alive and well.
After I’d finished off my second plate and was working on my third, I was surprised when the enginette—
Rita—arrived and pulled up a chair opposite me. She leaned her elbows on the table and gave me a sweet smile. “Are you going to talk to your dad about me going inside the mine?” she asked, her tone as sweet as her smile.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” I answered.
Her smile faded. “Why not?”
I shrugged, or attempted to. It hurt too much for the full thing.
Her eyes narrowed. “Is it true you used to build rockets?”
“Yes.”
“I’d love to see one fly,” she said.
“You’re a year too late,” I replied, grimacing as a muscle in my back announced that it was still peeved about yesterday.
Floretta appeared, carrying a coffeepot. “You be eating with this old coal miner, honey?”
Rita shook her head. “He’s a bit too grumpy for me. I think I might have liked him better when he was a rocket boy.”
“Honey, everybody liked him better then,” Floretta said. “He was a boy knew how to be a boy. Now he’s a man don’t know how to be one. That’s why he’s all grumped up.”
Rita said, “I’ll have my breakfast at my table, Floretta, thank you.”
She went over to a corner table where I saw there was a rose in a vase. She got a cloth napkin, too. We at the junior engineer table got paper ones.
I kept eating. I just couldn’t get enough food in me fast enough. When I was on my fourth plate, none other than Mr. John Dubonnet appeared and sat down opposite me. Maybe, I thought, I should start charging admission for the chair. “How’d yesterday go?” he asked.
“I was born to be a coal miner,” I said.
My attempt at humor eluded him. “Sonny, I’m going to put my cards on the table.” When he caught me looking, he said, “I don’t mean literally.” He twisted his lips over to one side, then drummed his long fingers. He was having trouble saying what he was about to say, whatever it was. “You see, it’s like this. Your mother called the other day, said she wanted you to stay in Coalwood for a while, that you and your daddy needed to have some time together. She asked my advice and I told her to leave it to me, I’d see what I could do about keeping you here. Then you rolled your daddy’s Buick and I struck upon the idea of offering you a job in the mine to pay for the damage. What better way to keep you in Coalwood? That was my thinking, anyhow. But I made the mistake of not telling your mom about it. I guess I can get too clever by half if I’m not careful. It’s a trait you and I tend to share. Your mother nearly wore my ear out about it last night, and said I needed to get it straight. So I called your father and we agreed to let you quit, if that was what you wanted.”
Of all the things he’d just said, only one seemed incredible. “You and my dad agreed on something?”
He took off his hat and laid it on the table. “All I agreed to was that I wouldn’t fight it.” He shook his head. “Lord knows I was a fool for getting mixed up with you Hickams.”
I had to agree with him on that one. “I’m not quitting,” I said, but even as I said it, I thought, What a strange beast am I! There was nothing I really wanted more than to get out of that old coal mine.
Mr. Dubonnet looked pleased. “Well, I have to say I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “It’s good for a boy to mine a little coal sometime in his life. There’s a lot to learn down there. But what are you going to use for college money? Your dad said he was serious about cutting you off from it.”
Again, I tried to shrug but ended up wincing instead. “I’m making good money in the mine. I’ll use that.”
“It won’t be enough,” he said. “Not even three months of work will cover a year of tuition, books, and all that. Homer’s not done you any favors on this one, Sonny boy.”
A question just popped out of me and it surprised me as much as it did Mr. Dubonnet. “Mr. Dubonnet, why do you hate my dad so much?”
Although I could tell I had startled him, his answer back was immediate, as if he was used to answering it. “I don’t hate him. I just don’t like him. There’s a big difference.”
“Still, I guess you’ll be plenty glad if he loses his job over Tuck Dillon,” I said.
His eyebrows plunged. “I don’t like any man to lose his job!” he snapped.
I guess I looked taken aback, because Mr. Dubonnet’s expression softened. He leaned in. “Sonny, does the name Amos Fuller ring a bell with you?”
“Talks like a machine gun and has a personality to match?”
“That would be him.”
“Sure. He was the man the steel company sent down to sell off the houses. He even tried to put the rocket boys out of business while he was at it. Dad took up for us on that one.”
Mr. Dubonnet nodded. “Fuller’s the steel company’s hatchet man. Whenever they’ve got something nasty to be done, he’s their man to do it.” His hand went to his hat and he stood up. “Fuller’s been put in charge of the Tuck Dillon investigation. He should be here any day. Thought you should know. I’ve already told your mom.”
“What did she say?”
Mr. Dubonnet plopped on his old hat, running his fingers over the brim. “She had a few things to say, but I guess I’ll keep them to myself.”
His answer was no surprise. My mom was one for secrets and intrigues. “Can you help Dad, Mr. Dubonnet?”
He shook his head. “This is one I can’t touch, Sonny,” he said. “For a couple of reasons.” When he saw me open my mouth to ask what reasons those might be, he said, “Coalwood business, son. I’m sorry.”
After he left, I was just starting to contemplate Mr. Dubonnet’s latest round of information—and lack of same—when Floretta came in from the kitchen to hurry me along to work.
“Floretta,” I asked, “have you reserved a room for Mr. Fuller? He works for the steel company.”
“I know who that rascal is,” she answered, making an ugly face. “He’ll be here next Sunday.”
“He’s coming to destroy Dad,” I said grimly.
“That may be, Sonny,” she replied, filling my hand with my lunch bucket and aiming me out the door. “But there’s not a thing you can do about it. Go on. And this time remember to take your bucket inside with you!”
“Okay, Mom,” I said, which seemed to give her some pleasure. She responded with a soft chuckle.
I WAS back in the line of men heading up the valley when I noticed a woman standing in the front yard of one of the smaller houses along Main Street. It was Mrs. Nate Dooley, the wife of Coalwood’s secret man. She was wearing a pink robe, and was leaning on her fence, her hand languidly holding a cigarette between two upraised fingers. Blue and pink hair curlers covered her head. She lifted her thin, pale face at the sight of me. “Sonny Hickam,” she called. “Come here.”
I went to the fence. “Yes, ma’am?” I could smell the chemicals, sharp and bitter, on her hair.
“Where are you going?”
“To work, ma’am.”
Mrs. Dooley frowned and took a puff on her cigarette, then threw it down and stepped on it with a pink bedroom slipper. “Next couple of days, come by the house. It’s time for Nate’s bath.”
“Ma’am?”
“Are you deaf? I need help with Mr. Dooley’s bath.”
“How is he?” I asked stupidly.
She raised her eyebrows. “Dirty. That’s why he needs a bath.”
“I mean his wrist.”
Her pale blue eyes rested on me. “It’s better,” she said at length.
“How did it happen?” I thought to at least get a report for Mom. Our next conversation, I figured, was going to be a knockdown, drag-out affair about me working in the mine, and maybe I could get her talking about Mr. Dooley instead. It was a slim hope but a hope nonethe-less.
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Dooley asked.
“Did he fall?”
“No, he didn’t fall.”
“What then? I asked Doc Lassiter, but he said he didn’t put on the cast. Who did?”
She shrugged and pushed back from the fence. “Come Saturday noon,” she said. Then she went up on her porch, opened her front door, and went inside.
I puzzled after her for a bit and then fell back into line. As I neared the Coalwood School, I heard what sounded like somebody running in their boots thudding behind me. When I turned, I was surprised to see it was Rita Walicki, the enginette. She was carrying a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. She slowed to a walk. “Got to deliver some drawings to the tipple,” she said, taking in a quick breath. “Mind if I walk with you?”
I didn’t mind one bit. “Did you run all the way from the engineering office?”
“Sure. I like to stay in shape.”
“You look like you’re already in great shape to me!” I blurted out.
She laughed, and I noticed anew that she had a wonderful smile. “Thanks. I ran the mile in college. Held the women’s collegiate track record for a couple of months.”
I started to tell her I had been on the track team, too. Intramurals. I’d come in third place in the hundred-yard dash. Of course, there’d only been four runners in the race, so I had second thoughts about telling it.
We walked along. “How long have you lived in Coalwood?” she asked.
“All my life,” I said, “not counting this past year in college.”
She looked past me, to an abandoned house on School Mountain. All the glass had been busted out of its front windows and its porch sagged. “Who used to live in that house?” she asked.
I considered saying I didn’t know. It was a sad story, and I’d had a part in it right before the last Christmas I’d spent as a Coalwood boy. But she seemed genuinely interested, so I gave her a condensed version of the story. A man named Cuke Snoddy had once lived there with a young unmarried woman. Dreama was her name. Because she was living with a man out of wedlock, and also because she was from Gary, most of the townspeople had rejected her as unworthy. Dreama wanted, more than anything in the world, to be a Coalwood girl, and, as it turned out, she’d gotten her wish. She was now a resident of our town forever, the only white woman buried in the colored cemetery on the mountain behind the Mudhole Church of Distinct Christianity. Cuke Snoddy had murdered her. “Coalwood has its ways.” I shrugged as I wrapped up the story.
“It sure does,” she said. “For one thing, there seems to be a history of mistreating women around here.”
I glanced at her. “I don’t know about that. Women pretty much run Coalwood. The teachers tell everybody what to do, for one thing, and the wives keep their husbands on a short leash, for another.”
“Sure,” she replied bitterly, “as long as they stay teachers and wives. But you let one of them try to break out of that mold, and see what happens.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I fell silent. So did Rita. After a moment more of walking, she said, “How about taking me for a hike?” She nodded toward the mountains. “I’ve been thinking about going up there and having a look around but I’m not sure where I’d go. How about it? Floretta told me you know these hills better than just about anybody.”
I considered her offer and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. As long as I was stuck in Coalwood, I might as well do it in good style, especially with such pretty company. “We’ll see,” I said, but I was actually already thinking about where we’d go.
At the tipple, I pointed at the little machine shop. “You asked me about my rockets. That’s where we first built them. A man by the name of Mr. Bykovski lost his job helping us.”
Rita seemed interested, so I told her the rest of the story, how Mr. Bykovski had been banished to the mine after Dad had discovered what he’d done. “But Mr. Bykovski said he didn’t mind. Helping us was the right thing to do.”
“Does he still work here?” Rita asked.
“He was killed,” I answered. “A mountain bump.” There was a lot more to it, but I had settled that tragedy in my mind and didn’t want to go any further. Mr. Bykovski’s death had nearly made me stop building rockets, and nearly driven me to quit studying in school. Only Miss Riley had been able to pull me out of my dive to personal destruction. When I’d seen her in Welch, she’d reminded me of what she’d said then, that when I had a job to do, it didn’t matter whether I wanted to do it or not. That was when a thought popped into my head. Maybe my real job this summer was to help my dad, even if he didn’t want it! Mom had said I was supposed to keep him company, but that had never been a serious possibility, considering our h
istory. How to help him, though, completely eluded me, except to be curious and find out all I could. That I could always do!
At the tipple office, Rita gave me a wave and went up the steps and inside. I watched after her. “You going to work?” Hub Alger asked as he went past. “Or are you going to just stand there and wait for that girl to come back out?”
“I know which one I’d do!” Pick Hylton crowed. There was general laughter from the crowd of miners streaming past. I was beginning to wonder what Coalwoodians did for laughs before I’d come back to town.
15
THE KETTLE BOTTOM
MR. RICHARDSON, a big chaw swelling his cheek, was waiting for me at the lamphouse. “You’re not working for me today, Sonny. You’re with Johnny Basso.”
“What about Big Jeb?” I asked.
He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the gob. “Big Jeb has a quota of posts he has to change out every week. It’s his lungs, you know. He can only do so much. He got a week’s worth done yesterday. I don’t know how he did it, what with you slowing him down.”
“Big Jeb is a true whirlwind,” I said.
He wrinkled up his nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Floretta’s special liniment,” I confessed.
“I’ve heard it works if you can stand it,” he said, moving upwind.
I set about finding Mr. Basso. He and his missus—Goldie was her name—lived up on Substation Row in one of the duplex houses above the Little Store. When we’d lived in our old house across from the Substation, he was one of the line of men who used to walk past our yard to and from the mine. Sometimes, he’d stop and ask me what I was doing, and I’d often confess to be acting out some scene in a book I’d read. I had a clear memory of telling him one time when I was about eight years old that I was Jesse James, and Roy Lee Cooke was my brother Frank, and we were trying to figure out how to rob the Big Store. Another miner, Bato Patsy, had joined us at the fence and we’d all put our heads together on the plot. As best I could recall, we decided we needed horses, which slowed our life as criminals down considerably.