Sky of Stone

by Homer Hickam

  Johnny said, “We’ve got work to do. Cribbing down on West Main—”

  “Right now,” Mr. Marshall interrupted, “your work is to follow me.”

  We looked at each other and then followed Mr. Marshall into Wally’s anteroom. “You can watch from out here,” Mr. Marshall said.

  I peeked into Dad’s office. I saw a sea of white helmets. All of Dad’s foremen looked to be in there. Mr. Marshall took a seat in one of the folding chairs in front of the big desk. Dad was on the black phone. Wally slid past me carrying a green folder. He handed it to Dad, then came back and took up his usual station, shuffling papers.

  My ears were tuned to Dad’s voice. “Listen, Clarence, for all the coal that section loaded, the lot of them could have stayed at home. If I hear about another wreck on his section, you tell Stubby he’s going to be looking for another job, understand?” He listened for a short second, and added, “Tell him I said he’s no good and never has been any good. Tell him, Clarence! How’s a man ever going to get good if he doesn’t know he’s bad?”

  There was a commotion behind me, and my jaw came unhinged when I saw Rita coming inside the anteroom. She was dressed in her engineer khakis and boots, and her hair was tucked up under her pristine white helmet. Coach Gainer, Big Creek High School’s legendary football coach, would have said she had her “game face” on. She looked all business. Tucked under her arm were some poster boards. She glanced at me but made no sign she even knew me. She went into the office and positioned her poster boards on an easel. Somebody handed her a wooden pointer and she tapped it impatiently against her leg, staring at Dad, who was still rattling away on the phone. I had deduced he was talking to his brother, my uncle Clarence, who headed up the Caretta operation.

  When Dad slammed the receiver down, he took a second to rub his damaged eye. He glanced at me for a moment, then at Rita. “All right, Rita,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Wally put his hand over his mouth. “What she’s got,” he tittered.

  Rita went to the big map of the mine that was tacked to the wall. She tapped her pointer along a line that ran from one end of it to the other. “Mr. Hickam, I’ve finished the study you asked me to make of the main line. Of course, I had to do it with secondhand information, not being allowed to go inside and make a thorough inspection myself.”

  Dad nodded but made no comment. She waited a beat longer and then ran the pointer along the line. “This is the main track, as you well know,” she said, her voice a degree frostier. “It was constructed over a forty-year period. The only sections of it that have been replaced are the ones that have been severely damaged by an accident. As a result, it is in various stages of disrepair.”

  Dad’s shoulders raised slightly. “Right. So what?”

  If Dad meant to rattle Rita, it didn’t work. “As you also know, sir, I asked that workers be sent to randomly remove ties from the track.”

  “Miners,” Dad said.

  “Sir?”

  “They’re miners, not workers. I don’t have workers in my mine. I have miners.”

  Rita took a breath. I sympathized with her. Interrupting on an irrelevant point was just one of Dad’s techniques of dominating a conversation. She plowed on. “Every tie the miners brought back was rotten. My conclusion is that the only thing holding some parts of the main line track together is impacted breccia and gob.”

  Rita waited a beat, perhaps to let Dad and the foremen absorb her conclusion, and then walked to her poster boards. She took off the blank one on top, revealing a carefully lettered chart with all the sections of the mine listed vertically, and out from each a percentage number. I looked for 10 West, the section where Tuck Dillon had died, and saw a percentage of 30. Over the list of percentages was an abbreviation: Est. L/T (%).

  “Because of the rough shape of the track,” Rita said, “trips have gradually slowed over the years. A series of interviews with all section foremen”—she tapped the chart with her pointer—“confirms that fact. Each of these numbers represents the estimated lost time percentages. In some parts of the main line, the motormen slow to a crawl. The time lost from production is formidable.”

  She pronounced the word for-mid-able, which seemed to me a wonderful way to say the word. Her next chart was “a statistical prediction of man-hours lost on the main line and the probability of future accidents.” My admiration for Rita soared. She had a way of putting across complex ideas in just a few words.

  Bobby nudged me. “Why are we here?” he whispered.

  “To see a real engineer at work,” I whispered back, most proud just to know her.

  He looked around at the foremen. “They don’t look very convinced,” he said.

  “She only has to convince Mr. Hickam,” Johnny whispered. “And she knows it. Smart girl.”

  “Pretty girl, too,” I said.

  Bobby put his hand on my shoulder. “Be careful,” he said. “That’s a woman there.”

  I glanced at him, just to be sure he hadn’t turned into Floretta.

  Rita continued. Her voice was cool and dispassionate, as befitted an engineer. “I spent a few days with the supervisors at the Dehue mine to confirm my figures. They, too, had an old main line that, until a few years ago, severely hampered their operation. I factored in their data. The lost-time number is far bigger than even I thought it would be, but I’ve checked and rechecked my numbers.”

  When nobody said anything, Rita said, “Gentlemen, we’re losing at least two hundred man-hours a day because of the condition of the main line. Using a conservative figure of five dollars per man-hour, that comes out to one thousand dollars a day. Figuring an average production year of two hundred days, that means two hundred thousand dollars a year. Add in the lost time for accidents and we have another one hundred thousand dollars, as a minimum.” She looked around the room, and then back at Dad. “There’s more, if you want to hear it.”

  Dad waved his hand toward the map. “All right, Rita,” he said tiredly, “we hear you. So what do you think we ought to do about it? You know it’s one thing to identify a problem, quite another to fix it. Right, men?”

  If Dad expected a chorus of agreement, he was disappointed. His foremen, apparently impressed, stayed silent, their eyes locked on Rita. She had their full attention. “Here’s what we do to fix this situation,” she said, turning to her last chart. “We bite the bullet and change out the entire main line.”

  The chart had a list of materials—ties, rails, spikes, and labor hours. She quickly went through her calculations.

  Dad frowned. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Get in there, do it as fast as we can.”

  “Why not a little bit at a time, spread it out over a couple of years?”

  “It’s simple, Mr. Hickam,” Rita said, still cool as a cucumber. “If we do it gradually, we’ll end up causing lost time over a longer period. The smart thing to do is to do it all at once.”

  The corners of Dad’s lips twitched. They almost turned up to a smile. Almost, but not quite.

  “By all at once,” Mr. Marshall interjected, “do you mean we start at one end and go to the other?”

  “Yes, sir. Since the Coalwood shaft isn’t used to bring out the coal anymore and is the oldest track, I suggest we begin here. Coalwood men can enter from the Caretta side during the months the work is being done.”

  A discussion followed among Dad’s foremen. All the while, I watched Dad. So did Rita. He was looking at the map of the mine, his finger tapping the big blue blotter on the desk. When he cleared his throat, the other men instantly stopped talking.

  “Here’s how we’re going to do it,” he said. He looked around the room from one man to the next. They all leaned in to hear what he had to say, and I confess I felt proud of him, the way he commanded their attention.

  “We’ll start at both ends and work toward the middle,” he said while holding up his hand in Rita’s direction. “I know it’s not the most efficient, Rita, but it’s th
e way my miners will like it. Coalwood men are used to going inside from Coalwood, and Caretta men from Caretta. Miners have their routines and they’re a comfort to them.” He shrugged. “No use getting them upset. The two teams will work the day shift. They’ll wait until the man-trips go in, then tear out the old track behind them and put in the new trackage before the end of the day.”

  While Dad was speaking, I couldn’t help but notice Rita irritably tap the pointer against her leg. When he stopped to take a breath, she said, “The evening or the hoot-owl shift would be preferable, Mr. Hickam. That way there’d be less interference with production.”

  Dad glanced at her with raised eyebrows, then continued without skipping a beat. “The hoot-owl shift will handle all the logistics. They’ll stockpile the track layers and have them ready to go each morning.”

  Rita turned and gathered her posters, putting them back on the easel. She’d lost her audience, except for me.

  Dad was the focus of everybody’s attention now.

  “How do we get the coal out on the Caretta side during the day shift?” Mr. Marshall asked.

  “Set up a route along the new north track,” Dad said. “It’ll take a little longer, but not much more than it does now.”

  “What if there’s a problem and the miners have to get out in a hurry?” Mr. Nordman asked. Mr. Nordman, another one of my former scoutmasters, was the company safety man.

  “Set up an alternate route for every section and make sure each foreman is briefed,” Dad replied. “Make some practice runs.”

  Everybody bent over their notebooks and scribbled Dad’s orders. Then Dad nodded to Mr. Strong. “Dwight, I’m putting you in charge of changing out the track. Get with Rita, figure out the logistics of this thing.”

  At the mention of her name, Rita turned around. I could see her eyes glistening. She’d been near tears. The pointer tapped again against her leg, this time an eager movement.

  “Got it,” Mr. Strong said, nodding to Rita, then scribbling furiously in his daily notebook. “We’ve already got a good stockpile of ties. If it’s all right with you, we’ll get the hoot-owl shift to start moving them in tonight.”

  “Since it’s my plan, I’ll need to directly inspect the work,” Rita interjected.

  Dad smiled. “Nice try, Rita.”

  “Who’s going to be my track layers?” Mr. Strong asked.

  “A three-man team on both ends,” Dad said. “I want Johnny Basso in charge on the Coalwood side. He’s the best track-laying man we’ve got over here. He can pick any other two men he wants.”

  Bobby and I traded glances. It seemed as if we were going to get another boss. But Johnny quickly said, “I’ll take Bobby and Sonny, Dwight.”

  I was amazed that nobody saw fit to argue with him, not even Dad. Bobby winked at me. I had to admit to feeling sort of proud, while being a little worried, too. I’d walked along a track or two in my boyhood, and one time we rocket boys had dug cast-iron pipe out from beneath an abandoned spur to sell as scrap. But laying track was something I’d never done, or imagined doing. I’d heard it was a pretty hard job, too, maybe the toughest in the mine.

  “How about the Caretta end?” Mr. Strong asked.

  “Use the same team that just put down the north track,” Dad said without a moment of hesitation. I knew then he’d already thought through the entire thing, even before Rita’s presentation. “Garrett Brown and those two boys.”

  “Delmar Crouch and Chinky Pinns,” Mr. Marshall said.

  “That’s them,” Dad said. “They’re strong boys and they’re fast.”

  They were, indeed. Both of them had been star players on the Big Creek High School football team the same year I’d graduated.

  Dad turned to Rita. “This is your project, Rita. You ride herd on it. You know how to do that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I know very well,” she said.

  “Then that’s it,” Dad said, reaching for the black phone. “We’ve jawed enough. Get to work!”

  Rita, her eyes still on Dad, reached quickly for her posters and knocked them all to the floor. When everybody started to laugh, I pushed inside and helped her gather them up. I didn’t say anything, just stacked them on her easel, and went back to my place. When I turned back around, I found her eyes on me, saying thanks.

  Bobby tugged my arm. “Come on, Sonny. Johnny’s already on the man-lift.”

  On the way down the shaft, Johnny explained our new job. We’d be pulling up the old rails, inspecting them, digging out the old ties, then after the bed was properly prepared, putting the ties and track back in place, all under the low roof of the main line. “We’ll do it, boys, better’n it’s ever been done before, or my name’s not Johnny Basso.”

  “It sounds hard.”

  “You’ll earn your pay, that’s for sure,” Johnny said. “You boys game or not?”

  Bobby narrowed his eyes. “I’m game.” He looked at me. “Sonny? How about you?”

  “I was born game,” I said. I also figured it would be good to work on Rita’s project. It would give us something to talk about.

  Johnny nodded. “Boys, prepare to sweat buckets like you’ve never sweated before.”

  JOHNNY’S PREDICTION turned out to be pure truth. The next day, we descended on the main line like we were going to war. Johnny was the general and Bobby and I were the raw recruits. He gave us a quick run-through of our tools, the spike pullers, the rail carriers, and the sledgehammers. “Listen to me, boys!” he demanded fiercely. “This is serious work. Once we pull up a track, we’ve got to put it down just right or the man-trips could wreck and somebody could get killed. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Bobby and I nodded uncertainly.

  “All right, then. Set to.”

  We set to. We pulled the spikes, then pushed the heavy rails off into the gob. Then we grabbed picks and shovels and pry bars and dug out the old ties until we hit draw rock.

  Johnny said it wasn’t enough to go down to the rock. We had to keep shoveling until every particle of dirt was gone. Only then could we set a tie in place. We learned to manhandle a tie into the groove we’d dug, then stomp it down until it was as level as we could make it. Then, while Johnny used a bubble level on the tie to get it perfectly flat, Bobby and I grabbed our pry bars and shovels and got after the next tie. It was slow going, made all the harder by the low roof. We couldn’t just throw the dirt over our shoulders. It would bounce back into our faces. Everything was done at an awkward angle. More hidden muscles, apparently dormant for the entire history of life, started complaining.

  After the ties and rails were set in place, Johnny showed us how to drive spikes. We had to work on our knees to avoid hitting the low stone slabs overhead. The first time I took my turn, I threw the hammer up and it bounced off the roof right down on top of my helmet. It nearly drove it over my ears. Johnny laughed and Bobby did, too, though he denied it later.

  Another hazard was much more serious. A trolley cable stretched down the main line, and it carried a powerful electric charge. When we got on station, Johnny called on the mine phone to get the wire turned off. But there was no way to look at it and tell if it was dead or alive. If it was alive, one touch with our hammer and “Katy, bar the door,” as Johnny put it to describe the pile of smoking flesh we’d become.

  All day, we fought the track with Bobby and me learning as we went along. At the end of the shift, I fell into the man-trip, whupped in a whole new way. Bobby looked done in, too. Johnny didn’t seem at all any worse for wear. In fact, he was whistling and talking about doing some gardening that night with his son.

  When we got off the man-lift, a cluster of men stood in front of the lamphouse, eyeing us hard. Bobby and I must have looked like prisoners of war—haggard, slump-shouldered, our boots dragging in the gob. When Johnny noticed the stares, he said, “These boys have been laying track.” I caught a glint of respect in their eyes and managed a bit of stiff-legged swagger. All the way down the valley, I wal
ked proud and then I got a little prouder when I recalled that John Henry, the steel-drivin’ man himself, had been a West Virginian. How had the ballad gone?

  John Henry told his captain

  A man ain’t nothin’ but a man

  But before I let your steam drill beat me down

  I’ll die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord!

  I’ll die with a hammer in my hand.

  After a while I took on the opinion that the women who were at their fences were there to watch me go by, as were their open-mouthed children. I couldn’t much blame them. I deserved their honor and awe. I had taken on the roughest, toughest job in the coal mine. I made up my own song and sang it to myself all the way to the Club House:

  Sonny Hickam told his daddy,

  I’m not a boy but a man

  Your old mine ain’t never gonna beat me down

  I’ve become a track-layin’ man, Lord, Lord!

  I’ve become a track-layin’ man!

  21

  BOBBY’S ADVICE

  NEARLY EVERY evening, Rita, still dressed in her work clothes, joined me for supper in the Club House dining room. Usually, she’d arrive straight from the engineering office. I’d visited her there once, just to see what kind of place the company had made for her. She was in the hall with a drawing board, a stool, and a filing cabinet. The top of the cabinet was stacked with her books. She kept an olive-drab canvas bag at her feet. When she opened it to pull out her slide rule, I saw only a hairbrush and some tissues in it. Just down the hall from her station, Ned and Victor shared a cramped closet of an office, but at least it was their space. They even had their own black phone. If Rita wanted to make a call to one of the foremen to talk over a project, she had to use the black phone in the meeting room. Usually, she said, either the phone was busy or the room was being used. Sometimes, she’d sneak up front to Mr. Bundini’s office and Carol would let her use her phone there. She also had to go all the way up front to go to the bathroom.

  At supper, Rita always wanted to know about my day. I told her how Johnny would yell Praise God! when he swung his hammer and Bobby would call out And pass the spikes! I told her how Johnny had thrown his hammer up and hit the trolley line and then fallen, shaking like he’d been electrocuted, and how Bobby and I had run around in circles trying to figure out what to do, until Johnny sat up and laughed at us.