Sky of Stone

by Homer Hickam

  I looked at his glass. I’d heard of martinis on television and the movies, of course, but it was the first time I’d ever seen one for real. “What’s in it?” I asked.

  He put away the bottles, licked his fingers, and replied, “Gin, vermouth, and attitude.”

  “What about the olive?”

  “That’s the attitude.”

  He handed over my tumbler of Canada Dry and pointed toward a leather couch, its throw pillows covered with what looked to be leopard skin. I sat down carefully, afraid to bruise the fancy material, and eyed the glass coffee table. It had curved horns for legs. The magazines on the table were National Geographic, Look, Field & Stream, and Argosy. I felt uncomfortable, like a coal miner wearing a tuxedo.

  Doc Hale settled into a chair that squished as he sat. “Buffalo hide,” he said, patting the armrest. “Most dangerous creature in Africa, next to the hippo. This one was in a terrible temper when I took him down.”

  “What’s it like to be in Africa?” I asked.

  He sipped his martini delicately. “Marvelous. A grand place of adventure. I loved it all—the animals, the people, the lawlessness of nature. It’s so vastly different from Coalwood.” He thought a little. “Then again, there are some similarities.”

  “You shot all these animals?”

  He nodded. “I bagged the big five.”

  “Big five?”

  “Lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and buffalo.”

  “How about the hippo?”

  “Too ugly. Ernest Hemingway told me once he’d just as soon shoot a dog as a hippopotamus.”

  My eyebrows rose at that one. “You know Ernest Hemingway?”

  He sipped his martini again and gave me a distant smile. I knew I was in for a story.

  “I joined him on his 1953 safari. I had traveled down from Mombasa to the Percival farm and found him there with his entire retinue. He was a rookie in the bush, though he was averse to admitting it. In comparison, I was an old Africa hand, having spent some time in the Belgian Congo the year before. I thought Kenya was pretty tame in comparison. Papa didn’t like it when I started telling my tales of the wild Congo. He always had to tell a bigger story. He claimed one time he jumped in the water off Key West and wrestled a swordfish until he drowned it. I knew enough about pelagic fish to be certain that such a thing was impossible.”

  “You thought he was lying?”

  “I thought he was being colorful.”

  “Do you like him?”

  Doc Hale gave my question some thought. “I do. But I think he lives his life as if he’s watching his own movie. He has to do everything in bold strokes.” He mused into his glass. “But at bottom he’s a shy man who never feels comfortable in his own skin.” Then he laughed. “Oh, the times we had when we split off from the women! Papa fancied this Akamba girl. I recall her name was Debba. I myself liked a girl named Nobba.” His face took on a wistful cheeriness. “It was on Christmas Day. The ladies in our party had become bored with the bush and had journeyed back to the Percival farm for the holiday festivities. Ernest and I had our own brand of festivities in mind, so we stayed in camp. He had a difficult time explaining his collapsed cot later to his wife. In fact, he broke poor Debba’s wrist when it happened. Luckily, my medical training included setting fractures. Darling girls. He wrote me later to speculate that he now had a child in Africa.”

  I stared at the dentist, sorting through his story, and lit on the part that intrigued me the most. “You were with an African tribal woman?”

  He chuckled. “Is that so hard to believe? Women the world over are much the same, Sonny. Although I must say the women in the bush had a certain . . . shall we say, abandon?”

  “Wow,” I said, meaning it.

  “How old are you, Sonny?” he asked.

  “Eighteen,” I said. “How about you?”

  He laughed at my audacity. “I’m sixty-five years old. The dinosaurs had just died out when I was born.”

  “I heard you were from New York.”

  He nodded. “Indeed. I am from the heartland of the Yankees, I’m afraid. My family was quite prosperous. The fence-line gossip is correct on that score. I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth. Or perhaps the golden teat, if you will.” He laughed at his own joke. “How do you like working in the mine?”

  I set my glass on the coaster he’d provided. It said Famous New York Explorer’s Club around its rim. “It’s different than I thought it would be,” I said. “It’s hard, but for some reason, it makes me proud to do it.”

  “Maybe you’re a living example of the maxim that work is as good for the soul as it is for the body,” he said.

  “I hope so,” I replied.

  Doc Hale looked at me out of the tops of his eyes. “So, Sonny. Down to cases. About your dad.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He cleared his throat, pursed his lips. “I was here when Homer first came to Coalwood. He was shy, a bit withdrawn, but essentially just another boy out of Gary, desperate for a job. The Captain saw something in him, though, and took him under his wing, taught him everything he knew about mining. I watched your father change over the years until he became the man he is today, as near like the Captain as he could possibly be. But deep down, I sometimes wonder if that boy from Gary is still inside him. If he is, I’ll bet you he’s scared. Your mother knows this better than I do. Maybe that’s why you’re here this summer. Your mother wants that boy from Gary inside your father to have at least one friend in this town. Do you understand?”

  Although I knew I would need to mull over everything he was saying, I said, “Yes, sir, I think so.”

  “This thing with Tuck Dillon. It’s caused by the history of Coalwood. Do you understand that, too?”

  “No, sir.”

  He let out a long, slow breath. “Have you studied evolution?”

  I thought back. “A little, in the tenth grade. Mr. Mams went over what Darwin had to say about it.”

  “So you understand how animals change over time? It’s pretty simple and part of God’s miracle, all in all. An animal is always reacting to its environment in order to survive. It has a need to hear better and its ears grow longer. A need to run faster and its legs grow stronger. A need to think logically and its brains grow bigger.” He leaned forward, looking into my eyes for a glimmer of understanding. “Your father and your mother—all of us, really—have changed, been modified by this town and what we do here and how we have to live.”

  “But how does that have anything to do with Tuck Dillon?” I asked.

  He pressed his hands together and rocked them against his chin for a few seconds. “It was evolution that killed Tuck. An accumulation of events. Cause and effect. History.” He searched my eyes again. “That’s all I can tell you, Sonny. That’s all I will tell you. But it is the answer to everything.”

  “If that’s the answer to everything,” I said, shaking my head, “then I don’t know the answer to anything.”

  Doc Hale picked up his martini glass and finished it off, including the olive. “I’m sorry I can’t make myself any clearer. You’ll just have to allow things to unfold.”

  I could tell he was finished. “Thanks for the Canada Dry, Doc,” I said.

  Doc Hale walked me back through his fancy digs. At the door, he said, “Good luck with all this. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The Sunshine State. Florida. Driving down first thing in the morning. I’ll be there through miners’ vacation. I’m ready for a little surf, sand, and golf.”

  “I’m ready for some of that, too,” I said, thinking once again how close I’d come to spending the summer in Myrtle Beach. “Of course, I don’t know how to play golf.”

  “Come on along with me, then,” he said brightly. “I’ll teach you. And there are some very pretty girls to be found in Florida.”

  I smiled at the offer, but, because I knew it was impossible, I couldn’t put much joy in it. “I
wish I could. Good night, Doc.”

  “Good night, my boy. And don’t worry. Everything will . . . evolve.”

  THAT NIGHT, as I lay in bed, I thought about all the things Doc Hale had said. I kept trying to ferret out his meaning, but in the end, I couldn’t penetrate it. I skipped to what I did understand, Doc Hale’s safari with Ernest Hemingway. I chuckled when I thought of Hemingway breaking his bunk while on top of his girl. Then I thought of something else Doc Hale had said: Luckily, my medical training included setting fractures.

  Staring up into the darkness, I kept thinking. An answer to the truth I sought was so close I could almost smell it. Then fatigue took over and I fell asleep. When I woke the next morning, I sat bolt upright in my bed. Like an airmail letter through the night, an answer had arrived. Doc Lassiter had refused to say anything about setting Nate’s wrist, had said he hadn’t done it. But maybe that was because he really hadn’t. Maybe, for some reason, Mrs. Dooley had taken Nate to Doc Hale. But, if so, why?

  I tugged on my clothes and raced downstairs to Doc Hale’s apartment. I knocked on it once, then again. Floretta came out in the hall. “I gave him a bag of breakfast biscuits for his trip an hour ago,” she said, frowning at my raised fist over the door. “He’s probably halfway to Florida already.”

  “Damn!” I blurted.

  “Don’t cuss in front of me, young man,” Floretta snapped.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She inspected me. “You going to put your boots on or are you going to lay track in your bare feet?”

  I rushed back upstairs to collect my boots. Along the way, I reflected I had always been taught that to discover a truth was an end in itself, that only goodness and virtue could result. But now, for the first time in the entire history of my life, I had discovered a truth, or thought I had, and even though I knew it was probably an important one, I didn’t have a clue as to what it meant.

  Was it possible, I wondered, that there were truths that meant nothing?

  Questions, answers, lies, truth: In Coalwood, it was sometimes hard to tell one from the other.

  30

  COALWOOD BUSINESS

  ON MY march up the road to the mine that morning, I saw Mrs. Dooley at the fence and went over to have a word. “Did Doc Hale set Mr. Dooley’s arm?” I asked.

  She took a drag on her cigarette and regarded me with tight eyes. “Yes,” she said, blowing smoke above my head.

  “Why?”

  “Doc Lassiter was busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why ask?”

  I voiced the suspicions that had been slowly forming in my mind. “Did somebody deliberately hurt Mr. Dooley? Is that why you went to Doc Hale? Because he would keep it quiet, where Doc Lassiter would make a report?”

  “All this is Coalwood business, Sonny,” she answered. “Let the adults handle it.”

  “Did somebody hurt Nate?”

  “Coalwood business.”

  “Are you afraid of the man who hurt him?”

  “Coalwood business.”

  “My dad told me the same thing yesterday about his trial.”

  “Then you should listen to him,” she said, and left the fence and went inside.

  On one of our runs to pick up a tie, I told Bobby of my suspicions. “Coalwood people have always looked at Doc Hale as the emergency backup to Doc Lassiter,” he said. “He was probably out on a call and Mrs. Dooley just naturally went where she could.”

  “Then why didn’t she just tell me that?” I said, picking up one end of the tie.

  “Ask Doc Hale,” Bobby said, picking up the other end.

  “He’s gone to Florida,” I said as we raced back, ducking the low roof.

  “Okay. Ask Doc Lassiter,” Bobby said, grunting as he nearly tripped in the gob. “I’m sure he knows what happened.”

  “I did the night we got sworn into the union,” I answered, wincing as a splinter from the tie jabbed through my glove. “He said he didn’t do it, then walked away. Anyway, he’s out of town until after miners’ vacation.”

  We threw the tie down and stood for a moment, panting. “Then I’d say you’re out of luck,” Bobby observed succinctly.

  “I guess I am,” I agreed, taking my glove off and sucking on my wounded finger. The splinter was still in it. I nipped it with my teeth and drew it out. “But I don’t like it,” I said, then spat the bloody splinter out. “God bless it, that hurt!”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in the mine!” Johnny yelled from down the track where he was working to level the new ties. “Stop jawing and get to work!”

  We picked up our pry bars and starting popping out spikes. “You’re lucky I’m around this summer to help you through all your problems,” Bobby said amid the squawk of the spikes being drawn.

  “It’s kind of funny,” I said, “but I’m trying to figure out how you’ve helped me, and I’m blamed if I can come up with anything.”

  We pushed a rail off the old ties into the gob. “How about we work on your softball skills this weekend?” Bobby asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “Fun?” I asked. “What’s that? I’m not allowed to have any fun this summer.”

  Johnny came over. “You boys going to talk or work?”

  “Johnny, what do you know about Nate Dooley’s broken wrist?”

  “I haven’t heard anything about it, one way or the other.”

  “Are you sure? Nothing at all? With all the gossip—”

  “I don’t listen to no gossip,” Johnny snapped. “Goldie tries to tell it to me and I just say, Woman, that ain’t none of our affair. Me and my college boys got a bet to win!”

  Bobby and I caught each other’s eye and burst out laughing. We were so tired, we’d turned giddy. It didn’t have to make sense. Johnny threw his head back and laughed, too. “Keep going, boys! We’ll lick those rascals yet!”

  When we came outside that day, we looked on the board and found the Caretta boys had beaten us again by one rail. Bobby saw fit to blame it on me. “I saw you slack off once or twice,” he said.

  “When was that?”

  “You took too long to pee.”

  “I took the time I needed. Was I supposed to pee in my pants?”

  “No, but you could stop being so shy. You must go halfway to Bradshaw. Just go behind a crib or something and pee.”

  Our argument had gathered a little crowd. When I looked up, I was surprised to see Dad among them. “We Hickams have always had bashful bladders,” he said before a foreman grabbed him for a word.

  I watched him go. “We Hickams?” At least Dad still saw me as a member of the family, even though the family trait he’d recognized wasn’t one I was particularly proud of. When I focused back on Bobby and the miners around the board, I found they were still debating my urological situation. “I’ll pee closer in,” I promised. Anything to make them stop talking about it.

  THAT NIGHT, I sat at my table and tried to concentrate on the results of my time study. I’d worked it as far as I knew how to do. If there were any more efficiencies that could be squeezed out, I couldn’t see them. The Caretta team was just bigger, better, and stronger. We were going to lose the bet. It was one of those inevitable mathematical certainties.

  But then, I thought, there was nothing about Coalwood that was mathematical or certain. When I’d been a rocket boy, Quentin, the brains of the outfit, had come up with something he called a body of knowledge. It was a crude form of the scientific method where everything we did determined our next steps. Remembering how we’d approached problems back then, I tapped my pencil on the paper, making a number of tiny dots. I looked at the dots, then drew lines connecting them. The resulting jagged formation didn’t make any sense, but neither did some of the things I knew and didn’t know.

  My intellectual curiosity, the one Jake had challenged me to redi
scover, was taking hold about Dad’s trial, about Nate Dooley, about the secrets in Coalwood. I’d always been curious about things. Mom said more than once my tendency toward it was one of my major problems. She had often reminded me that curiosity killed the cat, and I had just as often reminded her that satisfaction had brought it back. It was curiosity that had gotten me stranded in the attic of the old Community Building when it was being torn down. I was eight years old. Jackie Likens, Bobby’s younger brother, convinced me there was a treasure of navy silver up there that had been hidden by Harry Truman’s sailors when they’d moved out. We built ourselves a pyramid of boards and boxes and climbed up it into the attic. There we discovered not silver but about a million startled bats, most of which did a dance in our hair before flinging themselves out through a broken window. Then our rickety pyramid collapsed and we were trapped. It took the entire mine rescue team plus my dad to rescue us. When Mom finally gathered me in her arms, she said, “Sonny, you keep this kind of thing up and you’re going to get yourself killed someday.”

  Dad had suggested, since he’d almost been hit in the head by a collapsing wall of bricks during the rescue, that maybe the proper time for my death was more or less immediate. What was scary was that Mom actually seemed to consider the wisdom of his suggestion.

  Curious Sonny, however, was still alive and well. I contemplated my dots and jagged lines. What doesn’t make sense?

  I turned the time study over and wrote my questions down on its back. Maybe by looking at them, I could see something I’d missed. I wrote:

  Why didn’t Dad go inside with Tuck?

  Where did Dad go instead?

  Then I wrote down the other thing I was curious about:

  Who broke Nate’s wrist?

  Then I added into the equation my other major mystery:

  What should I do about Rita?

  I hadn’t caught sight of Rita since the night I’d seen her talking to Jake. She was still taking all her meals in her room, as far as I knew, and working long into the night at the engineering office. Jake had left town. Floretta said he’d gone back to Ohio. “He told me he didn’t want to go but he had a meeting he needed to attend.”