I loved his strength and passion, the life in him that seemed to warm me like a fire. But I knew I could never live with him, even if it had been legal, for he is not a man to relax with in a bathrobe and slippers and watch a silly TV show. He grew restless and bored, retreated to the kitchen to drink coffee and read a book or brood. He wanted me to sit across from him and fret over the crumbling of the coal camps or upheavals in Africa or Mississippi. I wanted to sit on the couch and embroider pillowcases and laugh at Lucy on the television. He accused me of being shallow and unsympathetic, baited me about working for the county, about staying friendly with Arthur Lee. I told him he was bossy and smothering. After an argument I would lie in my bed, flat on my back with fists clenched, and vow I would not go creeping down the back stairs to him.
Once I kept the vow, left him alone, and he was silent at breakfast until Jackie went out to play. Then he said, “I don’t mean to hurt you. I’m harder on myself than I am on you but that’s no excuse. I wouldn’t blame you if you hate me sometimes.”
“There’s just too much of you,” I said. “And I don’t know what you see in me. I’m not like you at all.”
He came behind me as I stood scraping bits of sausage from the frying pan, put his arms around my waist. I set down the pan.
“I’m too much for myself sometimes,” he said. “You’re my peace. You’re my home.”
He stayed a second night and I went back downstairs to his bed.
On his first visit after Toejam stepped on the nail, I sent Jackie to spend the night with a school friend in Felco. I fried some chicken and baked a chocolate pie. We ate quietly. Dillon had worked the hoot owl shift the night before and he always had trouble sleeping in the daytime. I sensed his fatigue in the slow scraping of his fork across his plate. His mood would be bad, but he always told me more when he was tired.
“Louella Day says something’s happening at the mine,” I said.
He set down his cup. “Did she?”
“You haven’t said a word to me, Dillon.”
“You usually aint interested in union politics.”
“I am now, and it’s a funny time to spare me. You usually talk about it whether I want to or not.”
“Well,” he said, “it does involve your good buddy Arthur Lee.”
I tried not to show I was irritated. “Tell me, Dillon.”
He sipped his coffee. “We heard that American Coal has cut a deal where the union will drop the membership of everybody at the smaller mines and cut off the medical cards. That means Number Thirteen. The company will take part of what they would have spent on us and kick it back to the union officials to put in their pockets. The company will run Number Thirteen nonunion, wages half scale and no benefits, the union will go along with it, and we’ll take it or leave it.”
“What on earth makes you think the union would do a thing like that?”
He shrugged. “It’s already happening in Kentucky. If you’d paid any mind to what I’ve said this past year, you wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a new gang in Washington, a bunch of crooks that are in bed with the operators.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t know yet. But when I do know, I won’t tell you.”
I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. “Why ever not?” I said.
“Because Arthur Lee Sizemore is running this end of things for the company, and he’s a good buddy of yours. Because he gave you the kind of political job people have to kiss ass to get.”
It was the first time he’d spoken disparagingly of my work. “I thought you admired my nursing,” I said.
“I do. I just don’t admire who you do it for. Lie down with dogs and you start to smell like one.”
His words brought tears to my eyes. “Do you know how much that hurts? And to know you don’t trust me enough to tell me what’s going on?”
“Quit that job, Rachel. You can be a nurse at the hospital and not work for the county.”
“I love my job and I don’t want to be cooped up in the hospital. Besides, I see people that can’t afford to go to the hospital. I’m not a crook and I didn’t do anything wrong to get this job. I’m qualified for it and I’m going to do it.”
“Then don’t expect me to tell you what’s going on at the mine. And if this thing gets as ugly as I reckon it will, it will make things damn hard between us. I may not be able to be seen with you.”
“Why? Are you ashamed of me?”
He shook his head and looked away. “Rachel, there aint been a bad strike for a while. You don’t know what it’s like. It gets bitter. Quit the job.”
“No. You don’t boss me, Dillon.”
He left without staying the night.
DILLON
I walked the track in the dark, following the gleam of moonlight along the rail. I kept stopping and looking back. I could hear my own voice demanding, Quit the job. I did hate the sound of it. She should have poured the coffee pot over my head.
I knew I ought to go back and apologize. But I stood still, covered my face with my hands, and breathed deep, smelled the fear on my breath. I know about a strike. My daddy comes to me sometimes and whispers in my ear, says I have obligations beyond the hold of any woman. Rachel is adrift among the ice floes, calling to me, and this time a bitter ghost, not my mother, holds me back.
But in the daylight it seems different, and I do apologize. Rachel accepts my apology but she is uneasy and quiet. She doesn’t ask me any questions about the mine. When we are together, we are peaceful but somber, as if one of us is terminally ill and each of us tries to avoid what we know, to be strong for the other.
JACKIE
The television people have come to Blackberry Creek, right to my school at Felco. They’re making a news show about Christmas in Appalachia, and they have cameras with those eyes painted on them. I keep looking for Walter Cronkite but Mom says he didn’t come with them. Mom brought them to the school because they spent the morning at her clinic. She is aggravated, I can tell by the way she holds her mouth shut tight like her teeth are stuck together with bubblegum. She talks to my teacher, Miss Cox, while the television men make noise in the hallway.
“What are they like?” Miss Cox asks.
“They make me feel like a specimen in a jar,” my mom says. She waves to me and leaves, and a television man comes in the room. He tells Miss Cox his name is Phil Vivanti. He has black hair cut like someone drew around the edges with a pencil before they trimmed, and he’s wearing a turtleneck shirt.
“We need a place to set up,” he says. “Where’s the cafeteria?”
“We don’t have a cafeteria,” Miss Cox says. “We serve the children at the kitchen door and they eat at their desks.”
“Then where’s the library?”
“There’s no library either. We keep books in each room.” She points at our bookshelf under the window.
“That’s no good,” says Phil Vivanti. “We need lots of space to give out the shoes. I guess we’ll just have to film in the hallway.”
“It’s okay, Phil,” says a bald man who comes in the room. “The hall has a nice bleakness.”
“What shoes?” Miss Cox asks.
“A shoe company in Paramus, New Jersey, heard about your problems here. They sent several boxes of their product for Christmas. We thought we’d film the distribution.”
He goes back out in the hall and the TV men come in and out with cords and plugs and lights on tall metal poles. Miss Cox tries to teach about the planets but we keep looking at the door so she gives up and says that people want to see television shows about Appalachia because they think we are stupid and backward and they can’t figure out why. She says we are not stupid or backward and are just as good as anybody, but she says it low and keeps glancing at the door like she thinks someone might come in and take her away.
We line up to get our lunches, corn dogs and macaroni and cheese and carrot sticks and pineapple slices. Toejam Day trips on a fat black TV cord and spills
his lunch but Miss Cox gets him another one. Toejam usually doesn’t eat the school lunch because he can’t afford it, but the principal said everyone gets a tray today. It is a present from the Board of Education. The TV men sit on the staircase and eat their lunch. They hold the corn dogs sideways and look at them before they take a bite.
After lunch we carry our trays back to the kitchen. The TV men have stacked lots of big boxes on the stairway. The boxes say Parkway Shoe Company. Phil Vivanti tells the bald man to turn the boxes sideways so the name won’t show. “No free advertising,” he says. He makes Miss Cox sit at a table with a pile of shoes beside her. The shoes are ugly. Some are pink tennis shoes, others are square boy’s shoes that look hard as rocks. We go back to our desks but Phil Vivanti comes in and tells us to line up. Brenda Lloyd, who sits beside me, whispers, “I don’t want any of them shoes.” I raise my hand.
Phil Vivanti says, “What is it?”
“Some of us don’t need them,” I say. “And some of us don’t want them.”
He looks at me like if he was a teacher he would spank me. Then he glances around the room. “How many of you need shoes?” he asks. No one raises their hand. Lots of them do need shoes but they would rather have their tongues pulled out than say so. “Great,” says Phil Vivanti. He looks at his watch. Then he says, “How many want to be on TV?” We all raise our hands. “Good,” he says. “Line up.”
We line up and Miss Cox asks our shoe sizes. She fishes in the boxes and hands each of us a pair of shoes. Toejam gets a pair of white tennis shoes and holds them close to his chest. He looks happy. Brenda Lloyd gets bright pink. She makes a face at me as she walks by. Miss Cox gives me a pair of sandals made of hard purple plastic that look like they would take all the skin off the top of your foot. She whispers to me, “I know you won’t mind because you don’t need them anyway.” I am proud of what she says and I swing the sandals high over my head as I walk past Phil Vivanti. I am tempted to give them to him and say, “Take them home to your little girl,” but that would be sassing a grownup so I don’t say anything.
After the TV men leave we are still too stirred up to pay attention in class, so the teachers send us outside for early recess. Brenda is with her brother Doyle Ray, who is a year ahead of us in the sixth grade. He has a pair of black Sunday shoes.
“Mine are ugly,” Brenda says. “I hate pink.”
“Never mind,” Doyle Ray says. “They’re big enough to grow into.”
“I don’t want them. I want to pick my own shoes.”
“I don’t need any shoes,” I say. “I think I’ll just throw these away.” I fling the sandals against the side of the school.
Doyle Ray wheels suddenly and shoves me against the brick wall. I step away and he shoves me again so that the back of my head hits the wall. Brenda comes close and hits me hard in the stomach. I am too surprised to cry out. They are still hitting me when Miss Cox pulls them off me. I get my breath and start to cry.
“What brought this on?” she demands. “Jackie, why were they hitting you?”
“I don’t know.” I hold my arm up and sob against it. “I just said I was going to throw my shoes away.”
She grabs Doyle Ray and Brenda by an arm and shakes them. “Why were you hitting Jackie?”
“I don’t know,” Doyle Ray says. Brenda is crying too. She has never fought anybody or been in trouble with the teacher. “I don’t know,” Brenda says.
Dillon comes to our house to watch the show about Blackberry Creek. We see Mom listening to a man’s chest and I point and holler, “There’s Mom!” “Poor health care,” says a voice. Mom sighs loud like her feelings are hurt. We watch children lined up for shoes and I see Brenda Lloyd and Toejam Day. I don’t see me. “Children who go barefoot,” says the voice. “Schools and houses in terrible condition.” The TV shows empty falling-down coal camp houses. Phil Vivanti looks at us from the TV set. He stands in front of a camp house. “There is another America hidden away in these hills,” he says. “Like something out of another century,” he says, “a land time forgot, a life most Americans will never experience. Why do people want to stay here? How will we bring them into the mainstream of American life?”
We sit downhearted like we have been beat on. Then Dillon gets up suddenly and flips off the TV set. “Mainstream of American life! Sonofabitch! Coal companies been shoving the goddamn mainstream of American life down our throats since my papaw’s day.”
“Don’t cuss in front of Jackie,” Mom says.
Dillon goes in the kitchen to smoke a cigarette. I follow him, looking for a CoCola in the refrigerator. Instead he pours me a cup of milk with coffee in it, like he does when Mom isn’t around.
“We’re in for it now, Jackie,” he says.
“How come?”
He throws his head back and blows smoke at the ceiling. “You know what the old fox says. Fox says, ‘Poor chicken, he was looking puny anyhow.’ Then he eats the chicken for supper.”
I can tell he’s glad I came in the kitchen.
DILLON
I have never been a regular churchgoer, not even when I was in the war and expecting to get my head blown off any minute. The God I believe in doesn’t take kindly to people sitting around in buildings feeling pious. I fancy a God that would as soon level a church building as look at it.
But on Blackberry Creek there is one building where you are free of the coal company and that is a church—unless it is a church American Coal built, like the one in Felco where Rachel takes Jackie, that looks just like a company store with a steeple stuck on. But the Holiness Church at Number Thirteen is not like that. It is a tarpaper building stuck on the hill across the railroad track from the Free Patch. You can’t see it half the time because the company parks a line of coal cars in front of it. When the track is blocked, the people have to climb between the gondolas to get to services, or else walk half a mile to get to the end of the train and then back.
When word came down that the union had cut us free and taken our medical cards, I called the first meeting at the union hall up to Raven. It was just going through the motions. When I showed up early at the cinderblock building, the lock had been changed. From then on we met at the Holiness Church. The boys that lived up the creek didn’t like walking all the way in to Number Thirteen, but it made me feel safe.
The Holiness are also called Holy Rollers, and Homer Day is the pastor. He must have a powerful call to preach, because Homer is quiet and shy, and it is hard for him to stand up in front of all creation and spout off in some foreign language. But when the congregation prays, the Holy Ghost grabs him and he is off and babbling in the lost tongues of the ancient Amorites, Perizzites, and Hivites. At least it is what he claims, and I am not one to dispute it.
The church has a red neon JESUS SAVES sign above the altar. Homer plugged in the sign when I arrived for the meeting.
“Reckon anybody will mind if I plug that in?” Homer asked.
“Hell, we need all the help we can get,” I said. Then I realized I had cussed in a church, but I decided not to apologize for it. I am of the belief that God cusses more than anybody.
The men straggled in slow, some of them straight from their shifts and bone tired, others on their way to the mine but figuring they might not get there. They wore their work clothes, recalled they were in a church, and pulled off their caps that said Mail Pouch and Caterpillar and Cincinnati Reds. They didn’t talk loud or joke like they usually did before meetings, but studied the JESUS SAVES sign or stared out the windows at the kids playing baseball across the tracks on the Free Patch.
I called the meeting to order from the pulpit. I said, “Well boys, some fellows up in Washington say we don’t have a union no more.”
Brigham Lloyd stood up and cleared his throat, said, “Hell with the United Mine Workers, pardon me, Homer, for my language. That union has done been took over from within. Hit’s just like the Communists, how they work.”
They talked one after another, getting the anger o
ut. Byrum Hoskins said his wife was facing heart surgery and now he couldn’t pay for it. Ralph Bays said, “You know what I hear tell? I hear tell Arthur Lee is going to work the mines five days again. I hear tell they could work ever thing on this creek five days, and they will once the union is busted all over. But they’ll pay half union scale.”
Stanley Cawood said, “Don’t know why they bother to bust the union. One day’s work a week union scale aint feeding my younguns.”
“I’ll tell you why they bother,” I said. “Them bastards in Washington won’t be in charge forever, and the company will try to break us before we can get that union cleaned up. But I’ll tell you what. There was a day on this creek when there was no union. And the boys working the mines here, they made the union. It was them done it for theirselves. And no sonofabitch in Washington tells me if I’m in the union. I am the union. You’re the union.”
They listened hard. I stood quiet a minute and looked out at them. The air was tight like something was ready to bust loose. Then Brigham said, “Son, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying strike. I’m saying strike like they aint seen since my daddy’s day. I’m saying pull out all the boys at the other mines that’s been kicked out of the union. Any mine that keeps working, union or not, we’ll shut it down. We’ll do what has to be done. They’ll not put us out without us pulling this place down around their heads, like Samson pulled down the Philistine temple.”
I am not used to talking from the Bible like a preacher, but it seemed the time and place for it. They were yelling all at once, saying “That’s it. That’s it right there.”
“Who’s with me?” I said.
They all raised their hands.
I hit the pulpit with a little gavel.
“Local Union 555 is now on strike,” I said. “I want a picket line up at Number Thirteen tipple five-thirty tomorrow morning.”
They were standing and clapping. I watched their faces and wondered who would go that night and squeal to Roger Jennings at the union office in Justice.
The Unquiet Earth Page 14