“He’s doing just what y’all said to do. He started him some groups.”
“Yes, but what does he have those groups doing?”
“He don’t have us doing nothing. We’re doing it our own selves.”
“Doesn’t he give you any direction?”
“We don’t need no directions. We know this place better than he does.”
There is this noise on the phone and then the supervisor starts to talking real slow. “You don’t understand, Mr.—ah—”
“Day,” I say. “Hassel Day.”
“Yes, Mr. Day. Part of Tom’s job is education. And he’s supposed to be addressing the problems of poverty. I can hardly see what strip mining has to do with poverty. Tom can’t just turn people loose to harass government officials and business leaders. Those are the very people in the community you should be cooperating with.”
“Naw,” I say. “That aint the way it works down here.”
“Mr. Day, I believe I know my job.”
“Yessir, but you aint never lived in a coal camp, have you?”
“Mr. Day, I have a master’s degree in sociology from Brown.”
“I don’t know no Brown,” I say, “but I know Arthur Lee.”
“Mr. Day. Thank you Mr. Day. Tell Tom I want to talk to him. And you might inform him that Mr. Sizemore has called the president of the American Coal Company about the situation, and that gentleman is an active member on the national draft board.”
“Yessir, I’ll tell him that for you.”
I am sure glad to get off that telephone. That is the kind of fellow that could have said what he had to in a minute or two and look at the time he wasted. Not to mention the taxpayer’s money for that phone call.
They let Tom out of jail just as sudden as they arrested him, and he hitchhikes up the creek to Number Thirteen. He has got a growth of rough beard on his chin. I tell him about the president of American Coal and the draft board. When he don’t say a thing, I say, “Well?”
He goes to the icebox and takes out a cold beer, rummages through the drawer for the bottle opener.
“I don’t worry about the army,” he says, “or the government. I answer to God and the Jesuits. That’s it.” He pops off the metal bottle cap. The mouth of the bottle smokes. “They can’t touch me, Hassel,” he says, and smiles. “I’m beyond their reach.”
Louelly says we are having problems because it is 1966. She says 666 is the number of the Beast in Revelation, and even though they’s only two sixes in 1966, a nine and two sixes is enough to give Satan a leg up. When we go to the county commission to ask for a new car bridge at Number Thirteen, Louelly says she don’t expect much. But she is dressed up anyway in her yellow Sunday school dress and a hair bow in her ponytail. She has been picked to give our speech and she has practiced at our meeting and in front of the younguns at home, but she is still yet nervous. We have called around and the TV station in Bluefield has sent a camera to the meeting. When Louelly stands up they shine that bright light right in her face. She speaks so soft nobody can hear her. Arthur Lee sits all reared back in his chair at the front of the room with the other two commissioners. He don’t even look at Louelly while she’s talking, he just keeps staring at Tom. Tom sets in the back with his arms folded across his chest and stares right back.
When Louelly is finished Arthur Lee says, “This is all fine and good, but where’s the money going to come from?” He turns to the TV camera and smiles real big.
Nobody says anything, then I stand up. “The state gives you money for the highways, don’t it?”
“That money is done took up,” Arthur Lee says and he sounds like he’d purr if he was a cat.
Louelly had set down but she stands back up. “Hit’s took up all right,” she says, loud this time. “You paved your driveway with it!”
Arthur Lee’s mouth drops open.
“I was picking up bottles at Annadel when I seen the truck at your house,” she says. “I followed it in the Batmobile all the way to the county parking lot. I even wrote down the license plate and I’ll give it to these TV men after the meeting.”
“You’ll shut up that kind of talk!” Arthur Lee says.
But now the TV man is sticking a microphone right in Louelly’s face and she is testifying.
“I been sitting here praying to the good Lord above. I was scairt to speak before, but He has opened my mouth like he done for Moses.” She sticks her hand in her pocketbook and fumbles around. “Tom Kolwiecki setting yonder that you throwed in jail has been sent to us from the Lord. He got me into the adult education up to Annadel and I learned to read and to write poems. I wrote this here about you, Arthur Lee. I weren’t going to read it but the Holy Ghost is calling me to it.” She smoothes the rumpled up sheet of paper and clears her throat.
I think that I shall never see
A politician mean as thee.
A politician with a look
That says he is a great big crook.
“Now you stop that!” Arthur Lee calls out.
Louella bulls on ahead.
A crook that has his dirty hand
In more bad deals to beat the band.
Tom has his hands over his face.
Poems are made by fools like me
But a bigger fool is Arthur Lee.
We don’t get the bridge.
JACKIE, 1966
The longer I’m a teenager, the more I hate it. I have done some catching up. I’m not what you’d call stacked, but my breasts stick out a little and I can wear a two-piece bathing suit without the pants coming off in the water. But I still hate being a teenager because everything has changed too fast. Goblins used to hide in the coal tipples, fairies lived in the basements of the company stores, and the mountains were magic. Now they’re just tipples and closed-up buildings and Trace Mountain is being stripped. When I was a kid I thought Trace Mountain was too powerful to be stripped, that anybody who tried would be cursed for all time. I wish I still believed it.
Arthur Lee thinks a strip mine is the greatest thing. He says it is the wave of the future, that soon they will be tearing the whole tops off of mountains and scooping out the coal like eating a soft-boiled egg. He talks all about strip mines at dinner.
Mom says, “There are still people living up on Trace.”
Arthur Lee says, “We won’t bother nary a one of them. They won’t even know we’re there. Since old lady Combs died there aint a soul living on the end of the mountain we’re stripping.”
I don’t say a word, just eat as fast as I can and leave the table. I don’t even say “excuse me” and Mom doesn’t fuss when I leave. These days she knows it’s better just to leave me alone.
I can’t stand Arthur Lee. He is a big turd. Mom says I have to talk civil to him because he is good to us. I keep a count in my diary of how many words I have to say to him every day. My record so far is three, and I am aiming for minus one.
I asked Dillon once why Mom married Arthur Lee. He said, “For meanness,” and he sounded so mad I was afraid to bring it up again. Dillon is mad a lot and it is hard to talk to him. I don’t think Mom likes it when I visit him, but she never tells me I can’t. She thinks I am with Dillon whenever I’m at Number Thirteen and she is mad at Dillon because he doesn’t like Arthur Lee. But I don’t hang out with Dillon when he gets all stubbed up, which is often. I mostly visit Brenda or Tom Kolwiecki. I don’t mind not dating any of the boys at school because Tom is so cool and cuter than any of them.
Sometimes I talk to Hassel Day. Hassel is such a hick but he’s funny too. He used to work for Arthur Lee and he doesn’t like him either, so I can say anything I want around him. Hassel says Arthur Lee is not naturally mean but he has got a mind like a high straight creek bed that never floods. I wrote that down when I went home and at first I couldn’t figure it out, but then I started to notice how Arthur Lee is all tight like he is tied up in knots, how he looks at my Mom like he wants to make out with her and then gets on the telephone and starts yelli
ng at somebody instead. Arthur Lee likes money, just like my dad did, only he is good at getting it and my dad wasn’t. Hassel says Arthur Lee knows how to make himself necessary, and if you want to be rich in the coalfields you have to be necessary.
Arthur Lee says Hassel used to be a hard worker but he has taken notions brought on by welfare. I think Arthur Lee is jealous because Hassel has got his own business and Arthur Lee can’t boss him around anymore. Hassel and Junior Tackett tore out the inside of a house near the Free Patch and put up black aluminum siding on the outside. The siding salesman said there wasn’t much call for black and he sold it half price, and Hassel says it won’t show coal dust. Hassel calls his place the Dew Drop Inn. He started it with money from the War on Poverty. “Economic Opportunity loan,” he tells me. “Ten thousand dollars.”
Hassel calls the Dew Drop Inn a restaurant, and he sells hot dogs with chili and slaw and onions on them, and popcorn, but that is all the menu. The Dew Drop is really a beer joint. I can’t go in there when it’s open because I’m not old enough, but Hassel showed me what it looks like right before it opened. There’s one little room with a pool table that just barely fits. Hassel and Junior tore out the rest of the inside walls to make one big space. The bar is dark, with rows of smoky bottles like at the Moose Club. There are two neon signs above the mirror, plugged in and glowing red. One says Falls City Beer, the other says Hassel.
“Place that made the JESUS SAVES for the Holiness church done them signs for me,” Hassel said. He flicked a switch and a silver ball hanging from the ceiling started to turn and sprinkle colored lights across the floor. “Even got me a psychedelic light. I’m going to bring in live bands on weekends. And I’m going to run this thing tight. No fistfights in my place. Louelly insists on that. She don’t hold with alcohol either, but I say if Jesus turned the water into wine, why not? Now if we can just get that there bridge built, I’ll have to beat the customers off with a stick. Although one good thing about that long walk, it will sober up some of them.”
I never cared for the long walk along the railroad track but I missed everything else about Number Thirteen. In Number Thirteen you could go right in someone’s house without knocking, just sit on the couch and watch what was going on. No one would think a thing of it. Out in the world you will be by yourself, but not at Number Thirteen. I miss Dillon too, or at least the way he was. Hassel says they did something to him in prison. I think it is me and my Mom that did it. Dillon says I am spoiled and he doesn’t like that. Sometimes that makes me cry and sometimes I don’t give a damn.
I still think about Dillon a lot. My school bus stops at Winco bridge to pick up the kids who have walked the track from Number Thirteen. I try to sit on the left side of the bus so I can see where the cars are parked at Winco and maybe watch Dillon get in his truck to go to work at the Robo car wash. I also like to sit in the front of the bus because the back gets full first and the Number Thirteen kids have to sit in front. I save a seat for Brenda Lloyd and we talk about Tom Kolwiecki. Brenda is not sweet on him. She likes a senior from Number Six who doesn’t like her, and she tells me everything about Tom. Toejam sits behind us and listens in. I have told him if he lets Tom know we talk about him, I will put a new pumpknot on his head.
Toejam is twelve but is still in the fourth grade. His grades are mostly F’s, and he brags that he makes C’s in penmanship but it’s because he writes so slow he has to be neat. One morning he got on the bus holding a paper bag and declared he would make an A in science that day.
“Tell Jackie what’s in the poke,” Doyle Ray Lloyd said.
Toejam looked at me with his chin up in the air. He said, “My science project.”
“Show her!” Doyle Ray said.
I could tell by the way Doyle Ray was acting that it was something disgusting that he expected me to scream at because he thought I was a silly girl. I couldn’t wait to see it and disappoint him.
Slow and awkward, Toejam took the paper bag off a gallon jar with holes punched in the lid. Inside was a skinny pointy-nosed brown rat. A bunch of hairless pink rat babies were piled on a rag wadded up in the end. Their skin was all wrinkled and you could see the blue veins in their sides. The mother rat ran back and forth real fast. She kept stepping on the babies and they would squeak.
“Toejam,” I said in my most bored voice, “you are really cruel.”
“Make her hold them,” Doyle Ray said.
I smiled patiently at Doyle Ray and tried to take the jar from Toejam before he could offer it, but he clutched it to his chest.
“No way,” he said. “You might drop them.”
“So where’d you find them?” I asked. “In your bed?”
Doyle Ray laughed. Toejam sat up straight. “They was under the house,” he said. “I was looking for a spare tire for Junior and I found them with my flashlight. Hassel took me to the library at Justice and I wrote down everything there is about rats. So I’m going to get an A.”
Then I felt bad that I had teased him, because I reckon Toejam never got an A in his entire life. I watched the way he rubbed the jar while he held it in his lap, like it was a genie’s lamp, and how his adam’s apple jumped up and down. He was dreaming about that A, could see what it looked like on top of his report, and how Louella would cry when he took it home to her.
He got off the bus with the other grade school kids. When I watched him go down the steps, his skinny shoulders hunched tight, I had a premonition. I could feel the jar slip inside the paper bag, feel it roll off his fingertips. I glanced away and when I looked back out the window, I saw it had happened just as I expected. Toejam stood in the middle of the road, the bag dangling in one hand. The mother rat was gone. Broken glass glistened in a pile at Toejam’s feet, and the fat pink rat babies were scattered all over the asphalt.
Toejam just stood there and cried. One of the other boys started laughing, picked up a rat baby and threw it as far as he could. Toejam stomped his foot and cried harder. The coal trucks and cars going to work were lined up and waiting for Toejam to move. “Get on out of the road!” the bus driver yelled at him. Toejam scurried out of the way. The bus driver waved his red flag and got back on the bus. The traffic moved forward and the tires of the coal trucks squashed the baby rats flat.
When it comes to dating, I feel just like Toejam. I’m just turned fifteen and nobody ever asks me out. Sometimes I go to the movies with a friend named James from Carbon who is in the school choir, but he never tries to hold my hand, much less kiss me. Doyle Ray Lloyd says James is queer. Doyle Ray is such a jerk. Mom says that is an ugly word and not ever to say it. She says James doesn’t try to kiss me because me respects me, but I don’t know. She is always telling me I’m too young to date. Sometimes I think she’s glad James doesn’t try anything because she wants me to herself, and sometimes I’m glad he doesn’t try because it might be gross or I might do something bad and Mom wouldn’t like me anymore.
Mom goes lots of places with me, to all the high school football games and to the movies, and she says I am her best friend. But when she took me to Dr. Zbivago, some girls from school came in and sat in the front row. I watched them giggle and tilt their heads back to eat popcorn. When Rod Steiger raped Julie Christie, Mom started twisting around in her seat, then she whispered, “Let’s leave. I’m not very comfortable with you seeing this.”
I stared at the screen. “Why do you always come with me?” I said. “Nobody else comes with their mother.”
Even in the dark I could tell she had gone all stiff and then I heard her sniffle.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” she said.
I felt like the most evil person in the world because she is the best mom and I don’t know why I acted like that.
“I didn’t mean it,” I whispered.
“Yes you did,” she said, “or you wouldn’t have said it. Don’t worry. It’s the last time I’ll come with you.”
The Bible says an ungrateful child is sharper than a serpent’s tooth an
d that is me. I wanted to put my arms around her but it was like a cartoon when a crack opens in the ground between the Road Runner and the Coyote and the Coyote knows he will never get across, never, and he can’t stop running before he falls in.
We didn’t speak all the way home. I stayed awake at night seeing it all happen again like a murderer who keeps watching the knife go in. It was a while before I got up the nerve to ask Mom to go with me again. We both knew something had changed. Maybe if she wasn’t mad at Dillon things would be different. Maybe if she hadn’t married Arthur Lee and moved us to Annadel. I never wanted to leave Number Thirteen. It was my happiest place.
Every day after school I get off the bus at Winco and walk to Number Thirteen. Tom has a program for all the kids where we play chess and ping-pong and talk about things. Arthur Lee doesn’t like me going to it, but Mom says it will broaden my horizons and I need someplace to go until she gets off work. We meet at the Dew Drop Inn until four-thirty when we have to leave because that’s when Hassel starts serving beer. Then I go to Dillon’s trailer to do my homework until it is time to walk back to Winco where Mom picks me up. Dillon usually isn’t home because he works late at the car wash but the trailer is never locked. He leaves Cokes for me in the refrigerator, and I sit on the couch with my books open and the TV on.
The cold dark of winter is when folks do foolish things, Hassel says, because they are bored and don’t get much sunlight. “It’s like in Russia,” he says. “I seen in the National Geographic where they make their younguns stand under light bulbs all the time in winter, so they won’t go stark raving mad.”
In winter, houses are shut tight against the cold, so the gunshot wasn’t much noticed. I heard it, stretched on Dillon’s couch with my algebra book, but it was faraway and flat like a balloon popping. I didn’t think it was anything. Then I heard somebody screaming. I looked out the window. Betty Lloyd was on the porch with her hands over her mouth turning round and round in circles.
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