Children of Crisis

by Robert Coles

  At the edge of Logan County, West Virginia. I stayed with and worked with a family whose head, Paul Evans, was by no means “sick” in any psychiatric sense. He did have a noticeably vulnerable quality to him, though; and he had, in his own words, “more of a restless nature than anyone else around.” Like Mr. Workman, he had worked in the mines for a while, then left because he was short of breath, coughing, plagued with chest pains, and afraid he might die were he to continue digging coal. He returned to the little town where he and his family have lived for many generations, and for a while he found odd jobs to keep him busy and provide his wife and two sons and three daughters with money. He worked in a gas station. He worked on the roads, digging and helping pave or even rake leaves. He drove a truck. He swept floors, in the grocery store and in several of the churches near the town. Finally he went back home — that is, back up Rocky Creek, so called, I suppose, because there is one patch of fairly large rocks there, some of them half submerged in the shallow water, along with a substantial amount of garbage that also sinks a little and floats a little. Once Paul Evans and I talked about the garbage, and perhaps that point in our conversation is a good one to begin with: “It’s no good, all the paper and cans in the creek. A man came from Holden and told us we should clean up every time, and if we did and came together and made ourselves into some kind of organization, or something, then we could get a little money out of those county people over there in Logan. Have you ever been there, in the town, and talked with them? They’ll say that we’re lazy, that’s why there’s no work for us — because we don’t go and find jobs. Well, I’d like them to come here and find a job. They could look for a million years, and none would come up. If you’re going to find a job, you have to know where they’re hiring people, and there’s no businesses and factories here, no sir — just us and a lot like us up the hollows and the creeks. They’ll go on to tell you how dirty you are, and why don’t you go and clean up after yourself. The answer is I’ve been burying our leftovers all my life. My place is covered with garbage that I’ve put into the land. We have these homes here, there must be ten, I’d say, and we’re all burying our garbage and trying to be as clean as we can, and we’ll come to church and nobody can say we’re not as spotless as can be. My wife is always telling the kids they should look as good and bright as a brand-new penny some of the time, even if they mess around a lot — and messing around is all right too, you know.

  “There’ll be times, I admit it, when we all lose our patience here in Rocky Creek, and then we’ll just go heave something down that stream. It’s natural a person will have his temper and then he’ll decide there’s no use trying to keep the creek in good shape, because there’s hardly a dollar that comes in here to any of us, from week to week. We don’t think like that, though — no, we don’t; it just happens, if you ask me. We’ll be sitting here on the porch and there’s some stuff the wife has for you to go and bury; and you’re in a sour mood; and you say to yourself, what the hell difference does it make. Now, that’s wrong, I know it. I don’t need a minister to tell me that Eternal Damnation business. I was told a long time ago by my daddy to obey the law, and do what’s right, even if it’s not written up into the law. But Daddy would admit to us that a lot of things just don’t make much sense. You want to work all you can, but there’s not the work for you to do, except keeping up the place. I take care of my land like it was a baby of mine. I plant the good part and grow enough to keep us out of the cemetery down there in Holden. I have a couple of pigs and the chickens and I make sure they don’t go wandering all over. But sometimes I get tired and I’ll sit here and rock myself and take a little of those good spirits we make, and before long I’m either all fixed up to go and shoot someone real big and important that’s sitting on top of people like us, or I’m ready to go and sleep right through until the next week or the next year or sometime like that. It’s then that I’ll be seen throwing our stuff into the creek; and of course the kids will take after me and throw their Coke bottles down there, and it all adds up, I guess. If you ask me, one of those county people should go and do something worthwhile; they all get paid more money than you can imagine, and they’re supposed to be working for all the people in Logan County. But they’re really out for themselves, and if you cross them, you’re in real trouble. The bus will stop coming to pick up your kids, and they’ll start breathing down your back about the school lunches your kids get, and it becomes so bad, like I say, you want to go and kill them over in the courthouse.

  “Most of the time I’m all right; I mean I figure we’re better off here than in some big city, where you never lay your eyes on a piece of land, and you’re lucky if you see a bird flying. I tell my kids that this is a good place to be born, and not to worry because somehow they’ll make it through, like I did. But there will be a minute now and then that I don’t believe myself, listening to myself talk, I just don’t believe my own words. It’s then that I figure it’s real bad here, and the only way we can change anything is to go and take away the mines from the owners, and the courthouse from all those people that are running it. Then my wife will tell me to cool off, and she’ll say there’s no use sounding like some crank who’s going to try to take over the government, and like that. She’s a hard-praying woman, you know, and she’ll start reading the Bible to me, and she’ll get my brothers to come on over and tell me to get to my senses. Well, I’ve half talked them into admitting I’m right in what I say, but I usually agree with them, in that sometimes you may have the right idea, but you can’t just go and do what you say you should do, if all that’ll happen is you’ll go to jail for the rest of your life, and you know that in advance. So, we’ll go up the hill there, my three brothers and me, and we’ll start shooting, and the one who hits the targets we choose the most, he’s the one to pull out some beer for the rest.

  “I worry about my kids, I’ll be honest and tell you. I’d like for them to have a better life than I ever had, but I don’t believe they ever will, and it’s too bad. That’s why I tell my wife that we can’t be too good to them; even when we do have something they want, we’ve got to let them know that here in West Virginia, in this county, it’s not like they see on that television set. Back a while I was making money, you know, in the mines, and I figured we could have all the gadgets we want, and keep on replacing them with new ones, too, like those store people tell you that you should. Then the money stopped, you bet it did. They admitted I should be getting some compensation, because my lungs were starting to go bad, but I wasn’t eligible, because neither the company nor the state allows you any money for that. They just tell you it’s too bad what you got in your lungs, but don’t come to the state of West Virginia; and the companies, well you know them — if they had their way the whole state of West Virginia would be turned into a big strip mine, so they could take out every piece of coal in these hills and make their money. Then, they’d leave and say, so long buddies, nice knowing you, but we’ve got to go to the next state, and squeeze it dry like we did yours. That’s why I tell my kids that they can’t have it easy in this world, no matter how nice those hills look, and even though we do have the woods they play in and a lot of other things around here we all would die for, if they tried to come and take them away. A little ways up in that hollow where they did try and take away some people’s land the strip mine people started dumping their dirt, and there was a landslide onto a couple of houses, and they were lucky no one was killed. That’s where I’d draw the line. That’s where I’d take out my gun and use it. I don’t care what they’d charge me with later.

  “Sometimes when we’re arguing I tell my brothers that they’re wrong to keep on bragging how lucky a man is to pick his guitar and be living here, where we have some land to our name and crops that we can grow to feed us. That’s good, but it’s hard to tell your boy, when he asks you why we don’t live better — it’s hard to tell him that we’re living better than anyone in the United States of America, when we damn well aren’t. That
’s what my brothers will tell their kids — that they should be smiling more and not talking about going over to Cleveland or someplace for jobs when they get bigger. Let me tell you, I don’t want my kids going over to Cleveland if they could help it, but if they’re smart enough to talk about going there, then that teacher must be teaching them something smart over there in school. They’ll leave for school in the morning and we haven’t had enough to give them for breakfast, and thank God they have the hot lunches for them — we had to fight for that, fight and fight — and for supper we’re lucky to have good food. When they leave to wait for the bus they’ll be nodding to me and their mother, and my little girl — she’s in the first grade — she’ll be smiling and all. When I feel real down and low, I’ll ask my wife why our child smiles like that, the way things are, and she’ll say that a mother wants her children to smile, even if there isn’t so much to smile about, so the child obliges. I guess that’s the correct thing for the child to do, but you’re pretty lucky, if you ask me, if your kids believe you, what you say about staying here and being happy in Rocky Creek. We’re all happy in Rocky Creek and we love Rocky Creek more than anything. But we’re always worrying about the troubles we have, and there’ll be a lot of days that I never feel my face smile, not once. That’s the truth, yes it is.”

  The truth Paul Evans tries to spell out for a visiting observer is indeed contradictory, and he has to make sure I realize that. He himself for a long time has struggled with all those contradictions, and expects to continue the struggle until he dies: “I can see myself there on my deathbed: in one breath I’ll be telling my family that we’ve got the best world there can ever be right here in Rocky Creek, and in the next breath I’ll be asking each of my kids to promise me that they get out of here, even though it’s only for a few years, to make the money they’ll need if they’re going to come back — and have enough for their kids to eat. I guess what I say with my last breath will decide what I believe; but you have to believe what you know is right, and if there’s a lot of argument between you and yourself, then that’s the way it goes. I once talked to our minister and told him I only half believed what he said, and he smiled and said he was doing pretty good, for me to be going that far along with him. Ever since then I’ve really liked the way he speaks. I believe that he is as humble as he keeps telling us to be — as if we’re not anyway. Once even my older brother lost his patience with a sermon — and of all of us, he’s the one who has most of it, patience. After church he went over and told the minister to stop telling us all the time how the poor are going to inherit the world. Which world, he asked the minister, and how humble did he want us to be — us, of all the people on God’s earth! The minister didn’t know what to say. Then my brother really spoiled it; he said he was sorry, and he didn’t mean to go and get him upset after his sermon — and of course the minister said thank you, and he was sure my brother meant no harm.

  “Now what do you think of that for getting scared at the last second? Of course, it’s not the minister’s fault; he’s only doing what he’s supposed to do. Still, he ought to use his common sense. Once he came to visit us, and he asked me what I thought he should be talking more about on Sunday, and I said about the troubles a lot of us are having in Rocky Creek and other places, just making everything hold together from today until tomorrow. Well, you know he got nervous, I could see, and he said he had to go on to the next house. The poor guy, he’s no better off than the rest of us, I guess. And I’ll say this to you, he’s a fine man, he really is. I’ll bet he’s better than a lot of ministers. He puts his heart into the job, and he loves us, and we love him. He comes from Logan County, only the city of Logan it is. He’s had offers to go to other places, but he wants to stay here in the county, and I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t go out of this county for a big pile of money; not if they came and put it right before me on this table. I believe that if I left, I’d soon be sick and die. How could I sleep, away from that hill over there? And what would there be to do that would be half the fun of hunting in these woods?”

  Like all of us, Paul Evans switches back and forth with respect to a number of “attitudes” he has or “issues” he thinks about. He doesn’t give names to his ideas, to his moments of anger or deep and proud enjoyment; he doesn’t call what goes through his mind or impels him to speak out (and sometimes, scream out) a “thought” or a “position” or an “opinion.” He does, though, recognize some of his own inconsistencies, and he talks about them. Again and again those inconsistencies have to do with Rocky Creek and the Appalachian kind of life — its hardships and its real virtues. Again and again the importance of order and cleanliness is emphasized and the presence of disorder and confusion acknowledged — and stream garbage is perhaps a concrete form of disarray that reflects a much larger uproar and agitation, a social and political rough-and-tumble which a plundered region has to live with, now that so much of its wealth has gone elsewhere. Again and again the questions are raised: should we stay or leave? Should we try to shelter our children as best we can, or speak to them about the especially hard fate that awaits them? Should we teach them the pride we feel in this creek, this county, this state, these familiar, peaceful, lovely hills, or should we come right out with it and admit how fragile is our hold on these hills, in fact on life itself? Finally, ought we tell them how sad and grim all these alternatives are, as they bear down on us, or ought we smile and insist that others before us have survived, so we will, too? Those are the questions and perhaps they are really one question. As Paul Evans sees it — perhaps more clearly than some mountaineers — all those dilemmas lead to this: will life in the Appalachian Mountains ever change so that the thousands and thousands of people who love those mountains, who were born to be part of them, can at last find it possible to keep the homes they love and stay on the land they never, never want to stop loving?

  What Paul Evans feels, what Kenneth and Laura Workman feel, their children also feel; more than that, like children anywhere, they face the added struggle that goes with assuming for themselves their parents’ struggles. In the case of Appalachian children, the particular tensions and ambiguities that go with a frequently hard but also satisfying mountain life come across repeatedly in the words those children speak and (with unusual, even dramatic clarity) in the drawings and paintings they choose to do. For instance, in Rocky Creek, but a half mile or so away from Paul Evans’s house live some of his kin. Paul Evans’s mother was a Potter, and her brother is John Potter, a man very much like his nephew, though less fiery and given to speeches. He sulks and broods and then suddenly stops all that and goes hunting and feels better and plays his guitar and feels even better and gets country music blasting loud over the radio and then will even talk about how he feels: “A good hour of music from that little radio and I’m feeling as good as those birds over there, soaring over us and saying to us: catch us if you can, but you won’t.” John Potter manages as best he can, manages without doctors and psychiatrists and pills of one kind or another; and manages despite a case of “black lung” that makes him suffer much more than Paul Evans does. John suffers silently for the most part. When he is low in spirits he sits and cuts wood and listens to his “hillbilly music” — which at such times doesn’t seem to help him feel any better — and stares out at the hills; or he goes to his crops and looks at them and decides what they need and asks his son Billy, aged eight, to “come on over here and lend me a hand.”

  Billy does just that, and expertly. Billy is tall for his age, with blue eyes and black hair. He has a strong face. His forehead is broad, his nose substantial and sharp, his chin long. Billy is large-boned and already broad-shouldered. He is thin, much thinner than he was meant to be. His teeth are in fearful condition, but his cheeks are red and he looks to be the very picture of good health. His mother knows what ails him though, and she worries: “Billy is a sturdy lad a lot of the time, but he’ll fall sick and it’s hard to know what’s ailing him. He gets pains in his mouth, from the te
eth I guess, and his stomach hurts. He has his share of sores, but they don’t trouble him any more than they do the rest of us. I worry because he’ll be so good and helpful, and you know, I think he’s the smartest of my children, I believe he is, and the teacher goes along with me on that; but suddenly he says he’s dizzy and he’s afraid he’s going to pass out, and a couple of times he has. I was afraid he might be having a fit or something like that, you know, but it doesn’t last too long — and no, he’s never shook, that I could see, or bitten his tongue, no sir. The teacher says he could go on and be good in the regional high school they’ve built, and even beyond that, but where’s the money I asked her, and she shook her head and said yes, she knew. She said it’s terrible the way West Virginia’s best sons aren’t getting all they should be. Billy will be all right, though, even if he doesn’t go on in school. He has a good head on his shoulders, and he’s nice with the other kids, and he gives his father a big lift, I’ll tell you that. His father will take to feeling sorry for himself and for me and for just about everyone in Rocky Creek, and then Billy will come over and practically order his daddy around: tell him to come on outside and help with the corn and the peas, or see if there should be more sawing of the wood, or go see the new litter of dogs we have — it’s those things that help snap his dad into a better turn of mind.”

  Billy is exactly what his mother describes him to be, inventive, imaginative, intelligent, industrious. Perhaps most wonderful of all, he is a truly generous boy. He is generous to his father when he clearly isn’t feeling too good about the world, and he is generous to his brothers and sisters and cousins and friends — not too generous, not fearfully obliging or nervously amiable, not ingratiating, just directly, openly, unselfconsciously kind, or perhaps thoughtful in the several senses of the word, because he does indeed do a lot of thinking in and around the house as well as at school. Billy has some of his ancestors’ fondness for talking, for telling stories — or singing those stories, reciting them in the form of long, drawn-out ballads. Billy can also be stubbornly silent. “It all depends,” says his mother, “if he has something that’s on his mind, or if he doesn’t.” Once when Billy and I were talking about his daily life, about what he had to do around “the place,” and what he did at school, he suddenly stopped himself in the middle of a sentence and asked me if I knew any doctors nearby. No, I didn’t, not near Rocky Creek. How does one become a doctor, was his next question, and is there a medical school near Logan County? I told him I had visited the state’s medical school in Morgantown, which is clear across the state from Rocky Creek, in Monongalia County. Is that north or south or east or west from where we were? It is north and east, I said. Pennsylvania is nearby, I added. He’d never been to Pennsylvania, he told me, nor to any other state. He’d never been out of Logan County, for that matter; and he wasn’t sure he ever would want to go out — except that he had heard a lot of people talk about leaving, and he knew some that have left, though they try to come back as often as they can, he noticed. As for him, he didn’t know. Maybe he would someday like to try another county, or even go over to Pennsylvania and see what it is like. His cousin Stephen Potter has tried Ohio, and doesn’t like it one bit there, but he sends home those dollars and they certainly are good to receive.