Children of Crisis

by Robert Coles

  The girl remembered her father’s analysis and felt even more troubled. A day or two afterward she brought up the subject again; she asked her father whether it wasn’t true that “it’s very dangerous down the mines, and no matter how careful you are, there can be an explosion.” He replied by asking his daughter why she was “still talking” about the accident. The girl was silent for a while, but did come up with an answer: “The newspapers and television are still talking about the disaster, too, so it’s hard to forget.” Her father agreed, but became rather stern, as the girl remembered: “He told me that the newspapers can make a lot of mistakes, and I shouldn’t believe everything I read in them. Mother said she was sure I didn’t. Then Daddy explained what really happened in the coal mine; and he knows, because he’s on the board of directors, and the president of the company got his job because Daddy recommended him. The president says he’s been told that one of the miners must have done something wrong. Daddy says everyone feels sorry for the miners who died, but if one of them caused the accident, then he’s the one to blame, and not the company.

  “On television they’re always criticizing the company and in the newspapers, too; that’s what Daddy decided — and that’s why he called up the owner of the paper, and he told him that it wasn’t fair, the way the reporters were writing their stories. The publisher told Daddy that he’d call him back, but first he wanted to investigate. And Daddy had an answer for him; he told the publisher that he’d send over a file, with all the facts, right away. The publisher said thank you, but he didn’t need the file. My father thinks the publisher is afraid of the editor, and doesn’t run his own business the way he should. It would be like someone working in my father’s office, one of his law clerks, telling my father what to say, and my father going along, and not ever disagreeing.

  “We have a man who comes and works in the garden. He planted some roses and my mother didn’t like them, but she wasn’t going to say anything, because she knew how hard the man had worked, and he told her the roses would last for a long time, and they are a good color to have. When my father heard my mother tell my sister and me about the roses, he got very upset. He was in the hall, but he came into my mother’s sewing room, and he said that we had to have one thing settled in our house — that the servants were taking orders from us, and not telling us what to do. He said that Mother should fire the gardener right on the spot, when he starts telling her what to do, and the same goes for the maid — or anyone else. I was upset, and so was my sister. He left right away, and we thought he was mad at us, but mother said no, he wasn’t. She said he had to go to an important meeting — and it was about the mine disaster, she was sure. That’s when I asked her if Daddy was right in what he said — that the miners could be the ones who caused the disaster. She said she didn’t know. She told me and my sister that our father is a lawyer, and he is honest, and he’d never tell a lie, and if he believed something, it was because he had the proof. So I said he was probably right. When I said that, she said I shouldn’t say probably, I should say definitely. I did. My sister asked her about the gardener, and she said she’d try to be tougher, but it wasn’t in her nature to be like Daddy. I told her she could be right, and Daddy wrong — because, like the teacher says, everyone makes a mistake sometime. Mother said she can’t remember when Daddy had ever made one!”

  The roses attracted Marjorie’s interest after that episode. She looked them over carefully, came to be fond of them. She had been interested in flowers and plants for several years; she kept several cacti in her room, and a month or so before the gardener had made so bold as to take the initiative with certain rose bushes, he had obtained for Marjorie three quite lovely plants, or so she had judged them. Did her father have quite another opinion? She was afraid to ask. She was afraid even to ask her mother. But the maid also loved plants. Why not ask her? She could innocently enough ask her father what he thought of his daughter Marjorie’s plants. The maid did ask the girl’s father, and reported back that he had indeed noticed them and pronounced them quite lovely. Shortly thereafter the father brought the subject up at the dinner table, told Marjorie how very much he liked her room, how pleased he was to see the care she gave to it, and how particularly fond he was of her three plants. Then he turned to the mother — saying nothing, but smiling and nodding, as if to send her a compliment, also: the one who, no doubt, selected the three plants and gave them to the girl. The mother said that she did agree with her husband’s judgment, but in all fairness had to admit that it was the gardener who had selected the plants and given them to Marjorie. A moment of nervous silence, then a smile from the father, a relaxation of everyone’s apprehension, and a statement from the man at the head of the table: “I think we are all becoming the gardener’s protégés. I must sign up myself!”

  A month later Marjorie used paints to indicate her approval of the lush late summer garden outside the house. She was especially drawn to the roses, but also to some enormous and beautifully arranged sunflowers — a stunning column of them, astride rows of vegetables. They were so “lucky,” she reminded herself, to have a gardener of such skill and devotion. He grew beautiful flowers all year around (the mother had a hothouse, attached to the stable) and he also had an exceptional way with lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, and squash, which wandered and flowered and intrigued Marjorie by their independent ways. The gardener also helped out with the horses — kept an eye on “everything outdoors.”

  Marjorie tried hard to do justice to the beauty the gardener had made possible near her home, but worried that she was not a good enough artist. She was especially anxious to make the sunflowers the commanding presence they were for her. Each one received her closest attention. And she topped them off, so to speak, with the sky’s sun — in her words, “the sunflower that makes all other sunflowers grow.” She decided at the last minute to put the gardener in the painting, but abruptly changed her mind: best to leave people out of it. As she put the painting aside (Figure 60), she gave herself some credit, but was still humbled by her self-acknowledged inadequacies. If only she could become even a half-competent amateur artist one day! But she has no gift in that direction — unlike two of her sisters. Yet, she loved to look at the flowers outside the house, and she could at least learn to grow them, care for them, keep them reasonably healthy and attractive. Now she had a thought: the ground, the earth that nourished the gardener’s flowers, her family’s flowers, the earth she had rather quickly suggested with a few strokes of brown paint, was the very same earth, not too far away, that men dug and cut into — miners in search of coal.

  She began to wonder out loud about coal: “There might be coal right under our house; if we dug up the garden and kept digging, we might find coal. I’ve never seen a coal mine. I asked my father, after the forty men died in the disaster, if he would take me to a coal mine — a safe one! — so that I could see the coal being dug and carried up. My father said no, there are more important things for me to see. I asked him if he’d ever gone down a mine, and he said no. He said there are a lot of things he hasn’t done. He didn’t want us in a mine, he told me, and I shouldn’t ask anymore! I did ask my mother, the next day; I was sure she could just take us to some mine, and they’d show us how it works. But she said no, you can’t just drive up to a mine and expect the miners to stop work and become your guides! My mother gave me a talk — on how I was growing up and ought to be more considerate and think of others. She was right! They work hard down in mines, and they don’t want people staring at them and asking them a lot of questions. I’ll bet my grandfather could show me a lot of mines, down where he lives. But maybe he wouldn’t. Mother says it’s the same there; he has to hire very strong men to do the work, and they wouldn’t like to be bothered by me and my sisters! And we’d be staring at them, and it wouldn’t be polite, and you can’t just go and see anything you want to see.

  “The mines are off limits to everyone except the people who work in them. What if someone older went down there, and he l
it a cigarette? There’d be an explosion! You have to be trained not to do a lot of things you might be tempted to do — if you’re going to work in the mines. It’s like being in an airplane; you don’t smoke, if you’re older, when they tell you not to smoke. I told my mother that I wouldn’t smoke, anyway, but she said there might be other mistakes I could make, and so I still couldn’t go visit a mine. She didn’t knew what the mistakes might be; maybe I would kick over a lamp, and then a fire would get going.”

  Marjorie has, however, seen pictures of a mine — of miners, at least, at work in West Virginia. The occasion: a social studies course — a book in it meant to “bring life in the United States closer to the young reader.” Marjorie asked the teacher where in the state the mine shown is. The teacher said she didn’t know. Marjorie thought of asking the teacher how the class might find out, might go visit the mine, but she did not. Another child did, a boy she didn’t know well — “only his name.” What had the teacher said? She said no, it would not be possible. The boy had asked why, only to be ignored. The class had to “move on.” Marjorie started paying attention to the boy; his name, Miles, began to interest her. She knew no one but him with that name. She had never said anything to him, not even hello. He sat on the other side of the room — “and besides, he’s a boy.” But a day or so after the incident mentioned, Marjorie approached Miles and asked him if he’d ever visited any mine, anywhere. He said no. Had she? She said no. Would she like to do so, also? Yes — and she liked hearing him say that he would. The boy confided in her: his uncle was the vice-president of a coal company. It was located in Alabama, however, and the boy had never gone to the state, let alone a mine within the state. The girl told him something, in exchange: her grandfather owned several mines, and they were located right in West Virginia. But she had never been to a mine, either. She had been to her grandfather’s home; she had gone fishing with him, and had taken walks with him, but she had not even seen his office. As for the mines, her own father had not seen “one of Granddaddy’s mines.” She wasn’t even sure that Granddaddy himself had actually gone down any of his mines. She had asked her father that question; he had said “probably.” Miles and she decided that “it must be very dangerous to go where the miners go” and for that reason “no one really wants to go there.”

  But the two of them could not quite forget that for some people there is no choice: “Miles said he saw the people on television, the families of the men who got killed, and he asked his father if there wasn’t some way to prevent mines from having explosions inside them. His father said no, there are always accidents. I told Miles that my father said the same thing. My father said the miners can cause the trouble, and it’s not fair that everyone gets mad at the owners of the company. Miles said that was the way his father looked at the trouble, too. We both said it was no good — that all those miners should die.

  “I once thought I would like to try being a miner for a few weeks. I didn’t tell anyone except my sister, and we both told our mother, and she just laughed. My sister Susie really wouldn’t mind marrying a miner one day; that’s what she told me the other day! She said she’d like to live way out on a farm, and if there was a mine nearby, and her husband worked in it, she would like the idea of him working hard and coming home covered with coal dust. She would have a hot shower ready to go, and she’d cook him food they’d grown themselves. I don’t think I’ll ever meet a miner or a miner’s son. I told Susie I don’t think she will either. I asked Miles if he thought he would, and he said no, that he wouldn’t. If my father had to go down the mines every day, I’d be plenty worried. If my husband was the one, I’d be worried. If I knew a miner, I’d worry about him.

  “My mother said the other day that anyone can get into an accident. Look at the number of automobile accidents every year. But it’s worse being a miner — more dangerous. Mother said I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I told her I’m glad Daddy doesn’t work in a mine. She said Daddy carries a lot of burdens on his shoulders; he has worries, and he’s always in a rush, because of the cases he has in court and the meetings he has to go to. Even so, he doesn’t have to worry that there will be a spark, and it will make some gases explode, and that will be the end. Miles said he told his father that he didn’t want to have a job even near a mine; he’d rather be in a submarine than down a mine. Miles says we’re both lucky. He wants to learn how to ski and go live in Switzerland; his uncle goes there every year to ski. Miles says if you go all the way over every year, you might as well live there.”

  Marjorie’s family has a summer home in the Adirondacks and regularly rents a home on the West Coast of Florida, near Venice, for two weeks every February. Marjorie likes those two homes a lot, but wishes there were yet another one, a permanent apartment in New York City. A classmate of hers speaks of such a place — the property of a law firm that does a lot of litigation in New York, and in West Virginia for companies located in New York. The companies are coal companies, and the lawyers in Charleston go back and forth, mostly getting instructions in New York and carrying out agreed-upon efforts “back home.” Marjorie has asked her father why his firm doesn’t rent such an apartment. She has been told that his particular firm handles other “accounts”— railroads, utilities, various wholesale distribution outlets. Those companies don’t all have offices in New York City.

  The firm does not, surprisingly, handle her grandfather’s legal problems. The girl is not sure why, but knows what she has heard and been told: “My father wasn’t supposed to live here. He was supposed to stay home in Mingo County and help my grandfather — be his lawyer. He would become the boss himself when my grandfather got too old or else died. But my father didn’t want to go back. He kept stalling after he got out of law school. He met my mother, and she didn’t want to go back with him. I think she once wanted to be an actress. She wanted to live in New York City. She made a compromise with my father: if he agreed not to go back to Mingo County, she would agree to give up the idea of going to New York. She asked him for a long time to take a job in a law firm up there, and he almost did. But he was afraid of the big city, my mother thinks. She says she’s glad, now. She says she wouldn’t have wanted to bring us up in a big city. But she likes to go up there on visits. My father says he wouldn’t rent an apartment in New York, even if he had to spend half of every week in the city — not when he can go to the Plaza, and they know him there, and he and my mother have a much better time in the hotel than they would in an apartment, and it all gets written off as expenses.”

  The question of income taxes prompts from Marjorie a thought about money: “Some have a lot, and some have none, and it’s not right that people should have none.” Her father strongly believes in private charities, as opposed to government-sponsored welfare programs of various kinds. He proudly tells his wife and children that he tithes himself, as his father and grandfather did before him: 10 percent of his gross income goes to assorted causes — the Presbyterian Church, the United Fund, a program directed at “problem children.” After the mine disaster Marjorie wondered out loud at the supper table whether her parents would be sending any money to the survivors of the men killed. She was told the answer immediately and abruptly: no. She did not ask her father why. The next day, characteristically, she turned to her mother for information. The mother was rather terse herself. She told the girl that it is her father’s “decision” where the charity money goes. The girl was insistent: why not try to help such obvious victims? The mother again called upon her husband’s authority and his rights: it is his money, and he has every justification to spend it as he pleases. What might she want to do with the money, if he gave her the chance to spend it as she pleased? The mother could not come up with an answer. She would have to “do some thinking.” The child asked if, in the course of her reflections, she might, just might, consider the survivors of the dead miners possible candidates for charity. The mother said yes, they were possible beneficiaries.

  But the mother never gave
any money to the survivors of that particular mine accident, or to any miners, or to their families. And Marjorie learned her mother’s reasons — learned over a period of a year or so to stop being interested in such people and their difficulties. When Marjorie turned thirteen her grandfather became gravely ill, was flown to Charleston in a private plane, became a patient in a hospital there, was operated upon, and almost died. When he had recovered enough to begin contemplating his future, Marjorie asked him whether he would go back to Mingo County and resume his work, which was to keep an eye on several quite profitable businesses there. No, he would not. He was tired of “the smell of coal,” he told his granddaughter. He was tired of workers making demands and “outsiders” coming into the county, seeking him out, and also making demands — of him. He wanted rest and “peace” during his final months.

  But he did not want to live with his son: “My grandfather told me there would be fights between him and Daddy if they both lived under the same roof. Daddy was supposed to stay in Mingo County, but he didn’t. My grandfather is going to sell the mines he owns down there. He can’t leave them to my father, and there’s no one else in the family either who wants to run them. I have an aunt in Pittsburgh, and she is married to a stockbroker, and they don’t want to leave Pittsburgh. I have another aunt in Beckley, West Virginia, and her husband owns a shopping center, I think, and they like living where they are. Like my grandfather says: there’s no one to take over. Anyway, there’s a lot of trouble now in the coal fields. It’s no joke owning a mine. Some of the owners have to hire bodyguards. There’s a lot of violence. My grandfather says on some days he feels like he’s just sitting and waiting for the union men to come and get him. He practices shooting his guns, and he keeps them near him. He has an alarm that can detect anyone even coming near the house, and he has a rifle right beside his bed. He’s a light sleeper. The doctor told him that’s another reason for him to stay in Charleston; he won’t sleep well at home, and he’ll get weak. But my grandfather says he’d really like to face down some of the union organizers and show them how he can shoot to kill.”