Slider’s Son

by Rebecca Fjelland Davis

  “Turned black awful fast,” the brakeman said and leaned closer. “You Injun?”

  Little Joe ducked his head again and didn’t answer.

  “Thought Injuns were s’posed to be quick on their feet. Looks to me like you got a little problem with the clumsies. You be careful, kid. Stay on your feet.” The brakeman went on down the length of the train, swinging his lantern.

  Grant scooped coal and lignite chunks and slabs fast as he could into his sled box. He kept trying to sneak looks at Little Joe’s face, but Little Joe kept his own face bent over his work.

  With help from his dad, Grant had fashioned a wooden box on top of the sled. He had begun with an apple crate, nailed and wired it in place, and added sideboards so the sled box was two feet high and held as much coal as he could pull. The others were scooping coal into their homemade sled contraptions, too. When Grant couldn’t pile any more on top without it sliding off, Grant let his sled sit and stepped over to help Lorraine heap hers high. Orland joined them.

  “Thanks, Grant, Orland,” she said, tossing a braid over her back, out of the way of her hands. When they finished piling, Orland reached as if to pull her sled for her, but she grabbed her sled rope. “I got it.”

  When all the sleds were heaped, Grant took stock of what was left by the tracks. Enough for almost another sled-full. He could come back for it, maybe, if somebody didn’t beat him to it.

  The engine still hissed with the water pouring into its boiler tank as the boys and Lorraine leaned forward, pulling their sled ropes, and started toward home. The engineer stood beside the tracks, sipping from a canteen. He nodded at the boys as they passed him.

  No jogging now. They strained with the weight of their sleds. At least the wind was at their backs.

  Five

  Little Joe

  Grant walked beside Little Joe up Main Street. “You didn’t really get that shiner tonight, did you?”

  “Sure I did,” Little Joe said, ducking his face again to make sure his eye wasn’t visible. Little Joe was half Mandan Indian, so his skin was a few shades darker than Grant’s, but the blue-black eye was hard to miss.

  “I didn’t see ya at school today. Were you ’shamed of your eye?”

  Little Joe shrugged. “None o’ your business.”

  “Okay,” Grant said. He tried not to look toward Joe’s face as they moved along with their heavy loads.

  Harry Cleaver was shoveling in front of the butcher shop as they passed.

  “Grant. Little Joe,” Harry said. “Quite the loads of coal you got there.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Little Joe, his face tucked down, his eye away from the street lamplight.

  “Wait here, boys.” He disappeared into the shop.

  Grant and Little Joe stopped, glad for a break from pulling their sleds.

  Harry Cleaver reappeared with two flat sticks of jerky. “You two deserve it. It’s not much—enough to wake up your appetites without putting them to bed, but it’s something. It’s antelope. I got two myself this year.”

  “Gosh, thanks, Mr. Cleaver,” Grant said. He ripped off a chunk with his teeth and the smoky, peppery taste of meat melted on his tongue.

  “Thank you, sir,” Little Joe said, his head still down.

  The boys turned onto Center Road, chewing their jerky, and Little Joe said, “But, if you gotta know, I kinda got in a fight.”

  “With who?” Grant said. “How’s that guy look?” Grant studied Little Joe. Little Joe wasn’t the kind ever to pick a fight. Grant couldn’t imagine it.

  Little Joe shrugged. “Mama kept me home from school today ’cause my head hurt. But I had to come to the train. We’re outta coal.”

  Grant nodded once again. “Us, too, just about. It’s been real cold. I knew falling from the train didn’t do that to you ’cause an eye doesn’t turn black that fast. I know. I had a black eye before. And so has my dad. And my uncle.”

  “I know,” Little Joe said. “I seen your Uncle Neil with a black eye.”

  Grant grinned at him. They walked another block.

  At Meadowlark Street, Grant turned toward home and said, “See ya at school tomorrow.”

  Little Joe stopped. “Hey, Grant.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mama said not to let you see my eye so you wouldn’t tell Slider about it.”

  “Why?” Grant said. “Why would my old man care you got a black eye?”

  Joe shrugged. “See ya,” he said.

  Grant turned toward home. Why would Mrs. Thorson care if the sheriff knew her son got in a fight?

  No matter how Little Joe had gotten the black eye, Grant didn’t envy him going home, even if his mother Mary Thorson was gentle and probably the most beautiful woman, a full-blooded Mandan Indian, in town. Slider had thrown Big Joe out of Grumpy’s Tavern three times since Thanksgiving for fighting drunk. When Slider would tell about the fight the next morning at breakfast, Grant always thought it was sad-funny that Little Joe’s parents were named Mary and Joseph. They certainly wouldn’t make a “sleep in heavenly peace” Christmas couple for the baby Jesus. Blasphemy, the preacher would say to such a thought.

  Grant walked the wheel ruts in the snow toward his house. On Meadowlark Street, between his house and Little Joe’s, the ruts were more uneven, and the sled full of coal felt like lead. Lamplight shone, bright and warm and welcoming from each window except Grandma Beadlie’s. On the corner, her house was also the only one without a thread of smoke rising from the chimney. Maybe she was gone, visiting someone. She wasn’t Grant’s grandma—or anybody’s grandma that he knew of. But everybody in town called her “Grandma.”

  When Grant reached his house on Church Street, he opened the coal chute and started scooping the lignite slabs into it. They clattered and swooshed into the coal cellar part of the basement. Finally, Grant picked the sled up and shook it upside down to get the last of the coal dust out. Only then did he realize how cold his feet were—past the aching stage and going numb.

  In the house, Slider sat at the kitchen table with a newspaper. Mamie stirred a big pot of stew on the stove. Grant’s stomach growled so loud, both his parents looked up. “Bit hungry there, son?” Slider said.

  “Sure am,” Grant said. He thought about Little Joe, and wondered why on earth Mrs. Thorson would care if Slider knew Joe had been fighting. He almost asked if Slider knew why, but of course, that would defeat the purpose of keeping his friend’s secret, so he didn’t say anything.

  “Here, come warm up,” his mother said. “Take those shoes off, and hang your socks by the stove. And here.” She handed him a cup of steaming tea with honey. “Your favorite.”

  “Yum. Thanks.” Grant loved honey. He stretched his cold, damp, naked toes out toward the coal heat and took a big sip. He set his shoes next to the stove to dry. Last week, he and Mamie had traced his feet and cut old linoleum to line the inside of his shoes. The soles had been wearing thin. Linoleum would keep his feet warmer and make his shoes last longer.

  “Listen to this,” Slider said. “St. Louis Browns are gonna play night baseball. Electric lights and everything.”

  Lights for baseball, Grant thought.

  “Imagine how much that must cost,” his mother said.

  There wasn’t money for anything in Larkin, North Dakota. Nobody had money. Even the banker in town and Frank’s dad, the lawyer, didn’t have much extra ’cause nobody had any money to put in the bank, and if they needed a lawyer, they couldn’t pay him cash anyway. Slider said it was because the stock market had crashed, and paper money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

  “Why don’t we burn paper money then, Dad?” Grant had asked a long time ago, when he was only twelve.

  Slider had laughed his big, rolling laugh. “We would if we had any, son.”

  People grew food, and people had gardens and chickens and pigs and cows, or they would have all starved. They still might have starved a couple years ago, Dad said, if the Dust Bowl hadn’t petered out this far north
.

  Honey was way too expensive to buy, but the O’Gradys had honey because the Siebolts kept bees at the edge of their clover field. Mrs. Siebolt had been Slider’s grammar school sweetheart back in Hillsboro. Then she had married the best farmer in Larkin County and moved west. When Slider had been recruited to play ball for the Meadowlarks and moved to Larkin, he was pleased to find his old sweetheart, as he called her, living smack-dab in his new county.

  As sheriff, Slider often found an excuse to go check on how Mr. and Mrs. Siebolt were doing. Mrs. Siebolt sold honey in town in summer, and when Slider happened to stop by their farm for something, the Siebolts always sent him home with a jar if they had extra. All fall, two of the golden jars sat in the cellar basement, tempting Grant whenever Mamie sent him to the cellar for something.

  Tonight, Mamie had opened one of the jars. “We’ll just have tastes. A little bit here and there. But then we’ll use it for Christmas,” she said.

  There was plenty of coal to buy from the lumberyard, but it cost money. The coal train stopped regularly and dumped a whole gondola car into the storage bin by the railroad tracks. Every household filled up a wagon or a pickup with coal when they could afford it, but that wasn’t very often. People burned anything they could for heat. Old furniture got chopped up and burned. When the first cold spell hit, the ditches around town had been swept clean so people could use plaits of dry prairie grass for kindling.

  The farmers sold corn and wheat to the mill, and the mill ground it and sold sacks of wheat flour and cornmeal to the mercantile. But when there was no money, farmers who couldn’t get a fair price for corn, burned corn in their stoves. Corncobs burned well, too, after livestock had eaten it clean of kernels.

  Of course, in North Dakota, nobody burned wood. There were no extra trees in a North Dakota town. The only natural trees Grant knew of were by the river and creeks and the couple lakes. Stump Lake was the closest one. Devils Lake and the nearby Big Creek had gotten more and more naked in the last few years, since people sneaked in and cut down almost every last tree to burn.

  All the trees in the town of Larkin had been planted by settlers or special-ordered and hauled in from Minnesota. Once, Grant had seen a livery wagon come with baby sapling trees in burlap bags. Jacob Morely, the president of the State Bank, had planted them in his front yard. Nobody else had money for something you could do without.

  That was why the railroad men chose to turn a blind eye when the boys in town “swiped just a pinch” of coal from the railroad cars. The coal millionaires wouldn’t miss it, but it kept the families in Larkin from freezing to death.

  Harley chattered about school all through supper. Shirley spent suppertime reading the book, Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. She thought it was hidden in her lap, and Grant wondered why his parents pretended not to know she was reading. Grant didn’t say much while he ate. The stew warmed him all the way down to his thawing toes.

  Shirley took a small second helping of stew. “I’m going to China when I grow up.”

  “You’re loony,” Grant said. “How would you get there?”

  “Trains. And a ship,” she retorted. “Am not loony. But I’m going. You’ll see. This is such a good b—” She stopped herself.

  “Stop pretending,” Grant said. “You think we don’t know you’re reading?”

  Shirley flushed pink “Maybe I’ll fly. Maybe airplanes will go to China by the time I grow up.”

  Grant shook his head and scooped up more stew from the bottom of the pan.

  “Me, too. I’m going to China,” Harley said.

  Nobody paid him any mind.

  Slider set down his spoon. “Stopped by the mercantile today. Talked to Sims,” he said and leaned back in his chair.

  “Mmm,” Grant’s mother replied, “I wish you wouldn’t eat stew with a spoon, Alfred. It’s a bad example.” She rose from the table, tied on her apron, and started stacking dirty dishes.

  Slider grinned at her backside. “Don’t like to miss a drop of your food, Mamie.” He looked at Grant. “Sims says, ‘Granty must be getting real big.’ ‘Why you say that?’ I ask him. He says, ‘’Cause you’ve always got enough coal these days.’”

  Grant’s mother smiled over her shoulder at Grant, and he felt his ears get warm. He looked at his lap.

  “Shirley,” Mamie said. “Come and help now. You can read after dishes.”

  “Dad?” Grant asked. “You know if Grandma Beadlie is home?”

  “Why wouldn’t she be? She’s got nowhere to go.”

  “No smoke from her chimney when I went past tonight. I can’t stop thinkin’ about her. How cold it is and all. Who brings her coal?”

  “Whoever sees fit to do it, I reckon. I think the livery brings her a load when she needs it.” He took another piece of Mamie’s homemade bread and chewed it slowly. Finally he looked at Grant and asked, “Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  Grant sighed. So much for being warm and dry. He pulled his almost-dry socks and shoes and his coat and hat and mittens back on, and he headed once more out into the winter night. The wind bit even harder into his cheeks now.

  If Grandma Beadlie was out of coal, he’d have to go back out to the train tracks in the dark and load up the klinkers he and the other boys had left behind. He turned the corner. Still no smoke from Mrs. Beadlie’s chimney. But from the side window came the glow of a single oil lamp. She was home. And probably cold. He bent his head into the wind and pulled his sled across the ruts in the snow.

  Six

  Grandma Beadlie and Big Joe, Too

  The electric yard light by the water tank tower sent a dim yellow glow over the frozen snow and the train tracks, enough to find the black clinkers the boys had left beside the tracks. The temperature had dropped even more in the full darkness, so Grant worked fast to stay warm, shoveling handfuls of lignite into his sled. The heat from his hands melted the snow so the lignite stuck to his mittens. By the time his sled was full, his mittens were damp and black, and his hands had lost their heat.

  He dragged the sled rope behind him, one-handed so he could beat the other hand against his pants to keep it warm. Finally, he gave up and took one mitten off, stuffed that hand in his pocket, and when his pulling arm got too tired, he traded hands.

  When he could barely feel any of his fingers, and his toes had long lost sensation, he pulled up to Grandma Beadlie’s house. The lamp was out now. Grant stopped in the street in front of her house. She’d probably gone to bed to try to stay warm under her blankets. He knocked. Loudly. And again.

  Finally, finally, a single electric light bulb flickered on in the front room, the door opened inward and Grandma’s gray head appeared. “Granty! I was in bed. What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you some coal. I didn’t see any smoke, so I thought maybe you were out.”

  Grandma Beadlie pulled the door open farther and pulled an afghan tight around her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death out there at this time of night. Get in here.”

  “Where’s the scuttle? I’ll fill it up first.”

  Grandma motioned him in, and he picked up the black dusty coal bucket from beside the stove. He went back outside and used his damp mittens to shovel it full of lignite. Then he lugged it back inside. Grant piled the black irregular chunks inside the coal stove and set the bucket back its place. Grandma didn’t have matches. She had a tinder box. She bent low, her bony knees making a tent in her patched flannel nightgown, and she got a spark on a scrap of paper and one piece of kindling. On the third try, she got a tiny blaze going and soon the lignite caught. She closed the stove door. “There now. Thank you, Granty. You’re a good boy.”

  “I’ll go put the rest down the chute,” Grant said. He traipsed back out and emptied the rest of the sled down the coal chute door.

  Grandma was waiting in the doorway when he finished. “You come in here for tea now. Water’s heating. You hear?”

  “Grandma, thanks, but I got to get home. So I don’t get
warm and have to get cold again.”

  “You suit yourself. But I won’t forget this. You’re a good one, Granty O’Grady.”

  Grant’s face was too cold to smile, his cheeks wouldn’t even bend, so he nodded to her and turned his sled to trot home. He wondered if he could call on Grandma Beadlie to testify that he was a “good one” next time he got in trouble.

  Between houses, looking the other direction, he could see the brightly glowing Christmas lights of Main Street a block away. When he’d come back from the train tracks this time, Slider’s car was nosed into its usual parking place in front of Grumpy’s. Grumpy’s was really named Gallagher’s Tavern, or at least that’s what the sign over the door read. Slider said that for the longest time, whenever Patrick Gallagher was asked how he was doing, he answered, “I’m grumpy, that’s how.” So he and his tavern got the names of Grumpy and Grumpy’s. Nobody called it anything else.

  Grant knew Slider would be sitting at the tavern with his buddies, sipping his one nightly vodka sour. And he would be making sure the harmless town drunk, Henry Olson, got home safely without passing out somewhere in the snow or on the frozen street after everybody else was safely tucked in for the night. Slider said Henry Olson was his “civic responsibility.” Mamie harrumphed and said it was just so he could stay at Grumpy’s ’til closing.

  Grant paused and then turned away from home toward Main Street. He knew Grumpy would let him dry his mittens by the stove and Slider would probably buy him a glass of root beer. Mamie wouldn’t be looking for him yet.

  The tavern door creaked open. The billowing smell of burning rubber completely overshadowed the other smells, the ones that permeated the place in warmer weather—old wood, liquor, and men’s unwashed clothes and sweat.

  Huddled around the bar sat the evening regulars: Slider; Grumpy himself; Henry Olson; Lawrence Messner; Askil Snortland, the mail carrier; and Ole Bjelland, who was Orland’s dad.

  “Grant.” Grumpy motioned him over. “Root beer?”

  Slider looked up at Grant and took in the wet mittens, black from lignite dust. Slider nodded. “Grandma okay?”