I climbed onto the high bed, crunching the white paper underneath me and feeling all of five years old. Was this the same bed my uncle died on? My insides jumped like oil in a hot skillet, though I was tryin’ my best to stay calm.
In, out, in, out. I closed my eyes and breathed. My stomach is fine. I don’t feel sick. Then Dr. Davis showed up and plugged in his saw.
I don’t know if I was curious or just plum scared, but I had to watch as the blade spun toward my arm. The high-pitched scream filled the small room and bounced off the cement block walls. I flinched to cover my ears, but Dr. Davis said, “Jack, hold still now. This’ll only take a minute.”
Plaster dust sprayed up like a rooster tail as the saw sank into my cast. I ignored the dust flying and stared without blinking while Dr. Davis moved the blade up and down my arm, cutting deeper and deeper until the tension of the cast released. The blade moved dangerously close to my pale skin as he cut the last bits of fiber that still held. Finally, the cast popped apart. My flattened arm hairs tried to stand on end as air rushed around them for the first time in weeks.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Dr. Davis asked as he wrestled the cast completely off.
“I don’t feel so good,” I said.
“Oh, you’ll be fine.” He patted my leg and handed me a yellow sucker.
Then I puked all over his white coat.
“Stop lookin’ at it,” Mom said in the car. “I don’t need you throwing up again.”
“It looks so weird.”
The broken arm was skinnier than my other arm and felt much lighter. Except for the red spots where I’d scratched under the cast with a bottle brush, it was strangely pale. Even with the cast gone, it still itched like wildfire.
“Jack Hicks!” Mom swatted at my hand. “Stop scratching.”
“It makes it feel better.”
“You won’t have any skin left if you don’t cut it out. Anyhow, look in the back seat. I got you a present.”
“A bike?” I smiled.
“No, not a bike.” She rolled her eyes. “Good Lord, don’t you think you get in enough trouble without wheels added to the mix?”
“If I’d had a bike, I’d a been going too fast past the trestle bridge to even notice Eli and all them that day.” I reached over the seat and grabbed the box from the back.
“You shouldn’t a been going to the tailings pond in the first place, young man—it’s dangerous out there.”
“I know, I know.” I didn’t get grounded for it because of my broken arm, and I didn’t want Mom to remember that, so I opened the lid quickly. “Converse high-tops, cool!” It wasn’t a BMX bike, but Converse weren’t bad. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Well, maybe these will keep your feet and you out of trouble—at least for a little while, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I blushed and hoped she was only kidding about the bike. She’d been grinnin’ when she said it, so it could still happen.
The Randy Travis song Mom had been humming along to was replaced by a deep voice that sounded strangely familiar.
“Is that Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard?” I asked and scrunched up my face.
“You don’t like it?”
“He shoulda stuck with TV,” I said and tried to block out the sappy love song.
The Dukes of Hazzard was my favorite TV show. I watched the reruns all the time. It was about two former moonshine runners who were staying on the right side of the law now but still got in trouble with the sheriff all the time anyhow.
Moonshine used to be a big thing up in these hills. Back during the Prohibition era when alcohol was illegal, folks would make moonshine and then outrun the cops trying to get it to the big cities to sell. It’s how a lot of mountain folks made a living during hard times. When alcohol became legal again, it put a lot of families out of business.
The show took place in what was supposed to be today’s time in the Appalachian Mountains, but the accents were too thick and it was sort of cheesy. Bo and Luke Duke’s clashes with the sheriff led to lots of car chases, though, which is why I liked it. Before my old bike fell apart, Piran and I used to pretend we were Bo and Luke Duke, racing around the erosion ditches like we were driving the General Lee, their 1969 Dodge Charger. That was my dream car.
I looked out the window, but the bright sun hit the glass just so and I ended up staring at my own reflection. Shadows stood out under my nose and eyebrows, and I squished up my face to turn them into odd shapes. It would have worked better if I had strong, sharp edges like my dad, but I had my mom’s roundness along with her olive skin, brown hair that would never lie down straight, and dark eyes.
Mom said my coloring came from a Cherokee ancestor. This used to be Cherokee land. Sometimes Piran and I found arrowheads or pieces of pottery lyin’ around. Most Native Americans were forced away on the Trail of Tears, but some hid out in the mountains and slowly blended back into society. Grandpa Chase told me, “You can’t swing a dead cat without hittin’ Indian blood in Coppertown.” I liked the idea of being part Indian. They never would have stripped the land the way the Company had. They lived with nature. It made me proud to know I had that in me too.
As we drove past the Company, I squinted through my reflection at the red-and-white-striped smokestack that marked its location from miles away. Without trees, it was the tallest thing in these parts. Heck, it’d probably be the tallest thing even with trees. You could never get lost in Coppertown as long as you could see the smokestack.
Coote Epworth walked alongside the road near the entrance to the mine, mumbling to himself as he always did. Crazy Coote, as folks called him, was bent and skinny with a stubbly beard. He always wore either a blue, green, or red hooded sweatshirt with worn blue jeans and kept his hands stuffed deep in his pockets.
“Coote’s wearing red today”—or “green” or “blue”—we’d say when we saw him. He was kind of our town mascot, even though he was nuts.
“Mom, why does he just walk around all the time?” I turned in my seat to watch him out the back window. And what’s he saying?
“You remember hearing about that big mine collapse way back when, before you were born?”
“The one Grandfather Hicks died in?”
“No, the other one, from when they got too close to another mine shaft robbing the drifts for ore. Your grandfather warned they shouldn’t do it, but management told ’em to anyway. They said it was insured, so they should try. Well, the explosion made the mine unstable,” Mom said. “Coote’s mama was pregnant when his daddy was killed in it. She took to drinking and Coote came out a little funny. The insurance money didn’t matter then.”
I frowned and promised myself I wouldn’t make fun of Coote anymore.
We stopped at the gas station on the way home. Mom was just pulling up to the full-service side as usual when none other than Eli Munroe came rushin’ out in greasy overalls with Mr. Habersham right on his heels snapping a gray towel like a whip. “And don’t you ever come back, you stupid kid!”
Eli jumped into his worn-out Jeep and peeled out of the lot, glancing at me with a scowl as he veered into traffic. Several cars swerved to avoid being hit.
“Sorry you had to see that, Mrs. Hicks. Kid was smoking a cigarette right next to an oil drum. ’Bout blew us up. He’s as sharp as a butter knife, that one.” Mr. Habersham rubbed the dirty rag over his red face, which didn’t help matters. “Fill you up?”
“Regular, please,” Mom said and handed him her Exxon card.
“Why isn’t he in school?” I wondered out loud.
“Didn’t he graduate last year?” Mom asked.
“No, he’s supposed to be a senior,” I said.
She shook her head. “Shame.”
At home, I placed the cast next to my baseball trophies on the shelf under my bedroom window. In a way, it was a trophy too. I smiled at all the
signatures. They were so different. Some were loopy, some were scratchy. Sonny Rust, the Company manager’s son, had drawn a smiley face like John Hancock’s big signature on the Declaration of Independence. He was always trying too hard to fit in. At least the smiley face was on the underside where it wasn’t starin’ at me.
I changed my clothes, putting on a fresh pair of jeans and a plaid flannel shirt from the bureau, since the ones I’d had on were covered with plaster dust. It was so nice to pull my shirt on without a cast. I wiggled my fingers as they poked out the end of my sleeve. Then I leaned over and tied up my new sneakers.
Piran will be jealous. I frowned. I wished I could buy him a pair too.
Piran didn’t get new things very often and when he did, it was usually something “practical.” His family wasn’t poor or anything, but the postmaster’s job didn’t pay nearly as good as mining, so money had to stretch in their house.
“Jack, dinner,” Mom called from the kitchen. “I made your favorite, macaroni and cheese.”
“Let’s see that arm,” Dad said as I ran into the kitchen.
I held it out for him to inspect. “It looks kinda puny.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll build it back up in no time.”
“We saw that Munroe boy at the gas station today,” Mom said as she set a large dish of yellow globby goodness on the table. “Mr. Habersham fired him for smokin’ near an oil drum.”
“I’m not surprised,” Dad said. “He applied for a job at the mine last week, but that boy is about as bright as a coon-oil lantern on a foggy day. He wouldn’t last a week underground.”
Dad got quiet and cleared his throat. It seemed that everything reminded him of Amon, which turned his mood to dark clouds as quick as spit. He reached for the serving spoon and plopped two huge helpings of macaroni and cheese onto his plate like he was angry at it.
Save some for me, I worried.
“Jack, do you know you’ll be a seventh-generation copper miner?” he said.
Of course I knew. Like most of our neighbors, we even hung the flag of Cornwall, England, below our American flag—black with a white cross representing the tin that ran through the ground there.
“And there’s no telling how long our family was mining tin in England before we came to America,” he continued.
“Ray, stop,” Mom whispered. “Not during dinner.”
“What about Uncle Amon?” I gulped.
“He weren’t no miner,” he mumbled and the muscles in his face sank like melting snow. “He never should have been down there to begin with. Mama didn’t want him to… It’s why I wouldn’t hire Eli. It’s a team down there. Those men gotta be able to trust you. One man not paying attention to what the rock is sayin’ puts everybody in danger.” He pointed his fork at me. “But don’t you worry, Jack. You’re my son. You’re made of the right stuff and you’ll make a damned fine miner.”
“Ray, will you just stop?” Mom glared at him until he sighed and went back to his dinner.
I knew I should have been flattered by what he said. He’d dropped out of high school to take care of his family when Grandfather Hicks died in the collapse and had moved up quickly, despite never getting his high school diploma.
“Hard work will get you anywhere,” he’d say.
But he never bothered to ask me what I wanted to do, which was pretty much anything other than mining. Do you even care what I think? I wanted to yell. Did it matter to him? But how could I tell my dad that I didn’t want his life?
I couldn’t move my fork. Who knew you could get a stomachache from macaroni and cheese?
Mom looked at me with her forehead all wrinkled. “Eat up, Jack. We’ve got to get goin’ to the park.”
I couldn’t hold on to my bad mood for music night—Hannah would be there!
Chapter 4
Music Night
Friday night was music night. Being the last one of the season, nearly everybody in town would gather at the river park in Georgia for bluegrass.
Coppertown sat right at the intersection of Polk County in Tennessee and Fannin County in Georgia. Cherokee County in North Carolina was just a stone’s throw away too. In fact, the Tennessee-Georgia state line ran right through the parking lot of the Company store.
Piran and I had stood with a foot in each state many a time. It made me feel like I’d been around, which I hadn’t.
We caught up with Grandpa Chase as we walked down to the park with our folding chairs. Dad and I helped him unload some coolers from his truck. Since Grandpa owned the local Bait ’n Beer, he sold RC Colas and MoonPies for fifty cents during music nights. Course, he couldn’t sell beer over the state line because Fannin was a dry county. And with Sheriff Elder right there, nobody was sneakin’ in anything they shouldn’t.
Grandpa gave me my cola and MoonPies for free. Sometimes I could wrangle one for Piran too.
I was just grabbing one for the both of us when his sister swooped by with her pack of girlfriends in a cloud of paisley and pink. I stuttered out a weak, “H-h-hi, Hannah.”
“Oh, hey, Jack,” she said and kept going on by. I focused on setting out a folding chair so nobody would notice my grin. Nothing could keep me down on music night.
The river kept the air cool as the water flowed by the park in a wide curve. People came down out of the hills, some so wrinkled and bent, you’d swear they were at least two hundred years old. And they all brought their instruments with ’em—everywhere you looked there were guitars, banjos, fiddles, basses, mandolins, and dulcimers. Sometimes there were more people making music than listening. For everybody else, it was a good time to catch up on gossip.
When Grandpa Chase wasn’t sellin’, he was sawing away on his fiddle. Mr. Quinn, Piran’s dad, plucked like wildfire on his banjo, clawhammer-style. A few kids stumbled over their fingering, trying to keep up. Mom sang along to “I’ll Fly Away” and “Rosewood Casket”—I caught Dad looking at her with a goofy expression on his face. If anybody could get his mind off the mine, it was her.
Old Counce Taylor harmonized with her in his Celtic mountain drawl. When he sang “Angel Band,” he blended all the words together until it was nearly impossible to tell what the words were. Grandpa said he sounded like a bagpipe—that it was the old mountain way of singin’.
Aunt Livvy and Uncle Bubba danced a few reels. They were so good people said they could win awards. Buster just grumbled, “God, they’re at it again,” and tried not to stand too close.
Practically the whole town was there—the miners and the folks whose businesses existed because of the miners. The store owners, the doctors, the service folks, and even Miss Post, who looked pretty in a green dress with her hair down. A man was standing beside her who I didn’t recognize. Was he her boyfriend? Did teachers have boyfriends?
At any rate, all the folks from Coppertown were there. We were one big family.
Except for the Rusts, that is. Not only were they from some big city, Nashville or somewhere, but Mr. Rust was the Company manager. He held the fate of most of our fathers’ jobs in his hands.
Since my dad was a supervisor, we’d been invited up to their big Victorian house once. It was over a hundred years old, built by the original owner of the copper mines—I’d never seen anything so fancy. Sonny’s bedroom was nearly as big as our kitchen and den combined. And they had a parlor—I never could figure out what for—and chandeliers, which were lights with crystals hangin’ from the ceiling. I couldn’t imagine living in a house like that.
The Rusts were nice enough, I suppose, and tried hard to be a part of our community, but there was no way they ever would. They sat at the edge of the gathering where folks smiled politely to them but didn’t ask them to join in.
So other than going to different churches and some folks not getting along with others so well, we were one big family—except for the Rusts. It was kinda like my ba
seball team, just bigger. I couldn’t wait to be playing again, considering I hadn’t been able to practice with my cast on. We Miners were as tough as our fathers, undefeated in our region the year before. We planned to do it again the following spring and beat out our biggest rivals, the Rockets.
We lived baseball and would have been playing during music night, but nobody let us practice around all those expensive instruments. We might have let Sonny join in if we had been playing, but since we weren’t, Buster, Piran, and I hung out at the water’s edge and skipped rocks.
From our position, we could spy the bend in the river where they’d stacked smashed-up cars to keep the bank from eroding. Trees would’ve done a better job, if there’d been any.
“How’s your arm feel without the cast?” Piran asked.
“It aches,” I said, the toss of a stone sending shock waves up to my shoulder. “The doc said the bone is set, but it’ll still bother me for a while. I’m just glad the cast is gone.”
“Me too.” The tops of his ears turned pink and he glanced at my feet. “Nice sneakers. Converse?”
“Yeah, Mom got ’em for me.” I shrugged and tried not to make a big deal out of it.
“Cool.”
As we tossed rock after rock, I tried to watch Hannah out of the corner of my eye. She was a senior and the most beautiful girl in Coppertown—maybe in all the Appalachians. How she could be related to Piran was beyond me.
Where Piran had wiry hair sticking out the top of his head like popcorn, Hannah’s strawberry-blond curls flowed over her freckled shoulders like hot slag pouring down the hillside. Her lips stayed a rosy pink, even though she didn’t wear that shiny, banana-smelling lip gloss that the other girls did. And unlike Piran, she got her mom’s eyes, crystal blue like the sky on a cloudless day. She didn’t play any musical instruments, but oh, could she dance. The setting sun lit her in silhouette as she spun and spun in her pink paisley dress. Time slowed and I…
A Bird on Water Street Page 3