“No way, Jack. Hannah? She’s out of your league, cuz,” Buster said and laughed.
I felt heat rise to my cheeks and glanced at Piran, who just rolled his eyes. We were in silent agreement—the less said about my crush, the better. Leave it to Buster to make a scene out of it.
“I bet I can skip this rock six times,” Piran said, changing the subject. God bless him.
“I bet I can do seven!” Buster replied, taking the bait.
His disk-shaped rock skipped out across the amber surface of the water, creating small trails of white where it hit. One, two, three, four, five, six… Not seven, but still something to brag about.
It was the kind of night I wished could last forever.
Chapter 5
Layoffs
The next week we were into October. Colder weather was finally moving in, and I puffed my breath into doughnut shapes as I walked close to the river. Fog soaked through to my bones. I rubbed my arm.
Piran’s head bobbed on his tall, lanky frame as he walked uphill to meet me at the end of the bridge.
“Mornin’,” he gasped but didn’t pull out his inhaler.
“Mornin’.” I waited for him to catch his breath. “Okay?”
Piran walked up Killer Hill almost half a mile to the bridge every day. My walk was only a quarter mile and all downhill. “Yeah. The cold air is just gettin’ to me.”
“You read that science chapter last night?” I asked.
“I tried to, but I fell asleep.” Piran rolled his eyes. “Amphibilans are so boring.”
“Amphibians,” I said. Along with no trees, we didn’t have any frogs or salamanders in Coppertown—there weren’t any bugs for them to eat. But I’d put up with bugs if it meant having frogs. “I think they’re cool.”
“Good. You can tell me all about ’em.”
I dove into the details of the frog’s life cycle, from egg to tadpole to adult. Piran made snoring noises.
“Fine, fine.” I laughed. “But you know you just jinxed yourself. Miss Post will call on you for certain now.”
“Eh, I’ll study some at lunch.”
He didn’t, of course.
By noon, the day had warmed up enough for baseball.
Piran pitched and I was at first base. It felt so good to be playing again, even in a loose game of after-lunch baseball, and even if my arm scared me from catchin’ anything just yet. It would be too cold and wet to play before too long, so I was anxious to fit in whatever I could.
Standing where we were, Piran and I saw the sulfur cloud first. It was headin’ straight toward the ball field.
“Hey yu’uns”—Piran nodded toward the Company—“hold yer breath.”
Everybody squinted as the yellow cloud sank onto the field, turning everything a sickly color.
I coughed a few times and felt the familiar burn in my lungs. Sulfur clouds blew through from the Company at least once a week, sometimes more.
Piran reached for his inhaler. We all waited a few minutes to get used to the stink and then went back to playing.
“Hey, Sonny,” Buster yelled out, “your dad dealt a mean one that time.”
“Ha, ha,” Sonny said and looked away. But not before I caught a glimpse of his frown and saw his cheeks turn bright pink.
I kinda felt bad for Sonny sometimes. Nobody really wanted him on the team, but he was a better-than-average shortstop, so we put up with him.
As I predicted, Miss Post called on Piran to answer a question about our amphibians homework.
“How long does it take for a frog to grow from an egg to an adult frog?”
Piran turned white as chalk. I tried to send him the answer with my brain, but his eyes were big as headlights—nothing was gettin’ through.
“Um—” Piran said.
Just then, the classroom door swung open. Principal Slaughter walked straight to the front of the room with a frown etched into his large brow. “Miss Post, I need to speak with you in the hall,” he said.
“We’re in the middle of a lesson…” Miss Post objected.
“This can’t wait,” he said and led her out of class.
“Lucky break,” I whispered to Piran.
“Yeah,” he said and let out the breath he’d obviously been holding.
We straightened up as Miss Post returned. Her face was whiter than Piran’s had been.
“Children,” she said and took a deep breath, “Principal Slaughter just shared some bad news.”
My stomach dropped. The siren wasn’t blaring. How bad could it be? Was Dad okay? He could have a broken bone or a concussion, or he might need stitches—those sorts of things happened all the time and the Company didn’t run the siren for those.
“The Company is laying people off, a lot of them.” She frowned. “Don’t worry about the lesson. Go home to your families.”
As Piran and I made our way through the school toward the front doors, the sound of sneakers squeaking on linoleum tiles filled the hall instead of the usual laughter. Like astronauts leaving a spaceship, we poured out of the dark building into the glaring sun and joined the growing crowd on Water Street. Nobody was running this time, so we were privy to all the gossip buzzing around us.
“I heard they were laying off a thousand men,” Mrs. McCoy said. “That’s over half the workforce!”
“That’s just a rumor, Ida Mae,” Mrs. Abernathy said.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Mrs. Hill replied.
“My Howard can’t lose his job,” Mrs. Barnes told everybody. “He’s got seniority.”
“Doesn’t your dad have seniority too?” Piran asked me.
“Yeah, he’s worked there forever.”
By the time we got to the Company, the first groups of men were already walking past us with their heads down. Their faces looked a lot like Piran’s when Miss Post had asked him about the frogs—pale, slack-mouthed, wide-eyed. Their wives rushed to their sides.
“What’s that pink paper they’re holding?” I asked.
“It’s called a pink slip,” Mrs. Hill whispered. “It means they don’t have a job anymore.”
That’s when it really hit me. Layoffs. For so long, I’d secretly wished for something to keep Dad out of the mine, to keep him safe. But I’d meant safe from injury. I’d never considered something like this. What would happen if he lost his job?
I’d always imagined “Dad safe” as a sunny picture—I saw him eating pancakes or fiddling around in his metal shop all day. Everybody would be smiling, everybody would be happy. But if Dad lost his job, where would the money come from? How long would it be before we were living in a ramshackle shed like Crazy Coote?
Inside the gate, two men I’d never seen before stood on either side of Mr. Ducat, the Company accountant. Everybody usually liked Mr. Ducat, seeing as he handed out the paychecks, but today they barely looked at him. He waited by the elevator with his box full of envelopes, shifting his weight uncomfortably.
Mr. Rust, Sonny’s dad, wasn’t anywhere in sight, and neither was Sonny. Go figure.
Everybody got quiet as the hoist whined back into motion to lift another group of men from the mine. When they reached the top, Mr. Ducat riffled through the envelopes and handed them out. Lift after lift, group by group, most of the men were laid off, including Will McCaffrey’s dad.
Despite Will being partly responsible for my broken arm, I felt bad for him and his family. What were they gonna do now? There’d been the blue-jeans factory, but it closed two years earlier. Construction might be a good job for a miner, but Coppertown wasn’t exactly a booming city. Stores downtown sometimes put out signs when they needed help. I tried to picture a miner dishing out ice cream at Dilbeck’s Pharmacy, or taking ticket stubs at the movie theater. It didn’t fit. And besides, I hadn’t seen a HELP WANTED sign in ages.
My fingers g
rew numb.
I watched Mr. Barnes open his envelope and pull out a pink slip. His shoulders sagged as he lifted his brass ID tag from the In board and moved it to the Out board, proof he was above ground—no longer in the mine.
“No, that can’t be,” Mrs. Barnes gasped. “Howard has seniority.”
I felt a lump grow in my throat.
The laid-off men hunched over and shuffled toward the crowd. Some had white tracks where tears ran down their blackened faces. They didn’t even try to hide their emotions.
Mr. Ledford rubbed the tears from his face, turning the grimy soot into a ghostly mask. His wife was sick with lung cancer, what my grandma had died from. My mouth suddenly tasted like ash. Mrs. Ledford hadn’t looked too good when I’d dropped off Mom’s apple cobbler a few days earlier.
The crowd thinned as families walked home in silence.
My dad and his crew were the last ones out, as usual. As a supervisor, it was my dad’s job to shut equipment down at the end of the day.
I felt a hand grip my shoulder. Mom stood next to me, clutching her coat tightly around her despite the warm sun. Her face was covered with shadows as she looked straight ahead. Mr. Ducat handed Dad his envelope.
Dad removed his ID tag from the board, rubbing his thumb over his initials and his number, 340, as if for good luck. Then he stared at the sealed envelope for what seemed like forever.
“Open it,” I whispered.
Finally, he took a deep breath and ripped it open. He pulled out a paycheck, and nothing more. My dad still had his job, for now.
I sighed with relief. So did Mom. But my stomach hit my feet when Dad turned to face the men on his crew. I hadn’t been watchin’ them because I’d been staring at Dad so intently. But Uncle Bubba, Uncle Mike, Uncle Rich, D.W., and Uncle Silas—that’s what I called them, even though Uncle Bubba, Buster’s dad, was the only one I was actually related to—every one of them held a pink slip. They stood together for the longest time, their eyes wide with shock. Nobody said a word as they patted each other’s backs.
My eyes stung, but I couldn’t even blink.
Mom hugged Aunt Livvy before she and Uncle Bubba left. Buster didn’t even look up.
“Talk to ya later,” I mumbled to Piran as Dad put an arm over me and Mom.
I was surprised to feel Dad actually leaning on me as we walked away. I glanced up. He coughed and blinked and looked away.
I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I kept my eyes glued to my new sneakers. They were already scuffed and dirty.
Chapter 6
Crazy Ideas
Grandpa Chase was pacing on our front porch when we got home.
“I came straight over when I heard,” he said and looked at Dad.
“I’ve still got my job,” he said, “but I lost my crew, including Bubba.”
“Damn.” Grandpa patted him heavily on the back.
“Union is meetin’ tomorrow,” Dad said.
“I imagine so.” Grandpa nodded.
“Pa, you going over to Livvy’s?” Mom asked. “I was about to call her.”
“Tell her I’ll check on ’em tomorrow,” he said. “I imagine they got enough to worry about tonight.”
“Well, stay for dinner then,” Mom muttered. “I’ll get it going.”
She made country-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, which everybody usually loved. But we didn’t eat much. I tried to enjoy it, but the meat stuck in my throat like a big lump that wouldn’t go down.
Mom cleared the dishes and nodded toward Grandpa.
“Jack, let’s you and me go set on the porch,” he said.
I wanted to scream, I’m thirteen for law’s sake! I hated when adults acted like I didn’t know what was going on.
“String some beans while you’re out there,” Mom said and handed us two bowls, two peelers, and a bag of pole beans. Usually I’d complain, but this time I kept quiet.
Grandpa rocked the swing slowly back and forth—my sneakers brushing the porch floor with every pass. Between us, the bowls clicked softly against each other from our movement, sounding like a wind chime.
Grandpa snapped the ends off his beans and ran the peeler down each side twice as fast as I did. I tried to keep up, but I couldn’t help listenin’ to my parents arguing in the kitchen. They were upset and growing louder. I wondered how the other families were doing—the ones who’d gotten pink slips. We were lucky, but it didn’t feel like it.
“Ow!” I said and stuck my knuckle in my mouth.
“Cut yourself?” Grandpa asked.
I nodded.
“Let’s take a break,” he said.
We sat back and watched the sun set over our Red Hills. The light turned the hilltops red, orange, and gold as the light hit them sideways and cast the erosion ditches into deep blues and purples. I suppose it was pretty in its own way—a lot of folks thought so.
Coppertown sat in a bowl at the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains—they called it the Copper Basin. Low hills surrounded the town, and the Tohachee River cut from east to west through the middle of it like a zipper.
Since my dad was a supervisor, our house on Smelter Hill was high up. Not as high as the Rusts’, but we had one of the better views around. I looked at the bridge that crossed to downtown with my school to the east, Tater Hill to the north, and the Company to the west—and at least fifty square miles of bare ground beyond that.
Folks were so proud when they’d talked about Coppertown on the national news. “The astronauts report they can see the denuded landscape of Coppertown, Tennessee, from the space shuttle.” Course, that was before the Challenger blew up and they stopped flying ’em altogether.
We were known worldwide, but not for any reason I was proud of. It didn’t seem right.
“Grandpa, since they closed up the smelting heaps, why haven’t trees grown back?”
He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Well, Jack, the government put limits on the acid fumes allowed to escape the Company, but the folks who own it live far away in New York City, and they’ve never paid the rules much mind. As long as they’re makin’ their money…”
Those city people were treating us like the characters from Star Trek that nobody missed when they got zapped by lasers or eaten by aliens—the ones who hadn’t been on the show long enough for anybody to care about ’em. They were expendable.
“It’s not right!” I said.
“I know, Jack,” Grandpa sighed. “But life is like that sometimes.”
“Well, I want the trees back,” I said. “I want a forest! So the roots can hold the ground together. Then maybe Uncle Amon wouldn’t have died.”
“Jack, the men work down in the rock, far below the dirt level,” Grandpa said. “There’s no tree on Earth whose roots could reach down that far.”
“I… I don’t care.” I stretched to kick my foot on the porch, but caught mostly air.
It didn’t make sense. We’d taken so much from Mother Nature. It seemed like she was just gettin’ us back. Who would be next? Dad…or me?
“Someday, I’m gonna make the Company follow the rules,” I said. “I’m gonna bring nature back.”
Dad opened the screen door. “Pa, you fillin’ his head with your crazy ideas again?”
“Ideas, my foot,” Grandpa said. “You seen a bird around here lately?”
“The government tests the air all the time,” Dad argued. “They say it’s perfectly safe.”
“What do you expect them to say with the Company wining and dining them every time they’re here?” Grandpa said.
“It just ain’t so, Pa. The Company takes good care of…” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah, like they took good care of your crew.” Grandpa shook his head. “And like they took good care of Amon and your daddy. How many more need to die before you snap
out o’ yer fantasy, Ray?”
I froze.
Dad glared at Grandpa for a minute like he was going to bust, but then his shoulders sank and he went back inside.
Dad was so proud of his job at the Company—the tradition, the money, the benefits—but sometimes I wondered if he was just coverin’ up because he didn’t know what else to do. Would he have been a miner if he’d had a choice? Would I have a choice?
Chapter 7
Sonny Rust
Everybody grew silent and stepped aside when Sonny Rust walked into school the next day. He looked like a deflating balloon shrinking into itself as he walked down the hall holding his books tight against him.
He turned toward his classroom but Buster blocked his path. “Where do you think you’re goin’?”
Sonny refused to meet Buster’s eyes and tried to meekly step around him, but Buster knocked his books out of his hands.
“You don’t belong here anymore,” Buster said through gritted teeth.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Sonny squeaked and stared at the floor like he wished he could sink into it. “It wasn’t me.”
Buster’s face turned red and his jaw muscles tensed like rubber bands—not good. I rushed to step between them. “Leave him alone, Buster.” I may not have liked Sonny a whole lot, but I knew what my cousin was capable of when his temper let loose.
“Out of my way, cuz,” Buster hissed.
“It wasn’t his fault, Buster,” I said. “He can’t help that his dad is the Company manager. Just leave him alone, okay?” I could usually talk Buster down. I was one of the few people who could.
“Maybe you’re right,” Buster mumbled and looked down.
I sighed with relief.
“But I don’t care!” Buster shouted. He stepped to the side then quickly spun around and nailed Sonny right in the eye with his fist. Sonny crumpled to the floor like a boneless chicken and slid into the wall.
“Send that message to your dad, you big turd,” Buster growled.
Everybody started yelling at once, either “Stop, stop!” or “Hit him again! He deserves it!”
A Bird on Water Street Page 4