I didn’t know what to say. My eyes got all watery and I hugged Grandpa so tight.
Finally he grunted and I stepped back. “Oh, I’m sorry! Did I hurt your back?”
“Not to worry, Jack,” he said. “That was just my heart bustin’ its seams.”
I used some of the leftover manure from the garden and dug a hole nearby for the tree.
Grandpa was impressed with my hole-diggin’ skills, which I had to put to work on the red ground. That ground was much tougher and before long I had blisters on my hands, but I had to finish. Mom stuck some bandages on me and Dad gave me some gloves to wear. I turned manure into the ground for a long time, knowing that what I did might make the difference between the tree living or dying.
When it was finally planted in the ground, it seemed much shorter. Of course, a good portion of the tree was underground, waitin’ to take root. It’s trunk looked skinnier too with all that bare land behind it, humbling it. Like David taking on Goliath, it needed me to keep it safe in the harsh environment of Coppertown. It needed us.
I handed Grandpa the hose to water it. “It’ll be our forest,” I said.
Chapter 19
Jobs
April was more of the same old, same old. I thought I was gonna melt with boredom. I couldn’t wait for May and the return of Music Fridays.
Aunt Livvy, Uncle Bubba, and Buster came over to join in since it was the first music night of the season and they didn’t have anything like that in Lumpkin.
Aunt Livvy went on about how much I’d grown, but all I could see was how much my dad had shrunk. When he stood next to Uncle Bubba, it was obvious how much weight he’d lost. He used to be the bigger of the two, but not anymore.
I acted like I couldn’t overhear Mom and Aunt Livvy talking about it as I grabbed an RC Cola from Grandpa’s cooler.
“He won’t give up on it, Livvy,” Mom whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Have you thought about gettin’ a job?” Livvy said.
“I got married straight out of school.” Mom laughed. “I don’t know about anything other than being a wife and mother.”
“Desperate times deserve desperate measures, Grace.”
Buster, Piran, and I tried to talk baseball, but it just got us down. Besides, it was hard to concentrate with the group of girls from our class looking at us and gigglin’ every five minutes.
Buster checked his shirt. “Did I spill somethin’?”
“Nah, yer fine,” Piran said. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
I rolled my eyes. “Piran, Beth Ann has a crush on you. Didn’t you know?”
Buster smacked Piran’s arm. “Go, Mr. Studly!”
“She does?” Piran turned red from his neck right up to the top of his shiny red ears. Buster and I died laughing as we headed to the water’s edge.
We skipped stones like we used to, teasing Piran about Beth Ann and comparing our favorite sports stars. It all felt so familiar, and yet everything was different.
My parents got into a heated conversation that night. Even with their door closed, I could tell it had something to do with what Aunt Livvy had said at the park. They got louder and louder until their bedroom door opened with a whoosh then slammed shut. Dad stomped down the hall, past my bedroom to the den.
I had a hard time getting to sleep, and when I finally did, I tossed and turned all night.
Mom was already gone the next morning when I entered the kitchen. The newspaper was pulled apart and scattered all over the table, where Dad sat staring at his hands. I peeked in the den. A pillow and blanket were rumpled on the couch.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“She’s off to find a job,” Dad muttered.
I made myself a bowl of cereal and tried to be quiet about it. Halfway through my meal, Dad suddenly pushed his chair back and stalked out to his metal shop.
When I returned home from hangin’ out with Piran, Mom was sitting in the car in front of the house. I couldn’t tell how long she’d been there, but the hood was cold and already covered with a thin sheen of silicone dust when I touched it to get her attention. She wiped her eyes before she climbed out. She looked so tired and small as I opened the kitchen door for her.
Dad was waiting inside. He had to know she’d been sittin’ in out there. He would have heard her pull up. “I gather it didn’t go well?”
Mom glared at him then sank into a kitchen chair. “Fifteen women showed up for the same job,” she said. “I didn’t stand a chance.”
Dad turned to the sink before I could read his expression. Sitting there in her Sunday dress and heels, she looked so fragile. “They made a mistake,” I said. Who had the nerve to turn away my mom?
She blinked, but didn’t look up. “I’ll go change and get dinner going.”
Chapter 20
Hannah
Things were going downhill at Piran’s house too.
“I can come over,” I told Piran on the phone the next weekend. Another storm had hit, trapping us indoors. Maybe, just maybe, Hannah would be home for once.
“Nah, I’ll come up there,” he replied, then whispered into the receiver, “I need to get outta here.”
“Why, what’s up?”
“I’ll tell ya when I get there.”
We sat in my room going through old magazines, but I could tell Piran wasn’t paying much attention. He kept chewing his nails and staring at the floor.
I waited for him and kept peeking at him out of the corner of my eye.
Finally he spit it out in a rush. “Hannah’s pregnant.”
“What?” My stomach turned upside down.
“She broke the news last night.” He didn’t look up. “She and Eli are getting married.”
“Married! But… But she’s in high school! And… And he doesn’t even have a job!”
“She graduates next month, and she’s the same age my mom was when she married my dad,” Piran said. “But, God! Eli Munroe is going to be my brother-in-law!”
My tomato soup lunch threatened to come back up. I’d been holding out hope that Hannah would realize how wrong Eli was for her. I’d been waiting for my chance to show her how right I was for her. But now it didn’t matter.
Married.
“They’re moving into an apartment in town,” Piran said. “My parents are furious.”
Piran’s face was splotchy red and slack. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so upset.
“I’m real sorry, Piran,” I muttered as my heart sank down to my toes.
“Yeah.”
Hannah and Eli were married at the courthouse two weeks later. Only immediate family attended, so Piran told me what happened—even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.
“Hannah was all googly-eyed, but Eli looked like he’d swallowed a toad. He was green I tell ya—green! Everybody was frownin’ and grumbling like right before a fight breaks out. I thought my dad and Eli’s dad were gonna come to blows, because Mr. and Mrs. Munroe blamed Hannah, of course. Like she got pregnant on purpose or somethin’. It was the most depressing wedding I’ve ever been to.”
Hannah and Eli didn’t go on a honeymoon, just hung out in Eli’s apartment—their apartment. I tried so hard not to think about it, but it kept creepin’ into my brain.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Rockets baseball team was all over the newspaper as they soaked up win after win. If the Miners were playing, it would be us in those papers.
My heart was as bare as Coppertown, and I didn’t think I could sink any lower.
Chapter 21
Tadpoles
Without being wrapped up in baseball season, Piran and I didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
“We could go swimmin’ in the sinkhole,” Piran suggested one weekend.
“God, Piran, that’s the sort of creepy th
ing Buster would come up with,” I complained. “You know my grandpa died in that collapse before it filled up with water. That would be like swimming around in his grave. Besides, there’s still equipment down there, and you can’t get in anyhow.”
“Half the fence is rotted,” Piran said. “The runoff water ate up the bottom of the metal posts. I knocked one over the other day without barely pushing at all. C’mon, I dare you.”
I gave him a dirty look. “You know what happened the last time I took one of your dares, Piran Quinn. I don’t need no more broken bones,” I said. “How about we go check on the frog eggs up at the tailings pond?”
“We’re not supposed to go there neither,” Piran reminded me.
“Nothing is gonna keep me away from those frog eggs,” I said.
On the way past the trestle bridge, Piran looked at me sideways. “I have an idea,” he said. When he walked out to the center of the bridge, my jaw dropped.
“Don’t worry, the train don’t run no more. C’mon!” He unzipped his pants and peed into the mud below. “It seems only fittin’, don’t ya think?”
I nodded and walked out to join him, taking the awkwardly spaced beams step by step. That day in August came back to me in a rush and my knees grew weak.
Piran urged me on. “C’mon, Jack, you can do it.”
Soon I was by his side and doing the same thing. The bumpy landscape of Coppertown spread out in front of me as I let go with a record-breaking pee onto the exact spot where I’d broken my arm. It did feel like a good payback as I replaced the bad memory of lying in that ditch in pain with the new one of doing something goofy with my best friend.
The tailings pond was starting to dry up. The feeder creeks were down to a trickle and several small ponds were now completely cut off from the main pond.
“I was afraid of that,” I said. “I’ll bet these are all gone by summer.”
“Hey, look!” Piran pointed at where the eggs had been. Tiny black tadpoles, no bigger than macaroni, wiggled through the water.
We stretched across the ground to get a better look.
Down low, I noticed something else—green reeds were sproutin’ out of the ground all around the ponds. Some even had the beginnings of leaves on them.
I shouted with excitement. “Piran, look—weeds!”
“Oh yeah,” he replied with much less enthusiasm.
“It’s nature, Piran,” I tried to explain. “After a hundred years of nothing, nothing, nature is comin’ back to Coppertown!”
“Eh. I like Coppertown the way it is,” Piran said. “What do you want a bunch of weeds around for anyway? I’d probably just be allergic, which would make my asthma worse.”
I was speechless. How could my best friend not understand? Even so, he didn’t dampen my mood. Weeds! Trees couldn’t be far behind.
I smiled all the way home as I stared at the ground lookin’ for more signs of life moving in. How long would it take for everything to turn green?
I told Miss Post about the tadpoles, although I didn’t tell her where I’d found ’em.
“Jack, honey,” she said, “we don’t have frogs in Coppertown.”
“The eggs must’ve come down with the flood waters or something, because they’re here all right,” I said. “There’s weeds growing along the banks too.”
She wasn’t convinced but found me an entire book on amphibians anyway. It went into way more detail than our school science book. I read about the stages they went through, called metamorphosis, from eggs to tadpoles to frogs, and learned that frogs actually breathe through their skin.
I can’t wait to see that!
According to the book, the tadpoles still had over a month to go before they’d be bona fide frogs. Would the pond last that long for them?
I pulled out the book Miss Post got me earlier in the year on plant identification. How cool to actually have living examples to compare to the pictures in the book! I walked all over Coppertown with that book sticking out my back pocket or my nose stuck in it studying.
I didn’t recognize most of the weeds popping up everywhere, but I picked out the kudzu right away. Whenever we drove outside of Coppertown, we passed miles of land swallowed up entirely by the green vines. It was pretty in its way, but a little scary too. Though I’d never thought of nature as being aggressive, kudzu was proof of it.
Chapter 22
Security Guards
That weekend, Mom called me over to the garden. “Jack, see how long the pea plants are getting? We need to make a lattice for them to climb up!”
“How we gonna do that?”
“I’m not sure. They never got this far before.” Mom tapped her chin. “I know!”
We got some rebar from Dad’s metal shop, stuck it deep into the ground at each end of the row of peas, and ran kitchen string between ’em. Then we gently curled the tendrils around the strings, givin’ the vines something to grab on to.
We were just finishing up when Dad sped into the yard, kicking up gravel as he screeched to a stop. His face was red as a beet as he slammed his car door and stormed into the house. Mom and I looked at each other warily and followed him in. Dad paced back and forth in the kitchen like a mad bull.
“The Company’s brought in security guards from out of town,” he said through gritted teeth, all the veins sticking out on his neck and forehead. “They never did anything so low down before.”
“I don’t understand. Why would they need security guards if the Company is closed?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know, Grace, but it can’t be good,” Dad said. “They’re planning something.”
He said they were dressed all in black like some sort of special military unit, although that’s not what they were. They were sent in to intimidate the strikers, mess with the picket line, bust up the Union.
Grandpa Chase showed up right before dinner, mad as a stuck pig. “I don’t believe this. Workers have been strikin’ for years. We always came up with an agreement everybody could live with,” he said. “On the way over here, I heard that one of those security guards followed Tom Hill home and cursed at him in his own front yard. Sheriff Elder couldn’t even arrest the jerk—said the guy was on public property when he did it. What has the world come to?” He shook his head. “Security guards my foot. They’re bullies with badges.”
“Want dinner, Pa?” Mom asked. “It’s nothing fancy, but I’m sure we could make it stretch.”
I looked at the pot on the stove and swallowed—beans and rice again, and so little that it was hard to imagine us dividing it with one more person. I could have eaten the whole amount all by myself.
“Thanks, Grace, but I can’t stay,” Grandpa said, and I sighed with relief. “Just wanted to make sure yu’uns knew what was going on.”
Chapter 23
Eavesdropping
School let out the next week, but I hardly cared.
“Have a good summer,” Miss Post said with a sigh as people started leaving the room.
I gave her back the library books she’d given me as well as the book on plant identification, but she handed that one back. “You keep this one, Jack. It was my copy.”
“Oh, oh, I couldn’t.”
But she pushed it back toward me. “I think you need this book more than I do.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. But even as grateful as I was, I couldn’t smile. “Miss Post, are you getting married? Are you gonna leave?”
“Oh, Jack.” Her eyes filled with tears and she nodded.
I don’t know what came over me, but I hugged her tight as can be, right around her middle—we were nearly the same height. If anybody saw, they might have laughed at me, but right then, I didn’t care a wit. “I’m gonna miss you.”
She squeezed me back. “I’m going to miss you too. You never stop reading, y’hear?”
“What
is it with you and older women?” Piran teased as we left the building. He’d seen me after all.
I just smiled. “Can I help it if they find me attractive?”
He rolled his eyes and pushed me. “Want to go for ice cream?”
“Nah.” I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t afford it.
“I can buy,” he said. “You’ve treated me plenty.”
Somethin’ inside me just couldn’t say yes. I wondered if that’s how Piran felt when I used to help him out. It was a hard lump to swallow, pride. “Thanks, but I gotta get home.”
“Fishin’ tomorrow, then?” Piran asked.
“Okay, I’ll see you in the mornin’.”
But we didn’t get to fish. News came that afternoon that Mrs. Ledford had finally passed. The viewing was the next day.
Mom made a cornbread casserole for the reception afterward at the Ledfords’ house. We all dressed in our Sunday best and headed for the Methodist church. “You look pretty, Mom.”
“Thank you, Jack,” she replied and tugged at my too-short sleeves. “You look right handsome yourself.”
“Jacket could be a bit bigger.” My shoulders were pulled behind me like chicken wings.
“You’re getting so tall,” she said and hugged me. Engulfed by the smell of Ivory soap and cornbread, I kept myself scrunched up so my jacket wouldn’t rip apart at the seams. Finally she turned away, wiping tears from her eyes. I held her hand tightly as we walked into church.
It was much more modest than our Episcopal church—just a white box with a pointy roof that was packed solid with people. Folks squeezed into the pews and stood against the walls.
We got in line to view the body. I hated open caskets. Mrs. Ledford looked so tiny and kind of silly in the rouge and lipstick I knew she never wore. She had on her purple dress, the one with the big pink flowers. I’d seen it on her many times under better circumstances.
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