“I done told you, they’s some he sees. Besides, I’ll tell him you’re my friend.”
“Oh. That should do it then.”
His eyes seemed to mock me, but then he smiled again. “You are something. I reckon you could talk a bear down outen a honey tree.”
Maybe, but I had a time convincing Miles.
“You’ve got no business being friends with a single miner,” he said. “I had a look at that fellow at the tipple. He’s got a swagger even with that cast on. There’s just one thing he wants from you.”
“What?”
“You’re not baiting me this time, Sis. I’m warning you, that’s all.”
“What makes you think he wants something from me? Aint nobody ever wanted it before.”
“That’s because you’re so muleheaded. It’s not becoming.”
“Go to church ifn you want to preach.” I stomped out, slamming the door behind me. Then I stuck my head back inside. “I’ll just invite him to supper at my place.”
I knew that would do it. He let out a sigh and said Lloyd could come to supper on Saturday.
Miles served roast beef and cherry pie. Lloyd had three helpings, and I noticed him wrap a fresh-baked roll in his bandana and stick it in his pocket. Then we went to sit in the library. Miles opened a box of cigars, made an elaborate display of choosing two and cutting them. He had a special cutter shaped like a guillotine, a present from Boston. He was never quite easy with it and had sliced his finger on several occasions.
Lloyd sat on the sofa and looked around the library with its bookshelves and piano.
“I reckon you didn’t grow up in a room like this,” he said.
“No,” Miles agreed. “No, of course not. My father was a simple mountain man.”
“Simple my foot,” I said. “You never figured him out.”
“You know what I mean,” Miles said. He gave me his down-the-nose look, which meant I should behave myself. “Daddy wasn’t a sophisticated man.” He smiled at Lloyd. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, of course. I’m proud of my background.”
Lloyd smiled back. “Reckon it’s helpful in your job. You come up like the rest of us. You know what it is to do a hard day’s work.”
“Yes. The company likes that. That’s one reason I was hired.”
“They like to know how their miners think.” Lloyd was reared back on the sofa, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “That’s smart. We’re a pretty cantankerous bunch, independent like. Dont take kindly to hard bossing.”
“I’ve helped them appreciate that in Boston,” Miles said. “They have to respect the independent turn of mind of the Appalachian miner.”
“Make the men mad, they might do something out of spite,” Lloyd agreed. “Like agitate for the union.”
Miles tried to look relaxed, but I saw right through him. He kept tapping his cigar against the ashtray long after the ashes had dropped. “You hear much about that?” he asked.
“Now and then,” Lloyd replied. “I dont put much count in it. Hit’s just a hothead shooting off his mouth.” He flicked his own ashes. “Now and then.”
Miles frowned. “Anything recent?”
“Not since the first week I was here. And the feller who said it, I dont think he even knows what a union is. He was just mad at a boss that day. I better not say nothing more about it. I aint wanting to get a feller in trouble over losing his temper.”
“Sure. I understand how people speak out in anger. No sense in making a big thing of it.”
“Man talking union, that aint no cause to fret yourself. Most of these men seem real happy.”
“I’m sure they are. This is a good company.”
“And not that I’m for the union,” Lloyd continued. “I was raised to look after myself. I dont want nobody telling me when I can work and when I cant. I know if I want to work or not. If I dont like the boss, that’s my privilege. I’ll say goodbye, move on.”
Miles cleared his throat. “Yes, I certainly agree with you. I approach this job the same way. Unfortunately, some people bring ideology into it. The union claims to be concerned about the miners’ welfare, but what they’re really after is a change in the economic and social order.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Well, you know”—he waved his arm vaguely—“the idea that uneducated and backward people are capable of running the mines.” He looked at Lloyd. “Of course, I didn’t mean to imply—”
Lloyd smiled to show he wasn’t offended. “You mean socialism.”
“That’s the fancy word for it.”
I didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “They’s some of those uneducated people got more brains than you, Miles. Just because Ben sent you to Berea—”
“I admit I’m lucky. If I hadn’t gone to school, I wouldn’t deserve to be in the position I hold now. But education is the key to progress.”
“Hit’s the twentieth century,” Lloyd said.
“Exactly. Our grandchildren will see the year 2000. And look at all the new inventions—electricity, the telephone, the motorcar. The world is changing, Carrie, changing for the better.”
“And we got to change with it,” Lloyd said. “We got to adapt.”
“Exactly!”
“Hit’s the age of the machine. Folks got to adjust or they’ll get crushed like a miner in a roof fall.”
“Well,” Miles said, “that’s a pretty strong image. It’s more like they’ll be left behind. But I can see you think about things.”
“I do some reading,” Lloyd said modestly. “‘The machine is the new messiah.’ Henry Ford. I read what them educated boys say.” He smiled at Miles like a pupil impressing the teacher.
“Lloyd is interested in medicine,” I said quickly. “He wanted to be a doctor. And he aint happy about the sanitary conditions in the camp, neither.”
“Now, Miss Carrie, you’re going to get me in trouble.”
“Not at all,” Miles said. “You’re entitled to your opinion. I’m glad to listen to grievances.”
“You do anything besides listen?”
“If I can. In this case, I can’t. I’ve already tried.”
“Cant fault a man for trying, can you?” Lloyd said.
I brought up school again, but Lloyd said he couldn’t afford to go and wouldn’t be beholden to anyone who might help him. Miles didn’t make any offers. I told myself it was a good beginning and tried not to be disappointed. I listened while they talked amiably about the company’s plan to open new mines. Miles asked if Lloyd ever thought about being a foreman, and Lloyd said he’d think about it. He asked if he could escort “Miss Carrie” back to the clubhouse, and Miles agreed.
“You didn’t say much,” Lloyd said as we walked along. “I thought you’d be more of a talker.”
“I’m sort of quiet,” I said. “Unless I’m riled.”
“I’ve got acquainted with your brother. When can I get acquainted with you?”
“Come to supper tomorrow night.”
“Would Brother Miles approve?”
“It aint none of his business.”
He grinned. “Looks like I’ll be eating good this weekend.”
He showed up on my doorstoop at five o’clock, his cap in his hand and his hair still damp from a washing. He handed me a paper bag full of poke and wild onion.
“Flowers from the mountains,” he said.
“Let’s take them downstairs. I talked Mrs. Hairston into letting me use a cookstove in the big kitchen.”
I had four pork chops, wrapped in slick white paper, specially cut by the butcher at the company store. I simmered them in flour and butter, mixed cornbread and baked it in an iron skillet, fried potatoes and wild onion, tossed the poke salad. When I was finished we bore our treasure upstairs on trays, along with a pitcher of cold buttermilk. We sat down at the table and looked across at one another. There was an awkward silence.
“You usually say grace?” Lloyd asked.
�
�No.”
“Good.” He heaped potatoes onto his plate. “You feed a man real good, Miss Carrie.”
“You can stop calling me Miss Carrie,” I said. “Miles aint around.”
He smiled. “I was just being polite like my mommy taught me.”
“Where is your mama? You never told me where you’re from.”
“I was born and raised in Justice County, over in West Virginia. Blackberry Creek. We had some land there oncet. Company took it.”
I remembered Albion Freeman, who had spoken of stolen land in West Virginia. I had not thought of him in years.
“They do that a lot? Steal land, I mean.”
“Sure. All over. Steal it or put the pressure on to buy it. Same thing, far as I’m concerned. How do you think your brother’s company got this here land?”
“I just figured they bought it.”
“Oh, they did. Everything legal, but sinful as hell. This here is fine cornbread.”
“Thank ye. Hit’s my Aunt Jane’s recipe.”
“Aunt Jane. What’s she like?”
“Real old. Fiesty.”
“That where you git your meanness?”
I giggled. “Some say we’re peas in a pod,” I said.
We finished off with a chocolate layer cake I made the night before. Lloyd leaned back in his chair and moaned.
“I got to git up and move,” he said. “Maybe all that food I et will settle down into my hollow leg. You want to go for a walk?”
“Sure. Dont let’s fret about the dishes. I’ll cover em and do them tomorry.”
We went outside and wandered down the road toward Chieftan, past a row of double houses. We’d had no rain for two weeks. The holes in the road were dry, and coal dust lay thick on the dandelions that grew up by the fences.
“You was awful sweet to Miles,” I said.
“I’m sweet by nature.”
“You are not. I was watching you close. You was laughing at him the whole time.”
Lloyd grinned. “You watch too close,” he said.
We passed by the company garden. People worked their corn, chinked their hoes against the rocky ground.
“I git tired of all that talk about education and progress,” he said.
“Aint you interested in bettering yourself?”
“‘Bettering yourself.’ Now there’s a phrase for you. You think your brother is a better man now than he was when he was hoeing corn?”
“He’s happier.”
“That aint the same thing. He’s happy at everybody else’s expense. Progress is always at somebody’s expense. Hit means putting everything in order till they’s no room to breathe. Progress means cleaning everything up. But I like things dirty.”
“You sound like a radical. You didn’t sound like one last night.”
“I didn’t want to git throwed out before I finished my cigar.”
We passed the houses, walked half a mile in the blue evening to the curve between lower Vulcan and upper Chieftan. Lightning bugs decorated the stickweeds and gnats bit my ankles and bare arms.
“We better turn back,” he said. “Aint nothing to see in Chieftan.”
I turned obediently, my arms clasped across my chest.
“How come you aint married?” he asked.
“I just aint found the right man,” I answered, shamed to tell him that I feared no one would want me, that in my three years at school no one had come courting.
“You look to me like you’re too independent,” he said. “You wouldnt take to a man bossing you around.”
The way he said it did not sound like a reproach.
“I can take care of myself,” I agreed proudly.
“Sure you can. I’m that a way, too.”
“I know. I like a man to talk the way you do.” I was afraid that sounded too forward, so I changed the subject. “Who are your kin? You still aint told me about them.”
“Aint much to tell. My daddy’s a broke down old coal miner. I got two little brothers. One of em’s married, got a youngun. He’s the only one I see much of.”
“What about your mama?”
“She dont care much for me. Aint never been able to please her.”
I felt a tenderness for him then, and an anger at his mother.
“Did I tell you I pick the banjo?”
“No, you never told me that.”
“I pick in a band with my brother and a buddy. We play all over in Kentucky. Inez. Warfield. Louisa. Even over to Shelby oncet. Call ourselves the Blackberry Pickers. I’ll take you to hear us sometime.”
“I’d love that.”
His crutches tapped the road.
“You like nursing?”
“Hit satisfies me to help sick folks feel better,” I said slowly. “And the human body is such a miracle. I study it and I think, ‘How could it all work?’ I seen babies borned. I seen dead bodies cut all apart by my teachers until they werent nothing left and I wondered what it was that run that body, that made them muscles move and them lungs breathe. Hit’s like an invisible fire running through us. Hit dont surprise me that the fire goes out. Hit’s where it come from that makes me ponder. And how we could feel things and think things, and us just a mess of muscle and fat. And ifn the fire comes from somewhere, then hit surely does go somewhere.”
“You ever seen a youngun die?”
“First person ever I saw die was a youngun. A Negro girl name of Charlene. I nursed her two weeks before she passed on. The day she was took bad, they had to go hunting her mama. She cleaned house for a big shot in Justice town. He wouldnt even let her stay by her youngun’s sick bed. When Charlene took to breathing hard, I knew she wouldnt make it until we could fetch her mama. But she did. She just stared up at that ceiling and breathed until her mama walked in the door. Then she turned her face to her mama and died. I walked right out of that room. And I aint been scairt to die since, not since I seen how that youngun did it. I just wonder where we go, and what it will be like.”
“And it didnt make you mad?”
“I werent mad. I was just perplexed. But I did git drunk that night. Only time in my life I drunk liquor.”
He laughed. “I’d like to seen that.” Then he grew quiet. After a time, he said, “I seen men die. Seen my dad’s buddy die when I was just a youngun. Made me mad as hell. Not mad at God, mad at the company. And I seen a union organizer murdered. Gun thugs throwed him right into a furnace. Seemed like he leaped right outen his body before they threw him in. Like he went off somewheres else.”
“A union organizer?”
We stopped walking and stared at one another.
“That’s right,” he said.
He took my hand, led me on down the road a ways, stopped again.
“Carrie, can I come up to your room and set for a spell?”
My insides quivered. “Sure,” I said.
Dogs charged from beneath houses and barked as we walked back down the rows. Lloyd sang softly, an old fiddle tune.
“Polly’s in the garden sifting sand,
Sue’s in bed with the hog-eyed man.
I’m going home with Sally Ann,
I’m going home with Sally Ann.”
He turned to me.
“Your name Sally Ann?”
I giggled. “Hit’s Carrie Lee.”
“Close’t enough.”
My thoughts were all awhirl as we climbed the clubhouse steps. What would I say if he did this or that? When should I say no? What would Flora advise? What would a good girl do?
I looked at his face in the lamplight, felt the weakness in my legs, and knew it would be impossible to say no to him.
I sat down on the sofa. He will go to the chair, I thought. But he sat beside me, lay back on the lumpy cushions.
“You ever been kissed, Carrie Lee?”
“No,” I whispered.
“Hit’s about time.”
He put his arms around me, pulled me closer, and kissed me on the mouth. Then his moustache tickled my neck and h
e slipped one hand inside my blouse. Every muscle in my body relaxed and in one magical moment I was on my back and he stretched full length on top of me.
“No corset, thank God.” He smiled against my cheek.
I followed what he did, unbuttoned his shirt and ran my fingers through the hair of his chest.
“I aint sure what to do,” I said.
“You’re doing just fine. Do whatever you want to do.”
“I dont want you to think I do this all the time, just with anybody.”
“Honey, I know better than that.” He lifted my skirt, caressed my thigh. “You want me to stop?”
For a moment Aunt Becka’s face was close to mine, frowning in disapproval. I was astonished this was happening so fast, that I was letting it happen. But then I tasted his mouth again, so sweet.
“No. Dont never stop.”
He tugged off my skirt, my blouse, pulled my shift over my head. Then he stood up, leaned against the sofa, and awkwardly undressed. Together we struggled to pull his pants over the cast on his foot. Then he lay back down beside me and slipped off my underpants. I marvelled at the smoothness of his skin, the smell of him, as though I had never encountered a human being before. I clung to him with a fervor I had not known I possessed.
“You are a hugger,” he said, and I held on all the more tightly.
He encircled my wrist with his finger and thumb. “So small.” He guided my hand to his groin. The skin was softer than a baby’s. I thought I must be the first to make such a discovery, that I had stumbled onto something precious. I longed to cry out that I loved him, but the words would not come. We had not yet spoken of love. I knew a moment of pain, but it was fleeting, and I balanced on a great promontory, I scaled the heights to be touched by God and would never be the same again.
He was spent, his hair damp against my cheek. His heart fluttered wildly in his chest, like a bird trying to escape a cage.
“I feel your heart beating,” I said.
He raised his head languidly, propped himself up on his elbows. “That’s what you done to me.”
“It was my first time,” I said shyly.
“I never would have knowed it.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment. Then he kissed the tip of my nose.
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