“I reckon you’re just a natural.”
“I think hit’s because I’m with you. You was so gentle. I felt—I aint never felt this for a man before. Hit was so special.”
He kissed me as though to quiet me. He had remained inside me and now he rose, moved, came again, affirmed what had gone before. Later we stood naked in the moonlight. He was just tall enough for me to bury my face in the silk-smooth skin of his neck.
“I want to wake up beside you,” he said.
We went to the bedroom, rested awhile, then loved again, drowsily this time. Afterward he fell asleep, snoring softly. I giggled into my pillow. Listening to Lloyd’s snores would be part of loving him, too. I lay sleepless throughout the night, my mind wandering from one scene to another—here we courted on the front steps of the Homeplace, and my kin would take me aside and tell me what a fine man he was; there we stood up before the preacher at our wedding. I saw Lloyd pace anxiously while he waited the birth of our first child. I saw him old, his hair and moustache turned to white but his eyes still a lively blue.
I watched him wake up in the morning, heard the catch in his breathing. He turned his head and threw his forearm across his eyes. He seemed to remember something, then he turned to me and smiled.
“Morning,” he said, and pulled me to him.
“Morning. You slept good last night.”
“Sure did. The sleep of a contented man. How about you?”
“No, I didnt sleep a wink. Couldnt. Had too much on my mind, thinking about everything that happened.”
“Uh-oh.” He kissed me and got out of bed. “We better git dressed. The widder has likely set a place for me at the breakfast table.”
“You can eat breakfast here. I’ll run downstairs and bring something up.”
He stumped into the front room on his crutches and dressed. I put on a nightgown and stood in the doorway. He buttoned his pants and looked up.
“I dont want you to take this too serious,” he said.
I felt as though a cold hand grasped my throat. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I aint the kind of man to fall in love with a woman. Dont know why, but that’s the way it is.”
“But I thought—”
“I never said I loved you, did I?”
I didn’t want to answer him. “No. You didnt say that.”
“What happened last night was nice. But dont expect nothin more from me. My life is crazy. Hit aint no kind of life to drag a woman into. And I aint no kind of man for you. You deserve more, somebody to pay you lots of attention. You’ll find somebody like that, I know it.”
“Dont you dare tell me what I deserve and dont deserve. I dont want nobody mooning over me, nor no rich man throwing money at me. I just want somebody to love me, somebody I can love.”
“Then I surely aint no man for you,” he said. “I aint never loved a woman and never will. I got nothing to give you. Absolutely nothing.”
“Why didnt you tell me that last night?”
He came closer. “I didnt think it would make any difference. You wanted me. Aint that the truth?”
I blinked back tears and nodded my head. “But hit werent all I wanted,” I said.
He took me in his arms, pressed my face to his shoulder with one hand.
“Carrie. Carrie. I wasnt wanting to hurt you. We should never have done what we done.”
“That’s easy to say now. You got what you wanted.” I pulled away from him. “This mean I wont never see you again?”
He shrugged. “We might get together again sometime. If the time’s right. I cant never say about nothing too far in advance. I’m picking the banjo in Inez next weekend. And the week after in Paintsville. Not to mention working my job. You see how my life is.”
He kissed me goodbye and left. I sat beside the table and wept. Aunt Becka spoke loudly in my ear. You see. Just like a man. Now look what you’ve done. You’re a fallen woman, and see where it has got you.
“Damn him,” I said. “Damn him, damn him, damn him.”
But I said it without conviction for I loved him. I believed in God and what Aunt Jane called His purposes. God had brought Lloyd to me, as surely as He placed us both in the mountains. I had freely given him, without a thought, what I had hoarded for years.
I could not bring myself to bathe, to wash away the smell of him. I dressed and walked through the July heat to the big house.
Miles questioned me over the next few weeks, saying I seemed “all mopey and dreamy eyed.”
“It’s that fellow, isn’t it?” he said once.
“Maybe it is,” I said. “Maybe I took a shine to him. But he aint interested in me, so that’s that.”
“Just as well. He’s nice enough, but you’ve got an education, and he doesn’t seem interested in one. You can do better than a coal miner.”
Twice I waited in the doctor’s office until I saw Lloyd leave the tipple, so that I would be sure to meet him on the way home. He was always friendly, and told me how good I looked. But he didn’t mention spending time with me.
Miles and I sat on the porch of the big house after supper and ate strawberry ice cream from the company store. A light rain fell and washed away the August heat.
“Between the store and the electric, I’m gitting spoiled living here,” I said. “But I still yet miss the Homeplace. I want to go visit pretty soon.”
“I miss the family,” Miles said, “and I miss the land. But I don’t miss working it.” He turned his spoon upside down and licked the back of it. “Carrie, do you understand why I came here?”
“I reckon so.”
“I could have gone a way off somewhere, made my mark in Cincinnati or Lexington or Charleston. But I didn’t want to leave these hills. That meant coal. Oh, I could have set up some kind of little business in Shelby or Justice. But to really be successful, I had to go into coal. You understand that, don’t you?”
“I dont know that I understand why you got to be that big of a success. But what are you trying to tell me?”
He fidgeted in his chair so much that I knew there was more. He leaned forward, laced his fingers together.
“You know how they are in Boston. You know how they feel about the United Mineworkers. They’d close this place down before they’d see the union come in here. You know that, don’t you?”
I set down my bowl of ice cream. “Go on.”
“One of my miners got drunk in Justice yesterday and let out that he had joined the union. Some of the Baldwin guards roughed him up and he told them who the organizer is.”
I pressed my lips together and sat up straight. “Who is it?” I asked.
“It’s Lloyd. Only his name isn’t Lloyd Justice. It’s Rondal Lloyd.”
“Oh, God, Miles! You wont hurt him? You wont let them hurt him?”
I tried to recall what I’d heard of organizers, how they were beaten, sometimes killed. Another thought came to me, almost as frightening.
“You wont make him leave?”
“I can’t have it, Sis. Those guards got me a list of everybody that’s joined. It’s over half the mine. By the end of summer, they’d be ready to walk out on me. He’s figured out who my informers are and avoided them, because I haven’t heard a word about this until now.”
“Your informers,” I said. “So that’s why them men come to visit you. That is low down, Miles.”
“How the hell else am I supposed to know what’s going on?” He stood up and leaned on the porch rail, his back to me.
“Lots of operators would have beat him half to death by now, Carrie. You got to understand my position. The Baldwin people have got a lead on him. Seems they know him from before, over in Justice County. I’ve already warned him what I know, told him to get out.”
“Damn you, Miles.”
“Carrie, I’ve got to fire all those men. I’ve got to put them and their families out of their houses. How do you think I feel? If he hadn’t come in here, those people would still have jobs.
”
“If you’d let them have the union—”
“Carrie—”
“I know. Boston wont let you. You aint no man, Miles. You aint got no backbone nor principles.”
He walked to the door. “He’ll be leaving soon as it gets dark.” He went inside.
I ran down the hill to the Widow Schoolcraft’s. The rain had stopped and the fresh air cut my lungs. Rondal sat on the front steps.
“I figured you’d be by here,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t even know your real name.”
“Why should I tell you? Why should I trust you with my life?”
“I trusted you. I trusted you with my life, and more.”
“If that’s what you did, you’re a damn fool. Hit aint my job to justify your faith in mankind.”
I sat down beside him so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Where you going to?”
“I’ll hike up to the head of Pond Creek and cross over onto Marrowbone. Hit’s safer to go west, I reckon. I was thinking to head in that direction anyhow if I had to run.”
“How far west?”
“Colorado. They’s a big fight in the coalfields out there. Taking on the Rockefellers.” He held my hand, ran the tip of his finger along the lines of my palm. “I tried this twicet, and made a mess of it both times, aint I? I cant git no help from Charleston. The leadership up there aint worth shooting. I got to git out and learn how to do this better, meet Debs and Mother Jones and all them.”
“Take me with you.” I cringed at the sound of my voice, begging.
He smiled, kissed my hand, stood up and hobbled inside. I followed him. The widow sat in her front room stitching a quilt. Her eyes were cold when she looked at me.
“How you going to manage with them crutches and all?” I said. “What if them guards catch up to you?”
“I got a gun. I can take care of myself.”
“What will you live on?”
“I’ll do odd jobs. Jump trains. I got ten dollars saved up. I’ll git by.”
He picked up a pillowcase full of clothes, stuck it under his arm against one crutch and swung out into the dusk. I ran after him.
“I got five dollars. Take it.” I folded the bill and stuck it into his shirt pocket.
“All right,” he said softly. “I’m obliged.”
“Please let me go.”
He touched my cheek. “I’m sorry I drug you into my life. I never should have done it. Maybe if things was different—”
He set his hand to my forehead, smoothed back my hair, then turned away. I watched him cross the bottom.
“I love you!” I cried.
I thought he paused, but it may have been some trick of the fading light. I heard the tapping of his crutches even after he was no longer visible. Then I ran up the hill, tore into the house. Miles stood in the parlor by the window.
“I hate you!” I screamed. “I hate you! You aint no brother of mine, you aint worthy to be kin, and I never want to see your face again!”
I went back to my room, sobbing with hurt and rage, and packed my things. I left the furniture, taking only my clothes, my books, and the electric lamp. I went to the station early the next morning. Farther down the tracks I saw Miles with all his men standing in a bunch. He was reading from a list, and the men separated to stand on one side of the track or the other. I wondered which side was the union men. When the train from Justice pulled in, four men with rifles got off.
I rode the train to the head of Pond Creek and hired a farmer with a mule team to take me and my belongings to Grapevine.
Part Three
Ten
C. J. MARCUM
THE DAY AFTER THE LETTER COME FROM RONDAL, I ATTENDED the monthly meeting of the Annadel Political and Social Club.
Our club started meeting in 1912 during the miners’ strike on Paint Creek in the Kanawha coalfields. They was sixteen of us altogether, including Doc Booker, who was mayor at the time, Ermel and Isom Justice, Sam Gore the bartender, Everett Day, the entire town council and several policemen. We started by drinking together on Sunday afternoons, lounging in the gambling room of the Alhambra with our feet propped up on the tables, sipping Pabst Blue Ribbon and shots of whiskey. After a while we always talked about the strike. The Paint Creek miners and their families lived in tents for a year, even through the dead of winter. They was shot at, some was killed, and they shot back. The governor declared martial law and jailed folks for speaking their mind. We followed it all and wondered if it was coming to us one day.
When the strike was done with, we argued about who had really won.
“Course hit was a success,” Ermel declared. “They got the union recognized, didnt they?”
Doc Booker disagreed. “Union was already recognized there for years, before them operators tried to bust it. Them people starved and froze and died all winter, just to stay where they was.”
“The gun thugs smashed the press at the socialist newspaper in Huntington,” I added.
“So what?” Isom tilted his head back and tossed down a shot. His adam’s apple jumped.
“You’ll think so what when it happens here,” I said.
“Aw, I seen some of them socialists from Huntington. They wear ties and talk about nonviolence. Them kind is easy pickins.”
We didn’t always get along at our meetings. We was all so different from each other. Me and Doc was socialists. Ermel by that time was one of the big shots in the Democrat party machine, close to getting his man elected as circuit judge. Sam Gore was a Republican out of loyalty to Abe Lincoln. Isom weren’t nothing, far as I could tell, except he liked to argue and drink his daddy’s liquor. We had fights all the time and we loved it.
We took turns suggesting what we should talk about. Doc wanted to discuss the Brussels Congress of the Second Socialist International. Isom said that sounded dull, but we talked about it anyhow and he stayed perked up most of the time, especially when we wrangled over the fighting in the Balkans. Isom is real interested in the Balkans because he says they sound like West Virginia.
We talked about Woodrow Wilson, the Niagara Convention and the Ku Klux Klan. Then the coal strike in Colorado caught our eye. It was Paint Creek all over again, the strikers throwed out of their houses, the tents, the gun thugs and martial law. Then the letter come from Rondal.
“He’s out there,” I told the club proudly. “He’s in Ludlow workin for the union. He even met Mother Jones and Eugene V. Debs.”
“Hot damn!” Isom said. “So my banjer picker’s all right.”
“He’s all right so far,” I agreed. “This here letter is near two weeks old.”
I read the letter out loud. Rondal’s last words were, “You better get ready. This is coming your way some day.” When I finished reading, my fingers trembled.
We followed the news from Colorado every day, and featured it on the front page of the Free Press. When the miners took Trinidad, we threw a party. Isom, drunk, sent a telegram to Mr. Felts of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, telling him “what a fine job your gun thugs is doing stop keep up the good work stop John D. Rockefeller.” But we sobered up considerable when word come out of Ludlow. The gun thugs and the U.S. Army attacked the tent colony there, shot people, set tents on fire and burnt women and children to death.
We fretted about Rondal, but they was nothing we could do. It was after the strike failed that another letter come and we knew he was safe. He was downhearted, he wrote, he was going to Chicago to see the city of Haymarket and Pullman, of Jane Addams and Altgeld and Clarence Darrow. We wasn’t to fret, he said. He had in mind to watch the Chicago White Sox and stay out of trouble.
“He wouldnt go to school in Huntington because he didnt want to go far away,” I said, “and now he’s in Chicago. What’s goin to happen to that boy?”
“He aint a boy no more,” Doc said gently. “He must be twenty-four by now. And he always had a good head on his shoulders. You see if he dont come back.
”
I knew Doc was right. These mountains has got a powerful pull. They let a man wander so far and then they yank him back like a fish on a line. I knew Rondal would sleep uneasy as long as he was away, and the hills would bring him home.
The Annadel Political and Social Club began to talk less and less about the world outside and more about Justice County. We all knew we had to do something, but we disagreed on how to do it.
Ermel was deep into the Democrat party. He was connected with every bootlegger and roadhouse owner in the county. Me and Doc wasn’t too happy about it, and not only because we was socialist. It just seemed to us like a bootlegger wouldn’t have no principles. The Republicans got their votes when the operators looked over the shoulders of the miners in the voting booths. Ermel’s crowd took in everybody else by promising a school board job for cousin Myrtle or threatening a busted still for brother Otis, or buying votes. Nobody never talked about getting back the land. It was just grab this and grab that.
I thought we in Annadel was better than that and we ought to go our own way. Rondal’s warning raised fear in me. We had to prepare ourselves. I told Doc Booker. He brought it before the town council and we voted to put a few more men on the police force, but that was all we done.
I tried to reason with Isom, so he would talk his daddy out of his crooked dealings. He wouldn’t listen.
“Them coal operators aint angels, C.J.,” he said. “You got to reckon with it. They’s socialists in England and Russia and the Sahara Desert for all I know, and they all get together and talk. But that dont mean a diddly-squat in Justice County. Aint nobody pays us no mind. We got to do for ourselves.”
Sometimes I thought we was saying the same things but not matching up. Isom, he never lost no land. He aint had kinfolks killed. He thinks he can do anything and get away with it. He is his daddy’s boy.
After the club got going, I tried to get Talcott Lloyd to join. We set on his front porch at Felco one warm Saturday evening and ate a fresh huckleberry pie sent down by Pricie’s mother. Talcott is touchy where Ermel and Annadel is concerned. He suspects that they send Pricie money, and resents it, but when fried chicken shows up on the supper table, he don’t have the gumption to ask where it come from. By his own lights, he tries to pay Ermel back by doing work around the farm some Sundays and by going hunting with Isom. Him and Isom is both crack shots and they sure bring home the critters. Isom sends me squirrel meat about oncet a week. I’ll take squirrel over a chicken leg any day.
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