He was still laughing when the police wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him. The stands emptied and fistfights broke out. I dodged some irate Davidson fans and got back onto the field. The teams stood in a bunch near home plate. Sam Gore and Joe Tibbs wrestled on the ground. Lytton Davidson, surrounded by police, yelled at Isom.
“Just what I expected! You people are crazy! You can’t do things this way!”
“He was a goddamn ringer!” Isom screamed back. “He werent legal in the first place!”
Tiny Sanders throwed down his cap and stomped it.
“It was a home run!” he yelled at the umpire. “It’s 9 to 6!”
I pushed my way between them. “Hit never cleared the fence. I was under it. Hit never cleared the fence.”
“It would have!” Davidson’s face was beet-red. I never seen him up close before. He was so short he barely rose up to my tits.
Isom grabbed the umpire, spun him around. “O’Malley’s a goddamn ringer,” he repeated.
The umpire throwed up his hands. “I’m a-callin this here game! You bastards can tote it home in a poke!”
Davidson opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. He glared at me.
“This is my property,” he said in a voice like ice. “Get off it. I want you and your team on the first train out.” He turned to a policeman. “Clear this field. Send these people home.”
We separated Sam and Joe Tibbs, who were rolling on the ground and doing little damage to one another. Sullenly we gathered our bats and gloves, tossed them into canvas bags.
“We beat them bastards,” Antoine said. “I know we did.”
“Damn straight,” Isom agreed.
Most of the Davidson players had retreated to their dugout, unsure whether or not to leave. Carmello Angelelli, a slender boy with dark brown skin, stood outside, his black cap in his hand and his hair wet and shiny. I wanted to talk to him, to say hell, son, none of this here was personal. Good game. Good luck in the American League.
I raised my hand. He smiled, raised his in reply.
The Baldwin guards went to Talcott’s house that very night and put Pricie and the younguns out in the street. They tossed their furniture from the porch, broke most of it. Pricie took the younguns to live at the farm. Talcott was in the Justice jail. He got one year for disturbing the peace and brandishing a deadly weapon. Ermel’s friends, who now controlled the county judge, got him out after he’d served two months, and Ermel put him to work at the hotel. But by that time, the Davidson baseball team had been ripped apart and tossed to the wind.
Thirteen
CARRIE BISHOP
WHEN ALBION FIRST SET EYES ON THE TALL, NARROW TIPPLE at Felco, he said, “That there is my church.”
I thought it looked more like something built by the Devil. It sagged and screeched and spewed clouds of black dust that settled over our tiny house. The day after I washed windows I could write my name on the pane. If we went barefoot in the house, the soles of our feet turned black and we smudged the white sheets when we got into bed.
We had been married at the Homeplace on a warm spring day when all the earth smelled sweet. Though I knew we would be moving to the coal fields, I had dreamed of a neat little house with boxes of red flowers on the porch. Flora, who stood by me at the wedding, gave me seeds for planting from her prettiest flowerbeds, and cuttings from her rose bushes. But our house was near the coke ovens, and the sulphurous fumes killed anything I planted. Our narrow strip of yard was gritty with cinders.
But Albion was happy. The first time he went in the mine, I fretted the whole day long. I cooked chicken and dumplings special for supper, and bread pudding, but I expected he would be too tired to enjoy his food. I dragged out the number three washtub, filled kettles with water and set them on the stove, paced by the kitchen window anxious for the sight of him. When he came home he was weary, and leaned against the door frame, but his eyes were alive. He talked the whole time I undressed and bathed him.
“I knowed it would be all right, soon as I got inside. I felt easy, like they was nothing to fear. And guess what I seen, over by the haulage way? Mushrooms! Growing up just as pretty as you please, there in the dark and the dust. I tell you, hit was a sign from God. He was saying, ‘See here how the least of these creatures can prosper in this place. And wont I take care of you?’”
I filled his plate, put the fork in his hand.
“Hit’s a powerful noise when the powder blows. But when we cleared the coal out, I knelt there a minute and I thought, ‘They aint never been a human being stood in this place before.’ Hit was like discovering a new part of God, like being able to touch something precious. And to feel the mountain all round, to be closer to its heart than I ever did think was possible—”
I sat across from him and toyed with my food.
“And when I was picking slate I come on the outline of a fern that had growed right in the rock. You could count ever leaf on it.”
“You talk to the other men?”
“We talked over our dinner pails. They was right shy about it. They’re afeard of what the guards might think about meetings. So I said I’d speak to the superintendent and git permission to study the Bible over dinner. They’s some are interested in it.”
He wanted to make love that night but was too tired for it, so I cradled his head and stroked his temples as he fell asleep.
The superintendent saw no harm in a daily Bible study and prayer session. He thought it might uplift the men, take their minds off their petty troubles and help them work harder. The company preacher at the Felco Methodist Church was strictly Sundays only and most of the miners didn’t attend his services anyway. Albion was a Godsend, the superintendent declared.
After a few months, men came to our house on Wednesday evenings for prayer meeting, and brought their wives and children. When a member of the meeting was killed in a roof fall after the boss sent him into a section the men had complained of, Albion read to them from the book of Exodus. One man mentioned the union, speaking quiet, his eyes skipping around the room like he feared to be arrested at any moment.
“Let’s talk about it some more,” Albion said, and they did. Their numbers grew until they filled all four rooms of the house, sitting cross-legged on the beds and on the floor. Albion had to stand at the kitchen door and turn in all four directions to be heard when he spoke. I waited for the guards to evict us, but no one came.
“They wont be informers in this bunch,” Albion said. “I know them ever man jack. They have been convicted by the scriptures.”
I was bored in the coal camp. All I did was cook, wipe away coal dust, and worry about where the money would come from. Albion was not the most efficient miner, and we had a hard time of it even with no children to feed. The mines were in a slump then; demand for coal was down since the war ended. Often Albion would trudge to the drift mouth to find a sign posted NO WORK TODAY. There would be no pay for those days. He would come back home and make the rounds of the houses, visiting the families who were hungry and cold, praying over the sick.
I wanted to nurse those sick. But when I tried, the camp doctor complained to the superintendent and I was ordered to stop. I visited the doctor to see if I could work with him but he already had a nurse. He treated me coldly. He was from Ohio, and by his lights, I was ignorant. But as I left the office, he called after me and said, “There’s a nigger doctor at Annadel who doesn’t have a nurse. Wouldn’t be a pleasant job, would it? But if you’re really interested…”
We worked a garden patch the company made available, but it was only half an acre, and would yield nothing for months anyway. For many weeks we ate nothing but potatoes fried with a bit of onion and bacon grease, and that only once a day. Twice a week I dipped into our precious store of meal and baked cornbread. I took dizzy spells.
I thought of writing to Ben, but I knew that their abundance of food would do us no good, and they had little cash to spare. Besides, it would have hurt Albion to know I b
egged from my kin.
One night I sat on the porch and watched men work the row of coke ovens built into the mountainside below the tipple. The ovens glowed and steamed in the dark. Tiny black figures leaped and darted before the fiery pits. I knew they were mostly Negroes who worked the coke ovens, who bore the heat and breathed the noxious fumes which caused my nose to curl even at that distance. They shovelled and danced like demons at the gates of Hell.
When Albion came down the alley, banging his empty dinner pail against his leg, I met him at the gate.
“Would you mind ifn I worked for a Negro doctor?” I asked.
“I wouldnt care.”
“They’s some folks would look down on a white woman for it. Would you mind?”
“I wouldnt care.”
“We need the money.”
“Course we do. Hit would be a blessing.”
Doctor Toussaint Booker took me on and paid two dollars a day, a fortune. I studied the frayed cuffs of his one suit and wondered if he could afford it, but I never asked him about it. We were no longer in the destitute class, but could now be considered fortunate. After I went to work we ate meat four days a week, enjoyed fatback in our beans, and Albion set aside fifty cents each day to give to miners with sick children. I looked back with a certain pride on the six months we lived on Albion’s seventy-five cents a day. I had accounted for every single penny and every piece of scrip, and spent nary a one without thinking of ten things it might be used for and pledging to do without the nine least important. Yes, there was a pride in it now that we were a bit better off. Only those who can afford it take pride in such things, and only when looking back on them.
I went to Doctor Booker with many doubts, I am ashamed to say. I suppose that at first I looked on him with the same superiority with which the Ohio doctor had plagued me. I soon got over that. Doctor Booker was the best doctor I had ever worked with, not only because of his knowledge but because of his kindness toward his patients.
Doctor Booker knew Rondal, as did his friend C.J. Marcum, the mayor. They talked about him every time Mr. Marcum visited the office, and I listened avidly. After a time I let it be known that Rondal was an acquaintance of mine. They took it as a sign of kinship and gladly included me in their conversations. When Rondal’s name was mentioned I paused at my work, and always asked questions so they would talk a little longer. I thought no woman on earth knew as much about Rondal Lloyd as I did. But the knowledge gave me shame as well as pleasure, for I was a married woman and I loved my husband.
Albion didn’t sleep well in August. It wasn’t just the heat. It was the gas.
“The mine buzzed today,” he complained. “Hit was like little bugs running around inside my ears.”
One night he came home with the sleeve burned off his shirt and his arm blistered. I smeared grease on it.
“I stuck my lamp into the hole,” he said. “The flame run right up my arm.”
I daubed a wet cloth at his eyebrows, which were mostly gone.
“Yall got to stop work,” I said. “Cant they see how dangerous it is?”
“They wouldnt pay us ifn we stopped work. They say hit’s natural this time of year to have a gassy mine.”
“Some mines blow,” I argued.
“Hit’s a chance. They take it.”
I dreamed it all before it happened, only I dreamed it was Albion. Even though that part was wrong, I knew it was coming. I wasn’t surprised when C.J. Marcum came to our office, his face white and drawn, and said, “Davidson Number Six is gone.”
My stomach griped and I sat down.
“They heard the explosion all the way to Felco,” C.J. said. “They’re gone.”
“Clabe and Kerwin?” Doctor Booker asked.
C.J. sank into a chair and looked away. “And Froggy Lester and Joe Tibbs.”
“We better go down there,” Doctor Booker said to me.
“I want to see my husband first. I want to set eyes on him.”
“He’s all right, Carrie. But go on. Meet me at the Davidson train depot at three.”
Albion was in the kitchen when I arrived.
“They sent us home,” he said.
I was suddenly angry at him. “Did they? That was kind of them. Too bad they didnt send Number Six home. Tell me, what does God say about this here?”
“Hit aint God’s doing. All God done was give Mr. Davidson the freedom.”
“Somebody better take that freedom away,” I said bitterly. “And somebody ought to burn in Hell for this.”
“I got to go help fetch the bodies.”
I answered him coldly, for his gentleness was an affront to me. “Go on then. And dont forgit to tote that Bible of yourn.”
He came to me, wanted to touch me, but he was still black from the mine.
“You’ll dirty my uniform,” I said. I waited for him to leave and caught the train after his.
The train I rode carried hundreds of wooden caskets. I watched them unloaded while I waited for Doctor Booker. A crowd of silent women stood near the depot; the faded cotton dresses hung limp on their heavy bodies. An Italian woman approached me. She was dressed all in white like a bride, except for a red vest, and bore an armful of red roses.
“You a nurse?” she said. She gripped my arm. “Are my babies back from the doctor? Is my Francesco very sick?”
Later Doctor Booker pointed out Rondal’s mother, a slump-shouldered woman like all the others. She wandered among the rows of coffins, most of which were still empty.
I knew Rondal would come back.
Fourteen
ROSA ANGELELLI
MY BABIES HURT THEIR EARS. THAT IS WHAT SENORE DAVIDSON says. The ears, they are gone first. They pop, they hurt, a little. But that is all.
Never mind, I say. We go to the doctor. The doctor fix.
Senore cries. He presses his face against my belly. The baseball, he says. My pitcher, my first base. Carmello will be in the American League.
Never mind, I say again. The doctor, he fix the ear.
I wait for the doctor. Everyone wears white. This place is very clean. Mama is here too. Her bed is beside mine. At night we whisper together.
Luigi is very difficult, she says. He makes the doctor work a long time. He is stubborn, like his papa.
They take so long I go to wait for them. I cut the roses from the bush in our yard. Francesco gives me the bush for my birthday. He is my best boy.
I carry a rose for each of my babies. Mario is angry with me.
Go home, woman, go home. He shouts and waves his hat.
Leave me, I answer. Always you whip them. But when they are hurt, they cry for mama. They love mama.
Everyone is crying, everywhere the tears. The women lean together, they sway, they do not close their mouths.
I wait but my babies do not come. Senore Davidson tells the doctor to hurry. Everyone does what Senore Davidson says. He takes me to the big house. The butterflies watch what we do. They turn their heads this way and that. They will not shut their eyes. I shake the roses at them. The thorns scratch Senore’s arm. The blood tastes like salt. His hands are warm, like the hands of the priest when he signs the cross upon my forehead.
Rosa, he says, you forgive so easy.
Mario drinks too much. The empty wine bottles glow like candles. He stands before the reliquary. I am behind him and I look over his shoulder. My mama stares out at me from behind the glass.
Where is God? Mario says.
He hits the glass with his fist. His hand bleeds, the red sprinkles his shirt like holy water flung by the priest.
I gather the purple glass. Mario cries for a towel but the cut will not heal for he has cursed God. The doctor will not fix. Whenever I see Mario the blood still flows. His clothes are sticky with it. Already he is in Purgatory.
Mama shows me how to sort the broken glass. Only one piece is missing. Luigi will find it.
Fifteen
RONDAL LLOYD
ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I DID WHEN I
GOT BACK ON THE CREEK was try to see Mommy. She moved in with Talcott and Pricie after the explosion. They lived high on the hillside above Annadel in a blue house that straddled two spindly cinderblock pillars.
Talcott led me into the kitchen. Mommy rocked beside the stove and stared at a cup of coffee.
“Hello, Mommy,” I said.
She looked briefly, then away.
“I got nothing to say to you,” she said.
I stood with my cap in my hand.
“Now, Mommy, that aint fair,” Talcott coaxed her. “Rondal come a long way to see you.”
“Where was he when the burying was done? Where was he before that when my baby went to work in that hole?”
“Hell, Mommy—” I began.
“Oh, yes, you would be a cussing and swearing,” she broke in. “Hit’s a sure sign that Satan has a holt of you, and it dont surprise me nary a bit. I’ve knowed it since you was borned. Your Uncle Dillon helped with the birthing of ye, and he set the evil eye on you. I knowed it from the way you sucked at my breast, the way you clutched, all greedy, and bit me and drawed the blood. I knowed it—”
I turned and walked out. Pricie stood in the front room with her arms across her chest and her face tight.
“Now you know what I go through,” she said.
“She aint kind to Pricie,” Talcott admitted. “Blames her for taking me away from Winco. But what am I supposed to do, put my own mother out in the street?”
“She could work in the clubhouse or take in washing,” Pricie said.
“Would you do that to your mommy?”
They argued without enthusiasm, for they had lots of practice and took no enjoyment from it. Talcott was miserable at Annadel, working as a janitor at the hotel. He wanted to move to another coalfield and go back in the mines. Pricie wouldn’t hear of leaving Blackberry Creek as long as Ermel and Annadel were alive.
Talcott’s four children were lined up on the couch, squirming and poking one another.
Storming Heaven Page 17