by Glenn Taylor
He followed the boy away from the mourner’s circle. He pulled him by the arm behind a substantial tree, and he smacked him. ‘Don’t you disrespect the dead,’ he said. He smacked again. ‘Don’t you dare disrespect the Lord out here, you hear me?’
Folks handle anguish in a variety of ways. Somehow the nine year old knew this to be true, and it stopped him from striking the ugly man back. But Hob Tibbs had made a new enemy, had added to his list of many, and something in his face burned into Trenchmouth’s brain unforgettable. Tibbs said, ‘You’re going to be in church every Sunday, hear? I’m puttin you to work for God. You’ll spit shine a cross if I tell you. Polish up stained glass for walking away from a man’s burial.’
Trenchmouth said what he’d said all his life. ‘Yessir.’
SEVEN
Folks Could Fall Hard
Church and school. These were places that didn’t interest a ten-year-old boy. It wasn’t that Trenchmouth abhorred scripture or couldn’t learn his lessons. He could. It was the existence of those that sought to ridicule him on account of his oral ailment, to single him out and dig at him so as to break his spirit. There were boys at school who plotted little else. And in church, of course, there was Hob Tibbs.
As promised, he’d shackled Trenchmouth to the Methodist congregation. He put him to work spit shining brass and polishing glass. During Sunday services, the boy was forced to wait and clean up after communion. Shirts were to be tucked in, hems straight. And Trenchmouth was subject to the unrelenting criticisms of his mouth. ‘There’s men called dentists these days, boy,’ Tibbs would say. ‘Might fashion you a brush outta twig and pine needle. You ever hear of a brush? Oh,’ he’d say, squinting close at the closed mouth, ‘I reckon you haven’t.’
Trenchmouth owned a toothbrush. He pulled it back and forth when he could stand to, but the ache it induced, along with the bleeding, would make anyone wonder at the worth of such a practice. He’d long ago tried and discounted a homeopathic mouth rinse from the Sears Roebuck, and now he used a concoction the Widow had stirred up for him, a bitter, stinging rinse for the mouth whose makeup she would not reveal.
It was a summertime Sunday, just after the Methodist Man had finished giving communion, when Trenchmouth, by this point a forced duty acolyte of sorts, was helping Tibbs in the choir room. They poured the unused grape juice back in the jug. The boy spilled it on the bitter man’s shirt front.
‘You little rotten shit,’ Tibbs said, teeth grit hard. He grabbed Trenchmouth by the collar. ‘You got no sense in that head, just like you got no teeth. You can’t do a simple Lord’s chore without foulin it all up.’ He was letting loose whatever it was that ate at him without rest. ‘Got no mama to speak of except the one in the bughouse, and even that Widow can see you got the devil in you. He’s leakin out through your gums, ain’t he boy?’ A boil rose inside Trenchmouth then, one that had started at Frank Dallara’s funeral, his first encounter with Tibbs. It was about to bust and run over. The man kept up, ‘And if you think Frank Dallara was any kind of daddy to you, think on it some more. That there was pity, son. No more, no less. Pity for a cripple whose real daddy was no better’n a nigger.’ The word was ugly, even in those times. ‘Some say he was half-a-one anyhow, mixed blood.’ Tibbs let a smile inch onto his face.
Trenchmouth, without much thought, bent at the knee and hinged back his hip. He took a full-leg backswing and let fly, trailing a black-booted shoe. This was inertia. He kicked Hob Tibbs in the stones with the force of a mule, like old Beechnut when he’d not eaten. Tibbs sucked in air with great volume. He bent double. On the dark wooden floor slats of the church’s choir room, he curled into a baby’s pose and whimpered like one for lack of speech at such pain.
The boy bent over him. ‘If anybody’s kin to hell, it’s you, cocksucker.’ He’d heard a drunk man say the word to another during a fight outside the pool hall and had been waiting to use it ever since. ‘And you won’t see me in this here church again, ever. And you won’t come calling either. Cause if you do, I’ll be up in a tree behind a barrel.’ The words were such that a boy shouldn’t possess to speak, but he did, and he wasn’t finished. He leaned over Tibbs’ head and spoke. ‘You’ll fall hard as Goliath, cocksucker.’
Tibbs just whimpered and knotted up tighter. Trenchmouth let his saliva carry and gather in his lips, just ahead of the ravaged gums. When he’d pooled enough, he opened up in a grin not unlike the one Tibbs had given him that morning. The spit, rusty and thick, hung for a tick or two until its own weight broke and it smacked heavy into the left eye of Hob Tibbs.
Trenchmouth tore off his church-donated tie and walked out the heavy doors. He was through. For the rest of his life, he’d use the word ‘sir’ to address any man his senior, with the exception of Hob Tibbs. He’d taken a place in the boy’s brain and heart reserved only for a few. A few who’d spend their days and nights back-looking over shoulders and sniffing the air like dogs.
It was the same at the schoolhouse. Under a ceiling so low a miner would crouch instinctual, sat all ages, all grade levels, together. The teacher, Ms Varney, switched legbacks for crimes ranging from sass talk to bad posture. She wrote on the new blackboard formulas for understanding reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history. But her two favorite subjects were hygiene and singing. Once, after Doc Taylor visited on head lice, Ms Varney said this to the class: ‘If you care for yourself so little as to let bedbugs infest your scalp, well then you’re nearly as bad as a tramp with trench-mouth in my book.’ Clarissa had put her head down.
When the students got to singing in unison at the end of every day, songs like ‘In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree,’ Ms Varney inevitably told Trenchmouth, ‘Remember to keep yours sealed shut, young man. Humming is all this little room can stand from a stink box such as yours.’
If Ms Varney left the room, Mose Crews inevitably scampered to the blackboard to draw up little diagrams of fly infestations and cow flop inside the opened orifice of young Trenchmouth. He had favorite, scribbled phrases like T.T. = Doo Doo and T.T. Stinky don’t talk, he breaks wind.
Trenchmouth never put his head down. He stared straight ahead at something no one else could see.
It was fall 1913 that a new girl came to sit beside Trenchmouth in that schoolroom, and she alone had the energy to break his stare. She even had the energy to take his thoughts off Clarissa, who’d been ignoring him since the kiss on the train.
Ewart Smith was her name. She came from Tennessee with her daddy, who was taking work in the mines. Ewart was tan. More tan than Trenchmouth even, who, after a summer of bareback climbing and digging outdarked all the kids in the segregated schoolhouse. But Ewart had yellow hair and green eyes, and her teeth were as white as Ms Varney’s chalk. The day she came in, she was introduced to the sound of laughter and confusion at such a given name. She responded by crossing her feet and bowing, one hand across her hips, the other extended to her side. Though there were a few empty seats, she picked the one next to Trenchmouth Taggart, T.T. Stinky.
By winter break, she held his hand after school, and he nearly parted his lips when he smiled at her.
EIGHT
Who Among Us Has Read The Signs
It was a simple idea really. Steel not wood. If folks would just realize that timber construction was a thing of the past, steel the future, maybe whole towns wouldn’t burn. Maybe good men wouldn’t die. And maybe, if the self-made railroad men laying track like match-sticks across the hill terrain of southern West Virginia, if they’d just realize that coal tipples could be fashioned heartier from the very product being mined in these hills, namely the bituminous coke, maybe the wealth would spread to the little folks. This is how Trenchmouth’s brain worked. The boy climbed Sulfur Creek Mountain daily to his secret spot, a dug out, one room, underground bunker complete with homemade drawing table, ruler, drafter’s compass, and school-stolen pencils. There he drew up plans. Inventions really. There he devised an outline for steel cities and suspension bridges and c
oal tipples. He’d never let anyone in until Ewart Smith came along. Only she knew the hideout’s location, and she’d been sworn to secrecy.
Things were thawing on a particular March afternoon when Ewart knocked on the bunker’s hatch door. He let her in. The hatch was on a fishing line pulley, so that when you re-closed it, a scoop net tossed ground cover across its surface.
Inside, he was trying not to stare at the harmonica he’d laid on the drawing table, the harmonica of his dead daddy. He still hadn’t put it to his lips, for fear that since that particular part of him was so susceptible to disease, he might well be infected with whatever drove his father down the road to hell. He got back to business: fashioning a miniature coal tipple and a crane from scrap metal he’d collected at the mine dumps. Structure-smart, he’d used a hammer and a punch to knock out holes in the skinny tin. Slots for connecting and building upwards. Ewart stared at what would surely become a tiny city there on the table.
‘Your momma’s going to come after you for spending all your time away,’ she said.
‘She ain’t home.’ Trenchmouth didn’t say where the Widow was, but ever since the Huntington woman had gone down on moonshine charges, his mother had been hard at work moving product here to there, covering tracks, fashioning cover. In the time since the train trip to Huntington, their home had been family-scarce. ‘Your daddy’s liable to come after you, you keep comin here.’
‘He ain’t home,’ Ewart said.
Trenchmouth wasn’t sure she even had a home. All she’d say was that they lived up in Sprigg, a mile off the Tug. ‘I can’t figure what shift he’s workin then.’ He looked up at her from his growing construct.
She bit her lip. Had a look of thinking hard. ‘How many secrets can you keep?’
‘I reckon about two hundred.’
‘How many you got piled right now?’
‘Ninety maybe.’
She wasn’t laughing at his odd ways like usual. ‘My Daddy ain’t a miner,’ she said.
‘What is he then?’
‘Preacher.’
His stomach tightened. He looked back to his drawing, took up the pencil again.
‘You don’t care for preachers?’
He shrugged.
‘Listen, T. This ain’t preacher like you’re thinking. My Daddy was best friends of a fella named Hensley down in Cleveland, Tennessee. They fell out cause Daddy was better and everybody knew it. Mr Hensley though, he started up this church…’ Ewart bit her lip again. This caused Trenchmouth to shift in his seat and lock eyes. ‘This promise might fill up all those hundred empty ones you got,’ she said. He nodded. ‘Mr Hensley picked up a serpent.’
‘What?’
‘It ain’t like church you know of. Folks pick up serpents. Roll around with em sometimes even.’
‘Snakes?’
‘Snakes.’ She almost laughed for having finally told someone. ‘Folks get bit even.’ Trenchmouth stared. ‘A couple folks died.’
You could call it a box, maybe a wood cage. Copperheads and rattlesnakes knocked around inside it, their dark, translucent sides thumping at the holes.
‘Who built the box?’ Trenchmouth asked her.
‘Daddy.’ They were standing inside a small backroom of Ewart’s farmhouse. She’d finally let him see where she lived. The walls were stained and halfway papered, like somebody had quit on the whole place mid-job. From the second story came sounds of the adult world. Above the two children, furniture scraped floorboards and the low tones of a man and a woman echoed untranslatable. ‘He’s up there preaching to somebody new,’ Ewart said. ‘Convertin somebody.’ She bent down and put her fingers next to one of the little round holes. The snakes were quiet.
‘You ever pick one up?’ Trenchmouth hadn’t taken his eyes off the box. Its construction could’ve been improved upon.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t care for snakes.’
That’s when he bent down next to her and got the feeling he’d had on the train that night with Clarissa. His knee touched Ewart’s, and through the thick wool fabric both sets of skin seemed to heat up. Trenchmouth put his hand out to touch her, but for reasons unknown he changed destinations. With thumb and finger he undid the little brass latch and opened the snake hatch. He reached into the slowly slithering mound and brought back a hand covered in copperhead. The snake might as well have been asleep, but Ewart hopped up anyway, pressed her back against the far wall. Brittle wallpaper fell to the floor behind her.
The snake moved up Trenchmouth’s arm slow and methodical. Had it decided to bite him, the going would be tough through coat and shirt and undergarment, but it gave no indication that it meant the boy harm. He stared at its undersized head, the geometric shape of it and every perfect scale lining its being. He stared and the snake looked back at him until the gaze went blurry between them, until that snake had made it up his forearm, biceps, shoulder, and collarbone. It stopped.
Though he knew she was watching and he knew he’d never shown her his affliction, the boy opened up wide because it seemed the only thing he could do at that moment. And, as if it was an act they’d practiced together before bug-eyed kids at county fairs, the copperhead, without hesitation, slid into the open mouth like it’d found home. It rested its head on his tongue.
Ewart’s hands had come up to her own mouth, holding in and keeping out simultaneously. She breathed heavy without having exercised. The breathing picked up more as she watched her friend slowly close his ragged gums and chapped lips around the serpent. He didn’t bite down, just closed up slowly so that it appeared to her he was ingesting the thing.
From upstairs, the low tones got louder, the furniture scraping and floorboard creaking more imposing, as if the ceiling might come down on them. But Trenchmouth paid little mind. He held his pose, eyes on Ewart, then opened that mouth of his again, just as slow and deliberate as he’d closed it. He gave the copperhead’s tail a little incentive pull and the girl watched the snake loop its head back toward her, a candy cane pose held briefly before slithering back down the arm. Then it was still.
‘How bout that?’ Trenchmouth said.
She let her hands fall from her face. ‘You’ve got to leave,’ she said.
He bent down to the open box and let the snake fall back to its brethren. ‘Did I scare you?’
‘Daddy’s done convertin. Can’t you hear how quiet it’s got?’
From the time he’d opened that box, his whole world had been more quiet than anytime he could remember. Quiet like it must be under the ground.
‘Daddy won’t like that you’re here. You’ve got to go.’
He swiveled the brass latch into place and stood up. He walked to her and kissed her on the cheek, and it was warm and dry, without the electricity of Clarissa’s. Then he slid through the open door of the little back room, his coat knocking paint chips from the molding, and walked out the back. The preacher and the convert descended the stairs inside, laughing.
It was obvious to the Widow Dorsett that for her boy, school was like being put on the rack. And she didn’t say a word when he announced he’d spent his last Sunday at the Methodist Church. She and Clarissa continued to go without him, and he continued to bow his head and hold their hands for the mealtime blessing. Little else was spoken in terms of Trenchmouth’s exile. It was simply accepted that the boy would not be accepted. What mattered was that he learned. That he kept up, surpassed even, those that would not accept. Above all, that he did not become a miner. And it was for this reason that the Widow, on most days, left the newspaper out on the kitchen table for him to read. She’d mark the articles she thought educational with black ink advice like Think on this one awhile or Ever thought of trying your hand at this?
Trenchmouth got home from school on a Tuesday to find one of these left notes on newsprint. It was warm enough out that he didn’t have to refill with coal or wood the heating stove fire, an after-school chore assigned to him during fall and winter months. He broke a piece of hard cornbread off a b
rick she’d left out and sat down to read. The newspaper settled him like little else could. It was almost as comforting as moonshine somehow.
The Widow had written I hope you don’t associate with these boys above an article titled Robbed Passenger Coach. Some local boys had robbed a coach car containing a stock of goods for the local newsstands. They’d been caught sleeping inside a cave they’d fashioned on top of Horsepen Mountain not far from Trenchmouth’s hideout. They slept between the open, stolen hampers and baskets of cigarettes, cigars, chewing gum, candy, popcorn, groceries, fruits, novels, and magazines, gorged no doubt on romance and sugar.
Trenchmouth tore off a piece of newspaper and scrawled on it move hideout for safety? He put it in his pocket.
A page in, she had written Think I’ll ever get me one of these? above an ad for a cooking oven. It read Every woman who wants a steel range will certainly buy The Peninsular if they can only get a view of it. They could do so if they got themselves to A.H. Beal Hardware in Williamson. The power of steel. It was everywhere to behold. Trenchmouth looked at the beat up Acme cook stove against the wall. It had seen better days.
The door opened and Clarissa walked in with Fred Dallara in tow. Trenchmouth nodded and looked back to his paper.
‘Hi,’ Clarissa said. She’d blossomed full to beautiful.
‘Afternoon, little T.T.,’ Fred said. His voice had gone suddenly low that winter, his torso thicker. He had a mustache that looked like somebody had smudged two fingers across his lip and halfway wiped it off. Fred enjoyed pointing out their age differential.
The two lovebirds climbed the ladder to the loft and went quiet.
Trenchmouth knew that Fred and Clarissa kissed up there. The soft sounds echoed in his ears. He knew that they knew the Widow was at work on her still again, moving and hiding and covering up, and that she wouldn’t be back to catch them in the act. He broke off two miniature pieces of cornbread, shoved them in each earhole, and got back to reading.