Muckers

by Sandra Neil Wallace

  “Muckers! Muckers!” The shift horn blasts again and you can hear the miners cheering from the open pit. I’m still down on the ground, but the guys start lifting me onto their shoulders, shouting, “Red-ee! Red-ee!”

  The Rim Valley cars flick on their headlights and start backing up, driving onto the field, trying to make it out of here without any problems. But I know the Mucker crowd will let them go without much trouble. Winning makes them awful generous.

  Coach is throwing up on the far end of the field so no one will see him. And I don’t know why—we won it. I guess he was as nervous for this game as I was.

  The boys finally let go of me and I collapse on the ground, I’m so spent.

  Rabbit leans over me with his camera and snaps a picture.

  “You’re not running that.” I try pulling the camera off his neck, but I can’t even do that. “Got any bread left?” I ask.

  Rabbit shakes his head.

  “What happened to it?”

  “I ate it all.”

  “You didn’t even play, Rabbit.”

  “I was hungry.”

  “You idiot, Rabbit!” Cruz says. “Ugly’s about ready to pass out.” Then Cruz lets out a wolf whistle. “Señor Francisco,” he beckons. “¡Ven!”

  I hear rattling. It’s Paradiso. Trotting over to me.

  “Come esto,” Francisco says, tossing a bag of pecans at my number. I tear the paper open and shovel them into my mouth.

  “God gave you strength to finish,” Francisco says. “He gave you the strength of Goliath. He always gives us what we need.”

  “ ’Cept a brain,” Cruz says, punching my arm. “Not only are you ugly, you’re stupid, too. So do me a favor?” he says, hauling me up. “Don’t ever not eat before a game again.”

  * * *

  10:08 P.M.

  I’m walking fast up the thirty-degree incline since there’s still a maze of cars working their way through Hatley after the game. I’m too close to the top of Hill Street not to go see Maw.

  I know it’s past visiting time, but we won. And Mrs. Mackenzie usually makes an exception for me—she’s just as nice as her husband, Mr. Mac.

  Ricky Sanchez’s mother is polishing the floor in front of the elevator and stops scrubbing for a minute. “Congratulations, Felix,” she says, smiling at me. “Muy bien.”

  I mumble “Gracias,” making my way up the stairs. I wouldn’t take the elevator anyhow.

  They keep it clean and the floors are always polished, but the Eureka Copper Miners’ Hospital still smells like disease. I never much cared for the place even before Maw came here. It’s shadowy and dank. And no matter how warm it gets outside, the heat can’t burn off the stickiness holding in all the soiled smells. I’ve seen them wash down the walls first thing in the morning, but how do you get rid of something that’s rotting from the inside?

  I pass the second floor—the only one where you still see flowers in the rooms and other signs of life: young miners with broken bones that’ll mend in a few weeks or wailing babies too small to go home yet, but they will. Things go downhill pretty quickly as you climb. And the higher you go, the stronger it gets. The scent of sickness. Overtaking any hint of talcum powder or ammonia from a newly bound cast, so that by the time you reach the fourth floor—which is the top floor—you know the stories must be true. And I don’t want Maw being part of them.

  One time on the way home from first grade I looked up at the hospital after hearing a terrible cry. They were rolling a miner out on a gurney, his light still strapped to his head. He’d let out a bloodcurdling scream from a pain I can’t imagine, his two arms—if you can call them that—aimed at the sky. Only they weren’t long enough to be arms; they were more like a pair of stumps, wrapped like meat from the butcher. I sprinted the rest of the way home.

  Those two severed limbs shooting skyward—and that scream—stayed with me all summer. Only I couldn’t tell Pop. He’d just accuse me of going soft. “Whatcha expect, you tink mining’s pretty?” he’d say with a deep-throated laugh. “ ’T’ain’t fer whisses.” But I’d heard him cussing and going over things with Maw that night, about how they’d sent another to the fourth floor and that even if he did get to go home, he’d be forbidden from walking the streets in daylight—for the sake of the women and children. How daft the rule was. “ ’T’ain’t no secret,” he’d howled, “what the mines’ll do to ya.”

  I feel a sudden urge to turn back and sprint home all over again because I’m never the same after these visits. The sadness sticks with me and I go over how it went with Maw, no different from a combination I haven’t got right on the field. Both needle my brain until only a hard tackle or a win can change how I feel.

  I don’t turn back, and it sounds like Opal Hubbard’s winning again. I can hear those checkers skipping to victory in the fourth-floor lounge. “Rah, rah, sons of Hatley High!” Opal sings when he sees me, marching on the spot. Then he smashes the board with a fist and the pieces scatter like popcorn. “You cheated!” he shouts at his imaginary opponent. “I saw you.”

  Phyllis Crawley shuffles over and buries her face in my shoulder. “I can let down my hair,” she says, showing me her long silver braid. “Then you can go home if you’ll do the same for me.”

  “It’s another one with short hair, Phyllis,” Tuffy Briggs tells her. “You’re not going home.” Tuffy’s reading in a wheelchair by the window, his pajama bottoms billowing empty where they amputated below the knee.

  “It’s 10:18, Red. You’re late. Two minutes and forty-five seconds late,” he says, holding up his stopwatch.

  “It’s all those Rim Valley cars,” I say. “Wanting to hurry home after a loss.”

  Tuffy likes holding my helmet, so I rest it gently on his lap and he fingers the indentations where the stitches grip into the leather. “Should’ve never lost in twenty-four,” he says. Tuffy drove the school bus back then. “Saw it with my own eyes, what the Phoenix officials did.”

  I lean closer and he takes my throwing hand, turning it over to examine it. “It’s your year, Red,” he says.

  “I hope so.”

  “You’ll make things right and let those Southern boys have it.”

  Mrs. Mackenzie waves me over. “Your mother’s still awake,” she says, so I follow her down the hallway.

  “Did she get out on the balcony at all?” I ask.

  Mrs. Mackenzie pauses. “I was making the rounds in the maternity ward, so she very well might have.”

  I know she’s just being kind.

  “Mrs. O’Sullivan, look who’s here,” she tells Maw before I go in. Then Mrs. Mackenzie turns to me and says, “Just for a little while, okay, Red?”

  I don’t find Maw at first—the light’s too dim. But when I do, I’m caught off guard—blindsided—every time I catch Maw this way, like being brought down to my knees the way it takes a while to recover from a sack. I keep imagining Maw as she was before, not who she is now—a shell of herself in the corner of the room in a wheelchair, slumped over, chin to chest.

  I come closer and kneel beside her but she doesn’t move. The choppy layers of hair covering her face lift a little, sort of to a rhythm, so I know Maw’s breathing—that she hasn’t given up completely.

  “Maw?” I whisper, turning up her chin so she can get a look at me if she wants to. “It’s me … Red.”

  Maw rolls her head back and blinks at the ceiling. Her neck’s all shiny, which means she’s been drooling. I wipe some off her chin and gnaw at my lip.

  Pop used to joke how even though Maw’s eyes were as green as the Glens, she was destined for Hatley since they’d been sprinkled with flecks of copper. I angle her face so I can see those eyes, but they’re empty. Cloudy as ice cubes, hazy and dull.

  “Would you like me to comb your hair?” I take the sable brush Pop got Maw five Christmases ago, just before she came here, and start at the temples.

  Cruz asked me flat out one morning if Maw was like Loco Francisco, which she’s not. I know
they call it “the ward for the insane” or “the nuthouse” but those are just names, really. Maw isn’t crazy, and I don’t believe Francisco is either. They call him loco because he aimed higher than most and started going on about God’s plan, telling them about his visions. Things like starting his own church to preach at and building it with his own two hands. It made the rest of the town so uneasy they kept giving Francisco hell for it, so he up and quit the mine. Now he keeps to his Bible and won’t share a word about what God tells him, living off the land instead.

  Maw doesn’t say much at all anymore, but that doesn’t mean she’s crazy, or even gone for good. You can give up for a while and then snap out of it like you can with a coma, which is a lot worse than what Maw’s going through. You read about stuff like that all the time in the paper—little miracles, really. People waking up from the worst after years, asking for a cherry Coke, then remembering all the people who love them sitting around and staring. Never giving up.

  I was helping Rabbit collect eggs from his mother’s hens last week. When one of them wouldn’t let go of the egg she’d been nesting, Rabbit wanted to know when Maw first let go of me. He said I was like an orphan.

  It was when we first got the death notice. Maw stayed in bed for a week and only got up for Bobby’s funeral. She never cried either. “Strong as the white rocks in Antrim,” Pop kept saying. Then Maw stopped baking soda bread on Saturday mornings.

  When school started up again, I came home and there was Maw, sitting in the parlor with her nightgown still on, counting the roses lining the wallpaper. When I asked why she hadn’t washed up, she just shrugged and said, “What for?”

  By Christmas, Maw’d cut up her hair pretty good, and she thought the living room carpet was a wicked, screaming beast. “Open the windee and we’ll shoo the bleemin’ hallion away!” she’d cried, beating the border with her crimping iron. And I knew I had to tell Mr. Mackenzie.

  That’s when Pop started taking on more shifts—night shifts especially—and I saw him even less, so by the time Sundays came, I’d eat up most of the bread meant for Holy Communion, and Father Pierre didn’t want that kind of altar boy around.

  “Ten more minutes, okay, Red?” Mrs. Mackenzie says, poking her head in the doorway.

  “Did he come visit?” I ask.

  “Not today.”

  I don’t know the last time Pop did.

  I keep brushing Maw’s hair, which used to be like mine, but it’s pale and brittle now, as if the pigments have given up, too. When I reach the nape of Maw’s neck, she simply lets go and an envelope falls from her lap to the floor.

  I know it’s a letter from Bobby. There’s a pile of them on Maw’s dresser in the old Victory cigar box next to her pearls.

  It’s the one where he’s at sea writing to Mr. Mackenzie, who gave it to me the day we found out Bobby died. It’s the last one Bobby ever sent. The thing about Bobby was that you could never catch him hurting.

  Februrary 3, 1945

  At Sea

  Dear Mr. Mackenzie:

  Here’s hoping you and your family are in the best of health. Everything is just joto as they say over here. That means okay. But it looks as though I’ll have to stay out here for a few more months.

  I saw the damege caused by the Jap suicide planes and it’s nothing to scoff about. I can see where I am going to need lots of luck in order to stay alive if one should ever hit the ship I am on. Almost all hit near the con-tower, where the captain is. I guess they figure that if they get rid of him the war is won. The captain says if he makes it home he’s gonna lie in a hamock for a month and have his wife pour beer down his throat. That he won’t even bother to swallow.

  All these waters are mine-infasted. At night you have to pray that you don’t hit one. It’s hard to see them in the dark and it really gets dark up this way. (Please excuse the mistakes but the typewriter isn’t any good and I can’t type real good when the kid below keeps shaking the bed. I know those are excuses but I don’t want you thinking all the time you spent on me was wasted if I can’t spell.)

  Had two good liberties. Bought a nice silk kimono for my future bride. It cost me fifty yen or in american currency it runs to three dollars.

  Any way lets give the teams a good going over next season, especially Cottonville. I’d give anything to be there that day but I don’t think I could make it.

  Well Mr. Mac, keep the home fires burning until I reach home and tell everyone hello. Don’t forget we are still out here trying our best that freedom shall not perish from the earth.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Robert O’Sullivan

  P.S. I will try and write as soon as I reach my destination. That’s a promise!

  Don’t do it, I tell myself. Get all weepy and sentimental. It won’t bring Bobby back, will it?

  Maw starts getting restless and reaches for the doors that lead to the balcony. She’s never done that before. “You want to go out?” I ask. She keeps reaching, so I take her outside. It’s a beautiful night. Not dark and murky at all, like it was in the Pacific. You could pluck any star you want from the sky. And Maw wants to see it.

  “We won the game, Maw.” I lean over and whisper it in her ear. “I threw a pass that was nearly as far as Bobby’s.”

  I rest my cheek against hers and look out at the sky. You can see everything from up here. We’re at the highest point before the mountain goes vertical. The hillside below is covered with light and it’s blinking. And I can’t tell which houses are Mexican or Irish or Slav—they’re all blended together, forming a single glow.

  On nights like these I feel like I can fight the sadness by throwing farther and running harder. That I can actually beat the odds. We’ve already got one game down—why can’t we take the rest of them?

  I know this place is the opposite of Rapunzel’s castle. That no one’s clamoring to get up here and that the chances of leaving are slim. But if an awful event brought Maw here, then why couldn’t a happy one bring her back home? Something so important it would make her decide that it’s worth it to come back. To take that chance.

  Maw reaches out again the way she did before and I give her my hand, but that’s not what she wants. She wants the letter.

  I miss him, too.

  Soon the glow over Hatley begins to fade as the town goes to sleep, like candles getting blown out on a birthday cake.

  And in a few hours it’ll be Bobby’s birthday. He would have been twenty-six.

  I hand Maw his letter. It’s all I can give her. Someday it might be something more. They say the Yavapai Cup weighs twenty pounds and that it bestows great things on anyone who wins it. If we do, they’ll be cheering so loud in this part of the state Maw won’t have a choice but to come around and see what all the fuss is about. Then I can finally bring her home.

  WEEKEND EDITION

  MUCKERS WIN PIGSKIN OPENER, 14–7. RECAP, P.2

  Miners Request Raise

  Hoping to secure the raise they’ve been trying to put through since April 1945, the Brotherhood of Hatley-Cottonville Miners & Smelter Workers has petitioned for a pay increase of 40 cents a day for all workers at the Eureka Copper mine and smelter.

  When asked about the threat of a strike if the request was not met, Dell Bruzzi, spokesman for the Brotherhood, said that as of yet there is no plan to do so. He said the facts show the inflation of prices in this locality after every past raise was greater than the increase in wages. If the trend continues, Bruzzi said, the Brotherhood may find no other alternative than to take constructive action.

  SOCIAL NEWS & ARRESTS

  —Mrs. Faye Cosgrove (nee Miller) and her little son are houseguests of Faye’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Miller. Faye is back from Grasshopper Flats to manage her father’s furniture store since he took ill last month.

  —Mrs. Reginald Hollingworth entertained the Women’s Garden Club with a bridge party at her Magnolia Street home on Company Ridge. Bouquets of white asters decorated the tables, and glace cupcakes
were enjoyed by all. High was won by Eulene Vance, second high by Hilda Booth, and low, Wanda Menary.

  —Featured guest speaker at the Elks fund-raiser will be Hatley High English teacher Luther B. Sims Jr., who has prepared a speech entitled “Creeping Communism in Your Community.”

  Draft Registration for All 18-Year-Olds Monday at Cottonville High. Draft Call Still Set at 19.

  Chapter 6

  EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 26

  5:47 A.M.

  POP’S SURPRISED WHEN I WALK into the kitchen this early in the morning the day after a game. He’s got on his red unions—he always has them under the white shirt every shift boss wears—and should be using a fork instead of those fingers when he starts fishing for a pickle out of the jar. But I’m glad he’s aiming for something to eat. Pop never does when he’s drunk, so I know I’m in the clear.

  “Dammit!” he hollers. I can see his fingers dangling inside the jar. “I’m stuck,” he says, his face burning red.

  I get out the lard Maggie Juniper keeps in the cupboard and bring it over to the sink, trying not to smile or laugh or anything. I can see his wrist is bleeding since he keeps trying to yank it out when it just won’t go.

  “Stop thrashing it around,” I say. “It’ll only make it worse.”

  Pop sighs and watches me spread the lard around the rim, then onto his swollen wrist.

  “If you say I’m in a pickle you’ll be sorry,” he mumbles. But I can’t stop myself from smiling.

  When the wrist wriggles free, he dumps the pickles into the sink and grabs the first one that slides out, looking at me in between chewing.

  “So you’re the king of happiness, eh?” he says.

  I don’t say anything. I never know what to say to Pop anyhow. I wonder if he’ll let me take a pickle, though. There’s only three. I lean into the sink to get one, but Pop latches on to my arm. He’s quick for fifty-four, at least before he gets to coughing, but his hearing’s definitely shot from all that blasting down in the mine.