by Tucker, Todd
“Your mother has a brother named Russell.” My father didn’t even pause for that bombshell. “Russell was determined to get out of the mines, get out of Harlan County, so when he turned eighteen—he’s four years older than your mom—he moved up this way, got a good job as a welder at Jeffboat. A union job.”
“Okay,” I said. Jeffboat was on the Ohio River in Jeffersonville, not all that far from us.
“Anyway, Russell got married, had kids, was raising this nice little family when Jeffboat went on strike. They went on strike all the time down there, and lordy, it is shitty work. But anyway, for some reason—maybe he needed the money, maybe he’s stubborn like your mom and didn’t like those union boys telling him what to do—Russell crossed the picket line.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“He went to work during the strike. Walked right by the picket line, went inside, clocked in, and started welding.”
“So he was a scab?”
My dad grimaced at my use of the word. “I’m sure they called him that—and a lot worse, too. Anyway, your grandpa, your mother’s father, the proud United Mine Worker, found out about it, and he never spoke to his son again. He couldn’t forgive Russell for crossing that picket line. That man had grandkids he never saw.”
“So Mom was mad at her dad?” I asked.
“She was mad at them both. She was mad at her dad for swearing off Russell. But she was mad at Russell, too, for crossing the picket line and starting all the trouble. Her mom had a stroke and died while this was going on, and your mom believes all the stress and the heartache had a lot to do with it.”
“So they never spoke again?” I asked.
“Your grandpa and Russell never spoke again. Your mom tried with them both, here and again. She talked to her dad on the phone sometimes, went to see Russell’s babies once. It was just too hard for everybody, too much damage had been done. So I think this strike has just dragged a lot of that stuff to the surface, stuff she tries hard not to think about most times. It’s been real tough on her.”
“Okay,” I said. I knew how hard it was to try and forget things you didn’t want to think about—I had definitely not mastered the art myself, and wondered if my mom was any better at it after a lifetime of practice. The story my father had just told me was careening through my mind. I pictured a band of unknown cousins cavorting around Jeffersonville. It was so much more information than I had ever known about my mother, an entire set of her secrets revealed. There were others, of course. I considered asking Dad about the sheriff’s midnight phone calls.
“You can see from your mother that something like this strike can really tear people apart,” he continued.
“Yeah,” I said. “It can.” I thought about Taffy, and her disappearance from Borden.
“So whatever is going on,” he continued, “I hope you and Tom stay friends.”
“We will!” I said. I hadn’t even considered the alternative. I knew my father was basing the statement on the fight he thought we had, but just hearing the words scared me. I considered our friendship to be so permanent, part of the bedrock of my world, I hadn’t even considered myself capable of endangering it.
“Okay, okay,” my father said, surprised at the strength of my reaction. “It’s just… you had this fight…” He gestured toward my wounded face.
“It’s just a fight,” I said. “We’re not even mad anymore.”
Dad sighed. “I know, but your mom lost family because of a strike, right?”
“Right.”
“And I’ve lost a friend because of this strike, right?” His voice cracked slightly. The scent of Old Spice and pipe tobacco seemed to waft through the air.
“Right,” I said quietly.
“So I don’t want you to lose a friend, too, okay?”
“Okay.”
“That would be one of the worst things to come of this strike, if you lost a friend as good as Tom.”
So it was settled.
My dad closed my bedroom door behind him as he left. Over the next three hours, I watched the shadows of the trees move on my wall as the waning moon crossed the sky. When I heard the tapping on my window, I slid it open, and drifted noiselessly with Tom into the southern Indiana night.
Being away from Tom and the woods all day had heightened my awareness and my appreciation of it all. I loved the way the ground felt beneath my feet, firm and yet giving slightly with each step. I loved the almost inaudible groan of the old trees as they swayed in the slight breeze. The night was clear but very dark, the moon just a tiny sliver of white. Tomorrow, I knew, it would be gone completely and the night would be black. I felt quick on my feet in the blue darkness, with my legs strong after the day’s rest, and my shoes almost bounced off the path I knew by heart. Tom stopped after a while and pulled his backpack from a fragrant thicket of honeysuckle. I saw as he stepped into it that the pack was loaded down.
“What’s in there?”
“Food,” he grunted, as he adjusted the straps. I heard the clanking of cans and the crinkling of cellophane.
“For Sanders and Kruer?”
“They must be starving.” Tom stopped talking as we stepped over a log across the path. He wanted them to stay in our woods, I sensed, forever if possible, which was why he was bringing them the food. Tom wanted to keep and nurture them, like the wounded bald eagle we fed hamburger and watched die for two weeks the previous fall.
We walked the rest of the way to the fort.
Tom was clearly making no effort to sneak up on Sanders and Kruer. We walked right down the main path, the one I am sure they were monitoring in some manner. Tom’s cargo made a racket in his backpack the entire time. I knew from experience that on a still night like that, our approach could probably be heard a half mile away.
We climbed over the fort’s rough limestone wall. No one was in camp, but the fire was still smoldering, recently extinguished. We climbed down the wall and walked to the center of the camp. All the guns were gone. I knew they had fled at the sound of our approach, and were now observing us from somewhere in the darkness. With a chill, I discovered what it felt like to be watched through a gun sight.
“It’s us!” Tom yelled. “Don’t worry!”
Slowly the two fugitives drifted up to the walls of the fort from opposite directions. Guthrie Kruer looked down at us a little puzzled. After he took us in, I followed his concerned eyes to the other side of the circle, to the scare-crowlike silhouette of his friend.
Mack Sanders looked even crazier than before. He had a long gun dangling at the end of each jittery arm. Dark circles outlined his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His face was dirty and lean. His eyes darted from Guthrie to Tom to me, as if he suspected a conspiracy between the three of us. He recklessly threw his guns down into the fort, making me cringe as they hit the ground, certain they would fire randomly, sending a ricocheting bullet right to us just as the curved walls of the fort focused sound. When they didn’t go off, Sanders slithered down the wall, picked the abused guns back up and walked toward us. Guthrie had slipped down the other side but I hadn’t even noticed.
Tom threw off his pack as they got close. He dumped all the food into a pile like a kid evaluating his haul on Halloween night. There were cans of Campbell’s soup, two packs of American cheese slices, Tootsie Pops, a box of Captain Crunch, and more. Mack Sanders stepped up to the pile, dropped his guns again, and lunged at a pack of hot dogs. Up close, I noticed that both guns were safe, a precaution I was certain Kruer was responsible for. Although the embers of the fire were still glowing behind them, Sanders tore into the pack with his teeth and began eating the hot dogs raw. With two whole dogs in his mouth, he handed the pack to Guthrie, who began feasting on them with equal gusto. Tom grinned, extraordinarily pleased with himself.
The fugitives ate an apple apiece and a half box of Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies before even sitting down. When they did, Tom, without an invitation, sat beside Guthrie at the fire.
That left a seat next to Sanders for me. The mood had relaxed slightly. We all tried to coax the fire back to life, blowing on it and poking it with sticks.
“Well, looks like somebody got their ass kicked,” said Sanders, noticing my face as the firelight grew. “Ha!” I couldn’t help but stare. Every part of him was in motion, his skinny legs that he couldn’t seem to get in a comfortable position, his twitching eyebrows, his hands with which he kept rubbing his face. He was giggling to himself as he ate, so crumbs occasionally spilled from his mouth and down the front of his shirt.
“Thanks. For the food,” Guthrie said, as he finally took a break from gorging himself.
“No sweat,” said Tom.
“How’d you know we need food?” said Mack, still challenging us, still suspicious. Tom shrugged in response.
“You know who we are, don’t you?” asked Guthrie.
“You’re the fugitives,” I said. “The bombers.”
Tom spoke up: “You’re my cousin.”
Guthrie turned to Mack. “We have got to get out of here. Right now. They know who we are and where we are. There’s no time left.”
“We’ll leave,” said Sanders, never taking his eyes off Tom and me, a tight smile on his face. “When the time is right.”
“When’s the time going to be right?” asked Guthrie.
“We need something before we go and you know it,” said Mack. “Just like we talked about. Precautions!”
“Shit,” whispered Guthrie.
“I need you boys to bring us some more shells,” announced Sanders, ignoring his partner. “Can you do that? Tomorrow night. The big stuff this time. Twelve-gauge buckshot, as much as you can bring us. How about it?”
Tom looked to Guthrie before answering, just as I looked to Tom. Sanders studied Guthrie’s response to us. There seemed to be some complex, silent set of understandings at work, and I was the only one not taking part. “Sure,” said Tom carefully. “We’ll bring you some buckshot.” Guthrie dropped his head in disappointment.
“Good,” said Sanders. “Then we can get out of here and we’ll all be happy.”
We were quiet for a while as Sanders went back to eating. For a time, the hush was interrupted only by the now crackling fire and the sound of Sanders chomping on corn chips and his occasional unprompted giggle. Finally, Guthrie took it upon himself to break the silence. “What grade are you boys in?” he asked. His voice was scratchy from a week of breathing in campfire smoke.
“Going in ninth,” I said.
“Cool, high school,” he said a little wistfully. “Who’s the principal these days?”
“Mr. Nevels,” Tom and I both said.
“The old driver’s ed teacher?” said Guthrie, nodding his head. “He’s a dick.” We all laughed at that, even Sanders, who hadn’t gone to our little school. It dawned on me that in the big scheme of things, these guys weren’t all that much older than us. In the light of the small fire, with their faint but recognizable familial resemblance, it was almost hard to tell Tom and Guthrie apart. We all popped open cans of A&W root beer. It was warm, but felt good on my throat, dry from the hike and the fire.
Tom belched as he finished his root beer. “I’ve got to piss,” he said.
“Me, too,” said Guthrie. “I’ll show you where, cousin.” He led Tom down a faint path leading from the fire to a slight, crumbly break in the wall of the fort. They had apparently established a regular location for the call of nature, presumably downwind and far from any paths regularly traveled by hunters, hikers, or fishermen. I thought about the path they were taking—a walk in that direction would take you to the general area of the cave entrance. That made me realize that the crevice we crawled through might be directly below the fort, which kind of made geologic sense, if I was willing to consider the sinkhole theory, and evidence that contradicted the legend of Prince Madoc.
“My buddy there wants to take off right now, doesn’t he?” Sanders spoke suddenly, snapping me back into the present. I realized with a start that it was just me and him alone by the fire. He smiled.
“Yeah.”
“We can’t do that. Not right now.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Outside these woods, they’re all looking for us, right? How far you think we’d get in broad daylight?” His words tumbled out, as if he couldn’t control them once he began talking.
“Go at night,” I said, eager to help him escape. I knew from experience how one could disappear into the woods after sundown.
“Can’t do that, either,” he said. “Those asshole thugs keep patrolling these woods at night between us and the highway; we’d never get past ’em.”
“Go to Kentucky,” I said.
He snorted. “How am I supposed to do that? You think anyone would notice me and Guthrie walking across the Kennedy Bridge?”
There was another way, I thought, but for some reason I stopped myself from telling him. I looked down at the fire instead. The silence grew unbearable. I could only think of two things to talk about with Mack Sanders, and one of them was the killing of Don Strange. I decided to talk about the other one.
“What was it like?” I asked.
Sanders cleared his throat and spit. “You mean settin’ the explosion?” he said proudly. “Awesome.”
“No,” I said. “Losin’ a nut.”
“Oh,” he said. He stopped short, and then wagged his tongue in an attempt to look devilish. “The bitches like it,” he bragged. “You know what I mean?”
“No,” I said. “Why do they like it?”
He shrugged. “No, I’m just messin’ with you. You can’t really even tell without looking close. The doctor says it shouldn’t affect anything, as far as having kids or anything. Said that’s why the good Lord give us two.” He shrugged again.
Some more silence passed. “How bad did it hurt?” I asked.
“It hurt,” he said. “How do you think it felt?”
“What did they do with the one that got torn off?” It was a part of the story I’d always been curious about.
“What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just curious.”
“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Asking me about my nuts. You want to see?” He stood up with his hands poised on his zipper.
I stared down at the ground, mortified with embarrassment. “No!” I said. “I was just curious.”
“Seriously, I’ll show you if you’re that goddamn curious, you homo.”
“I’m sorry!” I was ready to run off if he unzipped.
Sanders stopped suddenly, perhaps moved by my genuine terror or by his own memories of that day. He sat down heavily again on his log. He sighed and for a while we just watched the fire burn. He lapsed into a kind of stillness I hadn’t seen from him before, all his kinetic energy turned potential, his eyes half closed in thought. I hoped he would remain calm until Kruer and Tom returned. They’d been gone a long while and I wondered what they were talking about.
“We didn’t mean to kill Strange,” Sanders muttered, still looking somberly into the fire. “Now we can’t ever go back. We didn’t know he was in there. I liked that old man.” A huge mosquito landed on his cheek, stabbed him, and began sucking his blood. Sanders didn’t react.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked.
He thought it over for a moment, but it seemed like he couldn’t find words strong enough to express his feelings. “Because …” he said, his brow furrowed, staring hard at the fire. “Because I hate that place.” He spat a sizable goober onto the top of a smoldering log, and waited until it completely sizzled away before he spoke again, mumbling so softly I could barely hear him.
“We didn’t know he was there. We just wanted to shake things up, maybe give those assholes something to think about. What the hell was he doing in there that time of night, anyway?” Flames curled around the log as Sanders wallowed in regret. I felt again like I had to say something.
“My dad say
s Mr. Strange would go in at all hours.”
“Your dad works at the plant?” Sanders snapped back to life, energized by a piece of information his predatory instincts recognized as significant. He slapped at the mosquito, and a teardrop of blood ran down his cheek.
I had said too much. I nodded my head to answer his question, trying to look unshaken.
“Where at? What part of the plant?” He was smiling broadly, pressing me now, pushing his way through the crevice to which I had led him.
“Finish room,” I mumbled. A log popped.
“Me too!” he said with sudden, artificial enthusiasm. “What’s his name?”
I stammered.
He leaned in close. “Come on, man, what’s your dad’s name?”
I was fumbling for an answer when Tom and Guthrie came running back into camp. “Put out the fire!” whispered Guthrie. Mack hesitated for just a second, looking at me, wanting to continue the interrogation. He then lunged for an old five-gallon bucket that they had filled with creek water and placed next to the fire. He doused it, placing us in total, smoky darkness.
“What’s going on?” whispered Mack as we headed to the wall of the fort. Both Sanders and Kruer brought rifles with them.
“Voices,” said Guthrie. “The thugs again. Closer this time.”
By then we heard them. Men shouting, small branches snapping, larger ones being pushed out of the way. They certainly weren’t trying to be sneaky. A marching band wouldn’t have made more noise. Sanders shouldered his rifle, using the rock wall of the fort for support. He was trying to impress us, I could tell, but his awkwardness with the weapon had the opposite effect. When he raised the gun, his cheek was too close to the stock, an uncomfortable and potentially painful stance an experienced shooter would have avoided. His index finger probed the trigger guard for the safety, but he finally had to take the rifle off his shoulder to locate it. Sanders clearly didn’t know anything about his gun, and he didn’t even know enough to be embarrassed by that.