Billy Creekmore

by Tracey Porter

  “You’re tall, but awful skinny,” she said. “Looks like you’re half starved.”

  There warn’t nothing to say back since it was true, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Well, don’t go insulting him on his first day, Rachel,” said a boy my size. “I’m Clyde Light and this here is my brother, Belton.” A little fellow with great big eyes poked his face out then snapped it right back. “He’s shy, but he wanted to come meet you, right, Belton? We live at the boardinghouse across the tracks with my ma. She’s manager there ever since our pa died last spring. You’ll have to come visit tomorrow since it’s Sunday and there ain’t no school.”

  The other children stood around to get a look at me till Aunt Agnes pulled out her watch and said it was time to go home. “That Rachel’s a bold one,” she said after closing the door. “Just like her mother.”

  Before long the sun was going down. Aunt Agnes took me to milk Trotwood. I gave her a try and she milked easy without kicking or turning her great face to moo at me the way the cows at the orphanage did.

  “It does me good to have you here, child,” said Aunt Agnes. “My heart’s full in a way it hasn’t been since May died.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “Yes, and she liked being told so. She was a romantic, always had her nose in a book. Do you read, Billy?”

  “I can read some, but I’m not one for books. I can’t sit still long enough to get through one.”

  “Neither can I, Billy. Long as there’s work to be done, I’m up and about. Then I’m too tired to read.”

  By the time we was done, it was dark outside. The three of us sat down again for more stew, then it was time for bed. Judging by how quickly I heard snores coming from their room, I’d say Aunt Agnes had tired herself out. My straw mattress was lumpy in places, but I felt awful cozy. The coal stove was still warm from the day’s cooking. I looked at the glowing embers through the grate, trying to get my mind around how big the day turned out to be. I tried to remember all the kids that came by, but the only faces I could put names to was Belton and Clyde. I wondered why my aunt was discouraged over my long limbs, and what would happen when my pa found out I was here instead of at the orphanage. Maybe he’d be angry at the Beadles for letting me go and making it harder for him to come get me. Then outta the blue I missed Peggy and Rufus so bad, I began to cry.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MY AUNT TELLS ME

  SOME ABOUT MY MOTHER

  and

  I ATTEND

  MY FIRST DAY OF

  SCHOOL

  Sometime after I fell asleep, it must have snowed awful heavy, for when I woke up the mountains was white and the ground was covered. I swept the snow off the porch for Aunt Agnes and cleared a path to the road. Everywhere you looked, the snow was sprinkled with coal dust. I ain’t never seen nothing like it. Specks was frozen in the ice and peppered the top of the drifts. It was a strange sight at first, but I got used to it. Near everything in a coal town is tinged with black.

  It was Sunday, and toward the late side of morning, Clyde Light and his brother, Belton, came by to take me sledding. Clyde didn’t have nothing more than a sheet of plywood with an axle fixed to it, but he said it sailed. We trudged through the snow to the sledding hill, which lay just past the last row of cabins. Clyde was my age and still in school, much to his shame. His brother, Belton, was going on six. Like Aunt Agnes and Uncle Jim, Clyde’s mother was mad to keep him outta the mines long as she could, but Clyde reckoned he’d be going soon enough. Last year his pa got his legs crushed in a cave-in, then lingered in the hospital for near a month before he died. He left his family with a mountain of debt, which is why Clyde’s mother ran the boardinghouse for the Russian men. Mr. Newgate let her keep enough money to care for Clyde and Belton, but took the rest to pay off the hospital bill.

  “There’s still an awful lot to pay off,” Clyde said, “and a son can’t let his mother work herself to death. Now, just take a look at this hill, Billy. We’re gonna roar down it, I’m tellin’ you.”

  There warn’t a tree or stump or outcropping of rock to be seen. It was smooth and slick, glistening with ice clear down to the bottom, where it emptied onto a frozen pond. Clyde said that years ago the company cleared it to build a community hall, but they never got round to it. Kids was all over it, sailing by on sheets of cardboard and wood, or rolling down by themselves with their arms tucked in. One little guy was sitting on a pie plate sliding down the hill in slow, lazy spirals, giggling to himself.

  I jumped on behind Clyde and yelled for Belton to get on behind me. But he just looked right through me like he hadn’t heard and started twirling in place with his arms outstretched, talking to himself in a language all his own.

  “Don’t worry ‘bout him,” said Clyde. “He’s happy. He’ll do that till he falls down.”

  “Is he deaf?” I asked.

  “No, he can hear fine. He just don’t understand words. Don’t use ‘em either. Now, get ready, Billy, ‘cause I’m fixin’ to take off.”

  And with that Clyde dug in his heels and pushed us down the hill. We passed kids on cardboard and pie plates, whooping it up as we went over hard little drifts, then flew into the air for a flash. We smacked back down with a thrilling little thump of pain and managed to hold on till we hit the pond. We tumbled off dead in the middle of it, laughing our heads off and staring at the blank sky.

  Things went on like this for hours, and I don’t think I ever felt so happy and free in my life. Clyde and I took turns sitting in front of the sled. For the most part, Belton kept to himself, watching us from behind a tree or twirling about. Toward the end he went down the hill a few times on his seat, laughing like any other kid there. Finally, our clothes was damp, and bits of ice started freezing up our hair, so it was time to go. Clyde said he’d catch up with me on the way to school tomorrow, but I guess Belton didn’t like that idea. He threw his arms around Clyde’s waist and tried to drag him to the ground. Clyde yelled at him to stop it, that he was talking ‘bout tomorrow not today, and that he warn’t going nowhere right now but home with him.

  “He hates when I go to school. Can’t even stand me talkin’ ‘bout it,” explained Clyde. “You’ll see tomorrow.” And then he told me to just go on ‘cause Belton was acting up and overall he’d be easier to handle if he was alone with him.

  When I got home, Uncle Jim was sitting by the stove reading his book and Aunt Agnes was sewing a torn shirt. She put down what she was doing and made me change out of my clothes. Once again she wrapped me up in blankets and had me sit by the fire while she rubbed her tinctures into me.

  “You’re a mix, you are,” she said. She was working on my shoulders now. The smell of menthol was making me relaxed and sleepy. “I see both your parents in you.”

  “How so?”

  “You’re tall like your father, long-limbed and restless. But you’ve got your mother’s eyes, and her heart, too. She was fond of people, understanding, and people liked her back. I see her in you, how you make room for Belton and don’t cut yourself off from Clyde because he has a strange brother.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Lots of folks do. Won’t talk to Clyde or his mother for fear whatever ails Belton might rub off.”

  Belton was strange, more like a creature than a child, but he didn’t frighten me. I thought about how he babbled to himself and wandered among the trees. “Do you think he communes with spirits?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  I paused, debating whether or not I should tell my aunt about my talent with spirits, the very talent that killed her sister. But perhaps because she seemed to be seeing me, like no one else ever had, I did.

  “I do. Sometimes they come to me.”

  “So I’ve heard. The healing woman says you talked to spirits the hour you were born.”

  “Folks say it killed my ma. Made her die from fright.” I got awful jumpy inside. My heart was pounding. Maybe I was making her talk about something she’d rat
her forget.

  “I don’t know about that for I wasn’t there,” she said, “but lots of women die in childbirth, Billy. I’ve seen it many times here in Holly Glen. Just last spring I helped bring a baby into this world, only to attend the mother’s funeral days later. I don’t blame you for her death. May was always sickly. Had a weak heart from the host of fevers she suffered as a girl. I was all set to help her with your birth, but your pa’s letter came the day I was planning to leave. He said you came early and was stillborn and that May was dead.”

  A wave of relief poured over me. Maybe my mother didn’t die because of me. Maybe it was her weak heart. No one ever told me she was sickly before. At the same time I couldn’t help wondering why my father had lied about me.

  “Why’d he write you I was dead?”

  “I have thought and thought about that, Billy, and I just can’t say. All I know is that your pa was always secretive, elusive I’d say. He was never one to talk about his past or his plans for the future. He courted your mother off and on for two years, showing up on our doorstep with a present from one of his travels, then taking off again without a word of explanation. I held her hand while she cried over him many times.”

  “Why’d she marry him?”

  “He made her feel alive. Made all of us feel that way. He was handsome and charming, and he was always up to something exciting, like panning for gold in Alaska or traveling with a medicine show. When May first brought him to meet me, he took a dozen bottles of my tinctures to sell, but I never saw a penny.”

  I sat there silent, my mind filled with images of my parents, and the warmth of my aunt’s tinctures working into me. I saw a man giving a pretty woman a necklace, then her waving good-bye. I saw a cabin in the woods and the same woman looking out the window for him and crying. My aunt was there with her, waiting for him to return. I sunk a little deeper in the chair while my aunt capped the bottles and put them back in her doctor’s bag.

  “All right, Billy, you’re through. No grippe will be setting into you tonight.”

  My aunt’s tinctures seeped into me, and I slept sound that night. I didn’t stir until a loud screeching sound made me near jump out of my skin with shock.

  “That’s the mine whistle,” said Aunt Agnes. She checked it against her watch then snapped it shut. “It’s telling the miners they’ve got just an hour to get to work. Hurry up, now, so you can have your breakfast and walk your uncle to the mine.” She told me she’d already been up for two hours, pumping water for the day and starting the stove, fixing our breakfast and packing our lunches. She timed herself regular, checking her watch as she finished one chore and started another.

  The three of us ate breakfast at the little table by the stove, then bundled up for the walk through the snow. There was plenty of boys my age and younger going off to the mine, carrying the same tin lunch pails as the men. I carried one, with a pie baked in the top section just like my uncle’s, though I was going to school. Some of the boys was so little they had to be carried on the men’s shoulders through the drifts. The older boys nearly swaggered up the mountain. They called out to each other and laughed, while the ones just a year or so older was already serious as the men. I waved good-bye as Uncle Jim entered the mine, feeling like an awful sissy for going to school instead of the mine.

  “In a year,” said Aunt Agnes, reading my thoughts. “And not before. Don’t you know why we walk our boys and husbands to the mine every morning? We might never see them again. Now here comes Clyde Light to show you the way to school.”

  “Mornin’, Mrs. Berry,” said Clyde, tipping his hat to her. Belton was dragging behind, holding his brother’s hand and staring at the ground.

  “Good morning, Clyde. Hello, Belton,” she said. She glanced at her watch. “You boys better hurry. You’ll be late.” Then she was off, stepping in the footprints already in the snow so as not to get her boots any wetter than necessary.

  “My ma says your aunt could run the mine,” said Clyde.

  “I expect she could,” I answered. “Say, Clyde, see those little boys goin’ up to the mine? What kinda job do they have? Seems to me they can’t shovel no coal.”

  “They’s trappers,” said Clyde. “Spend the whole day sittin’ alone by the ventilation door, openin’ and closin’ it for the mule drivers so the gases don’t build up. It’s how most boys start in the mines.”

  “Sounds dreadful lonely,” I said.

  “Oh, it ain’t bad. It’s the way you start. Now, look smart, Billy, for we’s at school. There’s our teacher.”

  Miss Clark was waiting on the steps for her students. She shook my hand when I introduced myself and said she was pleased to have me. Belton started moaning soon as she opened her mouth. He clung to Clyde till he peeled him off, then Miss Clark closed the door. I stole a look at him through the frosty window, and he was red-faced with crying.

  “Don’t worry ‘bout Belton,” said Clyde as we took our seats. “He’ll wander about the hills waitin’ for us.”

  The schoolhouse was a little clapboard building with a coal stove in the middle and rows of desks all around it. It was right smart, I thought, for the inkwells was full and the pen nibs and pencils was laid out neat in the tray. Kids aged five on up to near twelve came in and took their seats. Rachel gave me a mean look. Only one boy seemed older than me and Clyde, which filled me with dismay. But Miss Clark seemed nice, and this cheered me up some. She was fresh-faced and young and moved her hands about when she talked. She introduced me to the class, then asked if I wouldn’t like to recite something.

  “Maybe there’s a poem or speech you memorized in your other school that you’d like to share?”

  “No, ma’am,” I replied. And before I knew it, a story started coming on. “I’m not one for recitin’, but I would like to say a few words, if I could, considerin’ how I’m new to Holly Glen and don’t know no one except my new friend Clyde Light over yonder.”

  “Why, certainly, Billy, that would be very nice.”

  “Well … ahem … ahem.” I cleared my throat. “I just wanted to say how much I appreciate bein’ here, seein’ how all the boys I was raised with at the orphanage was such a low-down pack of thieves, dedicated to learnin’ how to be pickpockets, robbers, and such. Some of ‘em even started a secret club that was hell-bent on spyin’ on folks at night and breakin’ into their houses. The ringleader’s name was Walter Barnes, and he was all set to make me join up, only my uncle, Mr. Jim Berry, saved me at the last moment by bringin’ me here to Holly Glen….”

  “Please, Billy, your language! Hell is not a word for school, but still, I am very moved by your remarks, and we are very happy to have you here with us now.”

  “Thank you, Miss Clark, and sorry about the language.” I took my seat and put my face in my hands for a moment, like I was tearing up with emotion. The class was silent.

  Well, my little speech was a big hit. I wasn’t just the new kid, or an older boy too sissy to work the mines. Instead I was someone who had seen some danger in the world, someone who knew pickpockets and thieves. They mobbed me at recess and pulled on my sleeves, begging for stories about Walter Barnes, whom I made out to be the meanest, strongest boy that ever lived. I had a grand time making up stories about him. I told the kids how he once threw a rock so hard it buried itself in a tree and how he took a copperhead right out of the hands of the preacher one Sunday morning and crushed its head. “He’s not afraid of God nor man,” I told ‘em, and the younger ones shivered in their boots.

  The rest of the school day was right interesting in its own way. Some of the kids spoke a strange kind of English, for their folks came from all over Europe to work the Newgate mine. There were kids from Wales, Romania, Italy, Poland, and Russia. It was a heap of fun hearing their accents and figuring out what they was trying to say, and all of ‘em wanted to talk to me about Walter Barnes and his band of robbers.

  “Oh, they was wicked thieves,” I whispered to a corner of the room while Miss Clark wrot
e on the blackboard. “Used to roam about stealin’ laundry off the line so they’d have plenty of disguises.”

  “Billy Creekmore!” Miss Clark spun on her heels. Her eyebrows was knitted together she was so mad. “You are becoming a distraction to the class!” If she warn’t so nice and pretty, I’m sure I wouldn’t have felt so bad. But since she was good-hearted and kind, nothing at all like Mrs. Beadle, I did my best to settle down. I got down to my lessons, working middling hard at my geography and spelling, and harder still at my numbers. I surprised her, ‘cause I know my times tables all the way up to 6 x 7 is 44, but I told her I don’t plan to go no further. I don’t put no stock in mathematics.

  Clyde said I did real well, considering it was my first day, and that he was proud to be my friend.

  “What the heck do you suppose that ol’ Walter Barnes is up to now?” he asked.

  “Heaven only knows,” I answered. “Still venturin’ out at night and stirrin’ up trouble, I reckon. I’m just glad to be away from him.”

  Belton was up ahead, hiding behind a tree, throwing little stones at everyone who came out the door until he saw his brother. He threw his arms around Clyde and clung to him all the way home, trying his hardest to put his tiny hand over Clyde’s mouth when he spoke to me. He couldn’t bear Clyde giving attention to anyone but him. Seemed awful irritating to me, but Clyde was used to it. None of the other kids could stand it, I guess, for the three of us walked home alone. Up ahead our classmates raced from one frozen puddle to another, stomping on ‘em for all their worth and shattering the ice.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I Write Rufus

  A LETTER,

  Start Learning

  A TRADE,

  and Receive My First

  CHRISTMAS GIFT

  I ain’t one for writing, but missing Peggy and Rufus bad as I did pushed me to do it.

  Dear Rufus,

  I’m living in Holly Glen, a tiny town between two great mountains with just a patch of houses, a store, a saloon, a schoolhouse, and a church. A man named Mr. Newgate owns it all. His picture hangs everywhere, even inside the schoolhouse just like he was George Washington himself. It’s printed on the bills you get from the store and even on the scrip, which is how the company pays the miners instead of money.