“‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said. ‘Used to be very religious in the coal camps until I saw what I saw. Now I’m an atheist.’
“‘Good,’ I said.
“He raised his eyebrows.
“‘I’m glad to find one person in this town who’ll call me Fred instead of Reverend or Preacher,’ I said.
“He laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘you’ll find plenty of white people here call you by your first name. Call you boy too, if you want that.’
“‘You know what I mean,’ I said.
“‘I know,’ he said.
“Long story short, I liked him, in a way. I think he liked me. In a way. Went to lunch with him, walked on over to his house and noticed how everybody we passed spoke to him. We sat on his porch with a pitcher of iced tea. Then he told me what he wanted and I wished I’d never set eyes on him.
“I’ll try to explain it quick as I can. There’s a chemical plant outside town. You’ll smell it—it stinks in the mornings. Same company has a plant upriver, ferro-alloys they call what it makes. Kind of a mill with the big blast furnaces and vats of molten metal, and eats a lot of electricity. And this big river out here, it comes from up in the mountains. Drops so many feet in just a few miles, fast strong river with lots of rapids. Haven’t seen that part myself, but Doc told me all this. At one point about thirty miles from here, just before it levels out and slows down, the river makes a big loop. So the company has this idea to drill a tunnel straight through the mountain. Greatest engineering feat in the world, they’re calling it. When they’re done, river will change course, rush through that tunnel, and make electricity. However they do it. I try not to think about stuff like that, makes me dizzy.
“Anyway, they’re drilling the tunnel now, been at it a year. Mostly black men working inside, but they got some white men from the hills around there too. Pulling people off the breadlines in Charlotte and Winston-Salem and Durham and putting them on trains bound for Hawks Nest. And keep looking for more, because word Doc’s been getting, they’re dying like flies up there.”
Dietrich had gone very still.
“How are they dying?” he asked.
“Don’t know. Even Doc didn’t know for sure, last we talked. All he knew was fellow name of Earl Harvey who rides the rails a lot has been up there and says so. This Earl has a reputation for being kind of crazy. Only saw him once myself, but I can vouch he’s strange. Called Doc on somebody’s telephone, said there are skeletons walking at Hawks Nest. Dead men walking at Hawks Nest. And said they need a doctor. Then there was yelling in the background and somebody cut him off.” Fred poured himself another shot of mescal. “So Doc went up to check it out and see if Earl was okay. Now they’re both in town and Doc wants me to meet them tomorrow.”
“And you’re frightened.”
“Hell, yes. The man wants to drag me into this. Whatever it is. Wouldn’t you be scared?”
“Yes,” Dietrich said.
Fred tossed down the shot from the far end of the tea glass. “Walking skeletons, shit. Not even like Reinie’s seminar in ethics, is it?”
“No,” Dietrich said, as though concentrating very hard. “Nothing like it.” Then, “What does this doctor want from you?”
“I think he wants me to go up there with him, then come back and tell people what we find out.”
Dietrich nodded.
“Will you go with me?”
He looked toward the window, but Fred had drawn the shades so no one outside could see them drinking.
“Ja,” he said.
After breakfast, Fred took Dietrich to the church. He read some James Weldon Johnson while Fred worked on his sermon for Sunday, then they went to lunch. Earl Harvey and Doc waited at the corner of Washington Street, surrounded by a small group of white men in shirtsleeves and ties. Earl was considered a local curiosity because in addition to being strange he was a mathematical genius. The white men called him Lightning, because he could think so fast, and were always trying to get him to perform. Like the trained horses that count by scraping their hooves in the dirt, Fred explained bitterly to Dietrich. When they drew closer they heard a white man saying, “Come on, Lightning. Bob here is from Cincinnati and he’s never seen you before. Tell him how many bricks are in this side of the Ferguson.”
Doc Booker had Earl by the sleeve as though he was trying to get away from the white men, but Earl struck a pose for Bob, who had a bald head and red hair that stuck out above each ear. Earl squinted at the brick wall of the hotel. He was a natural squinter, with a narrow face, a nose that seemed always wrinkled as though he was sniffing something unpleasant, and a deep vertical furrow between his wide-set eyes. He swung around and fixed an eye on Bob, who took a step back.
“One hundred seventy-two thousand, four hundred fifty-eight!” he snapped. “Would be two hundred sixty-four thousand one hundred fifty-two if it wasn’t for the windows.”
Bob looked at the hotel, then back at Earl. Mopped beads of sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief, because it was a hot day. Then a suspicious look crossed his face. “How I know you didn’t just make that up?” he demanded.
Earl glared at him. “Count it yourself!”
Bob flushed pink, the local white men hooted, and Earl bobbed his head. His head was always bobbing up and down, especially when he directed traffic, which he did whenever he got a chance, standing in the middle of the intersection at Washington and Brooks waving his arms and swiveling his hips until the police ran him off.
Doc saw Fred and Dietrich. He said, “Excuse us, we got business to tend to.”
“Aw,” a fat white man said, “come on, Lightning! Do us some figures.”
“Don’t call me Lightning!” Earl yelled, head still bobbing. “Name is Earl! Earl! I ain’t crazy, don’t call me no crazy name!”
The white men laughed. Earl let Doc lead him down the street. A white man yelled out, “Cube root of one million, seven hundred and seventy-one thousand, five hundred and sixty-one.”
“One hundred twenty-one!” Earl yelled back. Doc gained a firm grip on him and pulled him along. Earl had a long, swooping gait that was close to a limp.
Fred and Dietrich caught up to them outside the M&S and Fred whispered to Doc, “Was he right?”
“Earl,” Doc said, “were you ragging that man?”
“I made up the bricks,” said Earl. “I can do bricks, but I get tired of bricks. All they ask is bricks.”
Dietrich asked, “What of the cube root?”
Earl just looked through Dietrich as though he weren’t there. He said, “Doc, I’m hungry.”
“Go on in, Earl,” said Doc. Earl pushed open the screen door and was sprawled in a booth and playing with the salt shaker before the others could move. Doc shook his head and said, “Earl never misses a cube or square root. I know because I’ve tested him. Yet the man can’t count out change. Can’t read or write either.”
“What I want to know,” Fred said, “is can he tell the difference between a walking dead man and a figment of his imagination?”
Doc looked around cautiously. “Come on sit down,” he said. “We’ll eat first.”
Several days later, Dietrich lurked among warehouses with Fred, Doc Booker, and Earl Harvey, all of them dressed like hoboes, waiting to hop a train. They passed through banks of fog, for the cool night air after a hot day caused the river to sizzle and steam like a teakettle. As the locomotive trundled toward the crossing, striped bars descended in the glow of pulsing light that smeared the wet pavement a smoky red. The train was moving slowly. After a string of maroon passenger cars, a lantern dangled from a hand that hung from the caboose window. They clambered on board, hanging from the gritty railing until they could haul themselves onto the narrow platform.
A man in a uniform with the insignia of the New York Central Railway opened the door to them. The train was picking up speed, and they stumbled inside as the caboose swung around a curve. The conductor said his name was Joe, told them to si
t on a pair of unmade cots, and shook their hands, except for Doc, whom he punched lightly in the arm, saying, “Told you we’d get you, didn’t I?” He handed around scalding coffee in chipped, greasy cups, said he’d warn them when Gauley Bridge was near.
“We’ll be slow enough?” Doc Booker asked.
“Slow enough to climb on, wasn’t it?”
“Tell Calvin thanks. And you too.”
“Ain’t nothing.” The conductor disappeared through a wooden door scored with curlicues carved by a penknife.
Fred tried to sip the hot coffee, but the caboose lurched and he burned his upper lip. He grabbed the edge of a battered desk to keep from toppling over and knocked off a stack of papers. Everywhere there was clutter, untidy stacks of ink-smeared forms that hid the desktop, piles of rumpled clothes in the corner, a hot plate and skillet crusted with the remains of scrambled eggs.
“We could have bought a ticket,” Fred said.
“No. I don’t want anybody to see us stepping out of a passenger car.” Doc Booker sipped his coffee. “Anybody know where we’re going?”
“No. You acted like this was some big secret, so I didn’t say a word to anybody at church.”
Dietrich asked, “Why are we so careful?”
“Let me put it this way,” said Doc Booker. “Me and Earl and Fred don’t mean a thing to white people, and if they think we’re poking our noses where they don’t belong, watch out. A few Negroes disappear, nobody asks questions. How you think all these people dying at this tunnel and nobody raised hell yet? On the other hand, nobody pays much mind to hoboes these days. They think we’re just after work at the tunnel, or passing through, then they’ll leave us alone. So danger depends on what they see when they look at us. They see a doctor and a preacher and a white man being nosy, we’re in trouble. They see three shiftless niggers and a piece of poor white trash, that’s safer. Unless we’re just unlucky.”
“And if in danger,” Dietrich asked, “from whom?”
“You tell me who,” Doc Booker said. “Du Pont providing the explosives. Westinghouse building the dam and the turbines at the power station. Ingersoll-Rand planning the tunnel and Rinehart and Dennis overseeing construction. All of them working for Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. And who are all those companies? Wealthy, respected men. Churchgoing men. Pillars of their communities. Not a one that would harm a hair on our heads. Don’t even notice themselves. Don’t even be troubled, else they might feel bad. So who wants to be a colored man accusing them of murder?”
Fred poured another round of coffee from a fresh pot. Doc Booker took a flask from his pocket and added a shot to three of the cups. Earl Harvey crouched on the end of a cot, knees drawn up to his chin. He began to rock back and forth, said, “Not me. Don’t drink. I’m going to heaven.”
“Right,” said Fred. He moved to the cot, huddled close to Dietrich, and whispered, “Wake me up, man. Wake me up and let me be back on Broadway.”
They shut their eyes and tried to nap.
The train slowed to a crawl half a mile before Gauley Bridge, and they jumped off. Fred slipped and fell on the loose gravel beside the track, scraping his knee, but scrambled up at once. They walked the track with stiff legs and a reluctant, awkward gait, pulled along by the receding lights of the caboose. Dietrich stumbled. They trudged on in silence and stopped by the riverbank just before dawn, when the sky thickened even as it grew lighter. Doc Booker opened his pack and passed around fried egg sandwiches. Two men passed them in the gray stillness with scarcely a glance.
“Should we be laying low?” Fred asked.
“No need now we’re off the train. People are used to hoboes. Suffocated with hoboes.”
Dietrich chewed his fried egg sandwich slowly, savoring the crackly brown at the edge of the white. To be hungry and to eat an egg under trying circumstances brought back memories of childhood during the war, when eggs were so scarce they were saved for birthdays. Dietrich had such a craving then for eggs that he hoarded his pfennigs until he could buy a hen to share with the family. The family, he thought. Two weeks from this moment I shall be in Berlin.
The river emerged in the gray light. It was broad as a small lake, scored by ragged falls and islands spiked with trees. Fog sprites danced across the milky surface. The green wall of mountain beyond seemed to move closer as if borne on the water. Dietrich was reminded of the Thuringian valleys he had hiked with Sabine. Or at least it was like a Thuringian valley if all that was comfortable and German was stripped from it, and only the land remained. His head swam from lack of sleep, so he shut his eyes and thought again of Germany. His chin dropped to his chest and he was there.
Then he saw peasants crossing a field, wooden clogs breaking through crusts of ice, as sharp as gunfire.
He shook his head to clear it and brushed crumbs from the bib of his jeans. Doc Booker had provided his clothes, faded cotton shirt and denim overalls held up by copper-reinforced straps that chafed his shoulders. He kept plucking at the stiff, unfamiliar material and shrugging to adjust the straps. It was already so warm his face was moist beneath his glasses. He took them off and wiped them on his sleeve.
Fred said, “You need those to see?”
“I use them for distance,” Dietrich said.
“You better take them off. They don’t look like the kind of thing a tramp would wear.”
Dietrich folded the thin gold frames carefully and put them in the breast pocket of his shirt, beneath the overall bib. It depressed him to hide them, as though he were putting away the last piece of his old self.
Doc Booker was watching him. “Know what I think? You better pretend like you can’t talk.”
“Why?”
“Look here. You’ll call attention anyway, being a white man with us. You got a strange accent, very stiff. Nothing like American. If you pretend you can’t talk, you won’t stand out so much.”
“Good idea,” said Fred. “That’s even an excuse to be hanging around us. We’ll say you needed help and we took you in. You and Earl. Looking after you.”
Earl said, “Why you say that? I don’t need nobody taking me in. I get by all right.”
“Sure,” Fred said impatiently.
“You do fine,” Doc Booker said more gently. “We wouldn’t be here without you, Earl.”
“Damn straight,” said Earl. He rocked back and forth, fingernails digging into his knees.
“So here we are,” Fred said, “thanks to Earl. What the hell do we do now?”
“Don’t cuss,” said Earl.
“You cussed! You said damn!”
“That’s different. You a preacher. But you the least preacher-acting thing I ever did see.”
“Is that so? How’s a preacher supposed to act?”
“You supposed to be nice to peoples. Help ’em out. Act all the time like you in church.”
Fred waved his arm. “I don’t see any church around here, Earl. I don’t see any church.”
Dietrich noticed Fred’s overalls were torn at the knee, where he had fallen, and the skin was scraped and bleeding. Fred had turned his back and was looking out over the river. “Can we get on with this?” he said softly.
They followed the riverbank past the cluster of six or seven brick and wood buildings that were the entirety of downtown Gauley Bridge. A small hotel. A drugstore. Grocery. Five-and-ten. A restaurant called the Grill, because everything on the menu would be fried on a grease-spattered sheet of hot metal. They crossed a stone bridge over a smaller stream. “This,” Doc Booker said, “is where the Gauley joins the New. Where the big river starts. The white water and the tunnel are on up there.”
A row of shotgun shacks built of dust-streaked unpainted boards huddled on the narrow scrap of flatland between mountain and river. Doc Booker knocked on the door of the third house, and they listened, feeling the thin floor of the porch sag beneath their weight. The front door was open, no doubt because of the heat, and through the haze of the screen came a woman’s voice—“You feel
like seeing who it is, Raymond, I ain’t done with your brother”—a man’s answering mutter, and the approach of slow, shuffling footsteps.
The man who came to the door was as wizened and stooped as a wood-carving of a character in a Grimm tale. He was also young, his pale skin smooth and hair thick and blond.
“Raymond,” Doc Booker said.
Raymond stood a moment, swaying, his breathing loud as a whistle.
“Good to see you still getting around,” Doc Booker said.
“Barely,” Raymond wheezed. He held his head at an angle so they could not see his eyes. His thin fingers fumbled with the latch on the screen door. He led them into the small, close front room, through a kitchen that smelled of sour milk and pork fat, to a room at the rear. A small electric fan whined from the windowsill, swiveling futilely from side to side. A heavy woman in a cotton housedress leaned over the man on the bed, propping up his head and shoulders with one arm and spooning broth into his mouth. The man, his face tight and shrunken as a cadaver’s, stared at the ceiling. In between spoonfuls of broth, he took short, rattling breaths. The woman nodded briefly to Doc Booker, who entered the room first, knelt by the bed, and pulled a stethoscope from his battered knapsack.
“He’s still yet here,” the woman said, watching the face of the man on the bed. He never blinked, only stared, swallowed, opened his mouth to the air.
Doc Booker didn’t answer, just listened through the stethoscope, held a limp wrist between his fingers, and counted. Earl went to a spiderwebbed corner, slid to the floor, and drew his knees to his chin. A trickle of sweat tickled the small of Dietrich’s back. He felt queasy. Fred turned and left.
Dietrich followed him to the front porch, where Raymond sprawled list-lessly on a wooden swing.
“I’m next,” Raymond said. The exertion of his breathing carried the swing back and forth. Soon his mother came outside and sat on the swing beside him.
“Doc’s looking after Ed,” she said. She put her arm around Raymond’s bony shoulders, and he leaned against her.
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