The Coalwood Way (18 page)

19

TRIGGER AND CHAMPION

I DROVE MOM to church the next morning. Icicles hung from the roofs of the houses along Main Street Row, and I saw a thin layer of ice coating the creek when we went over the bridge that led to Coalwood Main. It didn’t look like it was going to get much above freezing all day. Snow clouds hurried overhead, spitting occasional, indecisive flurries.

As soon as we walked into the church, I knew there was trouble brewing. A stranger to Coalwood would have never seen it. People coming early to the Coalwood Community Church tended to fill up the back pews first. Those coming in later sat in the middle. The latest had to settle for up front. Trouble, however, restacked the congregation. Mom took it all in as quickly as I did and said, “Oh, what a fine lot of Christians we have with us today!” Up front, the union families were clustered around Mr. Dubonnet and the Malletts. The foremen and their families were all in the back. When anyone came in, they immediately sorted themselves according to their loyalties. There was a no-man’s-land in the middle where Doc Lassiter, his wife, and three young daughters took their ease. “11 East,” Mom muttered. “It was only a matter of time before John Dubonnet started stirring his pot.”

She passed up the foremen and walked up front and plunked herself down beside Mrs. Mallett. “Excuse me, Cleo,” Mom said, wiggling to find a spot beside the wide-bottomed woman. Cleo huffed but made room. Mr. Dubonnet turned and nodded to Mom. He looked amused. Mom glared at him.

I sat with Sherman toward the middle where there were a lot of empty seats. The church was going through a series of trial preachers. The one before us, Reverend Schrieber, was a young man from somewhere up north. He had an accent that most of us found a little grating to our ears. When the choir finished with its opening hymns, he stood to deliver his sermon. It was based on the 49th Psalm, an obscure one to be sure, but acceptable. It could have been a pleasant little talk about being charitable, but, perhaps due to a mistaken belief that anybody in the church cared a thing about what he had to say, the boy preacher managed to turn it into a diatribe. “What about the starving people of Africa?” he cried out. “What about the starving people of Asia? How can it be that any one of us might have a dollar if our fellow man has none?”

I looked around and saw about half the people inspecting the ceiling and the rest the floor. The truth was Coalwood people didn’t care a whit about anybody in Africa or Asia. What Reverend Schrieber’s congregation cared about was 11 East. The silence of his audience screamed it at him.
11 East. 11 East.
But people ten thousand miles away who he’d never seen were so loud to Reverend Schrieber, he couldn’t hear his own people just a few feet away. The young reverend kept swinging at air. When he finished, he could look out across his congregation and see a sea of nudging female elbows probing male ribs, heads rising and sleepy eyes blinking awake.

Perhaps finally sensing the futility of his sermon, Reverend Schrieber sat heavily in his chair behind the pulpit and waved at the choir to sing. They did so, happily, while the young man held his head. I noticed he was wearing tennis shoes, strange footwear for a man of God.

Ginger was in the choir and gave me a wink as she walked down the aisle after the service. She was cute in her maroon robe, I thought. Afterward, Sherman and I waited on the steps for Mom, who was having a word with Mrs. Dantzler and the teachers of the Coalwood school. “Another man got hurt on 11 East yesterday,” Sherman said.

I hadn’t heard that. “Who?”

“Mr. Franklin. Broke a finger.”

The Mallett boys swung by close. In a mocking voice directed at me, Germy sang, “We’re going on strike. We’re going on strike.” I didn’t hate that kid but I came close.

Mom was quiet on the way home. She was chewing on something, and it could have been anything. As we parked in the garage, she said, “I like Ginger, too.” I had a hunch she could have told me how many times Ginger and I had danced at the Dugout if I’d asked her.

As we came into the kitchen, I remembered I wanted to know why Dr. Hale had visited her. “Was that a chinchilla coat Dr. Hale had on yesterday?” I asked, all innocence. I was just going to warm her up on the subject a little.

She inspected me for a moment and then said, “He wanted to know if your dad would give him permission to work on that girl’s tooth.” At my startled look, she continued. “I just thought I’d save us both some time. That’s what you wanted to know, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, pretty much,” I confessed. “Did Dad agree?”

“I haven’t asked him,” she said. “When do I see him to ask him anything?”

I didn’t care to get off on that particular subject. “Can Dr. Hale really fix Dreama’s tooth?” I wondered.

“He can put a crown on it, but it’s expensive. He said he’d do his part for free, but since it was company equipment he’d be using, he needed company permission.”

“I wonder what Dad will say.”

Mom smiled and hung up her coat. She opened her pantry and considered what she had inside it. I hoped she was going to fix lunch. I was starving. A sermon, even a poor one, can leave you pretty hungry. “You know, Sonny,” she said, “I don’t know what your dad would say but I know what he should say so I said it for him.”

“Dr. Hale’s going to fix Dreama’s tooth?”

“I reckon so,” she said, selecting a can of tomato soup. “And I’d give a dollar to see Cleo Mallett’s face when she finds out about it. Being the superintendent’s wife isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but it does have its moments.” She chuckled. “It does have its moments, indeed.”

IT was the day O’Dell had asked me to come ride the ponies with him. After a lunch of tomato soup and a fried baloney sandwich, I pedaled my bike down to Frog Level. Along the way, I plotted my strategy to find out what he knew about Billy. I’d have to be less obvious than I’d been with Mom about Dr. Hale. I figured to come at O’Dell about Billy from an acute angle. That way, I wouldn’t have to break my promise to Mr. Turner to keep Billy’s secret. Billy no longer showed up for any of our BCMA meetings in the auditorium in the morning, and his class participation had fallen off, too. He looked a bit worried and wide-eyed to me, as if he were staring into a firing squad. I guessed quitting school was sort of like that, anyway.

O’Dell and I saddled Trigger and Champion and got going. The ponies tossed their heads and stamped their feet, getting used to the snow. Steam erupted from their noses as we came down off the hill behind O’Dell’s house. O’Dell was on Trigger, named after Roy Rogers’s palomino trick horse. I was on Champion, named after Gene Autry’s horse. Like his Hollywood namesake, Champion was a rich brown color with a white star on his forehead. He had a gentle way about him and was easy to ride. O’Dell inspected the sky. The clouds had blown away. “I was hoping we’d get more snow,” he said. “Someday I’m going to live out in the Rocky Mountains. Every day there’ll be snow. I’ll even go skiing!”

“That I’d like to see,” I laughed. “A Coalwood boy on skis. How do you figure to learn?”

“Nothing to it,” O’Dell declared. “You just strap on barrel staves and aim downhill. It’s just like sledding, only you stand up.”

Our ponies clip-clopped up through Middletown, prancing when Margie Jones’s dog barked at us as we went past her house. Across the ball field, I saw some men in front of Little Richard’s church. One of them was the reverend himself, dressed in his all-black Sunday frock. I turned Champion across the grass to have a word with him. Trigger and O’Dell followed.

A small stack of lumber sat in front of the church next to some glittering panes of glass. Two men stood in blue bib coveralls alongside Little. They seemed to be having an argument. “Hi, Reverend Richard,” I said as I rode up to them.

Little lifted his hand. “Hidy, Sonny, O’Dell. Mighty fine fillies you got there.”

“They’re geldings,” O’Dell said.

The reverend clucked his tongue. “Are they, now?”

“Working on a Sunday, Reverend?” O’Dell asked.

“Got my ox in a ditch, young man.”

I recognized the men in the overalls. One was Mr. Willy Franklin. When I saw the splint on one of his fingers, I remembered Sherman telling me that Mr. Franklin had been in an accident at 11 East. The other man was Mr. Billy Joe Blevins, a shuttle-car operator and also John Eye’s brother. “Hey, boy,” Mr. Franklin said while Mr. Blevins nodded. Though they didn’t call me by name, they knew who I was and I could sense their unease. I was the boss’s son.

“The boys and I are just having a little discussion about our new church windows,” Little said.

The two men were looking at a drawing on a piece of notebook paper. They turned it this way and then that. “We can do it, Reverend,” Mr. Franklin said. “But it still ain’t right.”

“It’s what I want,” Little said, smiling. “And it is as right as heaven.”

The men shrugged and went inside the church. “What kind of windows are you putting in?” I asked, the curious cat on a pony.

Little waved my question away. “So, lookit you and O’Dell, a couple of cowboys. Heh heh. My, oh my. I can remember when you used to ride your bicycles!”

So could I, since it had been earlier that same day and would probably be tomorrow, too. “I’m glad Dad sent you the stuff for your windows,” I said.

“Ol’ Homer usually comes through after some foot dragging just to show you he don’t have to do it. Guess you know how that goes.” A memory seemed to cross his face. “Say, you ever figure out that thing that was bothering you?”

“Not yet.”

Little sat down on the steps of his church. “Did you pray on it?”

“Not exactly.”

“God’s wheel shaping you, praying or not, Sonny Hickam.”

“Yessir.”

“You ready for Christmas, Reverend?” O’Dell asked.

“I live for it, O’Dell. Best time of the year.” Little got back to me. “Your granddaddy died last Christmas, didn’t he?”

“Christmas Eve,” I said.

“Mr. Benjamin Hickam,” Little said. “I used to go over to Warriormine, sit on the porch with him, talk things over. He didn’t care if you was colored or what—just come on over, Reverend, any old time you like. When he wasn’t on the paregoric, he was interesting to talk to. Knew something on just about everything. Read a lot of books. I’ll say a prayer for him tonight.” He searched my face. “You been getting any hassle about 11 East?”

“Some.”

“Been about all people care to talk about around here,” he said, watching me carefully. “ ’Cept maybe that woman who lives with Cuke.”

I was surprised that the goings-on of a young white woman was gossip in the colored part of the camp. “Her name’s Dreama,” I said. I assumed he’d heard about her getting beat up. “Why do you think she stays with Cuke, Reverend?”

Little studied the sky for a bit and then said, “Well, Sonny, people do what they do. Man wants a woman, woman wants a man. That’s the way the good Lord made us. So far as I know, nobody’s seen fit to fix us like your poor ponies there.” At the sound of splintering lumber, he called over his shoulder, “Easy, boys!” Then he said, “A man can’t hit a woman and stay a man. He becomes a loathsome thing, even to himself. But the woman who stays with such a man panders to his darkness. They both risk their souls.”

Mr. Franklin walked out on the church stoop. His black curly hair was sprinkled with sawdust. He was carrying a pry bar. I was surprised he could work with a broken finger. “This old place is hammered together pretty good, Reverend.”

Little gave him his slow laugh. “There wasn’t no shortage of nails when we built it, only boards.”

“What kind of windows are you putting in?” I asked again.

Little shook his head. “Sometimes a thing can’t stand to be talked about before it happens,” he said mysteriously.

Mr. Franklin made a sour face. “It’s durn crazy is what it is.” He looked at his bandaged finger. Then he looked up at me. “Like 11 East.”

Little gave Mr. Franklin a stern look. “Willy, I done told you why we’re doing what we’re doing. Don’t you be calling it names, now. And don’t be getting cute with Sonny. He didn’t do 11 East and he can’t undo it, either. Don’t matter who his daddy is.”

Mr. Franklin gave me a sheepish look and then joined Mr. Blevins. They began covering the front of the church with squares of canvas. “What’s that for?” O’Dell asked.

“To keep your prying eyes away, O’Dell,” Little said, smiling.

Trigger and Champion were getting restless, so we excused ourselves and pointed them up the road. “Ya’ll be careful now,” Little called after us as we waved.

We rode at a plodding pace past the old mule barn, long since emptied of the mules that had once hauled the coal out of the mine. Some of their old leather harnesses, moldy and falling away into dust, still hung inside. I always felt a bit forlorn when I passed that old barn, remembering the fate of the mules. After he’d automated his mine, Mr. Carter had kept the mules in the barn or pastured them around town. When he’d sold out, the mules had gone to the renderers the next day.

When we reached Sherman’s house, just down the creek from the machine shops, he whooped at us from his porch. “Mr. Bolt said he’d like to see you,” he said. I saw that he’d gotten his greens up. We waved and moved on.

We found Mr. Bolt and Mr. Caton at work on one of the benches in the rear of the machine shop. “Take a look at this,” Mr. Bolt said proudly, holding a shiny object aloft. “Clinton did it for you last night. It’s pretty much glorious.”

The shiny object Mr. Bolt held up was indeed glorious. It was a perfectly crafted De Laval rocket nozzle, with an interior lining of hardened water putty. “I finally figured out how to make it smooth,” Mr. Caton said of the putty. “I used a Popsicle stick dipped in lard.”

The putty was as smooth as a sheet of paper. “It’s just the thing!” I said happily. “We’ll try it out next weekend.”

“We’ll be there,” Mr. Bolt and Mr. Caton said in unison.

After O’Dell and I admired the nozzle some more, I put it in my jacket pocket for safekeeping. We said our good-byes to the machinists and went outside to swing back into our saddles. We took the road up past the Club House. Jake’s Corvette was parked in front. Then I saw that the light was on in Dr. Hale’s upstairs office in the post office building. He didn’t see patients on Sunday, at least to my knowledge. I wondered if he was working on Dreama.