The Coalwood Way (30 page)

I trudged home in the continuing blizzard. Drifting snow had nearly covered the fences. I used a narrow path beaten down in the center of the road, moving to one side to allow miners heading home to pass by. They were coated in brown and white rock dust. “Dubonnet blew the header,” Mr. Kirk told me. “But all we got was more rock. We loaded it until another crew came down. All three shifts are taking turns until we get it done, one way or another.”

“What’s going to happen now?”

He shrugged. “They’re arguing about it. Dubonnet says the coal’s not back there, just more rock. Your dad wants to give it another go. Jake’s not sure what to do.”

I went home and kept loading the casement. Mom was on the Captain’s porch, keeping an eye on the mine while pretending not to. Quentin had fallen asleep on the couch. Jim came down into the basement. “Let’s put up the Christmas tree,” he said.

I told him Mom had said she didn’t want it. “Let’s do it anyway,” he said.

Who was I to argue with my big brother? Anyway, it seemed like as good a thing to do as any. We poked around the basement until we found the big steel base Mr. Bolt had built for us a couple of years ago to hold Mom’s usual big trees, and then took it upstairs and put it in place in its traditional living-room spot.

Mom cast an intolerant eye on our work. “Stop it,” she said.

“It’s nearly Christmas, Mom,” Jim replied.

Mom shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jimmie. I don’t feel much like Christmas. With Dreama and all this . . .” She waved back toward the tipple and fell silent.

Jim sighed, then sadly abandoned the effort and went up to his room to read and listen to music. Then the inevitable happened in a West Virginia blizzard. The electricity went off. I thought of the mine ventilating fans. If they were off, 11 East was going to fill up with methane. An hour later, even though the trees outside were sagging under the weight of the snow, the power came back on. “God bless Appalachian Power and Light,” Mom said.

Miners kept going back and forth, coated brown and white. The rock header was covering them all with dust and failure. I couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m going to go up to the mine,” I told Mom.

She nodded and kept reading. I suggested to Quentin that he might like to go as well. He agreed, and we walked up the path that led to the tipple. A bank of snow as high as our heads had built up on one side of it. We stood at the man-hoist and watched for a while. The men coming out of the shaft, even though covered with rock dust, seemed happy and confident. It didn’t matter if they were union or management. They were working together against a common enemy. I felt pride for the miners of Coalwood, no matter how their war in 11 East turned out.

Quentin got cold watching, so we retreated into Dad’s office. I sat behind his big desk while Quentin perused the mine maps tacked to the wall. “A complex affair,” he said. He sniffed, then pulled out a big red bandanna from his hip pocket and gave his nose a good blow. “There are aspects to coal mining that require a greater intellectual capacity than I might have supposed.”

Mr. Chris Todd came inside. He supervised the lamphouse. “Saw you boys. Thought you might like some of this.” He provided mugs of hot chocolate.

“Any news?” I asked him.

“They’re getting ready to blow a double charge,” he answered.

“Going for it, by damn!” Quentin said, smacking his fist into his hand. He was as caught up in it as anybody.

I worried. The fans had been down for nearly an hour before the electricity had come back. Had the methane built up in the meantime? Mr. Todd sipped at a mug with us. “That was quite a thing at the wedding the other night, Sonny,” he said.

“Yes, sir. I apologize.”

“No need.” He pondered me. “What Homer said was not right. We all told him so after you left.”

That surprised me. I didn’t realize anybody in Coalwood ever corrected my father. “What did he say?”

“He agreed, said he wished it was Christmas.”

I didn’t understand why he wanted it to be Christmas and said so. Mr. Todd took off his helmet and ran his thin fingers through his bright red hair. “A boy shouldn’t think something about his father when the truth’s a whole different thing,” he said.

He opened up a cabinet and took out two brightly wrapped boxes, one about the size of a book, the other one narrow and about a foot long. He put them down on Dad’s desk and then pushed them across to me. “These are your Christmas presents from your dad. I’m not going to tell you to do it, but you might just want to give yourself an early Christmas.”

I frowned at the presents while Quentin came over to look. Mr. Todd walked out, going back to the lamphouse. “What do you think, Q?” I asked.

Quentin grinned. “I’d open them if they were mine!”

The folds of the wrapping paper on the presents were clumsily made and too much tape had been used. Dad must have wrapped them himself, I thought. My fingers trembled when I touched the paper. I tore at the narrow present first, just a bit, then a bit more. Then Curious Cat took over and ripped the paper away.

Inside I found a white box made of thin cardboard. I opened it and saw a long brown leather case that had a buckled flap on one end. I took it out and unbuckled it. I unsheathed a flat bar made of plastic and wood, covered with tiny numbers. A sliding scale moved in grooves along its edges, and there was also a tongue of plastic-covered wood down its center. It was also covered with numbers, etched into the plastic. I scratched my head. “What is it?”

“It’s a Keuffel and Esser log-log desitrig, you twit,” Quentin said in reverent tones. “A slide rule, Sonny! Haven’t you seen Wernher von Braun on television? This is the instrument he is always fiddling with! It will allow you to instantly take powers, use logarithms, determine the trigonometric functions! It is a most prodigious instrument.”

I held the slide rule and moved its wooden tongue back and forth, feeling it slide smoothly in its grooves as if on greased ball bearings. I didn’t know how to work it, but I knew I would learn.

I handed the slide rule to Quentin and pulled the paper away from the second box. Inside was another thin-papered white box. It held a case made out of black leatherette. The letters K&E were engraved on it in gilt. It had a snap front. I unsnapped it and the box unfolded. Inside, on a scarlet cushion, was a display of gleaming metal instruments. I recognized one of them: a drawing compass. But such a compass! It had a thumbscrew for fine settings and a levered pencil holder. I looked up at Quentin for an explanation.

“Professional drawing instruments, Sonny!”

I handled each device. There were several types of pens, a straight edge marked in metric as well as the English scale, the compass, an engineer’s curve. I didn’t have to say it to myself or to anybody else. These things represented what my father truly thought of my work. It wasn’t likely that Homer Hickam would give professional engineering tools to anybody, even a second son, who didn’t measure up to his standards.

I stayed with my presents for the rest of the day. Quentin played with the slide rule for a while and then went back to my house, where he’d decided to take up residence until the blizzard abated. I knew Mom would be glad to see him.

The snow kept falling and the men kept going in and out of the mine. I was hoping to see one of them with at least a little coal dirt on him, but still they paraded in brown and white. I kept going outside the office and standing at the lift, wishing that I could put on a helmet and a lamp and join my dad at his work down in the mine.

The man-hoist bell rang and the lift came up. Mr. McGlothlin, one of the foremen, was on it. I fell in beside him as he went into the bathhouse. “Another header,” he said, so tired he had trouble raising his boot up the step to the doorway of the bathhouse. “They’re drilling a hole in it now.”

Miners passed us, going in for a shower. One of them was singing “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.” “It’s over, boys,” he said tiredly. He got no argument from the rest.

It was nearly midnight when I was startled awake. Dad’s office shook, the books on his shelf falling over. A framed photograph of Captain Laird fell from its nail, crashing onto the floor, the glass shattering. There was a general raising of voices outside. Men were huddled at the shaft. The snow was still falling. I stepped off the porch and fell into a drift nearly over my head. I swam out of it and made my way to the man-hoist. “We don’t know what it was,” Mr. Todd said, his eyes filled with worry. “A mountain bump, maybe.” I looked back toward my house. The light on the Captain’s porch was on. I was certain Mom was there, watching.

The minutes ticked by and then an hour. The snow muffled everything, even the voices of the miners standing around waiting. A group of them had arrived out of the mine after the ground had shook. They’d been on the main line coming back, they said, and felt it, whatever it was, but kept coming. Another group of miners, this one led by Mr. Mahoney, an engineer just come on duty, had gone down to see what had happened. Mr. Todd kept trying to call 11 East on the black phone. There was no answer. I was shivering, the snow building up on my shoulders and my bare head. Mr. Todd ordered me back inside Dad’s office to get warm.

Just as I sat down, the lights flickered once, then went off. I sat in the darkness, waiting, holding my breath. It was all I could do. Outside, I heard generators start up with a whine. At least the man-hoist would have power. But with the fans down . . .

I sat for a long time, breathing in the smell of Dad’s office, his old mine maps, his desk, his grimy typewriter. Then I again fell asleep. When I woke, the lights were back on. Somehow, Appalachian Power and Light had come through again. I started to get up to see what was happening at the man-hoist, but just then the office door was flung open and there stood my dad, his eyes gleaming like white marbles on a face black as pitch. He looked at the slide rule and the drawing instruments he had given me, but before he could say anything, Mr. Dubonnet pushed past him, followed by Jake. They both had huge grins, their teeth like pearls lined up on ebony cloth. “We got that bastard!” Jake crowed. “We got him good!”

30

THE COALWOOD WAY

IN A PLACE other than Coalwood, perhaps my father and I would have put our arms around each other and had a nice hug. Instead, what happened was that he cast an unhappy eye on the presents I had opened, mumbled something about what could happen to a boy who was too curious for his own good, lurched to his desk, and, after I got out of it, sat down in his chair—hard. He lowered his head on his arms and fell instantly asleep.

Other men tromped inside the office, all covered with coal dust. Dieter and Gerhard were two of them. “It’s a nine-foot-high seam,” Dieter said happily. “Perfect for long-wall. We will have our machinery operating at peak efficiency within a month.”

Mr. Dubonnet did not allow the victory to remain unsullied for long. “This won’t solve much, no matter what he thinks,” he said, nodding toward Dad. “It only gives us another set of problems.”

“What do you mean, John?” Jake demanded. “We’ll soon be doubling our production!”

“Yes,” Mr. Dubonnet said grimly, “but without any increase in the number of miners. Production will be up but employment will be down. It is always the result of mechanization.”

“You’re wrong. We’ll be hiring, not cutting off,” Jake said. “You’ll see.”

The next round of town uncertainties was beginning. It was the Coalwood way I knew so well, and I didn’t see any reason to listen to it. “Help me with Dad,” I asked Jake, but it was Mr. Dubonnet who responded.

“Get up, Homer. Time to go home.” Mr. Dubonnet put his hands under Dad’s arms and lifted him to his feet.

Dad stood, wavering. Mr. Dubonnet put Dad’s arm around my neck. I walked him through the office, the miners who had crowded inside smiling at us. “Way to go, Homer,” one of them said. Somebody else said, “The Captain would be proud, Homer.” There was a murmur of agreement for the sentiment.

As soon as we were outside the office door and onto the porch, I heard Mr. Dubonnet and Jake start to argue again, and then I heard other voices join the debate about what the victory over 11 East had really meant. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get Dad home. I helped him along the grooved path that led down from the tipple to the road. I felt like it was a path of glory. All that my father had said he was going to do, he had done. Other men would sort it out, maybe even decide he shouldn’t have done it, but he had gone after his dream and grabbed it with both hands. What could be more glorious than that?

Dad tottered along, his head bobbing up and down like it was on a string. Then his knees buckled. I had to stop and brace myself to hold him up. He came awake and looked at me as if I were a stranger, which, in so many ways, I suppose I was. “What are you doing?” he slurred.

“I’m taking you home, Dad.”

He blinked at me, and a hint of recognition came onto his face. “Take me home, Sonny,” he said. “I’m pretty tired.”

“Yes, sir.” Together, father and second son, we shuffled along the path of glory toward the light in the Captain’s house on the corner.

31

A PAGE FROM JEREMIAH

I WOKE ON the couch. It was morning. I remembered bringing Dad home and Mom gathering him in. “Good Lord, Homer,” she said, and then walked him upstairs. Quentin was asleep in my bed, Daisy Mae curled up between his legs. I retreated to the couch.

I’d had a nightmare. I had dreamed I was asleep and all around me was turmoil, things breaking, curses, and then a huge crash. I looked around and, in the light of the early dawn filtering through the living-room windows, I saw that the Christmas tree was inside, more or less erect in its stand. It was tilting at an odd angle, but it was there. Then I noticed Jim was sitting across from me on Dad’s footstool. Billy Rose was also there, in a chair beside the tree. I thought I was still dreaming. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, both boys were still there. “What?” I demanded.

“Look,” Jim said, and showed me his finger.

I found my glasses. Jim’s fingertip was bloody. It looked as if he’d been bitten by a snake. “What happened?”

“I just wanted a Christmas tree,” he said. “So I figured I would go ahead and put it up on my own. I got out this morning and saw Billy walking down the road.”

Billy said, “I was coming to your house, anyway. I thought maybe I could shovel snow or do some kind of chore for your mother.”

“I asked Billy to help me with the tree and we got it inside.”

“There was a bird in it,” Billy said.

“We spent a good part of the last hour chasing it. I finally chased it out the back door.”

That explained the noises in my dream. “Did the bird bite you?”

Jim shook his head. “No, after it went outside, I came back in here and Billy said he heard another bird rustling in the tree. I reached inside to scare it out.”

“Was it a bird?”

“No.”

“A snake?”

“No. Worse.”

Both my eyes and brain were still bleary. “What?”

He pointed to the coffee table where the mangled Hickam family Bible rested. It was open, and on it sat something fuzzy and gray. A page had been torn from the Bible and the thing seemed to be eating it. I blinked again and then I knew what the thing was. “Chipper!”

At his name, the little squirrel squawked and jumped to the top of the couch, ran along it, and leaped for the curtains where it swung, its half-tail jerking spasmodically. “I think he’s been living in that tree for a while,” Jim mused.

“That would explain why Mom’s birdseed got eaten up so fast,” I said.

“Chipper!” It was Mom, come down from upstairs to see about the commotion. She was dressed in her housecoat. Chipper stopped fussing and threw himself down on the floor and zipped up Mom’s robe and then on top of her head, digging a nest in her hair. “My little boy,” she said, delighted.

I had my eyes focused enough to look at the Bible. Chipper had eaten an entire page from Jeremiah. “Jim and Billy found Chipper,” I said, giving credit (or blame) where credit (or blame) was due.

“He bit me,” Jim said unhappily. Billy just grinned a proud grin.

“Thank you, Jimmie. And thank you, too, Billy. I just can’t thank you enough.”

Chipper came down out of Mom’s hair and into her arms, where she held him like a baby, his little paws curling happily. “My little boy, my little boy,” she crooned to him. “I know you’ve been far, far away but you just had to come home to me, didn’t you? You never gave up, did you?”

Jim and I looked at each other and shrugged. The Hickam family, for better or worse, was back together again. The Prodigal Squirrel returneth.

Mom looked up from Chipper, then at Jim and me. “What day is it?” she asked.

“Why, Christmas Eve,” Jim said.

She crossed to the Captain’s porch and put a critical eye on the outside world. The snow had stopped, but it had piled up over the fence. The road was covered with it, too. “The Starvation Army won’t come,” she said grimly. “They won’t be able to get over the mountain.” She took a deep breath. Chipper jumped up on her shoulder, his little rat face taking on a look of studied concentration. Mom’s face did, too, although she didn’t look like a rat. She just looked tired, but as I watched, there was a transformation. It seemed to me that she began to glow, as if an inner fire that had been damped down had burst again into flame.

“Jimmie,” she said, “I want you to go find Jake Mosby. Most likely, he’s either still at the mine or down at the Club House. Wherever you find him, roust him out and tell him he needs to get the road cleared to Welch. Tell him he owes me and if he wants to argue with me about it, he can do it later but otherwise we don’t have time for his usual foolishness. Tell him the Starvation Army is coming to Coalwood and he needs to clear a path for them, no matter what it takes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jim said.

“Put chains on the Buick so you can get around.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“When you finish with Jake, get back here. I’ve got to get over to Welch. You’re the best driver in Coalwood. If anybody can get me there, it’s you.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll get Jake and then I’ll drive you to Welch.” Jim spoke with fierce determination. He grabbed his coat and headed outside.

“I want to help, too, Mrs. Hickam,” Billy said. “I’ll shovel you a path to Welch if that’s what it takes.”

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I believe you.”

I felt left out. “What can I do?” I asked.

“I can’t use a quitter,” she said.

“I don’t think I’m a quitter anymore,” I replied softly.

“I’m not surprised. You boys don’t know a thing about quitting. I guess you haven’t seen enough of it to learn.”

Mom looked out at the tipple. A towering plume of steam rose from the shaft and climbed through the man-hoist, curling and spreading until it disappeared into the layer of thick white clouds that covered the valley. She shook her head and crossed her arms as if she were cold. “Some things need quitting, though. Not many, but some. You just got to know the difference.”

She faced Billy and me, and her lips were pressed together in that way she had when she’d made up her mind about something. “But that’s for another time.” She pondered the undecorated Christmas tree. “You two want to know what you can do? I’ll tell you. Do the impossible. It seems like a good day for it.”

I puzzled over her words, and then I knew what Mom wanted me to do. It was impossible, of course, but I couldn’t wait to do it.