by Homer Hickam
“I haven’t seen him yet,” I said. “He came in after I went to bed, was gone before I got up.”
“Late to bed, early to rise, that’s your daddy.” He ran his tongue inside his lips. I knew he had something to say. “Sonny, Homer’s got steel company, state, and federal inspectors all over him. They’re turning the mine upside down, trying to figure out how Tuck got himself killed.”
“What do you think happened, Mr. Bolt?” I asked worriedly. “Was Dad to blame?”
He squirmed a bit. “That’s a good question,” he finally allowed.
“Yes, sir,” I replied softly. “That’s why I need to hear the answer.”
He considered my comment, then nodded. “I’ll tell you what I know. There was a big thunderstorm that night, a hellacious storm, lightning firing all around. A big old shagbark hickory tree behind the church got hit, killed it deader’n a hammer. A lot of fans went down, you know how they do. The hoot-owl shift was told not to go inside—too dangerous, what with the fans going in and out, the methane building up down there. Tuck went inside sometime after three o’clock in the morning from what I heard, I guess to inspect his section—10 West. When he drove his motor inside it, the section blew up. It was the fire damp for sure. The blast was so big it lifted the motor completely off the track and tossed it against a row of posts. Then the roof fell down. Tuck was thrown clear. At least they were able to have an open-casket funeral. That was a bit of a comfort to his missus. Just about everybody in Coalwood showed up for it. Never seen so many flowers in my life.”
I struggled to imagine the blast, which must have been like a red-hot hurricane. “Why would Tuck drive a motor into a section that wasn’t ventilated?”
Mr. Bolt folded his hands on his desk. He stared at them as if he’d never seen them before. “I’m not a miner, Sonny. Might be a reason I wouldn’t know.” He looked up, gave me a crooked smile. “So what’re you doing home?”
“I’ll just be here a couple of days,” I said, and left it at that.
Mr. Bolt nodded. “How does Coalwood look to a college boy?”
“Older and smaller,” I replied honestly.
“I don’t know if we’ve shrunk, but none of us are getting any younger around here, that’s for sure.”
“I didn’t mean you, Mr. Bolt,” I said, rushing to apologize.
“It’s all right, Sonny. Everybody gets older. That’s the one sure thing in this old world.” He nodded at his machinists, back to their posts. “If you get bored while you’re here, my fellows are always willing to crank you out a rocket or two.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m out of the rocket business. Without the other boys . . .” I shrugged. “Well, what would it prove?”
Mr. Bolt eyed me. “What did it ever prove?”
I reflected on his question. “I guess it proved we could go to work for Wernher von Braun someday.”
“Is that what you still want to do?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I guess I have to.”
“Attaboy. ‘Have to’ is the start of ‘got done.’ ”
I thought of the secret man. “Mr. Bolt, what’s wrong with Nate Dooley?”
He shrugged. “Nate? Nothing, far as I know.”
“Mom said there was.”
“Did she?” He smiled. “So how does Elsie like being down in Myrtle Beach? Finally got where she always wanted to be.”
I told him that she liked it fine. I could tell he wanted to ask me more about her, but he resisted the impulse. As we walked out of his office, he clapped me on my shoulder. “I suppose you’re glad to be out of this old place and all its problems, ain’t ya?”
I considered my answer and lit on honesty. “Yes, sir, pretty much.”
“Don’t blame you.”
I shook Mr. Bolt’s hand, waved at his men, and left. Outside, I found Tag Farmer, Coalwood’s constable, leaning against his car, his arms crossed. When he caught sight of me, he shoved the bill of his officer’s cap up with one finger. “Heard you were back, Sonny,” he said. “Thought we should have a word.”
Tag looked like he had put on a few pounds since I’d last seen him, but otherwise he wasn’t much different. His company-provided khakis were immaculate as always, and his Sam Browne belt was polished and glistening. He wore no weapons, not even a nightstick. Coalwood had never provided many criminals that needed shooting or bashing. Tag used his fists every so often, but that was usually with outsiders from Gary, Bradshaw, or Matewan, places like that. Tag’s main job was slowing down the cars on Main Street, or keeping tabs on John Eye’s joint up Snakeroot Hollow on Saturday nights, or perhaps investigating what boy had plinked out a streetlight with a BB gun.
I shook Tag’s offered hand, and we passed a few words back and forth. I told him about college, and when I asked, he said his mother was doing fine. “When’s your mom coming home?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know, Tag. She has a lot of work to do on her house.”
“Why aren’t you down there helping her?”
“She ordered me here to be with Dad during this Tuck Dillon thing, said it wasn’t good for him to be alone right now. What’s your opinion on Tuck, Tag?”
Tag mulled over my question. “Never been a mine that couldn’t kill you,” he finally allowed.
I recalled that Tag had tried to work in the mine when he’d come home from the Korean War but had froze on the man-lift at the bottom of the shaft. He’d told his foreman he’d rather face a million screaming Chinese troops than take another step. The Captain had hired him as the town constable right after that, and he had never, to my knowledge, tried to go down in the mine again.
“What happens now?” I wondered.
Tag hooked a thumb in his belt. “Inspectors have been in here for a week now,” he said. “After they finish, there’ll be a hearing to try to figure out what went wrong and who’s at fault.”
I went to the heart of it. “You mean, to see if my dad’s at fault,” I said. “Who’ll run the hearing?”
“First testimony will be by the steel company. Then, if the state don’t like the results, it’ll hold its own testimonies. Then, if the feds don’t like either one, they’ll hold another set. They’ll keep going until they get the answer they want.”
The way Tag had put it, it sounded as if at least three outfits were soon going to be after my father like starving dogs. “Is that what usually happens?” I worried.
“Naw. It usually stops with the mine owners. They don’t want the state or the feds in their knickers, so they’re pretty tough in finding out what happened. Somebody’ll be down here from Ohio pretty soon to get the testimonies going, I expect.”
“Is Dad going to get blamed?”
Tag nodded. “That’s the talk.”
“That would be rough on him.”
“It would kill him, Sonny,” Tag said succinctly. He got out a big red bandanna and blew his nose. “Damn allergies this time of the year. That’s another reason I never worked the mine—too much dust. That and being scared to death of that low roof. I need to see the sky above me, not a hanging slab of rock.”
I remembered Mom’s admonition about Coalwood’s secret man. “Tag, what’s wrong with Nate Dooley?”
Tag looked up in surprise. “Nate? He broke his wrist. About all I know.”
I thought to myself—ah ha! That must have been what Mom had heard. “Is his wrist okay now?”
Tag shrugged. “He’s got a cast on it. I guess it’s fine.”
It was clear that Tag was done with me, said what he had to say, heard from me all he’d wanted to hear. He climbed back in his car and headed on down toward Frog Level. I drove Dad’s Buick back through Coalwood Main and spotted Mrs. Dantzler at the post office, so I got out and said hello. Mrs. Dantzler was a woman who always looked like she was dressed for a dinner dance at the White House. She was also Ginger’s mom. When I asked her about her youngest daughter, she laughed. “Ginger’s going to about every camp there is this
summer, Sonny—majorette camp, cheerleader camp, she’s even going to tennis camp. In between, she’s visiting relatives in Mississippi and Kentucky. Doesn’t look like she’ll be here much the next couple of months.”
Her answer disappointed me but was no surprise. Ginger was a girl with big dreams. It figured that she’d be off improving herself in every way she could this summer, unlike me, who was so far stuck in Coalwood. I thanked Mrs. Dantzler and headed on up to the mine, hoping to see Dad.
I put the car back in the garage, then walked to the path that led up to the tipple grounds. Off-shift miners lounging around the gas station across from our house gave me a wave. One of them shouted out a question on my grades at VPI.
“I haven’t flunked out yet!” I called in reply.
“Attaboy!” came back a chorus. I figured it would take maybe an entire minute before the news had flashed up to New Camp and down to Frog Level.
Dad’s office was a low brick building grimy with years of caked-on coal dirt. I trudged up its nasty black wooden steps and peeked inside. Wally Barnes, Dad’s clerk, looked up from his desk. “Well, look who the cat drug in,” the tiny man said. “The rocket boy hisself.”
Even though he never went inside the mine, Wally was wearing a miner’s helmet with safety stickers plastered all over it. I guess he just liked to look the part. I glanced at Dad’s office door, firmly closed. “Dubonnet’s in there,” Wally said, spitting tobacco juice into a paper cup. “They’re fighting.”
That news didn’t surprise me. In 1946, after battling the Germans during World War II, John Dubonnet had come to Coalwood looking for work. Mom and Dad and Mr. Dubonnet had all been in the same class at Gary High School. They were friends then. In fact, Mom had even dated Mr. Dubonnet for a while. At Dad’s recommendation, Captain Laird had taken him on. Later, it turned out that Mr. Dubonnet was actually an undercover union organizer. Dad had never forgiven him for the duplicity. About the time Dad got the Captain’s job, Mr. Dubonnet, who never married, took over Coalwood’s local and moved into the Union Hall. The two former Gary boys had been tangling over one thing or another ever since.
“Can I go in?” I asked Wally.
Wally shrugged. “I guess so, if you don’t mind hearing a little yelling. They’ve been at it for over an hour.”
“What’s it about this time?”
“The usual,” Wally replied, spitting again into his cup. “Dubonnet wants more money for less work.”
“I guess that’s his job,” I said.
Wally scowled as if he didn’t like the idea of any Hickam, even me, taking up for a union man. “You gonna build any rockets while you’re here?” he demanded.
“I’m out of the rocket-building business,” I said.
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“Maybe if I can ever talk to my dad,” I replied, “I can figure it out.”
“Give it a shot,” he said, nodding toward the door.
I knocked and, even though I didn’t hear a response, went on in. Dad was at the huge oak desk he’d inherited from the Captain. He had his head down, writing a note in what I recognized as his daily journal. Woody Marshall, one of his top foremen, sat at a nearby table. Mr. Dubonnet was sitting on a folding chair, bent over with his elbows on his knees. I glanced around at the walls. Nothing had changed, the same mine maps, the same photograph of Captain Laird. There was at least a new 1961 calendar provided by the Joy Mining Machine Company. A pert blonde in a skimpy bathing suit graced it.
Mr. Dubonnet stared at me for a moment, and then recognition spread across his thin face. He had been a star halfback in high school, and I thought he always looked like he was ready to put on a football helmet and step out onto the field for some heroics. “Well, I’ll be—” he said. “Sonny Hickam home from college!”
Dad looked up but didn’t seem to share Mr. Dubonnet’s enthusiasm for my sudden presence. “We’re trying to have a meeting here, Sonny,” he said.
I came close to being sharp-tongued by replying Nice to see you, too, Dad. But I didn’t. I knew better. So I said, “Just wanted to say hello.”
It seemed every time Dad looked at me, it was as if he were looking at me for the first time. He cocked an eyebrow and scrutinized me carefully. After he’d finished his study of my features, he asked, “What are you doing in Coalwood?”
“Mom said I needed to keep you company.”
Dad closed his damaged eye and pondered me with his good one. It was like looking down the barrel of a gun. His eye had been nearly put out the same night Mr. Bykovski had been killed. During the rescue attempt, a cable had snapped and slashed Dad across the face.
“Company, huh?” I thought I detected a hint of a smile for just a moment, but then it disappeared. “For how long?”
“Until she says I’ve done it enough, I guess.”
“Well, you’ve done it enough,” he said. “Go to Myrtle Beach and help your mom.”
That was the first good thing I’d heard since I’d been back in Coalwood. “Yes, sir!” I said quickly, before he could change his mind. “I’ll hitch out in the morning.”
“Take the Buick,” Dad said. “Your mom could use a chauffeur. I’ve got the company truck to get around here.”
This was getting better and better! I couldn’t believe my luck! With the Buick as bait, I could cut a vast swath through the available females at the beach. “I’ll call Mom, tell her the plan,” I said, even allowing a grin to appear on my face before I could stop it.
Dad frowned a warning. “Don’t tell your mother anything! Just go.”
He was absolutely correct. The best thing to do with Mom was to just show up down there, make it a done deal. I could tell her that Dad was fine and so was Nate Dooley, not counting his broken wrist. I nodded to Mr. Marshall and Mr. Dubonnet and started to make my escape, but then I thought to ask a question. I hung by the door. “Dad, where’s Lucifer?”
The frown on Dad’s face faltered, temporarily replaced by a look I had trouble figuring out. He worked on it for a moment and got the frown back. “Dead, most likely. Every morning, he walked across the road to Substation Mountain to hunt. About three months ago, your mom said she saw him go but he never came back.”
“He was a real old cat, wasn’t he, Homer?” Mr. Dubonnet asked.
“Nearly as old as Sonny.”
“Cats do that,” Mr. Marshall said severely. “Go away to die.”
“Dogs, too,” Mr. Dubonnet said, and the two men nodded to one another, acknowledging their joint knowledge of feline and canine expiration.
Lucifer, dead and gone. Our old cat. “Why didn’t Mom write me, let me know?” I asked, feeling a big lump forming in my throat.
Dad leaned back in his chair, studying me. “What was Lucifer to you?”
“He was part of the family.”
Dad kept his study of me, and all of a sudden I felt as if it were just the two of us in the room. I guess Dad felt the same way or else he would have never said what he did. “Sonny,” he said carefully, and tiredly, “in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a family anymore.”
6
SAD TIMES
EVEN THOUGH I was going to get everything I wanted, I felt peculiarly restless, as if I’d done something wrong. I went home and was drawn to the basement to look at Lucifer’s thin gray rug at the base of the steps. Mom had placed it there just for him after the harsh West Virginia winters had started to chase his old bones inside. When I knelt and picked up the rug, I could still see some of his black fur entwined in its fabric. He had been a tough old tom, but sometimes I would look into his yellow eyes and sense there was more going on inside him than I could possibly know. Once, I’d been in the mountains with Sherman and we’d seen a sick fawn and stayed with it until it died. Afterward, when I came home, I swear Lucifer just seemed to know what I’d seen. Wisdom seemed to radiate out of his eyes, wisdom that said dying is the destination of us all—deer, cat, or human, it didn’t matter. Somehow, he’d ma
de me feel better about the whole thing. “Good ol’ cat,” I whispered, fingering his tattered, grimy rug. “Fine fellow.”
Still uneasy, I went upstairs and sat at my desk, skimming Cannery Row, trying to lose myself inside the written word. It didn’t work and I shelved it. I hoped Dad would come home and maybe we’d talk, about what I wasn’t certain, but it didn’t matter because he never did. Shortly after dark, the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Sharitz. “Your dad not home yet? You’re welcome to come over here for supper.”
I thanked her but said I was fine. I explained that I was going to be in Coalwood for just one more night and after that I was heading for Myrtle Beach. “Tell Elsie we miss her,” Mrs. Sharitz said. “I’m feeding the dogs and keeping an eye on the place.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Thank you for that.”
“Sonny?”
I suspected the real reason Mrs. Sharitz had called was about to be told. “Ma’am?”
“I don’t think your dad should be alone,” she said. “Cecil is worried about him. I guess we all are—since Tuck.”
I “yes ma’amed” her and left it at that because I thought she was wrong. My dad didn’t need anyone, and never had, as far as I knew. I hung up, feeling ever more doleful, and thought briefly about leaving for Myrtle Beach immediately but decided the smart thing to do was to wait for morning. The way that old Buick guzzled gasoline, I’d run out of it before I’d gotten much farther than Bluefield. It wasn’t like gas stations stayed open all night.
The night wore on and I cast around for something to do. I remembered the Dugout, the teenage dance hall over in the town of War, two mountains and eight miles away. It was a Saturday night, and, after all, girls didn’t come much prettier than McDowell County girls. I could get in some dance practice for Myrtle Beach and maybe even meet somebody new. My enthusiasm for life went up several notches at the thought.
I poked into my closet and found some khaki pants and a short-sleeved shirt that didn’t have too many wrinkles. They were all I needed for the Dugout. My brother was the one who’d been the fancy dresser. He had almost single-handedly kept open Belcher and Mooney’s men’s store in Welch during his high school years. Mom had tried to hand me down some of his things, but, besides being too large, they were always a bit too fine for me. I was always just a khaki cotton pants kind of boy.
