Sky of Stone

by Homer Hickam

  “A girlfriend, Mr. Jealous. The green-eyed monster has really grabbed you by your tail, ain’t it?”

  Floretta was absolutely right. I was horribly jealous of anybody else who spent time with Rita. To get some distraction, I watched a baseball game on television with some contractors in the parlor, then went outside for some fresh air. I was on the verge of moping, if I wasn’t careful. On the porch, I found Mr. Fuller slumped down in one of the wooden Adirondack chairs and chewing on an unlit cigar. I walked over to the other side of the porch to have a look at the tennis court opposite the Community Church. Doc Hale, the company dentist, and Bobby Likens were battling each other swat by swat. A small crowd of boys and girls watched them, hanging by their little fingers to the chain-link fence around the court. Occasionally, a cheer would go up when one of the players made a good shot. While I was watching, Doc Hale jumped over the net and shook Bobby’s hand. Bobby returned the favor by jumping over the net to the other side. Everybody around the court clapped, and some little girls ran off chasing little boys in games of tag.

  “Bucolic, ain’t it?” Mr. Fuller demanded from his throne.

  I looked around, hoping there was somebody else he was talking to, but I was it. “You might say so,” I answered.

  He chewed on his cigar, its tip going up and down. “Do you know what the word means, son?”

  “Rustic, countrified, and pastoral,” I answered, educated product of the Coalwood School, Big Creek High, and Virginia Tech that I was.

  He moved the cigar over to one side of his mouth. “How you like being in Homer Hickam’s boot camp?”

  I realized Mr. Fuller thought I was a junior engineer. It was just too good an opportunity for some mischief for me to let it pass. “Homer Hickam is as mean as a snake, sir,” I said. “He makes us work like common miners.”

  Mr. Fuller grunted. “I have never understood why the steel company lets him get away with the mistreatment of you fine young men. Him, with not so much as a scrap of paper from a college. I will be glad to see it stopped, sir. I can tell you that.”

  “So you believe his days are numbered?” I asked. I strolled closer and leaned against one of the supporting porch pillars, trying not to betray the intensity of my interest.

  Mr. Fuller squinted at me. “Do I know you? Who’s your boss?”

  “You probably don’t know him,” I said. “He’s kind of low-level.”

  “Try me.”

  I’d heard Dad over the years talking about a Mr. Battlo Jones, an Ohio man who seemed to be in charge of frustrating Dad’s attempt to purchase large mining machinery. I named him.

  “Battlo? You work for Battlo?” Mr. Fuller nodded approvingly. “You’re with the best, young man. The very best.”

  “Yes, sir. Nobody can squeeze a dime like Battlo Jones.”

  Mr. Fuller grunted a proud affirmation.

  “So you think that rat bastard Hickam is out of here?” I asked.

  Mr. Fuller shrugged but got a distant look on his face as if he were watching angels fly by.

  “What do you have on him?” I congratulated myself on my own craftiness.

  “I’m working several angles,” he replied.

  “But you’re going to get him,” I said. “That’s the important thing.”

  Again, Mr. Fuller shrugged.

  I kept probing. There was nothing, beyond good sense, to keep me from it. “Do you have proof?”

  “I’ve got a witness,” he said.

  I searched through my brain for a clever way to get the name of the witness out of him. What I came up with was “Who is it?”

  Mr. Fuller’s lips curled up into as near a smile as he could manage. “Homer Hickam himself,” he said. “He’s the only witness I need.”

  I STROLLED up Main Street to see the dogs. While there, I thought maybe I could warn Dad about what Mr. Fuller had said, but he wasn’t home—no surprise. I saw Mrs. Sharitz across the fence, and she said she thought she’d seen him walk up to the mine a little earlier. I talked with her for a little while, agreed with her that we all wished Mom would come home, and then played “throw the tennis ball” with Dandy and Poteet. Dandy mostly watched from the back steps while Poteet showed her stuff. She was capable of flinging herself into the air and catching the ball in her jaws while still on the fly. She was an amazing athlete.

  After I’d let Poteet work up a sweat, I sat down beside Dandy and scratched his ears. He crawled into my lap, and after a bit, fell asleep. Poteet came over and draped herself over my boots. Every so often, she’d let out a big sigh, as if something was worrying her. “It’s okay, girl,” I said. “Dandy’s fine.”

  We sat on the steps for a long time. I looked up sharply, thinking that somebody was watching us, and then I realized it was just the old mountains. They were always watching. I had the sudden urge to climb them, maybe go up to Pine Tree Valley where Sherman and I had once found the dying fawn. There was wisdom up there. I only needed to climb and then be quiet and listen. Maybe I might even see Mom’s fox, or its descendants. If I spied kits with half-silver tails, might that solve what had happened to Parkyacarcass? Maybe he had just gone looking for a mate, and found her. It was a fantasy, and I knew it. The answer to what had happened to Mom’s fox wasn’t on Sis’s Mountain. I didn’t know where it was, but it wasn’t there.

  On my walk back to the Club House, I stopped by the Dooley house. Mrs. Dooley appeared at the door. “Do you need me to do anything?” I asked.

  “Garden needs weeding,” she said. “Beans need picking.”

  “I’m your man,” I answered, and went into the backyard to get a hoe and a basket from her toolshed.

  Mrs. Dooley followed me. “Our garden’s just up to the right behind the Hardin place,” she said. “I got a scarecrow up.”

  “I’ll find it,” I answered.

  “Fill the basket full of string beans. Nate likes to snap them.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and climbed up the mountain.

  I returned with a basket filled with beans. I’d enjoyed my time in the Dooley garden, doing honest work with the hoe and stoop labor over the bean vines. The sun was warm, and the trees on the ridge above me were rustling with the light breeze. They seemed to be having as much fun as I was. It was a pleasant thing to work, and sweat, in a place where I could stand up without hitting my head on a slab of sandstone. It helped me get the kinks out of my joints, too. I stopped from time to time and listened to the mountain. What I thought it said was All is well.

  “Stay for supper?” Mrs. Dooley asked when I brought the filled basket back.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’d like that.”

  “Nate’s on the front porch. Carry that basket around to him.”

  Mr. Dooley was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch. He put his hands out when he saw the basket. I handed it over and then pulled up a stool. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “You an ol’ fox,” he said, but didn’t object when I picked up a bean and snapped it, one—two—three.

  “Nate likes you,” Mrs. Dooley said, coming out on the porch.

  I snapped another bean. “I like him, too, Mrs. Dooley. I wish I’d known him before he got hurt.”

  She sat down on the porch swing. “He was a good man. He loved to go up in the mountains. He hunted a bit for meat on the table, trapped for spending money. He didn’t like killing the animals, but sometimes you do what you have to do.”

  Mr. Dooley looked up sharply. “Shut up, you ol’ cat.”

  “You shut up, Nate,” she replied, but there was no sting to her voice. “He’s into cats and dogs these days, heaven knows why. Better than monkeys, I guess.”

  “He called me a fox,” I said.

  She laughed, and we kept snapping beans. It was the happiest I’d been in a long while, and I didn’t even wonder why.

  25

  THE FIRST TESTIMONY

  ON THURSDAY, June 29, 1961, the first testimony concerning the death of Tuck Dillon was held. I’d seen Jake
go into the Club House kitchen that morning, and when he came out, Floretta was at his ear. “Tonight, Mr. Jake?” she asked, her hands fluttering.

  Jake was perfunctory and unsympathetic. “Just set up some chairs, Floretta,” he said, sitting back down to his breakfast and shaking out his napkin. “That’s all we need.”

  Floretta kept hovering. “People will want to eat, and they’ll want iced tea by the bucket.”

  “Floretta,” Jake sighed, “those men you checked in last night are state and federal inspectors. They’re here for testimony and I’ve got to get some in before miners’ vacation. This is in no way a social occasion.”

  “Then you don’t know Coalwood, Mr. Jake.” Floretta huffed back into her kitchen.

  On the man-trip ride in that morning, I told Johnny and Bobby about the coming testimony. I also showed them the stopwatch Rita had slipped me at breakfast. Bobby snatched it. “A first-rate piece of machinery,” he said, giving it a test run.

  He handed it to Johnny, who turned it over a few times, grumbling something under his breath, before I managed to retrieve it.

  “I won’t let it slow me down, Johnny, I promise,” I said.

  “You better not or I’m taking it away from you.”

  All day, I stayed on double duty, working and clicking the stopwatch and writing down the results with Bobby giving me advice every step of the way. Johnny gave me hard looks but didn’t say anything.

  Later in the day, Mr. Dubonnet showed up and watched us work for a while. “You been over to see the Caretta boys, too, John?” Johnny asked.

  “Just came from there,” he said. “They’re having a terrible morning. Seems they got delivered the wrong size spikes and their stack of ties was late, too.”

  “Do tell?” Johnny responded. “Well, boys, you hear that? The Lord’s helping us.”

  Mr. Dubonnet squatted in the gob. “I need to talk to your boys, Johnny.”

  “Make it quick.”

  Bobby and I went over and knelt beside the union chief. “Boys, I want you two to play on the union softball team this Fourth of July,” he said. “Word’s out management’s got a hot pitcher. I don’t know who it is but I figure I better get some young blood to match him.”

  “I’ll play first base,” Bobby said.

  “You got it. How about you, Sonny?”

  I hesitated. I’d never been very good playing any kind of ball, and I was surprised Mr. Dubonnet didn’t know it. Then I thought—maybe he did know it and he was up to something, such as embarrassing Dad by showing off the fact that I was on the union team. Then I thought—why would he do that? Dad was about to be plenty embarrassed in the testimony that very night. Then I thought—

  “Sonny will play right field,” Bobby said, interrupting my ricocheting thought process.

  “That’s fine,” Mr. Dubonnet said, shining his light in my eyes. I shined mine back at him. We looked at each other for a moment, and then he reached over and slapped me on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, son,” he said. “You’re doing good work down here.”

  “I haven’t been paid yet,” I replied. He was the chief of the union, after all.

  He chuckled. “End of the month’s coming right up. Let me know if they shortchange you.”

  Mr. Dubonnet went off to have a word with Johnny. “Why did you get me into this?” I demanded of Bobby. “I’m going to be embarrassed all over the softball field.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “For some reason, my dad’s always liked you. He and I will give you some coaching.”

  “Can you give me some hand-and-eye coordination while you’re at it?” I said under my breath.

  Bobby heard me. “There you go with that negative attitude. You really need to get past that.”

  That afternoon on the man-trip ride out, Johnny wrote down our progress. We’d laid seven sections that day, a record for us. When we stepped off the man-lift, we took a look at the bet board. Caretta had also managed to put down seven. We’d at least tied them. That was a first. “We’re making progress,” Bobby said.

  Johnny looked doubtful. “They had a bad day, boys, and we had a good one. You can call it progress if you want to. I call it a crying shame.”

  I patted the stopwatch in my pocket. “I’ll work on my figures, Johnny. That’ll help.”

  He shook his head. “It better.”

  Floretta met me at the door of the Club House. “I don’t want you fretting tonight, Sonny, what with your daddy’s trial and all.”

  She had said out loud the word everybody was thinking. This was a trial, no matter how they tried to soften it by calling it a testimony.

  “You know you’ve been known to get a little scatterbrained when you get fretted,” Floretta continued. “That’s not good for you, especially down in the mine. You got to keep your wits about you.”

  “How’s Mom?” I asked.

  Floretta studied me. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

  “Well, I know you either talked to Mom today or you’re starting to sound just like her.”

  “She said for you not to worry about what happens tonight, Mr. Smarty-pants. That’s what she said.”

  “She didn’t say she was coming home anytime soon, did she?”

  “She ain’t ready,” Floretta said. “I’m going to need help setting up the parlor.”

  “Can I take my shower first?”

  “Go right ahead and then get back down here.”

  I was still setting up chairs when Cleo Mallett, the wife of the union’s second-in-command, arrived along with the other women of the Coalwood Organization of Women. It had been Roy Lee, back in 1959 when the C.O.W. was formed, who first noted that its initials pretty much described its membership.

  Mrs. Mallett gave me a sharp look as she came into the parlor, then proceeded to ignore me. I was just a common miner, after all, even if I was the son of the mine superintendent and, until recently, a college boy.

  Mrs. Mallett had always believed she had married well beneath herself and aspired to be the town’s social leader, which meant, as far as she was concerned, meddling in everybody’s business. What Tag said about her described her best: an ignorant woman who knew everything.

  Mrs. Mallett and the other C.O.W. ladies selected the chairs up front and plumped down in them, calling to Floretta for iced tea. “Testimony ain’t going to start for another whole hour, Miss Cleo,” Floretta answered from her kitchen door. “And I ain’t ready to serve.”

  “Floretta, dear,” Mrs. Mallett answered in the high-pitched voice she used when dealing with someone she thought inferior, “the ladies and I require our iced tea. A slice of lemon in our glasses, too.” Then her voice broke to her usual growl. “Right away, dear, if you know what’s good for you!”

  “What’s good for you ain’t on my menu,” Floretta muttered. But soon the sound of the tinkle of a spoon on a glass pitcher from the kitchen told the C.O.W. ladies they were getting their way. They relaxed into gossip.

  I kept working, carrying more folding chairs in from the storeroom in the back, but I couldn’t help but hear what the ladies were discussing. It seemed there was a certain somebody’s husband down in Frog Level who’d been observed in a certain somebody else’s house on Substation Row while the certain somebody else’s husband was working the day shift. I tuned them out, mainly because they weren’t mentioning any names.

  More folks were wandering in. Some miners, fresh off shift and still in their work clothes, filled some chairs. Then Jake came in, perused the gathering crowd, and announced: “Ladies, I’m sorry. The chairs on the front row are for the witnesses and the federal and state inspectors. I’ll have to ask you to move.”

  “Jake Mosby, we’re not moving anywhere,” Mrs. Mallett said. She was holding a glass of iced tea in one hand and in the other a fan imprinted with a logo that read Fanning Funeral Home, Welch, West Virginia. The others of her ladies were similarly composed.

  Jake caught my eye, and rather than hear any
orders out of him, I went ahead and solved his little problem. “I’ll put more chairs up front,” I volunteered.

  A tumult of voices in the parlor announced more visitors, mostly Olga Coal Company officials. Mr. Bundini followed them, talking to a big-bellied man I didn’t recognize. Another man, so skinny he was nearly cadaverous, came inside and peered into the parlor, taking it all in. He limped in such a way I deduced that he had a wooden leg. I’d never seen anybody with a wooden leg before, and I couldn’t help but stare. The C.O.W. ladies also took note of the men and began fanning themselves faster and talking a blue streak. I heard them say the two men were the federal and state inspectors, the ultimate judges of Dad’s fate, I supposed. The plump man, I would later learn, was Mr. Arlo Mutman, the state inspector. The skinny one, the federal inspector, was Mr. Percy Amsteader. I would also learn that he’d lost his leg in a mine accident.

  Mr. Fuller took up station at the heavy oak table I’d moved up front. He asked for something to bang the proceedings to order, so Floretta went back into her kitchen and came out with a steel soup ladle. Mr. Fuller took the ladle, tapped it on the table for practice, and nodded his acceptance of the device as adequate to his needs.

  Pretty soon, the parlor was packed and I had no more room for chairs. I asked Floretta if she wanted me to set some up in the foyer. “And scratch my floors? I don’t think so,” she said. She continued to ignore the C.O.W.’s waving their empty tea glasses at her.

  Rita came inside, spotted me, and came over. “How’d the stopwatch do?”

  “Great. Can I keep it for a while?”

  A smile started that didn’t quite make it. “You help me, I help you,” she said.

  I puzzled over her answer, but before I could say anything, Mr. Fuller vigorously tapped the ladle on the table. “Let’s have order,” he announced, and then banged harder when nobody paid him any mind.

  Rita said, “I’m not going to be able to stay. I have some specs to work up for a project.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “You’re really building some muscles.” Then she was gone. It took nearly a minute for my heart to stop pounding.