Sky of Stone

by Homer Hickam

  “And how would you describe Mr. Hickam’s emotional state?”

  Mr. Caulder slid his big hands up the legs of his coverall. “He was . . . unhappy.”

  “Unhappy? Is that all he was? Unhappy?”

  Mr. Caulder slowly shook his head. “Upset, maybe,” he said.

  “Upset like maybe Big Creek High lost a football game? Is that what you mean, Jack? Or was Homer Hickam more emotional than that?”

  Mr. Caulder looked around the assembly for help, but there was none. He fiddled with a button on his shirt pocket, then shrugged. “He was . . . well, like I never seen him before. He was white as a sheet.”

  “Like he was scared or had a guilty conscience?”

  “Amos . . . ,” Mr. Bundini said in a warning tone.

  Mr. Fuller drummed his fingers on the table. “You’re right, Martin.” He nodded to Carol. “Strike that. You can step down, Jack.”

  Mr. Fuller made a brief survey of the parlor and then said, “I still don’t see Homer Hickam.”

  “I’m sure there must be something at the mine that required his attention,” Mr. Bundini said.

  “More important than this?” Mr. Mutman, the state inspector, asked. “I have trouble with that.”

  Floretta came into the room. She was carrying a three-by-five card. “I have a message from Mr. Homer for all ya’ll,” she said nervously. She looked at Mr. Bundini. “Sir, he said that the mine’s gone all to heck and he’s got to see to it.”

  Just about everybody in the room laughed at Floretta’s announcement except the officials up front. Floretta put on the half glasses that hung from a chain around her neck and perused the card. “He also told me to tell you the only thing he’s got to say to this testimony is this: He doesn’t know why Tuck Dillon went into 10 West without firebossing it first. He only knows he was a man who had never made that kind of mistake before.”

  Mr. Fuller leaned back in his chair. “None of that will go into the record,” he said. “But the record will show that Homer Hickam was unwilling to come before this assembly and make a sworn statement.”

  “Sir, Mr. Homer never told a lie in all his born days!” Floretta blurted. “He don’t need no Bible to coach him to do it, neither!”

  Mr. Fuller pointed the soup ladle at Floretta. “I’ll thank you to be quiet, woman!”

  “Well, I’ll thank you to stop puttin’ dents in my good oak table with that soup ladle!”

  The audience laughed and then they clapped, clearly in the belief that Floretta had gotten the better of the steel company man.

  “I’d like to call someone to testify,” Jake said, his voice piercing the tumult. After everyone quieted down, he nodded toward me. “Sonny Hickam.”

  I thought surely I hadn’t heard right. Me? My face flushed hot and I turned around to make a run for it, but Tag barred my way. He pointed, and I turned around and trudged to the chair. Mr. Fuller gave me a surprised look when I stepped up to it. I guess he’d remembered his conversation with me when he thought I was a junior engineer.

  I raised my hand, swore on the Bible, and sat down. My heart was beating so hard I thought it was going to leap right out of my chest. I couldn’t imagine what Jake had in mind except to see to the further ridicule of my family.

  “Sonny, the first time your father took you in the mine, you told me he made a little speech to you about something. Would you relate that speech to us now?”

  “That was personal,” I said, bristling. “Just between Dad and me. And I’m sorry I ever told you anything!”

  “I think it relates to this investigation,” he said, his face coloring.

  Mr. Bundini said, “Sonny, you have to tell.”

  Since I’d sworn on the Bible and didn’t have much choice, I gave in. “Dad was trying to convince me to become a mining engineer,” I said. “That’s why he took me inside.”

  “When was that?”

  “I was a sophomore in high school. Spring 1958. I’d just started launching rockets. I was also making good grades in math, for the first time. I think he thought maybe I had some potential.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said he knew the mine like he knew a man, could sense things about it that weren’t right even when everything on paper said it was. He said every day there was something that needed to be done—because men would be hurt if it wasn’t done, or the coal the company had promised to load wouldn’t get loaded. He said coal was the lifeblood of the country, that if it failed, steel failed, and then the country failed. That’s what he said.”

  Jake paced. “He said something about miners, too, didn’t he?”

  I took a ragged breath. “He said there were no men in the world like miners, that they were good and strong men, the best there was. He said I would never know such good and strong men, didn’t matter where I went or what I did. He said I was his boy and since he was born to lead men in the profession of mining coal, maybe I was, too.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I said I wanted to go work for Wernher von Braun.”

  Jake waited until a rumble of voices, accompanied by a few titters, went through the crowd.

  “One thing more, Sonny. What happened when you and your dad came outside that day?”

  “My mom was waiting for us.”

  “Was she unhappy that your dad had taken you into the mine?”

  “Mom has always said neither of her boys would ever work in a coal mine.”

  “But she was also unhappy for another reason, wasn’t she?”

  “I don’t see what—”

  “Answer the man, Sonny,” Mr. Bundini snapped.

  “A spot on Dad’s lung had just been found,” I said. “Mom was looking for Dad to quit the mine.”

  “That was how many years ago?”

  I counted it up. “Three years.”

  “Three years. Yet your father continues to go inside the mine nearly every day. Why do you think he does that, Sonny?”

  I considered his question carefully. Then I said, “It’s his job.”

  “Is that all it is?”

  I’d had enough. It was late. I was tired and so was everybody else. I knew where Jake wanted me to go, and I knew he was going to get me there, so I saved him and me and everybody else the time and trouble. “My dad loves that mine more than anything in the world,” I said, “more than me, more than my mom, more than his own health.” I gave Jake my best dirty look.

  Jake looked away and then down at the floor. “I just wanted that on the record,” he said softly.

  And with me glaring at Jake, and Jake looking as shamefaced as he deserved, the first testimony in the “trial” of Homer Hickam was done.

  26

  RITA’S CHANCE

  I PUSHED through the sweating crowd. I didn’t hear Jake calling, but he caught me on the first landing. “I’m sorry, Sonny,” he said. “Since you wouldn’t talk to me otherwise, you gave me no choice.”

  “I don’t care, Jake,” I lied. “Whatever you want to do, you just go ahead and do it, the big steel company man.”

  He looked at me with eyes filled with disappointment, as if I were at fault for what had just happened. “I have another question,” he said quietly. “When was it that you lost your intellectual curiosity?”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about and said so. “You told the truth down there, Sonny,” he replied. “Your dad loves that mine more than anything in the world. So don’t you think it’s kind of strange that he let Tuck go inside alone?”

  “Maybe he was tired,” I said, but even as I said it, I knew Jake was right. As long as the mine was in danger, my father wouldn’t rest—or, at least, he never had before.

  “Something very peculiar happened that night,” Jake said as he put his hand on my arm, “and I’m going to find out what it was.”

  I shook him off and continued my journey to my room. Jake had once taught me about the stars, and I’d admired him for the joy he took from life. Some pe
ople had called him a drunk and ne’er-do-well back then, but I hadn’t cared. He was my friend, that’s all I knew. Now he was a sober and respected steel company man, and even drove a Nash. But he wasn’t my friend, not anymore, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I went inside my room and sat down at my bare table. The hurt was like a nail in my side. I hated Jake, hated him with all my heart and soul. How could he betray what I’d once told him, friend to friend, in utter confidence?

  I willed calm. I was no high school rocket boy. I was a partially college-educated track-laying man. Why, I asked myself, did I really hate Jake? Was it because he had forced me to think in a direction I’d so far ignored? What had happened the night Tuck Dillon died?

  I went over it. Dad had been ready to go into the mine, had his helmet lamp on, his tag hung, everything. Then he’d turned away and let Tuck go inside by himself. Jake’s question about my intellectual curiosity had struck bone. He was right. It didn’t make sense. And why had Tuck Dillon, a man known for his caution and judgment, committed the gross mistake of an utter novice—he’d driven an electric motor into a section filled with explosive gas!—an error that even a junior engineer would not commit?

  I kept considering the situation until I had nearly worn myself out. Sometimes, I thought, maybe things just happen.

  But not in Coalwood. Not in Coalwood. Here things did not just happen. There was always more. You just had to know where to look.

  The passage from Proverbs that the Reverend Richard had quoted came back to me now: It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the honor of kings to search it out.

  God might be in his glory here, I thought gloomily, but kings were nearly always in short supply in Coalwood.

  I HEARD a rattle of little raps on my door, bringing me out of a shallow, dreamless sleep. I had to hear it a second time before I believed it. My first thought was that it was Floretta, that maybe Mom had called me on the phone in the parlor. If that was so, it wasn’t going to be good news. The telephone never brought good news in the middle of the night. That much I knew for sure.

  I grabbed my pants, drew them on, and fumbled my way to the door. When I opened it, I was astonished to see Rita in full junior engineer regalia, including her white helmet. An olive-drab dispatch bag was strapped over her shoulder. “Sonny, it’s time,” she said.

  I just stood there, trying to sort out what was happening.

  Rita was excited, that much I could see. “Get dressed in your work clothes, meet me downstairs.” She looked up and down the hall, then whispered, “Bring your helmet.”

  While I dressed, I kept trying to figure out what was happening. Maybe, I thought, Rita just wanted to get me off alone with her in the dark. It’s amazing how hope cheers the ever-faithful, foolish heart.

  In the foyer, she put her finger to her lips and led me outside to her T-bird. I climbed inside and off we went. I was still in sort of a sleepy daze. There was a bank of low fog that hugged the road. It was as if we were driving through a cloud. I could smell her, a perfume of apple blossoms and peppermint. When we reached the vacant lot below the Todds’ house on Tipple Row, she pulled in. “We’ll walk the rest of the way,” she said, tucking her hair beneath her helmet.

  “What are we doing, Rita?” I asked.

  “I helped you,” she said. “Now it’s time for you to help me.”

  I stopped. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll explain it while we go. Hurry.”

  We walked, passing my house, crossing the road to the path that led up to the tipple. I felt more reluctant with each step.

  “I did a work order with Victor last week,” she said as we worked our way along the dark path. “It was for a stopping. Do you know what that is?”

  I did. It was a barrier, usually made of brick or iron plate, used to direct ventilation in the mine.

  “Stopper work is done on the hoot-owl shift,” she said.

  I knew that, too. Rock dusting and nearly all the maintenance tasks were done on the hoot-owl shift.

  “An engineer has to be thorough,” she said. “Do you know why that is, Sonny? I’ll tell you. Because usually the job we design is actually done when we’re not around. That means everything has to be in the engineering package—every supply item, every step in the procedure, all the drawings. That’s something you’ll want to remember when you get to be an engineer.”

  “Okay,” I said uncertainly.

  “The stopper project I did with Victor depended on him to do just one thing,” she said. “He’s such a putz. I did all the work on the damn thing and all he had to do was put the package together. Tonight, the foreman on East Main D got the work order, but the engineering package didn’t have the drawings. Victor screwed up.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because when the foreman phoned Victor, Floretta went after him and found he wasn’t in his room—probably over at Keystone or up at John Eye’s, if I know that idiot—so Benson, that’s the foreman on East Main D, sent Floretta after me. I guess he just wanted somebody to yell at and my name was on the package, too. Benson was really yelling, said if junior engineers couldn’t do their work any better than that, then they should just stop trying.” Then she lowered her voice. “‘By gaw, girl, you better get me those drawings or there’ll be hell to pay.’” She laughed. “That’s what he said.”

  “So you have the drawings?”

  She patted the bag over her shoulder. “Sure do,” she said. “Along with my verbal orders.”

  “Verbal orders?”

  She lowered her voice again. “‘By gaw, girl, you better get me those drawings or there’ll be hell to pay.’” She went back to her normal voice. “Well, we’d just hate for hell to get paid, wouldn’t we?”

  At the main gate of the tipple grounds, I said, “Rita, I don’t think Mr. Benson meant for you to bring those drawings.”

  “He gave me an order, Sonny.”

  “And you want me to do what?”

  “Get me a lamp and turn in my tag.” She produced a brass tag from the front pocket of her tight jeans. It was polished as smooth and bright as any I’d ever seen. It glinted in the spotlights on the wire fence that went around the grounds. It was number 982.

  I stared at the tag, trying to think. “Rita, I can’t do this,” I finally managed to say. “You go inside, the men will say the mine’s not safe anymore. They’ll go out on strike.”

  Her face clouded. “I’ve yet to run across a single miner who believes in that silly old superstition.”

  “Maybe not to your face, but trust me, they believe.”

  “You promised you’d help me.”

  “I also told you I didn’t know how.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  “How will you get to East Main D?”

  “I can drive a motor.”

  Her whole scheme became clear. Rita expected me to help her get on the man-lift, and then she was going to drive a tram all the way to East Main D. That was doubly illegal. Not only was a trip ticket required, but I would have bet money she didn’t have the necessary certification to drive one of the little electric locomotives. “I can’t do this, Rita.”

  “Can’t?” Her eyes flashed. “Sonny, this is my chance. You promised to help me. We had a bargain. I’ve helped you. You must have noticed what I did yesterday.”

  I didn’t know what she meant and said so. She shook her head. “Don’t be silly. I did . . . things.”

  It hit me between the eyes like a thunderbolt—the wrong spikes, the late deliveries of ties to the Caretta section. Rita had caused that to happen. “I didn’t know!” I gasped.

  “Well, what did you think was going to happen when we agreed to help each other?” she demanded.

  My head spun. “I thought you were talking about the stopwatch!”

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “I knew you needed more help than that! Now it’s your turn to help me. Please. You and I, fellow engineers against the
world.”

  Every molecule in my body screamed at me to stop what was happening, but I just stood there.

  “You told me about Mr. Bykovski,” she said, “how he knew he could lose his job if he helped you with your rockets. But he did it, Sonny, and you told me why. Because it was the right thing to do. You know this is right, too. I should be able to go down in the mine.”

  She was right, at least about Mr. Bykovski. And, no matter how much trouble I knew it would get me into, I knew she was also right, that she needed and deserved to go into the mine. I thought of the grubby little place they’d given her in the hall of the engineering office, and how she had to go all the way up front just to go to the bathroom. The company had treated her like gob and it wasn’t right, none of it. I started to get mad, for her sake.

  “Come on,” she said. “Please. For what’s right, Sonny.”

  What man wouldn’t want to do right for his woman? That thought whipped across my mind. “Let’s go,” I said, and led the way through the gate and up to the remains of the old tipple.

  RITA STOOD around the corner of the lamphouse and strapped on a battery and clipped a lamp to her helmet. I’d checked them out for her from Mr. Caulder, explaining the extra gear was for Victor, who’d be along any minute.

  “He’s puking in the bathhouse,” I lied. “John Eye’s whiskey didn’t sit well with him.”

  Mr. Caulder gave me the eye. “He’s not drunk, is he? I’d get in trouble if I let a drunk go in the mine.”

  “No. He’s just sick.”

  “You vouch for him?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Since when did you turn into a junior-engineer helper?” he wondered. “I thought you were a track-laying man.”

  “Somebody’s got to hold their hands,” I said, summoning a knowing laugh from him.

  “Sorry about my testimony,” he said.

  “You had to tell the truth. So did I.”

  “I guess. Go get Victor ready. You going to be with him?”

  “All the way.”