Sky of Stone

by Homer Hickam

  “What did you tell him?”

  For the first time, Dad hesitated. He seemed to go over something in his mind, then said, “I told him to go inside and check his section for methane.”

  “But first you wanted him to meet you at the number one tipple, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you just wait until the day shift and inspect Tuck’s section then?”

  “I needed to clear Tuck’s section before I could get production going.”

  “So after this huge storm and all the fans were down for hours, you figured to start production on the shift immediately after it was over?”

  “Yes. That’s my job.”

  Mr. Fuller rocked in his shoes again and they squeaked again. He looked down at them, rocked some more, and they squeaked some more. “When was Tuck supposed to meet you at the mine?”

  “As soon as he could. I met him around four o’clock or so. We dressed out and prepared to go inside to do the inspection.”

  “But you didn’t go,” Mr. Fuller said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Tuck Dillon was a competent foreman,” Dad replied in a reasonable tone of voice. “He knew perfectly well how to inspect for methane. I trusted him to do it by himself.”

  “Then why did you get your lamp and your tag if you weren’t going in with him?”

  Dad sat back and cleared his throat. “I meant to go, but after I was sure Tuck had all the facts, I decided it wasn’t necessary.”

  “And what facts might those be?”

  “The probability of high concentrations of gas in his section.”

  “Is that dangerous?”

  “You know it is, Amos.”

  “I do, indeed. Did you warn Tuck about the gas? Tell him to be cautious?”

  “I—yes, we discussed all that.”

  “And what was he supposed to do if he found gas?”

  “He was to let me know. If there were major buildups, I’d have to arrange for ventilating curtains or maybe even some stoppers before the regular shift went inside.”

  Mr. Fuller rocked and squeaked. I longed to take an oil can to his shoes. “So even though you were all prepared, had your work clothes on, your hard-toe boots, your belt, your lamp, your tag hung on the board—after all that, you decided not to go inside. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Were you sleepy?”

  There were a few titters from the C.O.W. ladies. They covered their mouths. Floretta grumbled something behind me.

  “Sure, I was tired,” Dad admitted, casting his gaze at the audience. “It had been a long night.”

  “So you were tired.”

  “I said I was. Yes.”

  Mr. Fuller frowned, as if in deep thought. “Let me make certain I understand you. Is it your testimony that because you were tired, you decided to let Tuck Dillon go inside alone to fireboss his section?”

  Dad’s cheeks reddened. I could tell Fuller’s question had touched a nerve. “Tuck didn’t need me,” he said.

  “Homer,” Mr. Fuller said, “is Tuck Dillon dead?”

  “You know he is.”

  “How did he die?”

  “There was an explosion.”

  “Why was there an explosion?”

  “A spark from his motor.”

  “From his electric locomotive?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Fuller put his hands behind his back, then paced over by the window that looked out on the town green in front of the post office. He stared through it. “Tuck Dillon drove his electric locomotive into a section that you told him was probably filled with pockets of explosive methane?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Fuller turned about. “And you still testify that he was competent?”

  Dad’s lips hardened into a straight line. “Tuck Dillon was one of the best foremen who ever worked in the Pocahontas coalfields.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Fuller said, “and I’m sure he was also a fine father and a regular churchgoer. But that doesn’t change what he did. He killed himself by doing something stupid.”

  “Tuck Dillon was not stupid,” Dad said. His right hand clutched the armrest of the chair.

  Mr. Fuller nodded, then walked back to the table. He put his hand on it, as if he needed it to keep him upright because he was in such deep thought. Then he straightened and walked until he was standing behind Dad. His hands went up as if he was going to put them on Dad’s shoulders, but then he seemed to have second thoughts. He dropped them along his sides. “I believe you, Homer,” he said in a soft voice. “In fact, I have inspected Tuck’s employment record. It is very impressive. Highest marks on his foreman’s exam, a member of the West Virginia Mine Rescue Association. He even contributed several articles on safety to its quarterly. Tuck Dillon was not stupid. He was well educated in mine safety. In fact, you trained him yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Dad said. His hand on the armrest twitched.

  “What else did you teach him?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Have you not given lectures to all your foremen from time to time about a variety of subjects?”

  “I suppose.”

  Mr. Fuller opened up the notebook and withdrew two sheets of yellow legal paper. “I found these remarks in the company file. You gave them last year to the new Olga Coal Company foremen. Do you recall what you said?”

  Dad shifted in the chair but remained silent.

  “Tell you what,” Mr. Fuller said. “Let’s not tax your memory. Why don’t you just read what you said?”

  Dad frowned and looked at Mr. Bundini. Mr. Bundini nodded, and Dad took the yellow sheets from Mr. Fuller. He withdrew a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, squinted at the paper, then closed one eye. He squirmed until finally he seemed to be in the posture he needed to read. “The qualities of a foreman,” he read aloud.

  “That’s the name of your talk, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The qualities of a foreman. Read on, please.”

  Dad eyed Mr. Fuller, then cleared his throat and read:

  If you are going to be an Olga Coal Company foreman, you must make a decision. Are you for the company or are you for the union?

  At this, Dad looked up. I followed his eyes as they landed on Mr. Dubonnet. Mr. Dubonnet’s face was grim. Dad went back to reading:

  I am not saying to be anti-union, but certainly you must be pro-company. John L. Lewis said to his union officers that if you eat my bread, you sing my tune. The same is true for the management side. You may not agree with management but as long as you are a foreman, you must side with the company.

  Dad put the papers down on his lap and said, “The rest is just a list of attributes I think a foreman should have.” Then he coughed the deep, phlegmy hack of a miner, a rasp, as familiar as it was, that made me cringe. He reached in his back pocket and drew out a blue bandanna and pushed his mouth into it.

  “Keep reading, please,” Mr. Fuller said softly.

  Dad wiped his lips but held on to the bandanna. He read:

  The attributes of an Olga foreman:

  We are proud of who we are. We were chosen to be Olga men.

  We are morally straight. We don’t lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. That not only goes for work, but everywhere.

  We never stop learning.

  We give orders and take orders like a man.

  We don’t make deals. We tell our men what to do and then stick to it.

  We don’t watch the clock. We get to work early and leave only when the job is finished.

  We don’t make decisions on what somebody else said. We go and see things for ourselves.

  When things go wrong, we don’t hunt for someone else to blame. We fix it.

  We don’t buddy with our crews.

  We’re not afraid to tell a man he’s no good. A man can’t get good if he doesn’t know he
’s bad.

  We’re the boss. We never tell the men to do something because somebody else said so. We say so and we make sure they do it.

  We know production is the key. Without it, all the good things we have in Coalwood and Caretta, our homes, our schools, and all that we hold dear, all will be lost.

  Dad took off his glasses, tucked them in his shirt pocket, and put the papers on the table. He looked straight ahead, his face expressionless.

  “‘Production is the key,’” Mr. Fuller quoted. “‘Without it . . . all that we hold dear, all will be lost.’” He paced a bit. “Odd. I never heard you mention the word safety a single time in your little lecture.”

  “Safety is inherent to a foreman’s job,” Dad said. “They all know that.”

  “But you never mentioned it. Interesting.”

  Dad kept his peace.

  “Tuck Dillon made a mistake that even a common miner wouldn’t make,” Mr. Fuller pressed. “But you say you don’t know why. Is that right?”

  Dad didn’t say anything, so Mr. Fuller paced some more. “Here’s what I think happened,” he said after taking a slow lap around the table.

  Perhaps in a court of law, a defense lawyer would have jumped up and cried, “Speculation, your honor!” or some-such, but this wasn’t a court of law, not by a long shot. Mr. Fuller got his say.

  “Homer, I think at the last minute you decided not to go in with Tuck because you wanted to be around when the day shift arrived. And why was that? You said it yourself. We’re the boss. You personally wanted to kick the tails of your foremen, get them inside as fast as you could so production wouldn’t suffer any more than it already had. That’s why Tuck Dillon died, isn’t it? You wanted production!”

  Dad stayed silent, his eyes held rigidly straight ahead.

  The federal inspector, Mr. Amsteader, leaned forward. “I have a question for you, Homer.” His reedy voice sounded strangely calm after Mr. Fuller’s outburst. “If Tuck Dillon had all the information he needed, would he have entered a gas-filled section in an electric locomotive?”

  Dad glanced at the federal man, then mulled the question over. “I can’t imagine that he would.”

  “You were his supervisor, responsible for providing him with all the information he needed?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Amsteader sat back and patted his wooden leg. A smile formed on Mr. Fuller’s face. “I think we’ve heard all that we need to hear,” he said.

  “Are you done with me?” Dad asked bitterly.

  Mr. Fuller waved his hand in airy dismissal. “We’ve heard enough. You may stand down.”

  Dad struggled to his feet. His face was red and he was having trouble getting his breath. I started to go and help him, but Tag held me back. “You’ll shame him,” Tag said, and I knew he was right. Dad walked unsteadily to the door, his bandanna still pressed to his face. The crowd in the foyer parted before him.

  Jake and Mr. Fuller huddled at the table while a conversational buzz began to grow in the parlor. When I thought I’d waited long enough, I followed Dad but was surprised to find him on the Club House sidewalk in deep conversation with Mr. Dubonnet. As I came up to them, I heard Dad say, “Don’t worry, John. I would sooner be fired.”

  “Thank you,” Mr. Dubonnet said, and put his hand on Dad’s shoulder.

  Dad shrugged his hand away and walked toward the Buick, which was parked in front of the Big Store.

  “Sonny,” Mr. Dubonnet greeted me when I came up beside him.

  We watched Dad climb in the Buick and pull out, heading up Main Street. “Why did you thank Dad?” I asked.

  After a moment of obvious deliberation, he said, “Because he protected one of my men in there tonight.”

  “But Mr. Dillon wasn’t a union man,” I said.

  “I didn’t say he was,” Mr. Dubonnet answered, then trudged away.

  37

  THE HONOR OF KINGS

  THE SECOND testimony finished and people poured out of the Club House while I wandered around in the dark, lost inside my own head. I figured I had most of the story now, including a working theory as to why Tuck Dillon had gone in the mine by himself. But why he had blown himself up—that remained a puzzle. God, in His sly way, was still concealing things from me and everybody else.

  More walking and thinking didn’t help. By the time I climbed the steps and went back inside the Club House, the place was empty and Floretta had closed herself up in her apartment. Breakfast found me entirely by myself in the dining room. Even the junior engineers didn’t turn up. The second testimony had worn everyone out, I supposed. A note in the kitchen from Floretta told me she was sleeping in, and I could fix my own breakfast. She’d at least packed my lunch.

  The day on the track found me sluggish, off center, and prone to error. I kept missing spikes with my hammer and dropping my pry bar, tripping over rails and slamming my head into the roof. Bobby and Johnny let me go my sloppy way without comment. At the end of the shift, we were one rail short of finishing.

  “If we have to flag down the first man-trip, what happens, Johnny?” Bobby worried.

  “We lose the bet, that’s what happens,” Johnny said grimly. “Garrett would hear about it, for sure, and say we’d cheated by working past our shift.”

  “Full-court press,” Bobby said. He came over to me, squeezed my arm until it hurt. “Full-court press, Sonny!”

  I pulled away from him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Like in basketball. We’ve got to run, throw away caution, go as fast as we can!”

  “Full-court press,” Johnny said. “Yeah!”

  It had been my fault we were behind. “Let’s do it!” I yelled.

  We pressed. Spikes flew, hammers pounded, shovels shoveled, ties were flung to the side. We ran like bandits, oblivious to the roof. I slammed into a roof bolt, was knocked on my back, and my glasses went flying. Even though all I could see was a blur, I got up and charged ahead anyway. I went by feel alone. We drove in the last spike just as the first man-trip rounded a curve and its glaring white spotlight was flung down the track at us. We backed off, watching it roar past. Its wind buffeted us. “Can somebody help me find my glasses?” I begged.

  “I’ll look,” Bobby said. He wandered up the track, his light going from side to side. I peered into the shadowy gloom. I couldn’t even read the yellow sign with black letters that marked the main line. My light reflecting off it just made it smudgier, and even squinting didn’t help.

  Bobby returned and handed me my glasses. “Here. Maybe you ought to tie a string to them or something.”

  After we got out, we walked down Coalwood Main in silence. I was mulling everything, a mix of Dad and Tuck, Mr. Dooley, even Rita. Bobby was polite enough to let me do it in peace. Inside the Club House, I found Floretta sitting in the parlor on one of the folding chairs. She’d cleaned up but left the chairs and everything else in place. The room seemed to still reverberate with Mr. Fuller’s accusations and Dad’s lonely words of futile defense.

  “Floretta, last night Mr. Dubonnet thanked Dad for protecting somebody, a union member. I’ve been thinking and thinking about who that might be. Do you know?”

  “Yes, Sonny,” she said tiredly. “And so do you, if you’d give it two seconds of thought.”

  I gave it three. I opened my mouth to name who I thought it was but she shook her head. “Just keep it to yourself. It was never supposed to go this far, see? It was all supposed to be swept under the rug. That’s what we do here, hide what we need to hide because it’s our business, our way. But the steel company’s got its business, too. Nobody’s ever seen them come after a man like they’re coming after your daddy. The only way he can save himself is by telling Coalwood business—what you’ve guessed now—and he ain’t going to do that.”

  “But why are they after Dad? That’s what I can’t figure.”

  She raised her hands toward the ceiling. “I don’t know about any of that. Mr. Fuller took off this morning, head
ing up to Ohio to report the dirty work’s about done, I imagine.”

  “Jake didn’t go?”

  She shook her head. “Judging by the empty whiskey bottle outside his room this morning, I think he decided to get himself drunk.”

  “Oh, no,” I said sadly.

  “I guess all this got him pretty rattled.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Poor boy. It’s enough to make anybody fall off the wagon, I guess. Jake’s between the old rock and the hard place. I didn’t used to see that, but I do now. Steel company gave him a job—what was he to do but to do it as best he could? Fuller told me before he left that the last testimony is to be next Friday. Not a real testimony, just a report of findings. Pretty clear what it’s going to say.”

  “That Dad was negligent.”

  “Yes, and Tuck Dillon was a fool.”

  “And then Dad will lose his job and Mr. Dillon will have his good name smeared.”

  “That’s the long and the short of it, Sonny.”

  “What good will that do the steel company?”

  She shook her head. “That’s what nobody can figure.”

  I sat with Floretta, both of us thinking. There had to be something that could be done, not only for Dad, but Tuck, too. Tuck’s whole life had been sullied by the way he’d died. I pushed my glasses back on my nose. They were still gritty with gob where I’d dropped them. I took my glasses off and looked at them. “It’s the honor of kings . . . ,” I murmured.

  “What is?” Floretta asked.

  “To find the truth.” I stood up and walked to the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Floretta demanded.

  “To talk to Jake.”

  “What can Jake do?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “deep down in his heart, Jake Mosby’s but a king.”

  Floretta looked dubious. “He’s a steel company man, Sonny. And now he’s a drunk again. That’s all he is.”

  Maybe so. Maybe not. I headed upstairs to find out.

  38

  THE THIRD TESTIMONY

  A WEEK passed, Friday night came, and once more the town gathered at the Club House for what was to be the third and last testimony. In the previous testimonies, before things got going, the audience had gossiped and otherwise entertained one another. Now they sat quietly, even the C.O.W. ladies. It was as if they were gathering for an execution, which, in a way, I suppose they were. I took my place standing just inside the portal from the parlor. I’d already said a prayer. Mentally, I had my fingers crossed. Maybe, just maybe, something was about to happen that nobody expected.