by Ninie Hammon
Will looked down at his hands. “Technically, I didn’t promise. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t say a word. But I didn’t do what your father asked me to do.”
“And you ran away. That’s what’s been eatin’ at you all these years, ain’t it?” She turned to Granny. “And that’s why Lloyd was acting so funny ’bout Will, like he was mad at him. He was mad ’cause he done what my daddy asked him to do and Will didn’t.”
“JoJo, you need to be still now, child. They’s things Will’s got to say and you got to hush up and let him say ’em.”
“All right, I won’t interrupt again. But I have to ask—why?”
Will saw a tangle of emotions wash across her face as the chill of déjà ran through her. Last night, on the porch, the same guileless, uncomprehending question. Why? Why do you want to end your life?
Granny turned back to Will and he couldn’t read the emotion on her face either. It wasn’t just one, though. Her reaction wasn’t a single, simple emotion. It was all tangled up, too.
“Why?” Will repeated softly and looked down at his hands again. “Why didn’t I stay and do what Ricky Dan asked? Why did I run away?”
It seemed like a thousand years passed between heartbeats, though his heart was banging in his chest like a lunatic woodpecker. His mouth was dry as the rock dust they spread in the mine.
His next words would shatter relationships and destroy the place he called home. But he had to say them. It was say them or die.
Will lifted his head and looked Granny in the eye. He owed her that.
“I ran away because I cheated,” he said. “I rigged it so Ricky Dan would draw the white rock and not me.”
Will is on his knees, searching for rocks to put into the hat. He needs one white and one black. What he picks up are two white rocks and one black.
A plan formed in his head as soon as Ricky Dan suggested they determine who would go out into the poisoned shaft by drawing rocks out of a hat. It wasn’t something he thought about, worried around in his head and then figured out the specifics. The plan simply dropped into his head, like a gift-wrapped package addressed to Will Gribbins. All the elements were in place; he didn’t have to design any of it.
He must switch the rocks. If he can pull a coin out of somebody’s ear undetected, he can replace one rock with another unseen. He will stack the deck so Ricky Dan wins the white-rock prize.
It is simple, really. He turns back around to face the others. In his left hand, he holds one black rock. In his right hand, casually out of sight behind his back, he holds two white rocks. He palms one, reaches around and drops the other into his left hand, then holds his hand out for the others to see—one white rock, one black. When Ricky Dan hands him Lloyd’s helmet, Will lifts the helmet above his head and appears to reach up into it with his left hand and let the two rocks in it drop through his fingers. What he actually does is palm the black rock. Then he drops the white rock from his left hand and the other white rock from his right hand into the helmet. Now, there are two white rocks inside the helmet instead of one white and one black, and Will has a black rock safely palmed in his left hand.
If Ricky Dan chooses first, he can only draw out a white rock because there is no black rock in the hat. If Will draws first, he will reach into the hat with his left hand and draw back the black rock he has palmed in it.
Once the drawing is complete, he will quickly put the hat, bottom side down, on the rock pile, where whatever rocks are left inside will vanish.
But he’s sure he will be able to get Ricky Dan to draw first. All he has to do is say…
“ ‘…age before beauty,’ ” Will said. He couldn’t hold Granny’s gaze, so he dropped his eyes to the table. “That’s what I said to get Ricky Dan to draw first. He never had a chance.”
For an agonizing, thousand-year moment, no one made a sound. No one breathed. It was as if they’d become figures in one of Jamey’s arts, frozen in one spot, with one look on their faces for all eternity.
“I was a coward.” Will’s voice was tight with restrained emotion. “I couldn’t go back out into that shaft full of poison air. So…I sent my best friend…my brother out there to die in my place.”
He lifted his eyes to meet Granny’s. Her face was absolutely blank. No emotion, no expression of any kind. In a ragged voice, Will whispered, “I’m so sorry, Granny. I know you could never forgive me—”
“I already did.”
Her voice was even, and her frozen face dissolved into a look of such compassion the light of it blinded Will and he had to look away.
“You already—?”
“I said I done forgived you. I forgived you years ago, Sugar.”
The room spun, whirled around and around Will in a dizzying blur of motion. Utterly alone in the middle of the tempest, he and Granny stared unblinking into each other’s eyes.
“How could…?” The rest of the words hung in his throat and he couldn’t finish. He wondered if she’d even heard him, if his small voice had carried above the roar of the raging wind.
“I’ve knowed what you done for a long time, son.”
“You…knew?”
Granny reached out and squeezed his hand, then let it go. “First, I cried and carried on, my heart tore all to pieces from the pain of it. Then, I got up one mornin’ and I forgived you. I got up the next mornin’ and forgived you again. And the next.” She sighed. “The Bible says you got to forgive seven times seventy times, and folks think that means forgivin’ that many hurts. But that ain’t it a-tall. What it means is that it takes that many times and more to forgive one hurt, ’cause you got to do it over and over, ever day. Until one day, the forgiveness comes down outta your head—outta your mouth where you been sayin’ it but not meanin’ it—and it lands in your heart.” She patted her flat chest. “When it lands here, the forgivin’s done.”
Her eyes filled with tears again. “I been waitin’ all these many years for you to come home and tell me what you done—not so’s I could forgive you but so’s I could tell you I already did.”
Will and JoJo spoke at the same time.
“Granny, how could you possibly—?” Will gasped.
“How did you—?” JoJo asked.
Granny ignored them both and spoke with riveting intensity to Will.
“You been out there wanderin’ the earth all eat up with guilt and you was already forgiven; you just didn’t know it.”
Granny stopped, took a breath and completely changed gears. “I want you to do some’m for me, Will. I want you to go up to Jamey’s shed.” She fished in the front pocket of the flowered apron tied around her waist and pulled out a key. “I got half a dozen spares; Jamey’s all the time losing his.” She handed it to Will. “Underneath the potato boxes in the store room of the shed is one of Jamey’s carvin’s wrapped up in a pillowcase. I want you to bring it back down here to me.”
“But Granny, I don’t underst—?”
Granny waved him off before he could finish. “Be patient and do as I ask.” She smiled a little smile. “Jamey’d pitch a fit if he knowed you was gettin’ it out of there. I told him a long time ago to hide it and not let nobody see it. He’s kept it hid all these years…’cause it made me cry. But it’s time now.”
CHAPTER 30
LLOYD COULD HEAR thunder in the distance and it had sprinkled off and on as he drove to work. A fine mist hung in the air when miners began to pull into the parking lot beside the Harlan #7 entrance at a quarter after eight. Only in union mines did your hourly wage start when you showed up for work. Non-union mines didn’t pay you until you got to the face and started to dig. It would take more than half an hour to travel the mile and a half to the face, and half an hour to get back out. All that time was on your nickel, not the mine’s.
Because they were anxious to get to work so the meter’d start running, the miners didn’t stand around and jaw. Like Lloyd, they all carried their coveralls, steel-toed rubber work boots, helmets, and work belts with them and put
them on in the chill air, standing beside their cars or pickup trucks. Some mines had lockers where miners could leave their gear; this one didn’t.
As he pulled his work belt around his waist, Lloyd glanced at the small piece of metal with his name and his social security number that was affixed to the belt with brads. He remembered how it had upset Will that he had to wear a label so they could recognize his body if he was crushed or burned beyond recognition. Lloyd never could figure why it mattered in the first place. Dead was dead. What difference did it make what family got which unrecognizable body to put in a box and stick in the ground?
Lloyd stepped into the office, took his nametag from the “out” board and placed it on a hook on the “in” board. Only one shaft was operational. A second crew was scheduled to go to work as soon as Black Gold had the money to dig out the shafts that had collapsed in the 1980 explosion.
The words printed on the back of his bossing papers came to his mind: You are responsible for the health, welfare, and safety of the men in your crew.
Well, he’d keep them all safe and healthy. Until he blew them all up. He paused, held his emotional breath and waited for the opposition chorus to rail against what he was about to do. Not objecting to the killing-himself part, but crying out against the take-other-people-with-you part. What had these men ever done to him? They were regular guys trying to earn a living. Why kill them? Why shove Aintree off a cliff into another black pit of despair it’d likely never climb out of?
He waited. Nothing. He had silenced all internal protest. Was he about to cause a world of hurt in this hollow? He was for a fact. But at this point, Lloyd Jacobs just flat out didn’t care.
“How you gettin’ ’long, Lloyd?” said the short, cheerful shuttle driver as Lloyd stepped up beside him in the lamp house and picked up his headlamp and battery off the charger.
“Can’t complain. You?”
“If I’s any better, I’d be twins.”
The man leaned over and picked up something out of a cardboard box on the floor by the Peg-Board. It was a black ribbon with the number 27 printed on it in silver.
“I see you ain’t got one of these yet. if ’n anybody’d want to wear one, I figure it’d be you.”
Lloyd reached out wordlessly and took the ribbon. The shuttle driver helped him tie it on his right arm above his elbow so the 27 was plainly visible, then the man gathered up his Clorox bottle full of water and his lunch bucket and headed outside. Lloyd had brought neither water nor lunch with him this morning. What was the point? He intended to time the explosion to go off at the same time as the mine blew two decades ago. Right at 12:18 P.M.
Hob Bascomb had been talking to another miner, then turned and smiled at Lloyd.
“Lose a fight with a bobcat, didja?” Hob asked, indicating the scratches on Lloyd’s arms, neck, and face from the thorns and broken trellis.
“Some’m like that. What are you doin’ here?”
“I come early for the ceremony.” He looked sheepish. “Real early. Couldn’t sleep.” Then Hob noticed Lloyd’s missing lunch bucket. “You on a diet, Lloyd?”
“Na, I’m s’posed to speak at the service out front, so I’ll have to leave the face ’fore lunchtime.”
Hob looked startled. “You’re speakin’ today?” He began to say something else then fell silent. He was probably just surprised Lloyd would be coming out of the mine, him being a boss and all. Bosses were not allowed to leave their sections.
Lloyd reached down and picked up the mine safety lamp called a possum light he’d set on the floor. Every boss had one. It was a special lamp, looked like a small lantern, with a flame that went out in the presence of CO2, Black Damp, and burned with a bright blue cap if the methane concentration in the air was higher than 2 percent. Lloyd planned to blow up Harlan #7 with methane, but none of the other miners would know it had reached an explosive level because the gas was odorless, tasteless, and invisible. The boss was the only man on the crew with a possum light to detect it and Lloyd planned to take the lamp with him when he left the face “to speak at the ceremony.”
“You okay, Lloyd?” Hob asked. “You look like yore wife left ya and the dog died.”
“Matter of fact, Norma Jean did leave me,” he snapped. “And I ain’t got no dog.”
Hob’s face flushed. “Lloyd, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean nothin’…”
“Hey, Lloyd,” said a cheery voice. The sound hit Lloyd in the belly with the force of a cannonball. He turned around slowly and there stood Jamey Sparrow.
The boy always looked strange in his work clothes, like a little kid playing dress-up. His face was too innocent and earnest, his blond hair too clean for a miner.
“What are you doin’ here?” Lloyd barked with such force two miners turned and looked. Hob Bascomb gawked at him like he’d lost his mind.
Jamey was so surprised the smile vanished from his face and he stared at Lloyd. Folks didn’t speak harshly to Jamey; that’d be like kicking a puppy.
“I…well. I’m—”
“You said you’s off for a week. Today’s Friday. You ain’t s’posed to come back ’til Monday.”
The boy looked confused for a moment, then his face cleared and he spoke as if he was reciting a poem in front of a class at school.
“ ‘Take next week off, Jamey, but I need you in here for the half day Friday,’ ” he parroted. “That’s what Mr. Murdock said.” Jamey turned and pointed toward the office building where the outside foreman stood in the doorway. “He’s right over there if you wanna ask him.”
Lloyd didn’t follow Jamey’s gaze.
“You ain’t s’posed to be here.” His mind spun. “You’re s’posed to be home with Granny and JoJo.”
“I couldn’t stay home. I had to come to work. But they ain’t by theirselves. Will’s there.”
Will. Yeah, they’re home with their precious Will! At first, Lloyd had mourned the fact that Will would escape the fate of the other miners today. Then it occurred to him that surviving this explosion would be way worse than dying in it. Let Will find out what that kind of grief feels like!
Jamey stood before Lloyd completely still and blank, like a radio you’d left turned off—like if you didn’t say something, he’d still be standing there waiting for you next week.
Lloyd stepped up to the boy and spoke urgently.
“You listen to me, Jamey Sparrow. And you do what I tell you. You go home. Right now, hear me. Go home!”
“What for?”
Jamey looked confused and other miners had turned now to listen to the conversation. Lloyd realized he had to back off, bad as he hated it. He couldn’t risk his whole plan to save one kid. It was a shame. But a lot of things in this life was a shame. Lloyd wasn’t at all sad to be leaving it.
“Oh, never mind,” he growled.
He left Jamey with a stricken look on his face, stormed over to the mantrip, climbed aboard, and leaned back. The machine carried miners into the mine sitting backward and out again facing forward. Lloyd wouldn’t be making that return trip. Neither would any of the others—including Jamey.
As the mantrip started toward the entrance and the dark tunnels beyond, Lloyd looked up at the clouds. Too bad it was stormy. He’d have liked to have seen a bright blue sky one last time.
Then the machine and the miners passed through the entrance into a darkness that matched the black depths of Lloyd’s soul.
WILL, GRANNY, AND JoJo were again seated around the kitchen table. In front of them lay the dusty pillowcase with a lump in it that Granny had asked Will to retrieve from Jamey’s shed. As soon as he saw it stuffed behind the potato box, a chill ran down Will’s spine. When he actually touched it, he had the strange sense that he almost knew what was inside. Understanding beat at the edge of his mind like a loose shutter banging in the wind. He could have opened the pillowcase and looked, of course. It’s not like there was a padlock on it. But he didn’t want to see. He was certain that whatever it was, he wouldn’t like it.
When he placed the two carvings on the kitchen table in front of Granny and JoJo, they scooted to the side the one Jamey had just completed and stared at the other one. No one spoke for a moment, but the air was charged with energy. JoJo had figured out that whatever lay inside that dirty pillowcase was some of her brother’s magic and she looked at it with last-Bingo-number intensity.
Granny turned to Will and said gently, “I think you know what’s in here. Jamey carved it years ago. ’Course he didn’t know what any of it meant, but I studied on it and figured it out.”
Without another word, she pulled the pillowcase down off the carving to reveal a shiny piece of jet about 30 inches across. She lifted it, tossed the dirty pillowcase over on top of the striped one and then set the jet back down in the center of the table.
Will gasped. JoJo looked confused.
The relief mural showed three miners in a vast darkness. The darkness alone was a masterpiece—far from empty and featureless. Jamey had painstakingly etched into it an intricate, detailed network of tiny lines that displayed the cracks and texture of coal. A miner without a helmet was leaned up against the wall with his feet extended out in front of him; two other miners were on their knees. One could be seen from the side, the other from the back. Even though the faces of two of the men were visible, they weren’t recognizable because all three of them were looking down, their attention fixed on what lay on the ground in front of them—a miner’s helmet, turned upside down.
JoJo finally broke the silence, spoke in an awed whisper.
