Memories of Another Day

by Harold Robbins

“The folk hereabouts know you an’ like you,” Fitch said. “You can he’p out at the store, buy the squeezin’s, handle things with the good folk. You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy said.

  “In business there are always problems,” Fitch said. “Sometimes people don’ understand what yer doin’ is fer their own good.”

  Jimmy nodded without speaking. He could appreciate that without any trouble. It wasn’t always easy to make people understand you were cheating them for their own good.

  Fitch interpreted Jimmy’s nod as approval. “I’ve always done my bes’ fer this town. But now there’s beginnin’ to be some talk that I’m doin’ it jes’ to butter my own bread. Like the new mill. That’s two hunnert jobs fer the good folks hereabouts. Still there’s talk that I’m jes’ doin’ it fer my own interest.”

  “You’re not benefitin’ from it?” Jimmy asked with pretended naiveté.

  “Of course I’m benefitin’,” Fitch said. “That’s only good business. But so is the town. I’m bringin’ more industry an’ work to it, an’ still all I hear is that the Craigs say I squeezed them off’n their land in order to sell it to the mill. Now they claim they still own seven acres along the river that was deeded separate in their gran’pappy’s name an’ he’s still alive.”

  “But they’re already clearin’ on the riverfront,” Jimmy said. “How can they do that if’n they don’ own the land?”

  “That’s jest it,” Fitch said. “The Craigs are wrong. But it would take a long time to win the case in court. Meanwhile, the mill would not open an’ the townfolk would lose all that work an’ pay. So bein’ generous, I made ’em an offer, but they refused.”

  “How much did you offer?” Jimmy asked.

  “Ten times what the land is worth. Fifty dollars an acre. Three hundred and fifty for the parcel. An’ that’s fer land they don’ even have clear title to.”

  “But neither does the mill, if’n they press their claim,” Jimmy said.

  “Ain’t no court in the lan’ that will hold up the Craigs’ claim against the mill. I already spoke to Jedge Hanley an’ that’s what he tells me.”

  “Then what’re you worried about?” Jimmy asked.

  “I jes’ don’ want no unpleasantness. I want the folks to see that what I’m doin’ is fer their own good.”

  “I still don’ see how I kin he’p you there,” Jimmy said.

  “The Craigs know you an’ like you,” Fitch said. “They would listen to you.”

  Jimmy nodded. “They might.” He rose and refilled his mug. “An’ what do I get out of it?”

  Fitch looked up at him. “You’ll be with me, boy. I’ll make you rich. I’ll start you out with a salary of twenty-five a week.”

  That was at least five dollars a week more than any man in town was paid. Jimmy knew that. It was also ten dollars more a week than he averaged even in the best of times. “I don’ know,” he said cautiously. “That’s jest a job, an’ I kind of like the idea of bein’ in business fer myself.”

  “You don’ make nowhere near that kind of money.”

  “But then, I don’ have to go to work every day neither,” Jimmy said.

  “That was all right when you were alone, but now you’re married an’ settled down. An’ pretty soon there’ll be a family. You got to be thinkin’ of them now.”

  Jimmy sat down at the table. “I don’ know,” he said.

  Fitch smiled. He felt he had him. “You talk it over with your wife.” He got to his feet. “She’ll agree with me. She’s a good sensible girl. You can let me know tomorrow.”

  After he had gone, Molly Ann came rushing back into the kitchen. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  He looked at her. “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “What?” She was bewildered.

  “That he wants me to be a crook like him. To cheat an’ steal from folk like your family an’ the Craigs.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Then what are you goin’ to do?”

  “Same as I been doin’,” he said. “Mindin’ my own business an’ sellin’ my whiskey.”

  But that was not the way it was to be. For two days after Jimmy refused Mr. Fitch’s offer, someone fired a rifle through the open window of the ramshackle wooden house about eleven miles from town where the Craigs now lived and killed Grandfather Craig.

  Mr. Fitch was as indignant as the rest of the townspeople at the senseless murder of the old man and put up a fifty-dollar reward of his own money for the arrest and capture of the killer. And despite the fact that the Craigs’ claim to the river acreage was even further obfuscated by the old man’s death, he raised his offer for the land to five hundred dollars in order to help out the poor family. He also promised to intercede in their behalf and see to it that the Craig children got their jobs back in the mill and the glass factory.

  It was a very generous offer, he thought. There was only one thing wrong with it. The Craigs turned it down. And a few days after the funeral, a shot fired from the woods adjoining the Craig land killed the mill construction foreman as he was issuing orders to his work gang to resume clearing along the river edge.

  All work came to a stop. There was no way for the men to tell which one of them would be next, and they would not return to work until armed guards were brought in to patrol the perimeters of the property. The first day after the guards arrived, one of them was found dead on his post by his relief man. He had been shot through the back of the head at close range with a Smith & Wesson .44-caliber revolver.

  When Sam Fitch got the news of the killing late that afternoon, his lips tightened grimly and all his geniality disappeared. For the first time in his life, his rule was being threatened. His reply was the inevitable reply of power. That same night, nineteen-year-old John, the Craigs’ eldest son, was shot to death as he went to water his mule.

  And that was how the war that would become known as Craigs’ War began in Fitchville. It would not end for almost two years and not until many more people were killed, among them women and children. It would be remembered as the bloodiest mountain feud in the history of West Virginia.

  Chapter 11

  Daniel felt the rumbling in his stomach and looked up at the clock on the wall. It was twelve thirty, and Mr. Smathers and his visitors had not yet left for lunch. It had to be a very important meeting, because Mr. Smathers was a prompt twelve-o’clock man when it came to lunch. Maybe there was something to the rumors that had been flying around for the last few months that the mine was about to be sold.

  The door to the inner office opened and Mr. Smathers stood there. “You still here, Daniel?” There was a note of surprise in his voice.

  “Yes, sir.” Daniel was polite. “I was waitin’ until you left for lunch.”

  “It’s all right, Daniel. There’s no need for you to wait. You can go to lunch now.”

  Daniel closed the posting ledger and got to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. Smathers.” He bent down and took the lunch box from under his desk. Mr. Smathers went back into the inner office as Daniel went out the front door.

  Daniel sat down on the bench just outside the building and opened the lunch box. He smiled to himself. Carrie had been extra good to him. He had a fresh banana as well as the usual apple, and the liverwurst-and-potato-salad sandwich on the fresh home-baked bread smelled real good.

  He leaned back against the building, his eyes half closed in contentment as he chewed his sandwich. His collar was beginning to feel tight. He loosened his tie and opened the collar. Many things had changed in the year he had been working as a clerk.

  Perhaps the most important was being able to afford a room all to himself. The other was that his eyes no longer hurt in the daylight. It more than made up for having to wear a collar and tie every day. He unscrewed the cap of the thermos bottle and took a sip of the hot, sweet coffee. That Carrie was a gem. She was worth every penny of the extra half-dollar he slipped her each week.

  He heard footsteps approaching and
turned his head in the direction of the sound. His former foreman, Andy, came around the corner of the building and stopped in front of him. “I want to talk to you, Daniel,” he said abruptly.

  “Go ahead and talk, Andy. I’m listenin’.” He wondered what was so important that Andy had come up out of the mine to talk about it. Usually Andy took his lunch in the shaft with the rest of the men.

  “Not here,” Andy said. “Too many people around.”

  Daniel didn’t see anyone, but got to his feet anyway. “Okay,” he said. “Where?”

  “Behind the toolshed,” Andy said, walking away. “I’ll wait for you.”

  Daniel nodded. He finished his sandwich and then slowly made his way to the toolshed. Andy was leaning against the back wall, his mouth working on a chaw. He let fly as Daniel came up. The spit sounded like a shot as it hit a rock ten feet away.

  Daniel looked at him. Andy was acting strangely. He had never seen him this way before.

  Andy looked both ways before talking. “Anybody see you coming over?”

  “I don’t think so.” Daniel was puzzled. “What difference would it make if’n they did?”

  Andy didn’t answer his question. Instead, he asked one of his own. “Is the mine being sold?”

  “I don’t know,” Daniel answered honestly.

  “There’s talk that it is,” Andy said. “I thought you might know.”

  “I heered the rumors, too, but I don’t know any more’n anybody else.”

  “Those men with Smathers. They’re from Detroit.”

  “I don’ know,” Daniel said. “Nobody tol’ me.”

  “They say the mine’s goin’ to be taken over by an automobile company an’ that the fust thing they’re goin’ to do is change over to scrip pay like they did over at the Parlee.”

  “You’re talkin’ to the wrong man,” Daniel said. “Mr. Smathers’ the man you should ask them questions, not me. I’m jest a clerk.”

  “I thought you might have heard somethin’,” Andy said.

  “Why should I?” Daniel asked. “I don’ go listenin’ at keyholes.”

  “I’m not sayin’ you do,” Andy said quickly.

  “I don’ know what you’re so het up about,” Daniel said. “What difference does it make who owns the mine as long as we git paid?”

  “Big difference,” Andy said dourly. “They pay you in scrip instead of money an’ they got you by the short hairs. You got to git everything at their stores an’ next thing you know you’re in hock up to your ears an’ you never git out.”

  “Still, if’n they sell the mine, they ain’t much you kin do about it excep’ if’n you don’ like the job you kin quit.”

  “They would like that,” Andy said. “Then they could replace us with cheaper men. No, there’s another way. A better way.”

  “What’s that?” Daniel asked curiously.

  Andy’s face took on a guarded look. “I can’t talk about it right now. I don’t know whose side you’re on.”

  Daniel was bewildered. “What sides?”

  “Management or ours.”

  “Ours?”

  “The miners’,” Andy said. “It’s different when you’re not workin’ down there.”

  “I don’ see that makes no difference,” Daniel said. “I’m workin’ for my keep, the same as you.”

  Andy stared at him for a moment. “You’re a strange one.”

  Daniel was silent.

  “Would you tell me if you hear anything?” Andy asked.

  “No.” Daniel’s voice was flat. “I don’t believe in spyin’. Fer anybody.”

  “Even for a good cause?”

  “I’d have to see the cause real clear,” Daniel said. “Then I’d make up my mind.”

  Andy grinned suddenly and was once again the man whom Daniel knew. “What’re you doin’ with your nights, boy?”

  “Nothin’ much.”

  “I hear tell that you’re spendin’ a lot of evenin’s with Miss Andrews, the new teacher down at the school.”

  Daniel felt the flush rising over his collar. There were no secrets in a mining town. “She’s bringin’ me on with my schoolin’.”

  “Sure that’s all she’s bringin’ you on with?” Andy asked shrewdly.

  Daniel felt the flush grow deeper. “I got a lot to learn.”

  “I’ll bet you have,” Andy laughed. Abruptly he grew serious. “I may be callin’ on you again in a few days.”

  “You know where to find me,” Daniel said. “I ain’t goin’ no place.”

  He watched the foreman walk off, then turned and went back to his bench outside the building. He sat down and took the banana out of the lunch box and carefully peeled it down. He ate it slowly, savoring the ripe sugary sweetness of it. That Carrie was a real love.

  He washed down the last piece of his apple with the remainder of his coffee. Carefully he closed his lunch box and went back into the office. Mr. Smathers’ door was still closed. He glanced up at the clock as he put his lunch box under the desk. There was time enough for him to stroll over to the breaker room and see what was going on.

  ***

  The breaker room was located at the other end of the track from the mine shaft. It was there that the coal hauled from the mine was dumped onto a conveyor belt. From there it traveled down a chute, where the boys would pick out the slag by hand and send the coal itself on to one truck while the slag was carted away to be dumped on the other side of the mountain.

  Daniel walked into the shed that was built over the breaker room, which was cut on a sharp incline into the side of the mountain, and out onto the platform that overlooked the breaker boys. The room was getting back into full operation after the lunch hour. It never really stopped completely, because while half the boys had their lunch, the other half were working. Now they were all back at work and the coal was tumbling down the chute, sending clouds of gray-black dust into the air and partly obscuring the view from the platform. After a moment his eyes adjusted and he could see the boys below.

  They sat, in rows, on either side of the chute. Cramped together on their tiny benches, they huddled over the breaker boxes, their hands flying over the coal, separating out the slag more by touch than by sight. The speed of their work was controlled by the supervisors, who forced the pace by increasing the flow of coal into the chute. If a boy should fall behind, he would soon find his arms buried in a pile of coal.

  Over the rumbling sound of the coal falling down the chute, Daniel could hear the voices of the supervisors as they walked up and down the narrow steps beside the chute shouting at the boys to speed up and empty their boxes. They were young, their ages running from nine to thirteen or fourteen, but with their drawn, blackened faces and permanently curved backs, they looked like miniature old men.

  One of the supervisors climbed up onto the platform beside him. He glanced at Daniel and nodded as he went to the bucket and held a dipper of water to his mouth. He drank his fill before he spoke. “Lazy little bastards!”

  Daniel didn’t answer him. The supervisor came over and stood beside him, looking down at the boys. “I wonder if the office knows how hard we have to work to get the boys to move that coal.”

  Daniel turned to him. “They seem to be workin’ all right.”

  “You don’t know ’em,” the supervisor said. “Half the time they’re fakin’. They jes’ look busy. Not like when I was young. The boys really picked slag then.”

  Daniel shrugged.

  “The mine bein’ sold?” the supervisor asked.

  “I don’ know,” Daniel answered shortly.

  “You kin tell me,” the supervisor said in a confidential voice.

  “I said I don’ know.” Daniel’s voice took on a hard edge.

  “Okay, okay,” the supervisor said quickly. “Don’t git tetchy jes’ because you work in the office now. You’re no better than the rest of us.”

  Daniel looked at him, his eyes suddenly cold. “What do you mean by that?”

  �
�You think we don’ know why you come down here? Not jes’ to pass the time of day you don’t.”

  Daniel’s mouth tightened as the anger rose inside him. He took a step toward the man, but was stopped by a shriek from below. It was the scream of a boy in pain.

  “Stop the coal!” A supervisor shouted.

  The supervisor on the platform next to Daniel reached up and pulled the trap. The flow of coal to the chute stopped immediately. “Damn! What now?” he said, coming back to the rail and peering down into the breaker.

  They could hear the boy screaming, but couldn’t see him until the clouds of dust cleared a little. A small boy near the bottom of the chute had his hand trapped between the conveyor and his sorting box.

  “Stupid little bastard!” the supervisor swore, heading for the steps. He went down the steps three at a time. By the time he reached the boy there was a cluster of other children around him. The boy himself had fainted.

  “Git back to your boxes!” he shouted. Another supervisor joined him, and quickly and expertly they extricated the boy’s hand from the chute. He lifted the boy, not too gently, in his arms and started up the steps with him. As he reached the platform with the unconscious boy, he freed one hand to start the coal down the chute again.

  Daniel looked at the boy. He seemed to be no more than ten years old, his face pinched white, his mangled hand dripping blood as he hung limply in the supervisor’s arms.

  The supervisor caught Daniel’s glance. “You kin tell the office ’twarn’t our fault. Damn kid couldn’t keep up.”

  Daniel didn’t answer.

  “’Twarn’t our fault,” the supervisor repeated.

  “Better go git the kid’s hand tended to,” Daniel said.

  He watched the supervisor hurry out of the shed with the boy. There was no infirmary, but the old man in charge of the toolshed knew what to do about accidents. The boy would be taken there, his hand would be bandaged and then he would be sent home. Of course, his pay would stop until such time as he could return. That is, if he could ever return to work as a breaker boy. There was no such thing as a one-handed breaker boy.

  Daniel looked down into the shed. Coal was tumbling down the chute; the dust was flying, the supervisors shouting; the boys were sorting coal. It was as if nothing had happened.