The Secret Wisdom of the Earth

by Christopher Scotton

  Grubby Mitchell raised his hand and spoke before being called. “Yeah, but, Paul, the Company ain’t offerin for Miss Janey’s. Bubba says he’ll pay me seventy-five thousand dollars for my place.”

  “Raymond, your family’s lived on that farm for generations. That land is who you are. Every summer you, and your daddy before you, dam up Running Creek and make the best swimming hole in the county—been doing that for sixty years. I remember swimming there when I was a kid. Well, when the Company pushes all that overburden into Running Hollow, what do you think is gonna happen to Running Creek? There isn’t gonna be a creek, is what. Raymond, if you decide to sell, you’re not just selling your farm and Running Creek, you’re selling all the memories still to be had there. How much is that worth to you?”

  Folks nodded. Grubby’s Adam’s apple bobbed as the inequity of the deal was laid bare.

  Jesper Jensen raised his hand. “I hear what you’re sayin, Paul, but Bubba does raise an important point. We been hearin all kinds a things bout you an Paitsel. So I gotta ask you, an you know I respect you, Paul, but I gotta ask you: Is you or ain’t you homosexual?”

  Pops opened his mouth again to speak, but Paul looked at him and gently put his hand up.

  “Yes, Jesper, I am homosexual.”

  “Paitsel too?”

  Mr. Paul paused and looked to the front row. Paitsel nodded slightly, a nearly imperceptible smile.

  “Paitsel too.”

  Whispers and head shakings. Several men blew out long sighs.

  Bubba Boyd smiled and licked his lips. He stepped in front of Mr. Paul. “I think we are done here, friends. Let’s all get on home.” He started shooing folks out of their seats the way shepherds drive sheep.

  Mr. Paul pushed to the side of him. “We are most assuredly not done here,” he said loudly. “Mr. Pendrick has already been in touch with the Environmental Protection Agency and I have a meeting next week with the Department of Natural Resources. Your slurry pond is over capacity. We’re gonna shut you down.”

  Bubba pretended not to hear him and started walking slowly down the aisle, his doppelganger son, Billy, a step behind. They paused here and there to shake hands and talk of fishing lures, the fall rutting season, Cleo Fink’s college prospects.

  They had chanced upon each other when Paitsel, recently sent down to his last minor league team, was flat-tired on the side of Highway 81 on the outskirts of Johnson City. Paul pulled over and drove him and his holed-out wheel into town and back again, tire plugged and aired and occupying the backseat. Paitsel insisted on beers and Paul followed him warily to Duke’s Bull & Billiards in Elizabethton.

  Life and place had helped Paul construct a masculine veneer, applied when conditions required, and so they talked of Sandy Koufax’s recent perfect game and Ned Jarett’s Grand National win, but all the while Paul was drawn to Paitsel’s hands, which were sizable yet somehow delicate, with flawless cuticles and long, courtly fingers that seemed to be exquisitely carved from alabaster marble.

  Paul took in the Johnson City Yankees game the next day, on a ticket Paitsel left at will-call—Paul and his popcorn in the front row and Paitsel glancing over at him before each pitch, as if Paul was a runner ready to steal home.

  Paul became a fixture in the front row when Paitsel pitched home games, and at season’s end, Paitsel drove north to help him rehab the newly bought Runyon place on the corner of Watford and Green. They were stripping a generation of wallpaper to the bares when Paitsel burned his index finger on the steamer and Paul grabbed ice and held it to the burn with both hands. Paitsel reached out with his good fingers and touched Paul’s cheek.

  After the town meeting, Pops and I, along with Lo and Chester, walked back to 22 Chisold and settled back into the porch. I poured mash for all.

  “Bunch of dang cowards the way they suck up to him,” Chester complained.

  “What did you think we have in this town, superheroes?” Pops replied. “Most folks can be astoundingly brave or dog cowards depending on the circumstances.”

  “That’s easy for you to say; you’re one of the brave ones.”

  Pops shook his head. “You want pure brave? I give you Paul Pierce. Probably the most courageous man I know.”

  Lo shifted, clearly uncomfortable at the topic. “Where you gettin brave from that? It’s disgustin, you ask me.”

  “I’m not talking about his being homosexual. I’m talking about standing up to Bubba Boyd. I’m talking about admitting to the whole town that he and Paitsel are homosexual. That took guts, let me tell you. I have tremendous respect for both those men.”

  “I kind of thought he was, you know, a homo and stuff when I met him,” I said. “How come no one else knew that?”

  Chester laughed and brought his arms wide. “That’s the absurdity of it all—everybody knew! He and Paitsel have been living together in town for eighteen years! And here he comes tonight, finally admitting to the pink elephant in the room.”

  “That ain’t true, Chester. Not everyone knew,” Lo mumbled. His forehead tacked up in rolls.

  Chester snorted. Pops waved him away. “You’re right, Lo. Not everyone knew. But lots of people suspected.”

  “I don’t get it.” I was on the edge of my chair now. “You say a lot of people suspected—then why the big shock?”

  “We all… some of us knew it, but nobody talked about it. Paul was born and bred here, which makes him one of us. He and Paitsel were politely referred to as ‘bachelor gentlemen.’ It was our awkward truth—our dirty secret. And Medgar has a way of trussing up its awkward truths and putting them on a shelf in the attic, never to be spoken of again.”

  Lo seemed anxious to change the subject. “I ain’t got a attic,” he said. “Got a basement, though.” Basements were rare in Medgar, and he was boastful of his good fortune.

  “A basement’s a fine thing,” Chester allowed.

  “Tis,” Pops agreed.

  “But Mr. Meadows…” I struggled to put my thoughts to the correct words. “… he seems normal. Like he’s one of us.” I instinctively knew my phrasing was set to the completely wrong pitch. “Do you know what I mean?”

  Lo nodded vigorously.

  Pops smiled. “Son, the more people I meet, the less good I get at labeling them. That’s a wisdom I hope you acquire.”

  Chester brought his hand to his chin; Lo seemed confused.

  We all went silent for a moment; then I asked about the story Mr. Paul had told me that morning about my grandmother and the rifle-shot slap. The more I heard of her, the more I wanted to know, if only to attach Pops’ loss to my own. At the mention of Sarah Winthorpe Peebles, Lo and Chester immediately began searching for interesting items in their sour mash. Pops adjusted himself in the chair until he found a position that let the memory of his one true love sit in comfort.

  “Your grandmother was quite a lady,” he said quietly, spinning the sour mash and looking off to his left at nothing in particular. “And saving that girl was one of her finer moments.”

  No one spoke for a while; we just listened to the night sounds around us. A large figure materialized out of the darkness at the bottom of the porch. It was Bubba Boyd. In the street, just out of the lamplight, Billy Boyd and the frowning man from the town meeting stood, arms crossed.

  Bubba took deliberate steps up to the porch and paused in front of us for a moment. “Lo, Chester, Arthur.” He nodded. “How are you boys this evenin?”

  “We’re just fine, Bubba,” Chester answered.

  “To what do we owe this pleasure?” Pops asked.

  “Jus come to talk, Arthur.”

  “Okay, let’s talk. Pull up that chair there.” He motioned to an extra green wicker chair on the other side of the porch. “Kevin, can you please get Mr. Boyd a glass of mash. On the rocks, if I recall.”

  Bubba walked to the other end of the porch and brought over the chair. As he sat in it, the old legs pushed out several inches under the unaccustomed strain. I went to the bar table, pour
ed mash on ice, and took it to him. “Thanks, son,” he said. He wet his lips, sipped, and toasted Pops. “Arthur, you always did have the good stuff. Clinch Mountain?”

  Pops nodded, but said nothing. Chester was staring intently at Bubba Boyd. Lo was digging mud out of the waffle sole of his boot with a pocket knife.

  “Do you remember when we was kids? All the crap we used to get into? I’m surprised our families dint disown us or ship us off to the formatory. Those were some good times.” He chuckled, licked his lips, and took a sip of mash. “Good times, indeed.” He brought the glass to eye level and inspected the brew. “This is some fine mash, Arthur. Reminds me a the time we broke into the Company Store to get at the liquor in there. Tenth grade I think we were. This hadta been thirty-three, thirty-four. Me an Bump, an Jesper, one a your brothers, I think it was Hersh, and a few of my boys, even little Gov Budget was taggin along, I think. You were there too, as I recall. Do you remember how we all snuck out an met up at the old trash dump? It was so long ago, I can understand if the memory has faded.”

  “I remember it,” Pops said.

  “Chester, you weren’t there, as I recall. And, Lo, you was jus a weeun.” He paused and looked up at the porch ceiling. “Whose idea was it to break into that place, anyways?”

  “It was yours.”

  Bubba chuckled. “I guess it was my idea. I remember we all snuck down there like we was World War One spies. But the place was locked up tightern a drum. How’d we get in there, anyway? I can’t remember.”

  “You stole the key from your daddy’s man who ran the store. Wasn’t much of a break-in. More of a door unlocking.”

  He chuckled again. “You are right, I did have the key. Made things a whole lot easier. But once I opened up that door, you dint come in. You said somethin like ‘I ain’t doin this’ an went on home. Hersh stayed an helped out, but you went on home.”

  “Stealing wasn’t one of my sports.”

  “Well it warn’t really stealin since my daddy owned it all, now, was it?” Bubba smiled and licked his lips. He took a sip of mash. “The police thought otherwise, though, dint they? Arrested us all an took us to Glassville. I always wondered how they knew who done it. Cause I know none a my boys woulda tole. You were the only other one who knew. I always wanted to ask you, jus never did—was it you who tole the police what we did? Was it you who ratted out his own brother?” The humor had left Bubba Boyd, edged out by simmering malevolence.

  Pops’ mouth was a paper edge. “Hersh lived his own life, made his own mistakes. He didn’t need my help of it. As to you, Bubba. You weren’t worth the ratting. A year or two up juvie wouldn’t have changed a thing about you. That would be like putting new rings on a bad piston.”

  Bubba’s neck went red and he drew his tongue into his mouth. “I dint come here to talk engine repair.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Come here to talk bidness.”

  “Business? Your Rotties having trouble? They do have some questionable hips.”

  “Not vet bidness, land bidness. Been out to see Hersh last week.”

  “He mentioned that.”

  “Then you know I come to talk bout Jukes.”

  “Okay. Talk.”

  “The Company jus bought Bridger Mountain and I want to make you an offer for Jukes. Best way in and outta there is on your old road. You ain’t usin it no more, an I will make you a fair offer.”

  “So make it.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars for the whole two-twenty.”

  Pops nodded and sat back calmly. “Why do you want to buy the whole parcel? A smarter play is to just lease the road from me.”

  “I guess I jus like ownin things.”

  “Of that we are all well assured. But I suspect you’ll need somewhere to push all that overburden. The other side of Bridger is all Old Blue National Forest. The park boys will never let you hollow fill Blue. Jukes is the only option you’ve got.”

  Bubba didn’t react. He just stared intently at Pops. “Got lots a options. Truck it out to Hogsback.”

  Pops crossed his legs. “I’m no expert of coal economics, but I do know the cost of dump trucking… you’re not trucking it out. But it’s all moot if Paul gets the feds involved. Says he’s going to shut you down.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen.”

  “You think he’s gonna back down after tonight?”

  Bubba blew out of his nostrils with certainty—the way a whale knows it’s reached the good air. He sucked at a piece of pork barbecue that had lodged in his teeth from dinner.

  “I’ve made you a fair price an Hersh wants to sell.”

  “Hersh and I have been known to disagree.”

  “It ain’t nothin but weeds up there.”

  “Bubba, you can be dumb as a stone. How long have you known me? Fifty-five, sixty years? Jukes ain’t for sale. Not for fifty thousand or five hundred thousand. Those weeds up there happen to be quite important to me.”

  “Think about your family, Arthur. Think about what you an Hersh could do with all that money.”

  Pops regarded him coldly. “Answer is no. Now, kindly leave my porch so I can get back to the important business of enjoying the evening.”

  Bubba sat for a moment, staring quietly at Pops. He stood slowly and walked over to the mash serving table and carefully placed the glass down, holding it from the top and lowering it gently so it made no sound when the glass met wood. He turned, heels clicking on the porch, and paused at the top of the steps looking out over Pops’ quarter acre. He picked his head up and sniffed at the air, as if he could read the future in the vagaries of night scent. He adjusted the lay of waistband on hip and strode casually off the porch steps, out to the lamp, and down the street until darkness bled over all the places he had been.

  I remember it as a staccato rumble, down the hill from Main Street, rattling the glass in Biddle’s window, then the plates and the coffee cups as the throttle unwound. We had just finished breakfast and pushed outside to the curb corner as it edged onto Green Street and up the hill to Main. It was massive, obstructing everything it passed, blocking everything behind as it crept slowly to hillcrest—and once so achieved it shrouded the sun like some errant thunderhead sidling in from the North.

  Its front bumper was six feet high and spanned sidewalk to sidewalk across Green, with four enormous headlights that looked to be the giant dead eyes of a birth-defected leviathan. The top of the haul bed overhung the tiny cab, and the driver, twenty-five feet above us, seemed like a monkey riding herd on a blue-ribbon bull. The monstrosity cleared the stoplight at Green and Main by two inches and turned slowly to nurse itself into position.

  It had arrived in twenty-seven pieces, laid down in the train offload parking lot at the bottom of Green Street. The six wheels came first, each on its own train car, chains crisscrossed to keep them upright. The engine appeared next, on a wide-load semi from the plant in Peoria, and the dump bed came in five trailered sections, butt welded together in the north corner of the parking lot. The frame arrived on two side-by-side semis with state police escort that had to let air out of the semis’ tires to clear the 402 underpass outside of Lexington. The assembly men came soon after and took up the SleepEZ Motel in Glassville and the Woodsman Bar on the way to Big Spoon. It all amassed in ten days and nights of welding, craning, bolting, pounding industry—cinders arcing out like sparklers on a Fourth of July evening.

  The spec sheet for the 650H 1-Q talked of a ladder frame with omnidirectional bolsters and a duo-max canopy. Rear-wheel rock ejectors and variable-rate hydropneumatic suspension with accumulator-assisted twin double-acting cylinders to provide constant-rate steering. A sophisticated operator environment with integral four-post ROPS/FOPS structure and an adjustable air-float seat w/lumbar support and retractable armrests. But to me, it was simply the biggest truck I had ever seen—twenty-one feet tall, twenty-eight feet wide, and forty-five feet long, with a bed capacity of 195 tons.

  As it rumbled to a stop in front of Mi
ss Janey’s, the shops along Main Street seemed inconsequential next to the colossus. I could see Mr. Paul in his front window, eyes like dinner plates. He rushed out of the salon, arms waving, mouth jawing. He kicked a ten-foot tire, then came to the front, shouting up to the driver, voice blanketed by the bass-drum rumble of the truck’s engine.

  The state police had blockaded traffic into town since the truck took up both sides of the street. The Company had arranged a ceremony on Main with the mayor and Bubba Boyd at court. The driver cut the engine and folks closed in around the front. Bubba climbed the four steps to the top of the bumper. He put one foot on the red railing and both hands on his knee and said absolutely nothing. It was the kind of thirty-second silence that made some men rub at stubble, made others examine palm creases. Petunia Wickle fanned herself faster, and even children stopped pushing, everyone silent in weary resignation.

  Bubba Boyd smiled, then cleared his throat. “Friends,” he said, “we’ve a fine town here. A fine town.” Mr. Paul’s arms were crossed, hands jammed hard under opposite arms. Jesper Jensen looked down and kicked at a stone.

  It’s the eyes you notice first.

  Deep-sunk sockets ringed gray against candle-wax skin. Skin like the grass that labors thin and white under a freshly turned rock, wincing in the unfamiliar sunlight. Thick hands, a ready cough, and fingers like great stubs carved from sallow stone; nails cracked, with black coal lines tattooed under them.

  But this new way sets a different mien. Same hands, same cough. But now ruddy paint has replaced candle-wax skin, dragline callouses instead of tattooed coal lines, deep sockets traded for tan crow’s-feet.

  The sun is their burden now as it drums down on them, sourcing the gray sweat and warming the dust to float long and high in the noon stifle.

  But if you look, some of the old muckmen are still around. You see them stalled in an aisle at the Pic-n-Pay. Or on a slow traverse of the Main Street crosswalk. The light turns and they are there still. One foot forward, then the other. You inch, they look up, and it’s the eyes you notice first.