“Yes, ma’am, till I finish up my year of obligation, then I got plans. I’m gonna be a trick rider. Gonna train with the Christiani family. They’re world famous, you know. See, if we want, Mr. Sparks lets us train as performers after we work the advance for a year. He’d let me be a clown or a trapeze flyer if I wanted, but I’ve got my heart set on bein’ a trick rider.”
“Do you now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I cleaned out the old lady’s gutters, then I clipped some branches that was brushing against her windows. I didn’t want to take the two silver dollars she gave me—the meal was payment enough for my work—but she insisted. I slipped the coins in my pocket next to my mother’s necklace.
“There’s a train that runs all the way from here to Charleston,” she said. “Use the money to buy a ticket. I’ll be praying for you, Billy,” she said, waving me good-bye.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I called back.
I thought about hopping the train so I could save the money the old woman gave me, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. I paid for my ticket and settled in for a long ride. I was the dirtiest one on board and more than a little embarrassed by my general appearance. I tipped my cap over my face, nestled into the window, and fell asleep.
The train rumbled along deep in Appalachia, stopping at one little mountain town after another. A day later, the mountains smoothed into soft hills and the terrain started to flatten out. We was getting closer and closer to the coast.
“Next stop, ladies and gentlemen—Charles-ton, South Car-o-lin-a,” sang the conductor.
“Tell me, sir,” I asked him before he sailed off to the next car, “do you know where Mr. Charlie Sparks and his circus makes camp?”
“You fixin’ to join the circus, boy?” he asked me. He had a craggy old face with bushy eyebrows.
“I already belong, sir,” I said. “I got lost.”
“Stay on this train one more stop,” he said. “When you get off, head east about a mile and you’ll find his camp. Got a nice set of cabins for his folks. Regular little town. You can’t miss it.”
He went on to say we’d be in the station for a coupla hours, and that I might like to take a little walk around the city.
“Charleston’s one of the prettiest little cities you ever could see,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, “but I’m gonna stay right here.” I couldn’t possibly risk not getting back in time.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
Those two hours took forever. I walked through the cars from one end to the other, trying to kill time. A few folks were left on the train, sleeping or reading, crocheting or writing a letter. I looked at their luggage on the racks and tried to figure out where they was going, but mostly I kept thinking about meeting up with the Sparks Circus. I hoped I’d find the camp all right and hoped I wasn’t gonna be too early. I checked the route map again and figured they should be there by now, but you never knew for sure. Maybe they hit some bad weather along the way.
Porters loaded with luggage, families, old ladies with their companions, businessmen, and workers began boarding the train, and I figured it was near time to leave. I got back to my seat, and the engine started puffing and before long we rolled outta the station, my eyes glued to the window. It warn’t more than a half-hour ride to the next stop. I jumped to the platform, figured where the sun rose, then took off.
It must have rained a day or so ago, for the edges of the dirt road was hard with dried mud. I could see the impressions of horseshoes, wagon wheels, and boots. They’re here! I thought, my heart soaring. I broke into a run, and sure enough I came upon a sweet little collection of cabins. Each one had a chimney with a curlicue of smoke. One of ‘em had pink gingham curtains hanging in the window, and, sure enough, there was Darla waddling down the steps, shooing away an old dog.
“Darla!” I cried, waving my hat at her.
“Billy Creekmore?” she yelled back, peering at me. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I cried. I ran into her soft arms and she kissed me on the top of my head.
“It’s ‘bout time you came back,” she said.
“I know,” I answered.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t holding back a few tears. Finally, I was home, back with people who loved me and wanted me to be who I was. Pretty soon I’d be shaking hands with my old friends, and then Rufus and I would be off scouting around camp and catching up with each other. I could see myself, clear as day, riding bareback on a stallion. Oh, it’d be something to see, something Uncle Jim would stand up for. The stallion’s mane would be ripplin’ and I’d learn to stand up on his back, my arms outstretched. I’d be feeling all those spirits that follow me. They’d be riding with me, while the stallion galloped and the crowd cheered us on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My father, Bruce Porter, and my stepfather, Larry Short, played important roles in the early stages of this book. I would like to thank my dad and my brother, James Porter, for being my traveling companions and fellow researchers during our road trip through Appalachia, and my stepdad and his wife, Roberta Short, for taking me to the wonderful Ringling Museum of the Circus in Sarasota. I am very grateful to the librarians, archivists, and scholars at that museum’s library, and to those at the West Virginia Historical Museum. Special thanks go to Professor Ken Heckler of Charleston, Ringling archivist Dawn Shongood, and Leroy White, my tour guide at the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine.
My deep gratitude for their support, careful reading, and great insight goes to Justin Chanda, Karen Nagel, and Joanna Cotler. No writer could have more talented editors or a more gracious publisher, and I feel very fortunate to work with them.
I want to thank my mother, Susan Morcone, for her constant support and encouragement, and my children, Sarah and Sam, for putting up with a mother who gave up cooking so she could finish a book.
Finally, I want to thank my husband, Sandy Corner, for his love and companionship, and for always encouraging me to tell my stories.
EXTRAS
Billy Creekmore
Meet Tracey Porter
Billy Creekmore: Behind the Scenes
Tracey Porter: The Writer
Tracey Porter: The Reader
Meet Tracey Porter
Until I was eleven, I grew up in a suburb outside Columbus, Ohio, that was still being developed when my family moved in. There were newly paved streets with no houses and perfectly sodded lawns ending at a wild field that would sooner or later also be flattened and built over with houses. Everyone’s house was brand new and exactly the same, with sliding glass doors leading from the family room to a small, square patio. There were no bushes, gardens, fences, or trees, just flat, green grass. Any kid on the block could stand on his little patio and look into the homes of his neighbors to see what they were up to. I did this often. This lack of privacy and landscaping also gave us a huge collective backyard where we played tag and hide-and-go-seek until the streetlights came on, the universal signal to go home. Just beyond our subdivision of ranch-style homes was a field with a gurgling creek and a crumbling barn and farmhouse. We caught tadpoles and crayfish in the creek and searched for old jars and rusty horseshoes in the barn. There were also snakes and bats and bobcats and raccoons in that field, although we rarely saw them. Once I found a near-perfect snakeskin draped across a broken branch and I felt incredibly lucky. In summers my brother and his friends built a village of tree forts in the gone-wild apple orchard. In winters we ice-skated on the little pond by the old farmhouse. The section that froze solid probably wasn’t bigger than a driveway, but it still felt like a great adventure to trudge over there through the snow, dragging our skates on a sled.
I remember feeling very certain about who I was and very safe during those years. That old farm and the field were just barely out of reach, just a short walk away from my bedroom window. I think this tension between the sub-urbanized and the abandoned, the new and the old, the safe and the wild gave me some of my des
ire to write. I remember wondering about the family who had lived on that old farm, what their lives had been like, and why they left.
Later on, the summer before I entered sixth grade, my family moved to Arlington, Virginia, a very old town just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. Arlington has a tremendous sense of history, with old houses, old churches, old graveyards, and old trees. I suppose there was mystery all around me, but I didn’t respond to it in the same way I did in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I suppose it was too established for me. Instead I became a very serious ballet student, and my training, my teachers, and music took on that part of my imagination. What I most wanted was to be a professional dancer with either New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theater. I was still reading quite a bit and keeping a journal filled with poetry and sketches for stories.
Eventually I stopped dancing. I realized I wasn’t strong enough to dance in either of those companies I mentioned, and I didn’t want to pass up college to dance in a smaller company. So I went to Georgetown University, where I majored in English, and then the University of London, where I received a master’s degree in modern English literature. I spent five solid years reading and writing and thinking about books and stories and making wonderful friends, many of whom I still have today.
Billy Creekmore: Behind the Scenes
Who or what inspired you to write this story?
Several years ago I read an article in The New York Times about the death of a twelve-year-old boy named Iqbal Mashih. Iqbal was one of about 250,000 child weavers in Pakistan who made very beautiful, very expensive handknotted rugs. Most of these rugs were sold in Europe and the United States since they were too expensive for the average person in Southeast Asia. Iqbal was sent to work in a carpet factory when he was four. Because of the long hours, lack of nutritious food, and terrible conditions, he was very undersized and frail—about the size of a six-year-old when he died. When he was ten he joined an international reform movement that sought to end child labor. He traveled quite a bit, giving speeches about the lives of kids who work in the rug factories in Pakistan. One day in 1995, while he was back home in Pakistan riding his bicycle, he was shot, probably by someone hired by the rug-factory owners. I brought in articles about his life, work, and death to my eighth grade class. My students found them very thought provoking and engaging, and this led to an ongoing study and discussion of child labor around the world. Eventually it led me to write Billy Creekmore.
Fact, Fiction, or Fancy?
Was there a Guardian Angels Home for Boys?
No, but there were many foster homes and orphanages like it. I modeled Guardian Angels after the orphanage in Oliver Twist. As Peter Leavitt, one of my writing teachers, once told me, “When you borrow from another writer, borrow from the best.” Dickens is one of the best.
Did accidents frequently occur in the coal mines?
Oh, yes. It was and is a terribly dangerous place to work. If it wasn’t a runaway train, an explosion, or a collapse that killed you, it was a fossilized tree stump falling from the ceiling. The miners called them “widow-makers.” If you survived your days working in the mines, you could well die of black lung, a disease caused by exposure to coal dust.
Did Baldwin-Felts agents actually exist?
Yes, they did! And they really walked their pet bear on a leash to intimidate striking miners and their families.
Was Holly Glen really a coal-mining town in West Virginia?
Yes, although it doesn’t exist anymore. It was located somewhere along the Paint River just outside Charleston. When the coal ran out, the town disappeared.
Could young kids run away and join the circus? Did their parents ever go looking for them?
I think kids have always run away from home for various reasons, usually pretty good ones. And I think parents have always gone looking for their runaway children.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF …
Billy was a girl? Were there orphanages just for girls? Did girls ever work in coal mines or other places with harsh conditions during the early 1900s?
Girls in the coal camps of West Virginia did not work in the mines. Instead they worked around the house, helping their mothers cook and clean, pumping water at the well, keeping the coal fire going, doing the laundry, mending, weeding the vegetable garden, etc. As a rule, they did not go to school any longer than boys did. Girls in other parts of the country worked both inside and outside the home. Many girls worked in textile mills and sweatshops and in the fields. And then, of course, once they were home they were expected to help their mothers cook and clean.
Billy’s mother hadn’t died in childbirth? Would his life still be one of hardship?
I think so. Billy’s father is an alcoholic and because of this, he is basically unreliable. I think he has reasonably good intentions about providing for his wife and Billy, but because of his addiction, he just can’t get it together. So Billy and his mother would have struggled financially. Billy would have had to go to work in some sort of factory or mine to help put food on the table, and his mother would have had to find some sort of work, also. Like poor people everywhere throughout history, their lives would have been very, very difficult.
What do you think happened to Billy? Did he realize his dream and become a trick rider in the circus? What did his future hold?
Billy has tremendous energy and resources. He is a keen observer, receptive, and sensitive. Billy is resilient. He never gives up. Whatever difficulties learning the skills of a trick rider presents, Billy will overcome them. And all that empathy he has for the dead and the outsiders in the world like Belton Light will help him communicate with the horses. Yes, I think Billy becomes a trick rider with the Charles Sparks Circus and has a long, happy life there.
Tracey Porter: The Writer
Is there a character in Billy Creekmore most like you?
I like to think Billy and I are alike. I admire his tenacity and hopefulness.
Do you believe communing with spirits is possible?
Yes, although I have had very few experiences doing so. Once, when I was walking down the hall of my mother-in-law’s house, a tiny book fell from a top shelf to my feet, directly in front of me, for no reason whatsoever. It was a play written by her mother, my husband’s grandmother, a woman I met only once but liked tremendously. She was a writer, and I remember thinking this was a sign from her to keep going, keep writing. This occurred as I was writing my first book, Treasures in the Dust.
Billy’s journey takes him from the coal mines of West Virginia to the spectacular world of a traveling circus. Where would your journey take you? To another time? Another country? Another world?
I’m very interested in the past, and there are many journeys I wish I could take. I’d like to travel with Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea down the Missouri River into the west. I would like to cross the Bering Strait during the Ice Age, and listen to some of the first storytellers in the caves of Lascaux. I really, really wish I could be a dancer with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe and travel the world on steam trains and ocean liners with some of the era’s great dancers, composers, artists, and choreographers.
Why is the subject of child labor so important to you?
I think child labor is one of the big moral issues of our age, like slavery was in this country until we decided to fight a war and end it once and for all. Many of the things we like to buy cheap, from food items to clothing, and many of the things we treasure, like beautiful rugs and other works of handicraft, are made by children who will never have a chance to be educated, never have a chance to travel, to learn to read, to enjoy a long life of good health. Many of the reasons people used in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century to justify slavery in the United States are similar to the ones people use today to defend child labor. “Working in a factory is good for a ten-year-old,” they say. Otherwise they would starve.” Or, “Only a child can do this very delicate work because their hands are so small and their eyesight so keen.” Various hum
an rights groups, from the United Nations to Human Rights Watch, estimate that there are between 150 to 250 million children working today, many of them in terrible conditions tantamount to slavery.
Billy’s keepsakes are the postcards his father sends and his mother’s necklace. No matter where he goes, these mementos go with him. Do you have a cherished keepsake from your parents or a family member that has special meaning to you?
Like all mothers everywhere, I cherish some of the things my children wore and made when they were small. I have files of my children’s artwork and schoolwork, and projects from preschool, as well as more recent ones, decorate my writing room. I especially love my wedding ring, which my husband had made from the rings of his grandparents, who had a long, happy, spirited marriage.
Do you have a special routine for writing?
Until about a year ago, I did not have a special routine for writing, primarily because I did not have my own space to write. Instead, I had a laptop that I carried from room to room depending on where there was the least noise. If Sam or Sarah needed the kitchen table for homework or Legos, I wrote in a bedroom. If the house was too noisy to write, I took my laptop to a friend’s house that had a spare room for me. My husband and I couldn’t afford to turn the garage into a fully functioning office or to add a room to the house. Then it occurred to me to buy a trailer—one of those beautiful aluminum trailers from the 50s—to use as my writing room. After almost a year of searching on eBay, craigslist, and various websites and papers, I found one. Two artists in Venice, California, people who also struggled to find space to work, were remodeling their home. They were selling the 1954 Airstream Flying Cloud that they had been using as an office and spare bedroom. It was absolutely perfect—electricity, new floor, freshly painted walls, three sweet little skylights. Now it sits in my driveway, a few steps away from the house, with my desk, computer, file cabinet, books, and a comfy chair. It’s my own private place to work, and I love it. Also, there’s something about the curved walls and ceiling that’s comforting and inspiring. I love to be there when it rains. Here’s what it looks like.
Billy Creekmore Page 17
