The Coalwood Way (31 page)

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THE KINGS OF COALWOOD

IT TOOK FOURTEEN feverish hours of work by at least a hundred people to complete the necessary preparations. By then, it was already nine o’clock at night. While my assembled army moved up and down Main Street, we shared the road with a growling convoy of company trucks. A company bulldozer had first opened up Main Street, then the road going past the tipple, and then Six Hollow. The trucks were filled with grit dug out of the Six slack dump. The bulldozer turned toward Welch Mountain, the trucks following, men on the back shoveling the coal tailing off onto the road. It made a nasty mess but it provided traction. Jim and Mom drove behind the trucks, the Buick gradually turning gray from the wet slack. The procession slowly disappeared up the road past Substation Row toward New Camp and the mountain.

According to my plan, everybody had something to do. Quentin and Billy took on the lighting and pyrotechnics. They went to work in my basement laboratory. Sherman and Roy Lee were put in charge of the players. Sherman helped Roy Lee put chains on his car and they started their visits, explaining to each person what role they’d been assigned. Everyone enthusiastically joined up except my dad, who was still asleep and would stay in bed all day. When Dad was finally roused and told what we had done and the part he was to play, he resisted it. “I’m no actor,” he said, but then he gave in when I told him what Mom was doing. Mom was doing her duty and he was going to have to do his, too.

O’Dell was put in charge of general scrounging. Red drove the garbage truck to take him around. O’Dell was after as many extension cords and as much electrical cabling as he could find. I also asked him to see about taking care of the snow on the Club House lawn and maybe somewhere for the audience to sit. Mr. McDuff and Mr. Lindley took on the carpentry work and didn’t bother asking for the necessary company paperwork. The same was true for the machine shop. Mr. Bolt said he’d get right on my designs and called in a half dozen of his best men. Soon, the machine shop was afire with activity, sparks flying from welders and the buzz of saws and lathes.

All day long, we gained momentum as more and more people became aware of what we were doing. Ginger took charge of the music after puzzling over my plan. “Do we dare do this to traditional Christmas music?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. I felt as if I was in a state of grace. She said she’d get right on it.

When construction of the sets began on the Club House lawn, there were more people trying to help than there was room. Mr. McDuff finally had to send some of them home. With the help of half the people of Frog Level to push when they got stuck, O’Dell and his brothers and Red transported the spoiling hay bales from Trigger and Champion’s barn to act as seats for the audience. Little kids shoveled snow all day to make room. A hay bale, it turned out, was as comfortable a seat as there was.

There was no set time for the pageant to begin. It would start when it was ready and not a moment before or a moment later. People seemed to understand we were putting together something more than a Christmas pageant. It was a celebration of Coalwood.

As the shadows lengthened, Billy and Quentin arrived from the lab with their hardware. They reported wonderful news: Two big Salvation Army trucks had arrived, a filthy Buick leading the way. The convoy had turned up toward Six Hollow. Snakeroot, Mudhole, and Frog Level wouldn’t be forgotten, either. No child was going to lack for food or Christmas presents in Coalwood this year.

The audience started to arrive in twos and fours and then entire families. They walked in from all the sections of Coalwood and settled in on the hay bales. Some of the men had come straight from the mine after a cleanup shift on 11 East. They still wore their helmets and coal-smeared clothes. Their wives sat close to them, and their children clung to their legs, heedless of the dirt. The snow had stopped, but then it started up again. The blackened roads started to pale, then became a pristine white once more. Every so often, there would be the noise of a small avalanche coming off the post office or church roofs. Nobody worried. There was a cheerfulness in the air, a deep and pleased contentment that overcame the damp cold of the snow.

I saw Roy Lee riding the bulldozer on the road toward Frog Level. “Where’s he going?” I asked Quentin.

“Part of my plan,” he said, his hands a blur as he spliced electrical wire.

“What plan would that be?”

“I’ll do my work, you do yours,” he snapped.

Except for the glow from a single lamp, the Club House was kept dark so as to not distract from the pageant sets on the lawn. There were two sets, a manger and a tower. The manger had an open front and a canted roof. The tower was set on the other side of the lawn and was about fifteen feet high. The snow was packed down around the sets so there was room for the players to move.

As the last-minute preparations swirled around the Club House, and the people gathered on the hay bales or stood in the street, there was still the occasional hammer put to nail. I saw Billy Mahoney, just in a few days before from college, come from behind a set, his coat dotted with sawdust. All the boys and girls who had left Coalwood but were home for a visit from college or the military or jobs in far-off places had enthusiastically turned out to help. I looked around, picking them out. Billy Hardin and Eddie Auxier could be seen moving a sawhorse off, to hide it behind a bush. Claudia Allison, dressed in jeans, emerged with a bucket of nails and disappeared into the shadows. The Todd boys, Johnny and Bill, hammered the final boards into place on the tower and reported to Mr. McDuff, who reported to me.

Quentin and Billy were in the final stages of wiring two electrical breadboards. The breadboards were two squares of plywood with electrical leads and switches. They were marked with a number corresponding to the places in my script where lighting or pyrotechnics was needed. Their plan and equipment were simple and crude, which gave me some hope that they might actually work.

Mom arrived with Jim. I was too busy to talk to them. They took their seats on a hay bale up front. She looked exhausted. Jim looked proud.

I felt a soft shoulder nudge mine and looked and saw that Dorothy Plunk was standing beside me. The other girls of Linda DeHaven’s snowed-in slumber party were taking their places on the porch. They were going to sing a medley of doo-wop Christmas songs while the audience gathered. Lynn Ridenour, Janice Taylor, Eleanor Marie Dantzler, and Guylinda Cox, all college students, joined them. Dorothy said, “I hear you’ve got a girlfriend. I’m jealous.”

I found myself staring into eyes that were like deep blue lakes. Our faces were just inches apart and she moved in closer. “You know where to find me if you ever need me,” she said. She kissed me on my cheek, a quick peck, and then went up on the porch with the doo-wop girls. I saw Emily Sue give me a look from the porch with a knowing smile.
I
wonder, wonder, who, do-do-do, who wrote the book of love?

I heard a distant thunder down toward Frog Level. I was puzzled. A thunderstorm during a blizzard?

Quentin said, “Anytime you want to stop romancing and help out would be much appreciated by Billy and me.”

Mrs. Dantzler sat down at the Club House piano, which had been moved out on the porch. The doo-wop girls began to sing softly as she played, then louder as their confidence built. They went through “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Blue Christmas,” and “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” while Quentin and Billy worked feverishly on their equipment. I did what I could, stringing extension cords and testing lights. Tug and Hug came by and pitched in, too.

Finally, when Quentin and Billy said their preparations were complete, I went up on the Club House porch and huddled with Ginger. “Are you ready?”

“I was born ready.”

“Then I guess it’s time.”

“This is going to be fun,” she said.

“It has been so far.”

I looked out over the audience that grew by the minute. The street was crowded with people from the Big Store all the way down to the Community Church. I wished that Reverend Richard could see it. I had stopped by during the day and invited him and his church to the pageant, but he said they were having Christmas Eve services and a dedication of his new windows. The windows were still covered with canvas, so I couldn’t see what was so special about them. “We’ll come up directly just as soon as we’re done,” he said mysteriously. I showed him my script, and he puzzled over it for a while. As he did, my confidence cracked a bit.

“Is it wrong, Reverend?” I asked worriedly.

He handed the script back and then took off his glasses, slowly folding them with his long, delicate fingers. He inserted the glasses into his coat pocket and patted the pocket. It was as if he needed a moment to choose the right words. “For this story, every place is Bethlehem,” he said softly, “and every time is now. It is not wrong. Some will say it is brazen. But it is not wrong.” Little’s face was creased by a sudden smile. “God will laugh, of that I am certain.”

I had looked past him then, up toward the crest of Mudhole Mountain. He caught my gaze. “Miss Dreama’s home now, Sonny. Mr. Dantzler donated her a box of pine and men of my congregation dug her grave. She has a good place to rest, and a fine view of mountains and sky.”

As the girls finished their songs on the porch, I thought about Dreama and imagined the snow, the beautiful snow, covering her “good place to rest.” There was rich soil on Mudhole Mountain. When the snow melted, and spring warmed the hills, her grave would be covered by mountain phlox and fire-pink dancing in the light, blown by gentle southerly breezes. I thought she’d like that.

The Community Church choir, dressed in their maroon robes, gathered on the Club House porch steps. Ginger blew softly into a pitch pipe and the choir warmed their throats. Mrs. Dantzler began to play and then the choir began to sing. They started with “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and the crowd quieted to hear the familiar words. Except they were not entirely familiar.

O little town of Coalwood,
In the Appalachian hills so steep;
Your men go down every day
To mine your coal so deep.

Yet in your depths there shineth
A light the best there be,
You’re tough and hard at times, it’s true,
But you’re the place for me.

At the end of my revision of the ancient, reverent classic, there was a low murmuring in the audience, then a few chuckles, then a pleased hum. I took a deep, relieved breath. They liked it. I would have been happy with a simple lack of outrage.

Mr. McDuff had built a low wooden stage for the speakers at the bottom of the porch steps. Billy threw the switch that turned on a small spotlight, scrounged by O’Dell from the mine. It lit the stage, and Sherman greeted one and all and gave a prayer, a short, easy one asking for the guidance of the good Lord and a hope for peace everywhere. Billy threw the second switch, and a dim light came on within the manger set. It was filled with straw. Champion’s head poked through a window. He was placidly eating from a bucket. It was filled with carrots, scrounged from the vegetable section of the Big Store. Sherman’s voice rolled across the assembly:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree
from Governor Underwood up in Charleston that everybody
should go and visit their home town for a reunion. And all
went, every one into the town where they were born.

As the choir quietly began to hum, I threw another switch and a small spotlight came on at the top of the manger. Slug DeHaven, wearing a miner’s helmet and work clothes, stepped into the spot. He held Trigger’s bridle. Trigger was wearing a wreath of Christmas greens around his neck and bells on his harness. He stamped his feet, somehow knowing that he had a good part. His bells jingled prettily. Sherman kept reading.

And a man named Joe who had to go upstate to work because
of the economy came unto the city of Mr. Carter, which is
called Coalwood in McDowell County, because Joe had been
born there, his father a miner as was his father’s father.

Slug led Trigger into the light. Sitting sideways on the saddle was Carol, his new bride. She and Slug had been trapped in Coalwood by the snow, their Myrtle Beach honeymoon put off on account of winter. Carol was dressed in a plain cloth coat and a kerchief around her head. Both hands gripped the saddlehorn. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Carol up on Trigger, but now that she was aboard, she didn’t plan on coming off by mistake. Trigger whinnied at Champion, and Champion withdrew his nose from his bucket long enough to prick up his ears and snort.

Joe brought Mary with him because he loved her. She was
pregnant and probably should have stayed at home. But Joe
wanted her to see Coalwood, the town where he’d been born
and raised. He was proud of it. It was filled with hardwork
ing, God-fearing people and he knew he and Mary would be
safe there.

Slug led Trigger and Carol over to the Club House steps. Mrs. Davenport, her hands crossed in front of her, waited for them. Slug mimed speaking to her, and she shook her head as if to say “no.”

But there was no room for them at the Club House, there beinga bunch of junior engineers down from Ohio to learn how
to mine coal, and Germans come to teach Coalwood miners
how to mine the long-wall way. But wait, the Club House
manager said . . .

Mrs. Davenport raised her finger theatrically and pointed toward the manger set.

There is a mule barn in Coalwood. It is old and no one has
used it for many a year. It was here old man Carter kept his
mules, which he loved exceedingly, and from where they were
sent away to be rendered when he sold the company. There you
will find shelter. I even have the key.

Mrs. Davenport held up a key and Slug took it and led Trigger over to the manger. He helped Carol, still maintaining a grip on the saddlehorn, to the ground. O’Dell slipped out from behind a bush and took Trigger’s reins and moved him discreetly away. His bells jingled into the darkness. Champion whinnied after him. Slug and Carol took up seats on hay bales positioned in the manger. Billy turned the lights down.