Red Helmet (23 page)

Cable trudged back to his office and looked in on Mole. He and the evening shift dispatcher, J.C. Flannery, were studying the monitors that showed data from the carbon monoxide sensors Cable had installed throughout the mine. Cable had also installed a seismograph in Mole's office to detect tremors in the mine. If a pillar let go, or anything else that caused the earth to heave, Mole or J.C. would know about it, and soon after, so would he. There was also a bank of lights that showed when any of the telephone pager systems were in use. The pagers were all “permissible,” meaning they were shielded and grounded, safe in even methane-rich air. By punching the right button, the dispatcher could listen in on what was being said on the pagers, or call one to talk to a section foreman or any miner. With a few flipped switches and punched buttons, anything that was wrong in the mine would be quickly evident.

But Atlas headquarters was always complaining about the money he'd spent on the monitors. Cable knew very well his head was on the chopping block for overspending as well as not meeting the quotas for India. But, never mind, he believed he had done the right thing, and if a man did the right thing, Cable believed all would be well. It had to be. The world could be unfair in spurts, that was his sense of things, but in the long run, it was mostly fair. He would depend on the long run to see him through, and maybe Preacher's prayers.

There was paperwork to be done, including responding to another punitive fine from Einstein, this time for having too much grease on the rollers of a conveyor belt in Two East. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. As for Joe and Song Hawkins, he'd worry about them later. It didn't matter who owned his mine. As long as he was superintendent, he'd run it the way it needed to be run.

Cable sat heavily in his chair and looked at the stack of documents on his desk, then drew a paper from the bottom of the stack and tried to focus on it. He didn't succeed.

He opened the back door to his office for a breath of fresh, cool West Virginia autumn air. He listened to the sounds of the tipple, the low thrum of the bull wheel as it raised and lowered the cages, the squeals and thumps of the coal cars being pushed along the tracks, the rumble of the coal dropping through the chutes from the preparation plant. He loved the sounds of the mine. To him, they were pure music, the finest kind. This evening's symphony told him all was well.

Just across the way was the red cap classroom. He wondered what was going on in there and then imagined Song wearing a red helmet. That image made him shake his head. “She won't last a day,” he assured himself, then went back to the paperwork on his desk.

Nineteen

S
ong woke, blinking into the darkness, disoriented and a little frightened. She had to think for a moment to recall where she was. The Cardinal Hotel was dark and silent except for the occasional creak of a floorboard. Rhonda had explained to her about those creaks. They weren't ghosts, or at least she didn't think they were.
The floors creaked because the Cardinal was always settling as the ground beneath it shifted on the old mine works a thousand feet or so below. Song detected the faint scent of mothballs. There were a number of them scattered in the tiny closet and she didn't want to think about what they were supposed to ward off. Her bed was an antique four-poster, ridiculously high off the wooden floor, with a step stool required to get in and out of it. Rhonda had explained that in the old days, the bed had to make room for a chamber pot.

Song was beneath a soft cotton comforter, but it gave her little comfort. She felt out of place. She rose and crossed to the window and looked down on Main Street, lit by a single light post. She drew up a chair. A block away sat the church on its little hillock, a faint glow in one of its back windows. Song wondered if Preacher was in there writing a sermon. She supposed he'd heard that she was in the red cap class. Surely everyone in Highcoal knew it! Cable had probably let everybody know what he thought about it too.

Not that she cared what Cable thought. “Sign the papers,” she whispered to him, wherever he was. At Hillcrest, she supposed, and maybe with Michelle Godfrey. She gritted her teeth.

Her mind was filled with contradictions on how she felt, and why she was in the red cap class. No matter. When it was all done, however it turned out, she'd leave Highcoal and not look back, though she hoped Young Henry might some day visit her in New York. She would enjoy showing him her city, and perhaps even finding him a job with Hawkins-Song. The others, even Doctor K, she couldn't imagine outside of Highcoal. They were as much a part of it as it was of them. She realized at that moment she envied them, their sense of place, and knowing where they belonged.
I'm pathetic,
she told herself, then climbed back in bed and pulled the comforter over her head and finally fell asleep.

B
REAKFAST AT THE
Cardinal was served at five a.m. Song dressed in jeans, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and running shoes, and carrying her shiny red helmet, headed downstairs. She was the first of her classmates to arrive in the dining room although there were a few day-shift black-cap miners already there. They glanced at her, nodded, and went back to eating. They knew who she was, but had nothing to say about it. That was a good thing. Song didn't want to fight with anyone.

Rhonda came through the swinging kitchen door with a stack of pancakes, Young Henry behind her, balancing a dish of scrambled eggs, a platter of ham slices, and another with a pyramid of sizzling bacon. Rosita followed with trays of biscuits, toast, and homemade muffins with plenty of butter and jam. Coffee was self-serve from a big chrome urn. A stack of real coffee mugs was beside it. No Styrofoam cups were ever in evidence in the dining room of the Cardinal.

Song felt out of place, just as she had been the first time she came to Highcoal. She inspected the serving table, mentally adding up the calories in the buttered biscuits and muffins, and rejected them along with the ham, bacon, and eggs. All that was left was cold cereal and skim milk, a slice of plain toast (which was, unhappily, white bread), and the robust, flavorful coffee. She had just sat down with her meager food when the Harper boys, their eyes squinting against the overhead lights, strolled into the dining room. Rhonda took a look at them and hooted. “I heard you boys come in about two o'clock. You can't stay out all hours and mine coal.”

They ignored her and made for the coffee urn, then the food. With their plates piled high with something from every serving tray, they sat down at Song's table and began to stuff themselves. Justin came in next, silently served himself, and sat beside Chevrolet.

“Good morning, fellow coal miners,” Song finally said.

Justin and the Harpers morosely glanced up at her, then without pause went back to eating. Chevrolet had a swollen eye, and Ford a bruise on his cheek.

“Were you two in a fight?” she asked.

“They called Gilberto a name after class last night,” Justin said.

Chevrolet shrugged. “I seen it on TV. They called this Mexican a taco-head. So I called Gilberto that to see what he'd do.”

Song smiled. “I see he didn't like it. Good for him.”

“Gilberto didn't do this. Ford did.”

Ford piped up. “We're all part of the same team now, right? Gotta be nice to each other and all that. Chevrolet needed to be hit.”

“You got me good, brother.”

“You got me good back,” Ford replied, with honest admiration.

Gilberto strolled in looking sleepy, gathered up his food and coffee, and sat down after kissing Rosita.

“I see you've met Rosita,” Song said.

“
Sí. Naturalmente.
She is my wife.” He looked at the Harper brothers, who were pretending they were in another universe. “You boys hokay?”

The brothers sheepishly acknowledged his question. “We're good. You?” Chevrolet asked.

“I'm good.” Then he chuckled. “Taco-head. That is so
idiota
.”

“Well, hell, we don't know no good words for Mexicans,” Chevrolet complained. “Tell us one, Gilberto, and we'll call you that. You got to have a nickname if you're going to work in the mine.”

“But you don't have a nickname,” Gilberto pointed out.

The brothers were startled by the accusation. Ford rallied first. “Our names are already kinda nicknames. Now, come on, Gilberto, give us something to work with. A Mexican skunk or something.”

“Hokay,” Gilberto said. “Call me
gran hombre
. It's
mofa
, how do you say it? You make fun of me with such a name.”

Chevrolet and Ford squinted in suspicion, then Ford said, “Okay, your nickname is Granny.”

“No, no!
Gran hombre!
”

“Granny, Granny, Granny,” the brothers chanted, knowing they had struck pay dirt.

Gilberto hung his head. “You have filled me with disgrace.”

“We sure have and proud of it too,” Ford said. “Hey, Rhonda, Gilberto's name is Granny!”

“Shut up, Ford,” Rhonda growled, as she set more plates of food on the dining table. “His name is Gilberto. You call him anything else, you answer to me. Now, all of you hurry up and eat. Square won't like it if you're late.”

Song ate her bowl of cereal while the other red caps at the table wolfed down yet another heaping plate of food. She thought about saying something to them about their meals. They were surely going to get fat on Rhonda's food. But, upon reflection, Song said nothing. They were all adults. If they wanted to be obese, that was their problem.

T
HE RED CAPS
gathered in the classroom, all wearing their red helmets except Gilberto, who had given his to Song. Square handed Gilberto a helmet.

“All right, boys—and, uh, girl . . .”

“I'm just one of the boys, Mr. Block,” Song interrupted. “You don't have to keep making allowances for me.”

Square nodded to her gratefully, then said, “All right, boys, here's what we're going to do. You can't go inside unless you at least look like a coal miner. You Harper boys, them fatigue shirts and tight jeans ain't gonna do. Justin, them slouchy pants ain't gonna cut it, with your drawers showing when your shirt ain't hanging over it all. That's the weirdest way to dress I ever seen. Any one of you boys care to explain how looking like that came about?”

When Justin and the brothers didn't say anything, Song raised her hand and advised, “I read where the fashion came from prisons. Pulling down your pants so your drawers could be seen is a signal you're available for homosexual relations. The shirt pulled over it was to fool the guards.”

Justin climbed quickly out of his chair and hitched up his pants, which simply sagged down again.
Blushing furiously, he sat down, careful to avoid eye contact, while the Harper boys laughed.

Square couldn't help but chuckle himself. “Gilberto, your khaki pants and shirt are okay, but you'll need some steel toe boots.”

“His name is Granny, Mr. Block,” Ford said.

“No, it's not,” Gilberto retorted.

Square pondered the Mexican, then shook his head. “Naw. That nickname don't feel right. We'll stick with Gilberto until something better comes along.”

“What about giving Song a nickname?” Chevrolet asked.

“Song is already a nickname,” she defended herself. “Like you say Ford and Chevrolet are.”

Square held up his hands. “Look, boys, a miner's nickname has to come about more or less natural. Understand? Like your daddy was called Squirrel, for instance. I was there the day he got that name. We was just kids together. He came to school with a squirrel sandwich your grandmother made for him. We all liked to busted a gut laughing. He fought everyone of us, but it didn't keep us from calling him Squirrel for the rest of his life. He liked it, I think.”

Ford and Chevrolet looked at one another, then shrugged.

Song was next in Square's clothing appraisal. “You look right fetching, of course, ma'am, but you'll likely split them tight jeans when you start duckwalking under a low roof. And running shoes ain't particularly good footwear in a mine. If you should accidentally drop a sledgehammer on your toes, why, it's liable to hurt. So, what we got to do is get over to Omar's and buy you some decent mining clothes and boots. That goes for everybody.”

“I don't have any money, Square,” Justin advised.

“Not to worry, son,” Square answered gently. “When you're hired on with the mine, you have an automatic line of credit with Omar.”

“Can we drink some of his ouzo?” Ford asked.

“No, you cannot,” Square answered. “That stuff can kill you.”

“Amen to that,” Song said with emphasis.

Square looked at her appraisingly, then smiled and nodded. “All right, gents. Let's go to Omar's.”

T
HE FIRST THING
Song noticed at Omar's was that the displays in the windows were the same as when she'd arrived in Highcoal months before. There was still a plastic pink flamingo in one window, a mannequin dressed like a miner in the other. The red caps went inside where Omar waited for them with an expectant expression. Beside him stood a trim middle-aged woman with large black eyes and black hair pulled back into a bun. She had gold rings on nearly all her fingers, many golden bracelets jangling from her wrists, and was wearing a gray pantsuit. Square introduced his class. Song noticed that Justin was staring at the couple with an odd expression. Then he lowered his head and didn't look at them anymore.

“My name is Omar, just as you say, Mr. Block,” Omar responded with a slight inclination of his head and a familiar nod to Song. He glanced at Justin, then away. “Welcome to my establishment, gentlemen and gentle lady. My wife, Marla, and I will be pleased to outfit you according to your needs. May I be so bold as to ask if any one of you has worked in a coal mine before? No? It is just as well. We will start with a clean sheet of paper. Or a clean set of working clothes, as it may be.”