Same Sun Here (9 page)

4 November 2008

Dear Meena,

We are out of school for Election Day, but I had to get up early anyway because Mamaw wanted me to go with her to the voting booth this morning. She says that it’s important for me to understand how lucky we are to be able to vote. She votes at the fire station, and even though it was cold and gray and drizzly, there was a long

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                                              long line of people waiting to vote. Mamaw says she can’t remember ever seeing so many people turn out. It’s because people feel so strongly about this election, with lots of them for McCain and Palin and some of them real big on Obama. I wasn’t allowed to go inside with Mamaw when she voted, so I stood there and studied everybody, and I thought it was really cool that people would stand in the rain to make their voice be heard. It made me want to be old enough to vote.

When she came out, Mamaw nodded and smiled to the rest of the people in line, but then this man I’d never seen before — he had a big bushy beard and his mouth was real little and real red — hollered and said, “I bet you enjoyed pulling that lever, didn’t you, tree hugger?”

“You bet your ass I did,” Mamaw said. I had never, ever heard her cuss before. Some of the people in line laughed, but most of them just kept their eyes on the ground. I felt like I should defend Mamaw, but I didn’t know what to do. So I just gave him the dirtiest look I could muster up. He laughed at me, which caused his little red mouth to spread out and show his yellow teeth. I was so mad I couldn’t stand it, but when we got in the car Mamaw told me to let it go. “He’s just stupid, honey. Ignorant people don’t know any better, but stupid people WANT to be stupid. So just forget it.”

I am really glad your dad got to come home. It sounds like you all had a real good time together. Mine won’t be home until Thanksgiving, but I talked to him on the phone last night. Our conversation didn’t go so great because I was telling him how the mine is getting bigger and bigger and how worried I am over it and all that and he said that I should just accept that one person can’t change things.

I don’t believe this. Last year in history we read about a student in China who stood in front of a tank when the government didn’t want to listen to any young people’s complaints. After that, people started to pay more attention to how people in China had lost their freedom.

But when I said that, Dad just said, “Yeah, and he’s never been seen since, either, has he?” So, see, he completely missed the point. Because I think the point is that if that boy hadn’t stood up for what he believed in, then people wouldn’t have paid as much attention. And also that tank driver refused to run over him, although they were killing people left and right. So that says something about him, too. Have you ever heard this story? This happened ages ago, like in the ’80s sometime, if I am remembering right.

When I told Mamaw what Dad said, she just shook her head and she tried to bite her tongue and not say anything, but you know her, she couldn’t stand it, so she up and said that sometimes she didn’t know where he got some of his beliefs, because they sure weren’t from her.

The mountaintop removal is getting worse over on Town Mountain. Mamaw goes over to the cliffs every day and makes sure the ’dozers are not getting over on our land. The coal companies are real bad to just take whatever they want, she says. It worries me because even though Mamaw is a true firecracker of a person, she is still old, and sometimes her head swims because she has the sugar diabetes. So I worry about her being up on the cliffs.

I have to stay after school every day because I have basketball practice. I do love basketball. It is one thing that Daddy taught me that has been of use to me. Sometimes, when I get real frustrated, there is nothing that feels as good as running down that basketball court and jumping up to swoosh that ball right through the hoop. It’s like flying, sometimes. Seems like when I let that ball leave my fingertips, it’s like my troubles are floating away with it, too. Not always. But a lot of the time.

Used to be I liked most of the boys on the team, too, but lately it seems like the only one I can really talk to is my buddy Mark. I’ve been knowing Mark Combs since the first grade, and we have always been good friends. (He’s my best friend here, but you are my best friend period.) He likes to read, too. He’s a real brain, although you wouldn’t know it to talk to him because he only talks about playing Wii and basketball, but when you go over to his house he has shelf after shelf full of books. He loves all those Narnia books and he’s crazy over Harry Potter and he’s dying for me to read
The Hunger Games,
which is his favorite book, but right now he’s hooked on the Twilight books. He says he only reads them so he’ll have something to talk to the girls about, so he can get them to go out with him, but I think it’s because he really loves them.

Mark’s mom picks us up every day after practice and then they drop me off. Mom can’t come get me because her headaches are getting worse. And Mamaw has started working at this office downtown where they are organizing stuff to fight mountaintop removal.

I always have Mark’s mom drop me off at the end of the driveway (which always bothers her because she feels like she should drive me all the way up to the house) so I can walk through the woods along Lost Creek. Well, yesterday as I was walking through there I saw that the creek was muddied up really bad, the way it gets after a big storm, when all the leaves and branches and sand along the banks have been washed in. But it hadn’t rained. And as the creek ran on I saw that it wasn’t just muddy, but there was some kind of orange gunk in it, too. Our creek has always been as clean as a whistle, so clean that I used to drop down onto my knee and scoop up a handful of it on a really hot day. I told Mamaw and she called some people to come test it.

A couple evenings ago Mamaw and I were out taking our walk in the cool of the day. Rufus was trotting alongside us. Usually he likes to take off occasionally, then come back to check on us, but this time he stayed with us the whole time, like he was afraid to leave us alone. Every once in a while he would look up at me and smile, his tongue lolling out. He’s the best dog. It was so warm that some crickets were even still hollering, and it almost sounded like springtime in the woods. The best thing about Mamaw is that she doesn’t talk your head off about stupid stuff. She only talks when she has something to say. A lot of grown-ups will always ask how things are going when they don’t really care, but she actually wants to hear what you’re saying. Anyway, I really like that sometimes Mamaw and I can just be quiet with each other. And that’s what we were doing. Looking at the night sky. Listening to that little bunch of crickets that were still hanging on into the fall of the year. I love the way Mamaw walks, easy and slow, but determined, like she has somewhere important to go.

All at once, out of nowhere, Mamaw turned her face to me and said, “It may be that I have to get into some trouble over these mountains, River.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I quit walking.

“I mean, it might end up that I get arrested or something. But sometimes the law arrests you to make a point. If I were to get arrested, you remember that I
intended
to, OK?” She dragged out the word “intended.”

I just nodded. I still didn’t really get it. Still don’t.

“And people might say bad things about me at school. But you just tell them that I’m standing up for what I believe in. If something legal is unjust, sometimes people have to do something illegal to get attention. It’s called civil disobedience. Have you all studied Rosa Parks yet?”

I asked her if she meant the woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus, and she said yes, and that was an example of civil disobedience.

I told her if anybody ever said anything bad about her at school I’d bust their mouth, but she didn’t like that one bit. She talked real fast and loud. She said that was no way to act, and that kind of attitude was what got countries into wars they didn’t belong in and caused many a good soldier to die.

Then we listened to the crickets some more, quiet while we looked out at the darkening world.

Some really cool things in your letter:

1. That the Hindi word for forest is “jungle.”
   

2. That those women fought for the trees.
   

3. That old folks can get food for a dollar and a quarter a plate! Everybody always says that food in the city is REAL, REAL high, but I guess not.
   

4. That the parakeet sits on the dog’s rump.
   

5. That there is a bowling alley at the bus stop. Our bus stop is the parking lot of the Burger King. I only know this because Dad had to ride the Greyhound home from Biloxi one time because his car was broke down.
   

6. That the bride peeled potatoes. Mamaw told me that when my parents got married my mother wouldn’t let anyone spend money on flowers from the florist because she thought that was a waste of money. So instead she and Mamaw and Dad went up into the mountains and cut ivy and wildflowers and honeysuckle and decorated the whole church that way. So that girl peeling potatoes reminds me of that somehow. This was back when Mom laughed and danced in the living room and wore lipstick and looked at herself in the mirror. Back before her headaches and before Dad lost his job in the mines and had to go off to the Gulf to find work.
   

What I did not like about your letter:

1. That man who tore up the hundred-dollar bill in front of people and then taped it back together. I can see why you all laughed at that story, but it made me mad! (Mamaw says there are lots of people around here who live in big fancy houses and drive big fancy cars even though they can’t afford them, and that’s why the country’s in a real mess and the taxpayers are having to bail everybody out. She says that’s part of the problem with MTR, because it exists because people are greedy and want something instantly.) I can’t stand people who brag and go on in front of people. What a big phony. And . . .
   

2. I appreciate you telling me everything, but to be honest I have no interest in ever hearing anything else about you shaving your legs or hair of any kind, period. Sorry, but I’m always honest with my friends and, well, that part about you shaving and all that kind of freaked me out.
   

OK. Moving on.

Have you noticed that I really like to make lists? It’s a weird obsession of mine. When I was little I would make lists of all my books and DVDs and video games. I have notebooks full of lists I used to make. I told you, I’m a weirdo.

I really liked the letter from your grandmother. It made me real sad, though. I thought about if I had to live way across the ocean from Mamaw and how bad I would miss her. I hope that you all get to see each other real soon.

I also forgot to tell you that there is a big mountaintop removal mine over by Mark’s house, too. I didn’t know it, but today I was trying to talk to him about it again, and trying to describe why it is wrong, and he said they were running that kind of mine on the mountain above his house and that it’s noisy and dusty, but his parents told him that was just where they lived so to get used to it. But he says his mother won’t drink the water out of their pipes now.

Basketball practice has been wearing me out lately. It’s hard at first, when you’re not used to practicing that long everyday, but I’ll get back in shape soon and it won’t bother me a bit. Coach says that if I keep up the way I’ve been playing in scrimmages, he’s going to start me this year. I’ve never been a starter before, so this is a big deal. I’m still doing my stretching exercises and I’ve grown 1/8 more of an inch. I am now 5 feet and 7 3/4 inches.

I guess I better go. Mamaw is hollering for me to come watch Obama give his acceptance speech.

November 21, 2008

Dear River,

When I got back from school today, there were all kinds of things lined up in front of our building — furniture and boxes and lamps and Kiku’s bicycle with a sign stuck to the handlebars: PLEASE TAKE. It’s lucky I came home when I did because a man was just about to wheel the bike away. I told him he couldn’t have it, and I dragged it all the way up five flights of stairs by myself. I had to take my backpack off and rest on the landings. It was really hard but I did it.