Sky of Stone (15 page)

While Rita spread the tablecloth on the rock and emptied the pack, I sat on a boulder and let myself admire her. I think she must have felt my eyes, because she looked over her shoulder and smiled. I looked away, but I’d been caught. I almost didn’t care. It was a warm, lazy day, and I’d brought a beautiful woman to a beautiful place to share it. There couldn’t be anything wrong with that, could there?

After we finished eating Floretta’s feast, Rita said, “I feel like lazing around a bit. Do you mind?”

It sounded good to me. We laid out the cloth on the grass and sat on it. I watched a few small clouds float by in the crystal-clear blue sky, then plucked a blade of grass and sucked on it. Rita drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “What will people say when they hear about our hike?” she asked, her head resting on her knees.

“They’ve already said it,” I said. “I doubt if there’s a soul in Coalwood who hasn’t already chewed it over with their neighbors on both sides of the fence at least once, and maybe twice.”

She chuckled. “And what are they saying, Mr. Know-it-all?”

“They’re wondering what in the world Sonny Hickam is doing taking a full-growed woman up in the mountains. Some of the women will make something out of it, say we’re up to sinful things. The men will say it’s not so. They know you from the mine and know you’re way above me.”

“Am I? Way above you, I mean?”

“As far as Coalwood is concerned you are,” I said. “To them, I’m still a boy.”

“I thought there was nothing lower in Coalwood than a junior engineer.”

“I think you fall in a different category.”

“And I think you’re a bit more than a boy,” she said teasingly.

I shrugged. “I’m working on it.”

I felt oddly exhausted from our conversation. I couldn’t contend with all the things that were rattling around in my mind. Rita had to be at least five or six years older than me. She was a college graduate, and usually the junior engineers worked at the steel mill a year or two before they were sent off to Coalwood to learn something of mining coal. How did that song go?
Born too late.
I whistled a few bars of it and let out a long sigh.

“What is that you’re whistling?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“No, it’s something.” Then she giggled. “Wait, I know what it is.”

She sang, a bit off-key:

Born too late for you to notice me
To you I’m just a kid
That you won’t date.
Why was I born too late?

“The Poni-tails sang that. Pretty stupid song.” She looked at me. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

“I’m mortified,” I said. And I was, too. My face felt hot. I was pretty certain I had turned as red as a beet.

She kicked her boots out and started laughing so hard she finally had to hold her stomach. “You’re cute.”

“Thanks.” Cute. That was me. Cute like a kid.

Her mirth subsided. She turned her face toward me. “Hey.”

“What?”

Her hand stole to mine. She had long, strong fingers that laced in between my own. At her touch, my heart started to race. “Look, Sonny. I don’t guess it matters how old you are. What matters is how you feel about somebody.”

I looked straight ahead, not daring to look at her. My heart was throttled up to a mile a minute.

“But right now,” she said, taking her hand back, “I’ve got to concentrate on my work. I’m here to learn everything I can about mining.”

I was intoxicated. Whatever it took, I decided I was going to win Rita Walicki. Everything else was just details.

“Are we okay, you and me?” she asked.

My thoughts were already in another solar system. All I needed was a plan to conquer her, a campaign. It would take careful thought to map it out. What should I do first? What did Coalwood boys ever do when they wanted to impress a girl? The answer was easy. First thing:
show off.

“You ever swing on a grapevine?” I asked.

“A what?”

“Come on.”

M
Y MEMORY
served me well, and we found the grapevine right where I’d last swung on it, years before. It was a two-inch-thick sinew of muscadine vine hanging from a stout hickory. At one time, the ground beneath it had been worn away by the feet of boys. I cleared the brush away to give us room for a proper swing.

“So this is how you spent your childhood,” she said, her hands on her hips.

“Every chance I got!” I boasted as I readied for a test swing. I gripped the vine with both hands and pushed off. It all came instantly back to me, the wonderful feeling of swooping out over the mountain, the trees all around a blur. I was instantly eight years old, yodeling like Tarzan. I swung back and pushed off again. I looked into the sky, laughing with my mouth open.

Rita eagerly grabbed the vine when I swung back and handed it to her. “Take it easy until you get the feel of it,” I advised.

“You don’t know me very well, do you?” she said, and then pushed off as hard as she could, whooping as she arced out over the mountain. She was an incredible athlete. She swung as far out as anybody I’d ever seen. When she finally handed the vine back to me, she was breathless with excitement. Our hands touched when she gave me the vine, and I felt nearly an electric shock. She bounded away, laughing. “That was so much fun!” she hooted.

I started really showing off. I went through all kinds of grapevine-swinging variations: one-handed, feet over my head, twirling.

I guess I shouldn’t have done the twirling. The old vine gave it up, broke with a sharp snap, and my jungle cry died in mid-yodel. I fell like a dead pigeon into a bush of hardscrabble thistles. Stunned, I sat for a moment while I mentally went through my body, searching for breaks and cracks.

Rita came after me, laughing so hard I saw she was actually crying. “That was soooo funny!” Tears were leaking down her cheeks. She finally covered her mouth to keep me from seeing her so joyful at my misfortune.

I shakily climbed to my feet, pushing my glasses up on my nose. Nothing seemed broken, amazingly enough. Then I lost my balance and nearly toppled over. Rita put her arm around my waist to catch me. I leaned against her, breathing in the sweet aroma of womanly sweat and perfume. “Are you all right?” she asked.

I put my arm around her waist. It was small, tight, smooth. I desperately wanted to put both my arms around it. “I am now,” I gulped.

She pulled away, gave me a serious look. “You know, you could be trouble.”

“I hope so,” I replied.

“But she didn’t do you any favors, did she?”

“Who?”

“Your mother,” she said. “I think she made you into a nice boy, Sonny Hickam.”

“I thought nice was good,” I replied a bit defensively.

“Usually it is,” she said, “but mostly it’s not.”

Apparently satisfied with her contradictory statement, Rita headed down the mountain. I watched her for a moment and then climbed up to where I’d left my pack. Poteet and Dandy ran past, then frolicked around a tree before chasing on. I could hear Rita calling far below. I hurried to catch up with her in every way I could.

20

A TRACK-LAYIN’ MAN

I
T DIDN
’
T
take long before getting my tag and my lamp and riding the man-trip into work seemed almost routine. Johnny, Bobby, and I mostly changed out posts in different sections of the mine, but one day we were sent up to the face to help the roof bolters. When the continuous miner stripped a gear and its crew stopped to work on it, Johnny found us some shovels. The shuttle car rumbled up next to us, and we started shoveling coal into it as fast as we could go. “Boys, you’re real coal miners now!” Johnny cried joyfully. After a while, we were so covered with black dust all I could see of him and Bobby were their teeth. That night, the shower drain got clogged with all the dirt that came off of me. I was proud of it.

As I started out the door to work the next morning, whistling and swinging my bucket like I was in charge of the world, I offhandedly asked Floretta where Rita might be. She gave me a long study and said, “Don’t be falling for that girl, Sonny Hickam.”

My face registered innocence. “I just wondered where she is.”

“If that’s all, she’s gone to Dehue to see some mining engineers about something.” She gave me another look. “Rita’s full-growed, boy. Don’t forget that.”

“I’m eighteen years old,” I said stoutly. “Since February the nineteenth.”

“That don’t mean you understand a thing about women.”

“Like what?”

Floretta glanced at the grandfather clock in the parlor and then pushed me through the screen door onto the porch. “Sonny, you’re just like every other man when you’re around a good-looker. You see all those curves and start thinking about a play-toy. But Rita’s no toy. She’s a serious woman and she means to put her mark on the world. Don’t you be trying to get in her way.”

“I’m not going to get in her way,” I said, miffed at being fussed at so early in the morning.

“She don’t have no time for a boyfriend,” Floretta insisted.

“Who said I wanted to be her boyfriend?”

“You did, maybe not in so many words but in the way you look at her. I seen you with them puppy-dog eyes.”

“I’m innocent of all charges,” I said, even though I knew she wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t believe myself.

Floretta wrapped her arms around herself in the cool morning air and muttered something I couldn’t hear. We walked side by side down the stone steps to the sidewalk. Miners were quietly going past in clumps of twos and threes. “Hey, Floretta,” Pick Hylton called as he slogged by. “Don’t forget to kiss your little boy good-bye.”

“You just mind your own business, Pick,” Floretta snapped. She pushed me into the line. “Get on with you, Sonny, and don’t forget what I done told you!”

I got on, but I instantly dismissed Floretta’s worries about me and Rita.
Rita Walicki, Rita Walicki.
How I loved my newest song. I couldn’t imagine why Floretta would think there was a thing wrong with it.

T
HE WEEK
wore on. I just kept working, eating, and sleeping. There wasn’t much else to do. I supposed I was making some money, although I hadn’t seen any of it yet. I dragged myself out of bed every morning, dug into breakfast like I was starved, which I nearly always was, and then headed for the mine. Before I even got to the tipple, my stomach was growling. It was like I had a hollow leg. My shirt was getting tighter, but my pants at my waist were getting looser. I didn’t know what to make of it, but at least my aches and pains had almost gone away. It had taken a while but maybe I was finally getting the kinks out.

I saw nothing of Dad, and Mom didn’t call. It was as if I had been cast adrift, and I kind of savored the feeling. One evening at supper, Ned and Victor took note of my solitude. They were good old boys, in their simple way. “Come on with us, Sonny,” Ned said, straddling a chair alongside me. “Victor and me, we’re headed over to Cinder Bottom. One of those girls over there will fix you right up.”

“Sure,” Victor added, leaning on my table. “Why, we’ll even let you pay our way. There’s this girl over there—”

“The one with the peroxide streak in her hair?” Ned asked eagerly.

“Yeah, that’s the one. There’s this girl who—”

“And has rings on her toes?”

“Yeah, she’s the one. Now, Sonny, this girl—”

“And a rose tattoo on her back?”

“Yes, Ned!” Victor spat. “What of it?”

“Didn’t she say she was going to slap your face if she ever saw you again?”

Victor gave Ned a look. “I’m trying to talk to Sonny, Ned. If he wants to pay my way with a girl, even if she’s mad at me, who am I to argue?”

I picked up my plate and moved to another table. “I’m not paying anybody’s way anywhere and I’m not going to Cinder Bottom,” I said over my shoulder.

“Well, thanks for considering it,” Victor said in an aggrieved tone. When I saw him start to follow me, I picked up my plate and went up to my room, the only place I figured I could get any peace.

One morning while we waited for the man-lift, Mr. Marshall walked over to Johnny, Bobby, and me. “Come on over to the office,” he said. “There’s something you need to hear.”

Johnny said, “We’ve got work to do. Cribbing down on West Main—”

“Right now,” Mr. Marshall interrupted, “your work is to follow me.”

We looked at each other and then followed Mr. Marshall into Wally’s anteroom. “You can watch from out here,” Mr. Marshall said.

I peeked into Dad’s office. I saw a sea of white helmets. All of Dad’s foremen looked to be in there. Mr. Marshall took a seat in one of the folding chairs in front of the big desk. Dad was on the black phone. Wally slid past me carrying a green folder. He handed it to Dad, then came back and took up his usual station, shuffling papers.

My ears were tuned to Dad’s voice. “Listen, Clarence, for all the coal that section loaded, the lot of them could have stayed at home. If I hear about another wreck on his section, you tell Stubby he’s going to be looking for another job, understand?” He listened for a short second, and added, “Tell him I said he’s no good and never has been any good. Tell him, Clarence! How’s a man ever going to get good if he doesn’t know he’s bad?”

There was a commotion behind me, and my jaw came unhinged when I saw Rita coming inside the anteroom. She was dressed in her engineer khakis and boots, and her hair was tucked up under her pristine white helmet. Coach Gainer, Big Creek High School’s legendary football coach, would have said she had her “game face” on. She looked all business. Tucked under her arm were some poster boards. She glanced at me but made no sign she even knew me. She went into the office and positioned her poster boards on an easel. Somebody handed her a wooden pointer and she tapped it impatiently against her leg, staring at Dad, who was still rattling away on the phone. I had deduced he was talking to his brother, my uncle Clarence, who headed up the Caretta operation.

When Dad slammed the receiver down, he took a second to rub his damaged eye. He glanced at me for a moment, then at Rita. “All right, Rita,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Wally put his hand over his mouth. “What she’s got,” he tittered.

Rita went to the big map of the mine that was tacked to the wall. She tapped her pointer along a line that ran from one end of it to the other. “Mr. Hickam, I’ve finished the study you asked me to make of the main line. Of course, I had to do it with secondhand information, not being allowed to go inside and make a thorough inspection myself.”

Dad nodded but made no comment. She waited a beat longer and then ran the pointer along the line. “This is the main track, as you well know,” she said, her voice a degree frostier. “It was constructed over a forty-year period. The only sections of it that have been replaced are the ones that have been severely damaged by an accident. As a result, it is in various stages of disrepair.”

Dad’s shoulders raised slightly. “Right. So what?”

If Dad meant to rattle Rita, it didn’t work. “As you
also
know, sir, I asked that workers be sent to randomly remove ties from the track.”

“Miners,” Dad said.

“Sir?”

“They’re miners, not workers. I don’t have workers in my mine. I have miners.”

Rita took a breath. I sympathized with her. Interrupting on an irrelevant point was just one of Dad’s techniques of dominating a conversation. She plowed on. “Every tie the
miners
brought back was rotten. My conclusion is that the only thing holding some parts of the main line track together is impacted breccia and gob.”

Rita waited a beat, perhaps to let Dad and the foremen absorb her conclusion, and then walked to her poster boards. She took off the blank one on top, revealing a carefully lettered chart with all the sections of the mine listed vertically, and out from each a percentage number. I looked for 10 West, the section where Tuck Dillon had died, and saw a percentage of 30. Over the list of percentages was an abbreviation:
Est. L/T (%).

“Because of the rough shape of the track,” Rita said, “trips have gradually slowed over the years. A series of interviews with all section foremen”—she tapped the chart with her pointer—“confirms that fact. Each of these numbers represents the estimated lost time percentages. In some parts of the main line, the motormen slow to a crawl. The time lost from production is formidable.”

She pronounced the word for-
mid
-able, which seemed to me a wonderful way to say the word. Her next chart was “a statistical prediction of man-hours lost on the main line and the probability of future accidents.” My admiration for Rita soared. She had a way of putting across complex ideas in just a few words.

Bobby nudged me. “Why are we here?” he whispered.

“To see a real engineer at work,” I whispered back, most proud just to know her.

He looked around at the foremen. “They don’t look very convinced,” he said.

“She only has to convince Mr. Hickam,” Johnny whispered. “And she knows it. Smart girl.”

“Pretty girl, too,” I said.

Bobby put his hand on my shoulder. “Be careful,” he said. “That’s a woman there.”

I glanced at him, just to be sure he hadn’t turned into Floretta.

Rita continued. Her voice was cool and dispassionate, as befitted an engineer. “I spent a few days with the supervisors at the Dehue mine to confirm my figures. They, too, had an old main line that, until a few years ago, severely hampered their operation. I factored in their data. The lost-time number is far bigger than even I thought it would be, but I’ve checked and rechecked my numbers.”

When nobody said anything, Rita said, “Gentlemen, we’re losing at least two hundred man-hours a day because of the condition of the main line. Using a conservative figure of five dollars per man-hour, that comes out to one thousand dollars a day. Figuring an average production year of two hundred days, that means two hundred thousand dollars a year. Add in the lost time for accidents and we have another one hundred thousand dollars, as a minimum.” She looked around the room, and then back at Dad. “There’s more, if you want to hear it.”

Dad waved his hand toward the map. “All right, Rita,” he said tiredly, “we hear you. So what do you think we ought to do about it? You know it’s one thing to identify a problem, quite another to fix it. Right, men?”

If Dad expected a chorus of agreement, he was disappointed. His foremen, apparently impressed, stayed silent, their eyes locked on Rita. She had their full attention. “Here’s what we do to fix this situation,” she said, turning to her last chart. “We bite the bullet and change out the entire main line.”

The chart had a list of materials—ties, rails, spikes, and labor hours. She quickly went through her calculations.

Dad frowned. “Do you have a plan?”

“Get in there, do it as fast as we can.”

“Why not a little bit at a time, spread it out over a couple of years?”

“It’s simple, Mr. Hickam,” Rita said, still cool as a cucumber. “If we do it gradually, we’ll end up causing lost time over a longer period. The smart thing to do is to do it all at once.”

The corners of Dad’s lips twitched. They almost turned up to a smile. Almost, but not quite.

“By all at once,” Mr. Marshall interjected, “do you mean we start at one end and go to the other?”

“Yes, sir. Since the Coalwood shaft isn’t used to bring out the coal anymore and is the oldest track, I suggest we begin here. Coalwood men can enter from the Caretta side during the months the work is being done.”

A discussion followed among Dad’s foremen. All the while, I watched Dad. So did Rita. He was looking at the map of the mine, his finger tapping the big blue blotter on the desk. When he cleared his throat, the other men instantly stopped talking.

“Here’s how we’re going to do it,” he said. He looked around the room from one man to the next. They all leaned in to hear what he had to say, and I confess I felt proud of him, the way he commanded their attention.

“We’ll start at both ends and work toward the middle,” he said while holding up his hand in Rita’s direction. “I know it’s not the most efficient, Rita, but it’s the way my miners will like it. Coalwood men are used to going inside from Coalwood, and Caretta men from Caretta. Miners have their routines and they’re a comfort to them.” He shrugged. “No use getting them upset. The two teams will work the day shift. They’ll wait until the man-trips go in, then tear out the old track behind them and put in the new trackage before the end of the day.”

While Dad was speaking, I couldn’t help but notice Rita irritably tap the pointer against her leg. When he stopped to take a breath, she said, “The evening or the hoot-owl shift would be preferable, Mr. Hickam. That way there’d be less interference with production.”

Dad glanced at her with raised eyebrows, then continued without skipping a beat. “The hoot-owl shift will handle all the logistics. They’ll stockpile the track layers and have them ready to go each morning.”

Rita turned and gathered her posters, putting them back on the easel. She’d lost her audience, except for me.

Dad was the focus of everybody’s attention now.

“How do we get the coal out on the Caretta side during the day shift?” Mr. Marshall asked.