Sky of Stone (6 page)

7

MR. DUBONNET’S OFFER

T
HE ANNOYING
ring of the home telephone downstairs woke me up the next morning, and even though I put a pillow over my head, the blamed thing wouldn’t stop. There was only one person I knew who could be so persistent, so I threw on my shirt and pants and went to answer it. “So how’s life?” Mom asked in as sweet a tone of voice as she ever used on me. I was instantly on guard. It was a question loaded for bear, and I knew I was the bear.

I sorted through possible answers and landed on a considerably condensed version of the truth. “Dad’s fine, Nate Dooley’s fine although he has a broken wrist, and I wrecked the Buick last night.”

She didn’t seem surprised at any of my news, which told me she already knew it. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

“No, but the Buick is.” When she didn’t answer for an entire second, I improvised a plea for sympathy. “Mom, can I come to Myrtle Beach now? Dad doesn’t want me here.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Pretty much.”

“How bad’s the Buick?”

I allowed a mild groan, still looking for some motherly
compassion. “I ran into a rock. It must have rolled down off the mountain. Something got busted up underneath.”

“Where did it happen?”

“I was going down to Cape Coalwood. I just wanted to see it.”

“What did your dad say about that?”

“Nothing yet. I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“Then you’d better talk to him,” she said.

“Then can I leave Coalwood?”

“No, you can’t leave Coalwood. I told you your daddy needs your company while all this mess about Tuck Dillon gets sorted out. Sometimes I think you never listen to a word I say!”

“He doesn’t act like he needs my company,” I said. “He told me to take the Buick and head for Myrtle Beach.”

Her chuckle filled my ear. “Well, you kind of messed yourself up on that score, didn’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am. I guess I kind of did. But how long do I have to stay?”

“Until I say you can leave.”

“When will that be?”

“I’ll let you know,” she replied. “I’m hanging up now. I’ve got roofers in today. Talk to you later.”

“But—” I began, but it was too late. She’d already hung up. I looked at the receiver, then slammed it down. The bell inside the phone protested with a single surprised chime.

I jumped when I heard Dad say, “You break that telephone, young man, you’ll be paying for it, too!”

I waited for him to yell at me about the Buick, but he was leaning over the dining-room table digging into a pile of letters and bills, and it seemed he had other things on his mind. “Do you ever study at all down there?” he demanded, and I saw his index finger pressing against my VPI grade report. “Mediocre in math, mediocre in chemistry, mediocre in everything except English. What are you going to be? A literary engineer?”

I opened my mouth to explain and then closed it. I had no explanation except to say I was doing the best I could. Even I didn’t believe that was entirely true.

His forehead, creased with deep furrows, lifted. “What the blue blazes were you doing down at Frog Level, anyway?”

“I went to see Cape Coalwood,” I said.

“There’s nothing to see,” he said. “Your old shed is long gone—weekend carpenters got it for the lumber, I expect—and your slab of concrete is covered up with silt. There was a flood this past spring, washed a good part of that dump away. Last time I was down there, there were already saplings pushing up. We’re not dumping on it anymore. Give it a few more years, it’ll be a forest.”

The shed he was talking about was the Big Creek Missile Agency’s proud blockhouse. The slab was our launchpad. The dump was once the finest rocket range this side of Cape Canaveral. Every vestige of the old cape had been destroyed. Dad had managed to diminish in a few words a place I considered grand and glorious.

He went back to stirring the mail, my grades thankfully pitched to one side. “In case you’re wondering,” he said, “a tow truck hauled the car over to Welch to the dealer about an hour ago. Tag found it where you abandoned it and called me.”

“Let me know how much it costs and I’ll pay for the repairs,” I said.

He looked up. “You? With what?”

“I’ll get a job,” I said. “I’ll send you the money.”

He fingered a letter, tossed it down unopened. “What kind of job?”

I explained my plan, which I had just made up. I was going to hitch to Myrtle Beach that very day (I didn’t mention Mom’s latest directive), and there I’d beg for a job aboard one of the tourist fishing boats, baiting hooks and swabbing decks. I would keep mailing money back to Dad until the Buick repairs were covered.

Dad heard me out, then shook his head. “That’s your craziest plan yet,” he said. “Anyway, I talked to your mom this morning, too. She doesn’t want you down there. She says she has her hands full as it is without having you to worry about.”

That shut me up and also told me exactly what kind of box I was in. Dad didn’t want me in Coalwood and Mom didn’t want me in Myrtle Beach. What was I supposed to do, live up in the woods somewhere?

“What are you thinking?” Dad asked, as if he really wanted to know.

“I was wondering what you were going to do about Tuck Dillon,” I said. It wasn’t the only thing I was thinking about, of course, but it was one of them. The accident just didn’t make sense.

“Tuck Dillon.” The way he said it, as if correcting my pronunciation, made it sound like I had no right to say Tuck’s name out loud.

I stuck with it. “They say—” I began.

He interrupted me, his voice weary but tinged with defiance, as if he were doing me an extreme favor merely by replying. “Don’t tell me what ‘they’ say. I don’t care.”

It was amazing that Dad could still push buttons inside me I didn’t even know were there. I choked back a bitter response. “I just want to help,” I said.

His good eye drilled into me. “The one thing I’m sure of in this old world, little man,” he said, “is I don’t need
your
help.”

And with that said clearly and just as clearly heard, he walked away and out the back door while I stood in the dining room for the longest time, my face burning.

I
HAD
nothing to do at the house except to continue to make myself miserable. Though I was pretty good at doing that when I put my mind to it, I decided instead to go down to the Big Store for a soda pop. Maybe I could mull a few things over down there.

One thing about Coalwood hadn’t changed. It was nearly impossible to walk anywhere. I hadn’t taken ten steps out of the front gate before a car stopped. It was Tag Farmer, driving his company-supplied Dodge. I subsided onto its bench seat. The floor was littered with empty pop bottles. “Morning, Sonny,” he said. “Did you wear your eyes out in college?” I didn’t know what he meant and said so. He chuckled. “You couldn’t see that rock?”

Thanks to the fence-line, the gossip circuit that went up and down every hollow and cranny of Coalwood, everybody in town was sure to have chewed over my battering of the Buick until they’d reached some consensus, most probably about my stupidity or lack of driving skills. I longed to be back at college, where I had only the occasional department dean to hold forth on my inadequacies, not an entire town. Although I knew it would probably do no good, I told Tag my side of it.

“There’s already a rumor you rolled the Buick,” he said. “I heard Cleo Mallett claim it was three times.”

The gossip was worse than I’d feared. “Tag, you know I didn’t roll the Buick! I just hit a big rock and knocked the oil pan loose or something!”

He laughed. “Remain calm, boy. That’s the way it is around here. Have you forgotten so fast? Everything has to be a little bigger than the way it really happened. How else would we occupy our time, after all, if we didn’t make up a few tall tales now and again?”

“I haven’t forgotten. I just hoped I was exempt since I’m not a Coalwood citizen anymore.”

Tag gave me a sharp look. “Who said you weren’t a Coalwood citizen?”

“Me, I guess,” I replied glumly.

I’d given him something else to laugh about. “Sonny, you ain’t never going to be nothing else but a Coalwood boy, don’t matter how far off you go or how big you get. Don’t ever forget that.”

I started to argue with him, then gave it up as a lost cause. For all I knew, he might have even been right.

When we got to Coalwood Main, Mr. Bledsoe, a roof bolter, came out of the post office, strolled up to the Dodge, and started complaining to Tag about his neighbor’s yard. “I swan, he hasn’t mowed it in two weeks. Hidy, Sonny. Back from school and already tore up your old man’s Buick? Fast one for good and bad, ain’t you? Rolled it over twice! You must have been flying. Lucky you didn’t kill yourself. You best get those grades up, too, young man. So, Tag, what you gonna do about that long grass?”

I started to reply, then clapped my mouth shut. What good would it do? I wasn’t the least bit interested in Mr. Bledsoe’s problems, either, so I excused myself and headed for the Big Store.

Junior, the venerable clerk of the drugstore section, was wiping down the counter. He despised fingerprints and smudges. All the glass cabinets and aluminum soda and milk-shake dispensers were shining like mirrors.

Junior’s eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed spectacles when he saw it was me. His close-cropped hair had turned gray around the edges since I’d seen him last, and deep creases had appeared on his chocolate-colored face, but he was still Junior. “Sonny Hickam! Back to Coalwood, I swan!”

“I’m just visiting,” I said defensively. I put my quarter down and Junior served up a pop and then wanted to know all about my life as a college boy. “It’s tolerable,” I told him.

“Well, you better get those grades up,” he said. “And stop rolling your daddy’s car.”

“Yes, sir.” I sighed.

“How’s your daddy? He holding up all right on this Tuck Dillon thing?”

Before I could answer, a big hand grabbed my shoulder. I nearly spit out my pop. It was Mr. John Dubonnet, the union chief.

“Sonny, good to see you, my man,” he said. “Making Coalwood proud in college, are you? Your grades could be a mite better, I guess, but you’ll make it. You come from good stock, at least on your mama’s side. Those Lavenders never could drive. Guess that explains your accident down at Frog Level. One time, your mama hit a cow with your daddy’s brand-new roadster. Didn’t hurt the cow but totaled the car.” He laughed, I suppose at the memory of Dad’s wrecked roadster.

I took a moment to absorb his greeting, filled as it was with information, genealogy, history, gossip, and a curious kind of logic all at once. “Hello, Mr. Dubonnet,” I finally replied.

He kept smiling. “When you going back to school?”

“September.”

“And how are you going to pay for the Buick? I hear your daddy said he’s giving you the bill.”

Junior brought his chores a little closer to hear my an-
swer. Whatever I said would be all around town in less than an hour after I said it, so I knew I’d best choose my words carefully. I worried over them a bit, then polished them up. “I don’t know,” I said, smooth as grease.

“Well, I have an idea,” Mr. Dubonnet answered instantly. “Why don’t you go to work in the mine?”

My laugh just burst out of me. I couldn’t help it. I heard Junior behind me chuckle, too. I guess neither of us had ever heard anything so outrageously ridiculous.

Mr. Dubonnet ignored my response. “A couple of years ago,” he said patiently, “when Mr. Van Dyke was the general superintendent, he got it in his head that Coalwood college boys ought to be able to work in the mine during the summer to help pay their tuition. I—that is to say, the union—agreed to it, even though nobody ever signed up. But I think it’s still a good idea. As a matter of fact, Bobby Likens came to me a few days ago, asked for work. I said I’d make it happen if you signed on, too.”

Bobby Likens was the son of the Coalwood School principal. I didn’t know him very well. He was four years older than me, so he’d always run with a different pack of boys. I’d heard in one of Mom’s letters that he had just graduated from Emory and Henry College. She had also written that he was on his way to medical school. I guessed that was why he needed the money. I was glad I wasn’t in the same situation. My parents were paying my way through school. “No, thanks,” I said to Mr. Dubonnet. But I thought to myself:
Never, not in a million years.

Mr. Dubonnet tilted his snap-brim hat back on his head. “Give it some thought, son. You could make some good money. You’d be doing Bobby a favor, too.”

“Why not just let him work by himself?”

He shook his head. “One boy makes a problem. Two boys make a crew. It’s complicated.”

I puzzled over his answer for a moment, then decided that even if it didn’t make sense, it didn’t matter. “I’m not going to work in the mine, Mr. Dubonnet.”

“You’d make three dollars and fifty cents an hour,” he said.

Three dollars and fifty cents an hour!
A veritable fortune! Before I could stop myself, I asked, “What would I have to do?”

“All you’d have to do is join the union,” he answered.

Junior whistled. It was my sentiments, exactly. There was about as much chance of a Hickam joining the United Mine Workers of America as a Republican being elected to office in McDowell County.

Mr. Dubonnet nodded to me, then went off to the grocery section. “So what you gonna do, rocket boy?” Junior asked. He might as well have gotten out a pen and pad to write down what I was about to say.

“I’m not a rocket boy anymore,” I said slowly so he’d get it down just right for the fence-line gossipers. “I’m a college boy. And I’m not going to work in the mine.”

Junior responded with a sympathetic but doubtful smile. I had the sudden opinion that he knew my fate better than I did.

8

THE UMWA

W
HEN
I got home, the black phone—the one connected to the mine—was ringing. I answered it. “Your dad wants you up here,” Wally said.

“What for?” I asked cautiously.

“The estimate for the Buick is ready.”

“Estimate?”

“You did tell your dad you would pay for the repairs to his car, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t serious.”

Wally laughed. “He thought you were. Looks like you managed to tear off the oil pan and knock the engine nearly off its mounts.”

I gulped. “Is it going to cost a lot of money?”

“Well, those Welch mechanics aren’t going to do the work for free.”

Wally could really irk me. “I’m on my way,” I snapped.

I found Wally at his desk. A quick glance through the open door showed that Dad wasn’t in his office. “Where is he?”

Wally ignored my question and slid a sheet of yellow paper across his desk. It was the estimated bill from the Buick dealer in Welch, to the tune of $135.78, approximately $135.78 more than I had to my name. Reluctantly, I confessed that fact to Wally.

“Your dad will pay the dealer after the repairs are complete,” he said, shrugging, “and then you will pay your dad. That’s the deal.”

I looked at the bill again. One little rock had done all that? “Tell him I’ll send the money after I get work.”

Wally shifted in his old chair, making it squeak. “And what work might that be? Are you going to launch rockets and charge admission? Maybe ten people would be willing to give you a buck for that.” He gave me a sly grin to show me how clever he thought he was.

I considered making some sharp retort but decided Wally wasn’t worthy of my wit, not that I had any. I walked down Main Street, trying to get a fix on things. I hadn’t gone more than ten yards before Coalwood’s garbage truck pulled up beside me. I hauled myself inside the cab. “You look like a boy who needs a ride,” Red Carroll said, his big, droopy, hound-dog eyes giving me the once-over.

Red Carroll, rocket boy O’Dell’s dad, was never far from a smile, and his tongue stayed in his cheek a lot, but he had the reputation of being a solid man, always ready to help somebody who needed it. He was also one of the few grown men in Coalwood I called by first name, don’t ask me why. “You sticking around town for a while?” he asked after finding a gear to get us moving.

“Looks like,” I muttered.

“O’Dell’s doing great in the air force,” he reported as he swerved around Mrs. Jack Rose, who’d stopped her car to chat with Mrs. Fleming, out for a walk with her son Zack. “As soon as he finishes electronics school, he’s off to Germany. I’m real proud of him.”

“So am I, Red,” I said. I was envious, too. At least O’Dell knew where he was going, and was seeing some of the world while he was at it.

“Well, come see me sometime, Sonny,” Red said as he let me off at Coalwood Main. “Beaulah still cooks a great supper. Be proud to have you.”

I thanked Red most sincerely and then walked through the center of town, my mind churning. I walked and thought down to the Community Church, turned around, and walked and thought some more past the Club House and the Big Store. Off-shift miners on the Big Store steps watched me go by, then turn around and walk back again. One of them was Hub Alger, who was about my age and had decided to make a career of the mine. “You’re making us dizzy, Sonny, going back and forth,” Hub said.

“I’m trying to figure something out,” I replied, stopping to slouch against the wall.

He offered his pouch of Red Man. “Wanta chew?”

“No thanks.”

Pick Hylton, another miner, said, “What are you trying to figure?”

“How to get some money.”

He laughed, as did the others. “Sonny, you ever figure that one out,” he said, “you let us know!”

I sat with Hub and Pick and the others for a while, listening to their mine gossip, mostly about what foreman was doing what to whom. I got offered pretty much every kind of chewing tobacco known to mankind while I was there—Red Man, Brown Mule, Bull Durham, Mail Pouch, and 3 Black Crows—but I had never been a chewer. When the men weren’t talking, they were spitting into paper cups, given to them for free by Junior inside the drugstore. By their talk, the mine was busy, causing a lot of work to be done in a hurry, just as I had suspected. The men, I noted, studiously avoided mentioning Tuck Dillon, and I didn’t bring the subject up. After a while, Hub had to go and the others broke up the knot, and I went back to walking until I found myself standing in front of the Union Hall. I looked at it for a long time. That little corner of my mind that sent me off in tangents sometimes gave me a kick in the pants by recalling something my old buddy Roy Lee had once told me when I was complaining about this or that. “If you don’t want to get run over, Sonny, you need to get off the road.”

Maybe, I thought, it was time I got off one road but onto another—my own.

I took a deep breath, and marched inside the Union Hall. I found Mr. Dubonnet at his desk. He looked up. A slow grin spread across his weary face at the sight of me. I signed the papers he shoved in my direction. “Come back tonight,” he said. “It’s the weekly meeting. We’ll get you joined up.”

I
DIDN
’
T
go home. I sat on the rock wall in front of the Club House and dozed in the sun a bit and then wandered up and down Club House Row until at last it was seven o’clock, the time designated for the union meeting. The Union Hall glowed with lights. It had once been the Norfolk and Western train depot before the tipple had been moved to Caretta and the tracks through Coalwood Main had been taken out. It was a single-story wooden building with the trapezoidal-shaped roof characteristic of the old stations. The place quickly filled up with men sitting in a sea of folding metal chairs. In front of the room was a table with union officials around it. Mr. Dubonnet was there along with Mr. Mallett, the union secretary. Mr. Mallett, plump and rosy-cheeked, was a nice man, although his two oldest sons were dumb brutes with a history of trying to beat me up during strikes. He also had a wife who could arm-wrestle with Rocky Marciano and win.

I found a chair in the rear of the hall. A few men took note of me and fell to whispering. I pushed my thick, horn-rimmed glasses up on my nose and crossed my arms and settled back into my chair, just as if I had made a habit of attending union meetings nearly every day.

After a short while, Mr. Dubonnet gaveled the meeting to a start. There was some old business, a droning report of the minutes by Mr. Mallett, and then the first new business came up, which was the induction of new members. Mr. Dubonnet consulted his list. It was apparently a short one.

“Sonny Hickam,” Mr. Dubonnet intoned. “Come forward.”

As I walked down the aisle, I could feel the eyes of every man in the hall on me. There was a low murmur among them. As I stepped up to the table, Mr. Jocko Paraganni, a retired miner, rose and whispered something in my ear. I couldn’t make it out. “What?” I asked, but Mr. Paraganni just gave me a toothless grin.

In a ponderous tone, Mr. Dubonnet said, “Sonny Hickam, you have just taken the first step required to enter the brotherhood of the United Mine Workers of America. You are to keep the motto you’ve just been told by the sergeant at arms secret unto death.”

“The secret union motto seals you to us for life,” Mr. Mallett added.

“But I didn’t hear—” I began, but before I could finish my protest, I was interrupted by Mr. Mallett going on to say how important it was that I never, ever reveal the secret motto. When I started to say again that I still didn’t know what it was, I was drowned out by a rumble of agreement from the assembled men. I gave up, figuring maybe I could ask somebody later what it was. Of course, when I thought about it, if nobody was supposed to tell it, how would I ever find out what it was?

“Bobby Likens, please step forward,” Mr. Dubonnet intoned.

Bobby came up, gave me a terse nod, then faced the congregation. He had a square-jawed, bantam-rooster look to him that, along with wire-rimmed spectacles, caused him to resemble a young Teddy Roosevelt. His sandy hair was cut short in a crew cut, and he was wearing a smart checked shirt, trim khakis, and penny loafers, as befitted a true college boy. Mr. Paraganni leaned over and whispered into his ear, and Bobby looked puzzled. I suspected he hadn’t heard the secret motto any better than I. For all I knew, maybe that was what Mr. Paraganni intended.

Mr. Dubonnet had Bobby and me raise our hands and he read us the union oath. It sounded like Bobby and I were supposed to be henceforth more loyal to the union than anything else in the world, even the United States of America. Although I didn’t entirely go along with it, I went ahead and swore. A lot of the men in the building had gone off to fight in World War II and Korea. Their oath to the union hadn’t stopped them, and I figured it wouldn’t stop me, either.

“Welcome, brother,” Mr. Dubonnet said, and clasped my hand. “It’s good to have a Hickam back in the fold of the working man.”

“Hear, hear!” came the shout from the assembly.

“You’ve made a man’s decision tonight, Sonny,” Mr. Mallett said in a soft voice. “A very brave thing, I swan.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You may call me Leo.”

“We’ll hear from our new brothers now,” Mr. Dubonnet said, and nodded to me.

I was still slightly dazed by what I’d done. “I guess this means I won’t be beat up by union boys anymore,” I said weakly.

That got me a laugh, and I decided to quit while I was ahead. “I’m happy to be a member,” I mumbled, and then shut my mouth. Mr. Dubonnet nodded to Bobby.

Bobby shrugged, and said, “You all know me and my parents and my brother Jack. I grew up here, played football, basketball, and tennis, studied hard in school, and never gave anybody much trouble. Next year, I’ll be going to medical school, which is going to cost way more than my parents can afford. I’m here tonight because I need a job, not because I’m in love with the union. If anybody has a problem with that, let’s get it out in the open right now. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the mine.”

Bobby tightened his fists at his hips and waited out his audience. Nobody saw fit to argue with him. I was impressed by his willingness to stand up and say what he thought, even though I doubted the need for it. “Thank you, Bobby,” Mr. Dubonnet said dryly. “We appreciate your honesty.”

Bobby shook some proffered hands from miners sitting up front, and then he got around to saying something to me. “Thanks for taking the job, Sonny,” he said. “They weren’t going to open up the program unless they got two boys.”

“Do you think we did the right thing?” I wondered.

“I know I did,” he said, jutting out his jaw and pushing his spectacles up on his pug nose.

I pushed my glasses up on my nose, too, and then let out a worried breath. “My folks are going to kill me.” It came out pretty much a whine.

He inspected me. “You know, Sonny,” he said, “when I was a boy, I never hung around with you much, but I heard some things.”

“Like what?”

“Like you could be a bit of a wimp. I hope that’s not true. You and me, we’ve got to stick together this summer.”

“I’m no wimp,” I squeaked.

“In that case,” he said, “you might want to stop sounding like one.”

His duty done, at least by his lights, Bobby Likens strode up the aisle and out of the hall. I watched his back with narrowed eyes. I’d heard some things about Bobby Likens, too, like he could be a real arrogant snot. At least three good retorts to his crack about me being a wimp bubbled up into my brain, worthless now that he was gone.

Mr. Dubonnet gave me the elbow. “Got you told, didn’t he? Got us all told, for that matter.”

My heavy glasses had sneaked down my nose and I pushed them back into place. “I don’t need to be told anything,” I grumped, then went back to my chair in the rear of the assembly and tried to let my brain catch up with all that I’d done.

Mr. Dubonnet surveyed the audience and announced, “Bernie, now it’s your turn. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

Bernie Trulock walked up the aisle between the folding chairs. Bernie had grown up in Coalwood and I knew him fairly well. He’d married one of the Campbell girls, I recalled. He was a thin, limber-looking young man. Either he’d forgotten to shave or there was a mustache trying to bloom on his upper lip, too. “Doc here?” Bernie asked as he came up front.

“I’m here, Bernie,” came the reply. Doc Lassiter emerged from a corner of the room. Like everything and everybody in Coalwood, Doc looked older and smaller than I remembered. As always, he carried his black doctor’s bag.

Doc came to stand in front of the assembly. “Welcome, Doc,” Mr. Dubonnet said.

“We’ll see how welcome I am,” Doc muttered.

Bernie began a little speech wherein he declared Doc was an awful doctor, always had been, and went on and on about some money Doc had charged him for his wife being sick “with just a little old cold.”

“Thank you, brother,” Mr. Dubonnet said when Bernie wrapped up. During the entire verbal blistering, the doctor had listened with a passive expression on his face. In fact, he seemed downright bored by Bernie’s diatribe, enough so he’d even looked at his watch once as if he had an appointment, which, considering the demands on a coal camp physician, he probably did.

Mr. Dubonnet turned to the doctor. “Now, help me out here, Dr. Lassiter. It’s in the union contract that the company will provide your services to every man and family member if they pay five dollars a month per family. According to his pay stub, Bernie here has done that.” He fingered another piece of paper. “But it says here you’ve charged the B. Trulock family forty-seven dollars and eighty-two cents since April seventh. Would you please be so kind as to explain?”

Doc Lassiter pursed his lips, rocked in his polished black leather shoes. “I have a higher oath than even your union contract,” he said with just a trace of distaste for the last two words. “A doctor has a duty to his patient to keep treatment confidential.”

“Well, there ain’t no sense to this, Doc,” Bernie maintained, his voice rising an octave. “You gave my wife a little old shot or two, that’s all.”