The Coalwood Way

  I heard the back gate being unlatched and saw Dad coming in from the mine. He had on his old cowhide coat, his hat pulled down low on his head. He walked as if he was a hundred years old. “Where’d you get the Christmas greens?” he asked.

  “Sis’s Mountain,” I replied, pulling another bough from my bag.

  He yawned. “Where’s that?”

  I realized that I had never seen Dad up on Sis’s Mountain. Mom had been up there a bunch of times, but Dad had never climbed it. He’d just worn a groove back and forth to the mine. “Up there.” I nodded vaguely across the creek.

  He took a bough from my bag and held it up to his nose. “I used to get Christmas greens for our house in Gary. Emmett was working at the mine so I took little Clarence and up we’d go into the woods.”

  He was talking about my uncles, Clarence and Emmett. Clarence worked for Dad over at the Caretta mine. Emmett was at the Anawalt mine the last I’d heard. All three Hickam boys had gotten no farther than the mines, but Dad had managed to climb to the top of his profession, at least as far as they were going to let him go without a college degree. It was strange to think of Dad as a young boy, up in the mountains gathering greens for his family. I couldn’t imagine him any other way than the way he was.

  Dad handed the bough back and trudged off to the basement. I felt vaguely unhappy but didn’t know why.

  “Hey, little sister!” It was Roy Lee at the back gate. He had on his dancing clothes—a tight pair of black pants, a bright pink shirt, a sunshine-yellow jacket, and a black hat with a pink hat band and a feather in it. He gave me a knowing smile and looked at me out of the tops of his eyes.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Go get ready,” he said. “You want Ginger Dantzler. All right. You’re going to get Ginger Dantzler. I got her all scoped out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He grinned slyly. “She’s going to be at the Dugout tonight. Betty Jane Laphew, Sue Burnett, Cheryl Ridenour, and none other than your sweet little Ginger are all going by their little sophomore selves, no dates with ’em. I got it straight from my mom and she got it from Betty Jane’s mom. The field is wide open, Sonny. If you can’t beat a Welch guy out, you’re not half the boy I think you are. I still think you need to train for those Cape Canaveral women but, hell, you want little Miss Innocent, then what’s the Big Creek lovemaster for?”

  18

  THE DUGOUT

  “GOL, SONNY, DON’T you own anything besides overalls and flannel shirts?” Roy Lee asked. “You want Ginger to think you’re a hillbilly? And what is that smell? You smell like a Christmas tree!” After rifling through my closet and dresser drawers, he had finally settled on a gray crew-neck sweater I’d gotten for my birthday last year and a pair of khaki pants. They had a hole in one of the back pockets, but he said if I pulled the sweater down low enough, nobody would notice. He also dragged out my penny loafers. “You ever hear of shoe polish?” he demanded, and then spit on them and gave them a polish with his handkerchief. Then he got the bottle of Aqua Velva Dad kept in the medicine cabinet and splashed it all over me. Added to the pine aroma on me already, I figured I smelled like a cemetery on the Fourth of July.

  I probably could have borrowed the Buick, but Roy Lee insisted he wanted to be my chauffeur. “If things work out, you might need my backseat for some hot lovin’,” he said. Then he caught himself. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. Miss Sweetcakes. Well, you could hold her hand back there, anyway.” He shook his head, the Big Creek lovemaster foiled by the perception of innocence.

  We descended the concrete steps to the Dugout. The Dugout was the place to be on a Saturday night if you were going to Big Creek High. Ed Johnson, a janitor at Big Creek, had converted the basement of the Owl’s Nest Restaurant, just across the river from the school, into high school heaven, a warm room festooned with crepe paper and dim lights and the best rock and roll to be found anywhere in America, all played over Ed’s homemade sound system. There were benches around the walls of the basement, actually wooden pews from an old church he’d found somewhere. In the corner was a furnace and a pile of coal in front of it. You could tell how much you’d danced when you got home by the amount of coal dust stuck to your socks.

  Ed had decorated for Christmas. There was a wreath hung on the door with a Big Creek owl doll attached to it. Inside, crepe paper, green and white for the school colors, red for Christmas, was wrapped around the support posts. Ed liked to play a medley of fast and slow songs, thoughtfully planned to get his dancers in a romantic mood. If you were having an argument with your girlfriend, an Ed Johnson dance was the perfect place to get her willing to climb in the backseat with you before the night was out. At least, that’s what I’d heard. It had only worked for me once, last year with Valentine Carmina. Valentine was an older girl who had taken pity on me when Dorothy Plunk had thrown me over for my brother. It seemed like ancient history now. Valentine had gotten married as soon as she had graduated from high school, and then left to work in the Detroit car factories.

  Shadows danced around me as I paid my quarter and entered the dance floor. The place was hopping. Gradually, my eyes adjusted and I started recognizing individuals. Emily Sue Buckberry twirled past, doing the chicken with Bobby Gray. Emily Sue was the girl I always turned to for advice. She called herself my “philosopher’s stone.” I took her word for it. Bobby was our band drum major. Ordinarily, those two couldn’t be found anywhere near each other, but in the Dugout, it was almost like we became different people. Emily Sue spotted me and came over. “Who dressed you?” was what she wanted to know. Roy Lee volunteered that he’d done it. “Thought so,” she said. “You got a date for the formal yet?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Roy Lee said, craning his neck. “He’s going to ask Ginger Dantzler out.”

  Emily Sue frowned behind her big, round glasses. “Ginger? I thought she had a boyfriend over in Welch.”

  “Look!” Roy Lee said, elbowing me and ignoring Emily Sue. “There’s Ginger. Go after her, boy.”

  I had butterflies in my stomach. This was it. The big moment. All I had to do was walk across the dance floor and go up to Ginger, tap her on the shoulder, ask her to dance, and so charm her she’d throw over her rich Welch car-dealer boyfriend for me, even though she’d already bought a dress with the other boy in mind. Before I could take a step, a vision appeared in front of me. “Hi, Sonny.” It was Dorothy Plunk.

  My butterflies grew to small birds. “Let’s dance,” she said just as Ed began to play “All in the Game.” All glory is shadows, so they say, and there is no armor against fate. It was pure chance Ed was playing what I had always considered our song, Dorothy’s and mine, and then there she was, asking me to dance with her. She took my hand and led me out on the floor. I could almost hear Roy Lee’s teeth grind behind me.

  “There’s been so much I’ve wanted to tell you,” Dorothy said, settling into my arms. She looked at me with her wide, gorgeous, expressive, intelligent, seductive, heartbreaking, summer-sky blue eyes. I started to drown in them. “You’ve been the best part of my life at Big Creek,” she whispered in my ear as the music played. “I know that you hate me now but I will always remember when we were friends. I’ll never forget you—you sweet, wonderful person. I think you’re wonderful. No, I’ll tell you the truth, Sonny, although it scares me to say it. I love you.”

  I love you. I tried to reply, tried to get something out that made sense. Had I been able to take a full breath, I might have managed it. When the dance ended, I gulped about a dozen times, trying to get the dust out of my throat. “Dorothy, would you go to the Christmas Formal with me?” I croaked. Then I thought: My God, what have I done? I’d gone to the Dugout to fight for Ginger Dantzler and had ended up asking Dorothy Plunk to the formal! I was nearly certain I had lost my mind! The next words out of Dorothy’s mouth took the “nearly” out of my equation.

  She smiled sweetly. “Oh, Sonny,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I already have a date.”


  My heart bottomed out around my ankles. “But—but you said . . .” I caught Ginger’s eye. She was looking right at me, and I sensed she knew exactly what had just happened. She turned away.

  “I said I love you,” Dorothy said patiently. “And I do. Just like a brother.”

  Then Dorothy began dancing with another boy I couldn’t see because I had closed my eyes hoping when I opened them I would be living in some other universe.

  I felt Roy Lee’s urgent hand on my arm. I opened my eyes. To my utter disappointment, I was still on Planet Earth, December 12, 1959. “Get over there, you fool!” He pushed me toward Ginger. Ed was playing a fast song now. I fought my heart back into my chest and tried to make a reasonable appearance. I’m certain my smile was crooked. The first thing Ginger said when I got to her was “Dorothy Plunk is sure a sweet girl.”

  “Yeah. Uh, Ginger . . . uh.” I couldn’t find the right words. Dorothy had knocked them right out of me. I kept trying. “I know you already have . . . uh . . . the Christmas Formal . . . uh . . . Look, I know you already . . . uh . . .” I couldn’t make any sense out of anything.

  Ginger smiled, but I detected pain in her eyes. “Sonny, let’s dance. You look like you need to have a good time. I do, too. Just you and me. Come on.”

  We started to dance and just kept dancing, fast tunes, slow ones, ones in between. Gradually, I began to have fun. Ginger was a good dancer, rhythmic and smooth, her mother’s daughter. She danced close during the slow tunes, but not too close. We chattered away. High school and Coalwood gossip. Dreama, 11 East, my mom, her mom, our dads, her sister Eleanor Marie at Duke University making straight A’s, my brother Jim at Virginia Tech making the freshman football team, how much Betty Jane liked Jim and was going to someday pin him down. Finally, Ginger said, “Let’s get some air.” I agreed. We grabbed our coats and walked out on the steel trestle bridge that went over the Dry Fork River just across from Big Creek High.

  The air was bracing, and as we cooled off, Ginger huddled in closer to me. We stood in the middle of the bridge and contemplated the dark, gurgling river below. The Christmas lights from the Owl’s Nest Restaurant sparkled merrily off the tumbling water. Just beyond, our old high school sat behind its manicured football field. A single light on its roof beneath a giant wooden owl was its only illumination. A chuffing coal train passed behind us, the coal cars clacking on the track. The locomotive called a warning into the darkness, its whistle a long, low moan. The old trestle bridge shook beneath our feet as the vibration from the tracks soaked through. “Bound for the steel mills,” I said.

  “You’d think the ground would fall out from under us,” Ginger said, “with all the coal dug out.”

  I chuckled. “It doesn’t work that way. The mine roofs are held up with posts or roof bolts when they take the coal out.”

  “I’ve lived here my whole life but I don’t know a thing about the mines,” she said. “Have you ever gone down in one?”

  “Once,” I said. “Dad took me.”

  “I’d like to go. It doesn’t seem right, living here and not knowing what it’s like down there. Do you worry about your dad when he’s in the mine?”

  “No,” I said firmly. “Dad knows what he’s doing.”

  The last coal car finally trundled past followed by its red caboose. A man on its back platform raised his hand to us. “Sonny, are you mad at me?” Ginger asked. “Betty Jane said you wanted to ask me to the Christmas Formal and, to tell you the truth, I would go with you if I could. But I can’t. I promised Stuart I’d go to his formal at Welch High. It’s on the same night as Big Creek’s.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you.”

  “We’d have made a cute couple, though,” she said playfully. She found my hand.

  Her hand felt so small. “We would have, for sure.”

  “Sonny, we can still be friends, can’t we? I know boys think that’s a terrible thing to hear from a girl, to be just friends. But I’ve never had a friend who’s a boy. Would you be mine? Look out for me maybe?”

  I was in a fatalistic mood. “You ever want anything,” I said, “just call on me. I’ll be there like a rocket.”

  “I’ve got so many dreams. Could I just talk to you like we’ve been doing, share my dreams with you?”

  “Anytime you want. Never doubt it.”

  Ginger stood on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. “You ready to go back inside?”

  “You go on,” I said. “I’ll catch up.”

  “Please do,” she said. “I want to dance ‘Goodnight My Love’ with you.” That was the record Ed played at the end of every one of his dances.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said.

  Ginger walked back toward the Owl’s Nest and the Dugout. I watched her and then turned back to the Dry Fork River. I leaned on the bridge rail, listening to the low grumble of the coal train already miles down the valley. By now, I thought, it was probably passing Miss Riley’s house. I hoped Jake was visiting her.

  Roy Lee found me on the bridge. “How’d it go? Do you have a date?”

  “Better,” I said, falling in beside him and walking back to the Dugout to dance the last dance. I clapped him on his shoulder. “I have a friend.”

  19

  TRIGGER AND CHAMPION

  I DROVE MOM to church the next morning. Icicles hung from the roofs of the houses along Main Street Row, and I saw a thin layer of ice coating the creek when we went over the bridge that led to Coalwood Main. It didn’t look like it was going to get much above freezing all day. Snow clouds hurried overhead, spitting occasional, indecisive flurries.

  As soon as we walked into the church, I knew there was trouble brewing. A stranger to Coalwood would have never seen it. People coming early to the Coalwood Community Church tended to fill up the back pews first. Those coming in later sat in the middle. The latest had to settle for up front. Trouble, however, restacked the congregation. Mom took it all in as quickly as I did and said, “Oh, what a fine lot of Christians we have with us today!” Up front, the union families were clustered around Mr. Dubonnet and the Malletts. The foremen and their families were all in the back. When anyone came in, they immediately sorted themselves according to their loyalties. There was a no-man’s-land in the middle where Doc Lassiter, his wife, and three young daughters took their ease. “11 East,” Mom muttered. “It was only a matter of time before John Dubonnet started stirring his pot.”

  She passed up the foremen and walked up front and plunked herself down beside Mrs. Mallett. “Excuse me, Cleo,” Mom said, wiggling to find a spot beside the wide-bottomed woman. Cleo huffed but made room. Mr. Dubonnet turned and nodded to Mom. He looked amused. Mom glared at him.

  I sat with Sherman toward the middle where there were a lot of empty seats. The church was going through a series of trial preachers. The one before us, Reverend Schrieber, was a young man from somewhere up north. He had an accent that most of us found a little grating to our ears. When the choir finished with its opening hymns, he stood to deliver his sermon. It was based on the 49th Psalm, an obscure one to be sure, but acceptable. It could have been a pleasant little talk about being charitable, but, perhaps due to a mistaken belief that anybody in the church cared a thing about what he had to say, the boy preacher managed to turn it into a diatribe. “What about the starving people of Africa?” he cried out. “What about the starving people of Asia? How can it be that any one of us might have a dollar if our fellow man has none?”

  I looked around and saw about half the people inspecting the ceiling and the rest the floor. The truth was Coalwood people didn’t care a whit about anybody in Africa or Asia. What Reverend Schrieber’s congregation cared about was 11 East. The silence of his audience screamed it at him. 11 East. 11 East. But people ten thousand miles away who he’d never seen were so loud to Reverend Schrieber, he couldn’t hear his own people just a few feet away. The young reverend kept swinging at air. When he finished, he could look out across hi
s congregation and see a sea of nudging female elbows probing male ribs, heads rising and sleepy eyes blinking awake.

  Perhaps finally sensing the futility of his sermon, Reverend Schrieber sat heavily in his chair behind the pulpit and waved at the choir to sing. They did so, happily, while the young man held his head. I noticed he was wearing tennis shoes, strange footwear for a man of God.

  Ginger was in the choir and gave me a wink as she walked down the aisle after the service. She was cute in her maroon robe, I thought. Afterward, Sherman and I waited on the steps for Mom, who was having a word with Mrs. Dantzler and the teachers of the Coalwood school. “Another man got hurt on 11 East yesterday,” Sherman said.

  I hadn’t heard that. “Who?”

  “Mr. Franklin. Broke a finger.”

  The Mallett boys swung by close. In a mocking voice directed at me, Germy sang, “We’re going on strike. We’re going on strike.” I didn’t hate that kid but I came close.

  Mom was quiet on the way home. She was chewing on something, and it could have been anything. As we parked in the garage, she said, “I like Ginger, too.” I had a hunch she could have told me how many times Ginger and I had danced at the Dugout if I’d asked her.

  As we came into the kitchen, I remembered I wanted to know why Dr. Hale had visited her. “Was that a chinchilla coat Dr. Hale had on yesterday?” I asked, all innocence. I was just going to warm her up on the subject a little.

  She inspected me for a moment and then said, “He wanted to know if your dad would give him permission to work on that girl’s tooth.” At my startled look, she continued. “I just thought I’d save us both some time. That’s what you wanted to know, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am, pretty much,” I confessed. “Did Dad agree?”