Jubilee's Journey (The Wyattsville Series) (3 page)

In the winter of Jubilee’s first birthday, a plague of influenza came to Coal Fork. First folks stopped going to church; then children dropped out of school. The company store closed down for a full two weeks, and half the men who worked the mine stopped showing up. The men who did continue to work, the men like Bartholomew, carried heavier loads and worked longer hours.

The week before Christmas Ruth began coughing. “Just a cold,” she told herself and continued with her daily chores. After three days she could no longer hold food in her stomach and was weakened to the point where she had to sit and rest after walking across the room. Sitting in the straight-backed kitchen chair, she’d explain to Paul how to make the biscuits and stoke the stove.

When Bartholomew returned from the mine a warm dinner sat atop the stove just as it always did, but Ruth was in bed.

“Mama’s not feeling so good,” the boy told Bartholomew.

After a long day of hunching over a pick and shovel, Bartholomew was weary to the point where he could barely lift the spoon to his mouth and he had no strength to question the boy.

Day after day Paul cooked the food and tended to his baby sister. “You’re such a good boy,” Ruth gasped, but even speaking those few words exhausted her and she fell back into her pillow. 

Finally one night the boy went against what Ruth had asked of him. When Bartholomew sat down at the table, Paul said, “Mama told me I ain’t supposed to worry you with this, but she’s real bad sick. She don’t get out of bed no more.”

Bartholomew looked at the boy quizzically. “Since when?”

“Monday.”

“Monday?” Bartholomew repeated. “Why, that’s five days back!”

Bartholomew left the food and hurried into the bedroom. Leaning close to Ruth he placed his hand on her forehead. Despite the coal dust still clinging to his fingers, he could feel the heat of her skin.

“Good God!” he shouted. He turned quickly and headed for the door of the cabin. As he passed through the kitchen he gave Paul an angry glare. “You should’ve told me sooner, boy,” he said. “Your mama’s got the fever!” With that he slammed out the door.

Bartholomew ran three miles down the mountain, once sliding partway into the creek bed and twice stumbling to his knees. When he reached Doctor Hawkins’ house, every light was turned off and it was obvious they’d all gone to bed. Bartholomew pounded on the door with such ferocity that lights popped on in the house next door as well as Doctor Hawkins’ bedroom. “You’ve got to come right now,” he said. “Ruth’s come down with the fever!”

It seemed the doctor pulled trousers, boots, and a jacket over his pajamas at a pace too slow for even a snail. “Hurry,” Bartholomew urged repeatedly.

Riding in a car the return trip up the mountain took nowhere near as long as his journey down. But the moment they entered the house, Bartholomew could hear the wheeze of Ruth’s breath.

“Get a pot of water boiling,” the doctor ordered. Bartholomew waved a finger at Paul, and minutes later the boy had the coal fire blazing and a full pot of water atop the stove. Bartholomew followed the doctor to the bedroom and remained there, his hand clamped tight around Ruth’s. The doctor wiped Ruth’s face, arms, and legs with clean diapers dipped in icy cold water, and when the heat coming from her skin lessened he gave her pills to swallow and moved her to a sitting position so she could breathe in wisps of steam from the boiling water.

For three days Bartholomew did not go to the mine. He sat beside his wife repeating prayer after prayer, beseeching God to save her from the fate that had fallen upon so many others.  It was Paul who kept a pot of water boiling and brought it to his mama’s bedside hour after hour. It was Paul who cooked the food and fed the toddler who had begun to cling to his leg like a koala bear.

On the fourth morning when Ruth could sit up and sip a lukewarm broth and sassafras tea, Bartholomew returned to the mine. Although Ruth’s temperature went back to normal and she claimed that she felt almost as good as new, the truth was she had become frail and weak. For the remainder of that winter, Paul stayed home from school. Once Bartholomew had gone off to the mine, Paul did the cooking, cleaning, and tending to Jubilee. Ruth told him how to do each task, and he followed her directions so precisely that Bartholomew never thought to question the change.

When the weather finally turned warm Ruth could sit outside and a hint of color gradually returned to her cheeks, but the weakness never left. Her back ached constantly, and at times taking a breath seemed to require more effort than she could muster. Although she did small bits of cooking there was no garden that year and the care of Jubilee, who was not yet two, was left to Paul.

Jubilee learned to call Paul’s name whenever she wanted something. “All,” she’d say, holding out a cup that needed to be filled. She hadn’t yet learned to say the first letter of his name, and that’s when Paul began teaching her.

“Pa…” He said repeatedly. “Pa…”  Paul put his lips together, then rounded them open as he pushed the sound out emphasizing the P. “Pha..aul.  Now you try it.”

Mimicking what her brother had done, Jubilee scrunched her face, squeezed her mouth closed, then spit out, “All.”

That summer he worked on getting her to say his name but to no avail. He continued to be All. Paul read the same books Ruth had read to him and the words came quickly to Jubilee, but the sound of a P was never there. “All, leese lay wif me,” she’d say.

“You mean, ‘Paul, please play with me’?” he’d ask tolerantly. Then he’d stop what he was doing and follow along to see what she had in mind.

On the second Tuesday of September Paul did not return to school when the other children did. The week prior Ruth had collapsed on the kitchen floor as she stood there trying to slice apples for a pie. “Mama!” he’d screamed, then lifted her from the floor and carried her to the bedroom. By that time Ruth was thin as a skeleton, and her bones were lighter than those of a sparrow.

“Please don’t tell your daddy,” she begged Paul. “He’s already got enough worry.”

“But, Mama,” Paul argued, “maybe Doctor Hawkins can—”

“There’s nothing.” Ruth grimaced, remembering the blood-stained hankie she had tucked in the pocket of her apron.

That evening Paul told his daddy what had happened.

“Is that the honest truth?” Bartholomew asked. “Because your mama don’t look sick.”

“It’s just pretend, Daddy. That’s all. Mama puts pink stuff on her face so you won’t know. But when she coughs, blood comes out of her mouth.”

“Lord God,” Bartholomew said with a moan as he dropped down into a chair. “How long has this—?”

“A long time,” Paul answered tearfully. “A real long time.”

And Thus It Happened…

R
uth died of tuberculosis in early December. The hard part of winter that crusted the mountain with layers of ice and snow came early that year, and with it came the heartache of reality. On the day Bartholomew returned from work to find Ruth gone, he howled with such heartache that it shook the mountain. It was said that men working the night shift deep in the belly of the mine felt the earth tremble beneath their feet.

Paul was the one who explained the situation to Jubilee. Although the two-year-old girl’s eyes often grew teary and saddened, she was too young to accept that gone meant gone forever. For months afterward Jubilee would speak of Ruth as if she’d be back momentarily.

“Where’s Mama?” she’d ask, then look around with a puzzled expression.

“Mama died,” Paul would explain patiently. “She’s gone to heaven.”

“Oh. Okay,” Jubilee would answer. Then she’d turn back to whatever she’d been doing.

Unfortunately, Paul did understand. And at times the weight of understanding was more than a boy of eleven could carry. The day his mother breathed her last, he stumbled into the woods behind the house, sat on a felled tree, and gave way to all the fear and sorrow he’d held inside. It started with a silent stream of tears, then, feeding upon the ugly truth, it grew into heartbreaking sobs heard a mile away. Lost in a misery that went far beyond words, he sat with his head dropped between his knees and his back hunched. When he heard the small voice it startled him.

“Don’t cry, Paul.”

He lifted his head and gave a weak smile. “Jubie, you said Paul!”

She nodded and smiled. “Paul,” she repeated.

He pulled his baby sister to his chest and held her there for such a long time their heartbeats mingled and bonded them one to the other for the rest of their lives—however long or short that time might be.

With Ruth now gone, Bartholomew became a lost soul. He moved through the days putting one foot in front of the other and thinking about nothing. He rose early in the morning and went off to the mine. When he returned there was always a warm supper atop the stove, but both children were sleeping. On Sundays the mine closed so Bartholomew washed the coal dust from his hands and face, and with his children trailing behind the pitiful threesome trod the dirt road of the mountain and took their seats in the last row of the Pilgrim Faith Church. With the last “Amen” still hanging in the air, Bartholomew took Paul by the hand and started for home.

In the five years that followed he never really came to know his daughter. Some believe he held the child responsible for her mother’s death; others think his soul simply died along with Ruth and he no longer had a heart capable of love.

For the next two years, Paul was not in school. In places like Coal Fork, mining families came and went. Children were there one year, gone the next, so no one questioned the boy’s absence. It was simply assumed that his family, like so many others, had moved on to a place where there was more work, better pay, or less danger.

In those years Paul became both mother and father to Jubilee. He taught her to read and write, he taught her numbers, and explained how the money Daddy put in the sugar jar each week paid for food and clothes. He showed her how to make biscuits and pull weeds from the garden. Patiently and lovingly he shared with her all the things Ruth had taught him.

When Jubilee turned four, he carried the girl down the mountain on his back and returned to school. Jubilee was smaller than the other children but she was smarter, and in that first year she jumped from a group learning their ABCs to a class adding two-digit numbers.

Paul was not so fortunate. In the two years of being away, his earlier classmates had learned new things and moved on. It shamed him that he now had to sit with a group of children who were both younger and smaller.

One evening when Bartholomew came in from the mine, Paul was at the kitchen table working on long division problems he couldn’t seem to grasp. Bartholomew washed his hands, carried his supper plate to the table, and sat alongside Paul.

“Whatcha working on?” he asked.

“Long division,” Paul answered. “I just ain’t getting this.”

“Let’s see,” Bartholomew said. “Maybe I can help.”

Wide-eyed, Paul turned to his father. “You know long division?”

“I sure enough do.” A faint trace of fond remembrance twinkled in Bartholomew’s eyes. “You might not think it by what I am today, but I got a high school diploma.”

That evening father and son sat together and talked long into the night. Bartholomew told Paul how he’d left the mountain with intentions never to come back. “Once you get a speck of coal dust on your hands, you’re doomed forever,” he said remorsefully. “There’s no escape.”

For a short while Bartholomew forgot the sadness that was his constant companion and allowed the muscles in his face to relax. With an expression that was the closest he’d come to smiling in more than two years, he shared stories of the life he’d had in Virginia and how he’d met Ruth at a movie show.

“Your mama was with her sister,” he said, “and if Anita had her way, they’d have gone on without me. But the minute your mama and I set eyes on each other, we knew.”

The mention of an aunt Paul knew nothing about prompted him to ask, “How come Mama never spoke of Aunt Anita?”