Sky of Stone (17 page)

22

THE BET

I
T WAS
toward the end of June when I came off the man-lift into the bright sun, looking forward to a long, hot shower followed by supper with Rita, when, all of a sudden, Johnny’s hoarse voice boomed across the black dirt.
“What do you think you’re doing, Garrett Brown?”

Johnny took off, pushing through the miners queuing up at the shaft. Bobby and I looked at each other, shrugged in unison, and followed him until we arrived at a big flatbed truck beside the lamphouse. The truck had a stack of railroad ties on it, and beside them, a big man, his fists on his hips, stood laughing.

“Those are our ties, Garrett!” Johnny yelled. “Put ’em back where you found ’em!” The man only laughed even harder.

At the back of the truck stood a couple of boys I recognized as Delmar Crouch and Chinky Pinns, classmates of mine at Big Creek High School. Although they’d been star football players, they hadn’t been good enough to get a college scholarship. To them, that meant their choices were either the military or the mines. They had obviously chosen the mines, at least until the draft caught up with them.

Garrett Brown, the leader of the Caretta track-laying crew, looked like a tank with legs. “We ran out of ties on our end, Johnny,” he boomed, “so we came over to get some of yours. You boys are so slow, you don’t need ’em.”

“You must be doing a fair sloppy job to be going so fast, Garrett,” Johnny growled, his hands reflexively balled into fists.

Garrett laughed. “We know what we’re doing. Not like you and these college boys.”

A crowd was gathering around the back of the truck, not only miners coming off the man-lift but the ones who were supposed to be getting aboard for the next shift, too. Several foremen came over for a look, pushing their white helmets back on their heads and frowning at the delay.

“These boys can lay track as fast as any men in this mine,” Johnny said.

Garrett had a laugh like rolling thunder. “You willing to lay some money down on that?”

I recalled Johnny telling me that gambling had been the hardest thing he’d had to give up when he’d become a Holy Roller. Now I watched him hesitate, struggle for words. “Get thee behind me, Devil,” he finally muttered.

“Come on, Johnny,” a miner said. “You got to put your money where your mouth is.”

“What’s the bet?” asked another man, his face plastered with coal dirt.

“Johnny’s college boys here against Garrett’s football boys!” came the reply from a clean-faced evening-shift worker.

A chorus of hoots and cheers rose from the assembly. Even the foremen joined in. Everybody seemed to be having a lot of fun. Bobby leaned against the bathhouse wall, his arms crossed. His eyes were narrowed behind his glasses, taking everything in. In my estimation, he looked dangerous.

“How do we call it?” asked one of the foremen, Mr. Early Smith.

“We measure the main line,” Garrett said, “then figure out where the middle is. Whoever gets there first wins!”

“Ain’t a proper bet,” somebody said. “Look at Delmar and Chinky. Those puny college boys’d never have a chance!”

Bobby suddenly became energized. He jutted out his jaw and strode into the clearing of men behind the truck. “Who said that? Who said I was puny?” He surveyed the men. “Come on, let’s hear it.”

I sidled up next to him. “Leave it alone, Bobby,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth.

Bobby’s blood was up. “I say we can kick their tails, no problem,” he said, pushing his glasses back up on his nose with his finger.

I pushed mine back up, too. “Are you kidding?” I hissed. “Look at those Caretta boys!”

He ignored me. “You hear what I said?” he yelled. “We can beat anybody laying track in this mine!”

Johnny kept balling his fists and unballing them. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He looked as miserable as anybody I’d ever seen.

Garrett Brown jumped down from the truck bed. “You heard Bobby Likens, folks! He says he can beat us. I say he can’t. Let’s start tomorrow to find out! The hoot-owl shift can measure tonight to find the center and make a mark on a post. Then we race to it. How about it, Johnny?”

Johnny looked up abruptly, then opened one eye. It was fierce. “You know I’ve given up sin, Garrett Brown!”

“Come on, Johnny, this is just a little sport,” a voice urged from the crowd. “No evil going to be done. Why, we’re all churchgoers here, ain’t we?”

A flurry of nodding black-and-white helmets indicated that only God fearers, Bible-thumpers, and pew sitters were at the scene.

“My uncle will set up a line,” somebody said. It was Teddy Blevins, John Eye’s nephew. John Eye’s Snakeroot Hollow emporium would take a bet on nearly anything.

“A hundred dollars is my bet, Johnny,” Garrett said, and put out his hand. “That’s a personal bet between you and me. The rest of you men can set up your own game.”

Dollar bills and bags of scrip instantly appeared in various hands. Why the miners carried money into the coal mine was beyond me, but they did. Maybe I would’ve carried some, too, if I’d had any.

Teddy produced a little spiral notebook and pencil and started to write down the bets. A friend of his stepped up and took off his helmet. Pretty soon, it was filled with money.

Johnny was eyeing Garrett’s outstretched hand. When he didn’t grab it, Garrett took it back and spat in it and stuck it out again. “There, sealed with spit, Johnny, just like we did when you and me were kids over in Gary.”

Johnny’s jaw twitched. He was struggling mightily with himself, there was no doubt about it. Then, as if a surge of internal electricity got too much for him to hold it in, he spat fiercely into his right hand and grabbed Garrett’s big paw.
“Done!”
he said, a strangled look on his face.

“Done!” Garrett laughed, and the crowd cheered.

Bobby started laughing. I didn’t see what was so blamed funny. Johnny Basso was surely going to lose his one hundred dollars, and since I was the weak sister of our crew, it was probably going to be my fault. The fence-line could go a lot of days with that kind of Sonny Hickam jerky to chew on.

Delmar lumbered up and stuck his face in mine. I could smell the Red Man on his breath. “I’ll bet you six hundred dollars, college boy,” he said.

I’d surely heard him wrong. “Did you say sixty dollars?”

“Six hundred and not a dollar less,” Delmar growled. “Or are you too chicken?”

Money had started to mean a lot more to me now that I needed it for college. Grinning miners crowded around us. I had to say something. “One hundred dollars!” I blurted out, instantly regretting it.

“Chicken!” Delmar snapped. “Five hundred dollars, then.”

More men crowded around. I looked at Bobby, hoping he’d stop me, but he had adopted a cocky smile. I felt like belting him. He’d gotten me and Johnny into this! “Two hundred,” I said, gulping. What else could I do?

“All right, Mr. Chicken. Three hundred dollars and not a penny less!” Delmar spat in his hand and stuck it out while the crowd cheered. His arms were as thick as mine posts.

The sight of his hand did it. I couldn’t let such a challenge pass me by, no matter what it cost in blood or money. I spat on my hand and slammed my palm into Delmar’s.
“Done!”
I roared.

And then I looked up and saw Dad standing in the doorway of his office. He was watching me, his brow a puzzled furrow. I held his gaze for a long second, then raised my spit-soaked hand to him in salute.

Don’t ask me why.

23

JOHNNY’S TEAM

T
HE PHONE
rang once, and Mom picked up on the other end. I identified myself and was met with silence. I waited her out. “I have run out of words,” she said finally.

It didn’t surprise me that somebody had beat me to her with news of the bet. It didn’t matter who. “I know it was a dumb thing to do, Mom,” I said. “Floretta thinks maybe I need a psychiatrist.”

“He’d be working on the wrong end of your anatomy,” she replied.

I rushed to agree with her. Then I said, “Come home, Mom. I need you. Dad needs you. Coalwood needs you.”

“Do tell,” she said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “Certainly, it makes wondrous sense for me to leave the house I’ve always wanted in the clutches of these thieves who masquerade as contractors down here in the Palmetto State.”

Wisely, I resisted saying that I could have been there helping her with those contractors.

“I love you, Sonny,” she said suddenly.

“I love you, too, Mom, and I’m really sorry for being an idiot.”

“It might come natural, I don’t know,” she considered. “Your ground-daddy was always a gambler. One time he came home with a wad of cash in his pocket after a poker game and Mama found it and burned it all up in the cookstove. She said she’d have nothing to do with money that came from sin. Daddy started hiding his gambling money out in the barn after that. Good thing, too. He won a lot of it. Kept us kids in shoes. I always thought there was a bit of my daddy in you. I guess it’s finally come out.”

“I’ll resist my gambling urges from here on,” I promised fervently.

“That would be a good thing. Did you give Nate his bath?”

The change of subject was welcome. “Yes, ma’am. For a minute, he even knew who I was.”

I described the entire experience. Then she said, “Anything Mrs. Dooley wants, you give it to her.”

“I will,” I promised.

She said, “Anything I can do for you?”

“I already mentioned coming home.”

“Anything else?”

“Can you get my college money restored?”

“Your dad still holding to that?” She sounded nearly nonchalant about my desperate situation.

“He hasn’t mentioned it lately, so I guess so.”

“Maybe you’ll win your bet and have plenty of money for college.”

“What if I don’t?”

“I guess you should have thought about that before you gambled,” she said. And then, “What’s this about you hanging around with an older woman?”

I told her about Rita. I couldn’t help mentioning how wonderful I thought she was. “You should talk to Bobby Likens,” she said. “He always had a hand with the ladies. Listen to what he says.”

“I already have. He says I should run.”

“You don’t need to get serious about any girl right now, anyway,” she said. “Plenty of time for women later in your life.”

I fell silent. “Later in life” for Mom, I suspected, was when I was about forty years old.

She said, “There’s one thing you can do for me, Sonny.”

“Anything.”

“I’m just going to say it once.”

“I’m listening.”

“Win that bet!”

T
HE NEXT
morning, someone had erected a chalkboard and placed it near the entrance to the man-lift.
COALWOOD VS. CARETTA
was written at the top. A horizontal line represented the main line and vertical tick marks showed the relative progress of the two teams working toward the middle. Below the line was space for the relevant statistics: the number of rail sections each team changed out the previous shift, the average rail sections changed per shift, and the number of rail sections to go until the midpoint. At the bottom of the board was another statistic that was pretty depressing: Since the changing out of the track had begun, Garrett and his boys were changing out a steady average of eight rails per shift. We were averaging a little more than five. We were well behind before we’d even got started.

Aboard the man-trip on the way in, Johnny got Bobby and me squared away. “Okay, boys. We’ll go as fast as we can but we ain’t gonna skimp on nothing! The main line’s gotta stay safe.”

“But what about Garrett?” I demanded. “Who’s going to keep him honest? He and his boys will throw their track down as fast as they can.”

“Every night, your daddy sends an inspector to see what we’ve done,” Johnny said. “He’ll be looking at Garrett, too, don’t you think he won’t. Garrett’ll get caught if he tries any dirty tricks.”

When we got to our section, Bobby drew me aside while Johnny was off praying. “We’ve got to put our heads together and figure out how to win.”

“Why? You didn’t bet anything.”

“I couldn’t, Sonny,” he explained. “I need every penny for medical school. Why do I have to keep reminding you? That doesn’t mean I don’t care about this bet. My reputation is at stake.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what else to do except work like the Devil.”

“All I’m saying is we need to think about it.”

“You boys through praying?” Johnny demanded.

“Amen!” we yelled back in unison.

He worked his way to us, then thrust a spike puller in my hands and a shovel in Bobby’s. The expression on his face was fierce. “Let’s go!”

“Wait a second, Johnny,” Bobby said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to be more efficient.”

A scowl crossed Johnny’s face. “You mean like a time study?”

Bobby snapped his fingers. “A time study! That’s what we need!”

“What’s a time study?” I asked.

“It’s a waste of time, that’s what it is,” Johnny growled.

“No, it isn’t!” Bobby replied. “A time study is where you break a job down into its different elements, then you put a stopwatch on them. You study the results, figure out where the delays are, and then you know how to do the job faster, cheaper, better.”

“It’s some lazy bum watching a man work, that’s all it is,” Johnny groused.

“Can you get us a stopwatch?” Bobby asked him.

Johnny wasn’t giving in. “The union’s against time studies. They burden the working man.”

“But they’re legal in this mine, aren’t they?”

Johnny reluctantly nodded. “I guess.”

“I can get a stopwatch,” I volunteered. “Rita will get me one from the engineering office if I ask her.”

Bobby hesitated. “I don’t want you to get into debt with her.”

“Mind your own business. Do you want me to get that watch or not?”

“Of course I do.”

“If I get it, I want to operate it.”

“It was my idea,” Bobby groused.

“Maybe so, but it’ll be my stopwatch.”

Johnny drew his bandanna and honked into it. “Boys, I’m not gonna let any one of you stand around with a stopwatch. I’m telling you, it would be a waste of good time!”

“It’s scientific, Johnny,” I said.

“See if that scientific spike puller fits your hand,” Johnny replied. “And you”—he pointed at the tool Bobby was holding—“get busy with that scientific shovel!”

“Johnny . . .”

“Let’s go, boys!
Go, go, go!
”

Bobby and I went. We pulled spikes, rolled the rails to either side, then started digging out the old ties. Then we put the rails back in place and spiked them in, one at a time. Bobby kept thinking. “How about we skip lunch?” he proposed. “We can eat while we work.”

My stomach growled at the idea of missing a meal, but such was my ardor to win the bet, I said, “I’ll go along with that.”

Johnny just kept wrenching. Bobby and I rolled the rails into place, and Johnny used a level to make sure they were set correctly. “Good” was all he said.

Bobby, on his knees, swung the hammer to drive in the new spikes. “We could use—
umph
—another—
umph
—hammer,” he said, grunting with each swing. “That way—
umph
—we could get—
umph
—these rails in twice as fast.”

Johnny finished with another fishplate, threw the wrench down. He came trudging over, bent under the roof. Bobby and I stopped what we were doing and looked at him, our lights two bright circles on his sweaty face. “All right, boys,” he said quietly. “All right.”

“Johnny, we don’t mean to be disrespectful,” Bobby said.

Johnny held up his hand, a signal for Bobby to be silent. “Sonny, can you get a stopwatch, like you said?” he asked.

“I can.”

Johnny pivoted, walked a step, pivoted again. “And you boys want to skip lunch, work right through it. That right?”

“Yes, sir,” we chorused.

“And you want another hammer?”

“Yes!”

“You really want to beat those Caretta boys, don’t you?”

“Yes,” we chorused again.

“Why?” He looked from Bobby to me and back again. “This is important. Why do you want to beat them?”

Bobby and I looked at each other, our lights in our eyes. I was about to blurt
So we can win our bet!
but, fortunately, Bobby answered first. “To prove to everybody in Coalwood and Caretta that we’re as good as any other miner in this mine, that’s why,” he said. Then he added, “Even if two of us are college boys.”

Johnny nodded. “You’re right, Bobby. Sonny, do you understand that? It’s not the bet. It’s because they’ve said we’re less the men than they are. That’s why we’re going to beat them.”

“I understand,” I said. “We’re a team.”

“We’re Johnny’s team,” Bobby amended. “You tell us what to do, Johnny, and we’ll do it.”

Johnny wiped his forehead with his sleeve, leaving behind a sweaty black smear. “Go get your buckets. Eat when you like, drink when you like, but this team don’t stop for nothing!”

“Yes, sir!”
Bobby and I went off at a run.

T
HAT NIGHT
I sat down with Rita at supper. She looked as exhausted as I felt. She fiddled with her food while I tossed mine down. As usual, I was starving. Finally, I asked, “Could you get me a stopwatch? We want to time-study ourselves while we’re laying track and see if we can get more efficient.”

She studied me tiredly, then said, “Sure.” If there was any enthusiasm in her voice, I failed to hear it. I knew she’d been keeping awfully long hours at the engineering office.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Did you know John Eye has a betting line on me, too?” she asked.

“No. What’s the bet?”

“Whether I’ll go into the mine this summer or not. Odds are ten to one against me, so I hear.”

I would have put the odds at about a million to one, but I was smart enough not to say it out loud. Sometimes a leisurely tongue can save the unwise.

“I put a hundred dollars on myself,” Rita advised, leaning forward so no one else could hear. The top button on her canvas shirt was undone. I got a whiff of the perfume that seemed to escape from that shadowy, warm place, and my head swam.

“How about we help each other win our bets?” she asked.

I heard her question, but it didn’t register. I was just trying to breathe normally.

“How about it?” she asked again.

I looked up from my heavenly vista and almost immediately sank into her eyes. “How about what?”

“We help each other.”

Help each other?
I was willing to help Rita Walicki do anything she wanted to do! Why, I’d climb the highest mountain, swim the widest sea, walk across the driest desert, endure the—

“Sonny?”

“Huh?”

“What do you say?”

“Yes!”

“Good,” she said with a wink.

I puzzled over her wink for a moment, but then decided to just enjoy it. “Did you know there are mines in the Andes, high up in the clouds?” she asked. “I want to go there, engineer those mines. Then I want to go to the Australian outback. There’s coal there, and also copper, iron, and aluminum. You name it, I’ll mine it.”

“I’d like to do that, too,” I said.

She looked at me approvingly. “Would you?”

“We could do it together,” I said, starting to warm to the concept. “We could start our own company.”

“A consulting company,” she said. “But I thought you were going to be an aerospace engineer.”

Before I could answer, hard footsteps thudded into the dining room. It was Jake Mosby. He came over, nodded to Rita, and said, “Just thought you ought to know, Sonny. We’ll start testimonies soon. I’d like to talk to you before we do.”

“Why? I don’t know anything about what happened to Tuck,” I said.

“Background is all I’m looking for,” he replied. When I didn’t respond, he rocked in his boots and then said, “Rita, you and I need to have a conversation, too.” He glanced at me. “This isn’t about the testimonies. It’s about the company festivities on the Fourth of July.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Are you asking me for a date, Jake?”

I gulped.
Was he?

“Not hardly,” he said to my everlasting relief.

She shrugged. “Call Carol and make an appointment. You know how much in demand I am around here.”

He laughed. “You always have a comeback. You’re a good kid, Rita. I enjoyed that summer you came to the farm, even though you rode our horses pretty hard.”

“Why do anything halfway?”

“That’s one thing about you. You’ve never done anything halfway in your life. That’s why I think you’re going to be interested in my idea for the Fourth.” Jake cast his gaze my way. “Sorry, Sonny. Not for union ears, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t care, anyway,” I lied.

“Talk to you soon, Rita,” he said.

“Can’t wait.” Her voice, I was happy to note, was as cold as a block of ice.

Thoroughly dismissed, Jake withdrew, sitting down with Victor and Ned.

“Amazing. He’s still jealous,” Rita told me in a low voice. “We used to race and he never beat me, not one time, even though he had the faster horse. He wasn’t willing to smack his horse’s rump. You have to get their attention, make them hurt a little. He never could understand that. He just wanted his horse to like him.” She shook her head as if Jake Mosby were the dumbest creature on earth.

I nodded in agreement with her, although the truth was I was more sympathetic to Jake’s position. I spent the remainder of my supper with Rita in silence, mulling over my misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and miscalculations as regards Miss Rita Walicki, all the while believing them to be utter truths.