Sky of Stone (7 page)

“I gave you a shot, too, Bernie,” Doc said, his voice becoming a little hotter.

“Yeah, but I warn’t even sick!” Bernie blared. “You’re just trying to make money off me on the side, you old fool! I ought to kick your butt!”

Mr. Mallett had been writing in a notebook as hard and fast as he could go, but at Bernie’s threat, he stopped and looked up sharply. Mr. Dubonnet fixed his mouth into a straight line. “Bernie, there will be no threats here. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this.”

“Aw, crap, John,” Bernie growled. “This old quack’s trying to steal my money. That’s the long and the short of it.”

Doc retained his dignified posture. “My answer remains the same. I have a duty of confidentiality.”

The door slammed in the back of the hall and everybody turned to look. It was Mrs. Trulock. Her skirt swished as she walked down the aisle. I noted she wore brown and white shoes—saddle shoes as they were called—probably left over from her high school days and indicating that money was in short supply in the Trulock household. She went all the way up front and then turned around and faced us. “Go on, Doc,” she said. “You tell it. You got my permission. Tell it all.” She glanced at Bernie. “Go on, tell our shame.”

“What you talking about, woman?” Bernie growled.

Mr. Dubonnet quieted the resulting hubbub from the assembly. “If there’s something to tell, Doc,” he said, “I think you have Mrs. Trulock’s permission.”

Doc shrugged. “I am treating Mrs. Trulock for a venereal disease,” he said. A low murmur shot through the hall. He waited until it ran its course. “Mrs. Trulock asked me to give Bernie a shot and tell him it was for the flu. She also told me to charge what a doctor in Welch would charge for the shots, said it wasn’t right to take the company for something this wretched.”

While Doc was talking, Mrs. Trulock’s hands gradually crept to her face. After he was done, she sobbed in them while Bernie stood stock-still, white as a ghost. “Woman,” he said.

“If you don’t stay out of those damn old whorehouses in Cinder Bottom,” she said from within her cupped hands, “you’re going to kill us all with disease, Bernie Trulock.”

“Woman,” he said once more, but his hands went to his face, too.

It was so quiet in the hall that all I could hear were the choked sobs of the Trulocks. Some of the men looked particularly grim, but whether it was for the Trulocks or Doc or from fear that maybe they had picked something up in the Keystone houses, too, I couldn’t say. I felt ashamed and embarrassed, as if I were listening in on a family argument.

Mr. Mallett had kept his pencil poised during all this but now slowly started writing again. Mr. Dubonnet was the first to speak. “Bernie,” he said quietly. “I think you have your answer.”

Bernie took his hands away from his face and made to touch his wife on her shoulder, but she twitched away and then walked back down the aisle. The door slammed behind her. Bernie pulled himself out of his slouch, stood as straight as he could. “Yeah” was all he said, and then he followed his wife.

A long silence followed, again broken by Mr. Dubonnet. “Doctor Lassiter, I’m afraid we owe you an apology,” he said stiffly. “You have always been a source of great comfort to our brotherhood, willing to get out in all kinds of weather to see to our pain. On a personal note, I would trust my health to you quicker than to any doctor alive at the fanciest hospital in the world. Coalwood is lucky to have you. I promise you this union will not trouble you again.”

Doc Lassiter nodded, picked up his bag, and made his way down the aisle. Before he got far, a man started clapping and then everybody joined in. Doc Lassiter did not acknowledge it. He just left the Union Hall with a straight back, his black bag swinging.

Then I thought of something and chased after Doc. I caught him at the edge of the road. He eyed me carefully. “Well, Sonny Hickam, I thought I’d seen everything until I saw what you did tonight.”

“Yes, sir. Can you get me out of it?” I was half serious.

“Not at all. I think it’s just the thing for you. Turn the boy into a man, eh?”

“Can I be a man after I’m dead? First, Dad’s going to kill me, and Mom won’t be far behind.”

That made him laugh. “Nothing happens to anybody which he is not by nature fit to bear.”

I hoped he was right. “Doc, I have a question for you. How did Nate Dooley break his wrist?”

His grin disappeared, replaced by a frown. “Sonny,
despite what you just saw and heard, I don’t discuss my patients with anyone not in their immediate family.”

Although Doc sounded adamant, the fact is I sincerely doubted him, due to personal experience. I had once fallen into a hole full of scrap steel and suffered a deep cut, nearly bleeding to death in the process. Doc had sewn me up, but before I made it home, most of the town knew every detail, down to how many stitches I’d received.

“I just want to know how he broke his wrist, sir, not anything else,” I said judiciously.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” the doctor said icily.

“Why?”

He cocked his head at me. “You know, boy, just because you’re a member of the union doesn’t give you the right to question your betters out on the road at night. I said I can’t help you because if you must know, I didn’t set Nate’s wrist. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a baby due to arrive any minute up Snakeroot Hollow. It’s Estelle Franklin’s first and she’ll need some hand-holding.”

And with that, Doc marched off, leaving me scratching my head.

9

THE CLUB HOUSE

I
OWED
Dad the courtesy of telling him what I’d done, so I tried to stay awake until he came home. I watched the
Tonight Show
until I fell asleep on the couch. Although I was convinced that I mostly tossed and turned all night, somehow Dad came home, turned off the television set, and left again without me knowing it. Surely that meant he didn’t know I’d joined the union. Otherwise, he’d have woken me up and yelled at me about it. No matter what, the yelling was going to be long and loud when it came, not only from Dad but Mom, too, and I just wanted to get it over with.

My breakfast—Wheaties soaked in sour milk—didn’t help my mood, but I forced myself to eat some of it, then headed down to Coalwood Main to start the processing with the company. I felt like I was one of those buffaloes I’d seen in the cowboy movies that got started on a stampede and went right over a cliff. Just as I’d never gone to work in a mine, the buffalo had probably never jumped off a cliff, either. Who knew for certain the result? Mr. Buffalo and Mr. Sonny Hickam just went ahead and kept going.

My first stop was Olga Coal Company’s administrative office beside the Big Store. I went into the door marked
GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT.
This was Mr. Bundini’s office. Carol Todd DeHaven, Mr. Bundini’s secretary and assistant, looked up from her desk as I entered. She knew exactly why I was there and immediately produced all the forms I needed. She asked if she could see my freshly inked union card. “Never thought I’d see this day,” she remarked, looking the card over. “What did your daddy say?”

I told her I hadn’t seen him since I’d joined the union. “Well, he knows about it,” she said. At my raised eyebrows, she said, “He has to sign off on every man coming to work.”

While I filled in the necessary forms, I got the chance to reflect anew on what I’d done and also wonder why Dad had let me do it. I started hoping that maybe it was all a big joke and maybe Dad and Mr. Dubonnet would suddenly step around the corner, laughing at me. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. The next thing to do, Carol said, was to go to the Big Store. She gave me a list of equipment I needed. “I have to buy all this stuff?” I asked. It was a revelation that the company didn’t provide all the things a man needed to work in the mine. I’d never thought about it. “I don’t have any money,” I confessed. In fact, I was $135.78 in the hole, which was the reason I’d gotten into this mess in the first place.

“The store will give you credit and deduct it from your paycheck,” Carol answered with a reassuring smile.

I went into the Big Store and back to the counter where the mine equipment was kept. Mrs. Anastapoulos, the clerk, gave me an uncertain look when I appeared and showed her my list. “I’ll need credit,” I said.

“What new miner don’t?” she answered, and then sent me to the office window to get signed up.

“You want some cash money, too?” the clerk asked.

“How about one hundred and thirty-five dollars and seventy-eight cents?”

He laughed, although I wasn’t sure if he knew what the joke was. He probably did, though, considering the efficiency of Coalwood gossip. He gave me twenty dollars in scrip, company money good for spending only at the company store.

Mrs. Anastapoulos had all my stuff laid out when I got back. “I already have some hard-toe boots at home,” I said, hoping to save a dollar or two.

“How old are they?” When I said I didn’t know, she replied, “Well, these boots just got approved by the union, so they’re the kind you have to have.”

I knew better than to argue, so she wrote me up for the new boots, a pair of leather gloves, a black helmet, and a cylindrical aluminum lunch bucket. She showed me how the lunch bucket worked. The top part held the food, the bottom part the water. “You’ll need work clothes if you don’t have any,” she continued, and then dragged out two pairs of khaki pants and shirts. She seemed to know my size. She wrote up the ticket. “Take it to the clerk,” she ordered.

I looked at the amount.
Sixty-two dollars.
When I came outside, a huddle of miners sitting on the store steps saw me and what I was carrying and started singing:

You load Sixteen Tons, whadaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

“You’ll be sorry,” Pick and Hub and the others chorused.

“Don’t I know it,” I muttered under my breath.

At the house, I went upstairs, put down my purchases, and sank down on my old bed. I looked around and it felt as if the room were condensing all around me. I had the sudden opinion that I was going to go crazy if I stayed there. But where could I go? Then I thought,
I’ll call my mother, beg her to come and save me!
She will fix everything! Why, she’ll probably even sock John Dubonnet in the nose for getting me into this mess!

But I knew I couldn’t do it and it wouldn’t help, even if I tried. When Mom found out what I’d done, she would be more likely to order me murdered than take up for me. She’d probably have Dad killed while she was at it. We were both in trouble with her, that much I knew. But that would show her what kind of trouble we were capable of without her, wouldn’t it?
Maybe she’d even come home!
But my next thought was in the opposite direction. I was so thoroughly messing up, she would never come back, or want me with her in Myrtle Beach, either. Was it possible for me to make things any worse? Oh, yes, indeed. That I could always do, and so I did.

I looked out the window, toward the tipple, a wisp of vapor rising from the shaft, and gathered my courage. It was time to act like a man, even if I wasn’t one. Bobby Likens’s crack about me being a wimp was still digging at me. It was time to stand up and be counted, even if I didn’t know all the numbers.
All right,
I thought,
I’m a miner, so I might as well live like one, too.
I gathered my few pitiful things in a cardboard box and marched out of the house and headed down Main Street. This time, nobody picked me up. It was as if the passing drivers knew this was a journey I had to make on my own.

I arrived at the Club House, climbed up the stone steps, and went into the high-ceilinged foyer. The breeze from opening and closing the door caused the massive crystal chandelier overhead to tinkle. The warm aroma of fried food filled the air. Mrs. Floretta Carbo, a stout colored lady, emerged from the kitchen. She was the Club House manager and I knew her fairly well. She was in the choir at the Mudhole Church of Distinct Christianity, the Reverend Julius “Little” Richard’s church. When I told her why I was there, she gave me a hard look but didn’t argue. “This way,” she said, her hands in the pockets of her starched white apron.

She led me up the stairs to the third floor and then down a long, dark hall. She produced a key from her apron and opened one of the heavy oaken doors to reveal a small room with a white porcelain sink, a narrow bed with a thin mattress, a round wooden table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs. A small window looked out on the road between the Club House and the Community Church. Down the hall, she said, was the bathroom, which included a bathtub and a shower.

“Rent is twenty-six dollars a month,” she said, “which includes breakfast and supper. Breakfast is served six to eight. Supper’s six to seven. Give me your bucket and I’ll pack your lunch for an extra dollar a day. Anytime you’re here, you get hungry, the kitchen’s yours. Leftovers will be in the fridge or on the counter beside the stove. I’ll do your laundry, a dime for each piece unless it’s a pair of coveralls, and they’re a quarter. There’s a laundry bag in the closet with your room number on it. Leave it in the foyer on your way out. I don’t make up your room. Make your own bed every day and keep your room straight. I’ll be leaving you clean sheets every Tuesday, put the old outside the door that morning. There’s a broom, a mop, a vacuum cleaner, and some dust rags in the closet down the hall. That’s it. You want the room?”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“You want me to pack your lunch?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She studied me, her hands gathered in her apron. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

I fiddled with the hand mirror on the tiny table by the sink. “No, ma’am. I just know I’m doing it.”

“You want me to tell you what I think?” When I shrugged, she said, “Quit now before you get hurt. I know that’s what your mother would want. She and I have always been special friends, I mean as best we can, her being the mine superintendent’s wife and all.”

“She’s always spoken highly of you,” I said, which happened to be true.

“What do you weigh?” she demanded. “A hundred and forty pounds or so, I’ll bet. Those jobs they do down there, they ain’t easy. Takes some heft to do them.” Her face clouded. “My mister was killed in the mine. His motor flipped and crushed him. Everywhere you look, there’s some tight place where you can get a leg or an arm took off.”

I knew she was right. “My Poppy—my granddad—got both his legs cut off in the mine,” I said.

“There you go. You’d better quit. It’s not hard. Just walk across the road and tell Carol DeHaven you made a mistake.”

“I swore an oath to the union,” I said, reflecting on how nearly everybody who gave me advice, from college deans to the Club House manager, was always after me to quit. Apparently, I was making a career out of being wrong.

Mrs. Carbo wasn’t done. “The union won’t protect you from falling slate and mountain bumps,” she said.

“No, ma’am, I guess not. But I can’t quit. I have to keep going.” I started to tell her why and even had my mouth open to do it, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t certain of the reason myself. It was all a mush.

She cocked her head and sighed. “You may call me Floretta,” she said. “If you’re going to be a working man, might as well call me like they do.”

“Yes ma—Floretta. Thank you.”

She gave me a long study, maybe thinking to give me more advice, but then she shook her head and led the way back downstairs. She handed over the guest registry and a chit for a month in advance and I signed them both, leaving me in debt to Coalwood for another twenty-six dollars not even counting future laundry and lunches. I had been in town for less than a week but I was on a roll, not all that difficult when you’re headed downhill.