DeDe Nettles was a pistol. At thirty-nine, she carried a .38
Smith & Wesson and could shoot straight. When she slipped it into the
pocket of her apron it felt heavy, like a ball and chain. Yawning, she shuffled
out to the back porch for some fresh air. She stretched and leaned over the
railing hearing … she wasn’t sure. “Could be raccoons trying to get to the
chickens.” Voices—someone’s in the yard. “The whole world’s gone crazy.”
She scurried back into the kitchen
and locked the door behind her. It was the first time she’d turned that lock
since she’d married Thirl and moved into the house on Nicholas Street. After
pouring another cup of coffee, she walked to the front room to rest in her
overstuffed chair. A chair Thirl had bought her for Christmas. He brought it in
on the train from Charleston. The same year he purchased their first
refrigerator and added the bathroom to the back of the house.
Before she sat down she smacked the
chair. An impulse from living in a coal camp, the dust that flew out of it
determined her next cleaning day. She was a small woman and felt like a child
each time she sunk into her chair. The first time she took a seat and saw her
reflection in the windows, she laughed and said she looked like a redheaded
kewpie doll with no legs.
Life’s sorrows showed in her brown
eyes, Thirl had told her. DeDe had seen first hand the hardships of mining life
on women, and she was no exception. Every woman she knew aged quickly. DeDe’s
smiles were few and far between, reserved only for special moments, and mostly
for James Curtis. Up close her skin was a vague meshwork of lines and wrinkles,
like the peel of an orange, only smoother. Petite, but often the largest presence
in the room, her physical size often went unnoticed. She was bound to protect
her own with as much commitment and passion as Joseph Bradley when he decided
to build his coal empire in Widen.
Thirl teased her, how she could
testify about her sanctification one night and shoot a perfect game of pool the
next. DeDe recruited every child on Nicholas Street for Sunday school. She
never missed a church service. And everybody knew she loved her boy. James
Curtis was her prize possession.
For all her religious dreams,
visions, and premonitions, she headed the ladies prayer group every week,
specializing in prayer for the safety of miners. Some folks said she had the
“gift.” Her grandma had it, and so did her mama. A sense of knowing the future,
of hearing what could not be heard by normal folk. A direct line to the
Almighty. She didn’t gossip, but when she spoke—folks paid attention.
DeDe’s hand slipped into her
pocket; her fingers clasped the cold metal of her gun. With her other hand she
reached out to the bookcase beside her chair and lifted the ancient picture of
her grandfather, turning it in the dimly lit room, tilting it this way and
that, gauging the severity of his lifeless face. He was God’s minister, and yet
she wondered if he heard the mine scream before his head snapped toward the
explosion and the rumble of the fireball—before he was incinerated. Or maybe he
never saw it coming. Maybe he was buried by tons of earth without warning.
Maybe his bones were crushed, his organs split open, his senses annihilated,
his life wiped out before he had a chance to understand what was happening. But
she doubted it.
~~~
The coal camp sprawled over the
bottom of the hollow some sixty miles northeast of Charleston, the state
capital. The road to Widen was hilly, twisting and narrow. A broken road with
ruined shoulders and potholes. A yellow sign at the top of the steep hill that
dropped into Widen warned, HILL. Somebody scratched it into the word, HELL.
At the bottom, all along its length
were small houses, occasionally a large one, set back from the road at the edge
of the mountain. A twisting octopus of streets swirled through the valley, not
the typical plaid grids of flatland towns. Although the valley was wide, as
they typically were in that part of the country, one road and one railroad led
in and out of town. Thunderous coal and passenger trains rode the rails and
filled the valley with the sound of screeching brakes and shrill whistle stops.
A loose-plank bridge near the Grille rumbled with a clap of thunder each time a
vehicle drove over the creek below that collected beer bottles, candy bar
wrappers, and cigarette butts. No streets or alleys were paved; that was only
for folks in cities like Charleston and Huntington. Widen’s streets were
covered in slag coal or dirt.
The town was alive with coal. The
Company’s huge gob piles, ominous heaps of mine waste with their guts ablaze,
filled a person’s nostrils with the pungent odor of struck matches. Over thirty
feet high, the graceful slopes of loose coal and sulfurous dirt glowed a soft
orange. The tipple’s steam rose like the breath of a monster. A place where
coal was screened and loaded into railroad cars, the tipple demanded the town’s
attention and tribute. Its silo, locomotive shed and repair shops hugged the company’s
railroad yard.
A company town; Joseph Bradley and
The Elk River Coal and Lumber Company owned it from tipple to barbershop.
Despite the company store, school, post office, bank, movie house, medical
dispensary, YMCA, baseball park, and 310 dwellings, Widen was first and
foremost a coal mine.
The
trees may not have been straighter in Widen, the grass greener, the sky bluer
and the mountains more purple and majestic, but when the mine was producing, it
often seemed so. On fine mornings the locals liked to tell each other that,
indeed, God covered His black gold with these hills, this place—first.
But
the fine mornings had ended. During the first weeks of September after the mine
closed down, the town’s inhabitants remained behind closed doors, clothed in
fear. The school closed, the Grille closed, and even the post office closed the
day after the strikers dug in and parked their cars, sons, and guns at the top
of the road into Widen.
~~~
Inhaling the hills of his childhood, James Curtis watched Odie
Ingram skirt the timber at the far end of the east pasture mounted on a young,
edgy bay colt. Huge maples, oaks and hemlocks towered over everything, standing
still in full foliage on the mountain behind his farm.
Odie worked hard in the mines and
he worked his horses hard. James had been welcome once, but he had no idea what
Odie would say to him now that they were on opposite sides.
James leaned his shotgun against
the fence. He knew most of the younger men had sided with the strikers—he
wasn’t taking any chances. They were boys he’d gone to school with, like Cole
Farlow. Cole was known for his hot head and short fuse. It stuck in James’
memory the day Cole spouted off that if there were ever a strike, he’d shoot a
kiss-ass company man faster than a nigger-lover.
But James knew if the strikers had tried to kill
his dad, they’d shoot at anybody. He respected his dad’s position. He’d
never side with the union even if he did share a few union sympathies. His
love and loyalty to his family far outweighed any feelings for or against the
union. Beyond his duty to honor his
parents, however, he loved Savina with his soul, and today he wanted to explain that to
her father—hoping to keep his place in Odie’s house as his future son-in-law.
James Curtis suspected Odie liked
him well enough, but he'd made it clear. Savina could not marry until she was eighteen.
It was her daddy’s stubbornness, Savina had said. James, in an attempt to be
amiable, respected Odie’s condition. But deep down, James believed Odie would
never allow Savina to marry him. James anticipated an eventual elopement. Many
couples in Clay County married early, but Odie had an innate fear of being
alone since his wife died, so James agreed to wait hoping time would ease his
anxiety.
Odie rode high in his saddle,
appearing taller than he was. Through the mist of daybreak, the dreamy scene
played like a western picture show. In the distance on his favorite colt, Odie
checked the mares for signs of illness or accident. The horses fanned away from
Odie and the colt. Quick in the morning chill, the mares puffed funnels of
breath and shook their heads at the inconvenience.
Odie was not a company man. He
worked the mine for one reason and one reason only—to pay off his farm and to
raise quarter horses. Odie rode up to the barn then jumped down and hitched the
colt to a post, nodding to James, acknowledging his presence. When he ambled
toward the back of the house, James shivered; a chill ran the length of his
body. Gazing up to the dreary sky, winter was on its way … the leaves were
changing, like the rest of his world.
James walked toward the front of
the peeling, sagging farmhouse. A pack of spittle-flinging dogs barked and
paced back and forth on the porch. Chickens roamed freely. Savina quit trying
to fix up the place after her mother died. The yard was covered with junk.
Rusted bedsprings, empty Pennzoil cans, wet newspapers, bald tires, corroded
truck parts … it looked like the house had vomited its insides.
Odie kicked open the screen door
and lifted his gun from his side. Gray drizzle peppered his skin as he stomped
down to the bottom broken porch step. Mud and manure covered his boots. A smile
ticked briefly at the corners of his mouth like a small spasm and he pulled at
his ear with his free hand. Their eyes met with awkward glances. Odie began to
stare at James with the eyes of someone who thinks he’s about to be told a fact
he already knows. His teeth were clamped shut, his top lip drawn back in that
smirking snarl.
James recalled what his daddy had
said about Odie a few days ago. That he changed amazingly little over the last
thirty years. Except for paunchiness around his middle and the loss of some of
his hair, he was the same nice boy he’d gone to school with. James considered
the fact that his daddy didn’t really know Odie.
“Morning, Mister Ingram. Savina in
the house?”
“I figure she’s down by the crick.”
James Curtis nodded and headed
toward the direction of the creek.
“James Curtis!” Odie cocked his
rifle.
James froze, feeling Odie’s hot
stare burn the back of his neck. He turned around. “Sir?”
A twelve-gauge aimed at his head
revealed Odie’s message before he spoke it. “I don’t want you comin’ ‘round
here any more. I don’t want you seein’ my Savina agin.”
Up to now, James was unafraid of
Odie’s intimidation—it was the attempt to keep him from Savina that left him
weak-kneed. “I have a right, Mister Ingram. I have a right to see her. We
agreed.”
Odie’s
blue eyes blazed, considering this. “Comp’ny men have no rights on my
property.”
“Mama thought you’d feel that way.
Said to tell you to remember who helped you on the farm last year when
Josephine died.”
Odie lowered his gun, by only an
inch or two. “I don’t need remindin’. You tell your ma—Thirl and me are even.
Ask Bonehead and Hardrock. Ask ‘em who drove Thirl’s car to the Grille last
night. With him in it passed out and bleedin’ like a stuck pig. I don’t owe
your daddy nothin’, boy. He helped me when Jo died, and it was me that saved
his life last night.”
James opened his mouth but nothing
came out. Except for his eyes, Odie had become a colorless man. His pale skin,
gray hair, gray stubble, dirty gray pants and jacket, and gray cigarette smoke
swirling between his fingers matched the shades of gray in his voice. Pockmarks
and small scars marred his face. Small cauliflower ears poked out from the
sides of his head. The tip of his left ear, which he tugged at whenever he felt
uneasy, was cropped, and his nose lay flat against his face—the result of
shoeing an uncooperative horse some years before.
Despite his unattractive features,
coarse speech and rough manners, he possessed a keen intellect and a profound
capacity for observing the world around him.
James stuffed his hands in his
jacket pockets and shrugged. “You and my daddy been mining together since you
were my age.”
Odie cleared his head and throat,
coughed, then spit a plug of phlegm at one of his dogs. “Boy, you ain’t tellin’
me what I don’t know. Your daddy and me spent years together in them
deep-dark-dank holes in the ground. Goin’ in before sunup and comin’ out after
sundown … never saw daylight for weeks. That cage dropped us like rocks
hundreds of feet into them black holes. Ever’ day we’d walk toward the tipple
together with our dinner buckets, givin’ the comp’ny another day’s labor, never
knowin’ if we’d come home.” Odie lowered his gun further.
“Anybody ever tell you the
definition of slave labor, son?” Odie flicked his cigarette to the ground.
“It’s coalminin’. Men that work a job where they risk their lives ever’ minute
and at the end of the pay period owe more to the comp’ny store than they made.
Debts don’t die with ‘em, neither. They’re passed on to their children. It’s
time the union come in, make things better, work less hours, stricter safety rules
… you heard Zirka … time to let some of the younger fellers in on them
committees. You need to join us, James. Time we make some of the decisions.”
“Daddy said Joseph Bradley has the
highest safety standards in the state. That he kept the mine open during the
Depression so the men could feed their families. Daddy said Bradley pays as
high as union scale.”
“Your daddy has his opinion about
Bradley, I have mine. Bradley owns the damn bank. He owns us, boy. You think
about that. We cain’t take a shit unless Bradley approves it. Now I’m telling
you to get off my land. You best hope the union gets in, then
maybe we’ll talk agin. Otherwise … Savina is off limits to you, son.”
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