Hardcastle (32 page)

“Sure,” Regus said, “but it ain’t all that clear to me just who has been helped.”

“Why, you have,” the Italian said at once, “and Mr. Music, for you turned your back on the capitalist swine and said to him he could not buy you with his money.”

“Sure,” Regis said, “and you come by to give us some more of that kind of help, I reckon.”

“You have humor, Mr. Bone,” Arturo Zigerelli said, “but it is true; I have come to help you again, and to allow you to help your brothers.”

“Great God,” Regus said and cocked an eye at Music. “What do you think, Bill? I think this feller would try to talk the fleas off a dog.” Regus chewed thoughtfully and looked at the Italian. “I don’t reckon Momma ever seen a foreigner before,” he said, “never mind heard one’s spiel. Less us go on up to the house, for I wouldn’t want her to miss it.”

“Thank you,” Arturo Zigerelli said.

But if Ella Bone was surprised or thrown by the Italian and his elaborate manners, she did not show it. When he gave her a deep bow and called her Madame Bone, she nodded with perfect dignity and told him, “Howdy”; and, as she would have done with anyone, when she had given the three of them coffee to drink, she told Arturo Zigerelli if he was hungry, it wouldn’t take her but a minute to warm him up some victuals. The Italian said he was honored, but, many miles away, men would soon be waiting for him, and therefore he was not free to accept her hospitality.

Finally, his dark, sharp face gathering into a frown, he said, “If you will excuse me, I would tell you now my purpose that brings me. In another state, but very close, there are tents, clothing, blankets, and food for the miners of Hardcastle; and it would be of important service if you, Mr. Bone, and you, Mr. Music, in your truck, would bring these supplies to the Bear Paw.”

Music felt the matter wasn’t much of his business and certainly not his decision to make; still, he couldn’t keep from asking why the folks who had brought the things wherever they were couldn’t bring them the rest of the way.

Arturo Zigerelli said if the two of them did not help him, they would attempt to do it just so, but that a strange truck bearing the license of another state would attract much suspicion and might be stopped and the stores lost. Even if the two of them consented to do this thing, he feared there would be risk, but the risk would not be so great.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to go off and leave Ella by herself,” Music said, looking at Regus, who was leaning back in his chair with his fingers knitted across his stomach and a deep frown on his face. Since he had missed his chance to keep quiet, Music saw no reason not to say what he felt. “Anyhow, if you think Hardcastle might be thinking about getting back at us,” he said.

Regus, having merely tucked his quid of tobacco away in his jaw, even when he drank his coffee, moved it from cheek to cheek, chewing thoughtfully. Finally he got up from the table, opened the door to the dogtrot, and spat his quid onto the hard-packed earth and scrappy grass of the backyard. “That’s right,” he said, “I ain’t gonna leave Momma by herself to make no trip.”

“You think Hardcastle will attack you for letting us go?” Arturo Zigerelli said.

“He might,” Regus said. “I don’t know.”

“Then I will ask some of the men who have joined us to guard this dwelling while you are away. There was the Floyd Lewis who ran to Hardcastle, yes; but there are others who are young and have conviction and hot blood who will be eager to defend your house while you go for supplies. They would guard what is yours for the thing you have done already.” Arturo Zigerelli turned to Music and smiled. “You are much admired, Mr. Music, that you beat this murderer, Cawood, who shot my comrade and the black man, who—it is a great pity—died this morning also.”

After a moment Regus said, “When would you want us to make the trip?”

“You will do this then?” Arturo Zigerelli asked.

Regus looked at Music and raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Do you think we ought to do her, Bill?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Music said.

“I reckon,” Regus said and scratched his jaw, “but will ye ride along?”

Music frowned. “Yes,” he said, “but I’ll be wondering why you changed your mind about unions.”

“I ain’t changed my mind,” Regus said. “I never seen one come in that didn’t make a mess, but this one’s already here.” He sucked his teeth and shook his head. “Ain’t never quarreled with the notion; only the goddamned unions never seem to work.”

“Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain, Son,” Ella said quietly.

But for once Regus seemed to pay no attention to her. “Hell,” he said, “hit ain’t likely to be much middle ground around here anyway. I expect a man might as well go on and pick him a side.”

Arturo Zigerelli had been looking from one of them to the other. “Is it agreed then?” he asked.

“Sure,” Regus said, “only I think it would be a good deal smarter to bring yer stores here, for hit won’t matter whose truck stops at the Bear Paw; if the wrong man sees it get unloaded, he won’t be fooled. We’ll have goons and the law and whatever else Hardcastle can muster down on us. Nawh,” Regus said, “folks can tote the goods from here, maybe, a little at a time, and up through the woods, and get by; and we can leave my place and come straight back and have a strong chance of keeping clear of trouble, but I don’t like the idea of pullin into the Bear Paw and tryin to unload.”

Arturo Zigerelli appeared to think only a minute before he nodded. “Yes,” he said, “you are wise.”

He told them they were to pick up the goods in Bristol, Tennessee, the day after tomorrow. He wrote down the street address for them and put a dollar on the table so that they could buy gasoline. He told them that there would be a great need for the supplies, for already today the mine guards and the sheriff had come to Mink Slide and loaded the meager possessions of eight families upon trucks and dumped them off on the side of the road just beyond Hardcastle property half a mile from the Bear Paw coal camp. There had been nowhere for the people to go for shelter except into some of the abandoned shacks of the camp, many of them without panes in the windows or a proper roof. There were two families in the old power plant, and one family had even occupied the drift mouth of the mine. Tomorrow, he told them, some of the white families of the Elkin camp would suffer eviction as well, and therefore the things waiting in Tennessee would be doubly needed.

At last Arturo Zigerelli rose from the table and took one of Regus’s hands in both of his and shook it warmly. He knew they would help in the struggle against Hardcastle, he said, taking Music’s hand and shaking it as well, for Hardcastle was a swine who would take even the shelter from his worker and cast him, together with his children, beside the road like garbage. He knew they would help him, he said and smiled, because he had always had a rare gift in the judgement of men, which had been given to him at his birth. He took two cards from his inside coat pocket and placed one before each of them. He turned to Ella Bone and gave her a formal bow. “I must be quickly gone,” he said, “but I will see you soon again,” and he let himself out of the door.

Music and Regus sat looking at the National Miners Union membership cards, their names already written upon them in a bold, flowing hand.

“Well, he was a friendly sort of feller,” Ella Bone said at last.

Neither Music nor Regus made any move to pick up the union cards. “I don’t remember saying anything about joining a union,” Music said. He laughed a short, incredulous laugh. “And a coal miners’ union; hellkatoot, in all my life I’ve never done more than walk past a coal mine and look in.”

“I hope that’s as close as ye’ll ever come, chile,” Ella Bone said.

Regus took a deep breath, let it whistle out through his nose, and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “we may be sorry yet we didn’t shoot that durned foreigner, or at least carry him and that dumb kid on to the sheriff. Ain’t much doubt somebody’s gonna shoot him anyway, just like they done his buddy, only it’ll likely be too late to do any good.”

“He was right friendly though,” Ella said.

19

SQUATTERVILLE

THE COOKSTOVE BEING dumped beside the road made a noise like distant thunder. Bedsprings came over the side of the truck next and made a windy sound when they struck the earth and again when a mattress landed on them and bounced half off. Bed boards clattered into the ditch like a brief clapping of hands. There were four men working, and three of them seemed to make an effort toward handing things down, but the fourth simply flung whatever he could pick up from the side of the truck. And in no time at all the truck pulled up into Regus’s washed-out road, backed around, and went south again toward Hardcastle.

“Judgement Day,” Regus said, looking down toward the jumbled belongings strewn by the side of the road.

Both of them had stopped setting the locust posts the moment the truck had growled to a standstill down on the highway.

“Where are the folks who own those things?” Music asked, but Regus merely shook his head.

As if by mutual consent, they left off work and went down to the roadside, but not a soul was in sight.

For a long moment they stood among the possessions as though embarrassed by them. There weren’t many, and however shabby they might have looked in the Hardcastle shack where they belonged, scattered beside the road in the bright, mild warmth of the November sun, the few simple articles of living looked as forlorn and ragged as abandoned idiot children.

“Sons a bitches,” Regus said, gazing around him at iron bedframes and stained mattresses, a washtub full of half-broken crockery and kitchen utensils, a heap of bedding on a soiled couch. All at once he swung his foot and kicked the metal headboard of a bed propped against the couch so that it went over noisily into the ditch. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and glancing at Music and flushing red as though he’d just been caught in some shameful act, he opened his mouth to speak, but had to clear his throat before anything came out. “Maybe a man can be only one kind of fool or another, but we done right when we quit Hardcastle. I’m obliged to you that you seen it, Bill Music.”

But Music wasn’t so sure. He began to struggle to right the cookstove, which had been allowed to fall forward on its front. Regus helped him, and they set it upright, closed the slightly sprung oven door, and replaced the lids. Except for the oven door, no serious damage had been done; still, setting it upon its legs seemed a futile gesture.

Music’s hands were marked with soot from the stove lids, and he wiped them upon his trousers.

“Well, yonder they come,” Regus said, his pale, bleak eyes staring into the distance down the road, and Music turned to look at the figures moving slowly around the bend; a man and a woman and three children, all of them laden. At first Music thought the man was carrying a barrel such as pickles come in. He watched him set it down and rest while the woman and the children came on.

“What the hell’s he totin?” Regus said.

“A barrel of something, I reckon,” Music said.

“Maybe,” Regus said. “Hit’s three or four times the size of a keg of powder for sure.”

The man caught up with his family and went ahead of them perhaps five yards before he set his burden down again.

“It’s a goddamned radio,” Music said, seeing it clearly at last.

“Ha,” Regus said, “even back when money was good, he likely gave a month’s pay fer it.” He shook his head and spat. “Just what a man needs who’s fixin to settle his family in a fuckin ditch.”

Again, as if by mutual consent, they started down the road toward the ragged line of people. The man was just coming abreast of his family once more, carrying the radio hugged against his chest, although his arms failed to reach much more than halfway around it. They could see, as they drew closer, that he was sweaty and wild-eyed with fatigue. He staggered when he was perhaps ten yards ahead of the others; his knees seemed to give way all at once, and he set the radio down in the road and rested his forearms on its top.

“Let me give you a hand?” Music said when he reached him.

“I ort to have shot em,” the man said. “Them sons a bitches chucked my stuff on that truck like they was a-loadin lump coal. But I wouldn’t let em touch my radio, by God, for hit’s a good’un. Do you blame me? Do you blame me for that?”

Regus took the woman’s burden, which seemed to be clothing bundled in a sheet, and the two of them and the children passed Music and the man by. The larger of the two boys carried a single-barreled shotgun and a sack which smelled sharply of side meat; the smaller boy carried a mop over one shoulder and a broom over the other; and a little girl carried two framed pictures. And all the while Music looked into the man’s stunned, wild eyes.

“I ort to have shot em, and I would, only they was five of the sons a bitches, and it wadn’t but three shells in the house. Do you blame me?” he said.

“You take one side,” Music said, “and I’ll take the other.”

“I’d as lief have shot the bastards dead if I’d had the shells to go around,” the man said, but when Music bent and began to lift the radio, the wild-eyed man did the same.

When at last the two of them drew abreast of the man’s possessions, the woman and the little girl were sitting on the couch with the empty expression of two people in a depot who had missed their train. “Git up from there, Dora Dean,” the man said, “and git that youngin up!” Although he had no idea why, Music realized the man intended to put the radio on the couch, and in order to keep from dropping it, he was obliged to help him do so. He managed to exchange a look with Regus, who shook his head.

“Missus,” Regus said, “why don’t you and the little chaps go on up to the house and rest yourselves. I expect Momma will have some milk for the youngins and a hot cup of coffee.”

“Yer right kind,” the woman said listlessly, but she made no move to go; she merely looked off in the distance toward Hardcastle.

“Son,” Regus said to the boy holding the shotgun and the rancid sack of meat, “set them things down and take yer momma on to the house so she kin rest.”