Hardcastle (33 page)

The boy did as he was told and the other children followed.

“My daddy was born on that creek fore err Hardcastle Coal Company was thought of, and I was too. They can’t treat me thisaway,” the man said.

“I reckon things will turn out,” Regus said.

“Sure,” Music said, “the top dog don’t stay on top forever.”

Like his wife, the man looked down the road toward Hardcastle, but this time there was something to look at, for the truck was coming back. As it drew closer, Music could see that Sheriff Hub Farthing was driving. He recognized none of the other men, but two of them appeared to be deputies and two, he guessed, were the new mine guards. “Yer a-wearin guns,” the man beside him said in a broken, shaky voice. “Hep me, and we’ll shoot them goons off that goddamned truck.” Music turned to see him ram his hand in his pocket and come out with two shotgun shells—one of which he fumbled into the ditch—and reach at the same time for the shotgun the boy had left atop the cookstove. “Whoa,” Music said and grabbed his arm. “Turn me aloose!” the man said in his broken voice and struggled to take up the shotgun. “If you won’t hep me, I’ll kill the sons a bitches myself!” “Whoa, now,” Music said, restraining the man easily, for he seemed no more substantial than a loose collection of bones covered with ragged clothing.

The truck pulled up beside them and stopped. “Have you got that idiot?” the sheriff asked. “Cause if you ain’t, one of us can lay him across the head and carry him on to jail.”

“I’ve got him,” Music said.

“See that you do,” the sheriff said. “We’re doin our legal duty, and I don’t intend to be interfered with.”

The man merely shook in Music’s grasp, and after considering them a moment, the sheriff looked at Regus. “Well, now,” the sheriff said, “it’s a fine day for it, ain’t it?” The sheriff pushed the brim of his hat up with his forefinger and smiled; or at least there was something about his face to suggest smiling, even if Music could not isolate exactly what it was. “I’m afraid you’re about to have a squatterville on your land here,” he said. “And if you don’t like bein up to your ears in these here damned troublemakers, I reckon you can drop by the courthouse and file fer an eviction notice. Course now, that’s likely to take some time, since I don’t reckon you had the foresight to make em sign a legal document like Mr. Hardcastle done.” The sheriff gave his eyetooth a suck and appeared to think a moment. “I figure I better warn you that I don’t want to see a single one of these damned scarecrows parked across the road, for that’s still Hardcastle property.” He and Regus looked at each other. “All right, boys,” the sheriff said, the suggestion of a smile still on his face and his eyes never leaving Regus’s, “throw that junk off so we can go back and get another load.”

“Don’t throw it,” Regus said. “You hand it down, and we’ll take it.”

“Why, sure,” the sheriff said. “It’s neighborly of you to help us out.” He pushed the brim of his hat up another inch with his forefinger, lit himself a cigarette, and settled comfortably behind the steering wheel.

Regus turned to Music. “Is he all right?” he asked. “Do you think you can turn him aloose?”

“What about it?” Music asked the man he held.

The man merely trembled in his grasp and made no reply.

“Why don’t you give me the shells you’ve got. I’ll give them back after a bit. You don’t want to get yourself killed or thrown in jail.” Music turned him loose and held out his hand, and the man put a shotgun shell in it, withdrew another from his pocket, and reluctantly, clumsily, gave that one to Music too, his fingers, as they brushed Music’s palm, feeling as stiff and insensitive as the talons of a bird. Music picked up the shell in the ditch and pocketed all three. And he and Regus and the man began to take items handed down to them from the truck and place them as carefully and neatly as possible beside the road. Frail almost to the point of collapse as the man had seemed, he made as many trips from truck to ditch as Music or Regus, and when the three of them had to carry something heavy, he held up his end, although Music would have sworn he did not have the machinery to do so.

By midafternoon the belongings of ten or more families cluttered nearly fifty yards of roadside, and there were many helping hands for the unloading. As more and more people straggled in, the spirit of the ragged group gathering on Regus’s land seemed to rise. Now and again among the evicted miners there were sour jokes and grudging laughter, almost as though everyone had gathered for a picnic that had been rained out. Gangs of children played games in Regus’s pasture. Lines of men carried articles which might otherwise be damaged if there were bad weather into Regus’s barn. And Ella Bone, helped by more women than could handily move in her small kitchen, had used all the rabbits in the springhouse and two chickens besides. She made bushels of biscuits and corn bread and gallons of gravy and saw to it that almost everyone, as they arrived, got at least a little something to eat. Her head hung obliquely to one side, her face flushed far more by their warm regard than by the heat of her wood range, she was, Music realized at once, a content and happy woman, and he began to understand how completely cut off and alone she had been, and how much Regus’s job had cost her.

And as for Regus and himself, what Arturo Zigerelli had said was true: the citizens of squatterville held them in high regard. People came up to apologize for thinking poorly of them in the past, and more than once men shook Music’s hand for having laid Cawood Burnside out cold, even though one or two of them regretted he hadn’t killed him. Still, their admiration made Music almost as uncomfortable as their thinly disguised hatred had once done. He felt he deserved the one no more than the other, and he wanted neither. Although he could not quite think it into words, he wanted only his anonymity. In the years since he’d left home he’d grown accustomed to it, ridden the rails with it, visited strange cities wearing it like a cloak of invisibility. It had become in part, a definition of himself, which he had assumed nothing, least of all the depression, could take away. The warm regard and admiration of the miners made him feel a little high, there was no doubt of that, but beneath the gloss he was uncomfortable as hell, and he didn’t like it. And he didn’t like the union card in his pocket with his name on it.

He was helping to dig one slit trench and directing the digging of another when Merlee appeared as she had promised. He saw her standing by a jumbled heap of belongings, looking along the outstretched arm of a miner who was pointing him out. “Here,” he said and gave his pick to the man beside him. “Since we have to get it sorta wide to get it deep, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to sink a post on either end and run a pole between so a man can have something to lean against and won’t fall in when he’s trying to take a crap.”

“Ha,” the man said, “we’ll do her, Mr. Music.”

“There’s some posts already cut up yonder a little south of the barn.”

“All right,” the man said.

“And maybe you could set up some sort of a blind so folks could have a little privacy; leastwise around the women’s trench,” Music said.

“All right,” the man said.

Music wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve, slapped some of the dirt from his britches, and went to meet Merlee.

“Lord,” she said, “ain’t it awful? Seems like they’ve moved half the people in Elkin out today. What they gonna do? Where in God’s world are the poor thangs gonna sleep?”

Music shook his head. “In the barn, on the breezeway. We’ve got pallets for some of the old folks and little children in Regus’s room and mine and in with Ella.”

“Then where you gonna sleep?” Merlee asked.

“Well,” Music said and smiled down at her and stroked his chin.

“No, you ain’t,” she said, backing away from him. “You ain’t either, Bill Music. I’m sick to my soul I’ll hear ye’ve been up to some foolishness and got yerself killed. If ye own any love fer me or any mercy, ye’ll not set foot in Elkin!”

“Shh,” he said, embarrassed that such a small and private subtlety could have provoked so much. And Merlee, aware at last that she’d caused people nearby to gawk and stare, bloomed red as a rose. “Yawl could mind yer own business, seems to me!” she said and stamped her foot.

“Ha,” said a man squatting with two companions by the litter of their belongings, “maybe Cawood wadn’t so tough, but I ain’t sure he can strap on that little gal yonder.” The other two guffawed.

“Come,” Music said, his ears warming the sides of his head, “walk with me.” And Merlee, giving the squatting men one last hot look as though considering whether or not to do violence, fell in beside him, and they walked up past the house and barn. A few yards into the woods there was an old bull pine, which had covered the ground with generations of warm, fragrant needles, and he led her there.

He sat down with his back propped against the rough, pitchy bark and considered her. She sat with her legs folded beneath her, still, it seemed, a little flushed around the neck and ears. He wiped his eyes and smiled. “Well, I reckon you ain’t the most even-tempered gal I ever seen,” he said.

“I never said I was,” she responded.

“I guess you never, at that,” he said mildly.

“Men ain’t got the sense of mules,” she said, looking at him as though she wished to slap him, pull his hair, claw his eyes. He had no notion what he had done to provoke such craziness. “My husband got hisself killed over a head scarf! Did ye know that?”

He knew, but he didn’t know how to respond.

“He was goan steal hit cause he didn’t have no money to pay,” she said, her eyes absolutely dry and fierce. “A kerchief fer me to wear!” she said. “Fool that he was! And you ain’t no better. You ain’t one bit better. You’d dare gettin killed for sport, to tomcat around!” Suddenly her mouth crumpled and she pulled up handfuls of pine needles and flung them at his face. “You want to do it to me?” she cried. “Do you? Do you?”

He had no idea what to say or do. He tried to laugh. “Well, I did a minute ago,” he said. She flung pine needles and the damp, musty earth beneath them at him until he held up one hand to protect his face and reached for her with the other. She came to him fighting and slapping, but he contained her. “I only meant to tease you a little,” he said.

“No, you didn’t,” she said and struggled against his chest. “You’re a fool. Ye’d have come if I’d said to. Wouldn’t ye? Wouldn’t ye?”

“Yes,” he said.

“See?” she said and began immediately to weep.

He rocked her, feeling helpless and befuddled.

“Turn me aloose,” she said and tried to push away from his chest.

“No,” he said and held her in spite of herself. “I think you’re a little bit crazy,” he told her.

For a long time she didn’t move, and if it hadn’t been for the hot, wet vapor of her breath against his chest, he might have wondered if she were still breathing. “Yes,” she said at last, “I am crazy.” She seemed to shiver for a moment. “Do you know how long a body can live on spite?” she asked him.

“No,” he said softly.

“A long time,” she said. “I thought I could live on it till the end of my days.” There was a damp explosion of air against his chest, but whether of laughter or crying, he couldn’t tell. “Don’t anything scare you when ye got nothin but spite in yer heart,” she said. She shuddered and seemed, suddenly and mysteriously, to fit the circle of his arms, as though her bones had grown soft, pliant. “Didn’t think I’d own anybody in my life, ever again, Bill Music,” she said. “Didn’t think I’d care to.”

He knew her meaning; he knew it was only a mountain girl’s way of saying she never thought she’d admit having someone else to love, but the possessiveness of it caused him a little fear. She leaned away from him and looked into his eyes as she had never quite done before. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to act such a fool.” With her fingertips, she brushed at his hair, his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth, to clear away the pine needles and dirt she had flung in his face. Then she lay down and drew him after her.

There was a change in her, as though she had the power to become younger and more beautiful than he had ever seen her, and that caused him a little fear, too, if only because on some deeper level he understood it. She had become new for him, and he could match no such trick as that. Perhaps no man could do such a thing; he didn’t know. But, for his part, he couldn’t even quite manage to shut out the distant hubbub of squatterville while they made love.

20

FIRST NIGHT IN
SQUATTERVILLE

HE TOOK HER to Valle Crucis in Regus’s truck and then to the northern edge of Elkin, where he let her out as he had given his word he would do. While the Model T pecked and chortled, he watched her turn off the highway up the path that led to her shack, her spine bent humbly over the sack of Red Cross flour the county relief office had granted her. She paused to look at him before she disappeared, this female who had singled him out for purposes of her own, and he had no idea whether he wished to weep or sing or draw his pistol and ride through the coal camp shooting out lights.

But he did none of those. He merely watched her until she was gone. Then, for a moment, he gazed at the coal camp. It looked exactly as it had the first time he’d seen it: a grimy derelict of a town, a smear of coal smoke floating like a veil a few hundred feet above it; the lights of its dwellings, of the commissary, of the tipple and conveyor and drift mouth, giving it an oddly festive, almost carnival, atmosphere. He could smell the sulfurous stink of burning coal. Yet the sight and smell of the coal camp did not fill him with revulsion. God help him, God help them all, there was about the place a grim and sad sort of beauty, as though, such as he was, such as the miners were, they might wish for no better place to call home. Hellfire, he thought, no doubt rats felt the same way about a city dump. He let out the clutch, and Model T lurched across the road and back toward Regus and Ella and the others.

There were three or four small fires burning and people squatting or standing about them when he pulled off the highway. The truck growled slowly up the wagon road, and he nodded or spoke or threw up his hand to those who greeted him, although he recognized very few of them.