Memories of Another Day (13 page)

One of the supervisors climbed up onto the platform beside him. He glanced at Daniel and nodded as he went to the bucket and held a dipper of water to his mouth. He drank his fill before he spoke. "Lazy little bastards!"

Daniel didn't answer him. The supervisor came over and stood beside him, looking down at the boys. "I wonder if the office knows how hard we have to work to get the boys to move that coal."

Daniel turned to him. 'They seem to be workin' all right."

"You don't know 'em," the supervisor said. "Half the time they're fakin'. They jes' look busy. Not like when I was young. The boys really picked slag then."

Daniel shrugged.

"The mine bein' sold?" the supervisor asked.

"I don' know," Daniel answered shortly.

"You kin tell me," the supervisor said m a confidential voice.

"I said I don' know." Daniel's voice took on a nard edge.

"Okay, okay," the supervisor said quickly. "Don't git tetchy jes' because you work in the office now. You're no better than the rest of us."

Daniel looked at him, his eyes suddenly cold. "What do you mean by that?"

"You think we don' know why you come down here? Not jes' to pass the time of day you don't."

Daniel's mouth tightened as the anger rose inside

him. He took a step toward the man, but was stopped by a shriek from below. It was the scream of a boy in pain.

"Stop the coal!" A supervisor shouted.

The supervisor on the platform next to Daniel reached up and pulled the trap. The flow of coal to the chute stopped immediately. ''Damn! What now?" he said, coming back to the rail and peering down into the breaker.

They could hear the boy screaming, but couldn't see him until the clouds of dust cleared a Uttle. A small boy near the bottom of the chute had his hand trapped between the conveyor and his sorting box.

"Stupid little bastard!" the supervisor swore, heading for the steps. He went down the steps three at a time. By the time he reached the boy there was a cluster of other children around him. The boy himself had fainted.

"Git back to your boxes!" he shouted. Another supervisor joined him, and quickly and expertly they extricated the boy's hand from the chute. He lifted the boy, not too gently, in his arms and started up the steps with him. As he reached the platform with the unconscious boy, he freed one hand to start the coal down the chute again.

Daniel looked at the boy. He seemed to be no more than ten years old, his face pinched white, his mangled hand dripping blood as he hung limply in the supervisor's arms.

The supervisor caught Daniel's glance. "You kin tell the office 'twam't our fault. Damn kid couldn't keep up."

Daniel didn't answer.

" 'Twam't our fault," the supervisor repeated.

"Better go git the kid's hand tended to," Daniel said.

He watched the supervisor hurry out of the shed with the boy. There was no infirmary, but the old man in charge of the toolshed knew what to do about acci-

dents. The boy would be taken there, his hand would be bandaged and then he would be sent home. Of course, his pay would stop until such time as he could return. That is, if he could ever return to work as a breaker boy. There was no such thing as a one-handed breaker boy.

Daniel looked down into the shed. Coal was tumbling down the chute; the dust was flying, the supervisors shouting; the boys were sorting coal. It was as if nothing had happened.

He was suddenly aware that his hands were gripping the platform railing tightly. He stared down at them. He imagined his own hand torn and bleeding. Something had to be wrong. A pair of hands had to be worth more than the three dollars a week they paid the breaker boys.

your nose buried in books all day and night will be an old maid."

And that was what she was. Thirty years old. Unmarried. No prospect in sight. An old maid. Just as her mother had predicted.

She took off her camisole, and her breasts seemed to fill the mirror. She stared at them in fascination. As she watched, the nipples seemed to grow larger and the breasts began to ache. She cupped them in her hands and held them tightly. It seemed to ease the hurt. She closed her eyes. They were his hands.

But they were not. It had been five years since he had touched her and then gone away. Her mother said that he had never intended to marry her. But never was too strong a word. He was just not the kind of man to get married. Responsibility frightened him. She had realized that when it was too late.

Still, she had never regretted knowing him and loving him. For the first time she'd been aware that she was a woman, and she had learned to take joy in her own femaleness. Her mother had said that she was a hussy, that all the neighbors were talking and that she could no longer hold up her head in the community. From that point on it had been just a question of time until she could get away. And after that it had been a different school in a different town almost every year. Not once in the five years had she ever gone home.

There had been other men. Brief, quick affairs, brought on by the desperate physical clawing deep inside her. But when her body was satisfied, a deep disgust replaced the longing. Each time she would promise herself that it would not happen again. But it did. And in the end, it had driven her from town to town, changing schools as she sensed the growing awareness of the townspeople. Especially the men. The way they looked at her, like hounds after a bitch in heat. There were no secrets in a small town.

It was seven months since she had come to this small mining town just outside of Grafton. When she

saw the little house next to the school, she had known it would be different this time. Here she would be alone—not in the usual boardinghouse, subject to the temptations and the smells of men around her. Alone, she would have nothing to stir her longing. She would be content in her work. This time she would not let herself be frustrated by trying to get some knowledge into the heads of children who knew that they were there only until work was found for them in the mines or in the mills. Silently she accepted the fact that the boys would disappear by the time they were ten or eleven years old. The girls would stay a little longer, but they too would be gone by the time they were twelve, thirteen or fourteen. Still, there was never a shortage of children in the school. Good year or bad, it was the only crop that never failed.

That was why she had been surprised when she had looked up from her desk one day during lunch hour and seen him at the other end of the room. At first she had thought he might be the father of one of the children, coming to withdraw his child from the school to put him to work. He filled the doorway. He was big, almost six feet, wide-shouldered and deep-chested. A few locks from the mass of unruly black hair fell toward the thick eyebrows over the deep-set startlingly blue eyes. And the shaven blue-black beard outlined a wide mouth and strong chin. As he came into the classroom, she knew that he was not as old as she had first thought.

"Miss Andrews?" His voice was deep but gentle.

"Yes?"

He took a few hesitant steps toward her. "Fm sorry to disturb you, ma'am. Fm Dan'l Boone Huggins."

She almost smiled, his awe of her was so visible. "You're not disturbing me, Mr. Huggins. What can I do for you?"

He didn't come any closer. "Fm the clerk in Mr. Smathers' office at the mine."

She nodded without speaking.

''I been workin' fer him fer about a year now, an' Vm beginnin' to re'lize jes' how stupid I am. I need more leamin'."

She stared at him in real surprise. This was the first time in all the years she had been teaching that anyone had ever admitted that to her. Book leamin', as they called it, was considered a waste of time. "Exactly what is it you would like to learn, Mr. Huggins?" she asked.

'*I don' know," he said. Then, after a moment, "Everything, I reckon/'

She smiled. "That's a pretty large order."

His face was serious. "There's so many things I don't know nothin' 'bout. Since I been workin' in the office I heered people talkin'. Politics, business, eeconomics. I don't know nothin' 'bout them things. I kin read 'n' write 'n' figger some, but there are words I don' know the meanin' of, an' when it comes to multiplyin' an' dividin' I git real mixed up."

"Have you had any schooling?"

"Yes, ma'am," he nodded. "Six years in a rural school. But it stopped when I was fourteen, an' that's all there was."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "Did you ever think of going to the library?"

"Yes, ma'am. But the nearest one is in Grafton, an' I work six days an' it's closed on Sunday."

She nodded. Grafton was almost sixteen miles away, so there would be no chance of his being able to get there during the week. "I don't know what I can do," she said.

"Anything you kin do, ma'am, I would truly appreciate," he said earnestly. "It's more'n what I kin do myself."

She thought for a moment. The children began drifting back into the classroom. Lunchtime was over. They looked at Daniel, curiosity on their normally unexpressive faces. She looked up at him. "There is

very little we can do now," she said. "Class is starting again. Can you come back later?"

''I work until six, ma'am," he answered. "I kin be here right after."

She nodded. 'That will be all right, Mr. Huggins."

"Thank you kindly, ma'am."

She watched him close the door behind him, then turned back to the class. The children's eyes swiveled from the doorway back to her. She heard a snicker from some of the larger children toward the back of the room. She rapped the pointer sharply on her desk. "You in the back," she snapped. "Open your books to page thirty, geography lesson number two."

It wasn't until the last of the children had left the classroom after four o'clock that she thought about him again. She puzzled over what she could do for him. Perhaps the best thing would be to find out how much he had actually learned. At least, that would be a beginning. She went to the cupboard and took out a set of six-year final-examination papers and spread them on the desk in front of her.

That had been six months ago. Since then, much to her surprise and excitement, she had found that this big, quiet boy had a bright, inquisitive mind that soaked up knowledge as fertile ground soaked up rain. They spent three evenings a week and Sunday afternoons together. Daniel read voraciously and questioned endlessly. Finally she had written to her mother and asked her to send her college books. For the first time she had been filled with the pure joy of teaching. Somewhere in the back of her head she knew this was the way it should be.

Gratefiilly, he had offered to pay her for the lessons. She had refiised. She was glad to have something to do with her spare time. But he still wanted to do something. Finally she agreed that he could reciprocate by cutting a week's supply of cordwood for both the school and her little house every Sunday.

She had begun to look forward to Sunday mornings, when she would be awakened by the ringing sound of the axe in back of her house. There was something strangely reassuring and comforting about it. A touch of home. An echo from her childhood when her older brother used to perform the same chore. Somehow she no longer felt strange here. No longer alone.

For her, the simple warm feeling had lasted throughout the winter and into the beginning ot spring. Then, one sunny morning, she had risen from her bed and gone to the window.

He had stripped to his waist. The sweat streaming down his body shone redly in the sunlight. The muscles rippled as the axe rose and fell. Transfixed, she watched the light tan cloth of his trousers darken with sweat across his buttocks and around his crotch.

The sudden surge of heat and the rush of wetness to her groin took her by surprise. She felt her legs begin to give away under her, and she held on to the wm-dowsill to keep from slipping to the floor. Angrily she shook her head to clear it. This was not the way it was supposed to be. She closed her eyes tightly and kept them closed until she regained her self-control.

From that day on she was more consciously circumspect, more careful not to sit too close to him, more careful in her dress, more formal in her language. If he was aware of how or why she was acting the way she did, he gave no sign. Occasionally when her glance took him by surprise, his face would flush, but she attributed that to his normal shyness.

That was the way it had been last evening when she had looked across the kitchen table and caught him watching her. Immediately the redness had begun to creep up into his face.

''Daniel,'' she asked, without thinking, ''how old are you?'*

The flush grew deeper. He hesitated. "Eighteen, ma'am," he lied.

She was silent for a moment. "You look older." She lied too. "Fm twenty-five."

He nodded.

*'Don't you have any friends?" she asked.

*'Some," he answered.

"Girlfriends, I mean."

"No, ma'am."

"Not even back home? A special girl?"

He shook his head.

"What do you do in your time off? Don't you go to the socials and the Saturday-night dances?"

"I was never much one fer dancin', ma'am."

"It doesn't seem right," she said. "You're young and handsome and—"

"Miss Andrews," he interrupted.

She stared at him in surprise. It was the first time he had ever done anything like that.

His face was scarlet. "I'm not one fer games neither. Girls is alius lookin' fer to git married, an' I'm not about to. I got family dependin' on me."

"I'm sorry," she apologized, accepting the rebuke. "I didn't mean to pry."

He rose from the chair. "It's late. Time fer me to go.

She rose with him. She reached over and closed the book he had left on the table. "We'll finish this lesson tomorrow night."

But it was now nine o'clock and he still hadn't appeared. Slowly she made ready for bed. The last thought she had before she turned out the light was that she had lost him. He would never come again.

The stocky foreman stopped and looked at him, his shock of white hair gleaming in the light of the gas lamp. "I been asked to make sure you were there."