Same Sun Here (6 page)

I guess that’s all. I’m going to try to go to sleep now. It’s real late and I’ll never be able to get up and go to school tomorrow. I’m going to read a chapter of
Old Yeller
(that’s what I’m reading now and it’s real good) and then go to bed.

Since you are in New York, I wonder if you are thinking about 9-11, too. It happened seven years ago today. I remember my parents sitting in front of the TV all day and night, crying. We had a moment of silence at school today.

Oh, one more thing. I don’t want to make you mad or anything, but I need to tell you something. In your letter you said that something was “a close calling.” I think what you meant to say is “a close CALL.” I didn’t know if I should mention it or not, but then I thought, a good friend is somebody who will tell you when you are doing something that might be embarrassing. Like if you had a booger on your face or a big trail of toilet paper stuck to your shoe after leaving the bathroom, I’d tell you. So I guess I should tell you that you are saying something wrong.

12 September 2008 (one day later)

Dear Meena,

I was going to go ahead and mail your letter but then today happened, which I HAVE to tell you about.

Today in school, my science teacher, Mrs. Heap, was talking about “cohesion” and giving us instructions on this exercise we had to do in class where we got into groups and tried to see how many drops of water we could get onto one penny. Right while she was telling about this, I figured out that she’d probably know even more about mountaintop removal, since she is a science teacher, so I raised my hand.

She ignored me for a little while, but then finally she put her hands on her hips and looked aggravated and said, “Yes, River? What is SO important?”

I asked her if she could explain mountaintop removal to us.

“We’re not talking about that right now, River. If you were paying attention, you’d know that.” I never have liked that woman. She always sits and eats Skittles right in front of us, even though she knows we’re not allowed to have any kind of candy at school. I think that says a lot about her. Plus, she wears way too much perfume, and sometimes it gives people headaches.

So then I said it was so important that maybe we OUGHT to be talking about it.

“Well, fortunately you don’t dictate what gets talked about in here, mister,” Mrs. Heap said, and laughed a little bit, looking at her daughter, who is also in my class and is the biggest snob in the entire school. She tells everybody she is rich, but Mamaw says that sometimes people just try to act rich and are actually in debt up to their eyeballs, and this must be the case with the Heaps, since they are both teachers and teachers don’t make squat.

Mrs. Heap smiled in this real fake way and took a step toward me. “Why are you so curious about it, anyway?”

“Because they’re doing it to Town Mountain, and a lot of other mountains, and my mamaw says that if something doesn’t change, then every mountain we’ve got is going to be flattened. If the coal companies have their way.”

“Let me remind you, Mr. Justice, that lots of people in this county make their living by working in the coal industry,” she said. “So your mamaw ought to mind her own business.”

Well, that made me real mad. I felt my face go red. So then I told her some of what Mamaw had told me last night. I said that lots of people, like my very own daddy, had lost their jobs because MTR (mountaintop removal) uses more machines than it does people. And then I told her that my mamaw had said that this WAS our business and if Americans hadn’t spoken up for what they believed in we’d still have slavery and women wouldn’t be able to vote and besides that we’d probably still be a colony of England instead of our own country. Right about there Mrs. Heap started telling me to hush and kept coming closer and closer, slapping her pointer across her palm, but I couldn’t hush. I felt like I had to say it all out, to set her straight. I had to take up for Mamaw. So I just kept talking. The last thing I said was “Mamaw said that the only way to be a good American is to speak up for what you believe in.”

So Mrs. Heap sent me to the office for disrupting class. I had to wait forever in the front office because the principal, Mr. Wright, was in the lunchroom breaking up a fight. He finally came in and looked down at me and said, “Let’s go, son,” and swung his arm through the air like a traffic cop directing me into his office. He thinks he’s really cool but I think he’s a big turd. He wears his pants too tight and the back part of his tie is always hanging lower than the front, and he is always fooling with his hair and checking himself out in windows or mirrors or anything that will show him his reflection.

He asked me all about the problem and I told him exactly what had happened, and he just said I couldn’t interrupt the teacher like that and I needed to stay in after-school detention. I got real mad. I couldn’t help it. “But I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

He stood up and leaned over his desk and pointed his finger in my face and spoke in a tight little voice. “You better watch it there, buddy,” he said, and widened his eyes at me. Then he said he was calling my mother.

So I had to sit for a half hour and wait again. I had to sit there while he signed papers and read letters without ever saying a word to me or even looking at me. Once I asked him if I could go get my copy of
Old Yeller
out of my locker so I wouldn’t have to sit there and stare at my shoes, but he just said no without looking at me. I had to miss history class, which I really love. We were supposed to learn about the Boston Tea Party today.

But after a while, here came Mamaw (I knew Mom wouldn’t come; she hasn’t left the house in ages). I was so glad to see her, but she didn’t hug me or anything the way she usually did. She just shot me a funny look like “What have you done?” and sat down and put her big old pocketbook up on her knees and asked Mr. Wright what was the problem.

“River here interrupted class by refusing to stop questioning the teacher today,” Mr. Wright said. He had his elbows up on the chair arms and was touching all ten of his fingertips together the whole time he talked. For the first time, I noticed he had sleep in the corners of his eyes. It was brown.

“Well, that’s not like him. He usually has awful good manners,” Mamaw said, looking at me like I ought to give her some kind of clue as to what was happening. “What were you questioning her about, River?”

“I was trying to get her to tell us about mountaintop removal, and she wouldn’t.”

Mamaw told the principal that seemed like a perfectly good question to ask a science teacher.

“Mountaintop removal is a controversial topic in these parts, as you well know,” Mr. Wright said. “And it’s not appropriate for teachers to be talking about with students.”

“If it’s controversial then that’s exactly WHY she should be talking about it with them,” Mamaw said.

Mr. Wright said “perhaps” I ought to wait out front, but Mamaw said no, she didn’t protect her children or grandchildren from the truth. “Tell me exactly what happened, River.”

So once again I had to tell it, and by the time I got to the part where Mrs. Heap told me that Mamaw ought to mind her own business, I could tell that Mamaw’s blood was boiling. So then she turned to Mr. Wright and said she wanted to speak to Mrs. Heap with him. He sighed and started to make up some kind of excuse, but Mamaw said, “I want to see this woman RIGHT NOW!” So he picked up the phone and called her to the office, and that’s when Mamaw turned to me and said that maybe it
was
a good idea for me to wait out front so she could talk properly to Mrs. Heap.

When it was all over, Mrs. Heap was the first one out of the door. She shot past me, her arms swinging as she walked away huffing and puffing. Mr. Wright said I could go back to class and there would be no after-school detention. Mamaw winked at me and said she’d see me later. So I went on back to class, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything at all. During my chorus class Mrs. Heap came in and whispered something in the ear of my teacher, Mrs. Greer, and then they both looked right at me. They are real good friends, so Mrs. Heap was probably in there telling her to give me a hard time.

And when I got home, the bulldozers were even louder. After supper (salmon patties and soup beans, which I love), we walked back out to the high cliffs, and you wouldn’t believe how much damage they’ve done in one day. It made me want to throw up. We stood there with the sun setting so red and orange that it seemed like the whole world was on fire, and for a long time Mamaw didn’t say anything. Something about it reminded me of when your grandmother said “God is great” during that big thunderstorm, because it was like Mamaw’s silence was saying that very same thing while we looked out at the good mountains and the one that was being destroyed.

I can’t even talk about it anymore. I’m sorry that I’ve written such a depressing letter, but I had to tell you all of that.

13 September 2008 (Saturday)

Dear Meena,

I was going to mail your letter this morning, but then one good thing happened and I wanted to tell you about it, so that I wouldn’t have to send a letter full of bad stuff.

This morning I went in and sat with Mom awhile. She was in agony with a headache and couldn’t even talk to me. I rubbed her temples for a while and then read a whole chapter of
Old Yeller
out loud to her, and that made her feel better. She kissed me on the cheek and told me to go play.

But I went to the grocery store with Mamaw instead. And sure enough, soon as we got to the Piggly Wiggly, there was Dr. Patel and his wife. Dr. Patel started laughing and threw out his arms for a hug and said, “Mama Justice!” and Mamaw hugged him and they talked and went on, and his wife leaned over just a bit and smiled at me. “Hello, young man,” she said. Meeting you gave me the courage to talk to her, so I said hello. And then I asked her what her name is. It’s Chandra. (What does that mean?) She told me I should call her that, and not Mrs. Patel.

Then I told her I have a pen pal from the mountains of India who now lives in New York City, and she seemed real pleased by that. She asked which mountains but I’m sorry I couldn’t remember, so I just said, “The ones that look like these,” and she laughed a little and said she was from Ahmedabad. I had to ask her to repeat it a couple times, and finally she said, “Here,” and held out her palm and wrote it there with a blue ink pen, so I could see. I told her I wanted to be sure to tell you where she was from, and so she wrote it on my palm, too, holding on to my fingers with her other hand. Her skin was very warm and she smiled the whole time she wrote it. She was leaning down close to my face, so I got to stare at her bindi real close. You were right, too, because hers is made of felt, just like your mom’s.

Mamaw was finally finished laughing with Dr. Patel, and so Chandra put out her hand to shake mine. “I am very pleased to meet you, River Justice,” she said. “I’m always glad to make a new friend.” She has really brown eyes that stare right into you. I liked her a lot.

I wanted to let you know that now I have TWO Indian friends, all because of ONE (you).

I’m looking forward to your next letter.

Sincerely,

River Dean Justice

October 17, 2008

Dear River,

I am sorry such trouble has come to you. I think if the top of Town Mountain is cut off, you and the rest of the people of Black Banks will be homesick forever. It is so sad about the trees. I have been thinking of them as they must have been when they were alive: birds singing from little nests, ants running up bark, squirrels sleeping in the shade of leaves, worms clinging to long, deep roots. It is terrible those creatures have lost their homes. It is terrible the trees have been burned and wasted. I don’t understand why those men in bulldozers didn’t at least save the wood.

I did not know that such things as mountaintop removal happened in America. I asked Ms. Bledsoe to teach our class about it. (Remember how Ms. Bledsoe was my Summer Program teacher? Now she’s my regular teacher!) Even though she is an English teacher, I think she will do it, because she is someone who cares when bad things happen — not just to herself but also to people she has never ever met. She had not heard of mountaintop removal before, so I showed her the photographs you sent. She said, “My God,” and went online and started reading. I have noticed that whenever she is upset she bites her lips and blinks a lot. She was doing that when I left to go to history.

I could see and hear and smell everything in your letter, as if I were right there with you. That made some parts extra nice and some parts extra scary. You are a very good writer. You are also realllllllllly brave. I have never been to the principal’s office. If I did go, I would be in trouble in two places — at school and home, both. Nobody would stand up for me like your mamaw stood up for you. At home, they would just yell and say I have to get good grades and do whatever the teacher says and be a good girl, no matter what. Even Kiku would say this, although he himself is always breaking rules in little ways. He will not admit it, but he thinks boys do not have to behave as good as girls.

I found an old cookie tin yesterday that someone had left out by the trash. I cleaned it and am using it to keep your letters safe. In New York City, when you don’t want something, you leave it on the sidewalk so someone else can find it. Mrs. Lau got a lot of her furniture that way. A long time ago she found a ficus tree in a little ceramic pot sitting on the sidewalk next to the trash. The ficus is very big now, on its third pot, and it stretches almost to Mrs. Lau’s ceiling. Cuba used to lift his leg and pee on it, looking very proud of himself, but he got such scoldings that he finally stopped. It seemed like it was a real pleasure for him, but I guess you can’t have a dog peeing indoors. How is Rufus, by the way? Please tell him I say hello.

I am worried the bulldozers will come even closer to your house with ten windows. I hope you will be careful in the woods and on the cliff where you feel nervous. Where I come from, even little children of two years run on the mountain paths without feeling scared. Dadi says when you are born on the edge of a cliff, that is where you always walk best. When she and I were in Delhi, walking on flat pavement made our knees ache, but I have become used to it here in New York.