The Coalwood Way (21 page)

On the drive back, we passed Dreama walking up the sidewalk toward Cuke’s house. “We ought to stop, give her a ride,” I said.

“Don’t you know when to give up?” Roy Lee demanded. Just to show me, he pressed harder on the accelerator pedal, leaving her in a puff of blue exhaust. “Leave her alone. You can’t help her.”

Then I remembered what Mrs. Mallett had said about Cuke. “What do you guess Cuke did with that sixteen-year-old girl?” I asked.

Roy Lee huffed a joyless laugh. “He raped her. At least that’s what he went to prison for. The way I heard it, she’d been raped by a lot of men in Bradshaw on pretty much a regular basis. Cuke got caught by her daddy and that got him shipped off to the state pen for a few years.”

As we rattled up Main Street, I tried to get what had happened to Cuke settled in my mind. Men had a responsibility to women, no matter how old they were. I’d been taught that from practically the day I was born. I believed it, too, although the concept had been sorely tested a few times when Wanda Kirk used to beat me up at grade-school recess. But I figured a mature man had an even greater responsibility to a young girl. A man who crossed the line on that deserved everything more righteous men might give him. I was glad Cuke had gone to prison for what he’d done, and I was sorry he’d found another young girl in Dreama.

At my house, Roy Lee stopped to let me off. I had another question before I got out of his car. “What did she say, Roy Lee?” I asked. “Could you hear her?”

I guess Roy Lee was pretty much done with me for the day. “Who?” he snapped.

“Dreama. You know, when she told Tag—I just want . . . something—I couldn’t hear her.”

“My God, Sonny. Can’t you just let it go?”

“I’m just asking,” I explained. “Did you hear her?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

Despite himself, I think, Roy Lee’s eyes betrayed a hint of sadness. “It was stupid.” He turned his face away.

“Roy Lee, what did she say?”

He kept his expression hidden but his voice was glum. “She said she just wanted to be a Coalwood girl.”

IT was the last week of classes before exams and the Christmas break, and there was barely contained excitement coursing through Big Creek’s halls, bright with candy canes, red and green crepe paper, wreaths, and over nearly every door entrance, sprigs of mistletoe. Kisses were legal under mistletoe, and if you stood under a door long enough, some girl would give you a peck on the cheek if only to get you to move. Hand-painted posters from the various clubs wished everybody a Merry Christmas. Sandy Whitt and her Christmas Formal decorating committee had placed notices at strategic spots, reminding everybody of the big dance. The theme this year was “Let It Snow.”

The week before, Sandy had snagged me in the hall between English lit and civics class. “I need help decorating,” she said.

“I’m not going to the formal,” I replied.

“How come?”

“I don’t have a date.”

“You don’t? Well, that’s crazy. You’re the friendliest boy I know.”

“Friendly and date material apparently don’t go together,” I said. Then I asked, “How about you?” I was going for a miracle. Sandy Whitt was the most popular girl in school.

“Silly. Dave and I have been going steady for a year.”

I knew that. Dave Taylor was not only a star football player, he was just an all-round nice guy. Heavy competition. “When are you decorating?”

“All day Sunday after church until we’re done.”

“I’ll come if I can.” There was no use resisting once Sandy had you in her sights.

“Thanks, Sonny, I can always count on you,” she said, and off she went, ponytail flying.

Ginger, Betty Jane, and Sue Burnett passed me going the other way while I hurried down the hall. The civics teacher, Mr. Short, was a placid man but he had a pet peeve. He didn’t like anybody to be late for his class. Ginger broke off from the trio. “You look tired,” she worried.

“I’ve been staying up late studying,” I confessed. “I’m trying to get all A’s this semester.”

“That’ll make two of us,” she said.

“Well, at least you don’t look tired.” It was my clumsy way of paying her a compliment.

“That’s because I don’t go around trying to save the world all the time, Sonny Hickam,” she said. “I heard how you took up for Dreama at the Big Store.”

“I just got her in trouble,” I replied miserably.

“That’s not what Junior said.” The bell rang and she headed down the hall to catch up with the other sophomores.

I looked after her. It was funny. Ginger had said the same thing about me that Mom had said about Dad. We were both trying to save the world. I sure hoped the world knew it.

“Coming to my class, Mr. Hickam?” Mr. Short called from his door. I expected trouble, but he only gave me a smile as I rushed past him into the classroom. I guess he’d already caught the Christmas spirit.

Mr. Short settled behind his desk, a huge slab of brown oak. He wore a charcoal-gray three-piece suit and, in a splash of Christmas color, a green-and-red-striped tie. He had brown hair, combed straight back, but his Errol Flynn mustache was tinged with gray, as were his sideburns. He had a kind face and a soft voice, but most of us knew better than to mess with him. He was also the assistant principal, and that added an aura of extra authority about him.

Mrs. Turner appeared at the door. “Mr. Short, excuse me for interrupting, but I need Billy Rose,” she said.

After Mr. Short had given him permission, Billy stood up, shoveled his books under his arm, and grimly followed her. “He’s gone,” Roy Lee said. “I saw the navy recruiter down at Mr. Turner’s office.”

“Would you like to share your information with the class, Mr. Cooke?” Mr. Short asked.

Roy Lee repeated what he’d told me. Mr. Short said, “Quitting school represents two failures: that of the teachers and that of the student. But Billy hasn’t given up. If he’s going in the navy, he’s still trying to better himself. We need to remember that.”

What Mr. Short had said was true to my way of thinking, but it didn’t make me feel any better about it.

After civics, we moved to physics class. Miss Riley asked everybody to gather around her desk. Although her supply of chemicals and hardware was running on empty, her supply of creativity was always filled to the brim. She invited us to look at a razor blade floating on the surface of the water in a shallow pan. “What holds the blade up?” she asked. We all knew the answer and competed with each other to say it first: surface tension, the elastic property of the surface of liquids. Then she squirted some liquid detergent in the water and the razor blade sank. “How come?” she asked.

Roy Lee said, “Because it makes the razor blade so slippery it cuts through?” We just laughed at him, but we didn’t know the answer any better than he.

Quentin piped up and said, “Is it not clear to you all that the detergent simply reduces the surface tension of the water such that it cannot hold the blade?”

Everybody went silent. Quentin, we were certain, had nailed it. “You’ve described
what
happened, Quentin,” Miss Riley said gently. “But
why
did it happen? That’s the more important question.”

Quentin’s eyes registered puzzlement. He licked his lips. She had him stumped. I had an idea. “Could it be,” I said, “that the detergent molecules are so small they get in between the water molecules and that’s what keeps them from clustering? If they did, the tension would be gone. It would be like knocking the legs out from under a table.”

Quentin looked at me. “A rigorous thought, Sonny,” he said.

I preened, just a little. Miss Riley smiled. Her experiments, no matter how simple, were to provoke our minds.

Miss Riley waved me up to her after class. She rested her cheek on her hand. “Can you tell Jake something for me?” I nodded, and she said, “Tell him I have received his message and will oblige.”

I was happy to hear that she and Jake were communicating. She perused her grade book. “If you get an A on your exam,” she said, “looks like you’ll get an A in this class. I’d put that down as prodigious, as Quentin would say.”

“I have a good chance of getting A’s in all my classes,” I reported, careful not to sound too proud.

“Why the turnaround?”

“My rockets,” I said instantly. “Every class seems to have an application. Even speech class. I’ve been giving every one of my speeches on the space race.”

Miss Riley worked her lips as if trying to keep them straight, but a crooked smile broke through. “I know. Miss Bryson said she’d like to see a little variety in your act.”

“Well, I’m kind of interested in the Loch Ness monster,” I confessed.

“You might want to use it as the subject for your final speech,” she suggested.

Quentin was waiting for me outside the classroom. “I applaud you for your rigorous thought process on surface tension, Sonny,” he prattled. “Roy Lee’s idea of the razor blade becoming slippery was, of course, ludicrous, but you might be interested to know that I have been considering the entire concept of slipperiness lately, a subject profoundly ignored by most scientists. In fact, I believe that if I put my mind to it, I might be able to create the perfect slippery surface. The applications of that would be enormous! Frying pans, for instance. Would that not be prodigious, Sonny, my boy? Your mother with a frying pan whereby her eggs did not stick? A complex polymer will probably be the solution. I have been considering the chemistry of the banana to start . . .”

“Quentin, not now,” I said. “I’ve got other things on my mind.”

“Such as?”

“I have a list. It was your suggestion. You want to hear everything on it?”

“Not really,” he confessed.

“Then how about your ceramic-lined nozzle? You want to hear about that? Mr. Caton finally figured out how to layer in the putty. And I got to tell you, it’s prodigious!”

Quentin opened his mouth. I could tell he was about to say “Prodigious!” but since I’d already said it, I nearly had him at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “Stupendous!”

“Quentin?” I stopped him in his tracks. He raised his eyebrows. “Please don’t start saying ‘stupendous.’ I don’t think I could stand it.”

He nodded, implying that he understood, although I knew he didn’t.

WE walked down the hall past the principal’s office. I was surprised when I glanced through the glass in his closed door and saw some familiar faces. I was most astonished to see my mother as well as Mr. and Mrs. Likens, the Coalwood school principal and his wife. In the corner of Mr. Turner’s office was a man in a navy uniform. I didn’t see Billy. “What do you make of it, Sonny?” Quentin asked.

A surge of hope passed through me. “Did I ever tell you the navy occupied Coalwood one time, Q?”

Quentin scratched his head. “No. Why did they do that?”

“Because they wanted something we had.” I looked into the office again. Mrs. Turner spotted me and closed the door to the outer office but not before I saw Mrs. Likens shaking her finger at the navy man. I laughed. “I think the tables just got turned.”

That evening, Billy wasn’t on the school bus back to Coalwood. The next morning, he wasn’t at the Six bus stop, either, but he did turn up in our first class. Mom had already given me the good news the night before. Mr. Turner was going to keep Billy at his house through exam week and even the Christmas holidays. He could stay there the rest of the school year if he needed to. The navy had been sent packing. “You and Mr. and Mrs. Likens did a good thing, Mom,” I said.

Mom was sitting on the top of her ladder, concentrating on the wispy clouds in the sky of her painting. “It saves him for now,” she said. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed that he can get through the rest of the year.”

I didn’t try to compliment her anymore. Sometimes just doing something is praise enough.

EVERY time I went past the union hall, I saw more activity. Hand-lettered signs were stacked out front. One of them said HICKMAN IS A RAT. Another one said HICKHAM AGAINST THE WORKING MAN. The signs didn’t bother me. Every time there was a strike, I’d seen them like that, or worse. What I wondered was how many years we’d have to live in Coalwood before people figured out how to spell our simple name.

Roy Lee, who kept his finger on the union pulse through his brother, said Mr. Dubonnet and Mr. Mallett were primed to take their men out on strike during Christmas week. All they needed was the approval of UMWA headquarters in Charleston. “Your dad can kiss 11 East good-bye if they do,” Roy Lee said. “It’s going to be one of their main gripes. They’re going to shut that section down for good. You ever find out what he’s doing in there?”

“No.”

Roy Lee was driving me down to the machine shop to get Mr. Caton to take another turn on the nozzle he’d built. I had found it to be just a shade too large for the rocket casement it was supposed to fit within. It was probably because of me trying to design with a fat lead pencil and a large-scale ruler.

As we drove past the Club House we saw Mrs. Mallett and some of the other women in her new club. They were supervising their husbands, who were putting up plywood camels, sheep, and other Christmas cutouts on the Club House lawn. One of the Wise Men held a sign that said THIS DISPLAY ERECTED BY THE C.O.W. LADIES.

I tried not to care but I did. Coalwood was just going to have this blighted little display this year and, in a way, it was my fault. If I’d jumped in and written the pageant script for Mom way back when she’d first asked me, it might have given her the momentum she needed to make it happen, despite the company’s abandonment of it along with everything else. I shook my head, sighing. “Shut up,” Roy Lee said before I could open my mouth. “It’s not your fault.”

“You’re a good guy, Roy Lee,” I said.

He hunched his shoulders. “Well, keep it to yourself. I have a bad reputation to defend.”

MY brain was crammed full. I had to let it get out on paper before it fell out of my ears. Exam day had struck at Big Creek High School, and I had studied all I could study. I gave my speech on the Loch Ness monster and got a thumbs-up from Miss Bryson. I was on a roll. Civics, English literature, typing, physics, and trigonometry all went by, one exam after the other. When I finished, I knew I’d done well. I could just feel it. I was going to get all A’s. I allowed myself a small grin, then wiped it off lest someone see me being proud.