A Bird On Water Street (2 page)

I moaned. Partly to shut him up but mostly because I hurt so bad and the thinking was makin' me hurt even worse.

It took forever for help to come, but it finally did. The paramedics had to carry me out on a stretcher—a space-age, orange skateboard looking thing. I thought I'd never get out of that ditch with them panting like they'd never climbed a hill in their lives. It was almost a good thing when they nearly dropped me and I blacked out again. It spared me the pain of half the journey up the crumbling, rocky slope.

O

I was still wearin' the cast when we went back to school in September. Piran made the story bigger and bigger with every retelling until I was positively famous. The whole class signed my arm, including my entire Miners baseball team.

My cousin Buster said, “I would've killed you if you broke it during baseball season.”

Like breakin' it over summer vacation was any better? I guess it was Buster's bass-ackward way of saying he cared. Or not.

I stuck a pencil under the edge of my cast and tried to scratch an itch that was . . . just out of reach. I could hardly wait to get the danged thing off.

“Jack Hicks, are you paying attention?” Miss Post snapped.
“What is special about this tree?” she asked as she pointed her yardstick at the projection screen and another bushy-topped tree.

“It's green?” I said, and everybody laughed. But I thought it was a good answer. In my world of brown earth, yellow mud, and dirty arm casts, anything green seemed special to me. In fact, I'd have turned all of Coppertown green if I could.

r

Chapter 2

Roof Fall

“Anybody else? What are trees good for?” Miss Post asked.

“Climbin'?” Piran said. It was the all-American boy pastime according to the TV shows we watched. Although I knew for a fact Piran had never climbed a tree in his life.

“Shade,” Buster mumbled like it was obvious. But shade was something we didn't get much of around here.

“Yes, good!” Miss Post jumped on his response since Buster rarely said anything in class. She switched to the next slide. It was a diagram, a cut-away view of the ground with rainwater digging into the ground forming deep crevices. “And their roots hold the soil in place. Without roots, you get erosion like what we have in Coppertown . . .”

Suddenly, a sharp whirring sound cut her off.
SIREN!

Books flew. Chairs fell. Desks crashed against each other. We took off running—all of us. Miss Post couldn't a stopped us if she tried. Our legs just took over.

The Company siren meant something bad happened in the mine. Somebody's dad might be hurt, or worse.

Please not my dad, please not my dad,
I chanted as my feet pounded the dirt road, matching my heartbeat. The sound of rushing blood filled my ears and drowned out the gasping breaths of my classmates. Our feet kicked up clouds of dust, which blinded me as I struggled to race to the front. I squinted at the gray and windy sky—a storm was coming and I was living my nightmare. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't run fast enough.

Over a rise, the Company came into view like a black scab on the horizon. Its rusted metal pipes wove up, down, over, and through each other like a giant tangle of snakes. The red-and-white-striped smokestack soared out of the center. The whole structure of small buildings and sulfuric acid tanks sat on its own mountain of slag—the leftover, molten rock they poured down the hillside. It cooled to a rusty black shade, the same color as the iron train,
the
train, which sat waiting for its next shipment at the bottom of the hill. In the yard, in front of the elevator lift, I could already see the commotion.

Piran caught up with me as we slammed against the chain-link fence that surrounded the plant. He gasped large breaths and nodded my way. I glanced at the sign hanging next to the gate: “No copper mine injuries in 28 days. Let's make 1986 our safest year!”

Had that number ever gone over thirty?

Inside the chain-link fence that surrounded the Company, the ambulance's back end faced the elevator lift with its doors open wide. Two men rushed out of the ambulance holding a stretcher, just like the one they'd carried me on. Heck, it mighta been the same one. I gulped.

The paramedics squeezed into the small metal box and we watched the tops of their heads disappear as they sank into the mineshaft. The truck's flashing lights burned spots on my eyes as I stared at the miners, trying to make out what was going on.

What was it this time—roof fall, cave-in, explosion?

Suddenly, a white Ford sped through the gate and skidded to a stop beside the ambulance. I knew that car. Aunt Catherine jumped out and pushed her way to the lift as the wind whipped her hair over her face.

My stomach tied in a knot and I tore away from my classmates to run inside the gate. Instead, I hit the wide chest of a soot-covered miner. He was dressed in dark denim overalls, with a flannel shirt and hard hat. He smelled of sweat and sulfur, bitter, like scratched metal. It made my teeth ache.

“Yu'uns best stay outside the fence,” he said in a gruff voice.

“But that's my aunt!” I shouted. “It must be Uncle Amon! What happened to my uncle?”

“Amon Hicks? Don't know yet.” He looked at me closer. “You Ray Hicks' son?”

“I'm Jack,” I croaked and nodded. I couldn't catch my breath.

He stepped aside and I ran to Aunt Catherine. She looked at me like a scared rabbit and my first instinct was to run away, but she hugged me hard, bending my cast against my body at a strange angle. It pinched and I inhaled from the sharp pain, but I didn't say nothin'.

The yard grew quiet as everybody stopped and waited.

Aunt Catherine and I sat on the hood of her car until the engine cooled and grew metal cold. She rocked back and forth, twisting the ring on her finger. She and Amon had only been married a year.

I couldn't think of anything to say to make her feel better, so I just kept my mouth shut, even when her hair whipped around from the wind and stung my cheeks.

A miner handed her a cup of coffee and she passed it to me, but I didn't want it either. I didn't mind the taste, but the few times I'd drunk coffee it tore my stomach up worse than usual, so I didn't care for it. Besides, it seemed too calm a thing to do—sip a drink—when who knows what was going on a hundred feet below us in the ground. I wanted to throw the cup across the yard and shout,
“Hurry up already!”
But there weren't nothin' to do but wait.

I poured the dark liquid out next to the tire, where it stained the gravel like blood.

After what was probably an hour, the lift chugged back into motion. It was coming up. Finally. And yet, now that it was happening I decided I could wait a while longer—maybe forever if it meant avoiding bad news.

The metal gates pushed open with a
clang
. Folks outside the gate rushed in and everybody started shouting, “Out of the way, give 'em room!”

Aunt Catherine ran to the stretcher and grabbed the hand that lay limp over its side. My Uncle Amon's hand—dirty and . . . gray.

The crowd swallowed me up as I stood there, frozen.

“It's Amon Hicks,” whispered around me like a Sunday prayer.

The paramedics loaded my uncle into the ambulance and my aunt climbed in with him. Suddenly my dad was there too, covered in more dirt and grime than I'd ever seen on him.

“Not enough room,” the paramedics yelled to him.

“I'll meet you at the hospital, Amon. You're gonna be okay!” Dad shouted. He stumbled to his Company truck as if he couldn't see his way clearly, as if his world was rocking beneath him.

I waved my good arm and chased after him to pick me up. “Dad, Dad!” But he didn't notice. My eyes stung with angry tears as Piran grabbed my arm.

“C'mon!”

We took off running again—this time cross-country toward the hospital. Up and down through the erosion ditches we climbed and slid. The wind kicked up dirt devils that blew into my eyes and nose, but going that way was still faster than the road.

Piran couldn't make it. About halfway there, his asthma stopped him flat. “Go on,” he choked out as he bent over coughing. “I'll catch up.”

“But, but,” I stammered. I was used to waiting for him to catch his breath.

“I'll be fine!” He wheezed and pulled his inhaler from his pocket, wiggling it as if to say,
See, I didn't forget it this time.
“Go!
”

I nodded and kept runnin'.

My arm throbbed under its cast as I burst through the emergency room doors. The waiting room was already full of miners and their families—word traveled fast in our town.

Aunt Livvy, Uncle Bubba, and Buster stood near the check-in desk with Mom, whose eyes were filled with tears. She reached out a shaky hand and pulled me close.

Suddenly, a gut-wrenching scream echoed from deep inside the building. All the air left the room in one gasp as everybody faced the double silver doors. A short time later, the doctor pushed through, scanned the crowd, and then shook his head. “I'm sorry, there was nothing we could do.”

I tried to swallow back the pressure growing inside—I didn't want Buster to see me that way—but it didn't work. I was crying for real now. We all were. My tears joined in with the groans, wails, and cursing that spread through the room. Mom hugged me tight, and though I usually would have pulled away, I didn't complain when the buttons of her shirt pressed into my forehead and her tears melted into my hair.

Aunt Catherine's parents wrestled their way through the crowd frantically. “Catherine! Where's our Catherine?” Mrs. Maddox shouted.

Just then Dad appeared through the silver doors. “She's with Amon,” he mumbled and held a door open for them. As soon as they passed through, he fell into Mom's arms and sobbed.

I'd never seen my dad cry and it dried up my own tears real quick. He'd lost his dad and now his brother to the mine. How could he stand it? Mom held him close, just like she'd held me, as she rubbed his back and whispered, “It'll be okay. It'll be okay.”

“I told him to stop sometimes, to listen to the rock,” Dad said. His face was puffy, streaked with dirt and tears. “If only I'd been there. He probably didn't even notice the roof was givin' way . . .”

Roof fall then. It was always something like that. And now my Uncle Amon was dead.

O

Three days later I stood between my mom and Grandpa Chase by Uncle Amon's grave. Dad and Aunt Catherine stood on either side of Father Huckabay, our Episcopal minister. The rest of the town surrounded us. Grandpa pointed out the Union leaders who drove in from the big city. They stood toward the back, away from the crowd with Sheriff Elder.

Everybody wore black, but dirt whipped around our ankles and turned us red up to our knees. I looked down at my own big feet, which seemed to melt right into the ground. Mom squeezed my hand and my eyes watered up again.

It had been a closed casket at the wake the night before—it gave me shivers to think why. But it felt strange that I didn't get to say good-bye, or somethin'. Amon and my dad never did get along real well. They'd been in the middle of another row when the accident happened, so it had been a few weeks since I'd seen Amon . . . alive.

They lowered the casket into what looked like a small sinkhole in the red earth—much like the collapse where my Grandfather Hicks had died. Was I the only one who thought it strange? It was being underground that killed Uncle Amon, and here we were puttin' him right back under.

After it was done, Aunt Catherine went to stay with her sister out of town. She said she couldn't stand being around Amon's memory everywhere, said she needed a fresh start. I hoped it made losing Amon easier for her, because it sure weren't easy at home.

Dad didn't sleep for days, it seemed. He kept switchin' between being sad and mad at Amon. According to him, Amon never should have been down there in the first place.

After Grandfather Hicks had been killed in that collapse way back when, my dad had gone to work in the mines to keep the family going. His mother had insisted Amon stay in school. She said both her boys weren't gonna lose out on a chance at a better life. After she died a few months later from a broken heart, Amon quit school and went to work in the mines anyway. The money was too good, I guess.

If it had been me, I wouldn't have done what Amon did. I would have stayed in school and studied . . . well, I don't know what I would have studied . . . something, anything to keep me out of those mines.

But Dad had my future mapped out for me. I was supposed to be a miner too. Would Amon's dying change his mind? Maybe Dad wouldn't want me to be a miner anymore. Maybe
he
wouldn't want to be a miner anymore.

It could have easily been him killed in the roof fall. In my dreams that gray hand hanging over the side of the stretcher didn't belong to my Uncle Amon. It belonged to my dad.