A Bird On Water Street (21 page)

“I am not happy you were up there, Jack Hicks, and for that, you're grounded until I say otherwise,” she said, and then put her arm around me. “But you did a good thing saving Little Man here. What are you going to feed him?”

I looked at my amphibian book. “Crickets, I think.”

“Well, that's easy enough,” she said. “You can pick some up from Pa's bait shop tomorrow.”

“I thought I was grounded.”

“Well, mostly.”

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Chapter 31

Nests

The next day, after pickin' out the smallest crickets I could find at Grandpa's bait shop, I showed Piran my setup for Little Man.

“They were all dead?” he asked.

“All except for this guy.”

“That really sucks.” He plopped down on my bed.

“Yeah. I can't wait until the Company is gone for good,” I said and placed a tiny cricket in the aquarium. Instinct took over and it didn't take long for Little Man to find it.

“But the town needs the Company,” Piran argued.

“It needs something,” I replied, “but not that.”

Little Man croaked happily.

“You should've seen those scabs the other day,” I said. “They looked mean.”

“You'll have a cool scar from the rock they threw at you,” Piran replied. His version of the story was already growin'. I grimaced and didn't bother correcting him.

“Dad hit the roof when he heard about Eli crossing the picket line,” Piran said. “I can't imagine what he'd do if he knew about the pot.”

“What about Hannah?”

“She sucked up to my parents and moved back in. We'll have
another
baby in the house soon. Can you believe it?”

I shook my head.

“Have you heard from your dad?” Piran asked.

“He called last night, but it's long distance, so I didn't get to talk to him.”

“Well, when are they comin' home?”

“I dunno,” I said. “Supposedly, there's a whole bunch of people waiting to talk to the supervisor.”

Just then, the phone rang in the kitchen. Piran and I jumped. I ran down the hall. As I came around the corner, Mom was walking toward me with a huge smile spreading across her face. “Jack, your dad's coming home this afternoon.”

“Any news?” I asked.

“He wouldn't say,” she replied, but she didn't stop smiling.

She grabbed her purse, rifled through it, and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

“Here.” She handed it to me.

“What's this?” I asked.

“Why don't you and Piran go see a movie,” Mom said and looked at the clock. “There should be one starting in about forty minutes.”

Piran and I exchanged a strange look. “Really? But what about Dad comin' home?”

“Don't worry. He'll be here when you get back. Now go on, you two. Shoo.” She practically pushed us out the door. “Go have fun.”

“Ever feel like you're not wanted?” Piran said as we crossed the yard.

“Yeah,” I laughed. “Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.” Still, I wasn't going to complain. My parents hadn't given me money for the movies in ages.

Some of the other kids whose fathers were on Dad's crew were already at the theater when we got there.
Weird
, I thought.

They all
oohed
over the bandage on my forehead after Piran told them the story of the picket line—extremely exaggerated of course.

Since most of the kids were still in middle school and Piran and I were gonna be in high school soon, we took charge. We handled everybody's ticket purchases and then bought ourselves an enormous bucket of popcorn. I inhaled the hot butter and salt as we entered the dark theater. I didn't even care what movie we were going to see. I was just glad to be there.

I'd eaten about half our bucket when Piran started the popcorn fight. Mr. Mabely tried to get us to settle down. “You kids hush up or I'll kick you out!” But I saw a smile sneak across his face as he turned to leave.

We drank our Cherry Cokes too fast and had a burping contest. Piran won by a mile.

We missed most of the movie, sure, but we had a great time.

It was late afternoon when we left the theater. I checked the lamppost for the sparrow, but it wasn't there.

All the way home I tried to brace myself for whatever news my dad might have.
Did he get a job? Will we have to move?

O

I ran into the house, slamming the screen door. “Dad!” I yelled, but it was dark and quiet except for Bill Monroe's “In the Pines” driftin' from the kitchen radio. I hummed along with the chorus, “In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines.”

Nothin' like that here,
I thought,
not yet anyhow.

I walked down the hallway looking for my parents. Dust motes drifted through the setting sun as it filtered through the windows. “Mom? Dad?”

Still no answer.

I went out back and finally found my parents smooching between sheets drying on the clothesline.

“Ew!”

Mom reached out and held my hand. “Jack, your dad got a job.” She beamed.

I held my breath. “Do we have to move?” I asked.

“It's a long way to go every day,” Dad said, “but the men and I will take turns drivin'. We can do it.”

I smiled so big I thought my face would break in two.

Just then, sunlight flickered across my eyes. There was the sparrow again, perched on the laundry pole with a twig in its beak.

“What do you know,” Dad said.

I blinked at the setting sun that framed the bird from behind and watched as it flew from the pole to my dogwood tree, where it wove the twig into its brand-new nest.

“Maybe we could pick up a bird feeder at the Piggly Wiggly next time we go,” Mom said.

“You'll need bird seed too,” Dad replied.

I nodded and smiled even bigger, if that was possible.

O

While Mom made supper, Dad and I sat on the porch swing and stared at the Company. Its familiar silhouette was already startin' to change. Some of the pipes stretched out and met nothing but air and a few of the holding tanks were already gone. Parts were leaving by train and truck, never to return. I was thrilled it was coming down.

“There was an article in the paper about what Tom Hill said—that they're moving the whole thing down to South America. No unions down there. I imagine it'll be much like it used to be here,” Dad said. “They'll have to fight for fair treatment, just like we did.”

“It's not right.” I frowned and thought about what Grandpa had said:
“Life is like that sometimes.”

The red-and-white-striped smokestack still stood. I wondered if they'd leave it as some kind of memorial.

“I suppose the mining days in Coppertown are officially over.”

I took a deep breath. It was time to tell him. “Dad, I know you wanted me to, and it was the family tradition and all, but . . . but I never wanted to be a miner,” I said. “I'm sorry.” I shut my lips tight and waited.

He looked at me long and hard. “What do you want to be then?”

“A forest ranger,” I said. “I want to bring the trees back to Coppertown.”

“A forest ranger, huh?” He sat staring straight ahead for the longest time. “Seems like you'd need to go to college for somethin' like that.”

“I suppose so,” I muttered.

“You'd have to get scholarships and work your way through. I couldn't afford to send you,” he said. “But you'd be the first one in this family to get past high school. You want it bad enough?”

I gulped and smiled. “Yup. I want it bad enough.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “I think you'd be real good at that, Jack.”

I felt fifty pounds lighter.

O

The miners picked Dad up early the next morning to go work at the new carpet mill.

Mom and I stood in the yard to send him off right. Just before he left, Dad pressed the fairy cross into my hand.

“It brought me luck, Jack,” he said. “Thanks.”

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Chapter 32

Trees

Piran was happy to hear the news too. “I guess I won't be the last kid in Coppertown after all.” He smiled and punched my arm.

We fished all morning, but my mind was someplace else. I was so happy I was flying, just like that sparrow. We didn't have to move. We weren't going anywhere, but the Company was. With it gone, nature actually stood a chance. The trees could come back, but they needed help. I thought about my garden and wondered how hard it would be to plant a garden the size of Coppertown.

“We gotta go to the post office this afternoon,” Piran said. “My Dad's gettin' a big shipment of baby chickens in. The Miller family is gonna start farming. Can you believe it?”

“That'll be somethin' to see,” I replied.

O

When we got there, people were walkin' out with wide smiles. The second we opened the door, we understood why. The sound of squawks and peeps was deafening.

“What a madhouse!” Mr. Quinn said and threw up his hands. “It's impossible to get any work done today.”

Behind him sat stacks and stacks of short boxes. Little beaks and furry yellow wings poked out of the holes that lined the sides. The containers shook from the baby chickens shuffling around inside. Piran and I stretched over the counter as far as possible to get a better look.

As I reached, I accidentally knocked a stack of flyers off the counter, sending them fluttering to the ground.

“Oops, sorry Mr. Quinn.” I knelt down to gather the mess. That's when I noticed what was printed at the top of each paper in bold black letters:

TREE PLANTERS WANTED

for

CERP

(Coppertown Environmental Reclamation Project)

Pay: 10¢ per seedling planted

Call . . .

I stopped breathing and my eyes watered. “No way,” I whispered. I could barely speak.

“Mr. Quinn, are these for everybody?” I asked as I returned the untidy stack to the counter. I tried to straighten it, but I was so excited that my hands were shaking.

“Sure, Jack,” he replied. “A man from some environmental agency dropped them off this morning.”

“Piran, I gotta go,” I said.

“What the . . . ?”

“I'll talk to you later!” I called out as I grabbed a flyer from the top of the stack and ran out the door. I whooped and hollered and waved that flyer above my head like a victory flag all the way home.

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author's note

Wh
ile
A Bird on Water Street
is fiction, Jack's story weaves through a real time and place in American history. Copperhill, Tennessee (Coppertown), is located in what's called the Copper Basin, where Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina meet at the base of the Gateway to the Appalachian Mountains. (The town is called McCaysville on the Georgia side and Ducktown, Tennessee, is just north of Copperhill.) The Georgia-Tennessee line really does cut through the parking lot of the local grocery store, and I've stood with a foot in each state many times.

Copper was discovered there in 1843, not long after the Cherokee Indians were forced to walk the “Trail of Tears.” Tin miners were brought in from Cornwall, England, as well as other countries, to apply their expertise to copper mining.

Life was crazier than the Wild West in those days. The remote area was cut off from most civilization by rocky terrain and terrible roads. Before the railroad, wagons (pulled by teams of donkeys or oxen) typically took weeks to haul supplies and copper in and out of the mountains. Therefore, miners turned to the locally available fuel to keep the smelters running—wood.

By the 1870s, over 50 square miles of land had been stripped completely bare of trees. Toxic fumes of sulfur dioxide expelled from the open ore roasting heaps created acid rain, which killed off the remaining vegetation. And although the smelters were enclosed in 1904 to trap and produce sulfuric acid, the area remained devoid of vegetation for over a hundred years.

During my research I heard amazing stories of what it was like growing up in such an environment. For instance, the wind was too corrosive for tin roofs (everybody had asphalt shingles) and could eat up a pair of nylon stockings hanging on a clothesline in a matter of minutes. There were no bugs, and there were certainly no birds. But the mining was lucrative.

The technology used in the Copper Basin mines was cutting edge for its time, although by today's standards the methods would be deemed harsh. But Americans had come to rely on the products made from the mined materials, such as electrical wiring, roof shingles, pool cleaner, detergent, fertilizer, and even toothpaste. The long-term effects of mining on the environment were considered acceptable back then—collateral damage. Sometimes that included loss of life.