A Bird On Water Street (3 page)

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Chapter 3

Castoffs

Two weeks later, I awoke to the sound of Dad's Company truck engine turnin' over. His new tires, the third set so far this year from the acid eating 'em up, crunched over the gravely dirt yard. I sat up in bed, groggy, and watched out the window as he drove across the bridge.

Usually I could watch him drive all the way to the Company, but today he disappeared into the thick fog.

I rubbed my lucky rabbit's foot and tried to settle my stomach as I prayed like I did every day.
Please let him come home safe, please let him come home safe.
I knew it was silly, but I'd been chanting that prayer since I was a little kid. It made me feel like I was doing
something
to help my dad. Maybe if I'd been doing it for my uncle too . . . I added a prayer for all the other miners.

I got my lucky rabbit's foot when I was eight and went to Rock City in Chattanooga with my Grandpa and Grandma Chase, before she died of lung cancer. There were so many signs to “See Rock City” painted on barn roofs along the way, I couldn't wait to hike through the caves with their crystal-lined walls and diorama scenes of fairy tales and gnomes at work tucked into nooks and crannies. I wanted to wind through the “Fat Man's Squeeze,” a path between two rock faces, and see seven states from the overlook.

It wasn't until I was older that I realized how strange it was that Grandpa had wanted to go into caves for his vacation after a lifetime of mining. After all, he'd been in the same mine collapse that killed Grandfather Hicks.

They were best friends when it happened. Grandpa Chase made it out with a back injury and couldn't mine anymore, which is why he opened the Bait 'n Beer, but my dad's father didn't make it out at all. Grandpa Chase said he didn't miss the mining, but he did miss being underground. Despite the bad things that had happened, he said being there was like being in the womb of Mother Nature.

If I'd felt that way about being underground, it woulda made things easier with my dad. Even as far back as that trip to Rock City, I knew my heart was someplace else.

It was one of my first trips out of Coppertown and I'd never seen so much green. I couldn't stop gaping at all the trees that towered over our car. It was so seldom I had to look
up
to see anything in Coppertown, other than the sky. When I finally saw the caves, I couldn't have cared less—I'd seen plenty of rocks in my lifetime. What I fell in love with were the trees.

I rubbed my rabbit's foot and remembered standing outside Rock City, under the shadow of a tree—Grandma had called it a maple—and having to crane my neck all the way back and strain to see the top through a thick canopy of paper-thin leaves. They looked like stained glass as the light cut through their layers in a million shades of green. I'd placed my hand on the trunk to brace myself and swore I could feel it hum. I felt like I was in church—experiencing something holy, like the tree was talking to me somehow.

About a month after that trip, I found a poster of trees, just trees, in
National Geographic
magazine and I put it up on my bedroom wall. Sometimes I dreamed I was a bird flying above that thick forest, breathing in all that
green
.

Dad loved everything underground, and I guess Grandpa Chase did too, but I loved everything above. Well, everything that was
supposed
to be above anyhow.

The poster reminded me of what Miss Post had said on the day Uncle Amon died. Tree roots hold the soil together. But we didn't have any trees in Coppertown. If we did, would Uncle Amon still be alive? Could trees somehow save my dad?

How long would it take to grow a forest?

I imagined seedlings sproutin' and spreading their roots underground while up top they reached toward the sky, at first no larger than twigs, then with trunks growing wider and taller. Their branches stretched every which way, leaves popping out along them in green waves. They made shadows across our Red Hills, where no shadows had fallen before. The air cooled, birds nested, and me and Piran climbed tree limbs higher and higher, breathing deeply without any dust in our lungs.

Even in my imaginings, though, a forest took a long time. And considerin' we could never get anything to grow in Mom's garden, let alone anywhere in Coppertown, it would be longer still. I sighed.

Then I remembered what day it was—Friday. Not only was it the last day before the weekend, but my arm cast was coming off. Finally!

I got out of bed and dressed in record time. The smell of sausage frying up in the iron skillet wrapped around me as I walked down the hall. My stomach growled.

“Biscuits and gravy for breakfast,” Mom said. “Pour yourself some milk.”

“No eggs?” I could've eaten the eggs and the chicken too.

“I gave your dad the last one. I'll pick up some from the Company store later today.” She looked out the window. “It's foggy this morning. Can't do laundry.” She sighed. “The fog ate up my stockings last time and I can't keep buying a new pair every time I need to wear 'em.”

Our fog was like sticky acid rain, and it burned holes in mom's stockings in a matter of hours. “I closed my bedroom window,” I said. It kept the wet out.

“Good. I hope it doesn't get as hot today, though,” she said. “Law' me, it gets stuffy in here all shut up tight.”

She started singing “As the Sparrow Goes.” She'd been singing that tune since I don't know when. I don't think she even noticed she was doing it. Like a bird, she yodeled, “As a sparrow flies, my heart flies, bringing my love to you.” It was the sound of my mother.

I stuffed myself silly with two biscuits smothered in gravy.

“Jack, you're gonna choke yourself. Slow down,” Mom said.

“In my opinion, biscuits are the world's most perfect food,” I said with a grin. It took an entire glass of milk to wash that brick down to the bottom of my stomach where it sat, warm and happy.

Mom handed me my lunch in a brown paper sack. “Now remember, I'll pick you up after after lunch and we'll head to the hospital.”

It had to be the only time in history those words had ever sounded good. “I won't forget!”

“Kiss.” She tapped her cheek as I was about to leave.

“Awww, Mom. I'm gettin' too old for all that mush.”

She grabbed my face and planted a kiss on my forehead. “You are
never
too old to love on your mama.”

O

For days after Uncle Amon died, the kids at school had avoided me like I was stained with bad luck or something. They'd stare and stop talking whenever I was near. But today they weren't—maybe because I couldn't stop smiling.

“Will you quit it?” Piran said as we walked down the hall. “Everybody is lookin' at you.”

“I can't help it,” I said as I nearly danced out of my worn sneakers. “I'm getting my cast off after lunch!”

“Well, that's good.” Piran's ears turned red, a sure sign he still felt bad about it. “But maybe you could stop
bouncing
so much? You're makin' a scene.”

“Hey, at least they're not whisperin' anymore,” I said and my stomach relaxed a little.

Even so, I had a hard time focusing on the tree identification quiz, so I only got an A minus. Piran got a C, which he was pretty happy with.

“It's impossible to study at my house,” he said. If I was around Piran's older sister, Hannah, all the time, I wouldn't have been able to study either. But it wasn't Hannah he was talking about. “My sisters and brothers are always runnin' around screaming,” he added. I'd seen and heard it too many times to doubt him—the volume got louder there every year. Dad said Mrs. Quinn spit out babies like a Pez dispenser.

Once, I asked my Mom why I didn't have any brothers or sisters. She said they tried two times before me, but lost 'em both. The way she teared up, I decided not to ask any more questions about it. I liked thinking I had a brother and sister up in heaven somewhere though. Add them to Grandfather and Grandmother Hicks, Grandma Chase, and Uncle Amon, and I had an army of guardian angels up there lookin' out for me.

As promised, Mom was at school after lunch, her car kicking up a cloud of dirt as it pulled up to the front steps. I didn't want dust in my teeth so while I waited for the cloud to settle before I got in, I yelled to my cousin who was still playin' catch in the yard. “Hey, Buster, next time I see you I'll be able to play ball!”

“'Bout danged time!” he shouted and fake pitched the ball at me. I ducked and he laughed. But he mighta really done it. I wouldn't have put it past him.

Talking about removing my cast and doin' it were two different things, though. We had to go back to the same place where Uncle Amon died just two weeks before. Walking into the hospital's waiting room brought that afternoon back like a bad dream. I could almost hear Aunt Catherine's scream still echoing off the seafoam green walls—the color of my least favorite crayon. When we'd seen Aunt Catherine's parents in town a couple days before, they'd said they didn't know when she'd be back from visiting her sister, their faces tightening up like they were wondering if she ever would come home.

My arm tickled like it knew something was up and my feet wanted to head the other way. I tried not to fidget while we waited for the nurse to call my name. I watched the clock
tick, tick, tick
and stared at the seafoam green walls. Who decided that was a calming color anyhow? It made me nauseous.

“Jack Hicks?” the nurse said. It was time.

She led us back through the two large silver doors to a row of beds divided by curtains hanging from the ceiling.

“Go ahead and get yourself settled,” she said and patted a bed. “Dr. Davis will be with you in a minute.” Dr. Davis had been my doctor since I was born. Mom said he moved to Coppertown straight out of medical school and never left. Something about our town got under people's skin, in a good way. Didn't surprise me none, we were full of good people, although if we had trees, I bet even more folks would stick around.

I climbed onto the high bed, crunching the white paper underneath me and feeling all of five years old.
Was this the same bed my uncle died on?
My insides jumped like oil in a hot skillet, though I was tryin' my best to stay calm.

In, out, in, out.
I closed my eyes and breathed.
My stomach is fine. I don't feel sick.
Then Dr. Davis showed up and plugged in his saw.

I don't know if I was curious or just plum scared, but I had to watch as the blade spun toward my arm. The high-pitched scream filled the small room and bounced off the cement block walls. I flinched to cover my ears, but Dr. Davis said, “Jack, hold still now. This'll only take a minute.”

Plaster dust sprayed up like a rooster tail as the saw sank into my cast. I ignored the dust flying and stared without blinking while Dr. Davis moved the blade up and down my arm, cutting deeper and deeper until the tension of the cast released. The blade moved dangerously close to my pale skin as he cut the last bits of fiber that still held. Finally, the cast popped apart. My flattened arm hairs tried to stand on end as air rushed around them for the first time in weeks.

“See, that wasn't so bad, was it?” Dr. Davis asked as he wrestled the cast completely off.

“I don't feel so good,” I said.

“Oh, you'll be fine.” He patted my leg and handed me a yellow sucker.

Then I puked all over his white coat.

O

“Stop lookin' at it,” Mom said in the car. “I don't need you throwing up again.”

“It looks so weird.”

The broken arm was skinnier than my other arm and felt much lighter. Except for the red spots where I'd scratched under the cast with a bottlebrush, it was strangely pale. Even with the cast gone, it still itched like wildfire.

“Jack Hicks!” Mom swatted at my hand. “Stop scratching.”

“It makes it feel better.”

“You won't have any skin left if you don't cut it out. Anyhow, look in the backseat. I got you a present.”

“A bike?” I smiled.

“No, not a bike.” She rolled her eyes. “Good Lord, don't you think you get in enough trouble without wheels added to the mix?”

“If I'd had a bike, I'd a been going too fast past the trestle bridge to even notice Eli and all them that day.” I reached over the seat and grabbed the box from the back.

“You shouldn't a been going to the tailings pond in the first place, young man—it's dangerous out there.”

“I know, I know.” I didn't get grounded for it because of my broken arm and I didn't want Mom to remember that, so I opened the lid quickly. “Converse high tops, cool!” It wasn't a BMX bike, but Converse weren't bad. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Well, maybe these will keep
your feet
and you out of trouble—at least for a little while, please?”