A Bird On Water Street (5 page)

We lived baseball and would have been playing during music night, but nobody let us practice around all those expensive instruments. We might have let Sonny join in if we had been playing, but since we weren't, Buster, Piran, and I hung out at the water's edge and skipped rocks.

From our position near the water we could spy the bend in the river where they'd stacked smashed-up cars to keep the bank from eroding. Trees would've done a better job, if there'd been any.

“How's your arm feel without the cast?” Piran asked.

“It aches,” I said, the toss of a stone sending shock waves up to my shoulder. “The doc said the bone is set, but it'll still bother me for a while. I'm just glad the cast is gone.”

“Me too.” The tops of his ears turned pink and he glanced at my feet. “Nice sneakers. Converse?”

“Yeah, Mom got 'em for me.” I shrugged and tried not to make a big deal out of it.

“Cool.”

As we tossed rock after rock, I tried to watch Hannah out the corner of my eye. She was a senior and the most beautiful girl in Coppertown—maybe in all the Appalachians. How she could be related to Piran was beyond me.

Where Piran had wiry hair sticking out the top of his head like popcorn, Hannah's strawberry blonde curls flowed over her freckled shoulders like hot slag pouring down the hillside. Her lips stayed a rosy pink, even though she didn't wear that shiny, banana-smelling lip gloss that the other girls did. And unlike Piran, she got her mom's eyes, crystal blue like the sky on a cloudless day. She didn't play any musical instruments, but oh, could she dance. The setting sun lit her in silhouette as she spun and spun in her pink paisley dress. Time slowed and I . . .

“No way, Jack. Hannah? She's out of your league, Cuz,” Buster said and laughed.

I felt heat rise to my cheeks and glanced at Piran, who just rolled his eyes. We were in silent agreement—the less said about my crush, the better. Leave it to Buster to make a scene out of it.

“I bet I can skip this rock six times,” Piran said, changing the subject. God bless him.

“I bet I can do seven!” Buster replied, taking the bait.

His disk-shaped rock skipped out across the amber surface of the water, creating small trails of white where it hit. One, two, three, four, five, six . . . Not seven, but still something to brag about.

It was the kind of night I wished could last forever.

r

Chapter 5

Layoffs

The next week we were into October. Colder weather was finally moving in, and I puffed my breath into doughnut shapes as I walked close to the river. Fog soaked through to my bones. I rubbed my arm.

Piran's head bobbed on his tall, lanky frame as he walked uphill to meet me at the end of the bridge.

“Mornin',” he gasped but didn't pull out his inhaler.

“Mornin'.” I waited for him to catch his breath. “Okay?”

Piran walked up Killer Hill almost half a mile to the bridge every day. My walk was only a quarter mile and all downhill. “Yeah. The cold air is just gettin' to me.”

“You read that science chapter last night?” I asked.

“I tried to, but I fell asleep.” Piran rolled his eyes. “Amphi
bilans
are so boring.”

“Amphi
bians
,” I said. Along with no trees, we didn't have any frogs or salamanders in Coppertown—there weren't any bugs for them to eat. But I'd put up with the bugs if it meant having frogs. “I think they're cool.”

“Good. You can tell me all about 'em.”

I dove into the details of the frog's life cycle, from egg to tadpole to adult. Piran made snoring noises.

“Fine, fine,” I laughed. “But you know you just jinxed yourself. Miss Post will call on you for certain now.”

“Eh, I'll study some at lunch.”

He didn't, of course.

By noon the day had warmed up enough for baseball.

O

Piran pitched and I was at first base. It felt so good to be playing again, even in a loose game of after-lunch baseball, and even if my arm scared me from catchin' anything just yet. It would be too cold and wet to play before too long, so I was anxious to fit in whatever I could.

Standing where we were, Piran and I saw the sulfur cloud first. It was headin' straight toward the ball field.

“Hey yu'uns”—Piran nodded toward the Company—“hold yer breath.”

Everybody squinted as the yellow cloud sank onto the field, turning everything a sickly color.

I coughed a few times and felt the familiar burn in my lungs. Sulfur clouds blew through from the Company at least once a week, sometimes more.

Piran reached for his inhaler. We all waited a few minutes to get used to the stink and then went back to playing.

“Hey, Sonny,” Buster yelled out, “your dad dealt a mean one that time.”

“Ha, ha,” Sonny said, and looked away. But not before I caught a glimpse of his frown and saw his cheeks turn bright pink.

I kinda felt bad for Sonny sometimes. Nobody really wanted him on the team, but he was a better than average shortstop, so we put up with him.

O

As I predicted, Miss Post called on Piran to answer a question about our amphibians homework.

“How long does it take for a frog to grow from an egg to an adult frog?”

Piran turned white as chalk. I tried to send him the answer with my brain, but his eyes were big as headlights—nothing was gettin' through.

“Um—” Piran said.

Just then, the classroom door swung open. Principal Slaughter walked straight to the front of the room with a frown etched into his large brow. “Miss Post, I need to speak with you in the hall,” he said.

“We're in the middle of a lesson . . .” Miss Post objected.

“This can't wait,” he said and led her out of class.

“Lucky break,” I whispered to Piran.

“Yeah,” he said and let out the breath he'd obviously been holding.

We straightened up as Miss Post returned. Her face was more white than Piran's had been.

“Children,” she said and took a deep breath, “Principal Slaughter just shared some bad news.”

My stomach dropped. The siren wasn't blaring. How bad could it be? Was Dad okay? He could have a broken bone, gotten a concussion, need stitches—those sorts of things happened all the time and the Company didn't run the siren for those.

“The Company is laying people off, a lot of them.” She frowned. “Don't worry about the lesson. Go home to your families.”

As Piran and I made our way through the school toward the front doors, the sound of sneakers squeaking on linoleum tiles filled the hall instead of the usual laughter. Like astronauts leaving a spaceship, we poured out of the dark building into the glaring sun and joined the growing crowd on Water Street. Nobody was running this time, so we were privy to all the gossip buzzing around us.

“I heard they were laying off a thousand men,” Mrs. McCoy said. “That's over half the workforce!”

“That's just a rumor, Ida Mae,” Mrs. Abernathy said.

“We'll know soon enough,” Mrs. Hill replied.

“My Howard can't lose his job,” Mrs. Barnes told everybody. “He's got seniority.”

“Doesn't your dad have seniority too?” Piran asked me.

“Yeah, he's worked there forever.”

By the time we got to the Company, the first groups of men were already walking past us with their heads down. Their faces looked a lot like Piran's when Miss Post had asked him about the frogs—pale, slack-mouthed, wide-eyed. Their wives rushed to their sides.

“What's that pink paper they're holding?” I asked.

“It's called a pink slip,” Mrs. Hill whispered. “It means they don't have a job anymore.”

That's when it really hit me.
Layoffs
. For so long, I'd secretly wished for something to keep Dad out of the mine, to keep him safe. But I'd meant safe from injury. I'd never considered something like this. What would happen if he lost his job?

I'd always imagined “Dad safe” as a sunny picture—I saw him eating pancakes or fiddling around in his metal shop all day. Everybody would be smiling, everybody would be happy. But if Dad lost his job, where would the money come from? How long would it be before we were living in a ramshackle shed like Crazy Coote?

Inside the gate, two men I'd never seen before stood on either side of Mr. Ducat, the Company accountant. Everybody usually liked Mr. Ducat, seeing as he handed out the paychecks, but today they barely looked at him. He waited by the elevator with his box full of envelopes, shifting his weight uncomfortably.

Mr. Rust, Sonny's dad, wasn't anywhere in sight, and neither was Sonny. Go figure.

Everybody got quiet as the hoist whined back into motion to lift another group of men from the mine. When they reached the top, Mr. Ducat rifled through the envelopes and handed them out. Lift after lift, group by group, most of the men were laid off, including Will McCaffrey's dad.

Despite Will being partly responsible for my broken arm, I felt bad for him and his family. What were they gonna do now? There'd been the blue jeans factory, but it closed two years earlier. Construction might be a good job for a miner, but Coppertown wasn't exactly a booming city. Stores downtown sometimes put out signs when they needed help. I tried to picture a miner dishing out ice cream at Dilbeck's Pharmacy, or taking ticket stubs at the movie theater. It didn't fit. And besides, I hadn't seen a
Help Wanted
sign in ages.

My fingers grew numb.

I watched Mr. Barnes open his envelope and pull out a pink slip. His shoulders sagged as he lifted his brass ID tag from the
In
board and moved it to the
Out
board, proof he was above ground—no longer in the mine.

“No, that can't be,” Mrs. Barnes gasped. “Howard has seniority.”

I felt a lump grow in my throat.

The laid-off men hunched over and shuffled toward the crowd. Some had white tracks where tears ran down their blackened faces. They didn't even try to hide their emotions.

Mr. Ledford rubbed the tears from his face, turning the grimy soot into a ghostly mask. His wife was sick with lung cancer, what my grandma had died from. My mouth suddenly tasted like ash. Mrs. Ledford hadn't looked too good when I'd dropped off Mom's apple cobbler a few days earlier.

The crowd thinned as families walked home in silence.

My dad and his crew were the last ones out as usual. As a supervisor, it was my dad's job to shut equipment down at the end of the day.

I felt a hand grip my shoulder. Mom stood next to me, clutching her coat tightly around her despite the warm sun. Her face was covered with shadows as she looked straight ahead. Mr. Ducat handed Dad his envelope.

Dad removed his ID tag from the board, rubbing his thumb over his initials and his number, 340, as if for good luck. Then he stared at the sealed envelope for what seemed like forever.

“Open it,” I whispered.

Finally, he took a deep breath and ripped it open. He pulled out a paycheck, and nothing more. My dad still had his job, for now.

I sighed with relief. So did Mom. But my stomach hit my feet when Dad turned to face the men on his crew. I hadn't been watchin' them because I'd been staring at Dad so intently. But Uncle Bubba, Uncle Mike, Uncle Rich, D.W., and Uncle Silas—that's what I called them even though Uncle Bubba, Buster's dad, was the only one I was actually related to—every one of them held a pink slip. They stood together for the longest time, their eyes wide with shock. Nobody said a word as they patted each other's backs.

My eyes stung, but I couldn't even blink.

Mom hugged Aunt Livvy before she and Uncle Bubba left. Buster didn't even look up.

“Talk to ya later,” I mumbled to Piran as Dad put an arm over me and Mom.

I was surprised to feel Dad actually leaning on me as we walked away. I glanced up. He coughed and blinked and looked away.

I didn't want to embarrass him, so I kept my eyes glued to my new sneakers. They were already scuffed and dirty.

r

Chapter 6

Crazy Ideas

Grandpa Chase was pacing on our front porch when we got home.

“I came straight over when I heard,” he said, and looked at my dad.

“I've still got my job,” he said, “but I lost my crew, including Bubba.”

“Damn.” Grandpa patted him heavily on the back.

“Union is meetin' tomorrow,” Dad said.

“I imagine so.” Grandpa nodded.

“Pa, you going over to Livvy's?” Mom asked. “I was about to call her.”

“Tell her I'll check on 'em tomorrow,” he said. “I imagine they got enough to worry about tonight.”