A Bird On Water Street (6 page)

“Well, stay for dinner then,” Mom muttered. “I'll get it going.”

She made country-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, which everybody usually loved. But we didn't eat much. I tried to enjoy it, but the meat stuck in my throat like a big lump that wouldn't go down.

Mom cleared the dishes and nodded toward Grandpa.

“Jack, let's you and me go set on the porch,” he said.

I wanted to scream,
“I'm thirteen for law's sake!”
I hated when adults acted like I didn't know what was going on.

“String some beans while you're out there,” Mom said and handed us two bowls, two peelers, and a bag of pole beans. Usually I'd complain, but this time I kept quiet.

Grandpa rocked the swing slowly back and forth—my sneakers brushing the porch floor with every pass. Between us, the bowls clicked softly against each other from our movement, sounding like a wind chime.

Grandpa snapped the ends off his beans and ran the peeler down each side twice as fast as I did. I tried to keep up but I couldn't help listenin' to my parents arguing in the kitchen. They were upset and growing louder. I wondered how the other families were doing—the ones who'd gotten pink slips. We were lucky, but it didn't feel like it.

“Ow!” I said and stuck my knuckle in my mouth.

“Cut yourself?” Grandpa asked. I nodded. “Let's take a break,” he said.

We sat back and watched the sun set over our Red Hills. The light turned the hilltops red-orange and gold as the light hit them sideways and cast the erosion ditches into deep blues and purples. I suppose it was pretty in its own way—a lot of folks thought so.

Coppertown sat in a bowl at the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains—they called it the Copper Basin. Low hills surrounded the town, and the Tohachee River cut from east to west through the middle of it like a zipper.

Since my dad was a supervisor, our house on Smelter Hill was high up. Not as high as the Rusts', but we had one of the better views around. I looked at the bridge that crossed to downtown with my school to the east, Tater Hill to the north, and the Company to the west—and at least fifty square miles of bare ground beyond that.

Folks were so proud when they'd talked about Coppertown on the national news. “The astronauts report they can see the denuded landscape of Coppertown, Tennessee, from the Space Shuttle.” Course, that was before the
Challenger
blew up and they stopped flying 'em altogether.

We were known worldwide, but not for any reason I was proud of. It didn't seem right.

“Grandpa, since they closed up the smelting heaps, why haven't trees grown back?”

He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Well, Jack, the government put limits on the acid fumes allowed to escape the Company, but the folks who own it live far away in New York City, and they've never paid the rules much mind. As long as they're makin' their money . . .”

Those city people were treating us like the characters from
Star Trek
that nobody missed when they got zapped by lasers or eaten by aliens—the ones who hadn't been on the show long enough for anybody to care about 'em.

“It's not right!” I said.

“I know, Jack,” Grandpa sighed. “But life is like that sometimes.”

“Well, I want the trees back,” I said. “I want a forest! So the roots can hold the ground together. Then maybe Uncle Amon wouldn't have died.”

“Jack, the men work down in the rock, far below the dirt level,” Grandpa said. “There's no tree on Earth whose roots could reach down that far.”

“I . . . I don't care.” I stretched to kick my foot on the porch, but caught mostly air.

It didn't make sense. We'd taken so much from Mother Nature. It seemed like she was just gettin' us back. Who would be next? Dad . . . or me?

“Someday, I'm gonna make the Company follow the rules,” I said. “I'm gonna bring nature back.”

Dad opened the screen door. “Pa, you fillin' his head with your crazy ideas again?”

“Ideas, my foot,” Grandpa said. “You seen a bird around here lately?”

“They test all the time,” Dad argued. “They say it's perfectly safe.”

“What do you expect
them
to say with the Company wining and dining them every time they're here?” Grandpa said.

“It just ain't so, Pa. The Company takes good care of . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Yeah, like they took good care of your crew.” Grandpa shook his head. “And like they took good care of Amon and your daddy. How many more need to die before you snap out o' yer fantasy, Ray?”

I froze.

Dad glared at Grandpa for a minute like he was going to bust, but then his shoulders sank and he went back inside.

Dad was so proud of his job at the Company—the tradition, the money, the benefits—but sometimes I wondered if he was just coverin' up because he didn't know what else to do. Would he have been a miner if he'd had a choice? Would I have a choice?

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Chapter 7

Sonny Rust

Everybody grew silent and stepped aside when Sonny Rust walked into school the next day. He looked like a deflating balloon shrinking into itself as he walked down the hall holding his books tight against him.

He turned toward his classroom but Buster blocked his path. “Where do you think you're goin'?”

Sonny refused to meet Buster's eyes and tried to meekly step around him. Buster knocked his books out of his hands. “You don't belong here anymore,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I wouldn't have done it,” Sonny squeaked and stared at the floor like he wished he could sink into it. “It wasn't me.”

Buster's face turned red and his jaw muscles tensed like rubber bands—not good. I rushed to step between them. “Leave him alone, Buster.” I may not have liked Sonny a whole lot, but I knew what my cousin was capable of when his temper let loose.

“Out of my way, Cuz,” Buster hissed.

“It wasn't his fault, Buster,” I said. “He can't help that his dad is the Company Manager. Just leave him alone, okay?” I could usually talk Buster down. I was one of the few people who could.

“Maybe you're right,” Buster mumbled and looked down. I sighed with relief.

“But I don't care!” Buster shouted. He stepped to the side then quickly spun around and nailed Sonny right in the eye with his fist. Sonny crumpled to the floor like a boneless chicken and slid into the wall.

“Send that message to your dad, you big turd,” Buster growled.

Everybody started yelling at once, either “Stop, stop!” or “Hit him again! He deserves it!”

Miss Post's high-pitched voice cut through the chaos. “What is going on?”

Principal Slaughter was quickly in the middle of the mess and grabbed Buster by the collar. “You're coming with me.”

I offered Sonny my hand. “You okay?” He glanced at me with one hand covering his eye. It was already turning purple and swelling underneath.

“Yeah, thanks.” He reached out as his chin quivered like he was about to cry.

“Don't listen to Buster,” I said. “He's just sore because of his dad. He knows the layoffs weren't your fault.”

“Maybe. But like he said, he doesn't care,” Sonny muttered.

Miss Post put her arm around him. “Let's get you to the nurse,” she said and smiled a
thank you
back at me.

I watched them walk away. Sonny wasn't a completely bad guy. He was always around when you needed him to play shortstop or fill in on a math team. We just didn't
want
to
need
him. Like it or not, for us he stood for the Company. He reminded us how much we counted on the mine and how little choice we had about it.

Some people thought I did the right thing, helping Sonny out like that. They patted my back and grinned at me with nods. But some didn't. They bumped me hard when they walked by me in the hall or frowned before looking away.

“What were you thinking this mornin', huh, Cuz? What about supporting your family?” Buster asked me that night when he called to chew me out. He'd been sent home early, so I hadn't seen him the rest of the school day.

“You would've killed him,” I said.

“So?”

“Sonny's a pain in the butt, but he can't help who his parents are. And you don't need anything else on your record anyhow.”

“So you were watchin' out for me, then?”

“In a way,” I said. “I suppose.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Buster said, “Well, all right then. We good?”

“Yeah, Buster, we're good.” I heard Aunt Livvy hollering at him in the background.

“I gotta go,” Buster said. “I'm supposed to be grounded.”

Mr. Rust pulled Sonny out of school the next day. Word was, they shipped him off to some private school in Chattanooga. I never saw him again.

Buster got three days' suspension, which wasn't much considerin'. I think the principal was quietly on his side. A lot of people wanted to beat the crap out of the Rusts. Buster just got there first.

r

Chapter 8

Slag Dump

My class shrank over the next two weeks from everybody's fathers who got laid off having to move their families somewhere else to find jobs. It seemed every time I went to school somebody else was gone: Mathew Rymer, who played third base; Junior Meeks, who was sort of annoying but who I missed anyway; Lee Anne Rush, who was almost as pretty as Hannah—almost.

Miss Post tried to act like everything was normal, ignoring the empty chairs left in class, but nobody could pay attention.

I wondered about the places my friends were moving to. Would they have trees there? What would their new worlds look like? How green would they be? A guilty part of me felt a little bit jealous.

Then, one Friday on our way out of school, we saw that familiar glow coming from the Company.

“Slag dump!” Piran hollered.

Buster, Piran, and I took off runnin' for Tater Hill, stopping once for Piran to catch his breath. Our favorite rock ledge offered the best view of the train parked precariously close to the cliff edge as it tipped giant iron crucibles and let the hot molten rock flow down the cliff's side. The glowing lava spit sparks into the air and lit up the sky—our own private fireworks show—the color of Hannah's hair with the sunlight behind it. I couldn't stop gaping.

They'd been dumpin' slag for so many years that the Company actually sat on a small mountain of the cement-like stuff. Even so, I never got over watching a slag dump.

“Probably the last time I'll ever see this,” Buster said.

Uncle Bubba had gotten a job at a chicken farm in Lumpkin.

“When yu'uns leaving?” Piran asked.

“Sunday after church,” Buster said.

“Stan's moving too,” Piran said. “His dad got a job in Cleveland.”

“I heard Greg's family moved in with his aunt up in Murphy,” I said.

“Damn, he was our best hitter,” Piran replied. “We're running out of players.”

“At least you'll be here to play,” Buster grumbled.

“At least you'll have trees,”
I almost said, but bit my tongue. I was
supposed
to be feeling lucky for our lives not being upended like the lives of our friends who were havin' to move away.

We watched the lava turn black as it cooled.

“What about your house?” Piran asked. “You selling it?”

“Company house, we were just rentin' it. So all we gotta do is pack up and leave.”

Miners switched houses like dominoes. Every time somebody got promoted, they'd move uphill, setting off a chain reaction as everybody below moved up a house too. The only reason we hadn't moved in a while was because Smelter Hill was as high as you could get. Except for the manager's house across town on Tater Hill where the Rusts lived—and no miner would ever live there.

So I was used to folks moving, just not
away
from Coppertown. They were like rats fleeing a sinking ship—except they weren't rats, they were my friends, and I didn't want to think of my home as a sinking anything.

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Chapter 9

Tailings Pond

Next morning, Mom checked the weather in the backyard. She licked her finger and stuck it in the air to see how fast it dried. “Hmm . . . I think I can do laundry today.”

“Where's Dad?” I asked.

“Down at Livvy and Bubba's helping load the truck,” she said. “I'm heading over in a bit with some sandwiches and iced tea.”