Jubilee's Journey (The Wyattsville Series) (4 page)

“They had a falling out years ago,” Bartholomew answered wistfully. “Anita, she was a lot different than your mama.” As the memories settled in, he repeated, “A whole lot different.”

That was the night Bartholomew elicited an oath from Paul: a promise that Paul would continue to study until he was smart enough to leave the mountain and find work elsewhere.

“Swear,” Bartholomew said, “that you’ll never step foot inside of a mine.”

“I swear,” Paul replied, understanding that it was a promise he would have to keep until the day he died.

That night Bartholomew pulled his son into his arms and held him closer than the boy had thought possible. There were no words spoken, but Paul could smell the black dust of the mine mixed with love, regret, and sadness.

Two years later there was a knock on the door late in the evening. It came at just about the time Paul expected his daddy to come home from the mine. It was Harold Brumann standing at the door with Bartholomew’s hard hat in his hand.

“I’m real sorry to bring you this bad news,” he said. “A trolley cart broke loose, and your daddy was killed along with two other men.”

Paul stood there looking expressionlessly into the face of the man who spoke.

“I brung you his hat and pail ‘cause I was thinking maybe you’d want to—”

“Daddy’s dead?”

Harold Brumann nodded. “It happened quick. The cart broke loose and came at them faster than—”

“Daddy’s dead?” Paul repeated.

Brumann nodded again.

Paul reached out and took the hard hat and lunch pail from Brumann’s hands. “Thank you for telling me,” he said and closed the door.

That night he again sat with seven-year-old Jubilee and explained how Daddy had gone to be with Mama in heaven.

“What about us?” she said tearfully. “Who’s going to take care of us?”

“I am,” Paul answered.

Jubilee cried for hours on end, and each time she voiced the same fear of who would take care of them. The questions went from a simple unadorned “why” to concerns that stretched far into the future. They circled around and around with each answer generating another question. Was Paul going to work in the mine? If he did work in the mine, would he die also? Did Mama die because she worked in the mine?

“I’m not going to die,” Paul said. “I’ll always be here to take care of you.” His voice was soft but reassuring until at long last Jubilee’s tears stopped.

That night after she had gone to sleep, Paul sat at the table and counted up exactly how much money they had. He tried to figure how he could make it last long enough for him to finish his final two years of high school. Maybe if he was lucky and could get some odd jobs, he could stretch it out to six or eight months. But two years?

When Paul spread his money on the table and counted it up, he figured on staying in the cabin they’d been living in ever since he was born. He didn’t figure on the fact that the mining company owned the cabin just as they owned everything else in town.

And he sure as hell didn’t figure that less than a month later the foreman would come knocking on his door.

“This ain’t my doing,” the foreman said. “It’s company rules. You gotta be working for Poynter Mining, or you gotta move out.”

“My daddy worked at that mine for almost seventeen years!” Paul argued, but he could just as well have saved his breath. As far as Poynter Mining was concerned he was nothing more than a squatter…unless he went to work at the mine.

That night responsibility weighed heavily on Paul’s shoulders. He had Jubilee to take care of and he had made two promises, both of which he intended to keep. The first was to his mother when he swore he would watch over Jubilee no matter what. The second was to his father when he swore never to step foot into the mine.

Two days later Paul and Jubilee walked down off the mountain, never to return again. He carried with him a small bag with a few clothes, three photographs, the family Bible, a remembrance of Bartholomew, and five faded letters he’d found in his mama’s keepsake box. They were the last letters she’d received from Anita. No return address, but it was postmarked Wyattsville, Virginia.

Many Miles Away

N
o one knew where Hurt McAdams got his name. They only knew that he lived up to it. George McAdams, Hurt’s daddy, was said to be the meanest man in Pittsburgh and every bit as hard as the iron he welded into grillwork day after day. When Hurt was fourteen his mama had all she could take of George and walked out the door, leaving Hurt and his mean-ass daddy behind. When she disappeared as suddenly as she did, neighbors speculated that George had done something unthinkable to Brenda McAdams. But the simple truth was she’d hitchhiked across nine states and settled in Arizona.

By then Hurt had already developed a pattern of following in his daddy’s footsteps. Before he had made it to sixth grade Hurt had been thrown out of school five times, and the last time the principal told his mama not to bother with bringing him back.

It started when he was not quite five. Hurt, small-boned and short like his mama, had come in from playing with his mouth turned down in the sort of pucker that holds a person back from crying.

“What’s wrong with you?” George asked.

“Alfred took my scooter and won’t give it back,” Hurt told his daddy.

George flared up like a Fourth-of-July rocket. “And you let him get away with it?”

Five-year-old Hurt let go of the tears he’d been holding back. “He’s bigger than me,” he said with a moan. “Way bigger.”

With a calloused hand as hard as a rock George whacked Hurt across the back of his head.

“You chicken-shit! Get back out there and get what’s yours, or I’ll give you a beating way worse than what that kid can do!”

“But Daddy—”

“Get going!”

When Hurt went back out the door George followed a few yards behind, still yelling insults. “If you ain’t got the guts to clobber him yourself, grab onto a baseball bat and swing it.”

Alfred was almost a foot taller, but Hurt was more afraid of his daddy than he was the boy so he tore into Alfred with a vengeance. Twenty minutes later Hurt had his scooter back, and his daddy said how proud he was of the boy. 

That did it. Hurt, who’d been trying to please his daddy since the day he was born, went from protecting himself to picking a fight with anything that moved. It didn’t matter that almost all of the kids were bigger than him; Hurt was meaner. When neighbors began to knock at the door complaining Hurt had beat up their boy, his daddy’s smile was wider than ever.