about it.”
Mr. Fleming was the first Coalwoodian I’d come across, and already we were talking about Tuck. That meant everybody in Coalwood was talking about him, too. “All I know is what my mom told me, which wasn’t much. What happened?”
Mr. Fleming, in the Coalwood style, considered his answer carefully. “There was a lot of rain that night,” he said. “Ten times what it is now. Lightning and thunder like I never seen before. It was like a bunch of atom bombs going off. All the fans got knocked out and your dad pulled the men on the hoot-owl shift out of the mine. But Tuck somehow ended up down in his section on a motor. He ran into a patch of fire damp and got blowed up. That’s all I know.”
I considered his account. The fans were the huge blowers on the surface that ventilated the mine. A motor was what Coalwood miners called the electric trams that traveled on the rails that went into every working section of the mine.
Fire damp
was the colloquial term for methane, an explosive gas that seeped naturally out of exposed coal. The purpose of the fans was to keep the methane from building up. Coalwood was a notoriously gassy mine. If the fans went down for just a short time, dangerous concentrations of methane could collect in a hurry. It wouldn’t take much—perhaps no more than an electric spark from a motor—to cause an explosion.
“That doesn’t sound like anything an experienced man would do,” I observed.
“It sure as hell doesn’t sound like Tuck Dillon,” Mr. Fleming huffed. “He was always real careful, always doing safety checks for this or that on his section. The bosses got onto him all the time for going too slow. It was because he was always checking.”
The “bosses” Mr. Fleming was referring to probably included my dad. I decided to ask another question. “What’s wrong with Nate Dooley?”
He shot me a look. “Nate? What makes you think anything’s wrong with him?”
“Just something I heard.”
Mr. Fleming gripped the steering wheel. “You know we don’t talk about him, not to . . .” He stopped, as if he was searching his mind for the right word.
I found it for him. “An outsider?” It gave me an odd sense of satisfaction to realize he considered me exactly that.
Mr. Fleming didn’t reply. He just kept turning the
steering wheel back and forth, back and forth, taking the twists in the road. Then we hit a little straight stretch, and through the rain-streaked windshield I could see the tips of the roofs of New Camp Row. A bit farther and the headlights illuminated a familiar white sign with black letters. It said COALWOOD and beneath it, UNINCORPORATED .
I was back.
5
THE CAPTAIN’S HOUSE
A FTER M R. F LEMING let me out, I stood, oblivious to the rain, and just stared at our old house, dimly lit by the streetlight on the corner. When Dad had taken the mine superintendent’s job in 1954, we moved into the big white house on the corner of Substation and Tipple Rows, which everybody in town called the Captain’s house. Until we Hickams moved in, Captain Laird and his wife, my third-grade teacher, had been its only tenants.
The windows in the house were dark. Dad had either already gone to bed or, more likely, was still at the mine. I contemplated the old crab-apple tree by the garage. Daisy Mae, my cat and confidante for so many years, lay buried beneath it. She had been hit by a car driven by one of my father’s many enemies. I had once come to terms with who I was and what I was going to do with my life beneath that tree just before I’d gone off to the National Science Fair. Then I thought:
What in God’s good name am I doing here?
I felt like a ghost somehow blown out of shining heaven back to dull earth.
I took a deep breath and tasted the sharp, acrid odor of coal. Less than a hundred yards away sat the mine, its buildings almost lost in the swirling wet darkness. I heard the ringing sound of a hammer on steel coming from the little tipple
Mr. Fleming was the first Coalwoodian I’d come across, and already we were talking about Tuck. That meant everybody in Coalwood was talking about him, too. “All I know is what my mom told me, which wasn’t much. What happened?”
Mr. Fleming, in the Coalwood style, considered his answer carefully. “There was a lot of rain that night,” he said. “Ten times what it is now. Lightning and thunder like I never seen before. It was like a bunch of atom bombs going off. All the fans got knocked out and your dad pulled the men on the hoot-owl shift out of the mine. But Tuck somehow ended up down in his section on a motor. He ran into a patch of fire damp and got blowed up. That’s all I know.”
I considered his account. The fans were the huge blowers on the surface that ventilated the mine. A motor was what Coalwood miners called the electric trams that traveled on the rails that went into every working section of the mine.
Fire damp
was the colloquial term for methane, an explosive gas that seeped naturally out of exposed coal. The purpose of the fans was to keep the methane from building up. Coalwood was a notoriously gassy mine. If the fans went down for just a short time, dangerous concentrations of methane could collect in a hurry. It wouldn’t take much—perhaps no more than an electric spark from a motor—to cause an explosion.
“That doesn’t sound like anything an experienced man would do,” I observed.
“It sure as hell doesn’t sound like Tuck Dillon,” Mr. Fleming huffed. “He was always real careful, always doing safety checks for this or that on his section. The bosses got onto him all the time for going too slow. It was because he was always checking.”
The “bosses” Mr. Fleming was referring to probably included my dad. I decided to ask another question. “What’s wrong with Nate Dooley?”
He shot me a look. “Nate? What makes you think anything’s wrong with him?”
“Just something I heard.”
Mr. Fleming gripped the steering wheel. “You know we don’t talk about him, not to . . .” He stopped, as if he was searching his mind for the right word.
I found it for him. “An outsider?” It gave me an odd sense of satisfaction to realize he considered me exactly that.
Mr. Fleming didn’t reply. He just kept turning the
steering wheel back and forth, back and forth, taking the twists in the road. Then we hit a little straight stretch, and through the rain-streaked windshield I could see the tips of the roofs of New Camp Row. A bit farther and the headlights illuminated a familiar white sign with black letters. It said COALWOOD and beneath it, UNINCORPORATED .
I was back.
5
THE CAPTAIN’S HOUSE
A FTER M R. F LEMING let me out, I stood, oblivious to the rain, and just stared at our old house, dimly lit by the streetlight on the corner. When Dad had taken the mine superintendent’s job in 1954, we moved into the big white house on the corner of Substation and Tipple Rows, which everybody in town called the Captain’s house. Until we Hickams moved in, Captain Laird and his wife, my third-grade teacher, had been its only tenants.
The windows in the house were dark. Dad had either already gone to bed or, more likely, was still at the mine. I contemplated the old crab-apple tree by the garage. Daisy Mae, my cat and confidante for so many years, lay buried beneath it. She had been hit by a car driven by one of my father’s many enemies. I had once come to terms with who I was and what I was going to do with my life beneath that tree just before I’d gone off to the National Science Fair. Then I thought:
What in God’s good name am I doing here?
I felt like a ghost somehow blown out of shining heaven back to dull earth.
I took a deep breath and tasted the sharp, acrid odor of coal. Less than a hundred yards away sat the mine, its buildings almost lost in the swirling wet darkness. I heard the ringing sound of a hammer on steel coming from the little tipple
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