The Coalwood Way by Homer Hickam

finish out the school year in Ohio. The plan was for Mr. Bundini to return, but until he did, Dad was temporarily wearing the hats of both the mine superintendent and the general superintendent. Mom noted that even though Dad was doing two jobs, at least he didn’t have to worry about an increase in his salary.
    Dad had been toiling over his pitch to the steel company for days and often worried about it over the supper table with Mom. I caught him working on it when I walked up to the tipple and knocked on the open office door in the grimy brick building that served as his headquarters. His head was in his hands and he was pondering an ancient Underwood typewriter and the sheet of paper rolled into it. Dad looked up, caught sight of me, and said “No,” as a general statement.
    “Telephone wire,” I said, confirming his supposition as to the purpose of my visit. Cape Coalwood needed telephone wire for a new communications system. Despite his greeting, I came inside and stood before his desk, taking on my usual pitiful expression when I was on a scrounging maneuver. “And, if you’ve got any, some glass, lumber, and tar paper for the Mudhole church,” I said brazenly.
    Dad cocked his head and made what I supposed was a quick mental inventory of every last scrap of mine supplies, its condition, and likely disposition. “There’s a spool of old telephone wire up by the back gate. I asked Filbert to carry it off to Matney’s junk yard a month ago and he still hasn’t gotten to it. It’s yours if you want it. As for the Reverend Little Richard, I am aware of his needs and, even though the company no longer owns his church, I will see that the company provides.”
    “Thanks, Dad.” I nodded toward the typewriter. “Is that your speech?”
    “If you can call it that.” He fingered the sheet of paper and pushed a single key. He did it with such finality I hoped it was a period.
    “I like speech class,” I said. “Miss Bryson, my teacher, thinks I’m pretty good.”
    He pondered me. It seemed to me every time Dad gave me a look, it was like the first time he’d ever seen me. “She’s not available for consulting work, is she?”
    I guessed she wasn’t, seeing as how she was the daughter of the county school superintendent, and probably pretty busy.
    Dad waved me out of his office. That night at the supper table, he and Mom had another exchange concerning his upcoming trip to Ohio. “I could make a hash of it, Elsie,” he said. There was uncommon worry in his voice.
    “So what?” was my mom’s unsympathetic reply.
    “So what I’ll not get what the mine needs,” Dad replied.
    Her sigh filled the kitchen. “Do you think they really care what you say up there in Ohio, Homer? Seems all they want from you is more coal with less men to do it. You can talk until you’re blue in the face and that won’t change.”
    Dad crumbled a wedge of corn bread into his glass and poured it full of milk, his standard dessert. “They have their own problems,” he said morosely, digging his spoon into the glass. “The steel business is in decline. Damn cheap imported steel is going to send us all into ruin.”
    Mom shrugged. “Go to Ohio, have your say, and then come home. Nothing will change in this old place if you do it standing on your head.” Then she added: “And stop thinking everything you do is so important. Knowledge puffs up but charity edifies.”
    “What in Sam Hill does that mean?”
    “Just something the preacher said in his sermon this past Sunday. Too bad you missed it.”
    Dad was notorious for missing church. “Thank you for your support, Reverend Lavender,” he said, using Mom’s maiden name. That made her laugh into her coffee cup, and Dad looked proud that he had made her do it. I went back to my supper of chicken, corn bread, and beans, Mom’s specialty, while secretly mulling Little Richard’s story of the potter’s wheel. I wondered if God had had any kind of hand in shaping my