Free Red Helmet by Homer Hickam Page B

father always told her. “If you turn away from it, it’ll bite you in the butt.” Crudely put, but it reminded Song that her father was, after all, famous for his ruthlessness in business, and devoted to his only child. She knew he liked Cable, but she also knew he’d bury the man if she wanted him to. But Song didn’t want to bury Cable. She loved him, even if she wasn’t absolutely sure, based on his performance yesterday, if he loved her anymore.
    Song needed to talk to her father. She tried her cell, receiving the same message she’d gotten the day before: “No service.” Shaking her head, she went into the bathroom, only to remember she had no makeup, except what she had carried in her purse, which wasn’t much. She did a few things, some light powder, some lipstick, then put on jeans, a chambray shirt, and running shoes. She headed downstairs to try the kitchen telephone. When she dialed her father’s number, the recording told her the circuits were still down. The squirrels were apparently still in charge at the local telephone company.
    After looking in various cabinets for something she could eat, she discovered some cereal in the pantry. With the milk in the refrigerator—unhappily not low-fat—breakfast was solved. She also made a pot of strong coffee. Carrying a cup outside, she walked to the edge of the yard, which ended abruptly at a cliff that had a vertical drop of about a hundred feet. With all the trees lower than the yard, the result was an unimpeded view of the town and the mine. From that elevation, she could see every house. They were almost all uniformly gray in color, which made the white church stand out all the more. Its steeple seemed to reach for the sunlit sky. Its bell began to toll, and Song wondered what it was announcing on a Tuesday morning.
    She recalled Rhonda’s advice, that the church was the place to “meet and greet,” but Song knew she’d never go there. As far as she was concerned, religion and superstition were one and the same. There had to be other ways to meet people, not that she was particularly interested. Cable was the only person in Highcoal she cared anything about. Well, maybe Young Henry. He seemed like a nice kid.
    She turned her attention to the ugly black scar of the mine. She studied its layout and tried to figure out what its various structures were for. The wheels atop the black tower were turning. She recalled there were cables attached to it, so perhaps it was lifting or lowering something. Maybe, she divined, the tower was just an elevator. But what did it lift and lower? Miners? Coal? Equipment? Her intellect was stirred.
    She saw a big truck crawling along until it reached three silolike structures on stilts. When it stopped at one of the silos, the acoustics of the valley were such that she clearly heard what sounded like a rumble of rocks down a metal chute. She suspected the truck was probably receiving a load of coal from the silo. But why were there three of them? Did they hold different kinds of coal? Were there different kinds of coal? The mine complex was mysterious, but she was confident it would all make perfect sense if she studied it long enough. As the property and acquisitions manager for her father, she was required to understand what companies did, sometimes even better than their own employees. Now she wondered what it would take to learn about coal mining, even to know as much as Cable knew. This made her smile, though it was somewhat grim. That would surprise him, wouldn’t it?
    But she didn’t want to learn about coal mining. What she wanted to do, what she had to do, was to get Cable out of Highcoal. It was not possible for her to live in the grimy little town. She had already seen enough to convince her of that.
    Song sat in one of the rockers on the porch and wondered what she was going to do with herself for the rest of the day. She looked at Cable’s roadster