Free The Coalwood Way by Homer Hickam Page B

and slapped me in the face, don’t ask me why. It was like all of a sudden the only thing I cared about in the whole basement was her. Coach Gainer had once spent an entire hour in his health class trying to figure out how the brains of teenage boys worked. He’d finally given up. I sympathized. I had one of those brains all to myself and I couldn’t figure it out, either.
    “Sonny?” Sherman said, smiling kindly. “If you’re finished looking at Ginger now, can we get back to work?”
    “Sure!” I squeaked, tearing my eyes away from her. Embarrassed, I cleared my throat and made an attempt to lower my voice an octave. “Sure,” I rumbled in a deeper register, and began to stir zincoshine at a rapid rate.
    It wasn’t long before I heard the scuffling of shoes on the back porch and a babble of voices as the women greeted one another. Mom was shepherding them into the living room. I wondered if any of them knew how Mom had been on her hands and knees all morning polishing the beautiful oak planks Captain Laird had laid down. The house, being company property, didn’t belong to us, but she treated it like it did and maybe better.
    The McDowell County Veterans Day parade was a huge, patriotic affair. Bands from every high school in the county marched in it, and there was a competition for the best float. As far as anybody could remember, Coalwood had never lost the float competition. Winning it was a point of great pride to the town. The company over the years had spared no expense to keep the string going, providing not only money but machinists and carpenters to do a lot of the work. Mom’s design called for a live Statue of Liberty to stand on a revolving disk while soldiers from exotic foreign nations, such as France, saluted her. Most other communities had something simple on their floats such as high school cheerleaders sitting on the lap of Old King Coal. Coalwood, everybody was confident, would win the prize yet again.
    This year, the guest of honor at the parade was going to be none other than Harry S Truman, the former president of the entire United States of America. President Truman and Coalwood knew each other well because when he had been the president, Mr. Truman had seen fit to send the United States Navy in to occupy us, just as if we were a foreign country. It had happened back in 1949 when Mr. Carter had closed the mine to keep the union out, declaring he had no intention of sharing his company with the likes of John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers of America. When this subject came up at the kitchen table, Dad said Mr. Carter and “ol’ John L.” actually respected each other but they had a duty to themselves and their own principles. Mom said if they had any principles, they wouldn’t have caused so much trouble just to make themselves appear like big shots.
    President Truman came in on the side of the UMWA. The next thing Mr. Carter knew, there was a convoy of gray military trucks rolling into his town and saluting sailors pouring into the Club House. The first thing the sailors did was order the Club House cook to boil their navy beans and bake their bread. Then, they started marching up and down the road, telling the miners to get back to work. The navy commander in charge told Mr. Carter it was time to sign a union contract. While the old man dithered, the commander settled into the biggest room in the Club House and hosted lavish sit-down dinners there, inviting all the bigwigs in the county to join him. He acted pretty much like the king of Coalwood, the way I heard it. The engraved silver cutlery, plates, and bowls used at those dinners were the stuff of Coalwood legend. I knew it was true because, over the years, I saw a lot of it in Coalwood homes. Most of them had pretty daughters in 1949.
    Although it took a couple of months before Mr. Carter gave in, he finally signed, “at the muzzle of a gun,” as he put it. More than a few swabbies liked our mountains and beautiful women