Red Helmet (29 page)

Rhonda rolled her eyes and stalked off.

It was during a brief interlude between servings, when the only sounds were chewing, smacking, grunts, gulps, and belches, that Rhonda heard a thump against the front door. When she opened it, she saw a scratched red helmet resting on the welcome mat. Song was slumped on the porch steps, one arm flung toward the door.

“Girl, what's happened to you?” Rhonda gasped.

“I couldn't go any farther so I threw my helmet at the door,” Song squeaked.

Rhonda helped her up. “What hurts?” Rhonda asked.

Song hung limply in Rhonda's arms. “Everything.”

“What happened?”

“Vietnam Petroski said we mined some good coal today.”

Young Henry appeared, and Rhonda handed Song off to him.

“Take her upstairs,” she ordered. “Quick now before these yahoos in the dining room see her and start making fun.”

Young Henry helped Song up the steps and into her room. She took off her boots, then flopped onto her bed, sighing.

“What can I do for you, ma'am?” The boy eyed her bloody socks.

Song showed him her hands. They were also bloody. “I have splinters. Can you get them out?”

“I'll call Doctor K.”

“No. I don't want to start a lot of gossip. What do you do when you get a splinter?”

“I usually use a pocket knife to pry it out.” He took a folded knife out of his pocket and showed it to her.

Song struggled into a sitting position. “Wash it in my sink, then get to work.”

Young Henry washed the knife, then inspected Song's hands, whistling at the number of splinters. He got to work while Song gritted her teeth. “Easy, Young Henry,” she begged.

“I have to go deep to get some of them,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Rhonda came in with a tray. “I made you a fresh salad with low-cal dressing,” she said, placing the tray on the bedside table.

Song looked at the bowl of vegetables. “What else do you have?” she asked.

“Chicken fried steak, potatoes, and biscuits
soaked in butter. Sweet tea.”

“Bring it all. I'm starving.”

Rhonda scurried out.

Song yelped when Young Henry dug too deep.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “But why didn't you wear your gloves?”

“Lost them,” she gasped.

“I'll get you another pair,” he swore, then sat back, and said, “I got all I could.”

“Thank you, Young Henry.” She smiled at him. “I couldn't do without you.”

Young Henry blushed crimson. “Sure you could, ma'am,” he said.

“Never turn down a compliment from a pretty woman, Young Henry,” Rhonda said as she arrived with a tray loaded with food. Song dug into it while Rhonda and Young Henry left to allow her some privacy. When they returned, Song had cleaned the plates. “What's for dessert?” she asked.

“It's a really rich pecan pie,” Rhonda said. “Loads of calories.”

“Bring it on, please, and make it a big slice!”

Young Henry went off at a run to get the pie while Rhonda helped Song lie back. “What else is wrong?”

“Blisters on my feet.”

Rhonda took a look, then whistled. “You have a few nasty ones, all right. Anything else?”

“I can't get the coal from around my eyes. I look like Cleopatra on a really, really bad day.”

“It takes swabs and cold cream to get the coal out of the folds of your eyes.”

Young Henry burst into the room carrying a plate with a huge slice of pecan pie. “Gimme it!” Song begged.

Song ate her pie, then there was a tap at the door. The trio of church women, Trudy Carlisle, Billie Petroski, and Dreama Williams, popped their heads in.

“We heard you were hurt some,” Trudy said, holding up a bottle of clear liquid and barging in. “Take off your clothes. I'm going to rub on some liniment.”

“And I'm going to get that coal dirt out of your eyes,” Billie said, brandishing cotton swabs and cold cream.

“I'll work on your fingernails,” Dreama said. “We'll get that gunk out from beneath them, have them all pretty again, I swan.”

Song started to argue, saw it was useless, and gave in. She was too exhausted to fight. Young Henry was banished out into the hall, and, with the women's help, Song took off all her clothes except her underwear and stretched out on her stomach. Trudy got to work with the liniment. “I have to do this for my mister every so often,” she said, ladling on the foul-smelling liquid and kneading it into Song's back.

“Vietnam said you worked for him,” Billie said. “He told me you didn't do anything but sit around all day. I can see that was a lie.”

“Didn't sit once,” Song protested, her voice muffled by the pillows.

“I know, honey,” Billie said. “It's what passes for humor with these crazy miners of ours.”

After the massage came the eye cleansing and the fingernails. “Don't forget to wear gloves, girl,” Dreama said, as she put the finishing touches with an emery board on Song's broken nails.

“I already got you another pair!” Young Henry cried from deep in the hall.

Doctor K appeared after stomping up the steps and making all kinds of noise and commotion.

“What's all this?” she bellowed. “How come I wasn't called? Oh, my stars, Song, what's happened to you?”

Song painfully turned her head to look at Doctor K. “I told Rhonda not to call you. Who did?”

There was the sound of someone running down the stairs. It was Young Henry. “Well, he always has my best interest at heart, doesn't he?” Song said. She would have smiled but it hurt too much.

Doctor K gave her a quick once-over and pronounced her diagnosis. “Dehydrated, bruised, and generally busted like most first-day miners. My initial prescription is water, and lots of it. It's best to drink it as you work. It's hard to catch up once you get behind.”

“I will. I promise.” Song flexed her arms. “It all hurts.”

“Uh-huh.” Doctor K smiled knowingly. “You're using muscles you've never used much before. I could give you some fancy prescription painkillers, but aspirin or ibuprofen will do for what ails you. What I
am
going to prescribe is rest. Tomorrow, take the day off.”

“I can't do that!”

Doctor K was not impressed by Song's objection. “As the company doctor, I can make you stay home. Just one phone call, that's all it will take.”

Song clutched Doctor K's hand. “Please, Doctor K! Don't do that! If they think I've weakened, they'll be on me like a pack of wolves.”

Doctor K caught the aroma of the liniment slathered over Song. She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a Christmas tree in a bucket of vinegar.”

“My patented recipe,” Billie said proudly.

“It smells bad enough to work,” Doctor K grumbled. “All right, Song. If you think you can work, go ahead. But try to take it easy tomorrow, okay? You're pretty beat up.”

“I will. I swan.”

“I'm going to work on your foot blisters now, honey,” Rhonda said. “Okay, Doc?”

Doctor K nodded. “You coal miner's wives are better at this kind of thing than I am anyway.” She packed up her black bag and went out the door.

The red caps were in the hall. “How is she?” Justin asked.

“She's going to live,” Doctor K reported.

“Is she going to work tomorrow?” Chevrolet asked.

“She says she is, so I guess so.”

“If she says she's going to do something, she's gonna do it,” Gilberto said.

“That's one tough lady,” Ford put in. He rolled his head and straightened his back, his bones cracking. “Lord knows, my back don't feel none too good, neither.”

“You boys better get to bed,” Doctor K advised.

“What time is it?” Chevrolet asked.

“You've had supper. For a miner, that means bedtime or sleep in front of the TV, take your choice.”

The red caps made their choice, heading for their rooms and their soft mattresses to snore through the night.

Song was also sleepy, but there was no dozing while Rhonda worked on her feet, opening the blisters, covering them with salve, and placing protective patches over them. Then, when all the work was done, her blisters repaired, the dirt from around her eyes removed, her fingernails cleaned, her back and legs rubbed, Rhonda saw the little coal miner was asleep. She covered Song up with a blanket, and the women tiptoed from the room. Song did not stir once during the night until her alarm clock rang the next morning. She reached for it, knocked it off the nightstand, and then stared at it until the spring inside ran all the way down. There was a knock on the door, and when Song didn't answer, it swung open. Young Henry, an anxious look on his face, entered, carrying a package.

“You okay, ma'am? I got you some new gloves.”

Song started to crawl out of bed, noticed she was naked, and pulled the covers around her. “I hurt, Young Henry.”

“I'll get the doc
again!”

“No. Close the door behind you. I'll be fine.”

Reluctantly, Young Henry closed the door behind him, and Song crawled out of bed. Literally. Down the step stool and onto the floor. She then crawled toward the bathroom. When she found her red helmet on the floor, she put it on, an act of defiance, and kept crawling. She was going to work.

Twenty-Four

C
able hung up the phone, then sat back on the couch in the governor's office and gave the conversation he'd just had some thought. Vietnam Petroski had supervised Song on her first day and wanted Cable to know she'd managed to finish the shift, but was battered and bruised.

“She won't be back tomorrow, Cable,” Petroski said confidently. “She could barely walk to the bathhouse.”

Cable tried to judge how he felt about the news. True, it had met his expectations. Song might be tough-minded, but her body was too small and frail for coal mining. Miners required extraordinary upper-body strength and she just didn't have it. On the other hand, he was impressed that she had managed to complete a full shift. As hard as Petroski worked any man under him, he had no doubt she'd been fully occupied throughout the shift with red cap work, which was typically dirty, hard, and monotonous.

But now Song was through, and that was good. Cable supposed Song would be back with her father by the time he returned to Highcoal. That meant, he realized, there was every chance he'd never see her again. He took a sip of the gin and tonic Michelle had mixed for him when he'd arrived at her office.

He took another drink.
I'll never see Song again
. The prospect was disheartening. But,
come on, Cable
, he thought. It was just as well, both for him and for her. They were never meant to be together. Why on God's green earth he had thought they were, he now could not imagine.

One thing he did know for sure, he was glad to be back in West Virginia after visiting New York. The visit to Atlas headquarters had been rough. He thought he was there for some routine meetings, but instead he'd been raked over the coals, the metallurgical bituminous coals, as it were. In the conference room, Helen Duvalle, Atlas's chief financial officer, had shown a series of viewgraphs detailing the Highcoal operation's tonnage targets. The numbers were all green at the bottom of her graphs and columns except for one, the most important one according to her, the special high-grade metallurgical coal desperately needed by the Indian steel mill that had contracted with Atlas. She pointed at that number and reminded Cable of his failure.

Cable had protested the implications. “Look, we're not missing it by much. A few hundred tons over six months is nothing.”

“It may be nothing to you, but our Indian buyers are screaming. If we don't deliver precisely what they order, they'll find someone else who will.”

Bob Hernandez, president of Atlas, leaned over and asked, “So, Cable. What are we going to do?”

Cable told them he was working on it. It all took time, and he needed more of it. Duvalle and Hernandez had traded glances. Cable knew very well he was being set up to be fired, whether he produced enough metallurgical coal or not. He was out of favor and they wanted a new man. He wondered now if Joe Hawkins was behind the scenes, pulling their strings. He recklessly asked them about it.

“I heard Atlas got bought,” he said.

The expression on their faces told Cable that Hernandez and Duvalle were unaware of the change.

“That's ridiculous,” Hernandez said. “We're part of the Taurus group, and have been for years.”

“Guess my sources are wrong,” Cable allowed.

“They certainly are,” Duvalle snapped.

Hernandez and Duvalle moved on to review Cable's requests for new equipment, all of which were denied. Among them was a purchase order for electronic identification tags, designed to pinpoint where a miner was in the mine at all times.

“They've been mandated by the West Virginia legislature,” Cable pointed out. “During the Sago rescue, nobody could figure out where the trapped miners were.”

“How many other mines have them?” Duvalle asked.

“Only a few.”

“Do they work?”

“So far, not reliably. We need to test them.”

“We'll let somebody else test them,” Hernandez concluded.

Hernandez next brought up drilling for natural gas on the Highcoal property. “Now, there's a successful operation, Cable. You should take a lesson from it. Bashful Puckett makes us a solid profit.”

Cable nodded his agreement. “Yes, sir. Bashful punches a lot of holes. It's hard to miss all the natural gas that's in the area. But he's made a lot of problems for me. He's hated in Highcoal and needs to come under my control.”

“Your control, Cable?” Duvalle demanded, his eyebrows rising in dismay. “I don't think so. We'll keep managing the gas drilling operations from here. That way, we know it will stay profitable.”