Billy Creekmore Read online

  School is tolerable, and overall I’m learning more from Miss Clark than I ever did from Mrs. Beadle. Still, I’m not cut out for sitting at a desk, so it don’t count for much. I’m longing to work in the mine, but my aunt and uncle won’t let me for another year.

  Does the Robbers Club still hold meetings? How are Peggy and Willis? I’d ask about Walter but I figure he’s mean as ever.

  I was all set to write how we had twin brothers in town, one good and one bad, and how the bad one was always pretending to be the good one and getting invited into people’s houses so he could steal their silverware. But Aunt Agnes was hanging over me and glancing at her watch. I signed my name quick and blew on the ink to set it dry.

  A thin layer of ice covered the snow, and it made a delicious crunching sound with every step. Clyde came running along with Belton on his back, telling me how the annual Christmas party was just two weeks away. He was near breathless but too excited to stop talking.

  “It’s held on Christmas Eve, and the superintendent’s wife decorates the church basement … and Mr. Newgate and his family come in from their big mansion in Charleston to celebrate with us. There’s a Christmas tree and tinsel … and we eat a turkey dinner, and have the choice of yule log or pie…. Then St. Nick comes with a sack full of toys … and gives each of us a present.”

  “What sort of presents does he give out?” I asked. Seemed glorious to me since there never was presents at Guardian Angels. We stopped in our tracks for poor Clyde to take a rest. Belton slid off his back and started twirling with his arms outstretched, laughing out loud at who knows what. He never needed no resting at all.

  “Last year I got a spinnin’ top, and Belton got a train whistle. Ma took it away from him as he was blowin’ it night and day, waking up the boarders. He cried something awful. Pulled all the drapes down and shoveled ashes from the stove all over the floor. Made a dreadful mess and wouldn’t stop cryin’ for nothing. So I gave him my top, which calmed him down. Right, Belton? You like that top, don’t ya?” Belton didn’t answer. He was happy as could be, though, babbling and laughing to himself, off in his own world.

  All day the sun was bright, so the ice melted. By the time we left school, the icicles hanging from the eaves were melting, and the roads through town were clear of snow. Sunlight fell in great shafts, and the shadows was dark and long. All over the village women was pouring great pots of boiling water into the tin bathing tubs on the porches. The miners would be home soon, and they liked to wash before entering the house. Clouds of steam rose up, billowed over the railings, and disappeared.

  A few days later, my birthday came and I turned eleven. Aunt Agnes made me the first birthday cake I ever had—a little jam cake sprinkled with sugar—and we had Clyde and his family over for supper. The grown-ups gave me a toast with sherry and wished me many happy returns. They let Clyde and me drink the last little drops, but I couldn’t see the fuss over it. It warn’t more than a thin type of sugar syrup in my opinion, and why it deserves a little cut glass goblet I’ll never know.

  After Clyde and his family left, Uncle Jim led me outside. “It’s time to try your hand with Coppers,” said Uncle Jim. “Let’s see how far we get before your aunt calls us in.” His cheeks was bright pink from scrubbing, and his hair was wetted down and neatly combed. My uncle’s a gentleman, I thought, through and through. Thick puffs of smoke rose from his pipe. We led Coppers out of his stall, and Uncle Jim showed me how to slip the bit into his mouth and hitch him to the wagon stored in the back of the tiny barn.

  “He’s cranky at times, for he worked long in the mines before I bought him, but eventually he comes around. Fix that buckle, Billy. You can’t have that slipping if you want your mule to haul a ton of coal. Easy now. He’ll kick if you startle him.”

  I bent down smooth and gentle and fixed the belt tighter. Old Coppers twitched his ears some, but otherwise didn’t seem to mind.

  “You should have seen Coppers the day he was retired! Like a colt he was! The driver led him out to the grass, and he trembled all over, like he couldn’t bear the expanse of earth or the sun upon his back. Then he started jumping in place, gamboling and prancing about. Oh, it was wonderful to see. I bought him then and there from the mine and am happy to call him my own.”

  I patted Coppers’s neck. It was warm and smooth and I could almost feel his blood coursing under his skin. I put my ear against him and listened to his pulse.

  “Was Coppers a good worker?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, one of the best. Visited ten different miners a day, picking up their cars of coal, leaving an empty one behind, then heading off to the weighing station. He could pull four tons of coal, he could!”

  Uncle Jim puffed on his pipe. He seemed to be thinking things over, for he was nodding to himself.

  “Aye, Billy, a mule driver is the best job in the mine. He moves around, seeing different people throughout the day, which is a good thing, for working alone in the dark gets lonely.”

  I led Coppers around the yard a few times, pulling the leads with a strong hand so he’d mind.

  “But the best thing about it is that it’s a trade that can take you places. A driver can work other jobs, delivering things for a company or working for hire. You could move out west or into Charleston. But a miner is stuck. He can only work underground, and it’s a brutal life, one I don’t want for you, lad.” Uncle Jim gave me some raisins to give Coppers when we was through, then inside we went.

  The next two weeks took their time, and it seemed like the holiday party would never come. But, finally, it was Christmas Eve. School was closed, the mine whistle didn’t blast, and miners and kids got a holiday. We played in the snow, building snow forts and having snowball fights. Those with skates went skating on the pond near the tipple, and those with sleds sailed down the hill. Belton rolled down by himself, laughing at the sky, and spinning in circles at the bottom.

  Just like Clyde said, the church basement was decorated for a banquet. Garlands of evergreen, ivy, and tinsel hung from the ceiling, and a huge Christmas tree with white candles and ornaments stood in the corner. The superintendent, the store manager, the doctor, and Mr. Newgate himself were all there. It was the first time I’d seen Mr. Newgate. He seemed to have gained a lot of weight since that portrait of him was made. He was rotund as Mr. Colder, with an even bigger belly and muttonchop whiskers. The lot of ‘em sat on a table raised up on a little stage, eating with their families, as if we all wanted to look up at ‘em like they was in a play. And they did look right nice, I have to say. They wore fine clothes, mostly made of velvet I’m sure, and the wives had dangling earrings and sparkly bracelets. The daughters had great big satin bows in their hair, and the sons wore waistcoats with starched collars. They looked just like their pas, only a little less fat and without the whiskers. At first it was quite a funny sight, seeing these little men, but then I realized we boys sitting below looked just like little miners. I figure it’s just the way of things, how boys wear the clothes of their pas.

  There must have been near a hundred of us in the basement, eating turkey dinner, and feeling toasty and warm. While dessert was being served, St. Nick came, only I knew it warn’t really him on account of him being just a character in a story. I heard Uncle Jim laugh and tell Aunt Agnes it was the man who ran the saloon dressed up in a red and white suit with a fake beard. All the children ran to him and he commenced to passing out presents—jump ropes and tops, cloth dolls, jacks, slingshots, and paddleballs. Clyde and I got slingshots, and Belton got a cloth doll dressed like a soldier. He held it against his cheek for the rest of the night. We walked home full and happy, sleepy, too, from the full day of playing in the snow and all the excitement of the party. It was the first time I had ever had those feelings of being with family and friends, together and content, a good day behind us, another good day coming. There was never a moment like that at the orphanage, of happiness, safety, and hopefulness intermingled.

  For Christmas, Uncle Jim and Aunt
Agnes gave me a whip, a proper one, too, not a toy. It was black and braided and ten foot long. It was a grand present, wrapped up in colored paper, with a string bow.

  “You’ll need to practice to work it right,” said Uncle Jim. He took me out back and set up six empty cans in a triangle. He cracked the whip and knocked over the top one first, then the one on the left, then the one on the right in the second row. Then with the flick of his wrist and a loud crack he knocked over the bottom three all at once. I took a turn but didn’t even get a decent cracking sound, let alone get close to the cans. Over and over I tried, but I kept missing and was snapping at air.

  “Keep practicing, Billy, and eventually you’ll get it. A mule driver can extinguish a flame without upsetting a candle. That’s how much control a driver has with his whip.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I practiced regular—when I got home from school, after finishing my chores. On the weekends I’d practice morning, noon, and night, setting up cans and lighting candles, doing my best to perfect my aim and develop some style. I walked about the yard with the whip looped round my neck just like the mule drivers I saw walking home from the mines with the men. I didn’t have the heart to use it on Coppers, though. He had too much of the whip for one life, I reckoned.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I Visit

  a Grave

  and

  Receive a Letter

  from

  an Old Friend

  I didn’t want to tell Clyde about my powers with spirits. I was off to a new start and didn’t want folks thinking of me as the boy with strange powers. Being the boy with the dangerous past was good enough for me. Ever since I knew Aunt Agnes didn’t blame me for my mother’s death, I was happy forgetting what folks used to say about me. But Clyde was awful blue. The anniversary of his father’s death was coming up. He didn’t have no desire to go sledding or take any interest in my stories about Walter Barnes. He was even getting cranky with Belton.

  “I’m tired of you!” he yelled, his eyes wet with angry tears. Belton had rushed him after school as usual, but Clyde pushed him away. “You ain’t a baby! Go home by yourself and leave me alone!”

  “Why, Clyde! I ain’t never seen you like this.”

  “I miss my pa,” he said. “It’s coming up on a year since he died.” He wiped his tears with his arm, but he was still choking on his words. “Everything’s harder now. My ma works all the time, and some of the men at the boardinghouse is awful mean when they drink. I wish he was back….”

  Our classmates streamed past us, laughing and chasing each other home.

  I took Clyde aside and whispered, “I’ll tell you what … I ain’t never told you this, ‘cause it’s cost me some trouble in the past, but I was born talkin’ to spirits. Sometimes they come to me, and sometimes they don’t. Maybe I could communicate with your pa’s ghost.”

  Clyde was pretty unsettled with the news. He looked at me like I said the sky was red, then he looked me straight in my eyes and said, “I could take you to his grave. Maybe he’d talk to you if I was there.”

  I said I’d give it a try, so we set off to the far end of town where the church was. Behind it, nestled between two low hills was the cemetery. You couldn’t see it from the rows of cabins and boardinghouses where we lived. I guess Mr. Newgate wanted it that way, for nearly all the men and boys buried there had died in accidents in the mines. Underneath the snow was rows and rows of grave markers, all of ‘em small slabs of granite. Clyde dug through the snow to find his daddy’s.

  “Here it is. The stone looks just like the day we buried him.”

  I knelt down in the snow and covered the carvings with my hands.

  Wainford Light

  1874–1905

  The granite was rough and cold, for a miner don’t get a polished tombstone. I quieted my thoughts and listened hard. At first, all I could feel was Clyde’s grief and my own desire to ease his suffering. But gradually I began to feel something different. It warn’t nothing more than the feeling you have when a bird flies overhead. But it was there, hovering above us, the first spirit I ever really felt. I used to think it would be a frightening thing, to really know a spirit was with you, yearning to talk, but it warn’t. My heart beat steady and full, like it was growing inside my body, pushing out any other thoughts or feelings so that I was all over listening, like how a wolf or a fox or a bobcat listens with its ears and tails, whiskers and fur.

  The spirit was sad and faint, and it didn’t speak, but I put my own words to it.

  “Your pa’s not restin’ easy. He wishes he warn’t dead so he could raise you and Belton and be company to your ma.”

  “What else?” he asked.

  I tried conjuring the spirit. I asked it to tell me what to say, but it was gone. I warn’t gonna pretend otherwise. I couldn’t take no joy out of deceiving Clyde.

  “Nothin’,” I said, “I don’t hear nothin’ else.”

  I don’t know if it helped Clyde or not. He didn’t talk as we walked home. Gusts of wind whipped the ends of our scarves and pulled at our jackets. Low-hanging clouds was collecting over the valley.

  “Looks like snow,” I said. Clyde looked to the sky and nodded, but we was silent the rest of the way.

  All day folks waited for snow, but it never came. We woke up to clear roads and another dull sky heavy with clouds. Later in the day, Aunt Agnes had me hitch Coppers to the wagon to pick up bags of flour and feed from the store.

  By the time I loaded the wagon, a heavy snow was falling. You could almost hear the flakes hitting the ground. Coppers didn’t like it one bit. He didn’t do more than twitch his ears when I told him “giddyap,” so I gave the whip a lazy crack. Just as I was about to flick it again, the manager leaned out the store with a letter in his hand. He was a fussy man who wore sleeve garters and an apron and kept his pencils sharp.

  “Hey, you forgot your mail, boy! Didn’t even ask for it. You’d never know you had some, if I didn’t run after you.”

  “No, sir,” I called back. “I plumb forgot.” I jumped outta the wagon so he didn’t have to walk in the snow to hand it to me, but he wasn’t done scolding me. I listened and apologized, then thanked him for all I was worth until finally he gave me the letter. Well, my heart almost skipped a beat when I saw it, for it was from my old buddy Rufus. I tore open the envelope right then and there, and I would have stood there reading it, but the snow was almost as wet as rain, and the ink began to run. I stuffed the letter in my pocket, then jumped back into the wagon and cracked the whip. This time Coppers roused himself and trotted home.

  No, wrote Rufus, the Robbers Club wasn’t meeting, and, yes, Mr. Beadle was still a horror. Peggy did her best to slip ‘em some extra helpings when he wasn’t looking, and Walter Barnes had been sent off to the glassworks. He was happy to leave the orphanage, and, truth be told, the boys was happy to see him go, seeing how he was turning so bitter and mean. Things was almost pleasant in the dormitory with folks getting along for the most part ever since he left.

  Your pa sent you a postcard and I told Mrs. Beadle I’d send it along. I passed it around for the boys to look at, just like you used to do. Since there was a drawing of St. Nick on it and it being the Christmas season, I didn’t think you’d mind.

  I looked in the envelope, and there was a postcard of St. Nick holding up a tiny Christmas tree with a star on top. It was a fancy card with scalloped edges and a bit of sparkle in St. Nick’s beard and on the snow falling around him. The same words were there, this time in green ink.

  “A card from your pa, eh?” Aunt Agnes was stoking the fire, warming the house for Uncle Jim. “He did the same thing to your mother. Sent her a card every now and then so she couldn’t forget him.”

  I got out my tin and showed her the other postcards he sent me over the years. She studied the pictures some, but overall didn’t seem too interested. Her eyes glittered when she saw the broken necklace.

  “Why, I remember the day your daddy gave this to May
! He bought it in a jewelry store in San Francisco on his way home from Alaska. He said it came all the way from Italy and was made of Venetian glass. The blue beads made him think of her eyes. Let me see, now …” She held the strand up to my eyes. “Yes … your eyes are the same color as May’s.”

  She handed the necklace back to me. It was all I had of my mother, and I was happy to know it linked us in this way. Her eyes and mine was the color of the beads, and if my father ever saw me, he would recognize I was his son. When I put them back in the tin, I thought of poor Clyde and how he was aching for a link to his pa.

  Snow fell off and on all week. One day it thawed and black slush lined the streets. Then it rained and froze again, so that all of Holly Glen was coated in ice. Drifts of snow was hard-edged and sharp with it, and whole trees glistened like they was made of glass. Clyde’s mood lifted with the sudden freeze.

  “I’ve got news for you, Billy Creekmore,” he yelled at me. It was so slippery, we was skating to school on our shoes. “I’m off to the mine! Gonna start next week.” The company was cutting his ma’s wages since the boardinghouse was only half full. A half dozen of her boarders had sneaked off in the night without paying their rent and left the company in the hole. There was a rumor saying they had gone to work in the Black Diamond mine thirty miles away, which was a bigger operation that paid better.

  “So now my ma needs me to work, since she can’t make enough money to feed the three of us and we still owe the hospital a lot of money. I’ll be starting out as a trapper.”