So Warren was lucky, in that not knowing any of this, he didnt slander Trenchmouth and pay the price. What stopped him was the sight of Arly Scott Jr walking by.
Good luck, bad luck. They interchange so quickly.
Arly Scott Jr was, like Trenchmouth, nearly fourteen. And, like Trenchmouth, he was bigger than the four other boys. But Arly was black, and this meant that even a pack of puny ten-year-olds could order him around if they felt like it.
Hey, Warren Crews shouted at the boy in the distance, who was going foot over foot along the railroad track, testing balance. Hey nigger!
Arly stopped and dropped his feet on either side of his balance beam. He turned and faced them.
Why dont you come on over here? Warren spit dirt, scraped grass off his tongue and lips using his teeth and fingernails.
Arly looked at them for a while, then began walking toward them. Trenchmouth didnt know him, but hed seen him around. Like every other black family in Mingo County, Arlys had come from down South for the mines. His father was in the number one at Red Jacket. And like every other black family in Mingo, he lived in Mitchell Branch and went about his business in an all-black world of school and church. Arly was almost identical to Trenchmouth in height and weight, and his sprouting muscles were just as hard and determined.
When he walked upon them, the littler ones got uncomfortable and began to fidget. Theyd heard their fathers and mothers and uncles and brothers use the term Warren Crews had used, but they were still young enough to be pierced by it when shouted in the presence of one to whom it was meant to describe.
You play Mumblety Peg down there in Texas? Warren Crews said. Oddly, hed stayed on his knees with his hands locked behind him throughout all this, as if to break the pose would be sin.
Georgia, Arly said.
Georgia then. Niggers play Mumblety Peg in Georgia?
Arly just stared down at the boy. The other ones fidgeted more plainly. One laughed a little, tried to act tough. Another gripped his thighs against his privates, tried not to piss himself as he often did when trouble arose.
Trenchmouth studied Arly Scotts eyes, the heavy lids, the wiry brows. The small scar that said he could take a punch. He knew that Warren Crews had called on the wrong black boy.
Well? Warren said. Is that all you know how to say? Georgia? They just teach you one word down there? State name? He laughed and turned back to the other boys to make sure they did the same. But he never found out they didnt. Before Warren Crews could notice the cringing expressions of impending impact the little boys uniformly wore, hed been cold-cocked. It was a sweeping right hook, a suckerfree sucker punch delivered from high to low and with the inertia of planted feet and swiveled hips. Arly Scott Jr was a trained fighter.
Some stood scarecrow still, some ran. Either way, they were thoroughly discombobulated by the sight of a black boy hitting a white one for insulting his race. It didnt happen in Georgia, they were pretty sure, and it didnt happen in southern West Virginia either. But it had happened, and Warren Crews lay asleep on the ground, thick blood, chunked by dirt, running from nose and mouth.
Eventually, they all left their ten-year-old comrade where he lay, only one of them with the wherewithal to shout a promise of revenge. Arly and Trenchmouth remained. They looked down at Warren together, the black boy rubbing his throbbing knuckles, the white boy rubbing his head. This would take some figuring.
Eventually, they all left their ten-year-old comrade where he lay, only one of them with the wherewithal to shout a promise of revenge. Arly and Trenchmouth remained. They looked down at Warren together, the black boy rubbing his throbbing knuckles, the white boy rubbing his head. This would take some figuring.
Trenchmouth decided he didnt feel all too sorry for the littlest Crews. At eleven, he was old enough to know better than to treat somebody that way, address somebody with those kind of words. The Widow had taught Trenchmouth, along with Clarissa, from a young age, to never engage in the game of white superiority. We are all made from Gods clay, shed said, no matter its stain. Besides, Trenchmouth had always been less white than the whites, especially in summer, a fact the other kids falsely attributed to a stubbornly thick buildup of dirt on his skin. And had he seen more of his father than the dusty, dug up variety, hed have known there was Indian in that bloodline, or maybe even colored. Still, by outward appearance, he was a white boy.
Im Trenchmouth Taggart, he said and held out his hand.
Arly turned those eyes on him. He didnt speak back or change the stare, which had the kind of calm to it that can precede a snot-knocker as easily as a handshake.
It was nice to see it in another, that something else look of the eye. Hed been embarrassed for revealing his own after Fred Dallara kissed Clarissa. It came from someplace less knowable than a steady diet of moonshine and ridicule. This particular something was there before all that.
Trenchmouth almost told the other boy how he once bit someone for kissing his sister, but it seemed anxious, foolish. Instead, he said, I reckon your daddyll have your hide for this here. He pointed at Warren Crews, who whimpered and tried to get up on his elbows.
Arlys hands re-fisted, and he turned his stare back to the boy on the ground then, as if he might have another go. But the whimper turned to a cry and Arlys whole being eased up. He answered Trenchmouth without looking at him. Youd reckon wrong then. My Daddy told me, when they look down at you, start em to lookin up. His voice was a pitch deeper than Trenchmouths, his accent big and round.
Before Arly Scott walked away, he snorted twice, gathered up what he could in his throat, and spat on the ground before Warren Crews, who was, by that point, all-out crying the kind of cry reserved for mamas, the kind hed have to be rid of in a year or two if he hoped to get anywhere in life.
Trenchmouth didnt forget about Arly Scott Jr. He knew somehow that the handshake hed offered would someday be returned. And the fallout hed worried over, the revenge on the Scott family for one of their own having struck down a white boy, never came to pass. This was on account of various abnormalities brewing in the hills. First, Arly Scott Sr, little Arlys father, was a quiet yet commanding miner who everyone knew had been a prizefighter in his youth, and they all respected that. Arly Sr had single-handedly integrated the late night meetings that were slowly building toward a certified coal miners union, and though some hated him for this integration, most recognized their enemy not as one with black skin, but one with green hands.
Second reason no one came looking for the Scotts was that George Crews, fat Warrens father, was rising among the ranks of the local coal operators, and a new sense of public image and city manners discouraged him from vigilante justice. Besides, Georges bulge-pocketed buddies told him, the little Scotts among us will be crushed soon enough for their attempts at rebellion.
And third, a reason not known to most, was the fact that the Crews family patriarch needed desperately to avoid attention upon his clan if he hoped to get truly rich. It was only recently that hed found out about his wifes betrayal of their Methodist traditions. Only in the last few months that George had unearthed the lies. It was these lies that sent her off early on Sunday mornings to care for her unstable sister in Williamson, while in reality, as he would come to hear through the ever-burgeoning rumor mill surrounding the place, she attended the Church of God with Signs Following. Shed been sucked in by a snake handler from Tennessee, and George had only pulled her back out with threats of beatings and separation and financial ruin. Had he known that she was also one of nine women paying top dollar every Sunday evening to visit the mountain hideout of a teenager, who knows what hed have done. Had he known that she was, like the other women, handing over increasing sums of her husbands currency in that hideout to secure the sweet burn of expert moonshine and the heavenly exhaustion of a tongue-talking, ventriloquist-cunnilinguist, George Crews may have killed his wife. That, or maybe hed have been reduced to nothing. To crying the pitiful, mamas boy cry his son had cried when he made the mistake of believing what so many in power believed. That things were to stay as they were. That the powerful would stay there, in power, and that the ones beneath would stay beneath, all dark-skinned and coal-blacked and rotten-toothed. And maybe things would stay this way for a while, but change was coming as fast and reckless as the N&W lines, and if triggered, it just might fell trees and men alike.
ELEVEN. Folks Will Dust You Quick As Look At You
Winter came premature that year. The long walk to and from the Church of God with Signs Following each Sunday cracked Trenchmouths lips, anesthetized his toes and fingers. But he got there on time, heeded the same instructions J.B. Smith gave him every week: Be sure to take up all the snakes at once. Dont open your mouth and let any in, folks didnt know what to make of that one. Dont stand so stock still. Move your feet a little. Move your tongue too. If you dont feel the Lord speaking through you, make something up.
The boys act had brought more sheep to the flock, and his gig became a regular Sunday ritual. J.B. Smith knew the boys tongue-talking to be fraudulent, but it added flair to his natural magnetism for snakes, and flair put asses in chairs, and asses in chairs put coins in hats, and coins in hats put food on the table, liquor under the basement stairs. Coins converted whores to the Lord.
Trenchmouth had even started to forge his tongue-talking while in a womans nether-regions. The genuine article, the God hed found down there on Independence Day, had ceased to draw out holy babble. Hed had to fake it after the six or seventh time. All part of the act. What had been, at least that first time with Anne Sharples, an awakening, had transformed into a job. They never let him kiss their mouths or dip his wick. Some had even worried so heavily on the contagiousness of his disease that hed procured a medical almanac to show them it wasnt contagious. Ewart wouldnt set foot in his hideout anymore, much less speak to him on account of his newfound tendency to avoid her, ignore her even. But, between the women and the small fee he charged J.B. Smith for his services in church every Sunday, Trenchmouths coin sack was getting heavy. He was saving up for something, he just didnt know what.