When the blood slowed, they hoisted him and ran. Arly clutched wrists, Trenchmouth ankles. They footed through the woods to Kumps awaiting automobile, a semi-reliable 1914 Model T Touring Type.
Arly at the wheel, they picked up downhill speed just about the time the mine guards reached the road on foot, out of range as soon as they raised their rifles. But, as was always the case in southern West Virginia, when one hill ended, another began. The mine guards stood winded with their hands on their knees and watched the automobile move out of sight. But before it did, the Model T sputtered as it climbed. Kump quickly spoke through the blood threatening to choke him. Gas tank, he said. Gravity feed.
What? Arly hollered.
Trenchmouth had heard something about it. The tank was under the seat, and on a steep enough incline, no gas could get to the motor unless the vehicle faced downhill. As he spoke on this to Arly and they got the car turned around, one of the mine guards noticed the trouble, and, along with the others, got to moving again. By the time the car was in position and climbing in reverse, with great difficulty, up the incline, the men were within range again. Bullets zipped past the windshield every three or four seconds. One lodged in the grill with a heavy sound. Arly got the trap moving enough so that at the top of the hill, turned around yet again, they were able to put distance between themselves and their pursuers.
Theyd cheated death, gotten free, then cheated it again when automotive invention nearly failed them. Theyd almost perished in a hail of bullets inside the contraption, rolling backwards up a hill. It was comical. When it seemed okay to do so, Trenchmouth started to laugh. He open-mouthed whooped it up there in the fast-moving Model T, and so did Arly Jr, whod only ever piloted a car once, on flat land. The wind carried their calls to the spaces they left behind, so that they almost forgot a man lay in the backseat, bleeding near to death.
Knocks at the hideout door had always and only come from two folks. In the old days, it was Ewart. More recent, Arly Jr. But on a mid-March morning, sunlight streaming through the groundcover and the cracks in the trapdoor, an unfamiliar rap sounded. Trenchmouth had been on edge since the shooting in McDowell, and though he wasnt sure whether or not the Widow had officially kicked him out, hed taken to sleeping most nights at the hideout, winter having died off. Hed spent a small portion of his savings on a revolver, a beat up Colt Cop & Thug.38, and he trained it on the trap door from where he lay under the heavy hide of his prized bear.
Above him, a voice said, I heard you pull back that hammer, son. Why dont you ease it down now. I got my hands on two of em, and I reckon you know as well as any that two is bettern one. Hed left little doubt to his identity, and Trenchmouth did as he was told. Your weapon put up? the voice said.
Yessir.
Good boy. Now open sesame.
Again, he did as he was told, pulling the chain and squinting up at the thin silhouette above. Two Gun Sid lived up to his name even before hed acquired the moniker, which would come later. On that morning, he holstered his sidearms and slid down inside the five by seven foot room. He pulled the door shut. Whew, he said. Stinks in here. Like assholes and oregano.
Trenchmouth had met Sid Hatfield before, in passing. But in his close-quartered presence, hed lost the ability to talk, much less laugh at the unique phrasings of a lawman.
Hatfield wore a three piece suit. His shirt collar was high and wide like his cheekbones, and those eyelids weighted down way past his years. He sensed the younger mans hesitation and got down to it. I hear you had some troubles in McDowell, he said.
For a moment, Trenchmouth considered that the sheriff was there to uphold the law, that the stories of Sids involvement with the miners were exaggerated, that maybe he should pick up his Colt from where it lay beside him before he was handcuffed and led to a cage. But he sat stone still.
What you got to understand is two words, Hatfield went on. Two words that Ive said over and over and will keep on sayin over and over until my bones is roadway for moles and beetles. He looked at Trenchmouth with something like respect, something like savagery. Self-defense, he said. Two words. As long as another man has picked up a gun and used it to try and end your life, you got no cause for worry in ending his. End of story. Trenchmouth hadnt ended anyones life, but Sid had come to reassure the boy just the same. Ease his mind. Still, hed come for more than that. I want to show you something, he said, standing from his crouch to re-open the hatch. Ill let you put on your britches. And if I was you, Id think on where to move this here hideout while you do. He lifted himself into the light and shuffled to a nearby tree. He leaned on it and looked up, directly into the sun.
Sid Hatfield had known that morning that the sun wasnt long to stay, and he was right. By ten a.m., the sky spoke somehow of dusk, and a cold front was coming, quick. The wind and the purple-gray character of the air would have warned other folks of a tornado, but not here. Here, there were hills to knock down such foolishness from mother nature.
Theyd driven through it, Trenchmouth and Sid, hoping the rain wouldnt hit. Neither spoke as they rode. After a while, Sid pulled Mayor Testermans Ford Phaeton right into the Lick Creek tent colony. Trenchmouth had seen it before, at the start of winter, but now it was crowded, overflowing with evicted miners and their families. The price of striking was coming in higher, and this was more evident at Lick Creek than anywhere else. It took him a minute to even get out of the car. Well. Cmon boy, Hatfield said, already walking into it all.
Trenchmouth followed. The makeshift streets of the place were mostly quiet. Everybody huddled around small fires in front of their tents, or slept against each other inside them. He had to step around a dog laid out on its side. It was bug-bitten all over, pus and skin and little hair from ears to tail and back. It could have been dead. It could have been sleeping.
A child ran from a tent on the eastern side of the camp. He couldnt have been older than three. His mother hollered after him in Italian, no doubt decrying the fact that he wore no shoes. Everywhere was coughing, the kind that hurts just to hear, and everywhere was wretchedness, wet dirt trampled rotten and paper tumbling on end.
Sid Hatfield walked over to a black family, whose matriarch cooked pinto beans over cinders kept hot by rocks the size of baseballs. Mrs Belcher, he said to her and nodded.
Benjamin, she hollered at the heavy canvas tent behind her. A black man came out followed by another one. The first was unfamiliar to Trenchmouth, but the second was Arly Scott Sr. He either didnt notice or didnt care that Trenchmouth was standing behind the chief of police.
Sid, Arly Sr said, and he held out his hand. They shook. The man named Benjamin looked at his boots, knocked off dried mud.
You seen the New York fella around? Sid asked.
Spoke with him this morning. Hes around, Arly Sr said.
Good. The lawman looked all about, as if for enemies. Arly, you know young T., he said. It was strange to hear the single initial used this way. No affectation, no meanness.
Arly Sr nodded at Trenchmouth and frowned. You supposed to be out of eyeshot for a little while, isnt that right?
Good. The lawman looked all about, as if for enemies. Arly, you know young T., he said. It was strange to hear the single initial used this way. No affectation, no meanness.
Arly Sr nodded at Trenchmouth and frowned. You supposed to be out of eyeshot for a little while, isnt that right?
Hes broken no law, Sid said.
This heres Benjamin Belcher, my nephew from Chicopee, Georgia. He come up October last year for the mines.
Benjamin Belcher had already made Hatfields acquaintance, but he stepped forward and shook Trenchmouths hand, still looking at his boots or the ground around them. Under his breath, he said, October and already I got no work to speak of.
Arly Sr spoke sharply to his nephew then, Union takes care of you, dont it? That aint paper money you was counting in there? Ten bills a week, doctor for your boys condition. There was some anger there, between kin. Living like dogs will do it to you.
Anger. It was in the eyes of Benjamin Belcher and his wife and the boy poking his misshapen head from the tents folds. They resented Arly Sr, that hed built his own house, had known never to live on company-owned property. That hed risen in the ranks of the union and begun fraternizing with white folks. To them, there was nothing but trouble in this, and the strange hill people around them made it all harder to bear.
Sid eyed the men, then spat on the ground beside him. Well, he said, Id better find this newspaperman and set him straight.
I already got him together with Bill Blizzard, Arly Sr said. He got an earful on the type of people we got livin here. The type was hard. Proud. Stubborn.
Sid and Trenchmouth walked away from the Georgia familys tent. As they did, Benjamin sat down on a log and played his harmonica. Trenchmouth turned to watch. It was the most beautiful sound he could remember hearing. He thought of his own, unused mouth harp. The instrument his Daddy had played. He studied the way Benjamin the southerner cupped the little thing with his hand, opening and closing it to let that sorrow out. It was the blues, the sound of a people bent but not broken, and Trenchmouth memorized it.
They found the reporter from the New York Times crouched by a makeshift trash pile. He was talking to a girl no older than six or seven. Oil cloth, she was saying, in response to his question as to what she slept on inside the tent. But Daddy dont have nothing but the ground, and its real hard.
The newspaperman wrote with furious speed. Trenchmouth and Sid stood behind him, waiting for the interview to cease. The man was unaware of their presence. Brothers and sisters? the man inquired.
Two, she said and stopped short for a moment. Three almost. Stillborn in February. She spoke those three words like shed heard the older folks around her speak them so many times in the days since. Like name and rank, crops and weather. Her lips were cracked on top and bottom both. The cold had gotten in. She licked them and pulled at the dried-up skin with her teeth, dead-eyed to the man in the gray suit and spit-shined shoes.