Читать книгу The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart - Glenn Taylor - Страница 16

It was a simple idea really. Steel not wood. If folks would just realize that timber construction was a thing of the past, steel the future, maybe whole towns wouldn’t burn. Maybe good men wouldn’t die. And maybe, if the self-made railroad men laying track like match-sticks across the hill terrain of southern West Virginia, if they’d just realize that coal tipples could be fashioned heartier from the very product being mined in these hills, namely the bituminous coke, maybe the wealth would spread to the little folks. This is how Trenchmouth’s brain worked. The boy climbed Sulfur Creek Mountain daily to his secret spot, a dug out, one room, underground bunker complete with homemade drawing table, ruler, drafter’s compass, and school-stolen pencils. There he drew up plans. Inventions really. There he devised an outline for steel cities and suspension bridges and coal tipples. He’d never let anyone in until Ewart Smith came along. Only she knew the hideout’s location, and she’d been sworn to secrecy.

Things were thawing on a particular March afternoon when Ewart knocked on the bunker’s hatch door. He let her in. The hatch was on a fishing line pulley, so that when you re-closed it, a scoop net tossed ground cover across its surface.

Inside, he was trying not to stare at the harmonica he’d laid on the drawing table, the harmonica of his dead daddy. He still hadn’t put it to his lips, for fear that since that particular part of him was so susceptible to disease, he might well be infected with whatever drove his father down the road to hell. He got back to business: fashioning a miniature coal tipple and a crane from scrap metal he’d collected at the mine dumps. Structure-smart, he’d used a hammer and a punch to knock out holes in the skinny tin. Slots for connecting and building upwards. Ewart stared at what would surely become a tiny city there on the table.

‘Your momma’s going to come after you for spending all your time away,’ she said.

‘She ain’t home.’ Trenchmouth didn’t say where the Widow was, but ever since the Huntington woman had gone down on moonshine charges, his mother had been hard at work moving product here to there, covering tracks, fashioning cover. In the time since the train trip to Huntington, their home had been family-scarce. ‘Your daddy’s liable to come after you, you keep comin here.’

‘He ain’t home,’ Ewart said.

Trenchmouth wasn’t sure she even had a home. All she’d say was that they lived up in Sprigg, a mile off the Tug. ‘I can’t figure what shift he’s workin then.’ He looked up at her from his growing construct.

She bit her lip. Had a look of thinking hard. ‘How many secrets can you keep?’

‘I reckon about two hundred.’

‘How many you got piled right now?’

‘Ninety maybe.’

She wasn’t laughing at his odd ways like usual. ‘My Daddy ain’t a miner,’ she said.

‘What is he then?’

‘Preacher.’

His stomach tightened. He looked back to his drawing, took up the pencil again.

‘You don’t care for preachers?’

He shrugged.

‘Listen, T. This ain’t preacher like you’re thinking. My Daddy was best friends of a fella named Hensley down in Cleveland, Tennessee. They fell out cause Daddy was better and everybody knew it. Mr Hensley though, he started up this church…’ Ewart bit her lip again. This caused Trenchmouth to shift in his seat and lock eyes. ‘This promise might fill up all those hundred empty ones you got,’ she said. He nodded. ‘Mr Hensley picked up a serpent.’

‘What?’

‘It ain’t like church you know of. Folks pick up serpents. Roll around with em sometimes even.’

‘Snakes?’

‘Snakes.’ She almost laughed for having finally told someone. ‘Folks get bit even.’ Trenchmouth stared. ‘A couple folks died.’

You could call it a box, maybe a wood cage. Copperheads and rattlesnakes knocked around inside it, their dark, translucent sides thumping at the holes.

‘Who built the box?’ Trenchmouth asked her.

‘Daddy.’ They were standing inside a small backroom of Ewart’s farmhouse. She’d finally let him see where she lived. The walls were stained and halfway papered, like somebody had quit on the whole place mid-job. From the second story came sounds of the adult world. Above the two children, furniture scraped floorboards and the low tones of a man and a woman echoed untranslatable. ‘He’s up there preaching to somebody new,’ Ewart said. ‘Convertin somebody.’ She bent down and put her fingers next to one of the little round holes. The snakes were quiet.

‘You ever pick one up?’ Trenchmouth hadn’t taken his eyes off the box. Its construction could’ve been improved upon.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t care for snakes.’

That’s when he bent down next to her and got the feeling he’d had on the train that night with Clarissa. His knee touched Ewart’s, and through the thick wool fabric both sets of skin seemed to heat up. Trenchmouth put his hand out to touch her, but for reasons unknown he changed destinations. With thumb and finger he undid the little brass latch and opened the snake hatch. He reached into the slowly slithering mound and brought back a hand covered in copperhead. The snake might as well have been asleep, but Ewart hopped up anyway, pressed her back against the far wall. Brittle wallpaper fell to the floor behind her.

The snake moved up Trenchmouth’s arm slow and methodical. Had it decided to bite him, the going would be tough through coat and shirt and undergarment, but it gave no indication that it meant the boy harm. He stared at its undersized head, the geometric shape of it and every perfect scale lining its being. He stared and the snake looked back at him until the gaze went blurry between them, until that snake had made it up his forearm, biceps, shoulder, and collarbone. It stopped.

Though he knew she was watching and he knew he’d never shown her his affliction, the boy opened up wide because it seemed the only thing he could do at that moment. And, as if it was an act they’d practiced together before bug-eyed kids at county fairs, the copperhead, without hesitation, slid into the open mouth like it’d found home. It rested its head on his tongue.

Ewart’s hands had come up to her own mouth, holding in and keeping out simultaneously. She breathed heavy without having exercised. The breathing picked up more as she watched her friend slowly close his ragged gums and chapped lips around the serpent. He didn’t bite down, just closed up slowly so that it appeared to her he was ingesting the thing.

From upstairs, the low tones got louder, the furniture scraping and floorboard creaking more imposing, as if the ceiling might come down on them. But Trenchmouth paid little mind. He held his pose, eyes on Ewart, then opened that mouth of his again, just as slow and deliberate as he’d closed it. He gave the copperhead’s tail a little incentive pull and the girl watched the snake loop its head back toward her, a candy cane pose held briefly before slithering back down the arm. Then it was still.

‘How bout that?’ Trenchmouth said.

She let her hands fall from her face. ‘You’ve got to leave,’ she said.

He bent down to the open box and let the snake fall back to its brethren. ‘Did I scare you?’

‘Daddy’s done convertin. Can’t you hear how quiet it’s got?’

From the time he’d opened that box, his whole world had been more quiet than anytime he could remember. Quiet like it must be under the ground.

‘Daddy won’t like that you’re here. You’ve got to go.’

He swiveled the brass latch into place and stood up. He walked to her and kissed her on the cheek, and it was warm and dry, without the electricity of Clarissa’s. Then he slid through the open door of the little back room, his coat knocking paint chips from the molding, and walked out the back. The preacher and the convert descended the stairs inside, laughing.

It was obvious to the Widow Dorsett that for her boy, school was like being put on the rack. And she didn’t say a word when he announced he’d spent his last Sunday at the Methodist Church. She and Clarissa continued to go without him, and he continued to bow his head and hold their hands for the mealtime blessing. Little else was spoken in terms of Trenchmouth’s exile. It was simply accepted that the boy would not be accepted. What mattered was that he learned. That he kept up, surpassed even, those that would not accept. Above all, that he did not become a miner. And it was for this reason that the Widow, on most days, left the newspaper out on the kitchen table for him to read. She’d mark the articles she thought educational with black ink advice like Think on this one awhile or Ever thought of trying your hand at this?

Trenchmouth got home from school on a Tuesday to find one of these left notes on newsprint. It was warm enough out that he didn’t have to refill with coal or wood the heating stove fire, an after-school chore assigned to him during fall and winter months. He broke a piece of hard cornbread off a brick she’d left out and sat down to read. The newspaper settled him like little else could. It was almost as comforting as moonshine somehow.

The Widow had written I hope you don’t associate with these boys above an article titled Robbed Passenger Coach. Some local boys had robbed a coach car containing a stock of goods for the local newsstands. They’d been caught sleeping inside a cave they’d fashioned on top of Horsepen Mountain not far from Trenchmouth’s hideout. They slept between the open, stolen hampers and baskets of cigarettes, cigars, chewing gum, candy, popcorn, groceries, fruits, novels, and magazines, gorged no doubt on romance and sugar.

Trenchmouth tore off a piece of newspaper and scrawled on it move hideout for safety? He put it in his pocket.

A page in, she had written Think I’ll ever get me one of these? above an ad for a cooking oven. It read Every woman who wants a steel range will certainly buy The Peninsular if they can only get a view of it. They could do so if they got themselves to A.H. Beal Hardware in Williamson. The power of steel. It was everywhere to behold. Trenchmouth looked at the beat up Acme cook stove against the wall. It had seen better days.

The door opened and Clarissa walked in with Fred Dallara in tow. Trenchmouth nodded and looked back to his paper.

‘Hi,’ Clarissa said. She’d blossomed full to beautiful.

‘Afternoon, little T.T.,’ Fred said. His voice had gone suddenly low that winter, his torso thicker. He had a mustache that looked like somebody had smudged two fingers across his lip and halfway wiped it off. Fred enjoyed pointing out their age differential.

The two lovebirds climbed the ladder to the loft and went quiet.

Trenchmouth knew that Fred and Clarissa kissed up there. The soft sounds echoed in his ears. He knew that they knew the Widow was at work on her still again, moving and hiding and covering up, and that she wouldn’t be back to catch them in the act. He broke off two miniature pieces of cornbread, shoved them in each earhole, and got back to reading.

See here? she had written above another story. Turns out you just got more brains than the rest of us, in more places, more stubborn. It was another new finding from the scientists who were always finding. Throat Brain Is Latest Discovery the title read, and under that Scientists Say Gray Matter is in Fingers and Cells are in Toes. Numerous Thinking Organs Distributed Throughout Whole Body. According to the columnist, the fingertips of the blind contained brain tissue, and so did the throat. If a throat surgeon slipped up during his operation, the throat brain would react by refusing to cooperate.

The boy couldn’t help but wonder what had been done to his mouth brain to make it so uncooperative.

He thought he heard a giggle from the loft, so he pushed the bread further into his ears and read on. Above Railroad Progress Moving Forward, she’d written You could see the world if you wanted to by the time they finish this. The big men of the N&W and the C&O were barreling through hills and valleys, blasting tunnels and building homes for workers. The word tonnage was used again and again to describe the coal that was bringing the railroad to West Virginia. The tonnage was here, so they were coming to secure it. To move it out to everybody else.

Trenchmouth thought of the tipples he’d seen being built from solid wood. He wondered how somebody could figure a kitchen range ought to be fashioned from steel but not a coal tipple. He ripped off another piece of paper and scrawled a new design. The power of steel. It was everywhere.

Another giggle. It made him sick. He gave the bread plugs another push and started reading out loud. Almost a holler. ‘Millions of dollars are being invested in coal properties, which will within a year furnish tonnage for the railroads, which are being built at a cost of more than millions of dollars.’ A shoe boomeranged down at him from above and caught his collarbone, hard. He didn’t look up, just rubbed at his injury. Had he looked to the loft, had he pulled the bread from his ears, he would have heard Fred Dallara say, ‘Pipe down little boy,’ and he would have seen Clarissa, up on her elbows with her neck stretched to check on him, a mix of worry and sadness and defeat in her eyes.

But he didn’t look up at them. He kept on reading.

He read that the druggist at the pharmacy had been confined to his bed. Like others in the county, he’d been taken hold of by Typhoid Fever.

That’s when Trenchmouth saw the toy advertisement. Mysto Erector Structural Steel Builder the banner read.

The boy could scarcely take it in.

Under this heading was a picture nearly identical to the scrap metal tipple on his drawing table at the hideout. The picture showed skinny steel strips, holes punched and connected to other holes. It was a steel construction toy, an erector set, and some fellow by the name of A.C. Gilbert was taking credit for having invented it.

Without knowing, Trenchmouth had made a toy, and now somebody else was getting paid for it. What he’d thought was an idea toward protecting the progress of civilization was nothing more than adolescent entertainment.

He sighed and sat and stared.

His ears were plugged up while his sister broke his heart within whisper distance, and he came to understand that ideas could be stolen before they were even ideas. But no tears would smear the newsprint that day or any other, as far as Trenchmouth was concerned. He was not yet twelve and had lost nearly everything he loved. But he knew this on that day: like toys, tears were for boys, and it was time to leave all that behind. It was time to become a man.