Johnnie latched onto his mama’s hand. I thought about Bonnie down there, the good miners, the sweet boy in front of me hardening to a lump of blackened coal.
“Please bring me them books, Honey, I promise to keep ’em good ’n’ hid. Promise,” Guyla Belle said, the desperation slipping into her quivering voice.
“It’s too dangerous for you to go back there,” I whispered, laying a hand on her slumped shoulder.
“Dangerous if I don’t. I could never leave him. Ain’t got no money or family. Only him and my boy in this world,” Guyla Belle uttered, holding onto the doorframe with one hand and her son’s palm in the other before stepping outside.
“Wait, Guyla Belle.”
She turned to me.
I could barely glance at her swollen eyes. She looked lost, the sadness and desperation painful to see. “I’ll make sure you get the books.”
Gratitude swept across her face. We watched her walk slow and stiff-legged out of the yard, with Johnnie in tow.
“They always go back to those pantywaist cowards, no matter how many times I stitch them up or set their broke bones,” Amara said, a bitterness wrenched in her words.
When the mother and son slipped through the trees, I pulled out my timepiece and saw it was going on eleven thirty. I raised the case and asked Amara, “Do we have time?”
“It’s a good five hours or more drive, Honey, and we’d never make the visiting hours to the prisons or get to the health center before they close.” She touched my arm. “I’m sorry. Maybe you can try and telephone them today. Let’s plan on next Saturday.”
I stared out into the fog-soaked hills, heartbroken.
“Let me fix you breakfast, Honey. It’s the least I can do for your trouble.”
“Obliged, but I have food packed. I think I’ll go into town and get a few things I’ve been needing.” I wanted to run and escape to a place where I could hurt without others seeing me hurt.
I shut the door quietly behind me and walked briskly over to Junia, crumpling against the mule, burying my face against her shoulder, quelling the sorrows of the morning. The ol’ girl didn’t twitch, or move in the slightest, and I knew she was hurting as much as me.
Twenty-Four
I climbed atop the mule and rode into a busy town square, grieving with a burning hunger to reach my folk.
Men and women called out their hidey-dos as they went about their Saturday business and morning shopping. I nudged Junia over to the post office where I tied her to a hitching post, deciding to buy stamps to write letters to my folk.
Postmaster Bill waited patiently while I tried to decide which stamps to buy. In the end, I purchased a sheet of the deep-blue, three-cent Women in Our Armed Services stamps, admiring the four brave women who fought in the four branches of the military. I stared at their cheerful faces, surprised they were blue. I puzzled over whether their color was a trick of the artist or whether they were really blue, and I wondered why war would make them so happy—doubting that their four-star generals did anything better than the women here in Troublesome, the miner woman, the frontier nurse, and the lookout. A man in line behind me inched closer, stepping an impatient reminder onto my heel with his shoe. I scooted forward, paid for the stamps and envelopes, and slipped outside.
Inside the library, I lingered over the latest book arrivals before leaving.
When I was through, I stepped outside and watched miners come out of the Company store next door on their afternoon dinner break. Some chatted while others piled into the back of pickup trucks to head back over to the mines. I searched for Bonnie but couldn’t find her.
In a minute, Perry Gillis stepped out with another miner, and Bonnie followed seconds later. She had a Coca-Cola in her hand and moved over to the other side, away from the men, sipping her cool drink. She still wore her blackened bib overalls, hadn’t followed the boss man’s orders yet.