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| The Coalwood Community Church circa 1959 |
The Power of Love
by
Homer
Hickam
When
I was a boy, my mother overheard me say, "I love peanut butter." I
was saying it because I was having an intellectual discussion with a friend of
mine, a boy who also loved peanut butter and we wished to confirm our
proclivity for that most wholesome of jarred elixir. For most boys who grew up
in the West Virginia coalfields, this was a natural thing to say because we
sincerely believed peanut butter was just about the best thing that could
possibly be smeared between two slices of white bread. Life, however, was never
easy when you were the son of Elsie Hickam. Later, when she had me to herself,
she admonished, "You do not love
peanut butter," she apprised me. "You like peanut butter. Love
is a word you should use for people. For instance, you love me."
"I
do?" The question sprang forth thoughtlessly from my young mouth because,
actually, I'd never really given it any thought as to whether I loved my mother
or not.
Mom's
hazel eyes registered hurt. "Don't you?"
Well,
of course I did, especially now that she'd put it that way. To her apparent
relief, I said so even though her advice still confused me. Love was just a
word, right? I was to learn not so.
One
day, a fellow arrived in Coalwood. He was a junior engineer, those pitiful and
pitiable creatures the steel company that owned our coal mine and our town sent
to us from time to time to be trained in the ways of our world. Since I was at
the time the owner, editor, and primary reporter for a rag I grandly called The Coalwood News, I approached him as
he stood in the street and identified myself as myself. "Is this the
bachelor quarters?" he asked, nodding toward the grand facility before
him.
"It's
the Club House," I said, marveling at his ignorance of our structures,
"where rooms are allotted for various workers and if you're a bachelor I
guess it will do since it houses a splendid cook named Wilma."
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| Coalwood Club House |
"You
use big words," he apprised me. "What are you, eight
years old?"
"Nine,"
I informed him and took out my pencil and paper. "Your name and purpose
for being here?"
"Frank
Miles. I'm an engineer. Why are you writing that down?"
"I
told you about my newspaper and you're officially news," I replied.
"And you're not an engineer. You're a junior engineer. It takes a lot to
get the rank of engineer around here. Tell me a little about yourself."
"About
myself? Well, right this minute, I'm hungry." He provided me a wan smile
on his otherwise unhappy face. When I didn't smile at his little joke, for it was
very little, he apprised me, with an odd weariness, that he'd recently been a
pilot in the United States Air Force serving in the war in Korea.
"Did
you shoot down a MiG?" I asked, holding my pencil at the ready.
He
pulled up the collar on his cracked leather jacket which I presumed he'd stolen
from the Air Force. "I guess I'll go on in. Good to meetcha, Sonny."
He'd
chosen not to answer my question but I let it go. Whatever he'd done in Korea
would come out soon enough. The people of Coalwood would see to that.
Sure
enough, I learned everything there was to know about Frank Miles in the coming
weeks. He had indeed shot down a MiG whereupon the Chinese had returned the
favor, shooting him down and generally making him the wreck he turned out to
be. I heard all about him from listening in on the coal miners discussing him
at the company store. They were pretty unforgiving. After all, they depended on
everybody at the mine to do their jobs and nervous ones made them nervous, too.
The way it got back to me was that Frank's hands often shook and loud sounds
made him jump, and he drank far too much of the illegal whiskey John Eye
Blevins made up Snake Root Hollow. No one in town gave him much of a chance of
ever doing anything worthwhile, not in Coalwood or anywhere else. In short, he
was doomed without half trying.
I
happened to be there when the next thing happened. Frank met a young woman by
the name of Teresa Donatello. Teresa was the daughter of Alfred and Ducet
Donatello who'd, not so long ago, had arrived in our coal camp from the country
of Italy where, I was confident from the patient instruction of my teachers,
the city of Rome was located and was also, due to God's little joke, shaped in the
form of a boot. Otherwise, I didn't know too much else about the place.
The
thing about Teresa was she was dying. Her heart was paper thin, according to
the company doctor, and she was so weak she could hardly stand and there was
nothing to be done. She was young, not more than eighteen, but the sands of her
time were rapidly draining from the glass of life she'd been given. As soon as
their eyes met, Frank and Teresa made a connection. I felt it even through my
nine year old brain. Frank put down the soft drink he was raising to his lips
at the company drug store and removed his hat. Teresa smiled demurely and
ordered a soft drink for herself. He spoke, she spoke, and then she laughed and
then he laughed. I got closer to hear what was being said but it wasn't much,
just how do you do and I'm doing fine and how are you enjoying Coalwood and I
guess I like it fine and that kind of stuff. How those words would make Teresa
giggle and Frank's face light up like a flaming candle, I surely didn't know.
Frank
paid Teresa court, as required by both the rules of Coalwood and her Italian
parents. He came with flowers, plucked with permission from my mother's rose
garden, and sat on the porch swing and there they spoke of many things, still
secret from even the ace reporter that I was at the time. Frank stopped drinking and he
stopped shaking and he stopped being anything but a good man. When Teresa felt
strong enough, he walked her to church and there he sat with her while the
choir sang and the light streamed through the windows across our congregation
who sang all the heartier in praise of the divine since two people who needed
each other were in their midst.
She
died suddenly, Teresa, never waking one morning. Her father walked to the Club House to
give Frank the news, catching him just as he walked outside to go to work.
Frank walked back to the little company house and there he sat beside Teresa's
bed and held her hand until the men arrived with the stretcher to take her to
Doc's office where she would be prepared for burial in our little cemetery.
Frank
stayed in Coalwood for a few more years after that although a day didn't pass
while he was still with us but what he didn't go to Teresa's grave, there to
sit with her and tell her of his day, and all the things that was happening in
town. He asked permission from my mom to take a slip of one of her rose bushes
and plant it alongside the grave. He no longer shook or drank or did anything
but what he was supposed to do. He was respected by all in the town. I wrote up
a little story on it but when I showed it to her, Mom said I shouldn't print
it. "It isn't our story," she said. "It's theirs and it's too
fresh. Let it rest for now." I let it rest. Until now.
The
cemetery in Coalwood is abandoned these days, as is much of the town. A few overturned
tombstones can be found amongst the trees that have grown up there to shelter
that which was and never will be again. On a recent journey to my old hometown,
I climbed the hill to see what was to be seen. It was as I described, nothing
much left, until my eye found a spot of color. I walked to it, there to
discover a most surprising artifact. It was a rose bush turned wild and unruly but with scarlet buds yet shining forth with the power of love.
