Read Online Muckers by Sandra Neil Wallace - Free Book Online Page A

shakes his head.
    “What happened to it?”
    “I ate it all.”
    “You didn’t even play, Rabbit.”
    “I was hungry.”
    “You idiot, Rabbit!” Cruz says. “Ugly’s about ready to pass out.” Then Cruz lets out a wolf whistle. “Señor Francisco,” he beckons.
“¡Ven!”
    I hear rattling. It’s Paradiso. Trotting over to me.
    “Come esto,”
Francisco says, tossing a bag of pecans at my number. I tear the paper open and shovel them into my mouth.
    “God gave you strength to finish,” Francisco says. “He gave you the strength of Goliath. He always gives us what we need.”
    “ ’Cept a brain,” Cruz says, punching my arm. “Not only are you ugly, you’re stupid, too. So do me a favor?” he says, hauling me up. “Don’t ever not eat before a game again.”
    * * *
    10:08 P.M .
    I’m walking fast up the thirty-degree incline since there’s still a maze of cars working their way through Hatley after the game. I’m too close to the top of Hill Street not to go see Maw.
    I know it’s past visiting time, but we won. And Mrs. Mackenzie usually makes an exception for me—she’s just as nice as her husband, Mr. Mac.
    Ricky Sanchez’s mother is polishing the floor in front of the elevator and stops scrubbing for a minute. “Congratulations, Felix,” she says, smiling at me.
“Muy bien.”
    I mumble
“Gracias,”
making my way up the stairs. I wouldn’t take the elevator anyhow.
    They keep it clean and the floors are always polished, but the Eureka Copper Miners’ Hospital still smells like disease. I never much cared for the place even before Maw came here. It’s shadowy and dank. And no matter how warm it gets outside, the heat can’t burn off the stickiness holding in all the soiled smells. I’ve seen them wash down the walls first thing in the morning, but how do you get rid of something that’s rotting from the inside?
    I pass the second floor—the only one where you still see flowers in the rooms and other signs of life: young miners with broken bones that’ll mend in a few weeks or wailing babies too small to go home yet, but they will. Things go downhill pretty quickly as you climb. And the higher you go, the stronger it gets. The scent of sickness. Overtaking any hint of talcum powder or ammonia from a newly bound cast, so that by the time you reach the fourth floor—which is the top floor—you know the stories must be true. And I don’t want Maw being part of them.
    One time on the way home from first grade I looked up at the hospital after hearing a terrible cry. They were rolling a miner out on a gurney, his light still strapped to his head. He’d let out a bloodcurdling scream from a pain I can’t imagine, his two arms—if you can call them that—aimed at the sky. Only they weren’t long enough to be arms; they were more like a pair of stumps, wrapped like meat from the butcher. I sprinted the rest of the way home.
    Those two severed limbs shooting skyward—and that scream—stayed with me all summer. Only I couldn’t tell Pop. He’d just accuse me of going soft. “Whatcha expect, you tink mining’s pretty?” he’d say with a deep-throated laugh. “ ’T’ain’t fer whisses.” But I’d heard him cussing and going over things with Maw that night, about how they’dsent another to the fourth floor and that even if he did get to go home, he’d be forbidden from walking the streets in daylight—for the sake of the women and children. How daft the rule was. “ ’T’ain’t no secret,” he’d howled, “what the mines’ll do to ya.”
    I feel a sudden urge to turn back and sprint home all over again because I’m never the same after these visits. The sadness sticks with me and I go over how it went with Maw, no different from a combination I haven’t got right on the field. Both needle my brain until only a hard tackle or a win can change how I feel.
    I don’t turn back, and it sounds like Opal Hubbard’s winning again. I can hear those checkers