Read Online Sky of Stone by Homer Hickam - Free Book Online Page B

polished and glistening. He wore no weapons, not even a nightstick. Coalwood had never provided many criminals that needed shooting or bashing. Tag used his fists every so often, but that was usually with outsiders from Gary, Bradshaw, or Matewan, places like that. Tag’s main job was slowing down the cars on Main Street, or keeping tabs on John Eye’s joint up Snakeroot Hollow on Saturday nights, or perhaps investigating what boy had plinked out a streetlight with a BB gun.
    I shook Tag’s offered hand, and we passed a few words back and forth. I told him about college, and when I asked, he said his mother was doing fine. “When’s your mom coming home?” he asked.
    I shrugged. “I don’t know, Tag. She has a lot of work to do on her house.”
    “Why aren’t you down there helping her?”
    “She ordered me here to be with Dad during this Tuck Dillon thing, said it wasn’t good for him to be alone right now. What’s your opinion on Tuck, Tag?”
    Tag mulled over my question. “Never been a mine that couldn’t kill you,” he finally allowed.
    I recalled that Tag had tried to work in the mine when he’d come home from the Korean War but had froze on the man-lift at the bottom of the shaft. He’d told his foreman he’d rather face a million screaming Chinese troops than take another step. The Captain had hired him as the town constable right after that, and he had never, to my knowledge, tried to go down in the mine again.
    “What happens now?” I wondered.
    Tag hooked a thumb in his belt. “Inspectors have been in here for a week now,” he said. “After they finish, there’ll be a hearing to try to figure out what went wrong and who’s at fault.”
    I went to the heart of it. “You mean, to see if my dad’s at fault,” I said. “Who’ll run the hearing?”
    “First testimony will be by the steel company. Then, if the state don’t like the results, it’ll hold its own testimonies. Then, if the feds don’t like either one, they’ll hold another set. They’ll keep going until they get the answer they want.”
    The way Tag had put it, it sounded as if at least three outfits were soon going to be after my father like starving dogs. “Is that what usually happens?” I worried.
    “Naw. It usually stops with the mine owners. They don’t want the state or the feds in their knickers, so they’re pretty tough in finding out what happened. Somebody’ll be down here from Ohio pretty soon to get the testimonies going, I expect.”
    “Is Dad going to get blamed?”
    Tag nodded. “That’s the talk.”
    “That would be rough on him.”
    “It would kill him, Sonny,” Tag said succinctly. He got out a big red bandanna and blew his nose. “Damn allergies this time of the year. That’s another reason I never worked the mine—too much dust. That and being scared to death of that low roof. I need to see the sky above me, not a hanging slab of rock.”
    I remembered Mom’s admonition about Coalwood’s secret man. “Tag, what’s wrong with Nate Dooley?”
    Tag looked up in surprise. “Nate? He broke his wrist. About all I know.”
    I thought to myself—
ah ha!
That must have been what Mom had heard. “Is his wrist okay now?”
    Tag shrugged. “He’s got a cast on it. I guess it’s fine.”
    It was clear that Tag was done with me, said what he had to say, heard from me all he’d wanted to hear. He climbed back in his car and headed on down toward Frog Level. I drove Dad’s Buick back through Coalwood Main and spotted Mrs. Dantzler at the post office, so I got out and said hello. Mrs. Dantzler was a woman who always looked like she was dressed for a dinner dance at the White House. She was also Ginger’s mom. When I asked her about her youngest daughter, she laughed. “Ginger’s going to about every camp there is this summer, Sonny—majorette camp, cheerleader camp, she’s even going to tennis camp. In between, she’s visiting relatives in Mississippi and Kentucky. Doesn’t look like