AFTER THE RAID, DOC Moo decided to bring Musa to help him fix up Miss Beulah’s tent and treat any wounded. He’d tried to keep the boy protected from the violence, but it proved impossible.
The day of the raid, Musa had come home with his shirt collar torn open and dirt pushed down into one ear, his knuckles swollen from contact with the nose of a schoolmate.
Buddeea set her hands on her hips. “What happened this time, Musa?”
The boy sniffed. “One of them Smith boys said Papa was a coward for not joining the Vigilance Committee. A tan-assed coward.”
He and the girls went to the school in Matewan, not Williamson, or it would have been much worse. Matewan was Sid’s town, after all. Still, the boy saw only one side of things at school, in town, even at church. He was the son of a physician—a certain vantage. Moo decided it was time for him to see how the people lived in the tent colonies. How fortunate he was. What conditions existed on the other side of the tracks—in the back of the hollers where few townsfolk ever went.
Buddeea was wary at first. “Are you sure, Moo? It’s a lot for a boy his age.”
“I know, Booty. But it’s getting tougher for him at school, and it might get worse before it gets better. For all of us. We’re becoming outsiders like we never were before. If, God forbid, the troopers or Baldwins or vigilantes try to run us out of the valley, or something happens to me, I need him to know why, to see the other side. The girls understand. I’m not sure Musa does.”
Buddeea nodded. “Don’t underestimate him, Moo. He might understand more than you think. But take him with you. Not just to see, but to help.” They embraced and she leaned close, her lips almost touching his ear. “And remember something, habibi.”
Moo raised his eyes. “Yes, my love?”
“If any of those sons of bitches touch you, I will burn their houses down.”
Moo couldn’t help but grin. There was fire in the woman’s blood. Her ancestors had been shepherds, farmers, and warriors for a thousand years, surviving beneath the heels of Byzantine emperors, Mamluk soldieries, and Druze lords. He kissed her. “Ya albi.” My heart. “I know you will. But let us keep the matches in the box for now.”
They rode up to Lick Creek in the afternoon, Musa on the pony mare he shared with the girls. The boy rode with his possibles bag looped over his shoulder and his worn plug hat rammed low on his head. Moo thought he’d be forced to make his son don his riding boots and saddle the pony, as Musa much preferred to ride bareback and barefoot like a little brave of the Plains. But the boy seemed to understand the weight of this journey and didn’t argue, showing up with boots on and tack in hand, a determined look on his face.
When they arrived, the camp seemed worse than Moo had left it. A vast wreck of trampled tents and knifed foodstuffs and gunshot livestock. Pigs, chickens, even the camp’s milk cow lay dead. Mud-caked figures stooped low over the ground, hunting for household belongings, poking sticks into the muck. Someone wailed over a dead dog. Flies were everywhere, dizzy with opportunity.
Musa’s face knotted up. Doc Moo thought for a moment the boy would cry.
“Who done this, Papa?”
Doc Moo thought a moment. It was a complicated question, in fact. The coal operators, the politicians, the state police, the county vigilantes. Money became influence, influence became policy, policy became force. And the miners were no saints, meeting violence with violence.
He sighed. “Men did this, son.”
“Bad men?”
“Some.”
“Will they go to hell?”
“I don’t know.”
The boy’s knuckles grew white on the reins. “I hope Smilin’ Sid sends them down.”
“Musa!”
They spent the rest of daylight raising tents and treating minor wounds. As dusk fell, Moo told his son to head home for supper. “Tell your mother I’ll be home late.”
“I can stay, too.”
“No, you have school tomorrow.”
“I know why you’re staying, Papa.”
“Why is that?”
“For the ones got away. Case any of them is hurt.”
Buddeea had been right, as usual—the boy understood far more than Moo realized. Saw more, grasped it. So he’d also understand such men were fugitives now, wanted men, and his father could be committing a crime in helping them.
“That is our secret, my son. Understand? For your mother’s ears only.”
The boy straightened and nodded, a soldier receiving orders. “Yes, Papa.”
NEAR MIDNIGHT, A SPECTER came lurching down out of the trees, bloodied and hobbling, one leg locked straight at the knee. His overalls hung tattered from his shoulders, a strap dangling at his side.
Miss Beulah took Doc Moo’s hand. “Thank you, Jesus.”
Big Frank. He’d been shot in the buttocks of all places. An oblique angle, but the bullet had buried itself deep in the soft tissue and would require extraction. With Miss Beulah acting as his nurse, Doc Moo had the man lie face down on the bed and gave him a morphine syrette, then set about cleaning the wound with antiseptic, the gauze clamped in a pair of forceps.
“You’re lucky. Without so much muscle tissue, the bullet might have penetrated all the way into the rectal cavity.”
Miss Beulah leaned over her grandson. “Hear that, boy? That big-ole butt of your’n done saved you.”
The big coal hewer turned his head toward her. “I should thank you, Mama-B, where I got it from.”
She slapped him on the arm. “Your granddaddy liked it.”
“Jesus help me.”
Once the wound was clean, Doc Moo gave Frank a knotted bandanna for his teeth and set to extracting the bullet. Despite the morphine, the man’s body quaked and shuddered with pain; what little sound he made came guttering through his teeth. The pain threshold of miners always impressed him. He thought their constant exposure to discomfort must inure them, like the saints and monks who taught themselves to endure extreme pain and cold.
Once he’d removed the bullet, he gave Frank a second sedative to help him rest and left alcohol, swabs, dressings, and written instructions for frequent cleaning of the wound. Frank had to return to the hills as soon as possible—the troopers could return at any time—so the cleaning would have to be done in the field.
Outside, Doc Moo went over the procedure with Miss Beulah. “Make sure he knows how important it is. If he misses even a single day at first, it could infect and I’ll have to admit him into a hospital.”
“Which he won’t never walk out a free man.”
“I’m afraid not. Also, I’ll need to check the wound once a week for the next month. We can do it on the same day we do your checkup.” He looked back through the tent flap, glimpsing the bloodied sheet that lay over the man’s buttocks. “I’m sorry, Miss B. I know that was harrowing to witness.”
Miss Beulah nodded. “I seen things in my years, Doctor, but it hits different when it’s your own boy.” She shook her head. “Frank don’t know it, but time was I marched with Mother Jones myself in one of her mop-and-broom brigades. Twenty, twenty-five years ago now. After my husband died of the miner’s asthma.”
“You marched?”
The old woman sucked her teeth. “Damn right I did. Just us womenfolk together, raisin’ hell on scabs and gun thugs, banging pots and pans, giving them cowards a hundred earfuls at once. Didn’t have no guns, mind you, but we sure had them pointed back at us. Thought they might use them, too.”
She shook her head. “Dying wasn’t nothing to me back then, I was so mad. Then Frank come into my care and I had to let the anger go, couldn’t raise a boy right with that fury inside me.” A wetness rose up in her eyes. “Reckon that boy saved me.”
“We’ll make sure he heals up good, Miss B.”
Miss Beulah squeezed his arm. “Thank you, Doctor.”