BIG FRANK WALKED THE camp with Bonney and Lacey as the fireflies sported about them. Men were oiling rifles and sharpening trench knives, sipping whiskey or scribbling letters to wives or mothers or sweethearts. A sound of hushed voices around the place, like purling water.
Near a schoolhouse at the edge of the holler, they heard a man preaching. A white man in his forties, long and lean, with jet-black hair combed high over a broad forehead, over crinkled cheeks and a crooked mouth. He stood on a high hickory stump, looking from man to man in the gathering dusk.
“Above ground, I serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the little white churches and revival tents of the hollers. Below ground, in the mines, I’m a slave to King Coal, sure as any damned dweller of Hell.”
That’s right.
A large clan of miners squatted before him in the falling darkness. The reverend looked across his gathered flock. He seemed to speak from the side of his face, his eyes aimed one way, his mouth another, as if someone had slapped him hard across the jaw and his face never righted.
“Bible says it’s a season for all things under heaven. It’s a time to weep, a time to dance. A time to be born, a time to die. A time for peace, and a time for war.”
Amen, said his men.
“Boys, I been praying hard on this one, asking Our Father for a sign. And I received it, clear as day. We all done. Them boys shot down in the road. Our Father, he’s told us what to do, he has. What we ought already to know. It’s time to put down the Bible and take up the sword.”
Damn right, said his men, thumping the butts of their rifles on the ground. The reverend squatted down on the stump before them, his knees cocked wide. He swung one eye from face to face. His voice came softly from the side of his mouth, in strange singsong: the challenge and password of the Redneck army.
“Where are you going?”
To Mingo.
“How are you coming?”
I come creeping.
“We’re the tip of the sword, boys. Tomorrow we eat breakfast in Logan town, and march on Mingo after that.”
Hurrah!
The reverend rose and started toward the twin crests of Blair Mountain, the miners filing along behind him, entering the woods. Frank and the twins watched them a moment.
“You think that man ought to be leading a party to the front?” asked Frank.
“Not without us,” said Bonney. “Like to get somebody killed.”
“What about the others?” The Bad Seven had been split apart to train different groups of miners; they hadn’t rejoined the others yet.
Bonney looked around. The camp was swarming, a sea of men. “Ten thousand of us, we might search all night and never find them.”
Lacey nodded. “Ain’t but a scouting party. We’ll be back before the main assault.”
Frank nodded and slung his rifle over his back. “Let’s go.”
The long file wended upward through the twilight, passing through the long shadows of the forest, past flint-scarred boulders and shallow caves. The cankered trunks of blighted trees floated like witchy totems in the falling darkness. They knelt at creek sides to fill their upturned hats, the water dripping silvery from their chins. Little sound but for the click of their boots on the rocky trail, the huff of their common breath.
They camped fireless on a ridge a mile above the schoolhouse. The breastworks and trenches of the defenders were built into the mountain above them, manned by the allied forces of King Coal: Baldwins, deputies, constables, troopers, and civilians who’d raided their wardrobes for khaki attire and wide-brim hats, a makeshift uniform. The Coal Operators Association had financed these guns and munitions, and their army had tied white armbands around their sleeves for identification. Whites, they called themselves.
Frank could see the flicker of their cigarettes and cookfires along the defensive line, could even hear their voices cascading down the mountain and through the trees, an odd word caught here or there in the darkness like something on a hook. He and the others maintained light and noise discipline, eating thin sandwiches from wax-paper wrappers and cold cans of beans, bedding down on blankets and sprawled coats, their rifles cuddled like spindly lovers, their cheeks twitching beneath the tickling creep of insects.