FRANK PRESSED UPWARD AGAINST the current of retreating miners. They were coming down off the mountain in droves. Frank paid them no mind as he worked his way up the steep trails, over the muddy roots and dead leaves. He hoped to find some diehards up on top of Blair, men who hadn’t given up the fight.
A lot of the men seemed happy the troops had arrived, as if they’d scored some victory. They thought the soldiers would be on their side, would help ensure they got fair treatment. Frank knew that wasn’t but a castle in the sky. He knew how it worked. The Army officers would do what they were ordered to do, and those orders would come down from Washington, where coal money had put plenty of men in positions of power and influence—and favors were expected in return.
Frank no longer felt angry, just dazed. He could barely remember the last time he’d slept, ate, or not been afraid. His arms and chest were crusted with blood and clay and dirt. His thighs burned, his hip smarted. Old wounds felt new. His whole body felt like it was coming apart at the seams, put through a decade of abuse in just a few days.
Still, he didn’t know what to do but to keep on going. He couldn’t go home. Couldn’t surrender. He’d promised Crock that much. He kept thinking of the big man struggling for his last breaths, drowning in his own blood, trying to tell Frank something before he was gone. What? That question might haunt him the rest of his days.
An ache rose again in his chest. He didn’t try to stop it. He let it come this time, rising all the way up into his throat. A hum, powerful enough to vibrate his teeth. He thought it would bust through his mouth, becoming a wail, but instead the sound found a rhythm, a tune. He sang no words, but they were just beneath the surface, there against the backs of his teeth.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored …
The same melody that passed like a soul through so many songs, jumping from one hymn to the next, animating the stories they told. From the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” to “John Brown’s Body,” from the Union anthem to the bawdy ballad of Davy Crockett they’d made up on the mountain. The same tune, one and all. The lines and verses of the various songs hummed in his mind, melding into words his own.
Mine eyes have seen the rising of the army of the mines,
We are trampling out the trenches where the King of Coal abides,
We have loosed the fateful lightning of ten thousand strengthened minds,
The Rednecks are march-ing on!
The song came louder from his lungs, still without words, his throat swelling, booming out the melody. The sun was breaking over the mountain. Between bars, he could hear the crack of gunfire still sounding from the mountaintop.
THE TROOP TRAIN CAME chuffing into the small station at Sharples, five miles short of Blair Mountain. Sparkes leaned over the rail of the caboose. The place bustled with miners come down from the front lines, men hollow-eyed with ragged scrapes of beard. Bib overalls, red kerchiefs, woolen bedrolls. Every age of man, every color, pimpled boys and gray grandfathers walking side by side.
Sparkes watched a clutch of miners on the platform, Black men with rumpled short-brim caps cocked bold over their eyes. An enlisted man hung out of a coach window, clanging his helmet against the side to get their attention. His regulation crewcut gleamed, his hair parted as with a razor.
“Well, hidy there,” he said.
Sparkes wasn’t from Appalachia, but anyone could tell the corporal didn’t have the accent for the words he spoke. He was having a jape. “How many boys is it kilt up thar on Blair?” he continued.
Up thar.
The miners had a slight rake in their shoulders, saw Sparkes. Their arms hung long and loose, slightly bent—a muscular slouch, like boxers in street clothes. Their leader was dark-eyed and wiry, with the tattoo of a coiled snake on his upper arm, set against a heraldic crest. Mark of the 369th Infantry, Sparkes knew. The Harlem Hellfighters.
One of the other miners spoke up. An older Black man. “They been haulin’ the dead out these mountains day and night. Three hundred niney-seven kilt.”
The corporal looked back at the other soldiers in the car. “Ye-all heard that? This old boy here must be their adding machine!”
Laughter rang through the troop compartment. The corporal looked back out the window, glee-faced, ready to poke more fun, but the small squad was already gone. Sparkes had watched their leader make a small jerk of his head and they’d melted away in the throng, quick as deer in a wood. The corporal stared dumbly from his window, mouth agape.
The orders came through to detrain. Sparkes grabbed his leather grip and portable typewriter, swinging one over each shoulder, and stepped down from the coach. On the platform, he saw Blizzard going from knot to knot of men, wearing his fermenting coat and wild stubble, talking up close to their ears.
“You think he’s the generalissimo of this lot, like they say?”
Sparkes turned to find a woman with short curly hair and tortoise-rim glasses, dressed in canvas trousers and heavy boots, a leather satchel strapped over one shoulder. Her eyes were bright with intelligence. She stuck out her hand. “Mildred Morris, International News Service.”
“Ah, I know your byline,” said Sparkes, shaking her hand. “A pleasure.” He turned to look back at Blizzard, who was still working the platform like he had a dynamo for a heart. “He’s a force of nature, whatever he is. Reminds me of a stick of lit TNT, rushing around before he blows.”
“I reckon we all run short of fuse one day.”
“Indeed.”
“I hear they’re still fighting up on Blair,” she said. “You want to hire a car, see if we can get up there?”
THE ROAD WAS MONSTROUS, a rutted track that might’ve been hacked from the mountainside with ax and dynamite. They were wedged in the rear seat of an open-topped Ford tourabout, knee to knee, their luggage strapped willy-nilly to the bent fenders and running boards. The driver was a local electrician named Ball; his wife rode shotgun, a baby clutched to her breast. The car lurched and bucked, battling every foot of road. Jolting, squeaking, hissing. The engine fumed and bubbled, threatening to overheat, and Ball rammed the car through rocky streams with gritted teeth, as if driving a mule to its death.
“Say you write for a New York City paper?”
“New York Tribune,” confirmed Sparkes.
Ball looked over his shoulder, not even watching the road. The baby was fast asleep, rolling back and forth in the saddle of its mother’s breasts.
“Well, is it true what they say?” he asked.
“What’s that?”
“Y’all got alley-gators size of submarines down there in ye sewers?”
The man grinned at them from the front seat, punching the gas, smashing the car through another rock-strewn torrent of creek water. As with Blizzard, it was tough to tell whether the man was toying with them or not.
Mildred bent toward the man, grinning. “Submarines, hell. We got gators so big they could eat U-boats whole.”
Ball smiled broadly. Maybe New York people weren’t so bad after all.
Now Mildred leaned toward Sparkes and lowered her voice, a conspiratorial whisper. “Says a lot you’re here, you know.”
“How’s that?”
“The nation’s foremost war correspondent, in West Virginia? I read all your dispatches from the Western Front. Never thought you’d be reporting from a battle on American soil.”
Sparkes shook his head. “Me, neither, Miss Morris. Never in my life. But I felt some pressure to stay home, to keep quiet on this one, which always makes me want to come. What about you?”
Mildred gripped the back of the front seat as the car jolted over a rock. “A woman can’t afford to sit on her feet in this world, can she? Plus, I got an express telegram from Mother Jones saying I ought to be here.”
Sparkes smiled, thinking of the telegram still folded up in his own coat pocket. That wily old hell-raiser. He wondered how many other correspondents had received such a telegram.
Higher on Blair Mountain, the slope steepened, pitching up the nose of the car until it seemed like they were on a Coney Island roller coaster, ticking toward the first drop. Sparkes was almost relieved when the car stuck in a gluey suck of mud, rocking helplessly on its axles, and they had no choice but to dismount and continue on foot.
Sparkes and Mildred each paid Ball a dollar for the ride.
“Watch out for them gators,” he said, folding the bills into his bib pocket.
Soon they were climbing, panting, crawling nearly on all fours, their hands groping for slick trunks and slimy stones, seeking purchase. The air cool and moist, as if they were climbing into the clouds.
They rounded a switchback and happened upon a brawny Black man in overalls, shirtless beneath the denim straps. He had a revolver strapped across his chest on a leather belt, a rifle cradled in one arm. His bare shoulders glistened with sweat, scratches, scars.
He held out his hand. “Name’s Frank.”
The feel of the man’s hand startled Sparkes. Fingertips like living stone, the whole palm callused with ten thousand hours of swinging pickaxes or coal sledges. Sparkes had shaken the hands of four-star generals and war heroes, Babe Ruth and the President of the United States. Theirs seemed the hands of children compared.
“Where you people headed?” asked the big miner.
“Blair Mountain.”
“This is Blair. They nearly blown the top off it.”
“Where is the top?” asked Sparkes.
The big miner looked over his shoulder. “You sure you want to go? Fighting ain’t stopped up there.”
Sparkes and Mildred looked at each other. “We’re sure.”
SOON THEY WERE CLAWING toward the crest of the mountain, their breath roaring hot-fired through their teeth. The mist had begun to move around them, weaving and swirling, as if made from very fine thread. The sky was ghost-gray through the trees, iron-smelling, promising rain. They were toiling to match the pace of the big miner who swaggered before them, limping slightly, his shoulders rolling as he walked, his boots stomping their way up the steep trail.
He stepped over a fallen tree and looked back at them, waving his hand. “Keep on talking. Mountain’s crawling with guns. Best you don’t sneak up on somebody unannounced.”
The correspondents nodded. When the big miner turned back around, Sparkes cocked his head toward Mildred, keeping his eyes on the trail. “I can hardly breathe. Let alone speak.”
“Amen,” she said. “Our man Ball might say we need to quit taking so many big-city elevators.”
Sparkes nodded. “Way the world’s going, they might just build them into these mountains.”
“Or cut their tops down to size,” said Mildred.
“Or that.”
Soon, any pretense of speech was gone. They were scrabbling toward what looked to be a crest, a steely light rifling down through trees. Sparkes had traveled through the Argonne Forest, a dark realm where every wet black tree still held bullets from the Great War, and he’d ridden through the pale moonscape of the Mexican mountains, where men had been ground into dust for eons. The thrill of cresting the mountain rose in his belly, tinny in his blood. He pushed himself harder, faster. The thud of his heart in his ears, the crack of guns. He forgot his pain, the acid crackling in his thighs, the hot ash in his lungs. He was approaching the story, the one he’d come to write. He could sense it just ahead, waiting for him.
They passed through a last dark arcade of trees, light-shot, the ground mossy underfoot. The big miner seemed to disappear before them, thinning out, vanishing into the wall of light, and then they were there themselves, high on the mountain, flushed with glowing mist, ready to witness the sight.
The ground beneath them detonated, smashed open with gunfire, and Sparkes felt the rounds penetrate him, white bolts of fire streaking through his flesh.