Whistling Past the Graveyard Read online

  Granny exhaled more smoke before she answered. “No, son, that ain’t what it is.”

  “Then…?”

  She chuckled. “It’ll keep. You interrupted your ownself, son. You was asking me a question before we heard yonder call.”

  He nodded, but it was clear that he was reluctant to leave the other topic unfinished. Granny felt how false her smile was. The mysteries out in the dark would keep. Might have to keep without the other shoe ever dropping.

  “I…” Joshua began, fishing for the thread of where they’d been. “Right…we were talking about the day Granddad left for Pittsburgh. He said it was because there was no work, but he never really talked about that. And when he moved to Pittsburgh, he always worked in a foundry. He never wanted to go back to the mines.”

  “No…I daresay old Hack Tharp would never set foot in a mine again. ‘Specially not in these hills, and probably nowhere. Lot of folks around here with the same thought. Those that stayed here gave up mining. I know men who wouldn’t lift a pickaxe to go ten feet into a gold mine, not after what happened. Hack was one of ‘em.”

  “Tell me about him. He died when I was ten, so I never had a grown-up conversation with him. Never got to really know him. What was he like?”

  Granny smiled, and this time the smile was real. “Hack was a bull of a man, with shoulders from here to there and hands like iron. A good man to know and a handsome man to look at. Hack worked himself up to foreman down in the Hangood Mine. Swung a pickaxe for twenty long years down in the dark before he was promoted, and still sucked coal gas for twenty more as the foreman. The men liked him, no one crossed him, and his word was good on anything he put it to. Can’t say as much about a lot of people, and can’t say half as much about most.”

  Joshua nodded encouragingly.

  “But Hack up and moved,” said Granny. “He was the first, and over the years more’n sixty families have left the holler. Ain’t no more than a hundred people left on this whole mountain, and I know of four families that are fixin’ to leave before long. Might be that I’ll be the last one here come next year, if I’m even here a’tall.”

  “People started leaving because the mine closed?”

  “They started leaving after the mine closed. This place went bad on us that day, and it ain’t ever goin’ to get better.”

  The moaning wind and the soft metallic clank drifted past the end of her statements almost as if it were a statement itself.

  Joshua cleared his throat. “Do you remember when Granddad left? I got the impression it was pretty soon after the disaster.”

  “It were on the third Sunday after the cave-in. Hack packed up only what would fit into that old rattle-rust Ford pick-up of his and drove off. Never came back, never called, never wrote. But…before he left, though, he came to say goodbye to ol’ Granny.” She sighed. “’Course I wasn’t Granny back then. Just a young, unmarried gal who thought the sun rose in the morning ‘cause it wanted to see Hack Tharp.”

  “Pardon me if this is rude, but…were you and Granddad sweethearts?”

  Granny blew out some smoke. “There was no official understanding between us, you understand. Every girl in five counties wanted to catch Hack’s eye, but for a while there I had some hopes. Maybe Hack did, too, ‘cause I was the only one he lingered long enough to say farewell to. And—I blush to say it to a young feller like you—but I was something back then. You wouldn’t know it now, lookin’ at this big pile o’ wrinkles, but I could turn a few heads of my own. Thought for a while that Hack might have been charmed enough to stay ‘cause I asked him, but the cave-in plumb took all those thoughts out of his mind. He was set on leaving and he knew that I never would.”

  “Even if he’d asked?”

  She sighed. “There are some things more important than love, strange as it sounds. At least…I thought so back then. You see…I had a talent for the old ways. With a talent for dowsing and a collection of aunts who were teaching me the way things worked in the world. Herbs and healing and luck charms and suchlike. Some folks call us witches. Even seen it in books. Mr. Sputters at the post office showed me a book onest called Appalachian Granny Magic. And I guess it’s fair enough. Witch comes from some older word that means ‘wise,’ and that’s all it is. Women who know such and such about things. My Aunt Tess was a fire witch. She could conjure a spark out of green wood with no matches and a word. My own mammy was the most famous healer in the holler. People’d come from all over with a sickness, or send a car for her to deliver a baby.”

  “I heard about that. Granddad told me a little. He said you could find water. He called you a dowser.”

  She nodded. “I been known to do that now and again. Mostly I make charms to ward off badness and evil. Half the rabbits in these hills walk with a limp since I started selling they's feet to ward off ill luck. And you can walk for two days and not find a soul who ain't wearing one of my snakeskin bags on their belts. Real toad’s eyes in ‘em, too, because fake charms don’t stop nuthin’.” She smiled. “Does that scare you, young Joshua? All this talk about witches?”

  “Not as much as that sound does,” he said, nodding to the night. “It’s really creeping me out.”

  Granny puffed her cigarette.

  “But the witches thing?” Joshua said. “No, I read up on that when I started researching this area for my book.” He cleared his throat. “You were telling me about how Granddad came to say goodbye.”

  “So I was. Well…Hack Tharp stood foursquare in my yard, not two paces from where I sit right now. ‘Mary Ruth,’ he said, ‘I’m gone. I can’t live here no more, not with all the dead hauntin’ me. My brothers, they never had a chance. They was so obsessed with earning that bonus that they went crazy, picking and digging like the Devil was whipping them, and then that whole mountain just up and fell. And it went down fast, too. Killed ‘em before they could git with God. I was right outside taking a smoke when the mouth of Hell opened up and swallowed those boys. I haven’t had a night’s sleep since it happened. And I won’t ever sleep a night if I stay here.’

  “‘Weren’t your fault,’ I told him. But Hack shook his head. ‘I ain’t saying it is. And I ain’t losing sleep ‘cause I feel guilty about being on this side of the grave when all my family was taken by death. No—the bosses killed all those men—killed my own brothers, two of my cousins. Killed ‘em sure as if they blew the mountain down with dynamite. Killed ‘em by digging too deep in a played-out mine. Killed ‘em by greed, and that’s an evil thing. Greed’s one of the bad sins, Mary Ruth, one of them seven deadly sins, and it made my brothers sell their souls to old Scratch himself.’”

  “I didn’t know Granddad was so religious. He never went to church when I was a kid. Not even on Easter and Christmas.”

  “I suppose,” said Granny, “that he lost the knack. Seen a lot of it after the collapse, just like I seen a lot of folks suddenly hear the preacher’s call before the dust even settled. Since then, though…well ain’t no one in this holler don’t believe in the Devil anymore, so the unbelievers have started believing in God by default.”

  “Was there an investigation?” asked Joshua. “Did the authorities ever determine that the mining company was at fault?”

  “Investigation?” Granny laughed. “You got a city boy’s sense of humor, son. No, there weren’t no investigation. And even if someone wanted to investigate, there weren’t no way to do it.”

  “Why not? I’ve read a lot about mining, and a structural engineer could do a walk-through look at the shoring systems, the drill angles, the geologist’s assessment of the load bearing walls of the mountain, and—”

  “No one’s ever going to do any of that.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause they’d have to cut through a million tons of rock to take that look.”

  “They could just examine the areas dug out when the bodies were removed.”

  Granny studied him for a moment. “Your granddad didn’t tell you?”

  “Tel
l me what?”

  She sighed. “Those dead men are still there, son. The company never dug them out. Nobody ever dug them out. That whole mountain’s a tomb for all those good men.”

  Joshua stood up and stared at the darkness again, looking toward Balder Rise. The wind blew from that direction, carrying with it the soft moan. “God,” he said softly.

  “Oh, God didn’t have nuthin’ to do with what happened that day,” said Granny. “Your granddad spoke true when he said that it were the evil greed of the mining company that brought the ceiling down. They dug too deep.”

  “That’s something Granddad said a couple of times, and now you’ve said it twice. What’s that mean, exactly?”

  “The mining company was fair desperate to stay in business even though most of the coal had already been took from old Balder. They kept pushing and pushing to find another vein. Pushed and pushed the men, too, tempting ‘em with promises of bonuses if they found that vein. Understand, boy, miners are always poor. It’s really no kind of life. Working down there in the dark, bad air and coal dust, it’s like you’re digging your own grave.”

  The moan on the wind came again, louder, more insistent. The black trees seemed to bend under the weight of it.

  “The company kept the pressure on. Everybody needed that vein, too, because the company owned everything. They owned the bank, which means they held the mortgage on ever’body’s house and that’s the same like holding the mortgage on ever’body’s souls.” She shook her head. “No, a lot of folks thought the Devil himself was whispering in the ear of ever’body, from the executives all the way down to the teenage boys pushing the lunch trolleys. Infecting them good-hearted and God fearing men with their own greed. Spreading sin like a plague. Makin’ ‘em dig too hard and too deep, with too much greed and hunger.”

  “Digging too deep, though—you keep saying that. Do you mean that they over-mined the walls, or—?”

  “No, son,” she said, “that ain’t what Hack meant, and it ain’t what I mean.”

  “Then what—?”

  The moan came again, even louder. So loud that Joshua stood up and placed his palms on the rail so he could lean head and shoulders out into the night. Granny saw him shiver.

  “You cold?” she asked, though it was a warm night.

  “No,” he said, without turning. “That sound…”

  Granny waited.

  “…it sounds almost like a person,” Joshua continued. “It sounds like someone’s hurt out there.”

  “Hurt? Is that really what it sounds like to you?”

  “Well, it’s something like that. I can hear the pain.” He shot her a quick look. “Does that sound silly? Am I being a stupid city boy here, or—?”

  “You don’t sound stupid at all, son. That’s one of the smartest things you’ve said. You know what’s happening?” she asked. “The city’s falling clean off you.”

  He studied her.

  “It’s true,” she said. “Your daddy might have been born in the city and you might have been born and raised there, too, but you still got the country in you. You still got some of the hills in you. You get that from ol’ Hack, and I bet he was always country no matter how many years he lived in the city—am I right or am I right?”

  “You’re right, Granny,” said Joshua. “No one would ever have mistaken Granddad for anything except what he was. He…loved these mountains. He talked about how beautiful they were. How they smelled on a spring morning. How the birds would have conversations in the trees. How folks were simple—less complicated—but they weren’t stupid. How he wished he could have stayed.”

  Granny closed her eyes for a moment, remembering Hack. Remembering pain. Remembering the horror of that collapse, and all the things that died that day. Those men, her love, this town.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Joshua.

  She opened her eyes and rocked back so she could look up at him. “Wrong?”

  The moan cut through the air again. Louder still.

  “I suppose you could say that nuthin’s been right since that mine collapsed,” she said, and Granny could hear the pain in her own voice. Almost as dreadful as the pain in that moan. “Close your eyes again and listen to that sound. Don’t tell me what it ain’t. Listen until you can tell me what it is.”

  Joshua closed his eyes and leaned once more on the rail, his head raised to lift his ears into the wind.

  After a full minute, he said, “It sounds like a person…and that clinking sound…that’s definitely something metal.”

  She waited.

  Joshua laughed. “If it was Christmas, I’d say it was Old Marley and his chain.”

  When Granny did not laugh, Joshua opened his eyes and turned to her.

  “That’s from the—”

  “I know what it’s from, son. And it ain’t all that far from the mark.” She sucked in some smoke. “Not a chain, though. Listen and tell me I’m wrong.”

  He listened.

  “No, you’re right. It’s, um…sharper than that. But the echoes are making it hard to figure it out. Almost sounds like a bunch of little clinks, almost at once. That’s why I thought it was a chain; you know, the links clinking as it blew in the wind.”

  “But it ain’t a chain,” she said, “and it ain’t blowing in the wind. Ain’t echoes, either.”

  There was a stronger gust of wind and the moan was much louder now.

  Joshua pushed off the rail and walked down into the yard. He stood with his hands cupped around his ears to catch every nuance of the sound. Granny dropped her cigarette butt into the empty coffee tin and lit another.

  The moaning was so loud now that anyone could hear it. So loud that anyone could understand it, and Granny watched for the moment when Joshua understood. She’d seen it so many times. With friends, with her own daughter—who screamed and then ran inside the house to begin packing up her clothes and her babies. She hadn’t come back.

  Granny had seen a parade of people come through, stopping as Hack had stopped, wanting to say goodbye. Only one of them ever came back. Norm McPhee wandered back to the mountains after spending the last fourteen years in a bottle somewhere in Georgia. He came back to the holler, back to Balder, back to Granny’s yard, and he stood there for an hour, his eyes filled with ghosts.

  Then Norm had walked into the woods, found himself a quiet log to sit on, drank the rest of his bottle of who-hit-John, took the pistol from his pocket, and blew his brains all over the new blossoms on a dogwood tree.

  Granny smoked her cigarette and wondered what Hack Tharp’s grandson would do, because she could see his body language changing. He was slowly standing straighter. His hands fell slowly from behind his ears. His eyes were wide, and his mouth formed soundless words as he sought to speak the thoughts that his senses were planting in his head.

  He turned to her. Sharp and quick, but his mouth wasn’t ready to put voice to the thought that Granny could now see in the young man’s eyes.

  “I can hear them,” he said at last.

  Them.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It’s not just one sound, and it’s not an animal. There are a lot of them.”

  “Yes,” Granny said again.

  Something glistened on Joshua’s face. Was it sweat?

  “Granddad said that forty-nine people died that day. Mostly men, a few kids.”

  “Yes,” she said once more.

  “All of them digging down in the earth,” said Joshua, and his voice sounded different. Distant, like he was talking to himself. Distant, like the wind. “All of them, digging like crazy.” His eyes glistened. “What did Granddad say? You just told me… That those men were so obsessed with earning that bonus that they went crazy, picking and digging like the Devil was whipping them.”

  “And then that whole mountain just up and fell,” agreed Granny softly.

  “It killed them fast. Killed them before they could get with God.”

  She nodded.

  “Like the m
outh of Hell opened up and swallowed those boys,” Joshua said, his voice thick, his eyes filled with bad, bad pictures. “God.”

  “I already said it,” whispered Granny. “God didn’t have nuthin’ to do with what happened.”

  The moans were constant now. The voices clear and terrible. The metallic clinks distinct.

  Joshua laughed. Too quick and too loud. “Oh…come on! This is ridiculous. Granny, I don’t mean any disrespect, but…come on. You can’t expect me to believe any of this.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  That wiped the smile off his face.

  “Granddad left because of this sound, didn’t he?”

  Granny didn’t bother to answer that.

  The moans answered it.

  The clank of metal on rock answered it.

  “No,” said Joshua. “You want me to believe that they’re still there, still down there in the dark, still…digging?”

  Granny smoked her cigarette.

  “That’s insane,” he said, anger in his voice now. “They’re dead! They’ve been dead for years. Come on, Granny, it’s insane. It’s stupid.”

  “Son,” she said, “I ain’t told you none of that. I ain’t told you nuthin’ but to listen to the wind and tell me what you think that is.”

  The voices on the wind were filled with such anger, such pain.

  Such hunger.

  The incessant clanks of pickaxes against rock were like punches, and Joshua actually yielded a step backward with each ripple of strikes. As if those pickaxes were hitting him. More wetness glistened on his face.

  “Granny,” he said in a hollow voice. “Come on…”

  Granny rocked in her rocker and smoked her cigarette.

  “All these years?” asked Joshua, and she could hear how fragile his voice was. It had taken three weeks of the sound before Hack had up and left. A lot of folks played their TV or radio loud and late to try and hide the sound.

  One by one, people left the mountain. Took some only months; took others years.

  Joshua Tharp stood in the yard and winced each time the wind blew.

  He won’t last the night, she thought. He’ll be in his car and heading back to the city before moonrise.