Red Helmet
Advance Praise for
Red Helmet
The latest from
Rocket Boys
author . . . takes an inside look at coalmining, from shoveling gob to negotiating international trade deals, through the lens of modern romance.
â
Publishers Weekly
A new book by Homer Hickam is always a cause for celebration, and
Red Helmet
is no exception. Set in the Appalachian coal country that Hickam knows down to the bone, every line of this rousing tale of true love and underground adventure is filled with the author's huge heart and boundless energy. I loved riding the twists of both the plot and the relationship as Cable and Song explored all the depths two people can find when they enter dangerous, exciting places like a coal mine . . . or a marriage. By the time I closed the book, I'd been entertained as all get-out and had my faith in humanity bolstered. Homer Hickam is a national treasure.
âJoshilyn Jackson, author of
Gods in Alabama
and
Between, Georgia
America's working men and women are Hickam's heroes; he is the Mark Twain of our age, and perhaps the best mainstream writer still tapping keys.
âStephen Coonts,
New York Times
best-selling author of
The Traitor
Red Helmet
is a tremendously compelling read, and further proves what most of us know already: Homer Hickam is a born storyteller. He writes about real people, and what genuinely matters mostâlove. Song Hawkins and her precarious hold on life, both spiritually and physically, make this a truly memorable book.
Bret Lott, best-selling author of
Jewe
l and
A Song I Knew By Heart
Other books by Homer Hickam include
The Far Reaches
The Ambassador's Son
The Keeper's Son
We Are Not Afraid
Sky of Stone
The Coalwood Way
Back to the Moon
Rocket Boys / October Sky
Torpedo Junction
© 2007 by Homer Hickam
“Destiny,” by Jim Brickman.
Hymn on page 213 by J. Bartholomew.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherâexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc. books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hickam, Homer H., 1943-
   Red helmet / by Homer Hickam.
      p. cm.
   ISBN: 978-1-59554-214-4 (softcover)
   1. Married people--Fiction. 2. Businesswomen--Fiction. 3. Coalminers--Fiction. 4. New York--Fiction. 5. West Virginia--Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.I224R43 2008
813'.54--dc22
2007043926
Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 QW 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Reading Group Discussion Questions
To mine rescue teams everywhere.
If you don't have love, buddy,
it don't matter what else you gotâ
house, car, all the money in the world,
because you ain't got a blame thing.
Overheard in a coal mine, not so long ago.
L
isten to me, Norman. I'm not going to say this twice. You call Bill Roberts back and you tell him I said he'd better get his little business plan together or I'm going to do it for him and he won't like that, Norman, he won't like that at all!”
Song frowned deeply as she listened to her assistant's reply through the cell phone clipped on her ear. Norman could be such a wimp! When he was done whining on behalf of the owner of the latest company acquired by her father, a company headed toward failure without some serious reorganization, Song rolled her eyes and stamped her bare feet in the sand. “He'll do it, Norman, and he'll do it on time exactly the way I told him to do it unless he wants to be on the street looking for a new job. And Norman? You might be out there with him. Now, shut up and do what I tell you!
Now!
”
“Uh, Song?”
Song cut her eyes toward the man standing beside her. “What?”
“Well . . . ,” the man drawled, “the preacher just asked you a question.”
“Oh!” Song clutched the flowers in her hand and looked into the deer-caught-in-the-headlight eyes of the woman standing in front of her.
“Would you mind repeating that?
Not you, Norman!
I'm doing something here. Just hang on. Better yet, hang up!”
“Now?” the woman asked plaintively.
“Now,” the man beside her said before Song could.
“Will you take this man, to have and hold . . .”
Song nodded. “Yeah. Got it. Sure thing. I do.”
“Attagirl,” he whispered to her.
Song looked up at him. “Cable, I'm sorry. I just had to take care of this. I told Norman not to call for the next hour. Norman,
hang up
! Don't call me back until you get this solved. Good-bye!”
Cable laughed. “I love you.”
Song squared her shoulders. “I love you too.”
The minister prattled on, rings were exchanged, and then she said, “I now pronounce you husband and . . .”
I'm married!
That was Song's astonished thought as she heard the final words from the barefoot minister. Her second thought was,
This is crazy
. She looked into the lake-blue eyes of her groom. “Boy, are you in trouble!” she said to Cable while inwardly, she said,
So am I
.
Her entire life, Song had wanted to love and be loved. Her smart tongue, her New York attitudeâthat's what she had shown the world. But now, here he was. This man, finally, at the right time and the right place, who saw through her, saw her as she really was, or at least as she thought she could be. Nothing else mattered at that moment but him. At long last. Her phone played its little song. She quickly turned it off.
Cable kissed her and she eagerly kissed him back while their fellow just-marrieds laughed and applauded. When they came up for air, Song threw herself on him in joyful abandon and, heedless of her white sarong, wrapped her legs around his hips and gave him another long, enthusiastic kiss. Whoops and cheers covered them like a wave. Song threw her head back and laughed. It was perfect. The sun was just dipping below the crystal blue sea. Love had finally reached her. It had taken long enough but, never mind, it was hers.
She whispered in his ear, “Do you really love me, Cable?”
“I surely do, Mrs. Jordan,” he answered with an easy grin.
She still couldn't accept it. “Why?”
His killer dimple made an appearance. “Why do you think? Because you're you.”
Which was exactly the reason Song had asked the question. Loving her, she believed, had to be a hard thing. She was a complicated woman and exuded toughness in a small, durable package. Men didn't like women who were complicated, and they didn't like a woman who was a fighter by trade and inclination. Yet there he was and here she was, standing together wiggling their toes in the sand on a lovely beach on the island of St. John, also known famously as Love City. It was that, and more. Perhaps due to the dangerous combination of romance and rum, St. John was also known as the isle of marriage, which, as had occurred between Song and Cable, sometimes happened between couples who had planned nothing more than a little fun time in the sun.
They were quite the pair.
She was Song Hawkins, the daughter of one of the richest men in the United States. He was Caleb “Cable” Jordan, the son of a coal miner who'd been killed in a mine. She was the “point man” for the acquisition of new properties in her father's company. He was the superintendent of a coal mine. She had been on the cover of
Fortune
magazine. The title of the piece was “You Think Joe Hawkins is Tough? Meet His Daughter.” He had been on the cover of
Mining Equipment
News
. The title of the article was “Ventilation and Brattice Curtains in the Modern Mine.” Her mother, the heiress to a Hong Kong family fortune, had been an adventurer who had fallen to her death in the Himalayas in an attempt to be the first Chinese woman to climb K2. His mother lived in Panama City, Florida, in a double-wide trailer with her second husband, a retired plumber. Song lived in New York City. Cable lived in Highcoal, West Virginia.
Against any reasonable calculation of odds, they had met and fallen in love.
And now they were married.
He'd asked her in the most endearing and oh-so-Cable-like manner. It was right after her morning yoga. She was lolling in the hammock on the veranda of their cottage when Cable came and took her by her hand. “I want you to meet someone,” he said.
“I can't meet anybody dressed like this,” she'd protested, motioning to her string bikini.
“Aw, you look great, honey bunch,” he drawled, and pulled her to her feet. She took the time to toss on a spaghetti-strap jersey and followed him to the open-air terrace. To Song's astonishment, at the piano sat someone she had never met but instantly recognized: Jim Brickman, her favorite romantic musician. Brickman was scheduled to sing at the resort the next day, an event Song had been keenly looking forward to, but here he was, the actual, real person, greeting Cable like he was an old friend. It turned out they had known each other for all of a half hour, but that was Cable. He liked people, so different from Song who always held back from strangers unless they were part of a company she was interested in buying.