Air rushed from my lungs and I felt lightheaded. I signed out and drove Mom over to the jail. All along the way, she sniffled and said, “Praise Jesus, praise Jesus, praise Jesus.” When we walked in, the deputy at the front desk lifted his chubby face only long enough to recognize us as Hickams and used the eraser end of his pencil to point to some chrome and vinyl chairs in the corner of the room. “You can wait over there. He'll be out in a bit,” the deputy said.
It was thirty minutes before Edgel came out, looking tired and in need of a shave of his spotty beard. He was wearing the same clothes he had been arrested in and a brown stain from the muddy drive streaked across his thighs. Mom was bawling as she ran up and threw her arms around him. He hugged her and patted her back until she pulled away. “You whipped them Micks, huh?” were his first words to me.
“Whipped 'em bad. Coach Battershell said I could take the game film and the projector home so you could see it.”
He nodded. “I'd like that. How'd it go with your writin' contest?”
I shrugged. “Good, I think. I was happy with what I wrote. We'll see. How're you doing?”
“Let's get the hell out of here,” he said. As we walked to the pickup truck, he continued, “Them lousy bastards have known for two days that I didn't set that fire. When I got back Friday morning, I gave the Farnsworths all my receipts and they paid me back out of petty cash. Mr. Crawford had them receipts Friday afternoon and he showed them to Sheriff McCollough, but that wasn't good enough. He had his deputies crawling all over creation trying to figure a way to bust my ass, anyways. He was pissed when he knew it wasn't me. Now he'll have to go out and figure out who really did it.”
I climbed behind the wheel of the pickup, Mom slid to the middle, and Edgel rode shotgun. “Maybe nobody did it,” I offered. “Maybe it was just an accidentâbad wiring or something.”
“I don't care what it was, so long as my boy is out of jail and not involved,” Mom said. “I just want you back home, that's all.”
When we got to the house, Mom stepped outside the truck and said, “I'm going to the store and pick up some things. I'm going to fix us another celebration dinner.”
“Mom, you don't have to cook a celebration dinner every time I get out of jail. It's not something I really want to celebrate.”
I kept the pickup idling. She kissed Edgel on the cheek and ran around to the driver's side, dropped the truck in gear and headed back down the drive. We watched until she made the turn out of the drive on to Red Dog Road. “Has the old man called?” Edgel asked.
“Nope. We haven't heard a word.”
“Do you have the keys to the 88?”
“They're in the kitchen.”
“How about snaggin' 'em? I want to drive over and see Mr. Morgan.”
I had taken a step toward the house when his words registered. “Mr. Morgan? Why in God's name do you want to see him?”
“Because I want to look him square in the eye and tell him that I didn't burn down his damn sawmill.”
“Edgel, the sheriff knows that. He'll tell Mr. Morgan. There's no need for you to do that.”
“Do I need to go get those keys or are you going to get them for me?”
I had learned years earlier not to argue with a Hickam male. I fetched the keys from the brass hook under the cupboard. When I handed them to him, I said, “I still think it's a bad idea.”
“I know. That's why I didn't ask you for your opinion.” He grinned, fired up a smoke from the dashboard lighter and then fired up the Rocket 88. A minute later, we turned off Red Dog Road and were roaring toward the burned-out hull of the lumber mill.
A house trailer had been pulled onto the mud and slag lot. It sat at an angle near the northeast corner of the mill's blackened foundation. A garden hose ran from an outside faucet to the underside of the trailer. A sedan and a pickup truck were nosed up to the side of the trailer.
Edgel parked the Rocket 88 alongside the sedan, and I followed him up a set of pre-cast concrete steps and through an aluminum front door. Mr. Morgan's secretary, Nettie McCoy, was sitting at a desk just inside the door, a space heater at her feet glowing the same shade of orange as her makeup. The smile on her round face disappeared the minute she recognized Edgel. He looked just like a younger version of my dad. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, ma'am, I'd like to speak to Mr. Morgan, please. My name is Edgel Hickam.”
She forced a smile, like a child pretending to enjoy an amusement park ride that was actually terrifying her. “I will see if Mr. Morgan is available.”
Before she could push herself away from the desk, Cliff Morgan appeared from a room in the back of the trailer. He had his hands in his pockets and was wearing blue jeans and bedroom slippers. He was about five seven, had a belly that stretched his flannel shirt but looked like it could stop a bullet, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses sitting on the top of a tuft of fading blond hair. He looked at Edgel for a long moment, withdrew his hands to his hips and nodded a tacit hello. This was a no-nonsense man, I thought. No wonder someone as unpredictable as my dad couldn't get along with him. He stared at Edgel without offering entrée to a cordial conversation.
“Mr. Morgan, I'm Edgel Hickam.”
“I know who you are.”
“Then you know that I just spent three days in jail because Sheriff McCollough thought I was the one who torched your mill.”
“Is there a reason for this visit, Mr. Hickam?”
“Yes, sir, there is. I wanted the opportunity to look you in the eye and tell you straight up that I did not burn down your sawmill.”
He folded his arms. “That's a different story than what the sheriff told me. The last time I spoke to him he said it was just a matter of time before you were charged and placed under arrest.”
“You call him again and ask him. He'll tell you they were able to verify that I was out of town from late afternoon the day before the fire until about eight o'clock the next morning. I was making a parts run for the Farnsworth brothers in West Virginia, and I've got receipts and witnesses that put me a long way from Vinton County when that fire started. I know you and my dad had some differences and given my record, people had good reason to suspect me. But I didn't do it. You can believe whatever you want, but I wanted to tell you that to your face.”
Mr. Morgan looked at him for a minute, then at me. “You played a helluva game Friday night.”
“Thank you.”
“I used to play for East Vinton, you know?”
“No, sir, I didn't know that.”
He nodded and said, “I played on the first conference championship team at East Vintonâ1947. Unfortunately, we haven't had many in between those two. He looked back at Edgel. “You say you're working for the Farnsworths. Is that full time?”
“No, sir, just whenever they need a run.”
“Are you looking for something steady?”
“Sure am.”
“Okay, wait here a minute.” He went to the office in the back of the trailer and returned with a pair of muddy work boots. “Mrs. McCoy gets perturbed when I wear these muddy shoes in the trailer.” He laced up the work boots on a rubber mat just inside the door and pulled on a canvas work jacket as he pushed the door open. “Come on out here a minute.”
We walked along a packed gravel road that circled around the north wall of the foundation. On the back side of the foundation was an opening that before the fire had been the service entrance to the basement. Fallen timbers crisscrossed throughout the basement and ash was ten feet deep. It was dank and smelled of smoke and ash. “I want to rebuild on this spot, so I need this cleared out and hauled to the landfill. Have you ever worked a front-end loader?”
“No, but I'm a pretty quick learner,” Edgel said.
“How about a dump truck? Ever driven one?”
“I drive the Farnsworths' flatbed. I imagine it's about the same.”
“You interested in the job?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good. It pays three fifty an hour. You have to be here eight hours a day, but I'll pay time-and-a-half for overtime and you can work as many hours a day as you want. I need to get this cleaned out as soon as possible. You can do most of the basement with the front-end loader, but a lot of it will still have to be done by hand. There's a subbasement in the south end of the building. That's where the investigators from the state fire marshal's office say the fire started. The only entrance is a regular door and that will all have to be cleaned out with a shovel and wheelbarrow. Do a good job getting this cleaned out and we'll talk about a permanent job at the mill. No promises, but we'll talk.”
“That's fair.”
“It's a big job.”
“I know.”
“You start at seven in the morning. Don't be late. I'll give you a lesson on the front-end loader and you're on your own. You came down here to be straight with me, so I'll be straight with you. If you turn out to be a pain in the ass like your dad, you won't last long. I won't tolerate it.”
“I understand.”
“Good. I gave that man a good job and he pissed and moaned from the day he walked in here until the day he walked out.”
“You're not telling me anything I don't already know, Mr. Morgan.”
As we walked back around the side of the building, I asked, “Mr. Morgan, you said the fire started in the subbasement. How do they know that?”
“The propane tanks that heat the place in the winter and run some of the gear are in the basement in that end of the building. The main line running from the tanks was pulled apart at a union fitting. Whether it was an accident or done deliberately, who knows? But after the fire marshal's investigators said that was the cause, Sheriff McCollough got all excited because he said one of the houses you set on fire had the gas line disconnected in the basement to help it along.”
“I was only convicted of one arson fire, Mr. Morgan.”
There was an edge to his voice and I tried to keep the conversation rolling. “But you said the fire started in the subbasement.”
“Propane is heavier than air and it all settled in the subbasement. It filled up with propane and sparked somehow. It blew straight up into the mill, hotter than hell. The gas kept feeding it. There was no way to save it.”
Chapter Twenty
O
n November 26, a bright Monday morning and a day shy of two months since my dad left home, Mom served us a breakfast of sausage gravy, fried eggs and toast. When the food was on the table she announced that after work that day she intended to drive to the county courthouse in McArthur and file for divorce from my dad. He had failed to call a single time or send her money. She considered that abandonment and she wasn't going to tolerate it.
I shrugged and said, “Okay.”
Edgel said, “I don't blame you.”
That night, Mom served us a dinner of chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and green beans. She confirmed that she had, indeed, filed for divorce. She then stated that the following morning she was leaving for Columbus for two weeks to attend a commercial driving school to obtain her license to drive tractor-trailers. Edgel and I looked at each other with furrowed brows.
When she finished truck-driving school, she said, she planned to leave Vinton County with a one-eyed truck driverâwhose CB radio handle was Cyclopsânamed John Phillips, of Worcester, Massachusetts. Phillips was a regular at the truck stop and had, years earlier, professed his love for our mother. Once the divorce from Nick Hickam was finalized, she and John Phillips were going to be married and then drive his rig around the country. “He said we are going to be partners, in trucking and life,” she said.
“What about us?” I asked. “Where are we going to live?”
“You can stay right here. The house is paid off. ”
“But it's your house,” I said.
“My name's on the title, but I'm not interested in spending another minute here. It's just where I lived with your father. It's not full of anything but his bad breath, cheap furniture, and enough horrible memories for one lifetime. You're both adults now and you don't need me. You'll figure it out. Now, I've got to get upstairs and pack. Be a couple of dears and clean up the kitchen for me.”
My brother and I looked at each other as if our mother had suddenly announced she was running away to be, well, a truck driver. “Is she kidding?” I asked.
“She didn't sound like she was kidding.”
“I'm not kidding,” she yelled from halfway up the stairs.
In the sea of irrational behavior that was the Hickam family, my mother had been a beacon of sanity. I had never known her to act like a Hickam until that minute.
Edgel and I followed her up the stairs to her bedroom, where she had a suitcase open on the bed. “Mom, you can't be serious,” Edgel said.
“I'm very serious. I've lived nearly thirty years with a man who screamed and yelled and slapped me around, and I'm not living that way the rest of my life. I'm getting out of Vinton County with a man who cares for me.”
“But who is this guy?” I asked. “Where did you meet him?”
“He's a truck driver and I work in a truck stop. I surely hope you can figure it out from there, because that's all the detail I'm going to give. He's taking me to Columbus in the morning and paying for my school. He'll be back to pick me up on Friday and take me back next Monday.”
“But, what do you know about this guy?” Edgel asked.
“I know enough. He says he loves me and I believe him.”
I sat down on the bed next to Edgel. “So, I'm not going to have either parent around for the rest of my senior year?”
“Maybe your father will come back, but that ain't my concern. I'll be back for your graduation. I'm very proud of you, Jimmy Lee, but I have an opportunity here for a better life and I'm taking it. That may sound selfish to you and if it does, I'm sorry. But I may never get a better offer, so I'm going. Now, you boys shoo out of my room while I pack.”