Chester Cowan stepped out onto the front porch of his simple little house of peeling white paint, and sat down in his rocker. This was his custom in the morning. He stared out at Highway 9, as he fiddled with the bib of his overalls, clipping it to the thread- worn denim shoulder straps that dangled down over his bony chest of greying hair. An old pick-up rattled and rumbled in the distance. Chester knew it was that old '56 Dodge before it ever rounded the curve because of the way it backfired gearing down. Old man Sullivan heading over to his field to count the cattle. He honked as he passed. Chester threw him a nod and a wave. He made a sour face as he squinted up into the maple tree at the mockingbird that just would not shut up. He loved her singing most of the time, but it wouldn't hurt if she'd give it a rest now and then. He hadn't even had his coffee. It was too early for such merriment.
Ruby elbowed her way out the squeaky screen door carrying two cups of coffee.
"Here Chester," she said, handing him one. She eased herself down slowly into her rocker next to his, as though every bone was complaining. Her arthritis was always worse in the damp of morning. For a few moments there was just the creaking of the boards beneath the rocking of their chairs. They sipped their coffees and contemplated yet another day. A school bus rolled by followed by a couple of sedans. Children on their way to school. Parents off to town to do one kind of job or another.
"Somethin' funny 'bout today," Chester mused, as he looked up and down the highway. "Can't quite put my finger on it."
"Reckon it'll rain?" Ruby said, her eyes looking at a cloud rising up over the hilltop across the way.
"Naw. Wishful thinkin', Ruby gal," Chester grumbled. "Lord knows we could use it. Ain't never seen corn so pitiful as what we got growin' this year."
"I'll pray for rain. I surely will," Ruby said. Even as an old woman, she still had that motherly need to try to somehow make things better for everyone. Even the weather.
"You do that, Ruby gal. I'm sure the Lord would lissen to you afore he'd pay me any mind." He stood and stepped up to the porch rail and leaned on the post by the stairs. "Somethin's wrong," he mumbled, mostly to himself. But Ruby heard him and looked around trying to sense just what it was that he was sensing.
"Wha'd ye reckon 'tis, Chester?" she asked.
"Just listen, Ruby," Chester replied.
"It's purty quiet," Ruby said softly.
"Yeh, that's the problem," Chester muttered. " There aint been nary a quarry truck to roll by this whole time we been out here." Ruby looked up and down the road. He was right. Usually those big dusty trucks would be flying by on their first run this time of day. Except on Sundays. But this wasn't Sunday.
"Oh Lord, Chester," she said, as a faint whining sound came from the south.
"Here come the sheriff," Chester said. The whining sound quickly became a loud piercing wail as Sheriff Johnson's patrol car soared by in a blur of red and blue lights. The valley was silent for a minute. Even the mockingbird seemed to sense something wrong. Something scary. Then there was a faint whine again. "Here come the ambolance," Chester predicted. They both knew something bad had happened. And it must be over at the quarry. And that's why the trucks were not running. The only time work ever stopped over there, it was because somebody was being hauled away to the county hospital, or to the morgue. "Somebody's dead," Chester said, as he returned to his rocker. He sat down with a long sigh. "Ain't nothin' to do but wait fer the news." Ruby took his coffee cup from his hands.
"I'll get us some fresh," she said.
She disappeared into the house, and appeared in the doorway again as an old grey Mercury pulled off the highway, and rolled slowly toward the house. Rupert Miller. Chester stood and stepped down off the porch as Rupert pulled up, rolling his window down.
"It was Billy," he said, tilting his head up to look at Chester.
"Young Billy?" Chester asked, leaning down to the window. Rupert nodded. Ruby dropped her coffee cups and they shattered on the porch floor spilling everywhere. She hid her face in her hands. "Oh, Lord, no! Oh, precious Jesus," she cried.
"He was settin a blastin' cap into a crack in the quarry wall," Rupert said quietly to Chester. "Tampin' it in. Damn thing blowed up in his face, an' blowed him plum off the wall. They jus' now fished 'im outa the water down there." Chester looked up to see the ambulance rolling silently by, headed back to town. No need to ask if Billy was dead.
Ruby sat down in her rocker again, as Rupert drove slowly away. Seems like any time Rupert came by, he had some kind of bad news. It wasn't his fault, he just always seemed the first to know. She reached into her dress pocket for the small kerchief she kept there, and wiped her eyes. Young Billy had been like a son to them. The only son they ever had. He worked alongside Chester in the fields. He helped get up the hay. He would get up on the roof and patch the leaks. Chester paid him well. Ruby loved spending her mornings preparing lunch for her men. String beans and bacon simmering on the stove. Rolling out a pie crust. Billy loved her blackberry pies. She made them with the berries he had picked. He would show up with a big can of berries and a big grin on his face. She loved to make pies for him. And both she and Chester missed him when he went to work for the quarry.
"I tol' 'im he could always work for me," Chester said in a low flat voice. "But he wouldn't lissen."
"He was jus' tryin' to be a man, Chester. He had little Becky to take care of. An' a baby on the way."
"An' now look what's happened." Chester replied. "Little Becky a widder woman at seventeen. A little baby with no daddy." To Chester, it was a bitter taste in his mouth. He felt mad that Billy had gone and died on everybody. And mad at himself for not trying harder to keep Billy from ever going over to that god-forsaken hole in the ground. Ruby broke down and sobbed. The sound seemed to break the wall in Chester down. His chest heaved. He hadn't cried about anything for some ten years or more. Ruby got up and went to him. Ran her fingers through his thinning grey hair. "Pray, Chester," she said softly. He laughed bitterly through his tears, shook his head, and took a deep long breath.
"Reckon we need to make a room for Becky?" he said.
"Yes, Chester. Tha's 'xackly what we need to do, Chester" Ruby replied softly.
So, little Becky came to live with Chester and Ruby Cowan. She had a little boy. His name was William Chester Hartman. He grew up to take over the fields for Chester, who had grown lame over those years. And his mother, Becky forbade him to ever work at the quarry. He went to college instead. In that same year that Chester Cowan died, the quarry was shut down forever by a legal team that had taken on the mining industries. They were able to improve many of the despicable conditions that had taken the lives of so many in the mines, and in the quarries around the country. Chester did live long enough to know that it was the legal team of William Chester Hartman, and Associates. He went to sleep with a thin smile on his face, and never woke up.
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