Appalachian Apologia

by: Jeff Manes

He had worked the mines and he spent two years in the army, part of it in Korea. And Korea, he figured, was colder than Kentucky. After the war he returned home but did not stay, his people told him of big money up north, near Chicago. He took a job in the steel mill and was placed in the coal handling section of the coke plant, a good job for a hillbilly. He figured it was not so cold as Korea, but atop the coal bridge, on an East Chicago January day, it was colder than Kentucky. And the coke plant was a pistol and it would hurt you, if you let it, the same as Kentucky or Korea. . .

He was an old timer when I came in and he reminded me, vaguely, of the character actor Ben Johnson, of the westerns. His voice and his face, vaguely, like Ben Johnson, but his hair was snow white. His hair was not always white; there was a day when it was black as coal. Woody and Emil told me so. He had a set of black market false teeth and they clacked, and he was proud of the teeth. He was the first man I met at the coke plant because he showed up for work an hour early, everyday. And we sat and stared at each other, and he said, “This here place, is a pistol...”

He was a white man, American born, who could not read or write yet he would pick up a stray newspaper and peruse it thoroughly in the presence of the new hires. And Woody and Emil would stare over their coffee mugs and shake their heads silently. He told lies. He told ridiculous whoppers and it was kind of funny and kind of sad, because he was so ignorant and he thought we believed him, but if you did dispute one of his tales he would get riled. He was an ignorant hillbilly. And he was a liar.

Most days you could only see the whites of his eyes and his false teeth. The coke plant, like the coalmine was filthy. He smoked humps, non-filters, and when he couldn’t smoke for fear of fire or explosion he chewed plug tobacco. Blood hound, Brown’s Mule, or Day’s Work mostly. Sometimes he’d bring back corn liquor from his native Kentucky, but I never saw him drunk. He was the last man to wear a respirator, when the government finally enforced it. He would wash his tools with benzene, a byproduct of the coke plant and he didn’t wear gloves while he washed the tools. He ripped asbestos insulation from pipelines so he could demo them with his torch and he preferred a number six tip in the torch. And he used it like a bazooka. He ate headcheese at lunchtime and the white bread of his sandwich would be black from his alligator hands. He showered faster than anyone I’d ever seen and he rubbed powdered hand soap all over his body and he used it for shampoo on his white hair. The hand soap was free. He was uncivilized. And he was uncircumcised.

Even in his later years the old boar head remained a grunt out in the field. He was plagued with hernias and a bad back; tell tale signs of a bull worker. A chunk of his arm was missing the size of a woman’s fist where he got caught between a conveyor belt and an idler…no dead man switches in those days. With hands like emery cloth he would pick up chunks of smoldering coke and light his cigarette with them, if he thought you were watching. I watched him bring a small sledge down upon his hand with everything he had yet continue hammering on a cold chisel as if it hadn’t happened, because I was watching. He was a show off. And he was unsafe.

He worked in the mill with those that were different than Kentuckians. Men, and eventually women, of all shades and colors that spoke with all kinds of accents but he lived in the hillbilly part of the city. His sons took dope and sold dope and stole cars. His daughter dressed like a harlot and wore an occasional black eye, because she went out with boys like her brothers. And she had babies and the old man turned sixty-five in the mill and he raised grandchildren in his modest slab home in Black Oak, Indiana, USA.

Woody was visibly shaken; he nodded toward a corner in the change house.

Woody could only whisper the first name of his old workmate… And the old man lay on the floor next to the toilet, his face a bluish gray like a buffalo carp. And on the stall wall surrounding the toilet someone had carved “Jesus Mendez can kiss my butt” and someone else let us know that “Jesus Christ is Lord” in magic marker black.

And as more of us showed for work we picked the old man up and carried him down the stairs because the ambulance driver needed help. Except for Woody. And as we neared the ambulance I thought of how the old man had pronounced such words as “amb-yoo-lance” and “sireen” and how he had sounded like Ben Johnson, vaguely. And just before they shut the doors of the ambulance I touched his hand and it felt like emery. And one of the bosses said if we didn’t get on the job he’d dock us. And Woody didn’t care because he was visibly shaken.

And Management said the old man died at St. Cat’s so his wife would only collect half the insurance. And we passed the hat and I gave twenty dollars for the widow. And I washed my hands of it like Pilate. How could I help an old woman trying to raise grandchildren in the hillbilly part of the city?

. . . And he was of the common herd and he was unlettered and unkempt and for the most part unwept. And when his time came it was nothing so horrendous or glorious as being blown up or burned up. And when I hear millionaire ballplayers whine or think of St. Jude and lost causes, I think of him, vaguely. And he was a good man, and he never retired, and he died on the toilet.