jerk to tighten it. I tied the two ends of the thread together, like Dad told
me to, and then, to put in a second stitch, did it again. The gash was
pretty big and could have used a few more stitches, but I couldn't bring
myself to stick that needle in Dad's arm one more time.
We both looked at the two dark, slightly sloppy stitches.
"That's some fine handiwork," Dad said. "I'm mighty proud of you,
Mountain Goat."
When I left the house the next morning, Dad was still asleep. When I
came home in the evening, he was gone.
DAD HAD TAKEN TO disappearing for days at a time. When I asked
him where he'd been, his explanations were either so vague or so
improbable that I stopped asking. Whenever he did come home, he
usually brought a bag of groceries in each arm. We'd gobble deviled-ham
sandwiches with thick slices of onion while he told us about the progress
of his investigation into the UMW and his latest moneymaking schemes.
People were always offering him jobs, he'd explain, but he wasn't
interested in work for hire, in saluting and sucking up and brownnosing
and taking orders. "You'll never make a fortune working for the boss
man," he said. He was focused on striking it rich. There might not be
gold in West Virginia, but there were plenty of other ways to make your
pile. For instance, he was working on a technology to burn coal more
efficiently, so that even the lowest-grade coal could be mined and sold.
There was a big market for that, he said, and it was going to make us rich
beyond our dreams.
I listened to Dad's plans and tried to encourage him, hoping that what he
was saying was true but also pretty certain it wasn't. Money would come
in—and with it, food—on the rare occasion that Dad landed an odd job