the truck, he climbed inside and put the rifle back on the rack, then sat scowling at the raggedy one-armed figure trotting toward him.
“You know something, Dwayne? You look like a goddamned scarecrow. The least you could do would be to get yourself a new shirt and some decent pants, even if you won’t wear your fake arm.”
Dwayne didn't say anything. He didn't even duck as Benny, grinning, reached out of the cab and grabbed his empty sleeve. He pulled Dwayne close and whispered, “How you ever gonna get a woman if you don't clean yourself up? I've seen you lookin' at those girlie magazines down at the Hut, you know.”
Dwayne reddened. “Hell, Benny I can't never get a look at them magazines cause you always got your nose in 'em.”
Benny laughed. “Damned right. I'd sure like to get my nose in some of that stuff.”
He relaxed his grip on Dwayne's arm, squinting up at the bright slice of sky above the hollow. “Ol' buddy, what say we do a little junkin' while we wait for Norvil and Junior to get back with the beer? It's gonna be too hot before long.”
He grabbed the acetylene torch and goggles from the truck bed. Dwayne selected a long, slender crowbar and they headed for a small brick building on the far side of the parking lot, Dwayne leaning on the crowbar as if it were a cane. The brick building had always been called “the pay office.” Officially, it was the southern West Virginia field office for The Blue Sulfur Coal Corp., a Cleveland-based outfit that had called the shots on Cabin Creek since the 1920s. But all that had ended abruptly the previous year when the company suddenly pulled up stakes and walked away, stranding the some 1,200 families who had depended on the mine for their daily bread.
“Hell, it’s too hot already,” Benny grumbled as they wove their way around the piles of debris.
He could feel the gravitational pull beneath him. His feet, small and narrow like a woman's, sank slightly into the soft asphalt and he almost tripped on a little metal stump when they reached the edge of the parking lot. The stump, and several others like it were all that remained of the chain link fence they'd hauled off to the junkyard the previous week.
Benny pulled on the goggles and pointed to a heavy metal door that had guarded the pay office entrance. The door now hung askew on one rusty hinge. “Let's do the door first, and then get the window bars.”
The torch sliced through the hinge, sending up a shower of white sparks. Benny stepped back and Dwayne yanked the door from its frame with the crowbar, jumping back as it came crashing down. They started across the threshold but stopped short as a foaming stream of termites erupted from the shattered door frame.
“Godamighty Benny! Lookit. There must be a million of them suckers.”
Benny stared at the pale, hairless creatures. Their blind, questing movements reminded him of something. Piglets! That’s what it was. They reminded him of the piglets he had watched being born that time his grandmother's old sow gave birth to a squirming mass of tiny, hairless creatures, 16 in all.
“Let's fry 'em,” Dwayne said, reaching for the torch.
Benny pushed him away. “Why would we want to kill 'em, Dwayne? Aren't they just doing a little junkin,' same as us?”
“Not by a long shot,” Dwayne said, kicking the door jamb. They're bugs. We're people; we have souls and go to heaven when we die. Bugs don't go to heaven.”
“How do you know where bugs go? Maybe they're in hell right now and you're the devil, you and that blowtorch.”
“Godamighty Benny, watch your mouth. Do you want to be struck down by lightning?”
Dwayne was still mumbling as they dragged the heavy door to the truck and heaved it onto the bed. He always had been deeply religious and had become even more so since losing his arm. He and Benny had been friends since grade school. Dwayne was a slight, sickly boy who had been bullied mercilessly until Benny took pity on him and became his protector. Dwayne had revered Benny ever since and looked up to him as an older brother even though Dwayne, in fact, was a few months older than Benny.
They sat on the tailgate. Benny rolled himself a cigarette, all the while staring at the mine office. The date “1923” was carved into the stone lintel above the empty doorframe.
He motioned toward the date. “Dwayne, wasn't that the year the coal company brought the armored train up the hollow and machine-gunned the strikers' camp? Marvin was just a little boy when it happened. He said he was all covered with splinters from where the bullets hit the trees above the tents. He said they sounded like rain on the tent.”
Benny reached down, picked up a rock as big as his fist and hurled it at the building.
Take that, you fuckers!” he yelled as the rock glanced off the roof. Even now it felt like an act of defiance, given the psychic residue of the enormous power once wielded by those far-away faceless men whose decisions and whims had for so long shaped the lives of the families living along Cabin Creek. He stared at the building through the smoke curls from his cigarette. It’s the temple of the gods of smoke, he thought. That’s it, they are the gods of smoke and now they’ve made everything go up in smoke, at least around here.
But the temple was defenseless now, its gates down.
“It's ripe for the picking,” Benny said as he stared at the empty doorway. He was just sorry there weren't any vestal virgins behind those brick walls, like the ones they’d read about in world history class. He was in the 11th grade at the time and had lain in bed at night imagining he was a Hun carrying off a temple maiden after sacking Rome or Constantinople or wherever it was. He and Charlie had exchanged knowing grins as Miss Dunfee told the class about the vestal virgins.
Just one little virgin would be enough right now, he thought; preferably, one with big, blue eyes and long, blonde hair. He envisioned the scene: him, Benny the Barbarian, crashing through the doorway; her, Vera the Virgin, cowering helplessly in a skimpy robe. She'd look up with pleading eyes as he reached down and grabbed her by that long, blonde hair.
He was just getting warmed up when Dwayne said, “I think it was earlier, around 1920? When they shot up the tents?”
“You could be right, Dwayne. Anyway, it's ancient history now.”
He leaned back on the truck bed and shut his eyes, remembering the first time he'd entered the pay office. He couldn't have been more than three or four at the time. The building had seemed so big back then. He was with his father and could still remember, clearly, how Marvin's pace slowed as they approached the metal door that now lay in the truck bed.
The mine complex was nestled in a natural amphitheater at the head of Cabin Creek in a hollow surrounded by steep hills covered with oak, poplar, hickory, sassafras, greenbriars and poison ivy. Deer, raccoons, foxes and an occasional bear roamed the upper reaches of those hills, whose rocky crests were crawling with rattlesnakes and copperheads. Benny was born in the Arnoldsville camp, some four miles down the hollow from the complex. Blue Sulfur was one of the earliest complexes on the creek and consisted of the brick office building, the miners’ bathhouse, a small repair shop, a large, tin-sided supply shed and an old shake tipple that looked like a 30-foot-tall version of a 1930s washing machine. The company had said it was going to replace the old tipple with a modern one but had never gotten around to it. They never will now, he thought. Probably not in my lifetime, anyway.
The mine’s main portal was carved into the hillside 40 yards behind the tipple. A weedy railroad
