Jubilee's Journey (Wyattsville #2)(5)

With Ruth now gone, Bartholomew became a lost soul. He moved through the days putting one foot in front of the other and thinking about nothing. He rose early in the morning and went off to the mine. When he returned there was always a warm supper atop the stove, but both children were sleeping. On Sundays the mine closed so Bartholomew washed the coal dust from his hands and face, and with his children trailing behind the pitiful threesome trod the dirt road of the mountain and took their seats in the last row of the Pilgrim Faith Church. With the last “Amen” still hanging in the air, Bartholomew took Paul by the hand and started for home.

In the five years that followed he never really came to know his daughter. Some believe he held the child responsible for her mother’s death; others think his soul simply died along with Ruth and he no longer had a heart capable of love.





For the next two years, Paul was not in school. In places like Coal Fork, mining families came and went. Children were there one year, gone the next, so no one questioned the boy’s absence. It was simply assumed that his family, like so many others, had moved on to a place where there was more work, better pay, or less danger.

In those years Paul became both mother and father to Jubilee. He taught her to read and write, he taught her numbers, and explained how the money Daddy put in the sugar jar each week paid for food and clothes. He showed her how to make biscuits and pull weeds from the garden. Patiently and lovingly he shared with her all the things Ruth had taught him.





When Jubilee turned four, he carried the girl down the mountain on his back and returned to school. Jubilee was smaller than the other children but she was smarter, and in that first year she jumped from a group learning their ABCs to a class adding two-digit numbers.

Paul was not so fortunate. In the two years of being away, his earlier classmates had learned new things and moved on. It shamed him that he now had to sit with a group of children who were both younger and smaller.

One evening when Bartholomew came in from the mine, Paul was at the kitchen table working on long division problems he couldn’t seem to grasp. Bartholomew washed his hands, carried his supper plate to the table, and sat alongside Paul.

“Whatcha working on?” he asked.

“Long division,” Paul answered. “I just ain’t getting this.”

“Let’s see,” Bartholomew said. “Maybe I can help.”

Wide-eyed, Paul turned to his father. “You know long division?”

“I sure enough do.” A faint trace of fond remembrance twinkled in Bartholomew’s eyes. “You might not think it by what I am today, but I got a high school diploma.”

That evening father and son sat together and talked long into the night. Bartholomew told Paul how he’d left the mountain with intentions never to come back. “Once you get a speck of coal dust on your hands, you’re doomed forever,” he said remorsefully. “There’s no escape.”

For a short while Bartholomew forgot the sadness that was his constant companion and allowed the muscles in his face to relax. With an expression that was the closest he’d come to smiling in more than two years, he shared stories of the life he’d had in Virginia and how he’d met Ruth at a movie show.

“Your mama was with her sister,” he said, “and if Anita had her way, they’d have gone on without me. But the minute your mama and I set eyes on each other, we knew.”

The mention of an aunt Paul knew nothing about prompted him to ask, “How come Mama never spoke of Aunt Anita?”

“They had a falling out years ago,” Bartholomew answered wistfully. “Anita, she was a lot different than your mama.” As the memories settled in, he repeated, “A whole lot different.”

That was the night Bartholomew elicited an oath from Paul: a promise that Paul would continue to study until he was smart enough to leave the mountain and find work elsewhere.

“Swear,” Bartholomew said, “that you’ll never step foot inside of a mine.”

“I swear,” Paul replied, understanding that it was a promise he would have to keep until the day he died.

That night Bartholomew pulled his son into his arms and held him closer than the boy had thought possible. There were no words spoken, but Paul could smell the black dust of the mine mixed with love, regret, and sadness.





Two years later there was a knock on the door late in the evening. It came at just about the time Paul expected his daddy to come home from the mine. It was Harold Brumann standing at the door with Bartholomew’s hard hat in his hand.

“I’m real sorry to bring you this bad news,” he said. “A trolley cart broke loose, and your daddy was killed along with two other men.”

Paul stood there looking expressionlessly into the face of the man who spoke.

“I brung you his hat and pail ‘cause I was thinking maybe you’d want to—”

“Daddy’s dead?”

Harold Brumann nodded. “It happened quick. The cart broke loose and came at them faster than—”

“Daddy’s dead?” Paul repeated.

Brumann nodded again.

Paul reached out and took the hard hat and lunch pail from Brumann’s hands. “Thank you for telling me,” he said and closed the door.