Beneath the Apple Leaves(6)
“No, sir,” Andrew answered. Kijek cursed with a mouth full of manure, but he had a good heart. He was Andrew’s father’s friend and the colliery barn boss. He had hired Andrew as the farrier though the old man could have done the work alone. Despite his constant abuse to humans, he was kind to the animals, never hit the mules with fist or belt.
Andrew reached for the rasps and nippers hanging on the shed wall, pointed an elbow at Kijek’s injuries. “You in the ring last night?” he asked.
“Didn’t see me there, did you?” he spit.
The tone was no longer light and Andrew came close. “What happened to you?”
“Mind your business,” he growled. The old man limped to the feed station, stuck a pitchfork in a new bale of hay. “Think these mules gonna feed ’emselves? Is that what you think?”
Even for Kijek, the man was more agitated than usual. Andrew kept quiet and helped stack the feed. A group of young miners passed the stables, heading toward the gaping portal. “Drew, you playin’ ball tonight?” James McGregor, one of the redheaded Scots, called out.
“Naw,” his brother Donald chimed while swinging his pick. “Don’t want to get his shirt dirty for the ladies.”
“Very funny.” Andrew shoveled a small clump of donkey dung and catapulted it at his friend. “I’ll see you on the field.”
Donald jumped easily from the onslaught. “Better practice your pitch, Houghton! Yer aim stinks.” He gave a sly nod in challenge, then whistled at the old man bending next to the donkey. “Nice ass, Kijek!”
Kijek turned to Andrew and snorted. “Kid says the same goddamn thing every day.”
Andrew moved to the first stall and rubbed the head of one of the mules, the hair stained black from nose to tail, the original color impossible to discern. The animal stiffened under his touch, then trembled. A stream of urine landed near his boot. Andrew’s gaze spread over the animal to the red sores across her back and rear end. His stomach dropped.
He found Kijek stooped over a box of rusty tools. “Who did that to her?”
Kijek didn’t pivot with the question, didn’t even flinch as he kept his back turned. “Let it go, Andrew,” the voice warned, nearly too soft to hear.
He grabbed the old man by the shirt. “Who did it, Kijek?”
The eyes drew to his slowly, the whites cloudy and bloodshot and full of pain. His bottom lip twitched. “I said, let it go.”
Andrew released the flannel sleeve, saw with new knowing the bruises and cuts along the man’s face and neck. “You tried to stop them.”
The old lips trembled and saliva formed in the corners. “Damn boys,” he hissed. “Came here stewed on whiskey, hell-bent on hurting anything that moved. I got one of ’em, though. Got him hard in the back with that bar over there.” A glimmer speckled for an instant before drowned in a stifled tear. “Till the other one took it to me. But I got one,” he slobbered wretchedly. “Got one good whack in for hurtin’ that beast, I did.”
Andrew stared down at the feeble man, so frail and shattered it made his ribs tight and pressing against his heart. “Who was it?” he asked again.
“Please, son—” Kijek begged, the rest of the words buried.
Kijek could take a beating as well as any man, but he’d never protect someone who hurt one of his animals. And then Andrew knew. “It was the Higgins boys.”
“Don’t start nothin’, Drew.” The old man grabbed his arms, the bony fingers stabbing into the skin. “You hear me?”
Andrew’s fists balled as he tried to shake the grip, but Kijek clamped like a dog’s jaw to a rabbit. “I know you’re hot as piss, but you can’t cross ’em and you know it.”
“No.” Andrew pulled away from the man. “They’ve gone too far.”
“Listen, you selfish prick!” Kijek reared, blazed with a finger pointed at Andrew’s nose. “You make a fuss with those boys and who you think gonna get the fallout? Eh? Your pa, that’s who. Mr. Higgins send him to work the tightest veins till he’s lying on his stomach picking. Then they’ll go after that sweet ma of yours. Yeah, that’s right. Think her credit’s low now? Be lucky to get the pork fat they scrape from the floor.”
Andrew glared at the man, pulled his gaze to the stalls. “When you turn so soft, Kijek?” he asked acidly.
“Ain’t soft, son.” He patted the young man on the shoulder. “But a dog knows when he’s owned.” Kijek turned back to his box of rusty tools. “Out with you now. Get to school and cool down. You can trim the hooves when you get back.”
*
In class, Andrew was restless, still agitated from the morning. He was the only son of a coal miner who still attended school at his age and he’d graduate in the spring, top of his class. Most boys followed their fathers underground by the time they were fourteen.
Seated in the back row, he ignored the lessons and filled out the college application. He tried not to think of the beaten mule and the old man who cared for her. Instead, Andrew focused on what he planned to become. He would not pick coal. He would not work for a mine that charged a man for the tools he used or broke—for a mine that put the value of black rock above a man or animal. He’d work and study and build a place in the country for his parents—a place where his mother’s flowers wouldn’t wilt from bad air and where his father could sit under the sun until his skin tanned and wrinkled.