“Joe,” Mother said, “you’re not going down there tonight? Not with the boys. Please.”

Paw buttered another hunk of bread. “We need the coal, Lorrie. It’s gonna be a long winter.”

“We could buy it for once.”

“How?” said our father.

She was silent for a moment. “You could dig some more out of the old mine on the hill. Like you used to.”

“You looked in that hole lately? Props are rotten. Roof’s gonna cave in most anytime.”

“Then you should seal it.”

“I been meanin’ to do that for a year.” He scooped more stew onto his plate. “But tonight we got to get coal. Full moon’s up, it’s a good night for it.”

“The brakemen will see you.”

“You think they care? Good Christ, Lorrie—” Mother hated swearing, especially at table. “God, Lorrie, there’s ten million men out of work these days. Why do you think Roosevelt’s fixin’ to get us into another war?” Angrily he broke his bread. “Ten million!”

“Joe, promise me this,” Mother said. “Don’t let Will climb on the train.”

“Oh, Maw,” Will said. “I can do that easy.”

“Promise me,” she repeated.

“Sure,” Paw muttered.

WE WALKED down the road under the maple trees. Paw wore his miner’s helmet with the carbide lamp attached to the front. We each carried a bundle of sooty burlap sacks. The moon sailed high; silver light lay on the dirt road before our feet.

“But why not, Paw?”

“Not this time, Will, I promised her.”

“You could load twice as much.”

“I know it, son. Don’t I know it? Next time.”

Will stopped complaining. He knew when it was useless to argue with our old man. We heard a screech owl in the pine trees. A fox barked far up the hill, followed by the howls of our beagles behind us, brokenhearted, tied up under the front porch.

We came to the railway trestle. We climbed the concrete abutment and walked two hundred yards down the tracks—I walked on a rail—to where the grade began. We could hear the steam locomotive a mile away, whistle wailing as it approached Groft’s crossing. I felt vibrations in the steel rail. Paw strode ahead between the tracks, big boots treading on every other crosstie, his shadow hard-edged in the moonlight.

We waited near the start of the mile-long hill. Paw took our sacks and draped them over his shoulder. He carried a bundle of short tie strings—binder twine—in his pocket, ends dangling. He repeated the usual instructions:

“I’ll load and tie and drop the sacks off along the tracks. You boys drag the coal to the bottom. I’ll be with you soon as I can. If either one of you tries to climb aboard this train I’ll tan your hide good.”

The beam of a headlamp swung across the trees; the engine appeared around the bend, rocking slightly from side to side, belching smoke and sparks from the stack. We backed into the elderberry bushes. The locomotive roared past in thunder, making a race for the grade. We saw the engineer with a pipe in his teeth leaning out his window, studying the tracks ahead, old hogger’s steady hand on the throttle lever. A red glow lit up the interior of the cab as the fireman opened the firebox hatch and shoveled in coal. Then they were gone, followed by the tender with its steel sentry box for a brakeman, followed by the chain of iron gondola cars heaped with blue-black bituminous coal.