The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell by William Klaber Page A

own hours. I stopped looking at the gift horse and said I would try my best for him. We agreed to sit down in September.
    I left the Wayne with a light step. My fortunes were on the rise. I would need new clothes, a better place to sleep, and a bank account. I had not opened one before, fearing that questions would be asked or references required. What money I made, I handed to Blandin to keep in his safe—two, sometimes three dollars a week. Soon, with a second income from the newspaper, I was certain to save more, money for our future, mine and Helen’s. And this night, as I walked down Main, my daughter was very much on my mind. In the autumn, I would begin to send money home—I’d find a way. In a year or two, Helen might come to me, perhaps as my niece. I didn’t know how it would all work, but that night it seemed it could.
    The next morning, I warmed a bucket of water and brought it to my room, washing myself up and down with a rough cloth as I often did. I had just put on my britches when the door to my room swung open—the latch hadn’t held. From the corner of my eye, I saw Damon in the doorway, peeking out from behind a pile of sheets and towels he was bringing around. I gave him my back and quickly put on my shirt. I didn’t think he had seen the evidence, but my hurried actions must have looked peculiar. I turned back and tried to smile. He gave me an odd, searching look and then put the sheets on my bed.
     
    * * *
    I wrapped the violin while Lydia sat and read the Herald . She seemed strangely quiet, and I didn’t have much to say. But then she began to read aloud—a story about a fire in a mine near Carbondale—a fire that could not be put out and now burned in unknown directions. Would the city fall into the newly created chasm? No one knew.
    “A strange way for the world to end,” she said, putting the paper aside. “To be burned up from the inside.” And with that, she began to recite something that at first sounded like scripture.
    In the ’ginning was the Wurts. And the Wurts was good.
And the Wurts begat Hone who did what he could.
And Hone begat Carbon, and Carbon ’gat Hawley,
and they all rode to town in a little painted trolley.
And Hawley ’gat Jervis by a mule team driver,
and the two lived together in a shack by the river.
And the Wurts stole a boro, and the Hone stole a dale,
and the Jervis stole a port, and they all went to jail.
How many years did they serve without bail?
    I laughed. “What, in heaven’s name, was that?”
    “Oh, just something Evelyn and I made up. We used to skip rope to it.”
    “I was a fair skipper myself,” I said, not seeing the mistake.
    Lydia looked surprised. “Really? There weren’t many boys I knew who could do it at all. They jumped like grasshoppers.” I braced for more questions, but Lydia got up and stared out the window. “Have you ever been over there, Joseph? To Carbondale?”
    “Is it nice?”
    “Oh yes,” she said, still looking out, “if you like grand homes with porches on the second level. But what do you see when you stand on them? Mountains of coal, piles of slag, and on every surface a black dust that surely darkens the soul.”
    I looked at Lydia like I was seeing my younger self, though we were only six years apart. She saw the world as black and white, good and evil, one or the other to win. I had seen it that way. Now I believed that the world was just a pudding of good and bad and would always be so. But I liked that Lydia felt the way she did, and I argued with her sometimes just to see the color run to her face.
    “Oh, aren’t you the serious one,” I said. “I rather think the human spirit is on an upward course.”
    Lydia turned. “Well, you might feel differently if you’d been here last year when they hanged Harris Bell.”
    “Was that not for a murder?”
    “Surely, but my goodness, the fascination!” Lydia picked up her shawl and draped it over her arm. “People started gathering in the early