Red Helmet Read online

  Advance Praise for Red Helmet

  The latest from Rocket Boys author . . . takes an inside look at coalmining, from shoveling gob to negotiating international trade deals, through the lens of modern romance.

  —Publishers Weekly

  A new book by Homer Hickam is always a cause for celebration, and Red Helmet is no exception. Set in the Appalachian coal country that Hickam knows down to the bone, every line of this rousing tale of true love and underground adventure is filled with the author’s huge heart and boundless energy. I loved riding the twists of both the plot and the relationship as Cable and Song explored all the depths two people can find when they enter dangerous, exciting places like a coal mine . . . or a marriage. By the time I closed the book, I’d been entertained as all get-out and had my faith in humanity bolstered. Homer Hickam is a national treasure.

  —Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia

  America’s working men and women are Hickam’s heroes; he is the Mark Twain of our age, and perhaps the best mainstream writer still tapping keys.

  —Stephen Coonts, New York Times best-selling author of The Traitor

  Red Helmet is a tremendously compelling read, and further proves what most of us know already: Homer Hickam is a born storyteller. He writes about real people, and what genuinely matters most—love. Song Hawkins and her precarious hold on life, both spiritually and physically, make this a truly memorable book.

  Bret Lott, best-selling author of Jewel and A Song I Knew By Heart

  Other books by Homer Hickam include

  The Far Reaches

  The Ambassador’s Son

  The Keeper’s Son

  We Are Not Afraid

  Sky of Stone

  The Coalwood Way

  Back to the Moon

  Rocket Boys / October Sky

  Torpedo Junction

  © 2007 by Homer Hickam

  “Destiny,” by Jim Brickman.

  Hymn on page 213 by J. Bartholomew.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc. books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hickam, Homer H., 1943-

  Red helmet / by Homer Hickam.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-59554-214-4 (softcover)

  1. Married people--Fiction. 2. Businesswomen--Fiction. 3. Coalminers--Fiction. 4. New York--Fiction. 5. West Virginia--Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3558.I224R43 2008

  813'.54--dc22

  2007043926

  Printed in the United States of America

  08 09 10 11 QW 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  PART 1 HIGHCOAL

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  PART 2 THE RED HELMET

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  PART 3 THE DARKEST PLACE

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  Sago Miners Memorial Remarks

  Reading Group Discussion Questions

  To mine rescue teams everywhere.

  Part One

  HIGHCOAL

  If you don’t have love, buddy,

  it don’t matter what else you got—

  house, car, all the money in the world,

  because you ain’t got a blame thing.

  Overheard in a coal mine, not so long ago.

  One

  Listen to me, Norman. I’m not going to say this twice. You call Bill Roberts back and you tell him I said he’d better get his little business plan together or I’m going to do it for him and he won’t like that, Norman, he won’t like that at all!”

  Song frowned deeply as she listened to her assistant’s reply through the cell phone clipped on her ear. Norman could be such a wimp! When he was done whining on behalf of the owner of the latest company acquired by her father, a company headed toward failure without some serious reorganization, Song rolled her eyes and stamped her bare feet in the sand. “He’ll do it, Norman, and he’ll do it on time exactly the way I told him to do it unless he wants to be on the street looking for a new job. And Norman? You might be out there with him. Now, shut up and do what I tell you! Now! ”

  “Uh, Song?”

  Song cut her eyes toward the man standing beside her. “What?”

  “Well . . . ,” the man drawled, “the preacher just asked you a question.”

  “Oh!” Song clutched the flowers in her hand and looked into the deer-caught-in-the-headlight eyes of the woman standing in front of her.

  “Would you mind repeating that? Not you, Norman! I’m doing something here. Just hang on. Better yet, hang up!”

  “Now?” the woman asked plaintively.

  “Now,” the man beside her said before Song could.

  “Will you take this man, to have and hold . . .”

  Song nodded. “Yeah. Got it. Sure thing. I do.”

  “Attagirl,” he whispered to her.

  Song looked up at him. “Cable, I’m sorry. I just had to take care of this. I told Norman not to call for the next hour. Norman, hang up! Don’t call me back until you get this solved. Good-bye!”

  Cable laughed. “I love you.”

  Song squared her shoulders. “I love you too.”

  The minister prattled on, rings were exchanged, and then she said, “I now pronounce you husband and . . .”

  I’m married!

  That was Song’s astonished thought as she heard the final words from the barefoot minister. Her second thought was, This is crazy. She looked into the lake-blue eyes of her groom. “Boy, are you in trouble!” she said to Cable while inwardly, she said, So am I.

  Her entire life, Song had wanted to love and be loved. Her smart tongue, her New York attitude—that’s what she had shown the world. But now, here he was. This man, finally, at the right time and the right place, who saw through her, saw her as she really was, or at least as she thought she could be. Nothing else mattered at that moment but him. At long last. Her phone played its little
song. She quickly turned it off.

  Cable kissed her and she eagerly kissed him back while their fellow just-marrieds laughed and applauded. When they came up for air, Song threw herself on him in joyful abandon and, heedless of her white sarong, wrapped her legs around his hips and gave him another long, enthusiastic kiss. Whoops and cheers covered them like a wave. Song threw her head back and laughed. It was perfect. The sun was just dipping below the crystal blue sea. Love had finally reached her. It had taken long enough but, never mind, it was hers.

  She whispered in his ear, “Do you really love me, Cable?”

  “I surely do, Mrs. Jordan,” he answered with an easy grin.

  She still couldn’t accept it. “Why?”

  His killer dimple made an appearance. “Why do you think? Because you’re you.”

  Which was exactly the reason Song had asked the question. Loving her, she believed, had to be a hard thing. She was a complicated woman and exuded toughness in a small, durable package. Men didn’t like women who were complicated, and they didn’t like a woman who was a fighter by trade and inclination. Yet there he was and here she was, standing together wiggling their toes in the sand on a lovely beach on the island of St. John, also known famously as Love City. It was that, and more. Perhaps due to the dangerous combination of romance and rum, St. John was also known as the isle of marriage, which, as had occurred between Song and Cable, sometimes happened between couples who had planned nothing more than a little fun time in the sun.

  They were quite the pair.

  She was Song Hawkins, the daughter of one of the richest men in the United States. He was Caleb “Cable” Jordan, the son of a coal miner who’d been killed in a mine. She was the “point man” for the acquisition of new properties in her father’s company. He was the superintendent of a coal mine. She had been on the cover of Fortune magazine. The title of the piece was “You Think Joe Hawkins is Tough? Meet His Daughter.” He had been on the cover of Mining EquipmentNews. The title of the article was “Ventilation and Brattice Curtains in the Modern Mine.” Her mother, the heiress to a Hong Kong family fortune, had been an adventurer who had fallen to her death in the Himalayas in an attempt to be the first Chinese woman to climb K2. His mother lived in Panama City, Florida, in a double-wide trailer with her second husband, a retired plumber. Song lived in New York City. Cable lived in Highcoal, West Virginia.

  Against any reasonable calculation of odds, they had met and fallen in love.

  And now they were married.

  He’d asked her in the most endearing and oh-so-Cable-like manner. It was right after her morning yoga. She was lolling in the hammock on the veranda of their cottage when Cable came and took her by her hand. “I want you to meet someone,” he said.

  “I can’t meet anybody dressed like this,” she’d protested, motioning to her string bikini.

  “Aw, you look great, honey bunch,” he drawled, and pulled her to her feet. She took the time to toss on a spaghetti-strap jersey and followed him to the open-air terrace. To Song’s astonishment, at the piano sat someone she had never met but instantly recognized: Jim Brickman, her favorite romantic musician. Brickman was scheduled to sing at the resort the next day, an event Song had been keenly looking forward to, but here he was, the actual, real person, greeting Cable like he was an old friend. It turned out they had known each other for all of a half hour, but that was Cable. He liked people, so different from Song who always held back from strangers unless they were part of a company she was interested in buying.

  Brickman nodded to her and said, “Cable asked me to sing a song especially for you,” and, without further preamble, his fingers danced across the keys and he began singing a ballad “Destiny.”

  What if I never knew,

  What if I never found you,

  I’d never have this feeling in my heart.

  How did this come to be?

  I don’t know how you found me.

  But from the moment I saw you,

  Deep inside my heart I knew,

  Baby, you’re my destiny.

  You and I were meant to be.

  With all my heart and soul,

  I give my love to have and hold.

  And as far as I can see,

  You were always meant to be my destiny.

  Song’s knees felt strangely weak, and she leaned against Cable. Brickman finished his song, then said, “My friend Cable has something he wants to ask you.”

  Cable went down on one knee and took her hands. “Song, will you marry me?” he asked.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Song blurted, but when she looked into Cable’s eyes, she saw he was serious. She was utterly astonished.

  “You want to marry me?”

  “I do. Right here on this beach. I’ve already talked to the resort manager. She said she can make it happen in a day. It’ll be fun, and the right thing to do too. We’re gonna get married sooner or later, aren’t we? You know it’s true.”

  “You’re crazy, Cable. I don’t know any such thing.”

  “Never make an easy thing hard,” he said. She rolled her eyes, having heard it all before.

  “There are no easy things,” she replied with the certainty of experience, “only things that appear easy but aren’t.”

  Still holding her hands, he stood up. “I know that’s what you think, but what a terrible opinion that is of this old world! I love you, you love me, and I don’t see that changing. All we have to do is stand up on the beach like all the other couples we’ve seen at this resort, say I do a couple of times, and we’re good to go for the rest of our lives. What could be easier than that?”

  Brickman was signing autographs. Their new friends, mostly couples who had come to St. John to be married or to honeymoon, gathered around, urging Song to accept.

  Song gave them a cold smile, then pulled Cable aside. “Marrying may be easy,” she said, “but marriage isn’t.”

  “Is that a no?”

  Song did a quick check of her heart. It was giving her a steady signal.

  “No, it’s a yes,” she said, almost sadly. “This is going to get complicated, Cable, very complicated.”

  Cable gave out a shout. “She said yes!”

  Cheers followed, Brickman played triumphant chords on the piano, the other couples came up and hugged them, and Song was washed away in an emotional tsunami. When she came up for air, she looked into Cable’s eyes, searching for even the slightest hint of doubt. She saw only a rock steady certainty.

  “You’re amazing,” she marveled.

  “Is that good?”

  “Not always, Cable. Not always.” She took his hand. “Let’s go back to our cottage.”

  “I’ll go back with you,” he said. “But I’ll be sleeping in the hammock tonight. Once you decide to get married, you got to start acting right.”

  She had never known a man like this. “All right,” she said. “Does this mean I can wear white at the wedding?”

  He laughed. “Just make sure you can get out of it in a hurry.”

  “You goofball. I guess Jim Brickman is right. You’re my destiny whether I like it or not.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing we’re going to get married.”

  IT WAS THEIR wedding night. Cable was the most marvelous lover. His touches, his kisses, everything he did lifted her higher until at the top of an arc of passion, there was an amazing spontaneous combustion of raw, wild emotion. Song had never imagined such pleasure existed. After they’d made love, they lay quietly in the warm breeze coming through the open sliders. Gradually, the volcano within her subsided, and her rational self returned.

  “What have we done, Cable?”

  “We got married, that’s what,” he answered lazily. He nuzzled his nose into her neck and took a deep breath. “You smell fantastic. I wish I could bottle you up and carry you around everywhere I go. And you are one fantastic loving machine, lady.”

  Wheels were turning in Song’s head, wheels she’d stopped to get married a
nd then make love but were now fully engaged. Without realizing she was doing it, she twisted on her finger the thin gold band they’d bought at the resort gift shop.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “In the morning, we’ll drive up to Francis Bay and do some snorkeling,” Cable said. “I heard there’s tarpon there.”

  Cable could be so obtuse at times. It was one of his more endearing traits, one of several that she looked forward to changing. “I mean after our honeymoon. How are we going to work this out? I mean, you in West Virginia, and me in New York?”

  Cable’s reply was instantaneous. “You’ll move to West Virginia. Wait until you see our house. It’s up on the mountain that overlooks Highcoal. You can see the mine from there and everything.”

  “I can’t move to Highcoal,” she replied in a firm tone. “My father depends on me too much. And I love my job. I couldn’t possibly give it up. Why don’t you transfer to New York?”

  He removed his arm from around her, came up on one elbow, and looked at her with more than a little surprise. “I can’t go up there. All they do is crunch numbers in that old office. I mine coal for a living. And I love Highcoal. It’s my place. Always has been, always will be.”

  “You love it more than me?” The question just popped out of her. If she’d thought about it, she wouldn’t have asked it, or at least phrased it quite that starkly, but there it was, asked and hanging in the air of the sweet Caribbean night, fragrant with frangipani and plumeria.

  She watched him start to say one thing, then she could almost see him change his mind. “Never make an easy thing hard,” he said, as if that settled everything.

  “I told you there are no easy things . . .”

  “. . . only those that seem easy but aren’t. I know.” He gazed at her. “I think you’re beautiful.”

  Song had been told she was beautiful by other men, all of whom had let her down. She chose to argue the point. “Beautiful? Hardly. My lips are too big, my nose is too small, and my eyes are too narrow. I’m a funny-faced girl. You know it’s true.”

  He traced a finger across her forehead and down her nose and touched her lips. “Your face is perfect. I loved everything about it from the moment we met.”

  “I’m too skinny. I’m too short. And I’m flat-chested.”