Muckers Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction based loosely on actual events that occurred in Jerome, Arizona, in 1950. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Sandra Neil Wallace

  Jacket art copyright © 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf

  Photograph reproduced on the jacket is of the actual Jerome Muckers team.

  Map copyright © 2013 by Graham Evernden

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wallace, Sandra Neil.

  Muckers / Sandra Neil Wallace. — First edition.

  pages cm

  “Inspired by a true story.”

  Summary: “Felix O’Sullivan, standing in the shadow of his dead brother, an angry, distant father, and racial tension, must lead the last-ever Muckers high school football team to the state championship before a mine closing shuts down his entire town” —

  Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-375-86754-5 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-375-96754-2 (hardcover library binding) — ISBN 978-0-307-98238-4 (ebook)

  [1. Football—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 5. Copper mines and mining—Fiction. 6. Grief—Fiction. 7. Race relations—Fiction. 8. Mexican Americans—Fiction. 9. Arizona—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W15879Muc 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013003537

  The text of this book is set in 12-point Adobe Caslon.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To the 1950 Jerome Muckers football team, their beloved coach Homer Brown, and Principal Lewis McDonald, for those letters.

  And to the Arizona mining town itself, for putting up such a howl.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Hatley’s Body Parts

  Chapter 2: Fighting the School Bus

  Chapter 3: Very Satisfactory

  Chapter 4: Eejit Icing

  Chapter 5: Game Night

  Chapter 6: Every Man for Himself

  Chapter 7: Four O’Clock Wind

  Chapter 8: A Squeaker

  Chapter 9: Straight to Hell

  Chapter 10: Where the Hell’s Korea?

  Chapter 11: Benched

  Chapter 12: Angry Ever Since

  Chapter 13: Bowling Under the Stars

  Chapter 14: Goodnight, Irene

  Chapter 15: Independence Day

  Chapter 16: Bad Blood

  Chapter 17: Caught

  Chapter 18: No Way Out

  Chapter 19: Cut Open

  Chapter 20: Running into the Pit

  Chapter 21: Next to No Shot

  Chapter 22: Bittersweet

  Chapter 23: Church Money

  Chapter 24: Tears Won’t Come

  Chapter 25: Golden Wings

  Chapter 26: Hell’s Corner

  Chapter 27: Mucker Sundaes

  Chapter 28: After

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  mucker (noun):

  1. one who shovels loose rock or muck into the mine core, sorting the ore from waste.

  2. a vulgar, ill-bred person.

  3. the name of our team.

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1950

  BEFORE DAYBREAK

  I COME TO THE SHANTY in the Barrio from behind, dipping under the broken shutters so the late-October moon won’t cast a shadow and wake up Cruz. Then I suck in my breath—there can’t be more than two feet between us—and tread lightly onto the porch. What I’m holding belongs to him, but Cruz is too stubborn for me to do this face to face. And persuasive. I admit he almost had me convinced about the mine. But there were things Cruz believed in all along that he shouldn’t have and ones that I should have and didn’t. Like the football season. Cruz sure was right about that. He knew it before we even started, back in August, when Rabbit and Coach and Angie were still here and only a miracle could make winning possible. It was so hot and dry in Arizona then, you could watch the dust and the smelter smoke fighting each other just to get to the top of the mountain.

  We were fighting, too, down in the slag below like all Muckers do. Not against the Commies in Korea or the ones that Sims and Superintendent Menary were hoping to find in Hatley. We were fighting to win football games—Mexicans, Slavs, and Anglos like me.

  Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Win six games in seven weeks, going undefeated against teams bigger and better than we were, and make it to the state championship game. Teams with real uniforms and grass fields. Every one of those quarterbacks was better than me. That’s what I thought. And I sure knew my brother, Bobby, was better when he played for Hatley High. But that’s not what Cruz or Coach or even the town believed, though I wanted no part of their praise. Looking back, we all had different reasons for winning. But once we found out about the mine, what we wanted more than anything was not to lose. Because the only thing worse than losing is being forgotten.

  1950 HATLEY MUCKERS FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

  Friday Aug 25 RIM VALLEY HERE

  Friday Sept 1 PRESCOTT THERE

  Friday Sept 15 COLDBROOK HERE

  Friday Sept 22 COTTONVILLE HERE

  Friday Sept 29 KINGMAN THERE

  Friday Oct 13 FLAGSTAFF THERE

  Chapter 1

  HATLEY’S BODY PARTS

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 10

  4:32 P.M.

  IN THE DISTANCE, AS WE drive up from Cottonville, she looks like a pair of tanned knees. Sunburned and gnarled. Scraped bare from millions of years of abuse by the desert sun and now us.

  But Cruz says the mountain above our town looks more like a woman lying down, tits up. One spread out, the other firm and pointy. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never even seen tits up close. Well, maybe once. But that was by mistake during Mexican pool hours, looking for Angie. And I’ve certainly never felt them.

  Anyway, the old prospectors christened her Nefertiti, after the Egyptian queen. And the mountain must have been beautiful once, back when she was covered in pine. That was some time ago, and none of us call her that anymore since Cruz came up with the nickname Nefer-titty.

  Cruz pulls the Lucky Strike from behind his ear and lights it, nursing the convertible wheel with his knees and blaming Nefertitty’s sagging on old age instead of the mine cave-ins. He points to the taller, perkier tit, in case me and Rabbit couldn’t tell the difference.

  We’ve been calling Sal “Rabbit” since second grade. Not that he’s fast. No one’s quicker than Cruz. Or because Rabbit’s ever been with a girl either. (You know how rabbits can breed.) It’s because of the harelip, which is why Rabbit can never look angry. It’s as if the deformity’s given him a moral compas
s somehow that stops him from doing anything halfway mean. Not even when he writes about our games in the Pick & Shovel.

  Rabbit stretches for Cruz’s cigarette from the backseat, but there’s no way he’d smoke it. Instead, he makes a branding motion with the lit end toward the mountain, as if he’s about to mark a steer. Because the other tit—the lopsided one—has a stone tattoo on it forming the letter H. We can take the blame for that. It’s been a school tradition since ’24 to brand the mountain with the spirit of good ol’ Hatley High. That’s when Principal Mackenzie led the Muckers to the Northern Crown. They nearly took the state, too, but those Phoenix refs had other ideas. Now we paint the H once a year no matter how we play, to keep the spirit of the town alive.

  The stones get blasted out from the mine all day across Nefertitty’s shoulder. Cut into stomach-sized chunks in the open pit by miners like Santiago, Cruz’s father. That’s how I know Hatley’s problems have nothing to do with old age or one sagging boob.

  It’s because of what our fathers and their fathers before that have done to the mountain, poking a shaft into her seventy years ago and finding enough copper to fill her belly up with smoke. The way my pop still makes others do, shouting orders at Santiago and the powder monkeys to blast her skin off layer by layer until they get to the insides.

  Rabbit’s been watching the cigarette burn. He waits till there’s about an inch of graying embers, then blows at it, spreading ashes all over the upholstery.

  “You idiot! I just washed the car,” Cruz says, snatching the cigarette back.

  You’d think it was a diamond the way Cruz treats this old car since he won it off a miner. He puts up a howl and tries to smack Rabbit, but Rabbit leans far enough away and Cruz misses. That’s the end of it. The light by the Tumbleweed gas station’s up ahead, and Cruz slows down, not wanting to stop completely. We’re in the middle of enemy territory: straddling both sides of us is Cottonville—the flat-chested community they built at the bottom of the mountain to process what we mine, and who we plan on beating the crap out of in football this year. Practice starts on Monday.

  “Hang on,” I tell Cruz, and get out of the car. I run up to the filling station and grab a newspaper off the top of the gas pump. The ones with two rocks on them are a couple days old and cost a penny instead of five cents. Benny from the diner lets me have them for nothing after game days, but that’s still two weeks from now.

  “What is it with you always wanting to read?” Cruz says, poking the Verde Miner with his elbow.

  “That’s how you find out things,” I tell him.

  “Oh yeah? Like what? Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “Well, it says here Ty’s chickens are as tender as a mother’s love. And that Peach Kellerman’s been irrigating with the runoff. Says the cyanide helps his melons grow. He lost his wallet, too, walking into town.”

  “Again?” Cruz laughs. The slick’s coming out of his hair. He smooths a hand over the black ends (which are brownish-black, really, like the feathers of a golden eagle caught by the morning sun). “And I bet Peaches can tell you what’s in the wallet, no?” Cruz rubs a thumb and two fingers together. “Dollar bills.” He smirks.

  “There’s houses for rent, too,” I say, folding the paper and turning to face him. “Nine of them … up on Company Ridge.” To me, that’s a sure sign the mine really is going to close, but I can already tell Cruz isn’t buying it. He takes a long drag, making the Lucky smolder red then a flickering orange before tossing it into the Cottonville dirt. And he still won’t look at me.

  “What?” Cruz finally mumbles. “Don’t mean anything except higher-ups getting on Ruffner’s bad side. And they always lose muckers on quits. What is it with you Anglos? Never staying in one place for too long.”

  “How much are the chickens?” Rabbit asks.

  “What do you care, Rabbit? Your mom raises them,” Cruz says.

  “Yeah, and she only charges forty-three cents for a pound.”

  I tell Rabbit there’s a number to call and find out how much, then give him the paper. Cruz hangs a left onto the switchback that takes us up to Hatley. Now the tits have become one. All we see is the H we’re headed for. Cruz puts the Ford Deluxe in low gear, flooring the gas pedal to make it up the steep pitch. The revs reach into our guts and Cruz grins, nodding at the radio on the dash—his signal for me to turn it up.

  You’ve broken your vow, and it’s all over now

  So I’m movin’ on.

  Hank Snow’s on the radio and it’s all over now for me and Rabbit. It’s Cruz’s favorite song, only he can’t sing.

  “I bet he’s got those rhinestones on right now, playing that song on the guitar!” Rabbit hollers from the back.

  “They’re not playing it right now while we’re listening to it, stupid.” Cruz blows a smoke ring at the rearview mirror. “It’s a record. Huh, Red?”

  “It’s a recording,” I say, not certain who to look at. “But it was done live. You know, like in the studio or on television or something.”

  I don’t want to get into it or start an argument, so I look past Cruz’s profile over to Deception Gulch. It cuts deep and red to the left of us three hundred feet below, where cactus are still blooming, even though it’s nearly halfway through August and there’s been no monsoon.

  Cruz is too busy crooning along with “The Singing Ranger” and Rabbit’s probably too hung up on imagining the sparkles on Hank’s shirt for either of them to notice that slowly, in small ways, the mountain’s beginning to heal. Like hair that grows back on a scar somehow. But it’s too late; at least that’s how I feel. Besides, the mountain may be healing from the outside, but inside she’s dying. Been hollowed, cleaned out, and scraped bare. Eureka Copper keeps cutting back shifts, forcing people to leave and slicing Hatley’s population in half. Since those miners got killed in the blast last month, we’re two short of a thousand.

  The E.C. says there’s not enough copper to make bullets and motors like they did in the Second World War. And I suppose we’ll have to drop the A-bomb over in Korea.

  “Can you smell it?” Cruz’s face lights into a goofy grin. “Rainbow bread.”

  Sure smells like the Palermos got the brick ovens going. It’s picture-show night, and the bakery’s gonna be jammed.

  We make a hard right, turning onto the final switchback, and see the Mexican-tiled roof of our school. That’s when Cruz stops singing, and Rabbit’s not tapping on the back of the flip-top anymore. They follow my gaze beyond the roof, up to the H. But really, I’m eyeing the mining hospital just below and the balcony that leads to Maw’s room.

  I wonder if we’ll heal. We’ve been hollowed out, too. Our families exhausted by the mine and the war that took my brother, Bobby. They’re even closing down the school. Bobby’s school. That’s how I’ll always think of it, especially with football starting. Bobby put Hatley back on the map in one season of football, winning that second Northern Crown. But there’s only sixty people left in high school, and that’s not enough to keep it going, though I sure hope it’s enough to win. That’s what I’ll focus on—winning. Nothing beyond that.

  “Seniors of fifty-one,” Cruz murmurs, eyeing the steps of the school. “All frickin’ twenty-four of us.”

  We’re the last graduating class of Hatley High. Our motto is “Try, it’s worth it.” And I really want to believe that. But to me, the town and the team just haven’t been the same since Bobby died.

  We round the Hogback and Mrs. Palermo calls out, “Andiamo, Salvatore,” the braid above her head looking even whiter with all that flour.

  Cruz pulls up in front of the ovens, and Rabbit’s father hauls a giant, wood-handled slab from one, with a steaming loaf of bread on it the colors of a rainbow. Balancing it in the air, he slides it into a flour sack. Mrs. Palermo rushes over to Cruz’s car and slips the bagged loaf into Rabbit’s lap.

  “Mangia, mio piccolo,” she says, gripping Rabbit’s chin. I know that means “eat” in Italian—Mrs. Pale
rmo stuffs Rabbit all the time since he weighs ninety-eight pounds soaking wet on the P.E. scale next to the showers. (We may only have twenty-six boys in high school, but there’s no way Coach would let a guy like Rabbit play.)

  Cruz leans back and rips a steaming hunk off the green part of the bread, sucking in his breath while he proceeds to burn his fingers, then his tongue.

  Brushing the sweat of baking from her hollow cheek, Mrs. Palermo gives Rabbit a golden smile—eighteen karats’ worth covering the left front tooth. Rabbit thinks that’s the reason his mother smiles, but he’s dead wrong. Whenever Mrs. Palermo sees Rabbit, her eyes light up the way the sunset does, exploding with color behind the mountain then lingering awhile, not wanting to give up the day.

  She must have been over forty when she had Rabbit, which just about killed her, so he’s the only one. “A miracle baby” is what Cruz likes to say—the bambino milagro—with a scar above Rabbit’s sutured lip to prove it.

  Mrs. Palermo pinches the fleshy part inside one of Rabbit’s chicken-skinned elbows, but she can’t get her fingers on much. And it’s at times like this that I find it hard to breathe normal. Something gets caught in my throat and my eyes start to sting.

  Maw used to do that—touch me in a caring way. But that was before everything changed.

  “Hush now, Reddy,” she’d whisper so only I could hear. It was after I’d fallen into Bitter Creek Gulch and nearly gotten myself killed. They’d had to stitch up both knees once they took all the mud and the prickers out. I didn’t mind the mud. I never do. I was born in it, halfway down that gulch when Maw went looking for Pop. Loco Francisco caught me. Doused us with his holy water so many times Bobby said I arrived home cleaner than anything coming out of the miners’ hospital. Maw had Francisco baptize me right then and there. Felix Francis. I suppose that’s when Pop’s loathing for me started, since I’d gotten a middle name that had nothing to do with him.

  I try to remember the sound of Maw’s voice. I know it’s much softer than Mrs. Palermo’s and that the accent’s all Antrim, as if Maw just rode off the Irish Glens and hopped on a train to Hatley. She used to smile like Mrs. Palermo, though. And bake bread, too. I’m hoping I can do something to bring that all back.