Buttons and Coal

The summer sun toasted the top of my head and little pufflets of dust rose beneath my small bare feet. The old field lane lay in a wide furrow between a corn field and a field filled with winter wheat that swayed silver-green in the breeze. The pat-pat of my trotting feet melted into a background sprinkled with lark song and the humming of jets. Grasshoppers whirred past my ears as I jogged down the lane.

I grasped Luanne’s hand and raised my face to the puffy clouds floating overhead. “Let’s hurry,” I urged. “Grandpa said he’s expecting lots of customers today.”

The mounds of black coal rose up at the end of the lane and Grandpa’s coal bins obscured the view to the west. We wove our way around a pile of stoker coal and slipped in the door to the weigh station. A fine, oily, black grime covered every surface but we didn’t care. Grandpa was busy with one of his customers so we dusted off a chair in the corner and settled in. The industrial smells of coal and motor oil surrounded us. “Don’t touch anything,” I whispered in Luanne’s ear. “You’ll get all dirty.”

Grandpa finished the transaction and his customer creaked back in the old chair. “You gonna shut down for the season this summer?”

“Naw, probably not,” Grandpa drawled. “I’ve got enough to do, fixing things and getting ready for fall.”

The other man chuckled. “You just want to stay out of Verna’s hair, don’tcha?”

“Oh, now.” Grandpa grinned, “Lots to do here.”

The customer left, still laughing at Grandpa.

Grandpa turned to us, eyes twinkling. “Now, what are you doing back there in the corner? Are you helping me today?”

“We want to dig through the trash pile,” I told him. Grandpa let some of his friends dump trash at the back end of his coal yard and I loved rooting through and finding all sorts of treasures. “I need some jars for our cabin in the woods.”

“Oh, I see,” Grandpa heaved to his feet, grabbing his canes as he did. “Well, I think someone just dumped a fresh load on Monday.”

I was eager to look but I wanted to stay for a while and meet some more of Grandpa’s customers. He called them friends, my mom called them cronies, but Grandma called them hoodlums. The coal yard was a sore spot in the family, but I loved it. There were so many nooks and crannies to explore, so many discoveries just waiting for me. Most of the buildings were rickety, made out of old, weathered boards that shuddered whenever Grandpa trudged through with his heavy-hitting canes and dragging gait. Today seemed to be a slow day, though, despite Grandpa’s predictions, and after waiting for a while, Luanne and I decided to head for the trash dump.

In the woods on the ridge above the yard I had my cabin, nothing more than grayed boards stacked to form the walls. Luanne and I spent hours playing there. It was our rustic cabin in the wilds of Alaska where we found shelter and safety from howling wolves. It was our castle with soaring towers, straight from the pages of Sleeping Beauty. It turned into a science lab where we conducted all sorts of questionable experiments, our art studio where we painted using berries and crushed leaves. We had lots of uses for old glass bottles and discarded treasures scavenged from the dump.

I picked my way through broken glass that littered the edges and rusty metal that protruded in tangled twists. I tossed aside several prospects when they didn’t meet my standards. Then I saw it. Upside down, slightly dented, a small rectangular metal box glinted in the sun. I picked it up and shook it. I grinned at Luanne. “Look at this! There’s something inside!” I turned it over and pried at the lid. It stuck and I looked around for something to pry it open with.

An old spoon, bent and tarnished, stuck out from a pile of tin cans. I tugged it loose and used it as a crowbar. The lid spun off in a glint of sunlight and Luanne and I stared at the contents of the box. Buttons! Round ones, square ones, bumpy ones and smooth ones. Blue, red, green, yellow… a kaleidoscope of colors met my delighted gaze. I ran my fingers through, unearthing shiny metal buttons, clear iridescent buttons, and some that looked like jewels. I climbed back down the heap of trash, clutching my find.

I sprinted to show the buttons to Grandpa. He was oiling one of his giant yellow wheel loaders, but stopped and gave me his attention when I slid around the corner of the shed. “Look!” I thrust the box at him, “Look what I found!”

He turned the box this way and that. “Buttons? What are you going to do with these? Sew them on a dress?”

“Of course not,” I scoffed, “you know better than that. These aren’t just any buttons. They’re rare, valuable ones. We’re going to use them to trade with the natives that pass through here.”

“Oh. I should have thought of that.” Grandpa nodded his bald head. Turning to Luanne, he winked. “Now, you watch out for those wild savages. Don’t want you both to run off with a handsome brave!”

I laughed and tapped the lid back on. “Come on, Luanne. Grandpa thinks he’s so funny. Let’s just go.”

Years have come and gone since those summer days. Grandpa is no longer here, nor is the rough gray cabin on the ridge. But some mornings when I step outside on our front porch, I almost think I can hear the roar of Grandpa’s coal sifter and the creaking of his grimy desk chair drifting up from the flat below our house. The wooded ridge where our house sits no longer has a trash dump or coal heaps pushed up against it. A few things do endure. A young girl’s imagination, being refined as a writer’s tool. The memories of a grandpa, dear to a little child’s heart. And on a shelf above the writer’s desk sits a smiling doll, bedraggled from all the adventures we shared. I smile at Luanne and sit to type our story.