you want the true history of something, you can’t pay attention to what people say today; you have to talk to people that were around at the time.
Another thing I know: old folks don’t get a lot of company.
Every time I’d have Tory-boy drive me over to where Mr. Barnes lived, he was always glad for the visit. It was from listening to other old folks that I knew what he’d been called back in the day: Big John Barnes.
The church people came by his place every day with a hot meal. Otherwise, he couldn’t have taken care of himself. The church kind of kept up his house, too.
His back was bent pretty bad; he had to stay stooped over all the time. His legs were gone, too. His wheelchair was a lot fancier than mine. More like a little electric scooter, actually. The Medicare people paid for it.
I tried to get by there no less than once a month. I’d sit and talk with him, while Tory-boy took care of anything around his house that needed fixing. The first time Mr. Barnes saw Tory-boy go after some high weeds with a machete, his mouth just dropped open in amazement. “Damn me,” he said, “that young man works like the Grim Reaper when he’s taking heads.”
“Tory-boy is some kind of strong,” I agreed.
“I’m not talking about strong, son. You could see that much just looking at the size of him. What I meant was how he’s so … relentless, the way he goes about it. That’s the only word I can think of. That brother of yours, you give him a job to do, he is not going to stop until he’s done.”
“No matter what the task,” I agreed, again.
“Am I boring you, son?” he asked. He never failed to ask me that. And I’d tell him the pure truth: that I loved learning above all else, and I was learning from him. He searched my eyes for truth, every time. Always got the same answer, too.
It took a while, but I finally got the story of how Judakowski came to be called “Jackhammer.” I thought it would be some kind of mining story, but Mr. Barnes put the lie to that one. “That boy did it himself. Just started calling himself by that name. When he would be introduced, he’d say his name was Judakowski—Jackhammer Judakowski.
“After a while, it just stuck. You know how, when a man looks the part, he gets the chance to play that part? He does that good enough, a name he gives himself can end up sticking to him like it was on his birth record.
“Of course, the best kind of name to carry is one you didn’t make up for yourself. It’d be one people decided to call you, all on their own.”
“Like ‘Big John’?”
The old man wiped at his eyes. “That was true,” he said, real soft. “That was true once.”
“I know that, sir. Everybody says it.”
He looked at me for a long minute. Then he asked, “And what do they call you, son?”
“You know how people around here are.”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure, I know. Nasty and mean in their hearts, some of them. But not all, son. Not all. Never forget that.”
“No, sir.”
“You still haven’t told me what names they—”
“ ‘Crip,’ that’s one. And ‘Half-Man.’ And—”
He held up a big callused hand like a traffic cop telling me to stop. “They called me ‘Big John’ because that’s what I was. A big man, name of John. It fit, so it held. For a long time, anyway. What would you want folks to call you, son? ‘Brains’—now, that would fit.
“Kind of funny, when you think on it. Anyone who wouldn’t call you by a name that truly fit, it’d be the same as naming themselves. You know, something like ‘Retard,’ or”—I was looking down, but I could feel his eyes burning at me—“ ‘Half-Wit.’ ”
I looked up. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“What do you want folks to call you?” he insisted. “Not just to your face, either.”
“Esau,” I told him. “Esau Till.”
“Mark me,” the old man said. “The day will come when folks will
ou’d think a man named Judakowski wouldn’t hold much sway around here. It was a foreigner’s name, and folks put great stock into how far back your name went. Far back local, I mean—not far back like European royalty or anything like that.
Lansdale, now, that was a name that carried weight. His father had been a prizefighter before the War. That was his last fight—one he never came back from. And that counted heavy around here, too.
What opened doors for Jackhammer Judakowski had nothing to do with his own family trail—a Polish name can trace back only so far around here. But nobody would ever be looked down on for having a Polish name, either —not in a part of the world where the name Yablonski is held sacred.
A man who died for his people.
Tony Boyle had been head of the UMW. And the United Mine Workers may have done some violent stuff, but that was only to force mine owners to allow the union in.
People knew that, and they stayed with it. Even when a whole mob had backhoed out a pit, thrown the owner in, and filled it up again—this was down in Tennessee—the jury had acquitted them all.
It might have gone on like that, but when a mine blew up in West Virginia, the truth came out. Boyle had personally told everyone that mine was union-certified, with a perfect safety record. But when the inspectors— federal inspectors—dug through the wreckage and found a slew of major safety violations, there was only one possible explanation: Boyle had been getting paid under the table to sell out the miners.
And it couldn’t have been for just that one mine.
That’s when Yablonski challenged Boyle for leadership of the union. He called Boyle’s men nothing but a gang of thugs, and he promised to return the union to the miners.
When he lost that election, Yablonski said it had been rigged. I don’t mean some whispering in a tavern; he said it right out loud, for all to hear.
He was getting ready to go to court to challenge the election results when Boyle had him murdered. And not just Yablonski, but his wife and daughter, too. When the murder team came calling, everyone in the house had to go. No witnesses.
That made it worse. Much worse. Folks who normally wouldn’t spit on the Law let them past the wall of silence just long enough to say a few things.
The people Boyle had hired to do that job, one of them had been by Yablonski’s house before, scouting. But Yablonski knew he was living under the gun, so he’d written down the license number of that stranger’s car.
One by one, they all got caught. The more they talked, the higher the trail climbed. Nobody wanted to chance the Death House.
Their testimony was overpowering. One of them, a girl, I believe, she even had a photograph of the man who had done the hiring shaking hands with Boyle.
After all that, Boyle still only pulled a life sentence. Didn’t matter, really—he died in prison.
He would have died even if the jury had acquitted him, and he knew it. Probably why he tried to kill himself. With pills, like the miserable coward he was.
Ask anyone around here and they’ll tell you: if Joe Yablonski had lived to be President of the United Mine Workers, things would be different today. They believe that the same way others believe in Jesus. Held that faith just as strong.
Maybe even stronger, now that I think on it. The only way folks could know Christ had died for them would be to read something written down maybe thousands of years ago … and believe nobody had tampered with it since.
But to know Joe Yablonski had died for them, all they had to do was read the newspapers. Or listen to someone who was around at the time.
You can’t find a living person who claims to have met Jesus in person. Not outside an asylum, anyway. But there’s plenty still around who’d met Joe Yablonski. Some who knew him personally. Even some who had been close to him.
