Under a Cloudless Sky

Under a Cloudless Sky

by Chris Fabry
Under a Cloudless Sky

Under a Cloudless Sky

by Chris Fabry

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Overview

A charming and engrossing novel for fans of Southern fiction and the recent hit memoir Hillbilly Elegy about a lush and storied coal-mining town—and the good people who live there—in danger of being destroyed for the sake of profit. Will the truth about the town’s past be its final undoing or its saving grace?

1933. In the mining town of Beulah Mountain, West Virginia, two young girls form an unbreakable bond against the lush Appalachian landscape, coal dust and old hymns filling their lungs and hearts. Despite the polarizing forces of their fathers—one a mine owner, one a disgruntled miner —Ruby and Bean thrive under the tender care of Bean’s mama, blissfully unaware of the rising conflict in town and the coming tragedy that will tear them apart forever.

2004. Hollis Beasley is taking his last stand. Neighbors up and down the hollow have sold their land to Coleman Coal and Energy, but Hollis is determined to hold on to his family legacy on Beulah Mountain. Standing in his way is Buddy Coleman, an upstart mining executive who hopes to revitalize the dying town by increasing coal production and opening the Company Store Museum. He’ll pay homage to the past—even the massacre of 1933—while positioning the company for growth at all costs.

What surprises them all is how their stories will intersect with a feisty octogenarian living hundreds of miles away. When Ruby Handley Freeman’s grown children threaten her independence, she takes a stand of her own and disappears, propelling her on a journey to face a decades-old secret that will change everything for her and those she meets.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781496427694
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Publication date: 01/09/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 416
Sales rank: 385,070
File size: 11 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

WE MEET RUBY AND BEAN BEULAH MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA JUNE 1933

Ruby and Bean met in the summer of 1933 in a town called Beulah Mountain, in the southwestern coalfields of West Virginia, shortly before the massacre that has become a footnote in some history books. When people speak of that time, they talk of red and black. Blood was the price paid and coal was the prize. Miners' families were collateral damage in a war against the earth itself, a battle fought with pick and TNT.

There are a thousand places to begin the story. Ruby and Bean's first meeting ... Bean's big regret ... where her name came from ... the shock when they discovered what was happening on the third floor of the company store. But there is another memory that floats to the surface and sits on the water like a katydid on a lily pad. The memory is wrapped in music and preaching and two friends tripping through the underbrush, hand in hand, giggling, and for a moment without a care in the world, the hurt and pain of life dismissed.

Ruby held on to Bean like a tight-eyed, newborn kitten, more afraid to let go than to hang on. She didn't know the hills like her friend, and the speed Bean gathered frightened Ruby. It is a grace to be able to hold on to someone who runs at life when you can only imagine walking.

"Slow down," Ruby said without a drawl, with a hint of northern refinement. To those in Beulah Mountain, Ruby sounded uppity, like she was putting on airs, and there were some in the congregation who questioned whether this daughter of a mine owner belonged in their church. Some thought she might be spying and trying to get information about the union rumors.

Ruby wore the dress her mother had picked from a catalog, a dress she only wore on Sundays and late at night when she couldn't sleep. This dress, other than the pictures and jewelry and sweet-smelling memorabilia she kept in a box on her dresser, was the last connection with her mother. The woman's voice was fading from memory, which troubled Ruby, though the fine contours of her mother's face and the rich brown hair and long eyelashes were still there when she closed her eyes.

Ruby's fingernails were finely trimmed and her hair shone in the sunlight as it bounced and wiggled in curls down her back. She wore pink ribbons that Mrs. Grigsby had positioned for her. Mrs. Grigsby, the wife of the company store proprietor, had been hired to watch Ruby and keep her from children who lived on the other side of the tracks, a task Mrs. Grigsby had failed at miserably. Like water and coal slurry, children will find their own worthy level and pool.

It is a fine thing to see two hearts beat as one. And the hearts of Ruby and Bean did that. Their friendship raised eyebrows at the beginning, of course, but in the summer of 1933, as the church bell rang, Bean pulled Ruby a little harder and their shoes slid down the bank through the ferns and rhododendrons and saplings and onto the path that led toward the white church with the people streaming in from all sides of the mountain.

"I swear," Bean said, "this church is the most excitement I have all week. It's the only reason to stay in this town."

"You'll be here until the day you die, Bean, and you know it," Ruby said.

"Will not," Bean said. "I'm going to see the world. And take my mama with me. These hills can't hold me."

"Slow down!"

Bean's shoes were held together with sea-grass string and prayer. Her fingernails were bit to the quick and dirty from gathering coal for the cookstove and plucking chickens and digging worms for fishing. Bean — given name Beatrice — was lean and tall for a twelve-year-old, and she had seen more than her share of pain. She had helped bury two brothers and a sister who had never given so much as a single cry. She had held her mother's hand and comforted her when her father wasn't around.

"Don't never run for the doctor again," her mother had said after the last stillborn child. "You've got to promise me."

"Why, Mama?"

"That man don't care a whit for people like us," she said. "He just makes it harder. Next time I'm sick, don't you get him. You hear?"

Bean had promised but didn't understand the ramifications of such a thing and the turmoil it might bring.

Ruby was older than Bean, but not much. Bean was a lot stronger and tougher and her exterior was as rough as a cob (she ran barefoot most days). There could not be two girls on the planet who were from more different families, and yet, here they were.

"Hold up," Bean said when they reached the edge of the woods.

Ruby was out of breath and welcomed the pause. "What is it?"

"Look there."

Ruby saw movement and peered through the underbrush at an animal. Elegant. Stately. When its head passed a wide tree, she saw it was a deer.

"Ain't it beautiful?" Bean said.

"Will he hurt us?" Ruby whispered.

"It's a she and she probably has young ones. I'm glad my daddy isn't here or he'd shoot her quick as look at her. We'd have venison for dinner but the view here wouldn't be half as pretty."

The deer stopped and looked straight at Ruby and Bean.

"Stay real still," Bean whispered. "Deer know things people don't."

"What do you mean?" Ruby said. When she turned her head, the deer jumped and ran quickly into the brush.

Bean sighed. "They see things you and I can't. If I could have been born as anything else, I'd have chosen a deer."

Music from the old piano in the church lifted over the valley and Bean picked up her pace again. The heat and humidity of summer made the piano keys stick, but she recognized the introduction to her favorite hymn.

"Come on, we're going to miss 'Beulah,'" she said.

Though the church tried to keep the piano in tune, summer was hard on the instrument and winter was worse. Those occupying the pews sang louder each week to overcome the weathering effects on the Franklin upright. The piano's story was rich — Bean's father said it had been rescued and redeemed from a saloon in Matewan a few years prior, and before that it was used in a Chicago brothel that Al Capone had frequented and the bullet holes in the right side had been made by Bugs Moran. All of these stories seemed too wild for anyone but Ruby and Bean to believe, though neither knew what a "brothel" was. That a piano could be rescued and redeemed in a church felt like something God would do.

Benches creaked and snapped as the congregation stood, and nasal voices rose in unison as the girls neared the wooden steps. Bean let go of her friend's hand, grabbed the iron railing, and catapulted to the top and through the door where an older man with only a few teeth looked down. Sopranos strained to overcome the off-key male voices.

"Far away the noise of strife upon my ear is falling; Then I know the sins of earth beset on every hand; Doubt and fear and things of earth in vain to me are calling; None of these shall move me from Beulah Land."

Bean rushed past women waving fans and men who had freshly shaved and washed away as much coal dust as they could. She found her mother in her usual spot and the woman drew her in with one arm as Ruby joined them, out of breath but smiling.

"I'm living on the mountain, underneath a cloudless sky, I'm drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry; Oh, yes! I'm feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply, For I am dwelling in Beulah Land."

Not every church service began with this hymn, but at some point on either Sunday morning or Sunday evening, the congregation raised its voice in praise to the God who allowed them to live in Beulah Mountain and long for their heavenly home.

Ruby had never heard such singing before moving to Beulah Mountain. She had taken piano lessons early and could read music on the page, a feat that amazed Bean. But what happened when these people sang was more than just humans hitting notes. The music seemed to come from somewhere deep inside and when their voices united, it felt like goose bumps on the soul. Something like joy bubbled up from inside her and leaked through her eyes.

When they had sung the requisite number of choruses and verses, the pews creaked again from the weight of slight men and women and their children. There were soft coughs that would be termed silicosis in the years ahead, but for now it was simply a "coughing spell." Ruby burrowed herself under Bean's mother's arm and Bean did the same on the other side. Though it was hot and muggy, and the pregnant woman between them would have been more comfortable being left alone, she spread her wings like a mother hen.

The pastor was a thick man with thin hair slicked back. He looked like a miner who had moved toward ministry, but he talked with a wheeze and Ruby sat enraptured by his words and the readings from the King James Bible that lay open on the pulpit in front of him. His name was printed on the bulletin at the bottom, H. G. Brace, and Ruby thought it humble of him that his name was so low on the page.

The text this day was from the book of Exodus, about the plight of the Israelites enslaved by cruel Pharaoh and the Egyptians who used the Israelites for their own devices, having forgotten all that Joseph had done. Joseph had interpreted the dream of Pharaoh and had saved the Egyptians, but a new leader had arisen who either didn't know the story or didn't care. Pastor Brace reminded them that Joseph's brothers had meant to do him evil, but God brought good from it and could do the same in their lives.

There was a smattering of amens in the room, followed by more crusty coughing. As the pastor continued, Ruby leaned forward and noticed a commotion coming through the open windows. There was noise down the railroad tracks. The pastor continued until they heard the audible voices of miners shouting for help.

(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Under a Cloudless Sky"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Chris Fabry.
Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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