a chance and searched the membership of the United Mine Workers Union. He’d checked all the brothers’ names, but Ben Roland was the only match. He was listed as deceased. He’d been married to a Rebecca Sawyer. Tom subconsciously added her to his search list. Meeting Ben Roland’s wife would be a nice surprise for Margaret.
Shortly past noon, he crossed into Tennessee. Since he’d never been to Chattanooga, he decided to stop there for lunch. He saw the sign: Chattanooga keep left, I-75 North; keep right toward Knoxville. He veered right and kept going. He’d never been to Knoxville either.
He expected Knoxville to be another half-hour or 45 minutes, but he hit a six-mile stretch of construction and the traffic bottlenecked. It slowed to a crawl for 20 minutes, and his stomach started grumbling. He’d been hungry before he reached Chattanooga. Now he was ravenous. A few miles past Athens, he spotted a sign saying Knoxville was another 50 miles. He pulled off at the next exit, wolfed down a quick burger, grabbed a Coke and two candy bars, then got back on the road. He could do without seeing Knoxville, at least this time around.
Just past Knoxville he took Route 40, merged onto I-85, and continued north. With a full stomach and few distractions, he went back to thinking about the Hobbs family. Margaret had given him a place to start with Nellie. If she’d lived in Huntington as a young girl, there was a reasonable chance that she’d married and settled down there. Once he got to Huntington, his first stop would be the city clerk’s office. Hopefully, he’d find her name in the marriage records and not death certificates.
John Paul was more of a challenge. The only thing he had to go on there was that the boy was deaf in his right ear and loved nature. No last known address other than Coal Creek. If at some point in time he’d consulted an ear doctor or purchased a hearing aid, Tom had a chance of finding him. The chance was slim, though, considering how little money the family had and how much a specialized doctor would have cost.
When Tom finally got to the end of Sullivan County, he left Tennessee and passed into Virginia. Virgil was the most troubling of all the brothers. No matter how many times Tom tried to imagine a scenario that would establish an obscure path for him to follow, he circled back to the same question: How did a 10-year-old boy with no skills and no money leave home on his own?
Something was wrong; didn’t jibe. Was it possible he did have money? The $1000 that disappeared with Martin Hobbs was still unaccounted for.
Tom yawned and rolled his neck. Sitting behind the wheel for such a long stretch was both tedious and tiring. Beautiful as the countryside was, he’d had his fill of seeing nothing but trees. In time I-85 became Route 119, and he wouldn’t have realized he was in Kentucky were it not for a small sign at the side of the road. The view remained the same: blacktop bordered by more trees. Once he got to West Virginia, he started looking for a place to stop for dinner. By then the highway had narrowed and turned into a two-lane mountain road that took him through Logan where he left 119.
He’d planned to finish the drive to Charleston after dinner, but once he’d downed a king-size prime rib and two beers, he felt too tired to drive. Checking into the Sleep E-Z motel, he asked for a wake-up call at 7 am. It was an hour’s drive to Charleston. He could be there by eight and in Coal Creek by nine. He’d watch TV for an hour or two, then get a good night’s sleep and start fresh.
——————
AS HE DROVE THE NEXT day, Tom wasn’t sure what to expect when he turned off of Campbell’s Creek Drive onto the unmarked road. Margaret had described the area to him, but the last time she’d seen the place was over 50 years ago. Given that much time a lot could change, but from the looks of things nothing had.
The Split Rock Coal Mine sign was there just as she’d said. The turnoff, graveled for about 100 yards, quickly turned to a dirt road rocky, badly rutted, and only wide enough for a single car. With the Buick bouncing up and down as it was, Tom thought for sure the car would