John C. and Hiley: The Struggle of a Coal Mining Family

By John H. Corns

Thirteen-year-old John C. McCoy slips into the cold water of the Tug Fork River and swims through the darkness to the West Virginia shore and his future. It is 1909, and in a dozen years, he and his wife, Hiley, and two daughters struggle to survive, and the couple joins the fight for food, shelter, and safety in the coal fields. In 1979, shortly after John C. dies, his grandson, an Army colonel, seeks the story of the mine wars, denied to him in public education, and the role of his grandfather in those wars, a story denied to him by his family. He discovers violence, Matewan and Baldwin Felts detectives, Police Chief Sid Hatfield, the Battle of Blair Mountain, and a dark struggle of spies, distrust, and betrayal. And as the larger mystery for him unfolds, he fears the nature of his grandfather's actions in that war, doubts that he should be searching, and asks himself, what will he find, and to whom will he tell what he has found. What was his grandpa's role, and will it write a story of pride or shame?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 11, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595603114

John H. Corns

John Corns is a graduate of Marshall University and a retired Army officer. He is the author of seven other books including the novels, Owain’s Own and The Bench. John and his wife, Carol, reside in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

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Copyright © 2008 by John H. Corns

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ISBN: 978-0-595-48221-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-60311-4 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

In Memory of… Sibyl, Sylvia, Sidney, Mack, and Janice

If a cause is just, it will eventually triumph in spite of all the propaganda issued against it.

—E. C. McKenzie

Image300.JPG

Introduction

This story responds to happenings in the lives of John C. McCoy and his wife of sixty-two years, Hiley Maude Belcher. They were my maternal grandfather and grandmother. The story is true, or all that we can reasonably take as true among the lore and traditions of the McCoy family. I have taken some liberties, the principal one being the creation of the narrator of the story, one Mitchum Hatfield, and his wife, Margaret. He, or she, never lived, and I base them on no single person, living or dead. He helps me tell the story of John C. and Hiley, relating information I obtained over time from various sources.

The reader is asked to savor the words of Mitchum Hatfield and the times and people of whom he speaks as he tells of a friend, fellow hillbilly, coal miner, union member, and enemy of private detectives, county and state police, federal soldiers, newspaper publishers, judges, courts, and federal legislators who said they only sought to enforce the laws in the hills of West Virginia in the early twentieth century—laws of the establishment, by the establishment, and for the establishment—designed to exploit the labors of men, women, and children by low wages in unsafe working conditions to ensure low production costs and to promote the profits on coal sold by operators of the state of West Virginia to Canadian and other manufacturers seeking to avoid the higher costs of coal mined in Indiana and Illinois, coal taken from the ground there by union miners who enjoyed a higher level of wages and mine safety, of sorts, that West Virginia miners lacked and were ready to fight and die for—and did.

1 

My grandfather John C. was dead.

It was a cold day in mid-November of 1979, and I had just arrived home to visit. He had passed away three months earlier while I was serving with the Army in Korea, and I had not been able to return for his funeral services. He had been sick for some time, victim of repeated minor strokes before the one that was fatal. My grandmother Hiley was still living, but her world had gotten smaller and quieter, and I found for her to say hello and talk of grandchildren and great grandchildren was ample effort; so I turned to others for—for what? For a word to help me feel what I might have felt on that day three months before? Or to ask some specific question about his last days, his last minutes?

No, I sought to sit with him, to hear him talk, to watch him lean forward in his chair and pull a half-emptied bag of Bagpipe chewing tobacco from his rear pocket, fashion a small ball of the dark, pungent chew, and place it in his jaw—the right jaw—the one that was a bit looser, that protruded slightly on its own when no chew of tobacco was present. I wanted to ask him . I wanted to sit and listen to whatever he might like to say; whatever he would want me to know; to anything he wanted me to remember after he was gone.

But he was gone, and he could not tell me. I could not ask him.

But there was someone.

Three days later I was in the southern tip of West Virginia, in Mingo County, to find a man I had never met; had not known existed until a few months earlier. His name was Mitchum Hatfield. He was my grandfather’s friend of the early days, the days of gun-toting, hungry, mining fathers with hungry children who came to the land along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River to shovel coal in exchange for credit at a coal company store. I had directions to Mr. Hatfield’s house, southeast of Williamson, given to me two days earlier by his wife over the telephone. The house was not hard to find, and I was on time; in fact some ten minutes early despite having driven an extra twenty minutes beyond the house and back before I pulled to a stop, the right tires of my car in the rut made by repeated stops by the mail carrier at the mailbox. There was no other room to park. The house was beside the two-lane road on a pinched strip of land. The gray-brown, naked limbs of scrub trees lightly covered the steep sides of the mountains. To the southwest ran the tight, Tug Fork River Valley. Outcroppings of rock lay in silhouette against the overcast sky atop the mountain behind the house. Somewhere up there would be a devil’s tea table, a flat rock held above the dark earth by a pedestal-like column of stone. There had been one on the mountain of my early childhood. They were all over southern West Virginia. I left my car, taking up one-third of the width of the road, and walked around it to the steps of the house. There was a screened door over the main doorway, and I knocked, the rattling of the doorframe more than adequate to awaken anyone inside.

I heard the shuffling of feet, and I saw they were in moccasins as the door opened, and a man leaned to see out. He did not look as old as my grandfather looked the last time I saw him; for one thing, this man had healthier—though more wrinkled—skin about his face and neck and he had more hair; fluffy full, well brushed back, and snow-white. My grandfather’s hair had still been mostly brown and quite thin the last time I saw him at his age of eighty-two.

Are you John? The man asked, before I said hello.

Yes, Sir, I am. Hello.

Come on in. He swung the wooden door farther open and stepped back. I opened the screened door, hearing the familiar squeal of lightweight and un-lubricated, metal hinges. He extended his hand, and I took it and felt it pull away after I applied only the slightest pressure, and I noted the swollen fingers. He was wearing a flannel housecoat, belt tied at the waist. His legs were bare from the mid-shin level of the bottom of the coat to the gray, leather moccasins on his feet. The coat was dark blue with thin, vertical, white or cream stripes. The rounded collar of a white undershirt appeared between the lapels of the housecoat. The white hair bounced as he walked, and he brushed it back from his forehead with a hand after sitting in a large lounge chair that looked old and comfortable. He motioned me to a large, overstuffed chair that set at an angle, as did the lounge chair, oriented on the television that displayed a colored picture, which was both blurry and marred by ghost lines around the forms of the man and woman featured on the screen. I guessed it was a soap opera, and he used a remote to silence the voice of the man who was taking his turn to talk as I sat in the chair. It was within minutes of two o’clock in the afternoon.

I looked around the room.

Margaret’s not here. She works at the Dollar Store down at the intersection; said to tell you hello and hoped you’d stay for supper; said she’d bring some pizza home. You like pizza?

Yes, I do, thank you. But I don’t think I should stay that long.

Beer?

Sir?

Do you like beer—with your pizza?

Yes, but—

He got up with some difficulty, shuffled through the door, and I heard the clank of bottles, a refrigerator door close, and the shuffling as he came back into the room. He was carrying two bottles of Budweiser.

They’re twist tops, he said as he held one out to me.

Thank you, I said.

Well, she’s bringin pizza because of what you told her. He took a long drink of beer.

What I told her? I hadn’t mentioned food of any kind to his wife—Margaret.

Yeah, you said on the phone that you wanted me to tell you about my friend John C., and I don’t know what you want to hear; so I told her I’d tell you everything I know, and that could take a while—four or five hours, at least.

I appreciated Mr. Hatfield’s readiness to share with me, but I had not expected to learn all he knew in one visit, and certainly not in as little as five hours. I was prepared to spend another half day.

That is what you’re here for, ain’t it?

Well, yes.

Now, Margaret says you’re some kind of rankin military man, and you’re thinkin on writin about John C. That true?

I’m a colonel in the Army, and yes, I may, someday, write about my grandfather, an article for a magazine, or maybe a book.

Now, what especially are you lookin for?

I don’t have a special thing, just what you know about my grandfather. Actually, I did have something, or some things, special, but should I ask him? Especially about things I had heard, that may not be true. Like a shooting in front of a courthouse. But, I did know one thing: my grandfather had been sentenced to serve time at Moundsville State Prison, something less than eighteen months that I could recall, but I didn’t know for what offense.

I guess I do have one thing special. I’m sure he spent time in the Moundsville penitentiary, but I don’t know what it was for—the offense he was found guilty of, I said.

Uh, Huh. He looked at me for a moment or so. Anything else—special, I mean? There was a hint of a smile, or maybe a smirk—no, more like a smile. I didn’t like it. It would be better just to let him talk and see what came out. He was watching me closely.

You … uh … a little worried about what you may find out, John?

I started to say no. It was on the tip of my tongue. But, I was worried—a little. I didn’t want to tell him that, though. I was here. I had driven for three hours. So what, if he told me something that I didn’t want to hear? I had told myself I would let the chips fall as they may; that I could deal with whatever was in my grandfather’s past.

I’ve heard a couple of things .in the family, but they may not have any basis at all.

Like what?

I wished I knew what was on his mind. I didn’t know this man. What he thought of me should not make that much difference. But it did. He seemed a bit amused. And not impressed.

Well, I know he did do some shooting in one or more of the union strikes, I said.

He appeared more serious to me now. The little smile, if that was what it was, was gone. I see, he said. You want to know about all of that do you?

I wanted to know, but I had to admit to myself that I had reservations. Would I learn something that I would really want to put in a book? But then, whatever I learned, I didn’t have to write about it. I didn’t have to write at all. But that was my idea—to write about my grandfather—maybe even as a kind of hero in the struggle for the rights of coal miners and their families. What would it mean if I decided not to write—because of what I learned—because of what he had done? No, I could handle that, whatever it was. I had already had those thoughts. But now I seemed on the edge of learning what happened. How about members of my family, John C.’s children and grandchildren—even great grandchildren? Would it be fair to them?

Is that what you want me to tell you about? He was sitting up quite straight now, an air of judgment about him. About me, I thought.

Yes. I do. I want to know all you can tell me.

"Well, all right. We ought to get started. You don’t have one of those record-

I do. As a matter of fact, I do, in my car.

Well, you’d best fetch it cause I don’t want to have to tell you somethin two times. He took a good drink.

I’ll get it. I looked for a place to set my beer, and finally put it down on the linoleum flooring, careful to miss the ridges where the uneven floorboards underneath shaped ridges in the linoleum.

Two or three minutes later when I came back with my little black bag and the tape recorder, he was returning from the kitchen with two more beers. He set one by my nearly full bottle and lowered himself back into the lounge. He seemed more at ease again. Maybe because I was. The brief walk out in the cold air had been good for me.

This is my rheumatism chair. The salesman said it would help my rheumatism, and the doctor said it would too, but the doctor says he means it will help the rheumatism get worse because I sit in the chair too much. He laughed and took a drink. He don’t know that half the time I sleep in it too—all night. Margaret says sometime I’m gonna wake up sittin in this chair out in the road with my marriage license on my lap. You’ll like Margaret. She can be real funny.

I had the recorder ready to go. Can I set this on the table beside your chair? I asked.

Sure, he said and removed two empty beer bottles from the table and put them on the floor by his chair. I walked over and laid the recorder on the table and punched the record button.

We’re recording now. Is that all right with you?

Sure. Whenever, he said. I noted there were three empty bottles beside his chair, all beer bottles.

What I would like to do—, I began …

I’m just gonna talk, if that’s all right with you, he said. I’ll talk for a minute and you can check this recorder machine to make sure I’m gettin on it, and then we can go on. I started to ask if he had done this before, but I guessed that he hadn’t; he simply had given this some thought in advance, and I was glad he had.

That will be fine, I said.

I’m gonna start at the start, if you know what I mean. I think you need to know the background and all. And I’ll tell you about two or three men really important to the whole story, men you need to know. Some of what I’ll tell you I just got from other people, you know? I mean, John C. was eleven years older than me; so I got things to say, some of it came from him, some from other people, you know? The second thing, this ain’t gonna be about me; not that I don’t have some things worth tellin, but that ain’t what Margaret said you want, and if you don’t mind my sayin, I don’t know you, even if you are—and I don’t doubt that you are, you know—John C.’s grandson. I’d just as soon wait ‘til I know you some better to talk about me, you know?

Yes, I understand that. I really appreciate you taking all this time, Mr. Hat-field.

And another thing, there were others—John C. and me had other friends, and I may mention them some—but I’m gonna keep my words mostly to John C. and me; that is things he told me, or other people told me.

I understand, Mr. Hatfield.

Call me Mitch. Don’t know nobody that calls me Mr. Hatfield anymore. Everybody calls me Mitch. Except Margaret. She calls me Mitchum—and Honey—but then she calls just about everybody Honey. All the women do that in these parts, and Buddy. Now most of us men will call you Buddy a lot, especially if you’re just passin through. We call most everybody new, Buddy. But Margaret is about the only soul that calls me Mitchum, and I don’t mind her callin me Mitchum, but I’d rather you call me Mitch. He took another drink of beer, this one almost a sip, and then, as if he just noticed it too, he took a longer drink and set the bottle on the table. He turned and looked down at the recorder and spoke to it.

Now, I’m gonna tell you about John C.—and Hiley.

2 

"John C. hardly knew his mother, Rosetta. He said his uncle told him his mother’s name. He never remembered her. He didn’t know his daddy at