The Ballad of Fenton Wells

Author’s Preface

I was born in England in 1955. My father, an American serviceman based in the UK prior to the D-day landings during WW2, was born in Whitesville, West Virginia. My mother was an English GI bride. I first met my American family in Boone County, WV in 1995, when they opened their homes and hearts to me, making the telling of this story possible. I have spent many years listening to family stories, researching the history of the coal fields and spending time in sacred family spaces and places in Big Coal River Valley. I met the late Judi Bonds of Coal River Mountain Watch who opened my eyes to the devastation caused by Mountain Top Removal. She told me about the fight to save the mountains. I saw first-hand the environmental degradation around Big Coal River when the late Larry Gibson took me up Kayford Mountain. My grandfather is buried up at Ameagle and my grandmother close to Route 3 near Sylvester. This book tells what I know of their story in a way that is not unusual for historical biographical fiction. I have taken the thread of a family story and told it as I imagined it to have happened. I have tried to tell the story in a way that respects the privacy and feelings of my family by changing the names of places and people. I have placed it in a historical context through reading key texts such as Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers by Ronald D. Eller and Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields by David A. Corbin. Fenton’s story is similar to many who struggled against poverty and prejudice to raise their children in the coal fields of Southern West Virginia in the early twentieth century. Writing this book has helped me to understand my roots. I once asked Judi Bonds in a letter why I felt so drawn to Big Coal River Valley. She answered simply, ‘It’s the call of the Mountain People.’

I would like to thank Jan Keable, Tony Petch, Eunice Mathers, and Sue Jarrell for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this work of fiction. I would also like to say thanks to Rosie Jarrell for designing the cover. And thankyou to Debbie Jarrell of Coal River Mountain Watch for reading the final draft and giving such supportive and encouraging feedback. The cover photograph Dawn Comes to the Mountains, which is part of the Claude C Matlack Collection, is reproduced with the permission of the Photographic Archives at the University of Louisville, KY. Net proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Coal River Mountain Watch, Naoma, WV, (www.crmw.net).

Chris Jarrell, Hull, East Yorkshire, May 2022

1 Wells Hollow

Fenton Wells sat in a high-backed chair on the porch of his small, weather-boarded house and peered into the early morning light. His coal-stained hands rested on his denim covered knees. He spat tobacco juice off the porch, pushed his wide brimmed hat back off his brow and traced the hazy outline of the mountain on the other side of the hollow. Beech, white and red oak, tulip poplar and sugar maple trees covered the surrounding mountains. But to the rear of the house the mountain was bare, cleared by Fenton’s grandfather for the price of the timber. Fenton could hear the cry of a young deer searching for its mother somewhere up in the trees. In the distance, the minor key of a train whistle sounded as it pulled an endless line of coal cars down Coal Valley. Fenton used to work at loading cars for Halpins Coal, the largest employer in the county. But ever since the strike he had been out of work. It was the vegetables he grew out back in the small garden, together with the chickens, the hog and the cow in the field that kept the family fed. He knew they wouldn’t manage without the few dollars Alice, his wife, made selling garden produce. Seth, his eldest boy, also brought home a wage from his job in the general store in Coalville. As winter approached, Fenton was spending more time worrying about how they would keep five children fed, with a baby on the way.

This quiet mountain homestead was once surrounded by farmland that had been hard won by his ancestors. Tough men and women who had cleared trees and rocks and marked out the fields. Little did Fenton know that his home was now only his own until Halpins Coal needed to start mining the coal seams above the hollow called Wells Branch. He was unaware of what his father’s hastily scribbled cross had meant when the company had put a contract in front of him when times were hard. As a result, Fenton was sitting on land that they could take whenever they wanted. The company could legally force him to sell up as the rights to the coal that sat in the surrounding mountains no longer belonged to him. When Fenton’s parents died, his older brother and sisters had sold their share of the land and moved out of state to Texas and Utah to start new lives. Only his sister, Martha, had stayed in Coal Valley. She married a local man, Hank Forster, setting up house with him in Prospect. Fenton had decided to stay and farm the acre of land held back from the sale to provide him with a home. He was now one of the few remaining descendants of the original settlers from the thirteen colonies still farming the land.

*

The porch boards creaked behind him and Alice, looking pale and drawn, appeared at Fenton’s side. She leaned forward, took the hat from his head, and stroked his red hair with a hand that had seen more hard work than fancy care. He turned in his chair and gently pulled her closer until her rounded belly was close to his face. He kissed the baby. It was unusual for Fenton to be intimate, and Alice was glad of this show of feeling. She knew that, despite his unpredictable temper, he was a kind and thoughtful man who provided for his family and kept them from harm. Fenton had been twenty-eight years of age before he married Alice. He had finally gotten tired of keeping the Wells’ family house and field running on his own. It had been time to overcome his shyness and isolation, find himself a wife and raise some children. New families had been filling the coal towns that were springing up overnight all over Coal Valley. Fenton had been feeling passed over by local women who were marrying newcomers with regular wages. These men had seemed a better bet than the traditional marriages that their mothers, sisters and cousins had agreed to in previous years. Because Fenton was a mountain man, shy and instinctively polite, he had not asked questions when Alice’s sister had suggested they get married. He hadn’t asked what had happened with Alice’s first marriage when she was seventeen. Fourteen years and four children later, he had still not pushed her for an explanation about Seth, born out of wedlock after her divorce at age nineteen. And so, partly out of a truly kind nature, and partly out of a deeply felt need, Fenton had agreed to marry Alice.

‘You come on in now Fen,’ said Alice. ‘All this worrying ain’t gonna help no-one, let alone the baby.’

He stood and followed his wife across the porch and into the house, closing the door behind him against the early morning chill.

*

Fenton stood with his back to the door and looked around the familiar room. It was lit by the light of an oil lamp on the old family dresser that stood against the back wall. The room had a roughly hewn table and chairs at which the family ate their meals. In the middle of the table was a pile of children’s clothing and a sewing basket. There was a large bed in the corner that was covered with a faded patchwork quilt made from scraps of recycled clothes and printed feed sacks. In the room next door, the children lay sleeping under their blankets and coats, despite the strengthening early morning light. They slept two in a bed and Seth, when he was home, on a mattress in the corner. Back in the main room there were two easy chairs either side of the large, open fireplace. This was where Fenton and Alice would spend most of their evenings from now on as the days grew shorter and the nights colder, waiting on the baby’s arrival. A single shot hunting rifle hung on the stone chimney breast with a box of ammunition in one of the dresser drawers. Logs were piled either side of the fireplace and a pail, full of coal scavenged by Seth from under abandoned tipples and spilled railroad cars, sat on the floor next to one of the piles of logs. An ancient coal stove stood in the small lean-to kitchen at the back of the house. Shelves on the kitchen walls held cooking pots, preserved produce from the garden and dry grocery supplies such as coffee and flour.

Alice was standing at the stove in the kitchen, pouring coffee from a pot into two cups. She turned, walked into the main room, and carefully placed the cups on the table. Fenton hung his hat on a nail behind the door, walked the few steps to the table and sat down. Alice sat down opposite, smoothed her long apron over her knees and smiled up at her husband.

‘Maybe you should go talk to the mine clerk at Halpins Creek. See if they ain’t hiring again.’

She knew that she had to tread carefully because Fenton was a proud man and quick to anger. If she were to inadvertently suggest that he wasn’t trying hard enough to keep his family fed, he would dwell on this perceived insult all day. Then he would explode like a dynamite charge, sending her and the kids running for cover.

‘Maybe so,’ he said.

Fenton didn’t find looking for work with the coal company easy. For one thing, he hated walking through the coal camp at Halpins Creek to get to the mine clerk’s office. The living conditions of the miners and their families distressed him. He could never find the words to express that distress, nobody had ever told him what the words were. And so, he ended up just getting plain mad at the world. And another thing, he didn’t always catch the nuances of hiring and firing at the mine. He hadn’t stayed in school long enough to learn to read. And so, he couldn’t read the newspaper reports about the rise and fall of the demand for coal. He didn’t understand that the needs of the northern industrial states to increase or slow production had a direct impact on hiring and firing at Halpins Creek. If that wasn’t enough, Fenton didn’t always follow the conversations between the men who sat round the potbelly stove in Taylors Store in Coalville. Many of them were from England, Wales, Germany, and Greece. Fenton told Alice it was like the Tower of Babel. He had tried without success to listen in as the men shared stories about the latest mine accidents, who’d been injured, and which families had been left without a breadwinner. This last one was important information, as that’s where the vacancies were likely to be.

Come to think of it, he had heard one or two extra trains passing through Coal Valley these last few days. That was a good sign. Maybe Alice was right. Maybe it was time to go back and see the mine clerk and ask about work. He sipped his coffee and, avoiding his wife’s gaze, placed the cup back on the table. He stared long and hard into the black fluid that was as dark as coal oil. Alice stood and, with a sigh, crossed the room to the dresser. She turned out the lamp before going into the children’s room, leaving her husband sat at the table deep in thought.

*

Fenton stood in the bean patch surveying the last of the crop, waiting for his children. The fall sun lit the far side of the hollow and it would be noon before it had crossed the steep wooded hillside and reached his garden. Despite the partial shade, the garden had yielded a good crop this year. Potatoes, corn, beans, tomatoes, and pumpkin had been harvested and preserved for the coming winter months. Alice and the two girls, Nancy and Mary, had filled the kitchen shelves with cans of vegetables. A barrel, now full of potatoes, stood in the corner of the kitchen. The family had eaten well that summer with fresh vegetables every day and milk, meat and eggs taken from the livestock and chickens. Fenton was due to slaughter the hog soon as they were running out of bacon. They also needed sides of pork for salting. The two boys, Luke and Jackson, would help him with the killing of the hog, and the whole family would be involved with butchering and preserving the meat. Alice sometimes sold excess meat, eggs and vegetables to Halpins Coal officials living on Silk Stocking Row. They were able to pay in dollars whereas miners’ families down in the coal camp were paid in company scrip, which was of no use to the Wells family who only dealt in cash. Although there was bartering sometimes with miners’ families for hand me down children’s clothes and shoes. But when there was no work, as was the case now, the Wells family relied on the farming and mountaineering skills their parents and grandparents had taught them.

Nancy and Mary appeared on the porch and, with sleep filled eyes, peered down the side of the house, searching out their father. They knew he would be working somewhere in the garden at this time of day.

‘Pa,’ said Nancy, in a small voice still wary of what dreams may hold. ‘Ma says to get the chickens fed before we eat breakfast.’

Mary who, at five years old was a full six years younger, stood holding her sister’s hand.

‘You best get started then,’ said Fenton, with a smile on his face. ‘Those chickens ain’t gonna feed themselves.’

One morning, Fenton had carried the heavy chicken feed pail because he felt sorry for the girls. Ever since that morning, Nancy would try to get him to help with her other chores before breakfast. Once Alice had realized this, Fenton was under strict orders.

‘Fen, you make sure you don’t spoil them girls.’

Alice knew her daughters had to learn the hard way about the life that was ahead of them. Softening them now would only cause them future pain when they had households of their own to run, and a husband and children to care for.

Luke and Jackson’s chores were to feed the hog and milk the cow. The hog pail was much heavier than the chicken pail. And so, Fenton would help the boys by carrying it as far as the pen, and then they would drag it the last few feet through the gate. And sometimes, for the same reason, he carried the milk pail back to the house, providing Luke had managed to coax enough milk from the cow. Nancy had cottoned on to this seemingly unfair arrangement and that was why, most mornings, she continued to try her luck at getting her father to carry the chicken pail. Mary shared her sister’s indignation about this unequal situation, even if she didn’t fully understand