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jargon and protocol, Artway sensed that this peck wasn't much more than he and the others there but since you had to be careful how you spoke to white folk he decided to play along. "That's what I'm here for, to work, you hiring today?" The white miner went through the same jaw changing and spitting ritual again. "I believe I'll make you my bradisher." Dad had no idea what a bradisher was or what he did. "When do we start?" Spitting ritual again, "We start Thursday night. Go over to the commissary and get yourself some muckers. You got any money? If'n don't, you can take them up. Better still, go over to the check office and ask for Miss McClain and tell her I said to issue you a check card. I'll see you at 4 o'clock Thursday, don't be late."

That evening, Mr. Sun Wilson, who was Artway's landlord, gave him a thorough orientation on how each miner could have an account in the commissary and how they ran your bill up so you never cleared enough money to get ahead. He explained that workers normally had to be on the job a month before they got a check card. Mr. Sun mused that old man Hank Faraday probably needed Dad more than Dad needed him. Mr. Sun also explained that bradishers were mostly white because they needed to know how to read and write. They were kind of apprentice carpenters that accompanied safety inspectors as they inspected for dangerous gases and repaired wooden entrances to mineshafts. Rumors had it that Mr. Faraday was being moved up to safety inspector because he had been an outstanding bradisher for over twenty years. Mr. Sun believed that my father had been sought out strictly for his reading skills. It was pretty well known that Mr. Faraday's reading ability was pretty shaky. So for the next 13 years, Mr. Faraday and my father made an excellent team.

Mr. Faraday earned safety engineer's pay ($9.00 a day) and did most of the bradisher work. My father did most of the reading and handed the tools to Mr. Faraday and received bradisher's pay ($5.00 a day). When my father went to the check office to apply for a check card the next day, Miss McClain immediately recognized his handwriting as the same writing that had appeared on several other applications that week. When she asked about it, my father admitted that he had assisted several others (this caused him to feel much apprehension because he did not know if it was against company rules or not). She went to the rear of the office and spent several minutes talking to her supervisor. She came back and told my father that since he was going to be working at night, he could make some extra money filling out applications for colored applicants who could not read and write. It seemed that the white women working in the office were offended because many of the colored men applying for jobs were dirty, didn't smell very good, and their verbal skills were so poor that white clerical workers often could not understand what they were saying. For this reason they offered to pay Artway 25 cents for each application they referred to him. Although no one dared describe it as such, but within two days he had obtained a $5.00 a day job and a sideline position as a collateral personnel clerk.

That night he sat down and wrote his wife another letter. Back in Silverrun as Marie read the letters aloud to the Archie family, her father declared that those were all lies and "that boy have a small man's complex and always wanted to make himself sound big. He showed what kind of man he were when he run off and left his wife and baby." Two weeks later when my mother received a letter with $10.00 enclosed; old man Archie had to slightly change his tune. Still he wasn't buying everything that was said in those letters. "However, I will admit that the boy is a good worker."

Meanwhile in Acmar, good things were still happening for the small man becoming known as Pint. He had quickly moved to the top of the company's housing list for colored. After only two months, he received notice that a duplex was available on Number 1 Hill. Now this was a super