King of the Mountain

by Fran Baker

  “We still have ten minutes.” Ben’s comment brought her to a halt. “Five to get to work and five to talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “About why you’re so damned eager to believe the worst about me.”

  She started to protest, then sighed heavily and slid back into the booth. “Habit, I suppose.”

  “Habit?” If she’d jumped on top of the table and started stripping off her clothes, he couldn’t have been more astonished.

  “Face it, your family’s name wasn’t exactly revered in my family’s home.”

  “You mean I stayed up half the night trying to figure out why you hate me, and all it amounts to is a habit?”

  “I didn’t say I hate you.” She felt slightly ashamed.

  He pounced on that opening, small as it was. “Well then, what do you think of me?”

  “I’ve never really thought about you as a person,” she admitted with a shrug. “I’ve always just thought of you as the coal baron.”

  “That’s not fair,” he said with a dangerous scowl.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m trying to improve conditions for the miners.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I’ve been working nonstop for five years to bring a power plant to Cooperville that will create jobs for anyone who wants to work.”

  She squirmed uncomfortably as he knocked the props of her preconceived notions out from under her. “There’s still the threat of that pay cut, though.”

  He nodded empathetically. “I hate the thought of that myself, but the reduced demand for steam coal these past few years has hurt the entire industry.”

  “Our five minutes is up,” she said curtly.

  He glanced at the wall clock. “So it is.”

  Kitty slid from the booth and started out of the café while Ben paid their waitress. She could certainly see why he was considered such a shrewd negotiator, but she couldn’t afford to see the situation from his point of view. A few more minutes at that table, she silently conceded, and he’d have had her begging to take a pay cut!

  Tomorrow morning, she decided as she climbed into the Blazer, he could either have a bowl of cold cereal before she picked him up, or he could go hungry. But even as she prepared to deliver her news, she couldn’t stop thinking about him eating his breakfast alone.

  “Let ’er roll!” Ben shouted to be heard above the roar of the continuous miner, a steel-snouted monster that chewed up eight tons of coal every six minutes and spit it out onto the central conveyer. It was Friday, his fourth and final day on the job. In the past week he’d had a touch of it all.

  A thin beam of light down the dark tunnel bobbed in response as another crew member switched on the belt.

  Glittering nuggets of “peacock,” named for its iridescence, rode the conveyer toward the waiting electric cars that would carry it to the aboveground processing plant. There the coal would be cleaned, washed and dried, then sorted into separate piles to accommodate different consumers’ needs.

  Ben had the self-contained processing plant installed when he took over the company reins. It made for a more efficient operation and fewer of the emissions that contributed to acid rain. And he had plans on the drawing board right now for a nonpolluting coke-fired power plant that would transmit electricity from the mine’s front door.

  He knew his mine engineering backward and forward. But as he’d explained to Kitty Tuesday morning, he needed to know how it felt to do the actual work in order to negotiate with the miners. And that meant getting down and dirty.

  “Overflow!” the machine operator shouted.

  Ben automatically picked up his shovel and joined the other workers, feeding the overflow of shattered coal into the mouth of the continuous miner, and he realized he felt more at home than he’d ever felt in his life.

  Nothing in his education or previous experience had prepared him for this alien place. The cool dry air had the faintly acrid bite of coal; the lamp on his helmet punched only a dim, shifting circle in the intense blackness; and the timbers that shored up the tunnel ceiling dangled pale, snaky fungus that brushed against his face.

  As a rule, the seven-man crews worked in silence. That didn’t mean they didn’t communicate, though. A nod of the head or the raising of a gloved hand was as good as—and in some ways more profound than—the small talk that passed for conversation in most of the places he frequented aboveground.

  Ben returned the nods he received now, thinking it was a far cry from the way he was greeted his first day on the job.

  It had proven just as difficult as Kitty had predicted it might. Strong and proud and innately suspicious, the miners hadn’t exactly rolled out the red carpet when she’d introduced him. But they hadn’t turned their backs on him, either.

  “I know that some of you don’t trust my motives for coming down here,” he’d allowed. “And given the fact we’re in the middle of contract talks, I can’t say that I blame you.”

  “Then what are you doing down here?”

  Ben had recognized the miner who’d spoken from his schooldays. It wasn’t the first time the other man had challenged him. He’d hoped, however, they could settle their differences more peacefully than they had in the past.

  “I’m here to learn.”

  The miner’s gaze clashed defiantly, resentfully, with Ben’s. “What can a bunch of coal diggers teach an engineer?”

  He’d checked his irritation at the loaded question and presented his case in a calm, congenial voice. At the same time he’d been careful not to look at Kitty any more often than he’d looked at the other miners, so as not to put her in an awkward position with her coworkers.

  “I’m hoping you’ll learn something from me too,” he’d said in summary.

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not my father.”

  The miner’s eyes had gone murky then, and Ben had guessed he was remembering another time when a similar scene had ended with the two of them slugging it out on the school playground.

  A ventilating fan had blown a fresh breeze between them, and Ben had found himself wondering if it were an omen.

  “In that case,” the miner had finally announced on behalf of everyone else who’d gathered around, “we’re glad to have you here.”

  Ben had accepted the other man’s outstretched hand, relieved to know he was willing to let boyish bygones be boyish bygones.

  Since then, he’d done his damnedest to keep the welcome mat in place. And after four days of robbing pillars, running the ravenous machines that gobbled at the mountains’ wealth, and eating lunch from a pail instead of a plate, he knew he’d allayed the worst of the miners’ suspicions. In turn, he’d developed a deep and abiding respect for the men and women who’d built his family’s fortune through the years by sweat of brow and strength of back.

  “Ready or not—” the blasting foreman warned from the next tunnel over. No sooner had he spoken than the muffled thud of an explosion rode the wet subterranean wind back to where Ben was working.

  “Here we come!” Kitty said when limestone had been spread over the deadly coal dust to keep it from accidentally igniting. Jackhammers in hand, her crew moved in to drive steel expansion bolts into the exposed slate, anchoring it to the more solid layers above.

  Ben didn’t break the rhythm of his swing, but he was prepared to drop his shovel at the first sign of trouble. The mine face was the point of greatest danger. Newly bared roof could collapse without warning, and the thought of Kitty being buried under a ton of rock and rubble aroused protective instincts he hadn’t even known he possessed.

  He’d met a lot of women in his thirty-nine years—he’d even come close to marrying a few of them—but he’d never met a woman like Kitty Reardon.

  She was sunshine and shadow rolled into one enticing package. Her smile captivated him; her frown cut him to the quick; and depending on her mood, her eyes could start a fire in his belly or stop him cold.

  They’d pract
ically lived in each other’s pockets these past four days, riding to and from the mine together, but he hadn’t laid a hand on her since that morning in his kitchen. The truth was, he didn’t trust himself to take it slow and easy with her. And if he’d ever met a woman who needed the kid-glove treatment, it was—

  “All yours,” Kitty informed the crew waiting to put the pillars in as she came out of the newly blown tunnel.

  Ben relaxed his tensed muscles and fed another shovelful of coal into the continuous miner’s gaping maw.

  “That’s some kind of woman,” the man on his right said as Kitty retreated in a swirl of dust and dancing light.

  Ben ignored the remark, trying to keep trouble at bay, and turned back to the overflow pile.

  A just-between-us-guys elbow jabbed him in the rib cage. “Wonder if her skin’s as white below the neck as it is above.”

  Ben froze in mid-swing, fighting the urge to clobber the other miner with his shovel. He’d wondered the very same thing himself, having seen her only in the coveralls, but hearing it phrased so crudely provoked his killer instinct.

  Luckily for the leering miner, the noon whistle blew.

  Ben exchanged his shovel for his lunch box and went in search of Kitty. Even though they hadn’t stopped for breakfast again, they always ate together at noon.

  He’d forgotten to tell her on the way to work this morning that his Cadillac was ready. The mechanic was going to bring it to the mine so Ben could inspect the repairs before he drove it home in the evening.

  The first place he looked for her was in a cavern cut into the tunnel’s side that served as a lunchroom. Nine miners sat there, their headlamps creating a pool of warmth in the gray gloom.

  No Kitty, he noticed as one by one the men’s blackened faces swung toward him.

  The talk died down, and for just a moment he felt like the outsider he really was. The miners’ faces—watchful and impersonal—were embedded with coal dust.

  “C’mon in, Coop.” The miner with whom he’d finally made peace waved him in, and all the others shifted to make room for him at the slab of rock that served as their table.

  He experienced a warm sense of belonging now, hearing the nickname the miners had dubbed him with his second day on the job. Solidarity might be a thing of the past in some places, he thought, but it was alive and well in Cooperville.

  “Thanks.” He sat down and, opening his lunch pail, took out his sandwich and thermos of coffee.

  “So,” one of the miners said, picking up the thread of the conversation that had been momentarily dropped when Ben came in, “you really think Louisville is gonna go all the way this year?”

  “They’ve got the best basketball team that ever took a court,” another miner answered around a bite of his sandwich.

  “Put your money where your mouth is.” A third miner dug into his pocket for a dollar to start the betting pool.

  Ben anted up along with everyone else, but his mind wasn’t on the action. He was thinking of heavenly blue eyes and of the shadows that occasionally dimmed their sparkle—dark shadows that made him suspect they’d witnessed the worst kind of hell a woman could endure.

  Five

  “There’s gonna be an Elvis impersonator at Old King Coal’s week from tonight,” Dottie Curtis said as she lifted a magnifying mirror from her lunch pail.

  Kitty unscrewed the lid on her thermos and poured hot coffee into her cup. “The girls’ first basketball game starts at seven-thirty that night.”

  Carol Brooks took a quick, quiet bite of her sandwich.

  “The impersonator doesn’t go on until nine.” Dottie had enough stuff in her lunch pail to stock a cosmetics counter. She lined it up beside the mirror in the order she planned to use it. “That means you could drop Jessie off at home after the game and still be there in time for his opening number.”

  “I think I’ll pass.” Kitty would rather have a root canal than walk into a bar by herself. “But thanks for the invitation.”

  Carol took a sip of her coffee.

  The three women, friends for more years than they cared to count, usually ate lunch with the men. But the tunnel they’d blasted that morning had given them a rare opportunity to escape the androgynous world of mining and engage in some girl talk.

  Dottie peered in the mirror now, her foxy features puckering in a grimace. “Load sixteen tons and what do you get?”

  “Another day older and deeper in debt?” Kitty guessed in her best Tennessee Ernie Ford voice.

  “Coal dust in your teeth,” Dottie corrected her friend drolly as she polished her own teeth with the pad of her finger.

  Kitty laughed and bit into her bologna sandwich.

  Carol didn’t even crack a smile.

  Kitty had been trying to corner Carol all week so she could ask her how things were going at home. So far, Carol had successfully managed to avoid her, but her cut lip said it all.

  “Is Jamie excited about the game?” Kitty asked her now, trying to draw the other woman out.

  “Seems to be,” Carol said shortly, stuffing her half-eaten sandwich back into her lunch pail.

  “Jessie was too.” Kitty took a sip of her coffee, thinking it wasn’t nearly as good as Ben’s. “Until Coach Brown came up with the idea for that ceremony.”

  Dottie opened a small jar of cold cream. “What kind of ceremony?”

  “The girls are going to give their fathers a rose at the end of the season,” Kitty explained.

  “How do Jessie and Jamie feel about that?” Dottie asked, reaching for a tissue.

  “Jessie threatened to quit the team.”

  Carol closed her lunch pail.

  “She also told me that Bob came home.”

  Dottie looked at Carol in disbelief. “When?”

  “A couple of weeks ago,” the other woman admitted in a near whisper.

  Kitty hated putting Carol on the spot like this, but she’d left her no choice. Now she shifted her gaze to the three bruises, each a finger’s width apart, that purpled her neck.

  “He’s a good man when he’s not drinking.” Carol flipped up her shirt collar to conceal the bruises as she defended the indefensible.

  Dottie rolled her eyes in disgust. “That’s what they said about Dracula.”

  “I married him for better or for worse.” There was such a palpable intonation of real and remembered pain in Carol’s defiant statement, Kitty’s stomach turned.

  “Well, if you ask me,” Dottie said, taking the top off her makeup bottle with a decisive twist, “you’re getting the worst of it.”

  “Who asked you?!” Carol’s temper flared, but her split lip trembled mutinously. “And what would you know anyway? You’ve never even been married.”

  Kitty flashed Dottie a don’t-take-it-personally glance, then tried to reason with Carol. “We’re your friends and we’re worried about you.”

  But the battered woman was beyond reasoning. “If you want to worry about something, worry about your own actions.”

  Kitty’s headlamp created crazy patterns on the cavern’s dark wall as she shook her head in confusion. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Carol came to her feet and hugged her lunch box to her heaving chest. “While the rest of us are wondering how we’re going to buy groceries and make the house payment if we have to take a pay cut, you’re driving a brand new Blazer.”

  “I told you that was just a loaner.” Though she hadn’t looked for a different car yet, Kitty was more determined than ever not to keep the Blazer. Her relationship with Ben Cooper was confusing enough. The last thing she needed was to have her coworkers thinking she was colluding with him.

  “Well, if you ask me,” Carol said mimicking Dottie’s earlier tone, “that Blazer gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘sweetheart contract.’ ”

  A silence heavier than doom suddenly descended.

  Kitty understood Carol’s position. In the not too distant past, she’d felt t
he same resentment toward the Cooper family. And Kitty herself wasn’t certain of Ben’s motives. She also knew she had nothing to defend, having done everything in her power to keep her dealings with Ben on a strictly professional level.

  Kitty also realized that her friend was attacking her to keep her from asking questions. But Carol’s problems at home were no excuse for her unfounded accusations right now. And hearing them from a woman she’d always considered one of her closest friends made her sick at heart.

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, Carol.” Kitty’s hands shook as badly as her voice as she poured her cooling coffee back into her thermos.

  “You do that.” Carol spun on her heel to leave, then turned back and all but collapsed at the table. Burying her face in her hands, she burst into tears. “I’m sorry, Kitty,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Dottie. I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “We know you didn’t.” Kitty wrapped her arms around the sobbing woman and waited for the storm to pass.

  Dottie handed her a tissue when it did.

  “I love him, dammit.” Carol wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “The kids do too. Jamie locked herself in her room when he left and cried herself to sleep. And the boys …” She trapped a sob in her throat at the mention of Jamie’s two younger brothers. “They need a man’s guidance, a man’s hand—”

  “So they can learn to raise that hand against their wives?” Kitty couldn’t help but retort.

  “He swore it would never happen again,” Carol said, still on the defensive. She raised a hand to her wounded face but didn’t touch it. “He even brought me a rose …”

  The hearts-and-flowers phase, Kitty thought cynically.

  “It’s like he’s two people,” Carol continued sadly. “The nice guy and the bad guy.”

  “They’re really the same guy, though.” Kitty didn’t want to push Carol into doing something she would regret, but she felt she had to confront her with the facts. Her life and the lives of her children were at stake. “You have to take both together, and you have to ask yourself if that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t know what I want.” Carol balled up her damp tissue and put into her pocket. “All I know is, the harder I try to make him happy, the more miserable he gets.”