Coal Run

by Tawni O'Dell

  I suffered less in college than I did in high school. Joe Pa worked us hard, but he took care of us. To him, football was a noble sport and the men who played it were prized athletes. To Deets, football was a brawl with a winner and a loser and the boys who played it were either winners or losers.

  I’ve often wondered what Deets would have thought of the current generation of pampered millionaires playing his precious game if he had lived to see it: quarterbacks running off to get their pinkies x-rayed, linemen getting hooked up to IVs during halftime because they feel dehydrated, backs heading for the sidelines to avoid getting hit when they might have been able to eke out another half yard if they’d stayed in-bounds. Deets called that particular move “pussyfooting,” and the punishment for doing it in a game was having the soles of your feet rubbed raw with sandpaper at the next practice.

  But Deets didn’t care what he did to us, because he wasn’t preparing us to go any further. He didn’t believe we were training for a possible lucrative career. We weren’t on a road to fame and fortune. I don’t even think he saw it as a sport. To him, playing high-school football was simply the most important thing we would ever do in our lives.

  I open the door and walk inside. Even tonight my body tenses in remembrance of the night of my accident. That pain was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It wasn’t just a feeling but a presence, like a flaming blanket thrown over me. It couldn’t be contained solely in the area where it originated and had spread to every inch of my body. Even then it was still expanding, searching for ways to escape the confinement of my skin. I was sure I could actually see my flesh pulse with it.

  The gear that fell on me was heavy—heavy enough to easily crush all the bones and cartilage in my knee—but after I regained consciousness, I was able to push it off me in one of those agony-fueled adrenaline rushes that enable a mother to push a car off her trapped child or one dying soldier to carry another dying one to safety.

  I had managed to drive myself to Gertie despite how drunk I was, but I forgot about my car’s being there after the accident happened. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since I wouldn’t have been able to drive. I dragged myself instead for a half mile down the same dirt- and gravel-packed road my mother once dragged me up going in the opposite direction.

  The moon was bright and full that night and had the effect of a spotlight. I could see clearly within a few feet of me in every direction; then the rest of the world fell away into inky country darkness.

  I stopped to rest once, on the verge of passing out, and tried to prop myself into a sitting position, which proved to be impossible. I glanced behind me and saw a trail of dark stains on the road leading up to me. They turned out to be smears of my own blood, but for one homesick moment filled with fear and love, I was sure they were the bloody footprints of a miner’s wife.

  I continued and made it to the main road before passing out. I was found by a truck driver around 2:00 A.M. He checked my driver’s license in my wallet. He knew who I was, and it turned out he also knew my mother. He got me to the hospital faster than any ambulance could have on those particular roads.

  I vaguely remember my mother’s pale face hovering over me, her hair pulled back in the same ponytail she was wearing the day my dad died, trying hard not to look in my eyes, searching for a doctor’s eyes instead.

  “Is he going to be okay?” she kept repeating.

  Her voice and stare were equally glassy. Her hand rose and fell uselessly, like she was mechanically conducting an absent band; she couldn’t decide if she could risk touching me or if she should already give me up as she’d already had to give up the others.

  I take a handful of the hard candy sitting in a basket on the reception desk and start peeling off wrappers and popping pieces into my mouth on the way to my mom’s office. I hope she’s there and I don’t have to go searching for her in patients’ rooms.

  The lights in the building have been dimmed, and many of the residents have already dropped off to sleep, with and without chemical aid. Small, pearlized Jesus Christ night-lights extend down the baseboards of the hallway like a glowing elfin army lined up for maneuvers. I watch them for a moment, until I’m convinced they’re moving.

  When I look up and see this woman coming at me, I think she must be a drunken hallucination, too.

  At first I only see parts. Brownie’s wall come to life. A mile of leg in a dove gray suit with a short swingy skirt and high-heeled black patent-leather pumps. A mass of dark curls. Lips with a natural raw redness to them, like she’s been chewing on them nervously or she just got done eating a cherry popsicle. Amber eyes the same golden shade of brown as Mr. Perez’s smuggled Havana Club rum.

  She’s in a hurry and has the kind of harried, distracted air about her that makes men look tired but makes women look combative.

  She stops and stares at me like I’m a simple undertaking she understands thoroughly but might still give her trouble anyway.

  “The great Ivan Z,” she states without any show of emotion—good or bad—and without emphasizing “the great” in any way.

  Hearing it makes me think about some of the old miners whose real names I can’t even remember anymore. They’ve always gone by nicknames and still do even though the reasons behind them were lost a long time ago: Hairy Riley, who’s bald as a cue ball; Smiley Lawson, who’s practically toothless; Happy Jenks, who’s hacking and gasping and slowly suffocating in Centresburg Hospital hooked up to a respirator and definitely not happy.

  She extends her hand.

  “Your mother and I were just talking about you.”

  I take the hand. Another part. It’s cool and dry. The skin soft but the grip firm. Slender fingers. No rings. Nails unpolished, clean pink with rounded white tips like moon slivers.

  “Huh?” I respond brilliantly.

  “Your mother and I,” she repeats slowly, exaggerating every word like I might be hard of hearing or English might not be my native language, “we were just talking about you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m on a fund-raising committee for the hospital. We’re holding a silent auction tomorrow night to raise money for the new children’s ward. Your mother suggested that maybe you could donate a signed football to auction off?”

  “She did?”

  “Yes. I was thinking that maybe you could donate a little more. How about dinner?”

  Her question blindsides me. For a moment I just stare at her blankly. It’s been a long time since a woman propositioned me. They used to do it so frequently that one of my roommates stole a number dispenser from the deli at a grocery store and installed it in our apartment outside my bedroom door. After a party I’d have girls showing up outside my classes, at my parked car, outside the locker room, in bars, in front of Old Main, every one of them waving paper numbers at me. That all ended when my career did.

  “Dinner? Sure. Anytime.”

  “Great.”

  She smiles. Every nerve ending in my body fires. I made her smile. I’ve pleased her. She’s pleased that she’s going to dine with me. Shit, where can I take her? Eat’nPark? The Ponderosa? The Valley Dairy?

  I need to think of someplace that demands a dress. A slinky dress. A short, tight, slinky dress.

  “Then we’ll auction off a dinner with the great Ivan Z, the award-winning, all-star, whatever-you-call-it, football-star guy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Can you still throw a football?”

  “What?”

  “Can you still throw a football?”

  “I . . . uh, I never threw a football. I mean, I don’t mean I never threw one. I did. I can. I mean, it wasn’t my position. To throw a football. I ran with it.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  She looks bewildered, but I detect a slight smile. I get the feeling the innocent confusion might be an act, maybe part of a joke, but I can’t figure out why she’d want to torment me.

  “Did you ever kick it?”

  “No.”


  “Oh, well,” she sighs. “I thought that might be fun for the man who bids on you. For you to throw a football to him or even kick it to him, but if that’s not what you did . . .” She tucks her lower lip under her top teeth and bites it. “I suppose it would be difficult for you to run with it now.” She glances at my knee. “Maybe you could just cradle it tenderly in your arms while you tell him some amazing football story, like the time you won the Daisy Bowl.”

  “You mean the Rose Bowl? We won the Sugar Bowl.”

  “Great. Just as long as you won some kind of bowl.”

  “You mean you want me to have dinner with someone else?” I manage to ask. “You want to auction off a dinner with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like a bachelor auction?”

  “Oh, a woman bidding on you. That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I should be welcoming death right about now, or at least exiting quickly, but I’m a man, and although male pride and the male ego can be damaged and even destroyed in extreme circumstances, the male desire to be in the presence of a woman he finds extraordinary can’t be tampered with.

  Even if it’s the last thing I ever get to ask her, I have to know who she is.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  She smiles radiantly, but there’s still a touch of mischief in it, as if she knows someone is standing behind me making faces.

  “I’m sorry. I never introduced myself. I’m Chastity. Chastity Morrison. Dr. Morrison. That’s why I’m here. I was checking on a patient.”

  “You’re a Dr. Chastity?”

  “I know. It’s not the greatest name to be saddled with, unless you’re a pilgrim or a stripper. What can I say? My mom was a Cher fanatic.”

  “But your name is Chastity.”

  She sighs again.

  “What were you doing in the seventies? I’m named after her daughter.”

  “Right.”

  “Didn’t you watch Sonny & Cher?”

  “Not really.”

  She shakes her head and glances at her watch. She’s about to leave.

  “Do you know what Chastity means?” I ask her.

  “No, I don’t,” she says, opening her eyes wide with mock admiration for the impressive explanation she’s expecting me to deliver. “I’m a surgeon who somehow managed to graduate with honors from Carnegie-Mellon and put herself through medical school without knowing the definitions of simple words. Do you know what Ivan means?”

  “It’s really pronounced Ee-von. It’s Russian for John.”

  “Do you know what John means?”

  “A man who hires a prostitute?”

  Her smile returns.

  “A toilet?” I try again.

  “God is gracious,” she says.

  “No it doesn’t.”

  “Yes it does.”

  “It does not.”

  “Yes it does.”

  “No it doesn’t.”

  “Okay. All right. You win. Monosyllabic, arrested sense of humor, immature. You’ve certainly done wonders to help debunk the stereotype of a dumb jock.”

  She delivers the insult with another one of her wry but radiant smiles.

  “Yeah, well.”

  “So do we have a deal?”

  “Sure. What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing. I’ll contact you after you’ve been sold. Can you still donate an autographed football, too?”

  She doesn’t wait for a response from me, or maybe I nodded.

  “Just give the ball to your mom. Or even two balls. Actually, I’ll take as many balls as you can give me.”

  With that she walks right past me, down the hall, and out the door.

  I continue on to my mom’s office after I manage to tear my eyes away from the place in space where her legs and the rest of her body disappeared into the black night.

  I find my mom sitting behind her huge slab of a dark wood desk signing forms and looking very magisterial in her tan tweed suit with a pair of glasses perched on her nose and her hair pulled back in a knot. She’s never worn makeup except for special occasions. My father didn’t like her to. He said it was an affront to nature, like spray-painting a swan.

  On all sides she’s surrounded by shelves crammed full of books, papers, and dozens of trinkets, knickknacks, and framed photos residents have left for her after they passed on.

  “Why didn’t we watch The Sonny & Cher Show?” I ask her as I take a seat in one of the chairs in front of her desk where the loved ones of Safe Haven’s internees have all sat in the past, racked with guilt or relief or a combination of both as they signed the crisp, blue-bordered white document with the home’s seal of an eagle returning to her nest at the top.

  “Jolene and I did,” she answers me. “Jolene would have never missed an episode. To this day she could probably describe every one of Cher’s gowns. You didn’t like it. You didn’t like the fact that Cher was taller than Sonny.”

  I slide back in the chair, extend my legs, and rub at my tired eyes.

  “God, I was so enlightened.”

  “You were a child,” she says, still busily writing. “Any particular reason why you wanted to know about Sonny and Cher?”

  “How could I have missed Dr. Chastity? Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

  “What was I supposed to tell you?” she asks, smiling down at her hand traveling over the papers. “There’s an attractive female surgeon at the hospital? You should run over there and try and have sex with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m your mother. It’s not my place to help you find women to sleep with. It’s my place to help you find a woman to marry and have children with, but since you have no interest in doing that, and since I happen to like Chastity, I wasn’t about to introduce you.”

  “I think I was insulted somewhere in there.”

  “So how was the funeral?” she asks. “Were people standing?”

  “Yes,” I say, remembering Val leaning against the pink flocked wallpaper.

  She finally stops writing, takes off her glasses, and gives me a maternal once-over that makes me instinctively straighten up in my chair.

  “How are you?” she asks. “You look awful.”

  “How awful?”

  “Pretty awful. But maybe I’m the only one who sees it. Sometimes I wonder. Jack obviously doesn’t see it. Even Zo refused to believe you have a drinking problem.”

  “She also refused to believe Liberace was gay.”

  She doesn’t smile at this, but, to my relief, she decides not to pursue the subject of my drinking. She sticks with Liberace.

  “I wonder who Zo left all those albums to. She must have fifty of them. I hope it’s not me.”

  “So where’s she from?”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Chastity Morrison.”

  “Clearfield.”

  “Clearfield?” I cry.

  “Yes, Clearfield. What’s so shocking about that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just assumed she had to come from someplace exciting and interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s exciting and interesting.”

  “Maybe you’ve underestimated Clearfield. You come from Coal Run, by the way.”

  “Yeah, I know. A ghost town. Now, that’s appropriate.”

  She ignores my beginning descent into self-pity.

  “Are you giving her a ball?” she asks.

  “I’m giving her a lot of balls and a dinner, too.”

  “You’re having dinner with her?”

  “No, she’s auctioning me off.”

  Mom laughs.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “I didn’t think she’d have dinner with you. I’m pretty sure she’s engaged.”

  “Engaged? No. I refuse to believe it. She wasn’t wearing a ring.”

  “So? We had a crisis in water therapy today.” She quickly changes the subject in order to distract me. “One of our patients fell out of the harness. Fel
l. She wasn’t dropped. But it just so happened her daughter was here. She called her lawyer that very minute. It was Mike. He didn’t want to make any problems for me. I felt bad for him.”

  “How can you possibly ever feel bad for Mike?”

  “He’s a decent man. I know you take a dim view of his profession on the whole, but some lawyers serve a worthwhile purpose.”

  “So do certain poisons.”

  Mom gets up from her big leather-studded wing chair, the one that used to sit behind Zo’s grandfather’s desk at First National. Zo didn’t want it for her office. She was a small woman and felt dwarfed by it. The first time she took a seat in it and saw her reflection in the window, she scowled and said it looked like a bird had flown over and shit her there.

  My mother gives the back of the chair a swat, a reflex action from all her years living in a mining town. She could never walk past a couch or an easy chair without slapping it to see how much coal dust rose out of it, to gauge how soon she needed to vacuum again.

  If her intention was to get my mind off Chastity, it worked. My dislike for Mike Muchmore is a fairly all-consuming emotion that takes up most of my thought processes whenever I’m reminded of it. He defended Reese, but even without that onerous distinction, I’m pretty sure I’d still hate him.

  He was able to get the attempted-murder charge against Reese dropped because no premeditation or malice aforethought could be proved. I remember reading the term in the local newspaper the day after the verdict was delivered. “Malice aforethought”: big words the reporter had to look up in a crime reference dictionary after he looked up the term “voluntary manslaughter.”

  Maybe Reese’s actions weren’t premeditated as defined by the law, but that was only because his desire to inflict harm was such a natural part of his composition that forethought wasn’t necessary. Does a disease plan to kill or only thrive in its host?

  It didn’t matter. Muchmore, his first year out of law school paying his dues as a public defender, knew exactly how to work the jury.

  He grew up in Centresburg and was well acquainted with the stubborn pride of people around here when they were faced with something they didn’t understand. Asking for help was equivalent to admitting you were stupid, so we never asked. We either figured it out on our own or decided to either hate the subject and have nothing to do with it or blindly embrace it and hope we weren’t making a big mistake.