Coal Run

by Tawni O'Dell

  “And a nimble wrist,” I add.

  The smile continues glowing, and the dark brown centers of her eyes expand until there’s nothing but a rim of copper around them, like twin solar eclipses.

  She leans forward over the table and purses her lips like she’s about to kiss me or spit on me.

  Balls-balls-balls. La-la-la. Balls-balls-balls.

  “That’s right,” she says, and leans back again.

  “You sure you don’t want something to eat?” she asks and pushes her side dish of linguini and clams in my direction. “I’ll never be able to eat all this.”

  I pick up the fork in front of me, meant for the missing mystery date.

  “Do you mind if I ask how a girl goes from growing up in Clearfield to becoming a surgeon in Pittsburgh and then ends up in Centresburg?” I ask before I dig in.

  “Do you want the real, corny truth, or do you want a cynical, sensible answer, like real estate is much cheaper here?”

  “I’ll take the corny truth.”

  “Okay.” She pauses to eat another bite of veal, then launches into her story.

  “All I ever wanted to do was escape. The minute I turned eighteen, I was gone. Off to college in the big city. I went to CMU. Did my residency at Presby. Started on the staff there. Worked my butt off. I rarely had time for a social life, but when I did, I had plenty of offers.

  “Well, even with everything I had going for me, I was unhappy, but I couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t as simple as saying I was exhausted and stressed out from my job. I was truly unhappy.

  “One night I was on a date. I was listening to this guy go on and on about some mutual fund or something financial. For a minute I couldn’t even remember his name. All the men I had known since leaving my hometown just blurred together. They were all the same. Always whining and complaining. All they ever talk about is money and their careers and how everything in their lives is so difficult, when nothing in their lives is difficult.

  “I suddenly realized how much I missed the guys from back home, which was a real shock for me, because at the time I left, one of my worst nightmares was that I would end up married to one of them, living in a trailer with five kids.”

  Her fingers begin pulling apart a chunk of garlic bread, leaving the pieces uneaten in a pile on the edge of her plate. Her voice drops to a husky whisper, and her words pour out rapidly.

  “I started tearing into my date. I said, ‘Can you do anything? You have this job that pays you a lot of money to make more money for a big company that makes more money for a lot of other men just like you, but what can you do besides that? Can you do anything real? Can you fix a carburetor? Paint a house? Pitch a tent? Plant a tree? Tap a keg? Sing a song? Catch a fish? Install a dishwasher? Carve a turkey? Build a table? Build a fire? Can you even fix my toilet?’ ”

  I quickly go through her list in my head. I’m falling short.

  “This is the corny part. I had this moment of homesickness that hit me like a truck. I missed everything. Even all the stuff I used to hate. The peace and quiet. The absolute lack of anything to do on a Friday night. People I used to think were dumber than me and less sophisticated. People I used to get so frustrated and disgusted with because I’d think to myself, How can you be content with this? But I realized that was the key. They were content. Everyone I knew in my current life had everything and was miserable.

  “I started keeping my eyes and ears open for a staff position at a hospital in a smaller town. When this one opened up, I took it.”

  The moons pass by, and the eclipse is over in her eyes. They’re a glowing golden brown again.

  “I know what you mean about the being-content thing,” I tell her. “I used to think the same way about my dad. Even though he died when I was only five, I still knew him long enough to get this strong sense of how content he was with a life I didn’t want to have. It wasn’t that he loved mining. But he was devoted to it.

  “Yet at the same time, he didn’t want me to have it either. He wanted me to go to college and work with my mind, not my hands and body like he did. He wouldn’t have wanted me to be a football player, because in his eyes professional athletes—even though they made a lot of money—were no different than factory workers or miners or farmers. We were all sovok to him.”

  “Sovok?” she asks.

  “Men who did physical labor,” I explain. “It’s a Russian word. To be called sovok literally means ‘you are a shovel.’ He never looked down on this way of making a living or men, like him, who did it. He had great respect for them, but he didn’t revere them the way he did artists, and inventors, and teachers. According to him, a strong back or fast feet could always be replaced, but original thoughts could only come from the individual who thinks them.”

  “Is that the way you think of yourself?” she asks. “Just another strong back and a pair of fast feet?”

  I try to casually throw away the thought, even though it’s always plagued me.

  “I’m sure as hell not a pair of fast feet anymore,” I say.

  She stares back at me. She looks like she might want to argue the point with me but decides to go in a different direction.

  “My dad was the same way,” she says. “He worked for Brockway Glass until it closed down, and I never got the feeling he wanted to do anything else, but I had two older brothers, and he always kept after them to go to college and have some kind of white-collar career. It turned out I was the only one who did.”

  “So he was the one who encouraged you to be a doctor?”

  “No, not really. No one encouraged me in an intentional way. My brothers had more to do with it than my dad. I was always trying to keep up with them and prove I could do anything they could do. When they’d hunt and clean their deer, I’d make myself watch, and I really became fascinated with the insides of creatures. I also used to help them build and fix things.”

  “In other words,” I volunteer, “it was a natural progression from liking guts and fixing toasters to wanting to be a surgeon.”

  “Right. Plus, I wanted to help people, but I didn’t want to have to deal with people. I could never be a general M.D. and listen to people whine all the time about their problems.”

  She wrinkles up her nose when she says this. I’m studying and memorizing every move she makes, every thought she voices, every shadow she casts and glimmer of light she captures, every scent that comes off her body, from the slight antiseptic smell of the hospital soap on her hands and the floral scent of her shampoo to the hint of wine on her breath when she said hello to me to the rich female odor that’s more of a premonition than a smell, attracting me and pulling me forward with hope, the same way morning always does no matter where I wake up and how hungover I am.

  “You just want to knock them unconscious and cut them open,” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  Her cell phone goes off. She takes it out of her purse and answers it.

  “Can you excuse me?” she asks. “I’m going to go to the lobby to take this. I can’t stand people who talk on cell phones in restaurants.”

  I watch her walk away from the table. Another short skirt today. Balls-balls-balls-balls-balls-balls.

  My eyes wander to the dark red glass of wine sitting next to her plate. An imprint of her lips clings to the rim, a soft, smoky smudge compared to the smear of carnival colors Jolene leaves behind.

  I reach for the glass and bring it to my own lips. I want to taste her. I don’t drink the wine.

  While she’s gone, I make short work of my own drink. I’m eyeing the remaining heel of garlic bread she didn’t destroy when I hear an exaggerated laugh coming from the bar area of the restaurant. It’s Mike Muchmore in a salmon sweater, a corduroy L. L. Bean ball cap, and tan slacks with a little white leather golf glove hanging out of his back pocket. He’s got one hand resting on some guy’s shoulder and another clutching a Dewar’s and water.

  He sees me and acts like I’m the last person in the world he expects to fi
nd here, and I probably am. He lowers his head to the men at the bar. They laugh. He laughs. He slaps some bills on the bar and starts walking toward me, already extending his hand, straight-armed, like he means to get a good running start and impale me with it.

  “Ivan, good to see you again.”

  I stand up and give him my hand. He takes it loosely and releases it again without a pump. Val used to call this a “suit shake.”

  “Mike,” I respond.

  He looks me over, starting with my black eye, my grass-stained deputy’s shirt, pausing at my badge, and ending at my jeans and boots. He ends by studying my eye.

  “That’s quite a shiner you’ve got there. Did you start the fight or was it the other guy?”

  “It happened in the line of duty.”

  “In the line of duty? That’s interesting. What exactly constitutes ‘in the line of duty’ for you? No matter what time of night or day I run into you, you’re always in uniform. Well, partially in uniform. But I rarely see you armed. Does that mean you’re on duty, off duty, or somewhere in between?”

  “I don’t like to carry a gun.”

  “Why not?” he laughs.

  “I’m afraid I’ll kill someone.”

  He laughs harder. I sit back down and wipe my hand on the leg of my jeans.

  “This must be the time of year you get the itch,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know. The itch.” He clenches his hands into fists and shakes them. “The itch to play football.”

  “Oh, that itch. Why would I get it now?”

  He sits down in Chastity’s chair, which really bothers me.

  “Training camp,” he says slowly.

  “It’s only March.”

  “You must miss it,” he commiserates. “What do you miss most? The fans? The fame? The parties? The women?”

  “The availability of painkillers.”

  He laughs again. I look around desperately for my waitress. I catch her eye across the room as she’s bringing out a tray of food. I make a drinking motion at my mouth. She smiles.

  “Where’s Chastity?” he asks, pushing her chair away from the table, settling back in it, and cradling his scotch in his crotch.

  “You know Chastity?”

  “Know her? I’m going to marry her.”

  At first this information doesn’t register. The fact behind the words is too inconceivable for my brain to grasp.

  I think of all the truly terrible things I can: my father’s death, my town’s destruction, Crystal’s fate, Stalin’s gulags, Vietnamese villages being torched by guys like Val. Nothing seems quite as horrifically unjust as the thought of Muchmore having this woman.

  “We love this place. We come here a lot. I get my cigars at the gift shop and just bill them to my table.”

  He leans forward and stabs the tabletop with an index finger. I’ve seen him make the same gesture in court.

  “This is my table, by the way,” he informs me.

  The waitress comes by with another whiskey. I drink half of it and tell her I’m going to need another one.

  “Actually, I’m glad I ran into you,” he says.

  His lips stretch into a slack smile. He has washed-out blue eyes and a lazy mouth that seems to move a beat behind the words coming out of it. All his facial expressions form predictably and unavoidably, like the slow spread of a stain.

  “I’ve had a family approach me about taking legal action against Dr. Ed. I was hoping you might talk to him and convince him to talk to them. Reasonably talk to them. I think litigation can be avoided if he’d just apologize.”

  I don’t respond. I feel like I’m coming out of a coma.

  “Apologize for what?” I finally ask.

  “He went to their house and gave their child a DTP immunization.”

  “Holy shit!” I cry.

  Muchmore jumps, and a little bit of his drink sloshes onto his pants. A few customers and waitresses look our way.

  “I hate that,” I exclaim. “The next thing you know, he’ll be prescribing antibiotics for ear infections.”

  “You know the situation, Ivan,” he says in a placating tone. “You accompany him sometimes on these little outings of his. His methods are illegal.”

  “You’re right. I do know the situation, and he’s not doing anything wrong. The children he’s vaccinating are all going to eventually be required by law to have these immunizations in order to start school. He’s just making sure they’re getting the shots when they’re supposed to. Some of these parents don’t bring their kids in because they don’t have health insurance. Some of them are just lazy and ignorant.”

  “His mere presence on their doorstep is an act of coercion.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of house calls?”

  “Unsolicited?”

  “Any idiot can go to your door and try to sell you magazines or tell you about Jesus Christ. Why can’t Dr. Ed try to get you to vaccinate your kid? He doesn’t charge for it.”

  “There’s no one policing him.”

  “He’s a doctor. He knows how to give a shot.”

  “His skills aren’t being questioned.”

  “He’s protecting children.”

  “He’s violating adults.”

  “Who’s the family?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “What exactly did he do that they’re upset about?”

  He hesitates.

  “The father wouldn’t allow him in the house, so he pretended to leave, parked down the road, walked through the wooded area behind the house, and let himself in the back door. Once he was in, he managed to distract the father long enough to give the baby the shot.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  He hesitates again.

  “He brought a case of beer and a bucket of fried chicken with him.”

  I smile.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. Can Dr. Ed countersue? Oh, wait. I forgot. There’s no crime against being a fucking moron.”

  “No, but entering someone’s house against his will and injecting his child with a chemical substance without his permission is a crime.”

  “Only in the legal sense.”

  He swirls his ice cubes. I close my eyes and listen to them clink.

  He’s seen her naked! my brain screams at me.

  “I’m on Dr. Ed’s side,” he says.

  “Fuck, you are.”

  “He’s his own worst enemy. He’s crude and pushy. He has no tact or social skills. I suppose it’s not his fault. Considering.”

  He’s touched her naked.

  “Considering what?”

  “Look, I’m the last person who would hold a person’s roots against them, but let’s face it, half the county’s welfare goes to someone he’s related to.”

  He’s fallen asleep with the warm, soft weight of her pressed up against him. He’s kissed the back of her neck while she sleeps. He’s listened to her breathe. He gets to see her eyes do that solar-eclipse thing every day. He’s reached for her, and she’s come to him. He’s been inside her. He’s felt what she’s like inside.

  I stand up.

  “Come on, Ivan. Take it easy.”

  He laughs nervously and glances around him looking for potential witnesses if I make the mistake of touching him.

  “All I’m saying is, you can take the boy out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the boy.”

  “Ed grew up on a farm.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Chastity comes back. I silently beg her not to kiss him. I beg God, too, even though I don’t believe in him, and if there was the slightest chance in hell I might start again, he completely blew it tonight.

  She doesn’t kiss him. He kisses her. But she did not kiss him. This is an important fact. Their lips have touched. I saw it before my very eyes. I can’t deny that it happened. But he was the one who made the first move.

  “What’s go
ing on here?” she asks, smiling, looking back and forth between the two of us.

  I’m too stunned to answer. I can’t believe the same woman I was just talking to could have anything to do with Muchmore.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “Do you two know each other?”

  “Sure,” Muchmore booms, slipping his hand around Chastity’s waist. “Everybody knows Ivan. He put Centresburg and Coal Run on the map. He made this place famous. To this day he’s considered one of the all-time-greatest college players. He should’ve won the Heisman. He was robbed,” he tells Chastity confidentially.

  “You were robbed,” he says to me.

  “I know who he is,” she says, frowning at him. “I grew up around here, remember? I meant are you friends?”

  Neither of us answers.

  The waitress returns with my Jack Daniel’s. I take it from her and drink it in two swallows.

  I look down at the empty glass in my hand. I put it on the table.

  “Congratulations on your engagement,” I tell Chastity.

  “Oh,” she says, looking a little surprised. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got to get going.”

  I stop at the gift shop on my way out. The girl behind the cigar counter greets me. I nod at her and head straight to the rooster.

  The lighting in the store makes him sparkle fiercely. I pick him up and run my thumb over the smooth glass plumes of his rainbow tail. He’s forty-five dollars. An Italian name is scripted in tiny looping gold on the underside of his feet.

  I hold him up to catch the light again, and through the window I see Chastity talking to Mike. She looks concerned for an instant. I wonder what he’s telling her. Her expression calms. She smiles. She leans into him, and she kisses him this time.

  I walk over to the cash register. I pick out a couple boxes of prime Dominican Republic cigars. It’s the best I can do in America. I think about my old boss, Mr. Perez. He always said the things he missed most about leaving Cuba were the cigars and the Cubans.

  I hand the rooster to the girl. I tell her to gift-wrap it and charge everything to Mike Muchmore’s table.

  10

  SHE’S GOING TO MARRY MUCHMORE? I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. I won’t believe it. There’s no way she could want to spend even fifteen minutes with that guy, let alone her whole life. What could she possibly see in him? What could they talk about? What could they do? What opinions could they share?