Coal Run

by Tawni O'Dell

  “I missed my bus.”

  “You planning on riding your bike the whole way to Centresburg?”

  “I’m riding to my grandma’s,” he answers me in huffs. “She’s going to give me a ride. There’s nobody home at my house. My mom works.”

  “You want a ride there?”

  “No thank you.”

  “What’s the gun for?”

  He looks from side to side at the trees that will be hectic with birds and squirrels and the roadside grasses where groundhogs will be hiding once he gets past this lifeless stretch of poisoned, simmering road. He fixes his eyes straight ahead again, almost losing his balance on the zigzagging, barely moving bike.

  “You never know what you’re gonna find,” he replies.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “You be careful and stay on your side of the road. And tell your grandma to have a nice day.”

  I pull away from him, watching his progress from my rearview mirror.

  My thoughts return to Zo, and I find myself smiling. It was just like her to ask Val to make a promise to come back when she died. More than thirty years before it happened, she was already making sure that even her death would serve a purpose. She knew that her obituary would bring him back again the same way a mother’s cry at dusk brings her child home for bed.

  The junkyard is covered in a blanket of mist as thick as fuzz. I come to a rolling stop at the top of the hill and wait for the boy to reach it so I can watch him fly down the other side.

  15

  MY TALK WITH VAL SHOULD HAVE MADE ME FEEL GOOD, BUT AS I drive back to town, all I’m feeling is jealousy and the familiar ache of loss: Val knew my father better than I did.

  I give up looking for excuses to avoid work and go to the station. I don’t know why I’ve had such a hard time doing my job lately. I don’t have any real complaints about it.

  Certain aspects of it can be tedious and sometimes just plain boring. A lot of it is grunt work. When I first started here, Stiffy told me most of the work I’d be doing would be “secretarial, janitorial, and transportational,” and he was right.

  There’s a lot of frustration: moments when I find myself wanting to shake some sense into the victim I’m supposed to be helping as much as I want to do it to the criminal I’m supposed to be subduing, times when I feel the law I’m enforcing is more dangerous than the so-called violation it’s correcting. But there are also times when I feel like I’ve helped someone. Not necessarily because I’ve resolved a problem. Not because I’ve restored property to a rightful owner, or assuaged a fear, or assisted someone in dealing with the aftermath of an accident or tragedy. It’s the fact that I showed up at all. A call was sent out, and that call was answered. I represent dependability.

  Not much is going on when I get to the station. I park around back and go in through the personnel entrance, which takes me past the holding cells. One has an occupant who’s giving off the worst stench I’ve ever smelled in my life.

  He’s sitting on the cot in his underwear and tube socks full of holes, with one of the department’s stiff pea green blankets held loosely around his shoulders, providing him with all the warmth of a paper towel and all the comfort of a shower curtain. His face is distorted into a severe wince that might be caused by regret or anxiety or the inability to escape his own smell.

  We don’t have a shower, so he was probably told to clean up in the sink, but small, occasional patches of some kind of black filth still cling to him in unlikely places: behind an ear, on the tip of his elbow, the back of a hand, a big toe poking through the end of his sock.

  He gives me a pleading look when I walk in. His eyes are weepy and bloodshot, and they’re not that way from crying.

  “How about a drink?” he says to me.

  “I’m fresh out,” I tell him, and I feel a slight wave of disgust at myself that I had a beer already this morning, even though I’ve had more than my share of mornings when I took my first drink before my first piss.

  I pass on through the room as quickly as my knee will let me.

  Pierced Chad is at his desk, sitting straight and tall, talking on the phone. He has the receiver in one hand and is twirling his black-mirrored sunglasses with the other. He’s the only one of us who wears sunglasses. He says he does it so people can’t see his true feelings in his eyes when he’s interrogating them. I’ve noticed he also wears them when he’s talking to women in bars and paying for his gas and shrink-wrapped sticky bun at the Kwik-Fill.

  Stiffy is pouring himself a cup of coffee. He’s not wearing any shoes.

  As I get closer to him, I get a slight whiff of the smell from the guy in the cell.

  “Holy shit,” I say.

  “Not exactly holy,” Stiffy replies. “Chicken.”

  “Chicken what?”

  “Chicken shit,” he says. He jerks his head toward the back of the station. “Our guest back there. He got into a disagreement with his boss at Wertz’s Chicken Farm, and they ended up in deep shit, so to speak.

  “Chad’s over at the Wash N Go right now trying to do something about the stink in the car. I smell this way just from riding in the same vehicle with him. I left my shoes outside. His clothes are out in the Dumpster. We were going to burn them, until Jack pointed out the only thing worse than chicken shit is burning chicken shit.”

  “I guess he’s right about that,” I reply, and reach for the pot to pour my own cup of coffee. “Is Jack in?”

  Stiffy smiles. “Yes, he is. And he made some mention of wanting to see you when you came in this morning.”

  “I’m sure he did. I guess I should go get it over with. I have it coming. I’ve been kind of slacking off the past week or so.”

  “Happens to everybody now and then,” he tells me with a shrug. “It’s not the slacking off that bothers him so much; it’s the not knowing why you’re slacking off. Jack needs to know everything.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  “You got a message, too. A Dr. Morrison called you. She wants you to call her back. I left the number on your desk. She sounded nice.”

  Being reminded of Chastity fills me with momentary glee and lust, until I remember how we left things at Marcella’s. She’s marrying Muchmore. I still can’t believe it.

  “That’s too bad,” Stiffy says.

  I guess I’m talking out loud again without realizing it.

  “Yeah,” I say as I dump spoonful after spoonful of sugar into my coffee.

  I walk over to my desk.

  Chad nods at me. His phone conversation is peppered with phrases like “not at liberty to say,” “ramifications of his actions,” and “alleged offenses.” I think he’s working, but it turns out he’s renting a band for a friend’s wedding.

  I sit down and pick up the piece of paper with Chastity’s number on it. She gave two numbers: her office and her cell. I try not to let myself read anything good into it. The fact that she gave me her cell-phone number, which is an invitation to call her anytime, is probably only because she wants to use me in a professional manner again. She probably wants to talk to me about another charity event. Maybe she’s organizing a fund-raiser to help struggling young lawyers buy their first BMWs before age thirty. Or maybe she wants to finance a series of seminars teaching corporate executives how to dig holes and change spark plugs.

  I’m good and mad by the time I pick up my phone and dial her office number first. It’s a Tuesday morning. She’s probably at her office. Unless she’s in surgery or at the hospital or Safe Haven visiting patients.

  I look at the message Stiffy took. It doesn’t say where she called from. It doesn’t say when she called. It doesn’t say why. It doesn’t even hint at her mood or what she was wearing. If it’s another short skirt, or maybe a longer one today. Or maybe a pantsuit with high heels. She’d look great in a pantsuit: one of those tailored ones where the jacket matches the pants and women don’t wear anything underneath the jacket except a lacy piece of some kind of lingerie.

  I’ve seen t
hem worn that way in magazines and on TV, although I’ve never seen a real woman wear one. Jolene assures me women in New York wear them, and she also assures me that most of them don’t look good in them because you actually have to have a better body to pull off a pantsuit than you do to wear a dress.

  I hang up before her secretary can answer. Of course she’s not in her office. It’s probably the last place she’ll be, and if she is there, she’s seeing a patient. That means she’ll have to get back to me between patients. She’ll be rushed.

  I take a drink of coffee. It’s way too sweet.

  The cell phone is better. She’ll only answer if she’s really free. And if she doesn’t answer, I’ll get to leave a message with my own voice. It won’t be her secretary’s interpretation, who might get it all wrong. I can’t put this in the hands of a stranger who’s never met me, or, worse yet, maybe she has met me. Maybe I went to school with her. Maybe I dated her. Maybe she’s from Clearfield, too. I don’t know who the hell her secretary is.

  I hang up before her cell phone answers. Shit, a message. I need a message. I start rehearsing them in my head when my phone rings.

  “Laurel County Sheriff’s Department. Zoschenko speaking.”

  “Hello, Zoschenko. This is Morrison,” she says in a playful voice. “What are you up to?”

  She’s calling me back. She wanted to talk to me so badly that she didn’t even wait for me to return her call. This could be good.

  “Not much,” I tell her.

  “I’m calling to thank you.”

  She’s calling to thank me. That’s better than calling to ask a favor, but not as good as calling because she’s crazy about me. Unless the reason she’s calling me again so soon is because I’m a chore she wants completed as quickly as possible. I’m probably on a list of a hundred people she’s calling to thank for donating their time to the fund-raiser.

  “Hello?” she says. “Ivan, are you there?”

  “Yes.” I clear my throat without much success. “I’m here.”

  “I wanted to thank you again for donating those autographed footballs. They were snapped up right away. And so was the dinner with you.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes, and it looks like I owe you an apology. You were right. You weren’t bought by a man.”

  “I knew it.”

  I feel happily vindicated, until I remember that all that’s been proven is that she was wrong in thinking that no woman could be interested in me. It doesn’t change the fact that she had the thought in the first place.

  “So is my owner attractive?”

  “Very attractive. I know this is short notice, but can you make it for dinner tomorrow night at six at Eat’nPark?”

  “Are you kidding me? Eat’nPark?”

  “They donated the dinners as part of your package. Zo always told me they make a mean baked scrod. And you’ll get a free smiley-face cookie. Or, if you’d prefer to pay for dinner for the two of you somewhere else . . .”

  “No, that’s okay. Eat’nPark at six.”

  I happen to glance in Chad’s direction. He’s giving me a thumbs-up.

  There’s a few seconds of silence that I’m certain are going to be followed with a polite farewell, but then I hear a soft intake of breath that makes me think of her testing her bathwater with the tips of her toes and finding it too hot.

  “I wanted to apologize for what happened last night at Marcella’s,” she says. “I’m not sure exactly what it was, but there was some definite tension there between you and Mike.”

  “There’s always definite tension between me and Mike. It has nothing to do with you, and it’s not something you need to apologize for,” I reply.

  I should just leave it at that. We’ve had a nice conversation, and she thinks I’m an okay guy; maybe not a guy she wants to go out with or sleep with or marry, but at least a guy she likes, but I’ve got to ruin that, too.

  “The world is full of incredible women who throw themselves away on assholes. I should just get used to seeing it and not let it upset me,” I decide to add.

  “Oh, I see. That’s what you were upset about? I’m an incredible woman, and Mike is an asshole.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What about all the great men who throw themselves away on bimbos?”

  “Here’s a thought: Why don’t you find a bimbo for your asshole and I’ll find a great guy for you?”

  “What exactly is your definition of a great guy?”

  I think about Bobbie. To her a great guy is one who never leaves town.

  I don’t have an answer for her. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I just want her to tell me it’s not true; she’s not going to marry Muchmore.

  “I don’t understand it. What is it? The biological-clock thing? Do you need to settle down and make many more Muchmores?”

  “I’m not in any hurry to have kids,” she replies calmly. “Can I ask you why you hate him so much, aside from the fact that he’s a lawyer?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Does it have anything to do with something that happened when you were kids? I know you went to school together.”

  “I never knew him in school. He was a couple years older than me and already a condescending pain in the ass. And it wasn’t because his family had money. His dad wasn’t a bad guy. He could put on an old Woolrich coat and a pair of shitkickers and down a few at Brownie’s with the miners, and nobody thought anything of it. His dad gave us the land for the J&P cemetery. We wouldn’t have been able to keep them together otherwise. They would’ve been split up. Nobody wanted that. Even the guys like my dad that were never found. They were still given a spot. If you go there, you’ll see a stone with his name on it. It’s not to show you where he is but to show you where he was.”

  My voice dies in my throat. I look up and realize both Chad and Stiffy have left. I’m all alone.

  “I’m sorry about your dad, Ivan.”

  “Yeah, everyone’s sorry. I doubt I’m ever going to run into someone who’s going to say I’m really glad your dad was killed when you were a kid. I didn’t mean to get off the subject. Let’s just end this by saying I don’t like the guy and nothing could ever change my opinion of him.”

  “Nothing?” she wonders. “Do you know that woman who was beaten into a coma by her husband twenty years ago? Crystal Raynor? Mike defended her husband. It was one of his very first cases as a public defender right out of law school.”

  “Yeah, I know all about it.”

  “Mike’s the one who’s paid to keep her in Safe Haven all these years. I think that’s fairly decent of him.”

  I’m not able to say anything more. I hear her make her apologies and say she has to get back to work.

  I hang up the phone and stare at the calendar on my desk. Today has a red circle around it. I can’t remember if I’m the one who put it there.

  Jack’s slow, even, hard-soled tread, like a principal crossing a gym floor in his street shoes, intrudes on the brief silence. I don’t look up. The footsteps stop, and I hear a faint creak that could have come from the adjustment of his belt and holster or the shifting and settling of various joints and bones as he arranges himself in what he considers to be a stance of infinitely unrushed importance. I sense he’s standing near the doorway to the reception area.

  I look up in that direction. He’s wearing his jacket and his dark brown sheriff’s Stetson with its polished silver shield, which means he’s on his way out. He crooks his finger at me.

  “Meet me outside,” he says.

  I join him. He’s standing with his thumbs hooked in his pants pockets, elbows out at his sides, lips pursed, already nodding for me in anticipation of the agreement I’m going to have for everything he says to me.

  He always begins by looking at a man’s feet, then sweeps his gaze up the body, ending at the face, where he finally meets the eyes and then extends his hand for a handshake. It has the disconcerting effect of making you think he’s noti
ced something about you that you didn’t know yourself, and you’re never quite sure if it’s a good or bad quality.

  With me this time, his eyes don’t rise past my jeans.

  “Pants,” he says to me.

  “Shirt,” I say back.

  His eyes flick to mine.

  “I thought we were doing word association,” I explain.

  “All right, then,” he says. “Sky.”

  “Blue.”

  “Gun.”

  “Shot.”

  “Raynor.”

  “Chimp.”

  “Reese Raynor.”

  “Fucker.”

  “Father.”

  “Mother.”

  “Sheriff.”

  “Jack.”

  “Chicken.”

  “Shit.”

  He lifts his hand in greeting to someone driving down the street bordering one end of our parking lot.

  “You want to tell me about your shiner?” he asks me.

  “Not particularly.”

  “I know where you got it.”

  I wait for him to go on. Jack dribbles information. It’s one of the ways he gets people to say things they didn’t have to say. They want to finish his accounts for him and prove they know more than he thinks he knows.

  “I want you to stay away from that situation,” he says after it becomes clear I’m not going to say anything.

  “Okay.”

  “Obviously, I’m concerned. There are children in that household. But it’s none of our business. If Jess wants Reese staying there, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  I’m confused for a moment. Then I realize he only thinks he knows how I got the black eye. He heard about the bar fight. He thinks it came from Jess.

  “You know I’m not a hard-ass about your conduct off the job,” he continues. “I don’t feel you disgraced the Laurel County Sheriff’s Department by your behavior last night, but I do believe you disgraced yourself and your mother and your sister.”

  “Since when are you opposed to brawling?” I ask him. “The other day you were waxing nostalgic about the good old days when men used to beat each other up instead of calling lawyers.”