Coal Run

by Tawni O'Dell

  Zo saw that same day as a gift. She told me if it had been rainy, we would have got our shoes muddy.

  I couldn’t deal with a name, but I can deal with the word “fatality.” Someone is dead, but I don’t know who. I can think of the children and Jess and Bobbie, one by one, then tell myself that each one of them is still alive. It’s a game of mental musical chairs. Death is the only remaining chair, and Jess and his family are still circling, not knowing that the person who wins will die. Until I get there, the music is still playing for me. My father’s words in Val’s handwriting keep reappearing in my head: The best way to die is first.

  It’s not until I’ve parked my truck down the road from the house and taken the first few steps toward the flashing blue and red lights of the ambulance and two sheriff’s cars that I regret not knowing.

  The beagles are silent but sit at attention on the roofs of their doghouses. Watching them, I’m filled with the same sick dread that turned my blood icy when I heard the first wail of Gertie’s siren.

  Their oldest boy, Gary, is standing outside with one of his sisters. I make mental check marks on my list of survivors. That leaves the other little girl. And Danny. And Jess. And Bobbie.

  I swallow hard and make my feet move in the direction of the house.

  I try not to dwell on the fact that I didn’t kill him last night. That I had a chance to do what I should have done and I didn’t, and now someone else is dead. I look away from Danny’s orange pumpkin bucket, lying empty on its side in the middle of the yard.

  Pregnant Chad comes out of the house holding the other little girl’s hand. Jack is right behind him carrying one of Jess’s rifles. He’s followed by the paramedics wheeling out the body.

  I run a clammy hand over my face. I don’t want to see the size of the body.

  I begin to pray to a god I don’t believe in. I pray that it’s not Jess, knowing that means he’s lost his wife or his son. I pray that it’s not Danny, knowing that means he’s lost his mom or his dad. I pray that it’s not Bobbie, knowing that means she’s lost her husband or her little boy.

  She called Jack last night to try to prevent this from happening to me.

  I force myself to look. A pair of large, muddy boots stick out from the sheet at one end.

  “Daddy!” I hear Danny cry.

  Stiffy comes out of the house next, carrying Danny, who’s clutching his blanket.

  I watch the stretcher being wheeled carelessly over the ruts in the yard. The boots jostle against each other like they’re keeping time to a frantic song.

  “Daddy!” Danny cries again.

  I feel the cup of coffee I just drank start to come up. I’m going to be sick.

  I make myself look back at Danny. He’s dropped his blanket. Stiffy doesn’t notice and steps on it, grinding it into the mud.

  Something doesn’t fit. I’m not sure what it is, and then I realize Danny’s looking back over Stiffy’s shoulder when he’s calling out to his dad. He’s not crying over the covered body on the stretcher.

  Shouting comes from inside the house.

  Jack’s eyes meet mine. I can’t read anything in them before his gaze flicks away.

  Doverspike escorts Bobbie outside. She has her hands cuffed behind her.

  “She didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident.”

  Jess comes after her. He almost stumbles down the front steps. One of his eyes is swollen shut, and bright red blood trickles from one ear, down his neck, and stains the shoulder of his T-shirt.

  My heart starts pounding loudly in my chest. The body is Reese.

  “I knew something like this was gonna happen!” Gary shouts when he sees his mom.

  His young face turns red, and his lips start trembling.

  “I just knew it!” he shouts again, and kicks at the ground before sitting down in the grass with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head hidden between them. His shoulders start to shake.

  The girls stand beside each other.

  “Mom!” the one cries. “Mommy!”

  “It’s okay, honey. I’m gonna be back. It’s gonna be fine.”

  Jess misses the bottom step and falls on his face.

  I jog over to help him.

  “What happened?” I ask him as he gets unsteadily to his feet.

  He wipes at the tears and spit on his face with a dirty hand that leaves his face streaked with mud.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. We got in a fight. Me and Reese. About going to Gertie. Next thing I know there’s a gunshot. He’s laying there dead. Bobbie’s holding my gun.”

  He realizes Doverspike’s putting Bobbie in the car. He takes off and runs over to them.

  “She didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident.”

  “He can’t hurt you anymore, Jess,” she calls out before Doverspike slams the car door shut on her. “I’m not sorry I did it.”

  He grabs at Doverspike’s arm.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s upset.”

  Doverspike gently but firmly grabs Jess around the wrist and removes his hand from his arm.

  “Sir, you’re going to have to step away from the car,” he tells him. “Sir,” he says more forcefully when Jess doesn’t respond.

  A strange light dawns in his murky stares.

  “You’re going to have to step away from the car,” Doverspike finishes.

  “Sure,” Jess mutters, all the fight seeming to have left him.

  He sits down hard in the middle of the yard, just like his boy Gary did, not far from the spot where I left him unconscious a couple days ago.

  I walk over to him.

  “You all right, Jess?”

  We watch the sheriff’s car drive away with Bobbie and the ambulance drive away with Reese.

  Stiffy puts Danny down. He runs over to us but stops a couple feet short of his dad.

  Gary gets up off the ground, and he and his two sisters stand staring at us.

  Jess doesn’t seem to notice them.

  “I’m going with Bobbie,” he tells me.

  “Can you drive yourself?”

  “I’m fine. Do you mind taking the kids?”

  “No, of course not. I’ll look after them until you’re ready to take them back or your mom can help.”

  “No, I mean take them to Gertie. Right now.” He gives me a pleading look. “We always take them.”

  Jack joins us after putting the gun in his car.

  “Don’t worry, Jess. We’ll take care of everything. You go on inside and get the keys to your truck.”

  “Did you know this was going to happen?” I ask Jack in a low voice after Jess is out of earshot.

  “How could I possibly know? I’m a sheriff, not a psychic. Although I do know sometimes it’s better to let families work out their own problems.”

  “That’s what you call this? Do you feel this problem has been worked out?”

  He kneels down and picks Danny’s dirty blanket up off the ground and hands it to him.

  “It’s getting there.”

  I don’t wait to see Jess again. The four kids cram into the front of my truck with me. Danny sits next to me, still holding his blanket. None of them move a muscle or make a sound while I drive.

  We have to pass by the junkyard to get to Gertie. I notice more cars and trucks on the road than usual, but I don’t think much of it.

  The last few miles before the junkyard, snakes of steam begin to slither across the road in front of my truck and dart beneath the dead, wiry, black undergrowth dotting the banks like snarls of steel wool.

  I round the final curve and see Jolene’s car parked on the side of the road. I pull up behind it and cut the engine.

  Four pairs of wide eyes turn in my direction and fix intently on my face.

  “I want to check something out in the junkyard,” I tell them.

  Their stares don’t waver. Their expressions reveal nothing.

  “You want to come with me or wait in the truck?”

&nb
sp; Gary, who’s sitting next to the door, opens it, and they all bounce out, their feet moving before they hit the ground. They’ve all disappeared down over the hill before I even get out of the truck.

  Small tumbleweeds of contamination bounce and blow in all directions.

  I start down the hill and lose my footing for an instant. I slide on the slick, packed mud and grab onto the gutted shell of an old Zenith TV. The knob for changing channels has been ripped out like a limb from a socket, leaving behind a tangle of red and blue wires, reminding me of the way arteries and lengths of nerves are pictured in anatomy books.

  Jolene is standing halfway down and turns in my direction as the TV goes somersaulting down the hill and I almost go with it.

  The girls and Danny are off running around with Eb. Harrison is with Gary.

  “What are you doing here?” Jolene asks me. “And why do you have Bobbie’s kids?”

  “Let’s just say I’m helping them out. I’ll explain it all later. What are you doing here?” I ask her.

  “I always come here first. I like the view.”

  I follow her eyes across the valley to the remains of Gertie. Cars and trucks are parked all around it, in the same haphazard fashion they were left in the day of the explosion. I can even make out a few fire trucks and some police cars.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Look,” she says.

  I begin to see the people. From this distance they’re the size of ants, but it’s a clear day, and I can see the colors of their clothing. They converge, split, converge, spread about, like speckles of paint in a water droplet.

  In my mind I know who they are. I see husbands and wives getting out of their cars and holding hands. Guys running into other guys, buddies, coworkers, school chums, shaking hands. Daughters helping their elderly mothers, holding them at their elbows where their big white spring pocketbooks hang. They bring their purses everywhere, even to Gertie. Kids running off with their friends. A group of teenage girls casting glances at a group of teenage boys.

  I know how they came to be here. I see Dr. Ed wash his hands in Exam Room 2, hang his blue coat on a hook, pick up his tackle box full of medical supplies, and flick the light switch on his way out. I see Muchmore outside a courtroom, checking his gold watch, ending a conversation with another lawyer, and offering his limp handshake before heading for his BMW. I see Chastity draw the blinds in her office, where she slips out of her skirt and heels and pulls on a pair of jeans and cowboy boots. I see Miss Finch glance around her empty classroom filled with art made from cans. I see Edna thank a coworker for filling in for her as she leaves her post behind the Kwik-Fill cash register. I see Chimp crawl out of bed, shaking off a hangover, and reach for his boots by the back door. I see Josh pick up some buddies in his truck. I see the tire shredders walk out despite a day’s loss of pay. I see Randy standing on Zo’s front porch looking at the hills. I see Val’s old Chevy truck idling outside Safe Haven as he makes his painstaking, one-legged approach into the building to pick up my mom, who meets him with my dad’s brass tag worn around her neck today and tucked secretly beneath her blouse. I see Jack taking off his hat to polish the shield before he drives up in his sheriff’s car. I see Crystal forever in her bed.

  Behind us, on the road above us, traffic has picked up. Cars and trucks roar past, a few at first, then a constant rumbling stream.

  “I wonder what Zo left for you?” Jolene says.

  The packed dirt and gravel road leading to Gertie that my mother once dragged me over is a long line of glinting windshield glass.

  “Some advice,” I tell her. “She helped me make a decision.”

  “Hey, Uncle Ivan!” Eb shouts at me through cupped hands. “Look at Danny!”

  The little boy is holding a big stick and standing on top of a pile of tires with his blanket knotted around his neck and a jagged half of a coffee can balanced on his head.

  Eb grins and calls out, “He’s the Czar of Coal Run.”

  My eyes return to the trail of glitter cut into the distant hillside. It leaves Gertie and keeps going, seemingly forever, curving, disappearing and reappearing from behind stands of trees and dips in the land in an unbroken vein of silver.

  EPILOGUE

  March 18, 2001

  Dear Deputy Zoschenko,

  I wanted to write and thank you again for the kindness you’ve shown my mother. It was difficult for me to find out about her after all these years and even more difficult to see her. I hope I didn’t seem like a jerk by staying for such a short period of time and then leaving so suddenly. I had a hard time being with her, but I hope I’ll be able to get used to it and someday I can treat her the way you do.

  The other reason I’m writing is that I’ve decided to come to Centresburg again in May after finals are over and before I start my summer job. I realize you’re very busy, but I was wondering if you might be able to find the time to show me around the area. I was also hoping I might be able to meet some of the family you said I have around there.

  I know I could come back and just visit my mom, but I feel like I should get to know Coal Run, too. After all, it is where I’m from.

  Sincerely,

  John Harris (Raynor)

  March 22, 2001

  Dear John,

  I’ll look forward to your visit. I’d be happy to show you around and introduce you to your family.

  Regards,

  Ivan Z

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Coal Run almost never saw the light of day because of some personal problems I had to deal with over the past two years, which made finding the time and the concentration to write next to impossible. Now that the book is finished and all that’s left is the pleasurable task of thanking the people who helped me, I find that what I’m thanking them for has little to do with the book itself but has everything to do with my own well-being. For me as a writer, my most valuable assistance came not from a team of researchers or access to the experts in their fields, but from people in my life who cared about me.

  That said, I’d like to thank my agent, Liza Dawson, who patiently waited for this book, never pushed me yet never forgot me, and was always there for me anytime I needed to vent. Thank you to my editor, the masterful Molly Stern, who once again proved to be my literary alter ego and instinctively knew exactly what needed to be done to make this a better book.

  Thank you to Françoise Triffaux at Belfond, whose esteem for my work has meant the world to me.

  Thanks to my baby sis, Molly, for being my fiercest fan. To my little sis, Trina, and her husband, Chuck, for keeping me on the family radar. To Roy, for going far above and beyond the basic requirements of stepfathering; thanks for your friendship and that all-important “swoop.” To Uncle Butch, for his immense generosity. Thanks, Mikey, for the heavy lifting. Thanks, Fern, for the listening. Thanks, Dad, for your steady faith in me.

  To my wonderful kids, Tirzah and Connor: We had to go through some tough times recently but through it all you behaved with a grace and maturity well beyond your years. I’m proud to be your mom.

  And speaking of moms, I don’t think I would have survived these past few years with my sanity intact without the help of mine. It’s very important as a woman to be reminded from time to time that before you were a mother yourself, a wife, an ex-wife, a student, an employee, a lover, a homeowner, a taxpayer, an author, you were someone’s little girl and that someone will always see you in that way; you, stripped of all your adult labels and responsibilities; you, just you; the purest sense of yourself. And while you are busy putting everyone else first, she will be putting you first. Thanks, Mom.

  To Bernard, the man of my dreams who became the man in my life. Thank you for showing me the world and all the joys of living in it.

 

 

 
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