by Mesha Maren
A voice was screaming, hollering Jodi’s name, and she surfaced slowly from a dream of rain and wind, a storm that lifted the house and tossed it away with all of them inside. She opened her eyes to Miranda’s hair, beside her on the pillow, and then slowly she became aware of Butter barking and Farren’s voice and the pounding of metal on metal.
Out on the porch she squinted, following the direction of Farren’s outstretched arm over to a cluster of trucks. Three blue trailers and one tall crane parked, not more than half a mile away, over at the old Persinger place.
“I told you when they run the other one dry that they’d move on to a new place,” Farren said. He sounded as if he blamed her personally. “They’ll frack the whole mountain dry, ruin the water clear up and down it.”
The noise was immense and palpable—the great thwank-thwank of the drill and all around it a sea of grinding gears and quaking machinery. Panic spiked up through her body, though she was barely awake enough to know if this was dream or reality. These frack men were hungry, she thought, hungry and moving. She’d been so worried about Ricky’s wanderings and Miranda working at the bar but this was the real doom. Do something, she thought—call Lynn, call the lawyer, do something, do something.
In her parents’ kitchen, she sat with a can of Bud in one hand and the phone pressed to her head, trying to concentrate sufficiently. She needed just a little beer before making this pleading phone call to Lynn. She’d been taught never to ask for handouts but now it seemed there was nothing left to do but beg for help.
“I’ve never sorted darks and lights in my life and my loads come out just fine.”
Irene and Miranda’s voices rang out from the laundry room. There was something different about Miranda lately, manic mood swoops that sent her zipping high and then crashing down exhausted. The more she thought about it, the more Jodi felt sure she was taking pills again. She’d tried to bring it up twice but each time Miranda denied, almost crying as she screamed, How could you say that? How dare you?
Jodi had been too distracted lately by Ricky and Rosalba and Dennis and now she was losing Miranda and losing the land. Back in that hotel room in Delray she’d promised Miranda that she could do it, they could do it, start new, stay clean, and make a good life for the boys. It had seemed so simple then; all they had to do was make it to West Virginia and find some kind of job and then the six of them could live there, sheltered and healing. Now, though, it seemed to Jodi that she’d failed to provide a life interesting enough to make the pills unnecessary.
In the living room the TV emitted explosion sounds:—and then, I’m gonna gouge your eyes out.
Jodi squinted at the paper in her hand and read Lynn’s number aloud to herself before dialing. The beers she’d drunk, combined with a couple of hits off the joint Dennis was currently smoking, were making this phone call exceedingly slow and difficult.
Yeah, I’m gonna gouge your eyes out, that’s what I’m gonna do.
Lynn’s phone rang. Jodi watched her fingers slide up and down the red beer can.
“If you’d put peroxide on it in the moment,” Irene said, “there’d be some hope. It’s not gonna come out now, though.”
“Hello,” the phone spoke.
Jodi pulled the earpiece away from her face.
“I can’t answer the phone right now but if you’ll leave your name and number I’ll call you back.”
“Hey, Lynn, it’s Jodi here.” She stopped and took a sip of beer. “They’re putting a frack well in, right now, just this morning, on the property just over from mine and I wanted to see . . . uh, I’m worried my land could be next.”
She placed the phone back in its cradle and moved her chair to the doorway where she could watch the TV without having to talk to Dennis who was sprawled across the couch, head in his wife’s lap, the smoke from his joint rising above him in a straight line. His wife appeared to be sleeping but her hands kept moving, crochet needles tapping out a tick-tick tune. On the screen a cartoon animal with huge neon-pink eyes leapt up and down on top of a fat red-and-white animal with a blue nose.
Jodi finished her beer and fetched another. The fridge was full of beer. It was the first week of a new month. She stood there, the cool yellow air swimming around her, enjoying the weight of the can in her hand and the view of all those other unopened beers. She found a pack of Marlboros beside the sink and tried to determine by the number of smokes inside if the pack was her father’s or hers. She gave up after a minute and lit one. Happy, happy, joy, joy, the television sang.
In the yard there was a rustle of movement and then Dennis’s girls began shrieking. The children stood in a ring beside the empty birdbath and in the center Ross lay flat on his back, blood flowing thickly from his nose. As the adults poured out into the yard the girls stopped screaming and stood, pressed forward on their tiptoes. Ross was not moving but his eyes were wide open.
“Hey, what happened here?” Dennis said, and his girls turned to him.
“He fell,” Dana said. “Tripped and fell and starting bleeding in his nose.”
Jodi pushed past and ran down the steps, gathering Ross up and carrying him toward the house. He closed his eyes. The blood had almost stopped running but berry-bright drops of it still clung to his nose and chin and the lobes of his ears.
Miranda was in the doorway as Jodi came up the stairs. She reached for Ross and Jodi looked up at her. Her pupils were tiny dots and the tendons along her neck stood out as if they’d been wound too tight.
“Give him some room. He needs room to breathe,” Jodi said, carrying Ross inside to the kitchen sink. Even as she said the words, though, she wished that Miranda would act like a normal mother for once and take Ross from her but Miranda just stayed there with Irene on the porch.
Jodi stared down at Ross’s face and let the water run until it came out warm. The blood had begun to crust and dry in swirled patterns, red-brown rust rivers crossing his cheeks. He seemed not to want to open his eyes, even after his face was clean, and so Jodi held him tight, rocking him, the thin legs of the kitchen chair wobbling. They rocked to the sloshing rhythms of the washing machine and the hum of a mower droning somewhere down the street. Through the window above the sink she could see the peak of Palmer’s Knob, and beyond that, the mountains that gave way to more mountains. Traffic glimmered on the hill road that twisted north and junctioned in with other single-lane roads, all of them squiggling up over those ridges, deeper into coal country. She reached her hand out and, with her fingers stretched, managed to block the window, but when she took her hand away the mountains were still there, beautiful, ancient, and suffocating. She could see a small strip of blue sky above the peaks but it seemed the mountain was compressing all the air, setting itself smugly between her and everything easy. To get anything, you’ve got to cross me, it said. She thought of the old settlers traveling the mountains for days, only to come to the End, the unfordable split of the New River gorge.
Back at Effie’s a long black foreign car was parked in the yard, gleaming like a single patent-leather shoe. The sight of it started something buzzing in Jodi. Every time she came home lately there was trouble waiting.
“Stay here a minute,” she said, but Kaleb, Donnie, and Ross spilled out of the Chevette before she could shut the engine off.
“Hold on,” Ricky called, and when they did not listen he followed them.
On the porch a short-haired woman in a cranberry-colored dress stood up and walked down the steps, followed by Butter. It was Lynn, Jodi realized, dressed in an asymmetrically cut dress, the deep redness of which made her skin look pearly.
Donnie and Ross rushed across the grass and tackled Butter around the neck while Ricky and Kaleb stood back, staring at Lynn. She stepped around them and walked toward the car.
“I got your message.”
Jodi closed the driver’s-side door and walked around the front. “Thank you, thanks for coming up, I—”
“It’s incredible here.” Lynn spread her arms a
nd stared off over Jodi’s head, her eyes sparking.
“Yeah, it’s a little wild still, we haven’t got to clear the field out yet but, you know—”
“No, no, it only just goes to show how much more beautiful a place can be without human intrusion.”
Miranda came around the front of the car. “Is this your lawyer friend?” she said.
Lynn’s lips broke open into a smile. “I don’t have any law degrees,” she said, walking past them across the yard. “I’m just a concerned party.”
Miranda looked at Jodi and Jodi brushed past her, following Lynn.
“I see we lost the land there.” Lynn pointed toward the field and the frack tower on the hill.
“We?” Jodi walked up beside her.
“Well, yeah, the we who care about the land.”
They’d reached the edge of the yard and the rusted barbed-wire fence that separated Effie’s land from the Persinger place. The white frack tower stood out brilliantly against the trees.
“It makes so much sense seeing you here,” Lynn said, turning to face Jodi. “I mean, you make so much more sense in this place.” She smiled. “But you don’t really know who you are yet, do you?”
Jodi glanced at Lynn and then off toward the frack pad where the trucks were parked for the evening but the sound of the drilling kept on. Even without looking, Jodi could feel Lynn’s eyes on her.
“It’s kind of beautiful. The unknowing,” she said. “There’s some magic about you. You’re unalloyed.”
“Un-what?” Jodi looked back at her.
“It’s the sort of energy one usually gets from a child. The wild trust in the universe.”
Jodi laughed, unsure if she should take offense. “How old are you?” she said.
Lynn’s face twitched. “How old do you think I am?” she said, and when Jodi did not respond immediately she brought her hand up to her hair. “And yes, I do color it, if that’s what you were wondering.”
“No, I was just thinking we’re probably the same age. Thirty-five?”
“Thirty-nine.” Lynn smiled. “I feel so old, though. You’ve got so much hopeful energy. For me, everywhere I look now it’s just . . . Did you know we’re at the precipice of a sixth extinction? Probably not a precipice, I think we’re past that. By the end of the century we’ll have lost fifty percent. And with almost no fossil record left.”
The leaps and jumps of Lynn’s conversation unnerved Jodi. She turned to walk back toward the house.
“I’m sorry, I’m boring you.” Lynn reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Jodi’s ear.
Jodi stepped back. “No,” she said, “no, I just don’t know what—”
“Don’t worry.” Lynn grabbed her hand again. “I just need to find one or two more donors for the silent auction. We’ll set the date this week.”
The next morning Farren met Jodi, Ricky, and the boys at the head of the lane and they walked out silently, the sound of the machines rising all around them. The little hillside that once held the Persinger house had been clear cut and flattened on top, molded and graveled until it resembled a landing pad. They stood in the shade of the sycamores and watched as the white metal tower climbed higher into the cloudless sky and hoses spilled like loose intestines across the muddy ground. A permanent line of tanker trucks inched around the well.
Even with Lynn’s assurances of help, the sound of the drill hammered a doom rhythm into Jodi’s brain. The hollow gong-gong-gong of it echoed on through even the deepest hours of the night. She thought of Rosalba’s words, Everything was gone, the farm I grew up on, the way we used to live, and she could see them, the huge mechanical god-hands of the frackers and the cartels, coming down from the pure blue sky and lifting, scooping away.
“Somebody was to strike a match in the wrong place,” Farren said, “this whole operation would fire up and blow to hell.”
“Where are they digging to?” Donnie yelled.
Farren said something but his words were lost under all the sounds and all Jodi could hear was a mumble about layers and openings and radium. She remembered Lynn’s words about the fracking and tried to imagine Farren and Lynn conversing and laughter rose in her throat. She turned and looked back at the small, dark shape of Effie’s house.
When the mines had slowed and the coal companies had pulled out, Effie said they would be back to take more eventually, so sure had she been that the future was only a parallel of the past.
June 1989
It is a slow night at the Crystal Club and the air conditioner is barely working. The girls sit around in clumps at the cocktail tables, fanning themselves with newspapers and smoking. Jodi and Paula have been here for the better part of an hour, trying to sell some of the coke that Paula bought from a man down in New Orleans. The bouncer at the Crystal is an old acquaintance and he said he’d let the girls know what Paula has. They’ve been doing this, hopping from club to club like traveling salesmen, since New Orleans. The allure of the clubs has worn thin. Jodi wishes she could just go out to the car and sleep but she’s supposed to be Paula’s security.
Legs walk by, smooth brown skin arching up to a plump butt and tits pointing down, the purple areolas stretched by hungry baby mouths. You see this much skin for too long, Jodi thinks, and it stops meaning anything. A part of her wants to tell the girl that if she covered her pussy until partway through the show, then maybe there would be a bit more excitement.
Paula gets up and goes over to the table full of strippers. They are too far away for Jodi to hear what they’re saying but Paula’s mouth moves and then all the girls laugh.
Jodi leans back in the booth, slides her hand inside her purse and fondles the pistol, the metal smooth against her skin. She can feel herself loosening, the Valium she swallowed half an hour ago burning away the connections between words and what they mean, between here and now and yesterday.
A stripper comes out of the bathroom, glances around the almost empty club, then sits in the booth with Jodi. She calls herself Gabby and she’s got braces, which, she explains, she thought would be a big turnoff to men but actually they think it’s exciting.
“Jonno, he paid for them. Said my dad should have paid for them a long time ago.” Gabby bares her teeth and runs her index finger along the lines of metal. She has little gold rings on every one of her chubby fingers.
“Jonno?” Jodi is watching Paula at the table of strippers. All evening the girls have refused to do stage shows because there is almost no audience. When the DJ cues their music and calls out their names they heckle him and lean back, propping their heels up on the table. But now, a new song comes on and a frizzy-haired girl stands, winks at Paula, and shows her how she can move each butt cheek individually.
“He owns this place.” Gabby taps her pink-painted nails against her braces. “You could make a lot of money working here.”
Watching Paula, Jodi feels a lick of jealousy rise inside her. The strippers are all turned around in their seats, a ring of faces angled up toward Paula, and Paula is beaming with that same look she gets when she’s on a great run at the card table. The more of an audience she gets, the better she performs. She’s probably off on some tangent now, already forgotten what she is here for, or maybe not; maybe she is leading them all around to the subject of coke, priming them so they’ll buy it off her whether or not they ever wanted any to begin with.
“You look so young. You could make a lot of money.” Gabby reaches out and touches Jodi’s cheek and Jodi wishes she found this girl even a little bit attractive.
“I am young,” she says, then pushes up out of the booth.
Paula is gone.
Jodi scans the room. They are supposed to be a team. Paula sells the coke and Jodi is there with the pistol to make sure no one messes with them.
The rhinestoned velvet curtain beside the stage is swaying. Jodi moves toward it, gripping her purse. Behind the curtain there is a hallway with a yellow rectangle of light at the end. There are voices in the room beyon
d. Paula’s voice: Yeah, here, try a line.
The girl is bent over a narrow counter that extends the length of the room, crowded with coffee cups, cans of hairspray, tissue boxes, and strappy lingerie. In the mirror Jodi can see Paula eyeing the girl’s back, which is branded on the left side with a sickle-shaped scar. As the girl inhales, Paula places her hand on the girl’s ass and squeezes it.
“Hey.” The girl straightens up and looks at Paula.
Paula does not remove her hand. “I figured, you get a free bump, I should get a feel.”
The girl laughs, then turns and sees Jodi in the doorway. Her mouth puckers and then flattens out into a smile. “Your girlfriend’s pretty cute,” she says, tilting her face back toward Paula.
Paula’s shoulders tighten and she spins around, her expression blank.
Something unfurls in Jodi’s chest, a fury of shock. She slides her hand into her purse and grips the cool metal of the pistol.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says, and surprisingly her voice comes out loud and steady. She has never spoken to Paula like this before.
Paula twists her mouth. “Wait for me out there,” she says.
Anger hooks Jodi’s stomach and pulls it up toward her heart. “No,” she says, sliding the pistol out of her purse.
September 2007
They were wilting before they’d even left the parking lot. Ross kept begging to be carried, Donnie cried out that he was thirsty!, and Kaleb was stone silent but looked like he was about to pass out. At the bottom of the gravel hill was a football field’s worth of tables of junk. From where they stood it looked like a model, Jodi thought, a little cross-section displaying the constant and useless movements of humanity.
Miranda had wanted to go by herself to the Sunday morning flea market but Jodi had insisted that they all come along and do something together on Miranda’s rare day off. And so there they were, in the ninety-degree heat, strung out across the parking lot in a weary hand-holding line, all of them except for Ricky, who had refused the invitation.
