The Coal Tattoo

by Silas House

  When Easter had this dream-remembrance, she felt what Serena had felt. Serena was not really shocked, as she had been expecting this for a long while. Still, there was the sharp tear in her gut, as if someone had shot her in the stomach, and there was the sickness that swam up her back and across her shoulders, down her arms. Vomit rose in the back of her throat. Serena had midwifed Birdie into this world, and now she saw her swinging there in the tree. For a moment Serena felt she might die, too, from a sudden black grief.

  Serena ran back into the house and pulled a drawer so hard that it came all the way out of the cabinet and crashed to the floor, silverware clattering out. She felt such an urgency to hurry that she thought of nothing else. She didn’t want anyone to see Birdie hanging there that way, her face blue, her hair uncombed. She grabbed a butcher knife and ran back out of the house and to the tree. There was a chair that Birdie had used to climb up, and Serena sat it upright and stepped up to saw on the thick rope. Serena took Birdie in her arms as she cut the rope in two. She eased down from the chair and sat on the grass, Birdie spread across her legs. She didn’t know how long she sat there, rocking her, but eventually she was aware of Vine standing there, back from town.

  Vine didn’t say anything. She lifted Birdie out of Serena’s arms and carried her into the house. Birdie had never been much bigger than a breath and she looked even smaller in Vine’s arms. It seemed that Birdie had become a deflated thing, her thin white wrists dangling down, black hair sliding over Vine’s arm like water made of coal. Serena stood in the middle of the yard and watched as Vine went into the house, knowing that this would kill Vine, too. In that moment Vine’s face and body both seemed to crumble in on themselves, and she was never the same. As Serena stood there, she heard Vine let out one awful cry, a sound like all the pain that Vine had ever known, made audible.

  “Your mama went in her sleep,” Serena told Easter for years and years. “I found her after you went to school.”

  Vine and Serena had Birdie buried in her high-necked blouse and hired the funeral director to come make her face look right, though no one they knew had ever used the funeral director before, as he was reserved for town deaths.

  Easter willed herself to stop thinking about it. She couldn’t handle reliving the funeral, too. When she became conscious again, she smelled the coffee burning on the stove. She jumped up from the table and found the coffeepot trembling on the burner, the aluminum bottom scorched black. The boiling coffee pecked against the sides of the pot. She wrapped a rag around her hand and lifted the pot over into the sink. When she ran water over it, a cloud of steam hissed up. Easter looked through it and out into the backyard. There stood the locust where her mother had died, right in her face all the time. She wondered why Vine hadn’t had it cut down.

  She didn’t know why she was comparing herself to her mother. Her mother had loved too much, but she had lost her mind. El made Easter feel as if she had finally gained an understanding of the world. She knew that he wasn’t perfect, but she had to keep telling herself this. She loved everything about him: the way he put on his hat, the way he ate with his hand wrapped around his fork, leaning over his plate to shovel in food as if it might be snatched away. She liked watching him drink a whole glass of milk without pausing for a breath, the bump-bump of his Adam’s apple with each swallow. She loved his stories of growing up poor with nine brothers and sisters, his mother a widow woman who walked four miles to work at the telegraph office in Victory. He told her about his time in Korea and rolled up his shirtsleeve to show her the tattoo he had gotten while there: an eagle with a scroll in its claws. Whatever had been written within the scroll had been blacked out, and when she asked what it had said, he always changed the subject. She knew that it had been some woman’s name. But she didn’t care. He was hers now, and that was all that mattered.

  They never went anywhere, although El occasionally wanted to go to a square dance or a honky-tonk; he loved a big crowd. But he always gave in when she said she didn’t want to. Sometimes they went into town and watched I Love Lucy on the television sets in the windows of Mullins’s Hardware. He went to church with her but she knew that he didn’t enjoy it. He sighed loudly without meaning to, though he seemed to perk up when she sang and played the piano. Eventually, she told herself, he would be so moved by her singing that he would go to the altar and repent. She knew people were whispering about her at church—they thought it wrong for her to date a sinner—but she didn’t care. She knew he had a good heart.

  They spent most of their time at the house. He cooked for her. She had never known a man who liked to cook, but he had worked in the kitchen during boot camp. He fried hamburger steaks and made chili that was so spicy she had to have a glass of water nearby to eat it. They listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio and sat on the couch holding hands. Sometimes she caught Anneth watching them, but there was never envy in her eyes. She believed Anneth was happy for her, though she saw something else in her sister’s eyes that she couldn’t interpret. Then again, there was a lot going on with Anneth these days that Easter wasn’t clear about.

  Anneth had a secret life that was not secret. Easter knew about it without knowing how, but she made no move to interfere. Anneth was spending more time with Matthew Morgan than she let on. Still, Easter wanted Anneth to be happy, and as long as she kept going to work and school, that was all Easter cared about. What she didn’t know was that Anneth thought she might be falling in love.

  EVERY DAY AFTER he got off work at the mines, Matthew Morgan came to see Anneth at the café. He had black coffee and lemon pie, holding his tongue out so she could watch the meringue dissolve there before she slapped him on the back and walked away. Every evening he brought her home, and on the way she sat in the middle of the seat with her hand on his thigh. Sometimes they pulled into the road at the abandoned lumber camp and kissed. He cupped Anneth’s breasts in his hands and she felt the heat of his fingers shoot through her skin. Although he always bathed up at the mine, she could still taste coal on his lips. He left the car running for the heat and the radio. They kept the volume down low, but when Sam Cooke or Patsy Cline came on, Anneth would push him aside and turn it up. While she sung he kissed her neck, but she was lost to the music. She closed her eyes, sang along, and felt as if she was completely alone in the world. Often the song would end and the deejay would come on to rattle off the closings due to the weather, though Anneth still would not respond to Matthew.

  “Who’s your favorite singer?” she asked one day.

  “Buddy Holly, no doubt about it,” he said. “If I could be as good as Buddy, I’d die happy.”

  “My favorite song of all time is ‘This Land Is Your Land,’” she said.

  He laughed and put his hand into her hair. “I thought you loved rock ’n’ roll.”

  “I do, but that’s the best song. I cry every time I hear it,” she said. “Especially that part where he wonders if this land really was made for everybody.”

  “I would have never guessed that for your favorite song,” he said. “It’s kind of pinko.”

  “It’s beautiful is all,” she said, and then she put her hand on his crotch and began to kiss him again. She loved the way his chin scratched against hers, the way his hands felt moving under her blouse. She paused for a moment and looked at his eyes. If she stared into his eyes long enough, she could believe that she really loved him.

  “You never cease to surprise me, girl,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her and they sat there, not saying a word.

  It was the last day of March when Matthew moved his mouth up from her exposed shoulder and along her neck and spoke with his lips against hers. “Marry me,” he said.

  “Not until I graduate,” Anneth said, not missing a beat. She was aware of his disappointment—it seemed like a solid thing right there in the seat next to her—but ignored it so she could focus on the way an entire inch of snow balanced itself on a dogwood branch. She lit a cigarette and leaned her head back agains
t the seat as she pushed out smoke rings, perfect circles that didn’t break apart until they hit the windshield.

  It must have been the unknown promise of spring that overtook the men that day, because El asked Easter the same thing that afternoon. The only difference was that Easter said yes.

  THAT MAY, EASTER married El, and Anneth moved in with Sophie and Paul for a month so the newlyweds could have a proper honeymoon alone. They all agreed it would be for the best. For one thing, it would give Anneth time to adjust to the fact that a man would be living in their house. She knew the way a man’s presence seemed to overtake everything.

  When she wasn’t at work, Anneth spent the afternoons sitting in the yard with her aunt and uncle. They cut up cabbage for kraut and peeled cucumbers for pickling. Anneth wasn’t much good at this kind of labor, but she enjoyed watching the careful way Sophie and Paul worked together, like they were two parts of the same machine. She put slices of cucumber on her tongue and let them rest there for a long while before biting into the fleshy whiteness. She loved how a cucumber remained cool inside, no matter how hot it was outside. It tasted like a mouthful of solid, clean water. Sometimes Paul set up his quilting rack on the yard and they would all help choose the colors. Anneth wanted to put in all bright colors, but Sophie slapped her hand away from the pile of scraps.

  “If it was up to you, the whole quilt would be purple and red. You have to throw in some darks to even it all out,” Paul said.

  Sophie let Anneth go out even on school nights, but only after Paul was asleep, which was easy, since Paul lay down just after it got dark every night. Sophie pushed fifty cents into Anneth’s hand. “As long as you don’t come in drunk and don’t stay out too late,” she said, and Anneth felt like kissing her slender hands. “Don’t let Paul know it, either. Be careful.”

  Sophie liked Matthew. Anneth knew that Sophie was taken by his eyes, just as she was. He acted different around Sophie, like a gentleman. He called her “ma’am” and stood up whenever Sophie left the kitchen table on those evenings he came to have supper with them. It made Anneth want to laugh because he wasn’t a gentleman at all. He was all the time trying to get at her titties and kept a fifth of Jim Beam under the seat of his car.

  They always waited until Paul had gone into the bedroom; then Sophie would walk them to the door and lean against the wall while they put on their shoes. “Remember, don’t be drinking and going wild,” she said as they made their way down the porch steps.

  One night, Anneth did get drunk. She couldn’t help herself. Matthew had taken her in the back door of the Hilltop, where the band was playing. It was a Friday night and the place was packed. Anneth sat at a little table just off the stage, where she could look out and see everyone. Since she was with the band, the waitress kept her supplied with Pepsi and shots of bourbon. Anneth tilted her head back and let the whiskey slide down her throat, then wiped her mouth on the back of her arm like a man. When Matthew plugged in his electric guitar, and his buddy, Blake, sat down at the piano and they started in on “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On,’” she couldn’t control herself. She took the final shot of Jim Beam that would make her completely drunk and jumped up. She shook her hips to the beat, lifting her legs and holding up her skirt so her knees had plenty of room to move around. She shimmied her shoulders and put her arms up over her head and let her head sway about. They were almost as good as Jerry Lee Lewis himself and she had never had so much fun dancing.

  The room spun around, shifted, like a boat crashing into giant waves. She spun with it, feeling more alive than she ever had before in her life. I’m alive, she thought. I’m here, right now. She leaned back and yelled out, then stumbled into a couple and leaned against the man’s back, laughing with her face against his shirt until his date pushed her away. Even after the song ended and the band took a break, she kept dancing. Then the jukebox kicked on and played a slow country song. Back at the table, Matthew stood waiting for her.

  “I think you’ve had enough, baby,” he said.

  “No, I haven’t. You’re wrong,” she said. She put her face against the open space at his collar and kissed his neck. “Get me another shot of that whiskey.”

  “Sophie will hate me for letting you get this drunk, and it’s about time to close this place down,” he said, and kissed the top of her head.

  “I don’t give a damn,” she said, “about nothing.”

  “Come on, Anneth. Straighten up, now.” He caught the elbow of a passing waitress. “Bring her some coffee.”

  The waitress snorted in amusement, revealing teeth smudged with lipstick. Anneth stuck her finger up to point at the woman’s mouth and laughed.

  “We don’t have no coffee,” the waitress said. “Maybe some 7UP.”

  “Whatever will help her.”

  Anneth lay against his chest and ran her hands down his back to settle on his rear end. She tried to push her fingers beneath the waistband of his pants. “I want you,” she said, as if out of breath. “Right now. Take me away from this place.”

  Matthew pulled Anneth onto his lap and held her, but he was unaware when she shed quiet tears on his shoulder. He didn’t know that she was thinking of her own dead family: her grandmothers, her parents, all gone and never coming back. She saw each one of them in their caskets. Even if Easter said Anneth wasn’t old enough to remember her daddy’s dying, she remembered. Maybe memory lived on in your blood or crawled up under your skin. She didn’t know. And now Easter was gone, too, in her own way. Down there in their house with that man. All Anneth had was Matthew.

  IN THE CAR, she laid her head in Matthew’s lap and didn’t say a word. She watched the way light traveled around the cab of the car as they leaned into the curves between town and Free Creek. Matthew played the radio and rolled down his window so that the wind would move over her face. He must have thought she was asleep, because he never said a word. He drove slowly, as if prolonging the trip, and only occasionally forgot himself enough to sing along with whatever came on the radio. When the car slowed and bumped over the rickety bridge, she knew that they were home. She found the door handle and shoved out before Matthew could put on the parking brake. He had pulled into Paul and Sophie’s, but Anneth wanted to see Easter. She started down the sandy road, aware of him behind her trying to catch up.

  “Anneth, wait,” he said, as if from very far away. “I said wait, now, damn it.”

  She could hear everything separately: the cry of the crickets, the scratch of the katydids, the squeals of the night peepers. The roar of the creek as it raged toward the river. She let all these sounds overtake her so that she didn’t have to hear Matthew begging her to turn around. She glanced up at the sky to find a fingernail of moon on the blue blackness, pecks of stars like granules of salt spilled out across a dark tablecloth. Here was their house, where she had lived all her life with her sister. She could picture them within, Easter snuggled up to El’s back. It was too much.

  Matthew pulled at her arm, but she shook him away.

  “Get up, damn it!” she hollered. “Everybody get up and look at this moon!”

  “Come on, now, Anneth,” Matthew said. “You’ve got to hush—”

  “I said get up and see this beautiful night. Live, Sister! Easter, get up! Come out here right now, every sumbitching one of you, and look!”

  Only when she saw Easter and El’s shapes standing on the porch did she stop yelling. El was shirtless—his chest broad—and he leaned on the banister as if staring at a wild animal. Easter was rushing down the steps in her nightgown. With the yellow porch light behind Easter, Anneth could see right through the thin fabric. She looked at Easter’s white feet, curved and long. Anneth had always made fun of Easter’s feet, told her they looked like a boy’s. Anneth took a step backward and then she was falling, falling right into Matthew’s arms. His knees buckled and he sat down in the road with her head in his lap. When she looked up at his eyes, at Easter squatting down to plead and cry, Anneth knew that if she didn’t make h
erself do something, she’d cry in front of every one of them. If she couldn’t choke it down, she might come right out and say, I’m hurting, where everyone could hear. So she started laughing. She thought she might never, ever be able to stop.

  PART TWO

  The Land Waits

  I am wealthy with earth and sky...

  I am possessor and possessed.

  —James Still, “Mine Is a Wide Estate”

  Six

  When Love Was Young

  ANNETH DIDN’T LOOK back as they pulled out of Free Creek. They took it slow across the rough bridge and then Matthew turned onto the main road and gunned the gas, leaving black marks on the highway. The tires issued a piercing squeal. He reached across the seat and took hold of her hand.

  “We’re on our way now,” he said. He looked very young in the early-morning light of high summer.

  She was leaving home for the first time in her life. In two hours she would be in a different state, and before long they would be married. This was not the way she had pictured her wedding coming about, but she liked it. She liked that they didn’t even have their rings yet. She liked the fact that she wasn’t even going to have a real wedding dress. It was all spur of the moment. An adventure. And that was the best way to go about things. That was the way to make memories.

  She held on to his hand tightly as they passed through Black Banks. At the stoplight, she felt like hollering out to the people on the streets that she was off to get married, that she was going to Tennessee. She wished she would see someone she knew so she could lean out her window and tell them. No one in this world knew what they were going to do, and she felt a thrill in having this secret. It would be dark before Easter returned from church and found her note. Anneth had taken a long time in writing it, although the note was not very long at all. She had chosen her words carefully and tried to use her best handwriting. She had used a piece of the stationery she saved for writing real letters. It was the smoothest paper, so cool and flat that she paused every so often to run her hand over it. The border was ivy and in the top right-hand corner there was a redbird perched among the greenery.