The Coal Tattoo

by Silas House

  “Oh, yes, you do,” Anneth said, and took a quick drink from her Dr Pepper before continuing. “It’s so beautiful, Lolie. The most beautiful thing. Just endless, that water. You would never get over it in your entire life.”

  “What was your hotel like?” This question came from Evelyn, Gabe’s new wife, whom they had known their whole lives. She had been raised just up the road but Easter had never entertained the notion of Gabe’s even dating the likes of her. Evelyn was as old as Gabe but was somehow childlike, with bangs that were so long they quivered in her eyelashes (which grew to be annoying because Easter noticed that Evelyn blinked a lot) and two perfectly rounded blots of rouge. Evelyn was clearly mesmerized by Anneth, who looked like Elizabeth Taylor that day with her off-the-shoulder blouse and full skirt. She wore dangling pearl earrings that seemed to point out her bare shoulders, and her fingernails were painted red as a pepper.

  “Oh, it was so fancy,” Anneth said, blowing out smoke. “We had a concierge that did everything for us.”

  “A what?” Evelyn said, moony-eyed, leaning in with the question.

  “A concierge,” Anneth said, enjoying the way the word worked its way out of her mouth. Easter knew that she was enjoying knowing such a strange new word, too. “This little man that is there for your every whim—”

  Easter slapped her hands together. “Let’s go in the house, boys,” she said. “Dinner’s going to get cold.”

  They had waited until late afternoon to eat so they could sit outside in the shadow of the mountain, once the sun had moved behind it. Easter sat at the end of the two long tables in the yard and looked at everyone. This was the first time since the baby’s death that she had been completely happy. She watched them all talking and leaning forward to laugh with one another, eating the food she had raised in her own little garden and made with her own hands. Here was everyone she truly loved, sitting on the patch of ground she had known all of her life.

  Anneth sat at Easter’s left and Gabe at her right. Anneth talked nonstop. She had brought Easter a box of seashells and wouldn’t hush until Easter held one of them up to her ear so she could hear the ocean. Anneth had stood there, slowly beginning to smile as she watched for a sign of recognition on Easter’s face. And then, there it had been, the roar of waves on the beach. “It’s magic,” Anneth had said.

  Gabe seemed to be crazy about Evelyn. She was the first woman Easter had ever seen him really talk to; all during dinner he whispered into her ear, delighted by the reply of her laughter, and he even kissed her on the cheek right in front of everyone. Easter had always thought a kiss on the cheek was more intimate than one on the lips. When a man kissed his wife on the cheek, you knew that he loved her because he wasn’t really getting anything out of it, wasn’t receiving the thrill of her lips, so it was a completely selfless act. Still, Easter had to marvel at his attraction to Evelyn, who was a mouse of a woman. He had always liked women that he could boss around, though, a thing Easter could not understand. Most men she knew enjoyed a woman who couldn’t be broken.

  She caught El staring at her as he sat at the other end of the table. Israel was saying something to him, but El was simply nodding as he looked into Easter’s eyes. He had been studying her while she watched Anneth and Gabe and Evelyn. She saw how much he loved her in that look, the way his eyes couldn’t break away from her, staring at her so long that Israel eventually noticed that El wasn’t even responding, so he turned his conversation back to Lolie.

  They ate until they couldn’t hold any more—the beans and dumplings and boiled potatoes, then the lemon pie and banana pudding. They scooted their chairs back from the table and patted their bellies. Gabe and Israel both unlatched the buttons on their pants. Anneth and Lolie smoked cigarettes and leaned on the table with their elbows. For such a small bird, Evelyn could eat more than any of them and was still picking at a large slice of coconut cake when the rest of them had already finished and simply sat there talking.

  Finally Sophie stood up and spoke loudly. “Now, girls. Me and Easter worked like dogs all morning cooking,” she said, and ran her finger through the air, pointing at each of the women. “It’s time for you all to wash the dishes.”

  Easter appreciated Sophie’s demands, but she couldn’t stand the thought of women being in her kitchen without her supervision, so she was the first to fill the sink with soapy water.

  “You go on and rest,” Anneth said, a cigarette bobbing up and down between her lips. “We’ll take care of all this.”

  Easter snatched the cigarette from Anneth’s mouth. “You know I’m funny,” she said, and ground the Lucky Strike out in the ashtray. “I’ll help you.”

  Easter and Anneth washed the dishes together while Evelyn and Lolie ran in and out of the house, packing in dirty dishes. Sophie couldn’t stand to sit still, either, so she joined in, too. While they worked, they sang the same song their grandmothers had always sung while washing dishes. Easter started the song off, and then they all joined in, Easter’s and Anneth’s voices harmonizing while the others’ voices drifted in and out with the slap of the screen door. They sang:

  Who’s gonna shoe your pretty little foot?

  Who’s gonna plait your hair?

  Who’s gonna kiss your red ruby lips?

  Who’s gonna be your man?

  Is that you, Reuben, Reuben?

  Where have you been so long?

  Sophie came in with an armload of plates and sang along as she slid one after the other into the hot water. She leaned against them in song, her voice high and more beautiful than Easter had ever noticed before.

  The longest train that I ever saw,

  It was near a coal town long.

  And the only man that I ever loved

  He was on that train and long gone

  Is that you, Reuben, Reuben?

  Where have you been so long?

  Sophie went out to fetch the rest of the dirty dishes. Evelyn leaned against the refrigerator with a dreamy look on her face. “Oh, there’s nothing in this world like hearing two sisters sing together,” she said, and clapped her small hands together. “Sing another one.”

  Easter smiled at her. “You have a pretty voice, too,” she said, and she meant it. “You’re our sister now, too, since you’ve married Gabe. That’s the way this family is.”

  Evelyn took a step closer and put her knuckles against her lips before speaking. “That means a lot to me, Easter. I never had no sisters of my own, you know.”

  “It’s a damn shame that you all are leaving,” Anneth said.

  Evelyn stepped even closer so that she stood just behind the two of them, her face peering between their arms as if the dishes they were washing might be something to see. “I don’t want to go,” she whispered.

  “I hate for you all to go, too,” Easter said. “So bad.”

  “I could’ve killed my brother. He was down here last weekend, bragging to Gabe about how much money they were making up there in the refrigerator factory, said we could waltz right in there and get a job. But I don’t want to leave home.”

  “Gabe says you all will just stay long enough to save up some money,” Easter said, but she wished she could be as reassuring to herself. She couldn’t stand the thought of Gabe going north. She knew what happened when people went up there. They moved off and got jobs in factories and lost their accents and became different people, and when they came back, they were changed forever.

  “That’s what everybody says,” Evelyn said. “But then they only come back for Christmas and Easter.”

  “Well, the company doesn’t need as many men since they’ve started that strip mining, which is ruining everything,” Easter said. She washed out a bowl and handed it to Anneth for rinsing. As she looked over her shoulder, she watched as Evelyn seemed to deflate, sinking back until she found a chair at the kitchen table. “And I begged Gabe to not leave, but he can’t stand being out of work. He’s been so unhappy since the mine closed, and you can’t hardly blame him for that.
”

  Anneth rinsed the bowl and spoke in an even voice. “You know good and well that Liam would have give him a job at the Altamont mines,” she said.

  Evelyn and Easter exchanged knowing looks.

  “He didn’t want to go asking his new brother-in-law for a job, I guess,” Easter said. “It’s done now, anyway. It’ll all work out, though, Evelyn.”

  Anneth jabbed Easter in the ribs. “Let’s sing ‘Downtown’ for her,” she said.

  Easter was glad her sister had the good sense to know when to change the subject. “Lord, no,” she said. “I don’t sing that old rock ’n’ roll no more.” She put her hands into the hot water and savored the prickle of its heat.

  “Please!” Evelyn cried, just like a little child. “Oh, please do, Easter.”

  Anneth started singing and moving her hips around while she ran plates under the rinse water. Even though she hadn’t sung a rollicking song in what seemed like ages, Easter started tapping her foot, too, and then the three of them were singing so loud that everyone out on the yard stopped talking and listened.

  EVERYONE STAYED UNTIL twilight began to overtake the sky with streaks of purple and yellow. They had played horseshoes and sung and eaten dessert once again, but mostly they had talked, and when darkness settled over them, they were still talking, some of them sitting in the stiff chairs around the table, but others lying back on the grass or on quilts spread on the yard.

  While Anneth was going on and on to Evelyn about the golden dome she had seen on the state capitol in West Virginia, Gabe sat down on the quilt beside Easter. He put his hand atop hers, and his skin was rough and callused. Gabe hardly ever touched anyone.

  “I’ll come home every weekend,” Gabe said. “And I don’t want you worrying about us.”

  “I will, though,” Easter said. “I don’t understand why you don’t talk to Liam about getting on at Altamont. He’s a foreman, Gabe. He could do whatever he wanted to.”

  Gabe looked away, his eyes hard and trained on Liam, who was telling Paul a long, animated story about his childhood. “I don’t want nobody to know it,” he said, “but I did talk to him about it. I hated to, because I don’t like to ask nobody to help me out, but I didn’t want to leave here, Easter. So I went into his office and asked him about giving me a job.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me he’d do all he could, that he’d pull a few strings and call me. Said the coal boom was over and that Altamont was having to make cutbacks like everybody else, but he’d find something.” Gabe still wouldn’t look at her. He plucked a piece of grass from the ground and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. “But he was just keeping me hanging on. He didn’t try to help me, never even mentioned it again.”

  Easter looked across the yard, and when her eyes met Liam’s he smiled at her like a little boy seeking approval. She couldn’t help but pull her mouth in tightly and look away.

  Twenty-one

  Altamont

  ANNETH HATED ALTAMONT, the dirt and grime and noise, the barren landscape where the trees had been clear-cut. And the distance from both town and Free Creek. But most of all what she hated was living in the big foreman’s house while friends of hers lived in the camp down there in the valley. It didn’t feel right. She was meant to be in one of those shotgun houses that had arrived preassembled on a railroad car, not in this fine home with the upstairs bedrooms and the gingerbread on the porch, sitting perched on the side of Redbud Mountain like a giant tooth that had fallen out of the sky.

  And the worst part was that this place was—in a roundabout way—her own land that was being mined and hauled away. She remembered so many stories about this place, could recall the way Vine’s face changed when she spoke of Redbud. She had told them of their grandfather’s proposal down there where the river met the creek, had described the neat little Cherokee houses sitting in the valley so vividly that as a child Anneth had often pictured the settlement. Vine had told Anneth that she had a special place up on Redbud Mountain where she went to sit and watch the world, an outcropping that overlooked the entire valley. Now those rocks were nowhere to be found. They must have been removed to make way for the very house she now lived in. The mayor had built this house himself back then, and his presence somehow lingered, a feeling in the air that seemed to dull the light and affect the temperature of the place. It made her sick to think that she was somehow part of tearing up what Vine had always called Redbud Camp, although everyone now called it by the name of the mining company—Altamont. It caused her to lie awake at night. Therein was planted the first tree that would grow up in the middle of her marriage to Liam. It was the first of a forest.

  Being married to Liam turned out not to be at all the way Anneth had imagined. They had been married almost a year now and in those months the bad episodes had just piled up. She couldn’t count the times she had heard women say, “As soon as I married him, his true self came out.” That was certainly true of Liam, and she guessed that it was true of many men. She had thought it would always be like their summer on the lake. The freedom of swimming, the speed of his boat slicing through the waves, their kissing as they lay back on the sandy bank with the heat of the sun on their legs. Cold beer in the cooler and a good song always on the radio, the smell of coconut lotion and baby oil. But once they had returned from their honeymoon, Liam had become a different person. She remembered the way he had been when they visited his parents, and realized that he was that way all the time now. Most of it was because the company had put extra pressure on him. Since his father was part owner of the mine and living the easy life up in Huntington, everything fell onto Liam’s shoulders. Everyone was saying that the coal boom was over, after all. It had lasted longer in Crow County than it had in most other places. He stayed at the office all the time and had to be up at the mine sometimes, too.

  When he came home he took a long shower with the bathroom door closed and then sat on the porch in nothing but his Levi’s, looking out at the coal camp while he drank a beer. Anneth stood in the doorway and watched him from behind. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

  She walked across the porch quietly and leaned on the rail in front of him so that he had no choice but to look at her. “I won’t understand if you don’t talk to me.”

  “It’s the mines. They’re wanting to start strip mining and using the broad form deeds. People around here won’t go for that.”

  “You can’t let them do that,” she said. “Talk to your daddy. He’ll listen to you.”

  His face darkened and he finished his beer. “He’s never cared what I had to say, Anneth. Couldn’t you see that when you went up there?”

  Often he drank until midnight, sitting there staring out at the lights of the coal camp. And then he would come into the bedroom and get on top of her without so much as a kiss, pulling up her gown and biting at her lips until she had to push him away. And sometimes he slept out there on the porch in that stiff wooden chair.

  Other nights he didn’t get home until after dark. Often she was already in the bed and he ate his supper cold, finding it in the oven, where she had left his plate wrapped in aluminum foil. She had had her suspicions about his whereabouts. If she ever found out that he was having an affair, she thought she might shoot him, to wound him at least as much as her sense of pride would suffer at the thought. But she had followed him into town once and seen that he had simply gone to see his lawyer. And several nights she had walked down to the foreman’s office to see if he was still there and had peered in to see him leaning over his desk with a hand to his forehead as he listened closely to someone on the phone. His father, no doubt.

  She wished she had never quit her job. Most of the time she had nothing to do. It would have been impossible to stay on at the café, though. Altamont was so far out in the mountains that it took an hour to get to Black Banks and almost as long to get to Free Creek. There was no one to visit because everyone she knew was a
t work during the week—Easter at the school, Lolie at Shoes Galore. Sophie didn’t actually have a job, but she was so busy she didn’t want to sit and visit with Anneth. She was always going about the business of quilting or sewing or canning or something. Anneth was made tired just by watching her dart around the house. And even though Anneth had been out honky-tonking with lots of the people who lived down in the mining camp, they were all busy during the day, too. The men were miles back in the mine, and the women were tending to their children and their chores.

  So she occupied herself by spending money. Every day she walked down to the post office and found her box stuffed with catalogs from Louisville and Chicago. One thing she liked about being married to Liam was that she could buy anything she wanted. She had never had money before, and she loved being able to flip through the catalogs and circle dresses and shoes with one quick swipe of her ink pen. The catalogs bored her after a while, and she found herself making the long trip into town once or twice a week. There she could walk into the dress shop and just pick out whatever she wanted. She loved meeting up with Lolie at noon and taking her out to eat and being able to pay for their cheeseburgers. She bought clothes for Easter and left them hanging on the door while Easter was still at work—otherwise Easter would never have accepted them.

  Sometimes she sat on the bench at the bus station, smoking cigarettes and watching all the strange, different people getting off the bus. Occasionally she spotted someone who obviously needed some money, and she’d approach them and insist that they take a ten-dollar bill. There were young men who were out of work and old women who wore ragged dresses, and lots and lots of girls with babies on their hips, most likely going to Ashland to see their men before they were shipped out. President Johnson was sending more and more boys to Vietnam. Anneth always remembered her own bus ride and how poor so many of the people had been, the way that one girl with the baby hadn’t had enough money to buy breakfast.