The Evening Hour

by A. Carter Sickels

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing.” She looked over the top of the newspaper. “When are you going to help me get out of here, boy?”

  Every day she asked him to help her escape. He’d already searched her belongings and knew that she had nothing. She’d come in with only a picture of her dead husband. He wondered if she’d lost everything, or if she’d always had nothing, which seemed more likely.

  “There ain’t nothing wrong with me,” she continued. “They’re keeping me in here on purpose. They don’t want me going after the coal company.”

  The old folks’ paranoia ate at their minds like salt on slugs. He checked her blood pressure and temperature, wrote the numbers on the chart. She still needed oxygen treatments twice a day. She had no family. No children. She would never leave.

  “Did you see this?” She rattled the newspaper. “Coal company says they’ll be mining up there at the end of the week. They were supposed to be shut down.”

  “I ain’t looked at the paper yet.”

  “You ought to read more. You ought to know what’s going on.”

  Then Sara Jean walked in.

  “There’s my girl,” said Blue. She looked at Cole. “She knows what’s going on.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Sara Jean scrambled up on the bed next to Blue. She looked wild. Her hair, as usual, was stringy, falling in her eyes, and she wore jeans that were patched at the knee, a ratty sweatshirt. Her sneakers were muddy, and he told her not to get the bed dirty. She threw the shoes off; her toes poked through the holes in her socks.

  “Your mama working at the Wigwam today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe I should go see her. You think she’d want to see me?”

  She shrugged. Then she said, “I got to talk to Blue about something.”

  “What, you telling secrets?”

  “We got things to discuss.”

  He pointed at Blue. “I better see you tomorrow at game night. You need to get out of that bed.”

  “I ain’t playing games,” she said angrily. “I ain’t no child.”

  On break, Cole went to the Wigwam. Lacy stood at the counter, her back to him, her hair pinned up. Her neck was slender, pretty. He’d put his mouth on it many times, but the memory was distant, like a sad song.

  “Hey there.”

  She turned. “Where you been hiding?”

  “Nowhere. Just busy. How are you doing?”

  She shrugged. “Just trying to hold on.”

  Her face looked strained, all bones and angles, and there were pale purple rings under her eyes. She was fierce and beautiful. He told her he was sorry for not being around.

  “I take care of myself pretty good,” she said.

  “I know you do.”

  She asked where he was living, and he told her about the rental. She said that it sounded better than the trailer park. “I can’t wait to get out of there.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll never back down from them sons of bitches.”

  He hesitated. “Hey, you think it would be all right if we got together sometime?”

  Finally, she cracked a smile. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”

  He said he’d call her later.

  “Yeah, well. I won’t hold my breath.”

  The next hour was busy, but when he had a free moment, he peeked in on Blue. She was sleeping, and Sara Jean was packing clothes into a paper bag.

  “What are you doing?”

  Startled, she dropped Blue’s nightgown on the floor. She had her mother’s cheekbones, high and sharp. “Nothing,” she said, still as a turtle.

  “Don’t be scared.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “What are you packing for? Blue planning on leaving?”

  “She don’t want to stay here,” she burst out. “She don’t want to and she don’t have to.”

  “She’s got to get better. Then she can leave.”

  “You’re lying,” she said. “They don’t let people out of here.”

  He looked at the pitiful bag of clothes. “She just can’t walk out,” he said. “She doesn’t even have a car. Unless you’re driving. You driving?”

  She told him that they had a plan, looking at him with hope, needing him to be someone he was not.

  “Who’s coming for her?”

  “My grandpa,” she said. “He’s friends with Blue.”

  “Your mom’s old man? Does your mom know about this?”

  “Not him. My other grandpa. My daddy’s dad.”

  “He lives around here?”

  “He lives in the mountains,” she explained. “Gundy.”

  Cole remembered now. Lacy had told him about Denny’s dad. Crazy, she’d said.

  “Well, tell me when he gets here, I’d like to meet him.” He tousled her hair. “You gonna stay here all evening? You want the TV on or something?”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t tell,” she called after him. He said he wouldn’t. As far as he could see, there was nothing to tell, except a silly story thought up by an old woman desperate to return to a life that no longer existed. He walked down the hall, passing Larry Potts, twiddling his thumbs, and Hazel Lewis, trying to take off her shirt. He used to imagine setting them free: Where would they go? They’d be more lost out there than they were in here. Like Elvira Black, her life falling apart around her, tossed and shoved into boxes.

  Ellen came up to him. “Hey. You have time to talk?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Let’s go outside.”

  They went out to the picnic table, sat under the canopy of a red maple. The evening sky held the lightness of spring. A breeze kicked up, Ellen shivered.

  “You cold?” he asked.

  “I’m all right.”

  They smoked, and around them crickets sang. She wasn’t talking, so he told her about Elvira Black, said she was a friend of his grandmother’s. “I’m worried.” Ellen told him she would call social services and have them check it out. “Thanks,” he said.

  He zipped up his jacket; now he was the one shivering. He wondered if she wanted to talk to him about the union. He’d been hearing rumors; it seemed like this time something might happen. He told her he was in, if that was what she wanted to know. “I been thinking it might be all right,” he said.

  “They’ll never get a union in here,” she said. “That’s just wishful thinking.”

  “Well, what is it? You can’t keep me guessing all night. I’ve never seen you like this. Something happen at home, or is it work, or what?”

  She looked at him. Her face was tense and small; he remembered when she first started working here, how he’d thought about asking her out. That seemed so long ago.

  “Cole, I saw you,” she said in a low voice.

  The air snapped through his jacket. “What?”

  “I saw you take stuff. I saw you a few months ago, and I saw you today.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Damn it, I saw you. You’re the one.”

  He took a long drag on the cigarette, trying to steady himself. He tilted his head back until he could feel the night over him, the leaves above, the shadows, the smell of a new season. He looked at her. “I’m good to them, Ellen, you know I am.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “You know how much I get paid,” he said defensively. “I need it. My grandma needs it.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, still talking in a hushed voice, practically spitting the word. “We all need it. It’s about trust, Cole. It’s about doing good.”

  “So now what, you’re gonna bust me?”

  She said nothing. He smoked furiously. He could not even look at her, he felt so much rage. He thought about her giving him the nursing books; she must have known all along that he would never be able to pick up and go away to school, she must have kno
wn that he would always be stuck here, stuck in his own skin.

  “I’ll give it all back,” he said finally. “Is that what you want?”

  “Listen to me. Linda suspects you. They’ll press charges. I heard her talking to Pete.”

  “You told.” He stood up. “You bitch, you told.”

  “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. They’ve been watching you.”

  He was shaking, could not see straight. Everything seemed far away, her voice, her face. He held onto the edge of the table until he felt like it would break in his hands.

  “There’s more,” she said quietly.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Look, I’m not making any kind of assumptions. But shit is going down, Cole. Randy told me, they’re gonna be busting people left and right.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  She stared him in the eye. “I’m warning you,” she said. “I’m telling you for your own good. Those people you hang out with.”

  “I don’t hang out with nobody.”

  “Look, Randy likes you. But in the next couple of weeks, things are going to happen. I’m warning you.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”

  “Christ.” Cole looked at her, waiting for her to take it all back, but she just said, “I should get in there,” and she walked through the doors and he was alone.

  He stood under the tree and rubbed his fists against his eyes. “Goddamn you,” he said. “Stupid fucking asshole, you fucked up, you fucked up.” He said this over and over, like it was scripture, and he looked up at the sky, saw nothing, only darkness. He threw down his cigarette and stormed inside. He didn’t know what to do. He was lit up with rage. He stared at a resident’s chart until the words blurred and jumped around. You can do this, he told himself, Pull it together. He completed his duties in a daze of disbelief and anger. Avoiding Ellen. Avoiding everyone. When his shift was almost over he walked into Blue’s room and saw her sitting in a chair with the paper bag on her lap. Sara Jean was gone.

  “Well, go on,” he said. “Nobody’s stopping you.”

  She scowled. “What’s wrong with you?”

  He was afraid if he let up for even a second, he would fall apart. He stayed rigid. Clenched teeth, fists. He stared at her, sick and feeble, holding on to that pathetic shopping bag.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re going to do,” he said. “It’s all over and done with. Nothing can be changed.”

  “I’ve lived eighty-five years, and I would not be alive today if there was not change.” She looked over his shoulder, and her voice softened. “I knew you’d come.”

  A gaunt, bearded man stood in the doorway. He was dressed in tattered army fatigues. He looked like he was afraid to go any farther, his anxious eyes darting around the room. But then he walked in, his boots not making a sound.

  “I’d kill myself if I was in a place like this,” he said, his voice gravelly, ugly.

  “That’s why I’m getting out.”

  The man stepped toward Cole. “She don’t belong here.”

  “He’ll let me go. He ain’t like the rest.”

  Cole kept his eyes on Blue. He did not want to look at the man again, did not want to see him, but still he smelled him, the sour sweat of him, his wildness.

  “I don’t know where you’re going,” Cole said, “but I sure hope to hell you’ll be careful.”

  She said not to worry. Then she reached out her spindly hand and put it on his face and he flinched, but he did not move away, he let the hand stay there and she said, “Don’t forget, you was born with the caul over your face. Means you got a gift, you can see things.” She left her hand on him for what felt like hours, years, decades, but was only a few seconds, the first hand that had ever touched him, and then she shuffled away with the crazy hill-man. Cole watched them go out the back door. He stood there another few minutes. Then he went to the locker room. He scrawled a note for Ellen, Don’t forget to check on Elvira Black. He did not say good-bye to anyone. He stripped off his scrubs and changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and then he clocked out for the last time.

  Chapter 19

  The next day Cole drove to a pawnshop on the outskirts of Zion. The one-story cinder-block building, without any windows, sat on the edge of the road, the mountains rising behind it, and next to it was a junkyard, protected by a barbed-wire fence. The hand-painted sign out front said: “Need cash? We buy jewelry, TVs, stereos, guns, brass, copper.” Years ago, he and Terry Rose came here with copper wiring they’d ripped out of a few deserted homes, all part of their scheme to make money and get out of Dove Creek.

  He rang the bell. After a few minutes an overweight man wearing dirty work pants and a denim jacket with the sleeves cut out opened the door and glared at Cole through a pair of thick eyeglasses. It was the same man who’d bought the wiring from them; now he was probably in his early fifties and he did not look any different, except maybe fatter. He went back to the counter, sat on a well-worn stool. On the wall behind him were shotguns, revolvers, muzzleloaders, and inside the counter, under the glass top, were knives and jewelry. The rest of the store was crowded with dusty TVs, radios, hubcaps, tools, all of it stacked on sagging shelves and pushed up against the walls. The smell of motor oil and old machinery made Cole think of Terry Rose back in high school, always messing with broken-down cars. He spent a couple of years working on an Trans-Am that was supposed to be their getaway car. Cole would drink beer and watch him as he fiddled under the hood, and occasionally Terry would raise his grease-stained face, his eyes bright. “Bro, this baby is gonna take us places.” He never did get it running.

  “You buying or selling?”

  “Selling.”

  Cole opened the paper bag and laid out all of the goods accumulated over the past year. Rings, brooches, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, watches, a few old pocketknives and antique coins. He had cleaned the objects until they sparkled. Now he looked at the old people’s belongings spread out on the smudged countertop, and he remembered each one, who it had belonged to. He picked up a thin gold ring that was so small, it would not even fit on his pinkie. He’d found it in Larry Potts’s nightstand drawer, along with a worn photograph of a woman. He’d heard the rumors about Larry’s pretty wife, dead by her own hands, how Larry was never the same after. Twiddling his thumbs, words locked up inside of him.

  “Some rich lady die and leave you all this?” the man said, smirking.

  Cole asked if he could smoke and the man said no, he had asthma. Cole watched him examine each piece. He already knew that he would not pay their worth. He knew but still dreaded to hear him name his price. He glanced up at the guns and knives. He had not told his grandmother or his mother that he’d quit his job. His cousin Kay was the only one who knew. She was home for spring break, and last night when he’d walked in, she was at the kitchen table, talking with Ruby. His grandmother was already in bed. “I been waiting for you,” Kay said, and told him that she and her college boyfriend were engaged.

  “That’s a little fast,” he’d said, but then saw the hurt in her eyes, and apologized. “I’m happy for you.” They had smoked and talked, and Cole held everything inside; he felt like he could not breathe. Finally, Ruby went in the family room to watch a late-night movie, and once they were alone, Kay asked him what was wrong. He told her about his job. “Don’t ask why,” he warned. She touched his hand. She said she was sorry. She knew him better than most people, but it was not enough.

  “Two hundred.”

  Cole put his hands on the counter and stared at the man and saw the brown stains on his teeth, the acne scars across his face. “Are you crazy?”

  “That’s my offer.”

  “There’s gold here, man, you can get that melted down.”

  The man shrugged.

  “Look at this. This is antique. This alone is worth two hundred.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  Cole began to put everything back in the paper sack. His hands were shaking. He’d nev
er started a fistfight, but he felt a blind fury overtaking him. “I’ll take this up to Charleston and sell it. Shit, I’ll drive to fucking Columbus.”

  “You’ll never make it that far,” the man said. “You need a fix. You need the cash.”

  Cole stopped what he was doing and leaned over the counter and spit his words. “I ain’t no junkie.”

  The man said nothing, but his face twitched and Cole saw that he was nervous.

  “Seven hundred,” Cole said.

  “You’re the crazy one.” The man took off his glasses and wiped them on the end of his dirty T-shirt. “Two-fifty, that’s as high as I’ll go.”

  Cole was calm. He picked up a brooch and showed the man the intricate detail, the tiny rubies inlaid around the edges. He picked up piece after piece, touching them, remembering the people they came from. They went back and forth, until finally the man said $300 and would not budge, and Cole took the cash and counted it twice and then walked out of the windowless building into the startling sunlight, the greasy bills folded up in the front pocket of his jeans, hot against his thigh.

  He went to the bank and closed his account. He got two texts from Reese on the way home, but ignored them. The rental house looked uglier everyday. His mother’s car was gone; she was at work, baking pizzas. His grandmother would be watching TV, what she did most afternoons. Although she’d been fired up, writing letters to lawyers and government officials, and attending the activist meetings, she also moved slower these days, a new uncertainty in her eyes.

  She opened the door. “I seen you pull in.” She lowered her voice, “You got someone here to see you.”

  “Who?”

  She said nothing else, but pointed toward the family room. He stood still, considered running. He looked at her and saw her sadness and his stomach fluttered. Would it be Randy or some other cop? All of the pills were stashed in his room, locked up. He was planning on selling everything this weekend. He slowly hung up his jacket. Then he took a deep breath and went in, quick, like diving into a swimming hole without testing the water. He stopped, gasped a little. Scrunched up in the corner of the loveseat, strung out and biting her nails, was Charlotte Carson.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “Hey girl. How’d you find me?”