Under a Cloudless Sky

by Chris Fabry

  He stared at the linoleum, then looked again at his work-worn hands and the creases and wrinkles life had etched. For the first time he considered what it would be like to move and what it would take to get a truck up the hill and who would help them haul their belongings away and how much it would cost to rent the truck. The feeling of going down the driveway the last time and waving good-bye in his heart. It was a moment he thought would never come, even considering such a thing. Moving and divorce weren’t in his vocabulary. But now he was considering one of the two.

  “You and me are always going to have Beulah Mountain in here,” Juniper said, pointing at her chest. “We’re not always going to have each other. So let me ask you again. What are you going to do when I’m gone?”

  Hollis thought a minute and rubbed his hands, then scratched the back of his head and felt a little of the emotion creeping in, so he pushed it away. “I was thinking of saying something funny. Something that would make you laugh like I used to be able to. Remember?”

  “I remember,” she said, straight-faced. “What were you going to say?”

  “Something like, when you’re gone, I’ll make a box out of that walnut tree and put you in it.”

  She smiled. “After Larry cuts it down.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at the floor. “But that’s not what I want to say now. I’m done making fun. Because it’s not the truth, Juniper. And you want me to see the truth. So here it is. When you’re gone, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Not seeing that pretty face of yours. Your shapely behind.”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but he could tell she liked to hear the words.

  “I’ll probably walk around like a zombie, just up and down the hallway. Look at our bed, stare at it, then go outside and walk up the hill and sit by the stones.”

  “You’ll find something to do with yourself.”

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Juniper. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been trying to get you to see that for forty years.”

  “I’ve acted like this plot of land is all I’ve ever cared about, but it’s not true. You’re worth a lot more to me than this mountain. More than a thousand acres. And I’d walk through hell itself to give you a day without the pain you carry. I wish we could trade places.”

  “I know you do,” she said and her voice cracked. She looked at him with that weathered face, the rheumy eyes. There was an upside to seeing what you wanted to see because he was able to look past all of that to what was inside both of them.

  “Hollis, I don’t want you to do something just because it was my idea. Can you understand that? It would kill me to think you gave up because it was something I pushed you into or twisted your arm to do.”

  He nodded. “I know. It just takes a man like me a while to figure out what I really want. It takes me longer than some.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. Then he put the orange juice in the refrigerator and picked up the dishes and set them in the sink and ran water over them until it became hot. “Now don’t you do these. You’ve done enough. I’ll do them when I get back.”

  “Where you headed?” she said.

  “You know where I’m headed.”

  28

  CHARLOTTE REVEALS TO FRANCES WHAT SHE HAS DISCOVERED

  BEULAH MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2004

  From the moment Frances walked into the Company Store, she felt she had found a missing piece in the puzzle of her mother’s life—the piece that was found in a heating vent years later, covered with cobwebs. There were old hardwood floors underfoot that shone with wax and creaked when you walked on them. Glass cases were filled with trinkets from bygone days and candy in original wrappers, miners’ hats, picks, shovels, boxes of matches, and real pins with numbers on them.

  On the wall by the door were framed pictures of men in suits and hats. She easily recognized the kindly face of her grandfather, but the other faces were unknown and gave her a chill she couldn’t explain.

  “Are these the men who died—?”

  “And who do we have here, Charlotte?” an older woman said, interrupting Frances. Her voice was welcoming but the look on her face wasn’t. She came from behind the counter and approached as if they were stepping on a sacred burial ground.

  “Marilyn, this is Frances Freeman. Her mother is Ruby.”

  “Is that right?” the woman said, her face suddenly beatific. “We’ve been hoping your mother would join us for the dedication. Charlotte said she’s missing?”

  “Yes,” Frances said, shaking the woman’s cold hand. “I was hoping I would find her here. My guess was she was heading this way, but so far we’ve heard nothing from her or the authorities.”

  “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I can’t imagine how worried you must be. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” She said it and touched Frances’s hand, but it felt as if she were checking off a to-do list. Thoughts and prayers. Check.

  “I wanted to show Frances the store,” Charlotte said. “I thought it would be of some comfort.”

  “Absolutely,” the woman said, stepping away. “Make yourself at home. If you need anything at all, let us know. And we’d love to have you for the ceremony. Assuming everything works out well with your mother, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Charlotte must have sensed that while Frances was interested in the memorabilia and other content in the store, this was not the time for a tour. When your heart is breaking, you can’t watch a sitcom. Instead, Charlotte led Frances to the back, through a door, and up a narrow staircase. They came to another door and Charlotte opened it and ushered Frances inside, closing the door quickly.

  Frances scanned the living area, which had also been decorated to reflect the decor of the 1930s. There was a fireplace and windows looking out on the mountain. A table and chairs, a couch and a reading chair with a footstool. There were books on shelves and above the fireplace were family pictures.

  “Do you recognize any of this?” Charlotte said.

  Frances moved toward the mantel. “I’ve seen old photos of my grandparents with my mother, but I’ve never seen this one.”

  “Look in here.” Charlotte led Frances to a smaller room with a brass bed and dresser. “This was your grandfather’s room. He designed this building and the living quarters above the store.”

  Frances walked to the dresser and leaned down to see the pictures scattered across it.

  “After the massacre, the shop owner took the contents of the rooms and stored them. I assume they thought Ruby would come back one day and retrieve all of this. What you see has been locked away for decades.”

  “My mother never returned?” Frances said.

  “Not that we know of.”

  Frances lingered by the photos until she sensed Charlotte at the door, waiting. “Let me show you your mother’s room.”

  Ruby’s room was small, with a twin-size brass bed and a window that led to the fire escape. A closet contained a few dresses from the period. A steamer trunk sat open at the foot of the bed and had folded clothes inside. A handmade quilt covered the bed and an oversize pillow with a lace pillowcase sat neatly at the head. Frances was drawn to more pictures on the narrow dresser.

  “Those are the rest of the photos they found in storage,” Charlotte said. “I don’t know that they would have been in your mother’s room, but we put them here.”

  “Someone’s gone to great lengths to make this feel incredibly authentic,” Frances said.

  Charlotte nodded and bit her lip as if there was more she wanted to say.

  “What?” Frances said.

  Charlotte looked away. “Can you believe those steps we took, this room we’re in . . . it’s all where your mother lived when she was young? I grew up seeing exactly where my grandfather lived as a child. Most people never get that chance.”

  Frances nodded. “It does take your breath away when you put it like th
at. But why are you so interested in my mother?”

  “As I said, I did research in school about the mine’s history. My father was killed several years ago in an accident. That’s how I got the scholarship.”

  “Was your family compensated for the loss? After the accident?”

  “No, ma’am. He didn’t have life insurance. And the company said the accident was my dad’s fault. They offered us a settlement. My papaw was against it. He contended it was their fault. They’ve been known to cut corners. We tried to prove it but couldn’t.”

  “You didn’t bring a lawsuit?”

  “No, ma’am. My mother took the settlement and paid off our house.”

  “But you took the scholarship.”

  “I did. I felt it honored my dad to get an education. Papaw didn’t like it, but he finally gave in. And while I was there, I spent a lot of time in the library reading about the history of our area and the mines and what the people who lived here went through. They have this collection of old documents that were donated. It was fascinating.”

  Frances sat on the bed and looked at the slanted ceiling. Her mother had seen the same view seventy years earlier and she wondered what secrets she could reveal if only they could have one more conversation.

  “Tell me what you found that made you want to talk to my mother.”

  “Come with me.”

  They took the stairwell up another floor. The staircase narrowed until they reached the third-floor landing. The ceiling was low here and gave a claustrophobic feeling. Frances entered the room where Charlotte waited, and when she set foot inside, something felt different.

  She stopped just inside the door. “I don’t like it in here.”

  Charlotte watched her expression closely. “Why not?”

  “It feels . . . dark.”

  On the far wall were potted plants and flowers arranged on shelves. Near the window was an overstuffed cigar chair, a couch on the other side. Pictures mounted on the wall showed the same men she had seen as she entered the store.

  “Is this where the massacre happened?”

  “Yes, there’s no question about that. There’s a bit of a disagreement about this room, however.”

  Charlotte closed the door and walked to the window. “It was the day your mother left for boarding school. Right there is the old train station. She would have gotten on and left before her father was killed.”

  “What’s the disagreement about this room?” Frances said.

  “Marilyn, the one you met downstairs, and the rest of the historical society believe this was a meeting room for the mine owners. A place where your grandfather and his partner, Mr. Coleman, and the other men who were hired to oversee the operation met to do business. If you believe the historical society, it was to crunch numbers, decide which workers to fire, which mountain to mine next. That kind of thing.”

  “But you don’t believe that?”

  “They may have done business here, but I think the historical society has it wrong. I’ve heard a story from a woman who saw this room—Aidelle Mason was her name. I found her in a nursing home near Charleston. She called this the shoe room.”

  Frances looked around. “Why would she call it that? And why would it matter? That they sold shoes in a separate room isn’t strange, is it?”

  “They had shoes downstairs. And it wouldn’t be controversial if there wasn’t more to the story.” Charlotte sat in the cigar chair. “Have you ever heard of Esau scrip?”

  Frances shook her head.

  “Scrip is what the miners were paid. They used it to buy at the company store—it was only good at the store. They were never paid with actual money. So they were at the mercy of the store’s prices for food and clothing and the basic necessities. On top of that, they had to rent their equipment from the company, so at the end of the month, if they broke even, they were lucky.

  “When a miner got hurt, which happened frequently, another member of the family sometimes took his place. But if the family had only small children, there was nothing they could do. So for thirty days, the injured miner’s family was given Esau scrip. Esau was the man in the Bible—”

  “I know who Esau and Jacob were and selling the birthright for a mess of pottage.”

  “Okay. Not everybody does. My papaw’s the one who taught me about that. Anyway, the company would give scrip to the family to get them by for thirty days. And if the miner went back to work, the debt was forgiven.”

  “What if he couldn’t go back?”

  Charlotte leaned forward. “Aidelle said that if a miner went past the thirty days without working, there was a way the family could get Esau scrip. The mine owner would send someone for the wife or a teenage girl in the family. They would bring her to the store after hours. And they’d take her to the shoe room.”

  Frances’s mouth dropped. She couldn’t imagine what those women had gone through, if the story was correct.

  “Aidelle said you always knew what those women went through when you saw them with new shoes.”

  “Why would they wear them?” Frances said. “Wouldn’t the shoes be a reminder of what happened? I would think they would be ashamed.”

  “That might be how you and I would think. But these women had nothing. Cold feet and hungry stomachs at home. They were trapped, in so many ways.”

  “My grandfather was part of that?” Frances said. She looked out the window at the old train tracks that ran through the town. The tracks that had carried her mother away from this mountain so many years earlier. “No wonder my mother never came back.”

  “I don’t know that your grandfather was involved, but he built the store. He designed the rooms. I would think he knew what was going on.”

  “If it’s true.”

  “Right.”

  “And he brought my mother into that world.”

  “You can see why the historical society wouldn’t want to talk about such things. It wouldn’t be good for the idyllic picture they’re painting. And it would taint the image of the company. There are some who say there was never such a thing as Esau scrip. One history professor I had at school said it was a fantasy. He’d never come across anything about it in the research he’d done, and he’d written books about the mines. I think he was jealous that a student found something he’d never seen, but that’s just me.”

  Frances stared at the mountainside and the winding roads through the town. Such a peaceful, serene setting. “If you have an eyewitness, why do you need to talk with my mother?”

  “That’s the thing. Aidelle is dead. And to be honest, she wasn’t what people would call a reliable witness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In her lucid moments, Aidelle was sharp. But her mind tended to wander. For instance, she didn’t believe the moon landing was real.”

  “That’s not uncommon for conspiracy buffs.”

  “No, she thought they hadn’t landed on the moon because it was really Mars. And that they started a colony there. She also knew the person who killed Kennedy. She never gave me the name, but she said Jackie was in on it. Jackie had confessed to Aidelle.”

  “Oh, dear. But you believed her about the Esau scrip?”

  Charlotte stared out the window. “Maybe I wanted to believe it. Maybe I wanted to expose some sinister plot by Coleman’s lineage that would give me a measure of revenge for my dad. And what they’re doing to my grandfather.”

  “What’s happening to your grandfather?”

  Charlotte pointed out the window. “That’s Beulah Mountain. Our family has owned part of it for generations. But not for much longer.”

  “He’s being forced out?”

  “He and everybody else up and down the hollow. Coleman has offered a lot of money for the land so he can bring in machines and take the coal the easy way. You cut off the mountain and take what you want and leave. Everybody’s selling. What choice do they have?”

  “But your grandfather doesn’t want to go?”

  “I’m worrie
d about him. I think maybe one day he’s going to snap.”

  “And you want to save the mountain and tell the truth about all of this.” Frances glanced at the empty wall.

  “That’s what I wanted to do. I thought your mother could help.”

  Frances stared at the pictures on the wall, then put her face in her hands. “How could people do such a thing?”

  “You’d be surprised what people can do down here in the coalfields, ma’am. For good and bad.”

  “But the historical society isn’t covering up the massacre, right?”

  “No. They know it will draw people. There’s just something not right here. In the sheriff’s report I found information about how your grandfather was killed—”

  Frances put up a hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can take this in right now.”

  “You’re right. This is not the time.”

  “I’m interested. I’m just worried about my mother and this is not getting me any closer to her.”

  “We should be looking for her.”

  Frances shrugged. “I don’t know where to look. I could drive up and down the road. But what if you’re wrong? What if she was never coming here in the first place?”

  Charlotte’s phone buzzed. “It’s my editor. I need to take this.”

  “By all means,” Frances said. She looked out the window while Charlotte had a brief conversation.

  “Is something wrong?” Frances asked when Charlotte hung up.

  “I don’t know. Corky said I needed to come to the office right away. I’ve never heard him like that.”

  Footsteps sounded in the stairwell and they both stared at the door until the knob turned. Marilyn stepped into the room. “I thought I might find you here. A few of us from the society are having an early lunch. We’d be honored if you would join us, Frances.”

  “I don’t know that I’m in the frame of mind to do much of anything right now.”

  “It might help to get a bite to eat,” Marilyn said. “To keep up your strength for when you find your mother.”

  “I have to get back to the office,” Charlotte said.

  Frances nodded and followed Marilyn downstairs.