Sister Mine

by Tawni O'Dell

  It wasn’t the town that people remembered but the surroundings. There were far more spectacular natural settings to be seen, but this was a place that called out to a traveler to stop awhile and feel at peace. The mountains were protective but not intimidating like the daunting ranges farther west; they were wild but not unruly, lush but not gaudy.

  One hill stood out more prominently than all the others. It was a little broader, a little higher, and because of the large number of elm trees growing there, whose buds were red-tipped before turning green, the entire hillside was tinged a hazy, dark pink each spring.

  When describing how to get there, the French always ended their directions by saying the town was “au pied du joli mont.”

  At the foot of the beautiful mountain.

  Over time—after the beaver were trapped and hunted into near-extinction along with the Indians, and the French and British were asked to leave, and the colonists became known as Americans—the town lost its original reason to exist, and may have ceased to exist altogether if it wasn’t for the farms surrounding it and the Jolimont Inn, which continued to be a useful stopping-over point for people journeying to and from Pittsburgh and points beyond.

  Then an ancient black rock that could be dug and blasted out of its hillsides and sold in vast quantities to factories and steel plants was discovered. The town had its new and final reason to exist.

  However, Jolly Mount never thrived the way some coal towns did. It wasn’t the site where the area’s most powerful coal baron, Stanford Jack, decided to base his operations. He and his partner, Joseph Peppernack, chose a town called Centresburg, farther south, where more of his mines were located.

  Jolly Mount never had the shops and the amenities that came along with the mansions belonging to the mine operators and the other men who were successful in businesses related to or dependent on mining. It never had the impressive courthouse and marble-columned bank. It also never had the noisy, grimy backstreets lined with overcrowded, company-built row homes.

  It’s stayed basically the same, supplying only the most pressing needs of its residents, most of whom prefer to live scattered throughout the countryside rather than along Route 12, the main road through town.

  Jojo and her sister mine, Beverly, still provide most of the jobs. Kids still play around the smoldering bony piles despite their mothers’ warnings. The beautiful mountain is still here, too, but the French pronunciation of the town’s original name is long gone, having been modified over time to fit the American tongue.

  The only things French left in town are the way lovers kiss and the fries at Jolly’s when the grill is working.

  I finish my tour guide version of the town’s history just as Gerald Kozlowski and I arrive at Jolly’s.

  He doesn’t comment, but he did listen attentively when he wasn’t on his cell phone, which was most of the time. The calls were all from clients, and consisted predominantly of assurances from him to them that everything was under control.

  He didn’t seem to care if I overheard his side of the conversations, and I understood why since he never said anything that could be useful to someone trying to figure out what he was up to, but I did notice a change in the way he spoke depending on the caller.

  For some, his language was formal, aloof, and peppered with big words: a voice that promised success and prosperity yet was laced with an underlying menace and detachment, like a dictator addressing the starving masses below his palace balcony.

  With others, he softened his voice, simplified his vocabulary, and sounded almost as if he were trying to console and control a child.

  Jolly’s parking lot is full. Saturday nights are usually pretty busy and tonight is no exception.

  The weather turned cooler after the sun went down but the evening’s still warm for this time of year. People have spilled out of the bar onto the porch with their cigarettes and beers to enjoy the clear, mild night, the women in jeans jackets and the men in insulated flannel shirts.

  Kozlowski has made an attempt to look more casual and blend in by putting on a pair of jeans, but they don’t help much since he’s still wearing his Prada loafers and the black T-shirt and blazer. At first I thought the jacket was the same one he wore earlier but now I realize it’s a slightly lighter shade of black.

  “So what color do you wear when you’re feeling really festive and light-hearted?” I ask him as we push through the people gathered on the porch, all of them greeting me and eyeballing him. “Charcoal? Ash gray?”

  He glances at me. I’m wearing a pair of jeans, high-heeled, dusty rose suede boots with snakeskin toes, a silver tank top, my Stetson, and the cropped pink leather motorcycle jacket I bought for myself for my fortieth birthday a couple months ago.

  “Adults who wear bright colors are either tasteless exhibitionists,” he says to me, “or people trying desperately to seem festive and light-hearted when in actuality they wish they were dead.”

  We start making our way to the bar, but he gets distracted by the Jolly Mount Mine Disaster clippings and photos posted on the wall.

  The story from yesterday’s newspaper about the Jolly Mount Five suing J&P Coal has been added to the display.

  Someone has already written the words, “Fuck you,” in pen next to the headline. I don’t know if the sentiment is directed at Cam Jack or the miners.

  I leave Kozlowski there while I continue on to the bar to get a drink. It’s packed. The tables are full, too.

  I spot E.J. and Ray down at one end. Ray waves and smiles and calls out to me.

  E.J. looks in my direction, then goes right back to looking into his glass of whiskey.

  He’s sulking because I called him a slut earlier. And a pig. And then I think I called him disgusting, too. But none of that matters because I’m sure he started it. I’m sure he said something insulting to me first; I just can’t remember it anymore.

  He’s always had this uncanny ability to make me feel like I’ve treated him badly when I haven’t. Usually, he’s the one who’s treated me badly, then when I react to him treating me badly, he acts like my reaction came out of the blue and I’m some kind of crazy, violent, overly emotional, female head case.

  “Hey, Champ.”

  Sandy appears in front of me. She holds up a fist, shakes it, and smiles.

  “You really beat the crap out of Choker,” she shouts over the barroom din. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” I tell her. “Let me have a beer.”

  “On the house,” she says.

  Kozlowski joins me.

  Sandy eyes him appreciatively and blushes profoundly.

  “Grey Goose and tonic,” he orders. “On crushed ice.”

  A shadow of panic crosses her face.

  “Grey Goose is a brand of vodka.” I help her out.

  “Oh, sure. I knew I’d heard of it. I’ve seen ads for it in magazines at my hairdresser. No, we don’t have that here. I’m sorry.”

  “Absolut?” he asks.

  She nods.

  “I’m absolutely sure.”

  “Absolut vodka,” he states.

  “Give him a vodka and tonic,” I tell her. “Whatever vodka you have will be fine.”

  I turn to him.

  “Come on, Gerry. Lighten up. Surely there’s been a time in your life when you weren’t drinking top-shelf liquor.”

  He studies me for a moment, trying to figure out how to play me. Should he let me into his confidence a little? Should he keep me completely on the outside?

  “I prefer Gerald,” he says.

  “Okay, Gerald. There’s a couple friends of mine at the end of the bar. They’re also two of the Jolly Mount Five. Come on. I’ll introduce them to you.”

  We walk over to E.J. and Ray, who are leaning with their backs against the bar now, watching a game of pool. I tell them Gerald’s visiting from out of town. He’s a lawyer from New York. They both look less than enthused.

  “Let me guess; you’re not crazy about lawyers,” Kozlow
ski says with a far nicer smile than he’s ever tried using on me.

  E.J. and Ray look at the hand extended toward them.

  “Not exactly,” Ray replies.

  “Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a chance as an individual before you pass judgment on me in regards to my profession. You know what they say, ninety percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.”

  “That’s a lot,” Ray comments.

  Kozlowski looks over at me.

  I stick my face in my draft and shrug.

  “It’s a joke,” he explains.

  Ray pushes his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes and off his forehead, which is prematurely marked with heavy lines that come from the constant pinched expression most people think is a scowl but is actually concentration.

  He’s wearing a pale yellow shirt pinstriped in blue. The material is so thin, his sleeveless undershirt is visible beneath it. His shorts are cutoffs that come down to his knees. His sneakers are black canvas with matching holes where his big toes have pushed through. He keeps his tube socks pulled up to the middle of his calves.

  Growing up, Ray was one of the truly poor kids like me, but unlike me he never learned to stop dressing like one.

  No one looks more at home in a scratched hard hat and dirty rain gear with a miner’s tool belt strapped around his waist than Ray does, but every time I see him in a social situation his outfits bring back every uncomfortable memory I have of all the hopelessly unfashionable, ill-fitting hand-me-downs I was forced to wear to school: the flood pants; the frayed, discolored collars on the cheap polyester blouses that always had snags running down the sleeves and quarter-sized shadows of permanent mystery stains dotting the front; the scuffs on the shoes and the slapping echo they made walking down the hall when the soles began to fall off; the faded T-shirts with outdated slogans or corny decals that only kids who weren’t given a choice would ever have the guts to put on their bodies.

  Ray takes Kozlowski’s hand and they shake.

  I look down at my ensemble. My clothes may be tasteless in the opinion of some, but they were never worn by somebody else first.

  E.J. shakes his hand, too.

  “We had a guy in school with a name like yours,” Ray ventures.

  Kozlowski smiles again and tilts his head a little like he’s trying to understand.

  “You mean Polish?” he asks.

  “Well, of course there were lots of kids with Polish names. There’s tons of Polacks work in the mines. My own mom’s Polish. No, I mean a guy with a name like Gerald.”

  He elbows E.J.

  “You know who I’m talking about? Remember him? What was his name?”

  E.J. takes a drag off his cigarette and looks thoughtful.

  “You mean that Jonathan kid?”

  “Yeah, that was it: Jonathan. Not John or Johnny or Jay.”

  They fall silent for a moment.

  “Jonathan,” Ray says, nodding his head.

  “Jonathan,” E.J. repeats.

  Ray smiles. “You remember him?”

  E.J. nods.

  “Yeah.”

  Kozlowski looks blankly from one to the other then back at me again.

  I pop a few peanuts in my mouth and shrug again.

  “You wanted to talk to locals,” I say.

  “So you two are part of the Jolly Mount Five?” asks Kozlowski, making an attempt at conversation.

  This is the wrong subject to pick, but I let him plow on.

  Neither E.J. or Ray responds to Kozlowski’s question. They continue drinking and watching him.

  “You were heroes,” he adds.

  “We weren’t heroes,” E.J. counters immediately. “We didn’t do anything heroic.”

  “We were survivors,” Ray adds. “There’s a big difference.”

  “I can see the distinction,” Kozlowski says, “but still a lot of people feel you have to have a certain amount of strength and courage to survive something like that.”

  Ray nods.

  “A lot of people called us heroes, but we never saw it that way. We even had some guy from a toy company who wanted to make action figures of us. Remember that, E.J.?”

  E.J. nods.

  “Remember what Jimmy asked him? He asked him if the action figures were going to be part of a series: trapped coal miners, Indians on reservations, starving Africans, paralyzed soldiers in wheelchairs. He said they could call the collection Luckless Bastards.”

  They both smile broadly at the memory.

  “Or maybe Lucky Bastards would be a better name since you’re all survivors,” Kozlowski suggests.

  “Maybe,” Ray says but the smile leaves his face and E.J.’s and neither of them look convinced.

  “So what do the two of you do for a living now?”

  “We work in the mines,” Ray replies.

  “You went back in the mines after what happened to you?”

  “What else are we gonna do?”

  “I guess I don’t know.” Kozlowski looks authentically stunned. “But surely there has to be something else you can do. Wasn’t there a book deal and a movie deal? Didn’t you make some money from that?”

  “Yeah, we made some money from that but not as much as people think. People think we’re millionaires now but we’re not,” Ray starts to explain. “And what people don’t understand is when you make a big unexpected chunk of money like we did, there are all kinds of rules and regulations and fine print the IRS comes up with so you end up paying about half of it in taxes, and as if that’s not enough, then they use this new money—which you ain’t ever gonna make again in your life ’cause you’re sure as hell not planning on getting trapped in a mine again—to say now you’re in a new tax bracket and that allows them to take more money than usual out of your regular paycheck, which hasn’t gone up at all. Then you got to pay an accountant to do your taxes for you ’cause there ain’t no way in hell you can figure them out by yourself anymore.

  “And in order to get any of this money from these deals in the first place, you have to get an agent to negotiate things for you and a lawyer to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up, including what the agent’s doing. So by the time you pay all these people and the government and you buy everyone in your family a new dishwasher, there ain’t really that much money left. Especially if your wife makes you buy a bigger house and she goes out and buys a sports car along with a bunch of other stuff.”

  I check on E.J. He has his cap pulled down as far as it can go without interfering with his drinking. It looks like he’d crawl into his glass of whiskey if he could.

  I can’t tell if he’s reacting to Ray’s tendency to talk too much or if he’s hiding from a woman he jilted.

  I scan the patrons and notice a blonde standing by the pool table in a pair of low-rise, acid-washed jeans, with a Tweety Bird tattoo on her shoulder and her tits practically popping out of a too-tight black halter top, shooting daggers at him from between her heavily frosted blue eyelids.

  “But, see”—Ray moves closer to Kozlowski, taking him into his confidence—“no one wants to hear this. No one wants to hear us bitch about the fact that some TV company gave us each $100,000 for doing nothing just so they could make some movie about something that happened to us that was beyond our control.

  “Everybody wants to think we’re millionaires so they can either hate us or be happy for us, but at the very least we give them something to talk about.”

  E.J. noticeably cringes at the thought of people talking about him.

  “What about the other three? Are they still working in the mines, too?”

  “Our boss took early retirement. E.J.’s dad, Jimmy, lost his leg, so he’s not working anywhere anymore. Dusty took his money and opened a restaurant. It just went out of business a couple weeks ago.”

  Sandy comes by with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to refill E.J.’s glass.

  “You want another beer?” she asks me.

  “Is it on the house, too?”

  “S
ure. One more.”

  “Why are you getting drinks on the house?” Ray asks.

  “I escorted Choker out of the bar earlier today.”

  “I heard about that,” Ray replies. “What was that about? Unfinished police business?”

  “I heard he made fun of her tits,” E.J. comments.

  He winces the moment the words leave his mouth. I can tell he regrets it, but he won’t apologize and I’m not going to cut him any slack.

  I notice a table opening up near the door, and I tap Kozlowski on the shoulder.

  “Let’s go sit over there,” I shout at him over the noise. “I want to talk to you alone.”

  I say good-bye to Ray and turn my back on E.J.

  “Why did you want to come over here?” Kozlowski asks me before we’re even seated. “I didn’t get a chance to ask them if they know Shannon.”

  “You don’t need to ask them because they would have told you what I’m about to tell you.”

  I let the tension build for a moment while a country-western star on the jukebox sings about a flag he’s proud of and a life he can hang his hat on.

  “Shannon Penrose is my sister,” I announce. “She ran away eighteen years ago, and I haven’t seen her since. Up until meeting you, I didn’t even know if she was dead or alive.”

  He sits back in his chair and cradles his drink in his crotch.

  “Why did you lie to me?” he finally asks.

  “I didn’t know anything about you. I didn’t know if I could trust you. Maybe you wanted to hurt her. But then I thought about it and since I can’t tell you where she is, I figured I might as well be honest and see if in return you’ll tell me what you know about her.”

  He thinks about my proposition while swirling the ice in his drink. The bar is loud, but all I hear are the cubes clinking against the glass.

  “Shannon and I have known each other for several years,” he tells me.

  “In New York?”

  “In New York.”

  “Is that where she lives?”