Sister Mine

by Tawni O'Dell

  He hasn’t aged well. It’s the first thing I thought when I spied on him in E.J.’s hospital room two years ago. His face is jowly and lined; his stomach is too big for his pants. He’s expanded the way a yeast bread rises and I have the feeling if I were to poke him with my finger, it would sink into his flesh like it would into an underbaked muffin.

  His hair is still thick but has turned pewter gray. He wears it moussed and slicked back, completely covering the top of his head like a steel cap.

  “Standing over there you look exactly the same as you did when you were sixteen,” he tells me. “Maybe better. You got a little more meat on you now. You were such a scrawny little thing.”

  I don’t know how to respond. I can’t and won’t make polite conversation with him.

  I say nothing.

  He gestures at the two chairs placed in front of his desk and asks me to sit.

  I do as I’m told.

  Up close, he doesn’t look well. There’ve been rumors circulating for years about his failing health. Talk about dialysis machines and experimental drugs.

  I forget that I don’t look so great either.

  “What the hell happened to your face?” he asks me with his typical tact. “Don’t tell me you got yourself a boyfriend who knocks you around?”

  “It’s none of your business.” I break my silence.

  “Oh, I see. You’re gonna be all pissy with me. I was hoping after our conversation yesterday you’d take some time to think about things and get yourself in a better mood. You got no reason to be mad at me.”

  I stare at him incredulously and hope that my jaw isn’t hanging open.

  “I’m not saying I haven’t made some mistakes,” he continues, not sounding the least bit humble. “My dad used to say, ‘A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.’ I’m just saying there’s no reason to be mad at me.”

  “No,” I tell him, crossing my legs and forcing a strained smile. “There’s no reason for me to be mad at you. I should let bygones be bygones.”

  “That’s my girl. Can I get you anything? Coffee, soda, bourbon?”

  My head is beginning to throb, and I rub at the knot behind my ear.

  “How about some health insurance?” I joke.

  “You don’t have any health insurance?”

  “I’m self-employed now. I can’t afford it.”

  “That’s your God-given right as an American.”

  “Not to be able to afford health insurance?” I wonder aloud.

  “To be able to buy health insurance if you can afford it.”

  He walks over to a cabinet, opens it, and takes out two glasses and a bottle of Old Grand-Dad.

  He pours two shots of the amber liquor and hands me one.

  I notice in the midst of all his photos he only has one of his wife, Rae Ann.

  She’s about my age. He married her when he was in his early thirties. At the time I suppose she would have been considered a trophy wife: ten years his junior, as blond as they come, daughter of a real estate mogul, a former Miss Florida runner-up who dreamed of becoming a marine biologist and working at Sea World with trick dolphins but who settled for playing a lot of tennis and living on her parents’ 200-acre estate near Boca Raton until she met Cam Jack.

  He also only has one photo of his three daughters.

  He and Rae Ann never had a son.

  “So tell me,” he says, taking a seat on the corner of his desk nearest me, “you’re good friends with some of those boys that were trapped and rescued up in Jolly Mount, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “How’s that working out for them?”

  “Well, the part about being rescued is working out real well.”

  “I mean…there was a lot of fanfare after they were rescued. They were regular celebrities there for awhile. Book deals and movie deals and things like that. Oprah treating them like heroes, putting them on her show and giving them all a new set of camping equipment and a hunting trip to Wyoming.

  “Did you know she never even called me and asked for my side of the story? I would have been happy to give it to her. I think she’s damn attractive for a black woman.

  “I bet those boys really cleaned up,” he finishes.

  I’m starting to get pissed over the “boys” reference.

  “Two of those boys are older than you,” I point out to him.

  “One of them still works for me, doesn’t he?”

  “Two of them still work for you.”

  I think about E.J. I think about what he survived, about how he still feels like he’s losing his mind sometimes, about the amount of composure and willpower it takes for a man to be able to continue to do a job that almost killed him.

  “How about now? How’re they fixed for money?” Cam disrupts my thoughts.

  “I don’t know. Why do you want to know?”

  “You know about this lawsuit. Hell, everybody does. I’m trying to figure out where they’re coming from. What’s their motivation? You think they’re only in it for the money or is it personal?”

  “Is that why you invited me here? To talk about the Jolly Mount Five?”

  “The Jolly Mount Five,” he scoffs. “What the hell is that? Everybody calls them that. The Jolly Mount Five: sounds like a goddamned backup group for Willie Nelson.”

  He tosses back his drink in one gulp and gets up to pour himself another one.

  “It took them awhile to decide to do it and that means they had some misgivings,” he goes on. “I’ll give them credit for that. But I knew they’d eventually do it. The working man doesn’t have any honor anymore; that’s what it boils down to. It makes me sad. Truly. None of the old-timers would have ever sued my dad. Ninety-six men died in Gertie and nobody ever made a peep.”

  “Who were they going to make a peep to?”

  I’m starting to get angry and I’ve had enough to drink to loosen my tongue.

  “Everyone knew the inspectors never really pushed enforcing the safety violations if they wanted to keep their jobs. And every mine commissioner and muckety-muck in the government was a former mine owner and a friend of your dad’s.

  “The system’s not any less corrupt nowadays, it’s just things are harder for you because the public gets involved in everything and there’s always a lawyer somewhere willing to sue.”

  “Shae-Lynn. I’m surprised at you. Where did you ever pick up this bullshit?”

  “It’s public knowledge. You’ve just always had a public that doesn’t want to think about it because they don’t know what they can do to change it and they need the jobs so they ignore it.”

  “If there were still Communists around, I’d say you sound like one.”

  I finish my drink and hold it out for him to refill.

  “There are still Communists around, you ass. It’s called China. You know, the place that makes all the things we used to make here in America?”

  He pauses with the bottle held over my glass. His face grows dark and I think I might realize my wish for him to hit me, but he lets it pass and produces an expression that doesn’t show the least bit of affection or amusement but still manages to look like a smile.

  “Cynicism isn’t pretty, sweetheart. No wonder you never got married.”

  He fills my glass and sits back down on the edge of the desk.

  “I’m gonna let you in on a secret. I’m getting out of the coal business. Now on the surface it might not make sense. Coal’s coming back in a big way. Not that it ever left. Most Americans would be shocked red as a baby’s rashy ass if they knew 60 percent of their electricity still comes from coal.

  “They want to run their five TVs and their four computers and have every light on in the goddamned house all night long and never think about where the juice is coming from. Well, it sure as hell isn’t coming from the Energy Fairy. And it sure as hell isn’t coming from the sun and the wind. You ever been to Holland?”

  “No,” I answer.

  “Neither have
I. But I’ve seen pictures and those windmills aren’t doing shit. Nuclear power? Who the hell wants to risk having his hair fall out and his pecker shrivel up from radiation when you can use coal and just have a little old-fashioned air pollution?

  “Besides, all that clean air nonsense is becoming a thing of the past anyway. Coal has friends in very high places these days. And we got all these Third World countries needing coal because they can’t afford oil and hell, none of them care about clean air. People are calling America the Saudi Arabia of coal.

  “That’s a compliment,” he feels compelled to add.

  He gets off the desk and begins to pace. I watch the jiggle of his soft, pudgy body underneath his expensive suit and think of E.J. again. Nothing on him jiggles.

  “Fact is, I’m tired of coal. More than that. I hate coal. Coal and coal companies and coal miners and coal dirt and coal money.”

  And one coal baron in particular whose name you inherited, I think to myself.

  “I even hate those stupid little pieces of coal they sell in stores now at Christmastime to put in kids’ stockings.

  “I was in a store in New York City, and the salesgirl saw me looking at some and she started talking to me about how nice it was that we’re finding a different use for coal instead of burning it and destroying the environment.

  “‘A different use?’ I said to her. ‘You think selling a dozen pieces of bony in an overpriced doodad store is going to take the place of burning millions of tons of coal every day? Little girl, do you know who I am?’ She said she didn’t. I explained to her and afterward she was very nice and accommodating, if you know what I mean, but I had her fired anyway.”

  I sip at my drink. When I sit back in my chair and look at the ceiling, the room seems to spin around me. I concentrate on the green and brass banker’s lamp on Cam’s desk and everything seems to slow down.

  “I started selling off pieces of my dad’s coal empire as soon as he died ten years ago. I’m fairly well diversified at this point but most of the capital has gone into the family’s oil interests.

  “Almost all coal companies are owned by oil companies anyway. My dad always used to say, coal and oil are incestuous: They fuck each other from time to time but they’re still part of the same big happy family.”

  He smiles broadly at his father’s wit and wisdom. It’s not exactly a maxim I expect to see Sophia Bertolli cross-stitch on a pillow.

  “Everything’s going to be held under one umbrella corporation. I already have the name picked out: Camerica.”

  I’m beginning to feel genuinely sick.

  I put my unfinished drink on the edge of his desk and stand up slowly.

  “Why did you ask me to come here? I don’t care about the lawsuit. I don’t care about Camerica.”

  “You don’t care about this lawsuit?” he asks me, the same humorless smile he used when I mentioned China appearing on his lips again.

  “I think you’re gonna care. As things stand now, the investigation cleared me of any criminal wrongdoing. Reckless disregard for human life. Depravity and indifference. All that bullshit. But anyone can sue anyone in civil court.

  “I’m not going to let that happen. Have those five miners tell a packed courthouse what it was like being trapped. Their teary-eyed wives and mothers on the stand yanking at the jury’s heartstrings. Their lawyers bringing up my previous history of unaddressed safety violations and being able to dig into all my business dealings related to J&P. They might even be allowed to dig into my personal life and try and cast aspersions on my personal self. I won’t have that.”

  He comes and stands directly in front of me. He still has the same shampooed dog smell I remember from when he was younger, only tonight I detect the underlying odor of a slow, sweaty decay.

  “The Jolly Mount Five found out today from their lawyer that if they go through with this and sue J&P, J&P’s going to declare bankruptcy. I’ll close the mines I have left. There’s at least a half million dollars worth of equipment belongs to the company I’ll have to sell and give to them. But the land and the mineral rights are mine. They belong to my family personally, and they’re grandfathered airtight.

  “If they sue, mining is over in Laurel County. It’s over. I’ll plant goddamned trees and flowers and turn Jojo and Beverly into wildlife refuges where tofu-eaters can come have picnics and look for Bambi. No hunting either. No hunting. No mining. See how those boys will take to that.

  “Now maybe they won’t care about the mines. Maybe they’re only out for themselves and the money. If that’s true, then there’s nothing I can do. Let them come after me. I can tie this thing up for years in the courts with my lawyers and my money.”

  “You can’t do that,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice steady. “You still employ a couple hundred men in Jolly Mount. You’re the only source of employment we have.”

  “It’s not up to me. It’s up to them. Let’s see what they’re made of.”

  He’s standing so close I think he might try and kiss me. I brace myself to smack him as hard as I can.

  “But none of that’s why I asked you here. I want to talk to Clay.”

  I knew this was the reason, but hearing him say my son’s name as if he knows him or has any right to know him hits me with an unexpected intensity. I feel like I’ve been told I only have a week to live. Maybe I do.

  “No,” I say automatically.

  “No?” he laughs. “It’s not up to you, precious. I can pick up this phone right now and call him and have him over here in ten minutes. I know he’s a deputy. Good-looking kid, too. Not surprising.”

  I suddenly remember my gun in my purse. Nobody knows I’m here. Nobody knows I have any reason to be here. Nobody knows I have a tie to him. He has tons of enemies.

  “Why? Why after all these years? You never tried to see him or have anything to do with him. Why now? He’s twenty-three years old. He just had his birthday two days ago.”

  At the mention of his birthday, a sob blocks my throat.

  I’m instantly buried beneath memories of other birthdays. His fifth when he wanted a party with his friends where everyone acted like a dog. We made paper ears for all the kids and they ate their cake and ice cream out of little bowls we decorated to look like dog dishes. On his sixth we had just moved to D.C. and he didn’t have any friends yet so we spent the day together, just the two of us. We went to the zoo and had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, his favorite.

  It used to make my heart ache seeing how alone he was that first year after we moved, but he persevered in his earnest, uncomplaining way and before long there was a group of boys constantly showing up at our apartment who he made sure were always dressed warmly on cold days and had memorized the map posted in the stairwell showing the nearest emergency exits and fire escapes.

  “Stay away from him,” I say, my voice breaking on the final word.

  I can’t cry. I won’t cry. I don’t cry. Don’t cry, I start chanting inside my head. Don’t cry. Don’t cry in front of him.

  He puts his arm around my shoulders.

  “There’s nothing to get upset about. You never came after me. I respect you for that. That’s why I’m doing you a favor. You understand that? I’m not going behind your back. I’m giving you a chance to explain to him before he meets me. I’m even allowing you to come with him and be present when we talk. Tomorrow. Same time, same place.”

  I need to get out of here. I wonder if this is how E.J. feels when he has one of his panic attacks, when he believes he’s back inside his solid black tomb.

  “I have to go,” I announce and make my getaway without looking at him again and without looking back.

  I don’t remember running, but I think I must have because I’m winded when I reach the bottom of the stairs. I’m disoriented, too, and I turn away from the front doors instead of toward them and find myself face to face with a larger than life-sized, full-length portrait of Stan Jack.

  It must be eight feel tall. I have no
idea how I missed it when I came in.

  There’s a definite family resemblance between the man and his son, but Stan has the fire of ambition and intellect burning in his dark eyes and a firmness in the set of his jaw that Cam lacks.

  I never met his dad. My dad worked his whole life for him and never met him either. But I do know that the miners respected Stan more than his son and that was because Stan had some respect for the miners. Cam never understood why this was important.

  He knew that his father had given them jobs and built their homes and schools, but he also saw that it was the miners themselves who gave their children and grandchildren a chance at a better life. He didn’t know if he should admire or hate them for this.

  He asked me about it during our one night together, but I was a kid and didn’t have an answer for him. I still don’t. I’ve never been able to figure out for myself if the Jack family is the enemy or some mercenary kin.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I STEP OUTSIDE THE BUILDING and blink up at the black and gray streaked and smudged night sky that looks like it’s been wiped with a dirty rag. The clouds are so thick not a single star or the moon is able to shine through them. They make the sky seem heavy and near instead of endless. I feel another wave of suffocation pass over me.

  Not much happens in downtown Centresburg these days: shopping, dining, even banking have all moved to the mall and the roadsides leading to and from the Super Wal-Mart. The only activity that remains is drinking.

  I tell myself I’ll just have one drink at the Golden Pheasant and then I’ll drive home and do the rest of my drinking at Jolly’s.

  I’m within a few blocks of the bar and beginning to doubt my decision to drink in public when a very distinctive couple leaves the establishment. They’re both atypical for Pheasant patrons. She’s extremely pregnant, and he’s clear-eyed, sharply dressed, and carrying what I believe is called a man-purse in some circles. Around here we call it an-invitation-to-get-your-ass-kicked.