by Thomas Cater
She laughed and I detected the smile of a wanton in the curl of her lips.
“You don’t have to worry,” she said. “The farther south you go the deeper the mine seam runs. At Elanville, coal seam is very thin and close to the surface, but here, it is probably 10 to 20 feet below the surface. By the time the seam crosses the southern state line, it is very deep. In the southern part of the state, they don’t mine it. It runs at too steep an angle and it is difficult to mine.”
“How do the Alberichs haul the coal?”
“They once used mules and mine cars.”
“I didn’t see any mules.”
“You wouldn’t” she said, “They once kept then in the mines. The mules are probably gone by now. Rats probably ate them up overnight after they died. They seem to do just fine with the tools they have now, axes, shovels and tiny mine cars.”
“You’d think they’d have run out of coal by now,” I said.
“No, there’s plenty down there. But they’re ‘pillaring’ now, so they won’t have to haul the coal so far.”
“And how did you come by all this information?”
“My father used to be a mine foreman. I know more about coal mining than Rockefeller knows about oil, even though he to owns thousands of acres of coal.”
Something still made me feel apprehensive. It was as if the state were endorsing a form of slavery under the pretext of rehabilitating the mentally and physically handicapped.
“With all the laws governing safety, you’d think some occupational safety inspector might have stepped in and stopped that kind of operation by now.”
She gave her head and hair a little toss from side to side.
“Evidently not. The fact is that the coal is being used by the institution and not sold commercially. There are only three people employed in its extraction, so that makes it a ‘mom and pop’ operation and not subject to state or federal laws.”
It still sounded as if there were some elaborate scheme to keep men subservient to the state for generations to come, but to what end?
“So how did the Alberich’s fall heir to the hospital’s tombs?” I asked and shivered at the prospect.
“Actually, I don’t know,” she said. “I think someone just dropped them off here one day when they were young.”
She hesitated for a moment and then asked, “Did you notice anything unusual about their appearance? I mean, besides the fact that they were dwarfs or hobbits?”
I could not keep from frowning. “They do have large jaws, but it was dark down there. I could have been looking at coal dust and shadows. It makes me wonder why they don’t provide better lighting. It seems criminal to expect someone to work in that kind of darkness.”
“There weren’t any lights?”
“It was dark as a dungeon,” I said.
“Maybe their eyes are used to it,” she replied.
“You asked if they looked different. There was something about their skin. It looked like leather, as if they’re skin had a patina.”
She nodded affirming my observation.
“Yes, that’s what I heard. Have you ever heard of progeria, a strange disease? It makes victims age about ten times faster than normal. Victims live about ten or fifteen years and then die of old age.”
“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “But don’t know anything about it; is that what they’ve got?”
“Hardly,” she said. “What they have is the opposite. They have a rare genetic disorder that keeps them from growing old.”
Connie kept nodding her head. She was like a goofy-head toy a teenager sticks on his dashboard.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” she said. “The first time someone catches a meaningful disease, weird little gnomes catch it.”
I too felt angry that I was not accursed. It tipped the scale of justice.
“Think what it would have meant if Hitler, Nixon, Truman or Mondale caught it. Mediocrity would have enslaved the world. There would be no more rising to great heights or sinking to great depths, only mediocrity, or Mondale duality.”
I found it hard to believe that little gnomes were going to outlive me and in total darkness, never to see or appreciate a sunset or a girl in a pink blowsy dress.
Connie tried to catch my eye. I think she was finally ready to enter the van, but I wanted her in a state of eager anticipation.
“How old did they look to you?” she asked in a teasing, testing voice.
“It was dark and they were covered with coal dust; maybe they're ages were forty, or fifty?”
She glowed with pleasure. “They’ve got to be in their seventies, maybe eighties. My records show they were wards of the state and patients at the hospital in the 1930s or forties. They weren’t babies when they were admitted either, because they went to work tending the furnace soon after.”
I suspected all along that somehow they were part of this extraordinary experiment that was taking place in Upshyre County. I tried to identify the problem, ferret out the miscreant whose self-generating legacy would continue into eternity, unless someone stopped it.
“Who was responsible for putting them to work in the mine?”
“Whoever was acting administrator or head of the hospital at the time,” she replied.
“And who could that have been?” I had already answered the question in my own mind; I just wanted confirmation.
“We don’t really know when they actually got here, or when they started working in the mine, we only know when their ‘scrawl’ started appearing on the requisitions. It was some time in the 20s or 30s and that could only have been Samuel Ryder.”
“Then they knew the old man!”
“They must have,” she replied, “though I doubt…socially.”
“It is also possible they knew Elinore, or at least about her,” I suggested.
Constance stopped smiling and started frowning. I sensed it was time to move into the van.
“Why am I getting so excited about this? I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing. Would you mind letting me in on what is happening? If I’m going to get excited about something, I want to know more about it.”
I stepped aside and took her arm. “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly; it’s the cutest little parlor that you ever did spy.”
She took a quick look before entering; she was probably searching for leather whips and shackles. She tested both steps for stability and suddenly went nuts exclaiming over the red carpet.
“Looks like a cat house on wheels.”
“A cat house: where did you see a cat?” I asked anxiously.
“Not a real cat house, a brothel, a house of ill repute,” she replied
“Oh,” I sighed with relief. “I try to indulge my passion for color and comfort.”
I followed her in and locked the door. Inside she took to the white couch, and flung her purse and jacket on the floor, kicked off her shoes and snuggled into its luxury and comfort. I glanced about to see if Myra’s disappearing cat had made a sudden re-appearance.
“This thing had to cost a fortune.” She said.
“It’s used. When it was new it cost about the price of a modest middle-class suburban two-bedroom dwelling.”
She waited silently for me to continue. “It cost me 35 thousand, plus another two or three thousand in insurance and miscellaneous items.”
“How can you afford it?”
“I try to think I’m resourceful,” I replied.
“Does that mean you’re rich?”
I squirmed uneasily. “I have nothing to write home about, but a small monthly stipend, and enough to keep this thing guzzling gas”
“And you can do that without working?”
“I work,” I said indignantly. “I also have income-producing real estate that requires my attention. I take pictures, follow the sun and prowl the beaches.”
“Sounds like fun not work,” she said.
“My life style was thrust upon me,” I said. “I have to live this way or my
ex-wife and her lawyer will impoverish me. I think she intends to pay him a very large percentage of everything he squeezes out of me. She wants the van, but she has to catch me first. She trashed my art treasures and my masks. She even sold my collection of tractor seats.”
“Tractor seats?” she replied. “You got to be kidding;” and added, “new or used?”
I could barely restrain the flow of tears. “When someone trashes everything you love, you know what bitterness means. I had a set of twelve; almost two thousand dollars invested.”
“In tractor seats?’ she said callously. “How much were they worth?”
I fidgeted uncomfortably. She was very nervy, I thought, asking me such personal and embarrassing questions. Aren’t these mountain people cognizant of others' feelings? I poured several fingers of gin into bud vases I used as brandy snifters, stirred and poured two very dry martinis.
“The house special,” I said.
She sipped courageously, a skilled saucy minx. “I want to know what kind of a man collects tractor seats?” she said making a formidable face.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask,” I replied.
“I mean, tractor seats? Something a fat old farmer plants his smelly bum on?”
“These weren’t your generic Kansas wheat farmer or Ohio dairy farmer type tractor seats. They were smelly old tractor seats from the heart of darkest Africa, from the killing fields of Eritrea and Vietnam and the pogroms of Germany, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosova, Timor, Thailand and Myanmar. These tractor seats aided and abetted the smelly old bums of murderers and assassins, as they went about the business of racially and ethnically cleansing various cultural groups. These seats were from tractors that hauled their cargo of dead and defiled humanity to mass graves and crematoriums throughout the world. These were seats that knew the real smell of life and death.”
“Sounds grisly,” she said. “Why couldn’t you be like a normal man and collect guns or knives?”
“Power symbols,” I said. “I wanted something pantheistic, agrarian.”
“I’m sorry, I asked,” she said genuinely troubled.
“Would you like some vermouth?”
She gave me her glass.
“I’ll take some ice water, tonic or ginger ale, if you got it, anything at all. I need something to quiet my nerves.”
I was willing, even hoping to accommodate her every wish. I found a month-old lemon in the refrigerator, squeezed it unmercifully into her glass and added sugar.
“Ah, that’s more like it. I don’t mind a stimulating buzz before dinner, but I don’t want to walk into the house blitzed.”
“You live alone?” I asked.
“I live with my mother, my cat, my dog, my gay goldfish and Jeffrey.”
“Jeffrey?”
“My son; he is the most irrepressible five-year-old in town.”
“The product of an unfortunate union,” I asked, wishing I hadn’t.
“No union that produces a child like Jeffrey could ever be considered unfortunate.”
“A healthy attitude,” I replied. “I wish my caretakers had felt the same way about me.”
She laughed, and almost choked on ice.
“Unhappy childhood?” she asked.
“Don’t know for sure,” I said. “Never really knew my guardian. No one talked about him. He just left one day and then the cards and letters stopped coming. Turns out he was a carnival rube and drank too much. I guess he got his fill of circus folk, sideshows, mummified corpses, two-headed calves and Siamese twins.”
She took another swallow of her drink and prayed I was lying.
“Apples fall not far from the tree,” she said. “Is there a second Mrs. Case lurking somewhere beyond the horizon?”
My shoulders trembled as if from a chill. “Not at this point,” I said. “I can only afford one mistake at a time.”
The drink had limbered up her tongue. She was flashing her legs, having a hard time keeping them under control.
“Can you think of any reason why we should prolong this conversation?” she asked in a voice husky with innuendo.
I didn’t think about the question. She was closing in on me with her flyweight figure and a mouth that could suck the pit out of a peach. I was getting old, opportunities were whizzing by at the speed of light, and I was too tense and uptight to ignore them.
“I think I like you, Miss Pennington. What kind of name is that, English?”
She pulled a few pins out of her hair and it cascaded down and around her shoulders. She shook it loose, extended her legs on the couch and began to gulp the contents of the bud vase.
“I don’t know,” she said, stretching and yawning down to the tips of her toes. “I’ve gone round and round with my family on that. Daddy says English, but he looks like a ‘wop,’ so I think he’s Italian. But if you look at me, a mousy blonde with blue eyes and a complexion like flour, it’s hard to imagine.”
“There’s only one way to tell for sure,” I said.
“Oh, how’s that?” she asked.
“Flagrante delicto,” I said, “during the blazing of the crime. All English women have a style that is distinctively different from Italian women. It has to do with one’s clitoral heritage, or marital cltiorage.”
“And you are acquainted with both?”
“I have made a casual study.”
“An interesting proposition,” she said, tossing back a little more gin.
“I thought you might think so.”
“You can guarantee results?”
I hesitated for a moment, tried to remember the last time the Jolly Roger was unfurled.
“You really need a guarantee?”
She was trying to talk herself into taking off her clothes, but the dialogue was having the opposite effect on me. Any woman who needed that kind of fortification was not following her instincts, but trying to put them to sleep.
“What if I find out later you are wrong and I’m not what you say I am?”
“I am seldom wrong,” I said, not too convincingly.
She walked around in a small circle in the middle of the room trying to find the bottom of her glass.
“I’ve never gone this far on the first drink before,” she said.
“It’s a no brainer,” I said and wished again I’d kept my mouth shut.
“Well, in that case,” she upended the glass and swallowed hard. Half a bud vase full of gin vanished down her throat. “Let’s see what you’ve got; I’ve been dying to find out. Is there a powder room in this vehicle?”
I led her to the facility, an extravagantly over-decorated little cubicle with a shower and a red fiberglass tub barely large enough to accommodate one of the Alberichs.
“If you get lonesome…” I said, declaring my willingness to serve as a diversion.
She smiled patronizingly. “I think you’re jaded.”
I returned her smile, but with too much temerity. She eased passed me and slowly closed the door. The gin and her smile were working miracles on my ego.
“Another drink!” I shouted, knowing that I needed one more than she did.
“If you don’t mind,” she replied from the bathroom.
I poured two more and wandered back to the door. “How long did you say you have been working at the hospital?”
“More strange years, more than I care to admit,” she said.
“Strange? Why strange?”
She opened the door, much to my surprise, with the towel wrapped around her like a sarong. Her hair fell down and over her shoulders. Her shoulders and legs were opulent compared to the pale whiteness of her complexion.
“Come on in,” she said easily. I squeezed into the bathroom, balancing the drinks in my hand. “Have a seat.” She directed me to the commode upon which I gratefully nested. The towel fell suddenly away from her and before I could focus my eyes, she vanished into a cloud of foamy bubbles.
“Where did the bubbles come from?” I asked.
She glanced toward her open p
urse.
“You never know where or when,” she replied.
I tried to conceal my naïveté by recalling bits of our previous conversation.
“Why strange?” I croaked, losing some of my voice to nervousness.
“You’re not jealous, are you?” she asked, glancing at the purse and bubbles again.
“No,” I said, a little too defensively. “Why should I be jealous? I’m a man of the world, a Washingtonian, in the springtime, maybe summer, of my life, and a Floridian in the winter. Why should I be jealous?”
She slid a little deeper into the bubbles, and her eyes took on a delightful shine. Women, who invest in illusions created by ads in magazines, are privy to all the wrong kinds of information about men, but insist upon it being correct, even to the detriment of their own understanding.
“Why strange?” I asked again.
She started thinking about my question and stirring up more bubbles. Her mouth was almost covered and her arms and shoulders had vanished beneath the soapy effervescence.
“Well, it’s a strange place,” she said calmly. “You never see anyone, administrators or board members, Payroll checks come in regularly from the state. Patients come and go. Everything works without them. The food and supplies show up. The vendors submit bills. I forward the bill to a computer. It’s a strange place. There is no one in charge. Machines and computers control the system. I have more authority than anyone does, as far as administration is concerned.
“Once or twice a week, a psychologist comes in to test someone. A lawyer or a doctor will commit someone. A sheriff’s deputy will bring someone in and the machinery takes over. Cooks, food service, nurses, orderlies, maintenance, paper shufflers and that’s the way it works. Doesn’t that sound strange to you?”
I nodded. “Yes it does.”
It was hard to concentrate on her words while soap bubbles kept rising and falling around her like foamy surf. It had been a while since I shared such close proximity to such a pleasing and compatible body.
“I have one more question?”
“Can it wait till later?” she replied.
“Why can’t I ask now?”
“Because I want you to join me,” she said
