Seated on nail barrels around the feed store stove, Mikey had spent many a Saturday morning listening to men in the community talk and scheme about ways to get ahead. Get astraddle of the dividing line that would let them give their families what they wanted to give them. Men like his pa, Burnett Otey; his uncle, Ezra Ledbetter; and their shift leader, Irving Mason.
Some of the men who worked in the mines were lucky enough to own land independent of the company, but not the Oteys. His pa had people up here in the hills, but Mikey’s parents hadn’t been settled for long. The Masons owned an entire mountain and had lived in the county long enough so their holler was known by name.
Davy, Irving’s lone son, was a good friend of Mikey’s. The boys had spent many long summer mornings laboring side-by-side in the fields, cultivating their small cash crop of tobacco. Hard work followed by lazy afternoons laying alongside the creek, fingers twitching set lines, watching for the dunking of red-and-white bobbers indicating a catfish had taken the bait, hooking itself on the boys’ offerings.
If the company man was in their home, it could mean his words drew a line under their time in this house. This was what his “three weeks” threatened. The grace period following the death of Mikey’s pa was over, time for the mine to put a productive man back into this house. A working man, one who would ride the box into the ground. Taking away their sanctuary. The only home Tabby had ever known. His sister’s entire history was tied up in these walls; she had been born in his parents’ bed. Without hesitation, Mikey spoke up, offering his life in exchange, “I’ll work for the company. I’ll ride your elevator tomorrow, you give me a shift.”
All the soft fled his ma’s face, rigid lines of anger falling into place so fast he almost couldn’t mark the transformation, her mask settling. “No, you won’t, boy.”
The company man twisted oddly, feet planted with his toes pointed towards Mikey’s ma, shoulders and face turning so he could look back at the door where Mikey stood. Halfway between what he clearly wanted, and what he thought he needed to deal with. “How old?” The barked question hadn’t stopped sounding in the room before Mikey answered, eager to put an end to where he believed this encounter was headed.
“Fifteen.”
Without another word the man untwisted himself, turning to face the silently raging woman across the room. “He’s old enough.”
“Not without my say-so, he isn’t.” Ma’s lips and mouth scarcely moved with the words. Her teeth were clenched tight, jaw thrust forward, anger distorting her face so much Mikey hardly recognized it.
“But, he’s old enough.”
“Not without my say-so.” Her chin lifted, and Mikey felt the weight of her gaze again, her eyes cutting to him over the man’s shoulder. “Son.” She drew a breath and he saw her chest rise and fall with it, saw the man’s focus return to her in a way that sucked the air from Mikey’s lungs with anger. Anger at his pa for dying. Anger at the company for making it so nobody ever had enough to hold back anything, for making it so the least trickle of bad turned into a flood of pain. He hated the man standing in the room because he held power over Mikey’s family, his ma, and ultimately, over him. She continued, her voice steady and sure, confident in a way he hadn’t heard from her since before Pa died. This was a path she could control, and he saw the difference in her stance, the way her shoulders arched back. “Take Tabby. Do as you’re told. A dozen mudbugs, no less.”
Mikey waited for more, but Ma didn’t give him anything. She sucked in another hard breath, looked as if she were bracing for a hit then her arm lifted, pointing the way, aiming a stiffened finger towards the doorway leading to his parents’ bedroom. Without another word, she walked across to the door and disappeared into the dimness inside, moving on nearly silent footsteps. The man’s head swiveled to watch her go, and then he turned to look at Mikey. In a flat, emotionless voice he said, “You better get gone, boy.” His uncaring tone was at odds with the greed glittering in his eyes.
“Don’t,” was all Mikey could think to say and the man blinked at him, a slow, lascivious movement of his eyelids, pupils even larger when his eyes opened again. Tabby’s voice rang through the yard, and Mikey stood frozen, watching as the man followed his ma into the unlit bedroom. Jeebus, he thought, whirling and hitting the edge of the porch in a single stride, leaping over the steps and into the dust surrounding their house. Barren dirt spread in a broad swath separating the house from the forest, the yard a barrier to fire and bugs, any thriving blades of grass relentlessly hoed up and removed. Tabby stood outside the barn, looking at the car, the expression on her face probably the same one he had worn earlier—interested excitement at what appeared to be some small out of the ordinary happening. She had no idea the weight this day would carry in their lives.
“Tabby,” he called, quickly covering the distance to her. “We gotta go crawdad hunting, baby girl. Ma wants some for supper.”
“Oh, goodie,” she shouted, clapping her hands, the mysterious midafternoon visitor forgotten in her excitement at the prospect of a trek to the creek with her adored older brother.
***
“Ma,” Mikey called out as soon he and Tabby hit the front stoop, bags and baskets in hand holding the fruits of their afternoon spent along the creek. Their haul included blue catfish and crappie, already skinned, or scaled and filleted, innards flung over the fence to the hens. There were also wild strawberries found hiding in a drift of last year’s leaves along the path, and two dozen crawdads, hard shelled but homeless, scuttling around in the bottom of the paper bag Tabby carefully carried. He scanned the yard, seeing no evidence of their earlier visitor.
“Ma?” His second call was a question because there had been no responding answer, which wasn’t like her. She was a “meet you at the door” mama, ready to hear about whatever had been going on that day.
“Tabby, stay here,” he cautioned his sister, turning to see her setting the bag on the porch. Her eyes remained pinned to the top of the bag as if the crawdads might come bursting out of the opening any moment.
“’Kay,” she responded automatically, using the tip of one finger to thump against the side of the bag, giggling brightly at the resulting scrabble of claws from inside the paper prison.
Mikey opened the door, took two steps into the house and stopped, frozen in place. The room, so tidy and organized when he left, was that way no longer. Furniture upended, tables turned over, doilies scattered far and wide. Pictures were off the wall, and glass had exploded everywhere from where the frames had been thrown or dropped. “Ma,” he called softly, and then he heard glass crunching from behind the overturned couch, some unseen movement grinding it into the wooden planks of the floor. “Ma?”
A guttural groan answered.
Heedless of his bare feet, Mikey ran across the open area, reached the couch and grappled with it. Flinging it back with one hand before he was once again turned to stone, he stared down at what he found. Bloody and mangled fingers scratched at the gore-slickened floor, two fingernails embedded in a sticky puddle a few inches from the feeble movements. He scanned side to side, trying to make sense out of the puzzle in front of him.
A sound from the front of the room drew his attention for a moment, fear clawing at his belly until he realized it had to be his little sister. No. God, no, he thought, she cain’t see this. “Tabby,” he yelled without turning, “stay outside.”
“’Kay.” Her feet scuffed the boards in a clumsy skip as she moved a short step back away from the open doorway.
Whispering, he squatted down, not trusting himself to go closer yet, still not coming to grips with what was in front of him, “Ma.” Hair tangled, snarled and matted with blood, a grisly veil of it covered her face like a tortured bride. It looked like a whip had been taken to her back, strips of material from her dress embedded into the torn and bleeding flesh.
She moved and groaned, the sound rough and painful to hear. It scraped its way into his ears and rooted in his head, setting up a lou
d echo, drowning out any other noise as if he were back head-down inside the barrel, digging out chicken feed. Soft and bubbling, her breathing was slow, a perceptible delay with every intake and pause, then release and pause. Each breath was drawn out for an immeasurable count of seconds. In and pause. Out on a high whine and pause. The beat in his neck counting out the time, the blood safely contained in his veins marking its passage. Her breathing was flooded with softly painful, liquid-sounding choking noises. There was not enough air in her for a true cough, her airways clogged and filling. In and pause. Out and pause with a groan.
“Ma, what can I do?” Afraid to touch her, Mikey reached out a hand anyway, his palm hovering over her shoulder. “What can I do?” A movement to the side sent him into a panic, and he whirled, seeing Tabby standing there, jaw gaping in a face gone too-pale, her eyes as round as her mouth, shock etched across her features. “Get out,” he screamed, aware she had started making a high-pitched keening sound. “Get out, baby girl. I told you to stay out. Get out.”
Her eyes flicked up to his face, then back down to the bleeding pile of flesh and tattered fabric that was their mother, then back to his face. That movement was all Tabby seemed capable of. Even more color leeched out of her cheeks until she was white as a sheet. He stood, scooping her up and walking with great strides to the door, seeing the tiny, bloody footprints she had left on the floor as she’d approached, unaware he was leaving a similar trail behind him. “Tabby, I need your help,” he murmured, feeling her face pressing into his shoulder and neck, tiny arms choking in a tight hold around his neck. “I need you to listen to me, baby girl.” This was his pet name for her, had been since she was born. Tabby was his baby girl, loved and lovely, now squalling hard against his neck, her hot tears searing him. “I need your help.”
He set her bottom on the porch railing and tried to squat to her level, but her hold was firm and unmoving, arms locked into place around him. He stood back up, and she latched on harder, wrapping her legs around his waist, holding on with everything in her. When he tried to pry her off his neck, she jerked, shaking her head and making a loud, fitful hiccupping noise, seeming to lose her words, only capable of guttural noises. “Uh. Huh. Huh. Uh. Huh.”
“Tabby girl,” he whispered, not sure if she could hear him over her own sounds. “Tabby, sweet baby girl, I need your help.” Ma might be dying in there, he thought, but couldn’t find it in himself to be angry at his baby sister. It was a sight no child should ever have to bear, something he wished he hadn’t seen. “Sweet baby girl.” Unconsciously he reverted to the familiar movements from when she was a baby, when, to spell Ma, he would crawl out of bed with Tabby. Offering a sugar-teat in place of a bottle sometimes, the sweet-sodden rag always bringing a grin to her dear face. “Precious baby girl.” Rocking and twisting, he stood in place, soothing the both of them into a mindless place, bleeding feet sticking to the dusty porch. “Sweet baby. Sweet girl. My baby girl.”
He didn’t know how much time had passed, wasn’t aware the sun had descended behind the woods until he saw lights coming up the lane. The glow growing from faint to blinding, aimed at the house like a floodlight used for frog gigging. He felt pinned in place again, like his feet had grown roots and he couldn’t get away. As if he were watching the spread metal jaws of the gig creep closer and closer, waiting for the plunging thrust that would lock those sharp teeth around his middle, pulling him out of the mire of his mind. The lights went out, and darkness flooded back in, as blinding in its own way as the light had been.
“Mikey?” That was Darren’s voice. The presence of the oldest Otey sibling was unexpected because he had gone to Louisville for the construction season and hadn’t even been able to come home for Pa’s service. Why would he be here now?
“Mikey? What’s wrong, bud?”
Darrie will know what to do, his brain supplied, and he nodded at the thought, suddenly feeling the slackness of Tabby’s muscles. She had cried herself to sleep in his arms, no telling how long ago. He could have put her down and tended to Ma, should have kept better track of what was going on, but the thought made him remember what was waiting for him in the sitting room, and his arms tightened around Tabby involuntarily. Now he was the one holding on; now he couldn’t let go, couldn’t set her down, couldn’t fail her more.
“Mikey, you’re hurt. What happened?”
Glancing down, he considered the dried puddle of blood surrounding his feet. As if freed by the motion, an instant later Mikey felt the pounding of his heart through the glass splinters that had pierced his soles, the sticky blood dried to a thick, tacky cake between his toes. “Ma,” he started, and Tabby stirred in his arms, so he took a step towards his brother, stopping when the pain blinded him. Whispering, he held out his arms, offering his baby girl up to someone who could take better care of her, telling Darrie, “Put her in your car. She cain’t see again. She shouldn’t have seen in the first place, but she didn’t listen.” He repeated himself, making sure Darrie heard what he needed to communicate, “She cain’t see again. Not again.”
Darrie’s face was white, but he took Tabby and strode to his car, opening the door one-handed and carefully laying Tabby in the back seat. After surrendering her, Mikey’s arms felt empty, light and disconnected, as if they were about to drop off his body, like the tail of a chameleon, falling to the ground and wriggling around. Darrie looked at her feet for a moment, flashlight taken from his belt giving a soft spotlight, halo shining around his head from where Mikey stood. He’s saving us both, Mikey thought, and turned towards the door. Standing there, it felt as if a thousand horror stories were waiting just inside, and the last place he wanted to be was standing there. There’s just us, he thought. She’s depending on me. As he moved to open the door, he felt Darrie’s hand on his arm, the pull demanding, so he turned to face his brother.
Before Darrie could ask his question, Mikey said, “Ma’s in there. It’s bad, Darrie. If she ain’t dead, I don’t know why.” He sucked in a breath, trying to fortify himself. “Company man was here today. Ma was tryin’ to keep the house. He gave us three weeks, but she was tryin’ to keep the house.”
“I enlisted,” Darrie blurted, and Mikey’s chest hitched as if with a blow. His first thought was, You cain’t leave us, but then he pushed past what he knew was a selfish child’s reaction. This was good; it meant Darrie wouldn’t ever work the mine. That hole that ate dreams and people, and broke families apart.
“That’s good,” Mikey said, because it was good manners to congratulate someone. Then, he couldn’t stop the flow of words, had to repeat his pain, needing Darrie to understand what wrongness had laid in wait for him this afternoon. “Mm…mm…” He swallowed the stutter tripping his tongue. “Ma’s hurt in there.”
“Your feet?” Mikey frowned. What he could see of Darrie’s face surprised him, an unfamiliar expression of uncertainty on an older person; older meaning Darrie was twenty-four. There were nine years between each of the kids. Ma had made more than one joke about only having another baby when the current one was old enough to help out. Tabby didn’t know Darrie, not really; she wasn’t his baby girl like she was Mikey’s. Darrie had been gone from the house nearly all her life, only coming back on holidays when the house would already be overflowing with family, one more face in the crowd to her.
“I’ll live.” He waited, but Darrie didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Frustrated, Mikey shook his head. “Ma’s in there,” he reminded Darrie, then took it farther, feeling like he needed to prepare his brother for what he would see. “Her back looked like old man Toller’s mule that time it decided to sit down instead of pullin’ logs.” Toller had whipped the hide and muscle off the mule’s back; killed it where it had sat. Hitched to a too-large log, the mule had been smart enough to know he couldn’t pull it out of the muddy woods. Too smart for his own good, because if he had only tried, Toller wouldn’t have gotten so pissed, and the mule would have probably lived. If the mule had only tried, Mike thought. At least M
a tried. “I didn’t get to…I couldn’t…Tabby came in…” He trailed off, forgetting what he wanted to say. “It’s bad.”
“You wanna stay here?” Mikey frowned again, because this wasn’t Darrie protecting him like Mikey had tried to protect Tabby. This didn’t look like care so much as fear, and he wondered for a moment if he shouted “Boo,” loud like Pa used to do when he told a ghost story, whether Darrie would up and run for the hills, doing his best imitation of a spooked horse.
Mikey shook his head and turned back to the door. Reaching out to pull the handle, he heard the squeak of the spring as it stretched, making a muted “sproing” sound when his grip slipped slightly, letting the door close by a couple inches. He had stopped the swing before it slammed shut, and then Darrie was behind him, arm reaching out to grab the edge of the door, his other hand flicking the switch on the flashlight still in his hand. The light faltered across the destruction of the sitting room, jerking here and there. “Holy fuck,” Darrie said on a soft breath, sweeping the light back and forth again. The glitter of glass shining from the floor suddenly reminded Mikey of the company man’s eyes just before he had followed Ma into the bedroom.
Gagging and choking down his scream at the memory, Mikey stepped inside, feeling the biting slice of glass on his soles. The light flicked and flashed, then settled on their mother, lying motionless on the floor where he had last seen her. He stared, seeing things he hadn’t noticed before, the beam from Darrie’s flashlight bleaching the scene of color, giving him a straight view of the damage done to her. From her shoulders to the curve of her buttocks, her back was flayed. The skin along his mother’s spine had been laid open with a knife, and something had gripped each strip of pink and bloody flesh, pulling it back.
No more bubbling breaths came from the crumpled body. No moans or groans. No noises at all. No singing as she was accustomed to do every evening. After the meal was eaten, and the table cleared, her voice would sound sweetly through the gloaming as her children prepared for bed. No soft words of encouragement about homework, chiding him even if Mikey didn’t see a need, knowing he wouldn’t use any of it once he started riding the car into the ground.
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