When he comes Mommy talks to him in the living room. They talk real quiet but I can hear them if I lay down and put my ear against the door.
Are you sure? Mommy says.
Sure I’m sure. The mine’s shut down until the end of the month so what else do I have to do except sit with you all in that hospital? I’m useless there. I love Aunt Flora, but you know she never cared much for me.
I don’t want to impose, Mommy says.
How long do you want to keep punishing me? Dillon says.
Until you can love her wholehearted, Mommy says.
I told you I can’t tell, Dillon says louder. How can I tell when she’s being raised by that sonofabitch.
Mommy says, Ssshhhh, little pitchers.
After Mommy leaves, Dillon stands in the middle of my bedroom with his hands in his pockets.
Anything you want to take with you besides clothes?
Will you play a game with me?
What game?
I get a blue and gray box off the shelf and open it. It’s a game about the Civil War. It has a map of the United States with rivers and it has plastic men, horses, and boats. I am afraid Dillon will laugh like Papaw did when I took the game to his house.
Papaw said, Lordy, Rachel, that’s no toy for a little girl.
Mommy said, It’s her birthday and that’s what she wanted.
This is cavalry, I tell Dillon. That’s different from the place where Jesus died. That was Calvary. Cavalry is horses. This is infantry. This is gunboats. Gunboats can only move on the rivers.
I wait for him to laugh.
Dillon bends over the board. He looks at me with his eyes real narrow like he is thinking hard. Who plays this with you? he says.
Nobody will play it. Mommy tried once but she didn’t like it. So I just move things around myself and tell stories.
Dillon folds the game board and puts it in the box. I’ll play it with you, he says. He puts the game under one arm and my suitcase under the other and we go to his truck.
At Dillon’s house we drink Cokes in little bottles, eat popcorn, and play Civil War. I am blue because I like the North and they freed the slaves and gray is an ugly color. Dillon says he likes to be the South because the South lost and he loves a loser. This is a silly thing to say but I don’t make fun because he doesn’t make fun of me. Then he says a loser knows things about this world that a winner will never know and is better for it. We roll dice and move infantry and shove gunboats up and down the rivers. I win right before bedtime so Dillon will be happy.
Dillon lives at Winco. He doesn’t have much furniture except a couch and chair and television and kitchen table and one bed and boxes for his clothes. He doesn’t have any pictures on the wall. I sleep on the couch because I am little. We eat oatmeal for breakfast but on Saturday he makes pancakes with hot chocolate syrup to go on top of them.
Mommy calls on the phone and Dillon lets me talk to her. I tell her I’m having a good time and she doesn’t say anything for a while. Then she says, I’m glad. Tell Dillon I appreciate him.
When I tell him he smiles and takes the phone. I love you, too, he says. Then he hangs up and winks at me.
Dillon has a brown pickup truck. He takes me for a ride because it is more fun to ride in a truck even if you go places you’ve already been. But Dillon says we will go someplace new.
I wear my cowboy boots and corduroy jacket. Dillon has a baseball cap that says UMWA on the front. He has a thermos jug of coffee and a lunch bucket with baloney and mustard sandwiches and Hostess cupcakes. He has a little thermos of milk for me and four spoons of coffee in it. He plays country music on the radio, Roy Acuff singing about car wrecks.
Good driving music, he says, and smokes a cigarette.
At Annadel we take the right fork to Jenkinjones. We go slow under the railroad trestle where the road is always full of water from the creek and the other trestle where the road curves so sharp you honk the horn to let other cars know you are coming through. It is a fun road to Jenkinjones. We pass the row of little Negro houses, then the road forks again as the hollow narrows and we go left where my house is but we don’t stop, we keep on going.
I never been past the store, I say.
You never been up on Trace Mountain? Your mommy goes up here to work. There are people living way back in here she goes to nurse, but I doubt she’d take you unless you ask her.
Are you taking me to see those people?
Naw. I’m taking you someplace special.
We pass the company store. The road turns into dirt and goes up the mountain. The slate dump is burning and smells like where someone went to the bathroom.
I used to think bad things live here, I say. I thought they used the toilet at the slate dump and that’s why it stinks so bad.
I expect him to smile and shake his head but he looks serious.
You were right, he says. There are bad things living here.
That scares me because Mommy said the bad things were figments but Dillon believes in them and he is grownup so maybe they are real after all. Then I am not scared again because Dillon takes my hand and holds it but his hand doesn’t feel scared, it is quiet and warm. His hand has rough places like plastic all underneath. We go on the dirt road and then we turn onto a skinny road with a high hump that goes straight on up the mountain. Dillon puts both hands back on the steering wheel. He says this is a bear track we’re driving on.
I can’t hardly hear him because the truck rattles so loud. I bounce around on the hard slick seat and branches switch the truck. Then the road ends and we get out and walk for maybe ten minutes or a half hour. The trees move away and there are tall weeds tangled up like hair. Dillon stops and points. Then I see the log cabin. The weeds reach up its walls, the roof is sideways, and the logs look chewed on like the bad things have been having them for lunch.
I had a great-uncle, Dillon says. I was named for him. When the coal company come in, long time ago, he moved back up in here on Trace. He become a hermit, didn’t see many people. I like to think this was his cabin but I don’t know for sure.
It’s real old, I say. I never seen nothing so old.
I keep thinking of what a hermit is. All I can figure is an old man with a long dirty beard like John the Baptist.
Did the hermit eat grasshoppers? I ask.
Dillon smiles. Lordy, I reckon he ate a little bit of everything. Grasshoppers and dandelion greens and groundhogs and possums.
Can we go inside?
Naw, that’s something I won’t do. Don’t know if he’s in there or if the animals has scattered his bones. Rather not know. There’s some bones wasn’t meant to be gathered in.
He looks at me. He says, Your mommy is the only other person I ever come here with.
She never told me, I say.
It was a long time ago. Before you was born.
We find a long flat rock to sit on. The stone is cold through my pants and my rear end goes numb. My face feels raw. We can see the tops of mountains, one after another, whipped up like the peaks of a gray mud pie. The mountains are scratched with the brown lines of strip mines so that the tops of the mountains seem to set crooked. Dillon opens the lunch pail and puts the thermos bottles on the rock. The mustard on the sandwiches makes the edges of my mouth burn. Dillon pours more coffee in my milk to warm it. The heat fogs my glasses.
Don’t tell your mommy I give you coffee, he says.
I sit up straight and say, Hey, I know some things.
He smiles. I know you do.
At Dillon’s house we eat hot dogs for supper and a can of pork and beans. Dillon says he can’t feed me fancy because there’s not much money with the mine closed. Then we walk to Uncle Brigham’s house at Number Thirteen coal camp. We have to walk the railroad track because the Number Thirteen car bridge washed away. The water got high and when people woke up one morning the bridge was gone.
Uncle Brigham is Dillon’s cousin but on his daddy’s side so he is not my cousin. Everybody calls h
im Uncle Brigham even if he isn’t their uncle. Dillon’s buddy Homer Day is there and his brother Hassel Day who is skinny and Hassel’s friend Junior Tackett who is fat. Hassel has a little mustache like Zorro and Junior has a crewcut so you can see freckles on his scalp. We watch West Virginia play California in basketball. Dillon says it is for the national championship. Little gray men in shorts run back and forth. The TV voice says Jerry West Jerry West Jerry West. The basketball falls through the net like water splashing and the ball is gone from the face of the earth and then it is there again and they grab it and run with it.
Uncle Brigham’s wife Betty makes popcorn and me and Uncle Brigham’s two kids eat it all up so she pops some more. Jerry West! the voice yells. But West Virginia loses the national championship by one point and Uncle Brigham cusses, and Uncle Brigham’s boy Doyle Ray cries until Uncle Brigham shames him out of it. Dillon sits back like he is satisfied and not a bit surprised. I know what he is thinking about losers, and it makes me happy because there aren’t many people I know what they think.
Mamaw Honaker is dead. She has been wooled and worried until there was nothing left and she had to go to Heaven. I’m not too sad. She always sat in a wheelchair and couldn’t move or talk and just looked at me. Her right arm laid in her lap and the meat of her arm was so loose it looked to slip out of her skin and plop right onto the floor.
Papaw Honaker will go to live with Aunt Carrie and they will move back to Kentucky which is where they come from. Dillon says Aunt Carrie will take care of Papaw and it will give her something to do. He says Papaw Honaker is sick too and missing Mamaw and will not last long. So Mommy will be an orphan.
Mommy cries a lot but she is glad to be home. Dillon comes to see me at our house. Mommy says he shouldn’t come but he says, Tony’s at the Moose and me and this girl want to visit. I ask Mommy why she doesn’t like Dillon and she says, I like Dillon, now do your homework.
Dillon has been to Charleston on union business. He has a white bag with the words Major’s Book Store in red letters. Inside is Charlotte’s Web.
The woman said it’s for fourth grade but I said this is a real smart second-grader, Dillon says.
I have never had a book belong to me. Mommy takes me to the library every Saturday but I have to give the book back no matter how much I like it. Sometimes I want to hide the book instead of give it back.
I take Charlotte’s Web to my room. I turn on the light so my dad won’t fuss about buying me new glasses. I smell the book. Charlotte is a spider and she writes messages into her webs. Dillon is like a spider, his hair hangs over his forehead and he looks out from under it like Charlotte looking out from her web. He doesn’t say SOME PIG but he is trying to tell me something.
JACKIE, 1961
My dad killed my spiders. They lived in the living room window, on the outside so they weren’t hurting anybody. They were twin brothers named Harold and Darold and they each made a web shaped like a tunnel in the corners of the window behind the flower box. I hit flies with the fly swatter and took them outside and dropped them in the webs. I could just reach if I stood on the lawn chair. Harold was bigger and he had two white stripes down his back but Darold only had one stripe.
My dad said, “Those spiders will get in the house and bite us.”
That is silly because spiders can’t go through glass but my dad is too stupid to know that and he is afraid of spiders. Besides, he knew I liked Harold and Darold better than him. He took the broom and killed them right in front of me. I screamed and screamed but he still killed them. I will hate his guts forever.
My mom hates my dad too. She tells me everything awful about him. Mom says I am her best friend and she can tell me anything. She says she wants us to be close because she and my mamaw weren’t. So she tells me about things like sex. It doesn’t sound like much fun.
I don’t know how mom can stand to have sex with my dad, but if you want babies you have to have sex. Now my mom has heart trouble and the doctors won’t let her have any more babies. They tied her tubes. The baby goes up the tubes like CoCola up a straw, but if the tubes are tied the baby can’t get by and it will die so it can’t hurt my Mom. I’m glad because I would hate a baby that killed my Mom.
Mom doesn’t have many friends, just Dillon and the nurses she works with, but she only goes to the movies with Dillon and me. Dillon says she should have more friends but she says we are enough. We don’t tell my dad when Dillon goes to the movies, we say it is just me and Mom. The best we went to see was Old Yeller at the Pocahontas Theater in Justice. We sat in the balcony in front of the wall that marks off the Negro section. The Negroes don’t go in the front door and I don’t know how they get in. We can’t see them and I wonder how they can see over the wall but I guess they can see because when Travis gets ready to shoot Old Yeller, I hear them call out and rustle around like they are anxious.
My Mom is a public health nurse during the day, but she works one night a week at the hospital in Justice, Friday nights, and my dad goes to the Moose Club. I’m supposed to have a baby sitter. But tonight my dad has the flu so he stays home. Mom heats a pot of leftover chicken soup.
“Maybe I should stay home,” she says. She acts real nervous.
“Go on,” says my dad. “You can’t miss work.”
After Mom leaves, I try to pretend my dad isn’t there. I read Little House in the Big Woods. He says the light is bad and I will go blind but I ignore him because that is the way you have to do him. He lies on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and watches the news. A blonde-headed woman says how exciting Washington is since Kennedy is president. My dad makes me get up and switch channels because he wanted Nixon. Then I ask, “Can I watch The Wizard of Oz? It’s on tonight, and it won’t be on for a whole nother year.”
“They’s a fight on,” he said. “Friday night fight at nine.”
“The Wizard of Oz comes on at seven-thirty,” I say. “Just let me watch part of it. It’s only the best movie in the world.”
He shrugs. “Go on.” He shuts his eyes like he will take a nap.
I know if he wakes up, we’ll have our own fight and I’ll lose, so I watch the first part of the movie as hard as I can. It’s the only movie I know where a girl is the main character and does most everything right. Dorothy acts silly when she falls into the pig pen, but after that she is all right. I wrap my thumbs in my white undershirt while she runs away from home, and I wait for the tornado with a knot in my stomach. The house takes off. When Miss Gulch turns into a witch and hollers and carries on while she rides her broom, my dad opens his eyes.
“What’s that?” he says.
“The Wizard of Oz.” He is really slow sometimes. The house falls out of the sky. It is made of wood and its paint is peeling off, just like our coal camp house. When it thumps down without breaking into a million splinters it is my favorite part of the movie.
“Turn it off,” my dad says. “It’s too scary. You’ll dream.”
“It’s not nine o’clock!”
He gets up, walks to the set with the blanket trailing behind him, and flicks the button. The screen spits a white spark and turns gray.
I cry and kick the couch and he sends me to bed. After a while I can hear the donging of the bell and the fight announcer yelling through his nose. I can’t sleep or dream.
I am surprised when he says he will take me to the carnival on Friday night because he never takes me anyplace. I want to go to the carnival, but not with him.
“He won’t let me ride the big rides,” I tell Mom.
“Yes, he will,” she says. She is pulling on white hose and hooking them onto her garter belt with the snaps like little rubber pills, getting dressed to go to the hospital. “I’ll tell him to let you ride the big rides.”
Big deal. He never listens to Mom.
The Thomas Joyland Carnival is in Number Ten Bottom. You can look down on the lights and the going-around rides from the road on top of the mountain. The carnival shows up one week each year, then d
isappears like Brigadoon in Scotland that I saw on TV. Even in the dead of winter I can look in Number Ten Bottom and remember the tents and red trailers. The camp houses on the hill keep a watch with their windows dark like big sleepy eyes while they wait for the carnival.
I ride the merry-go-round first. My dad keeps looking around while he buys the ticket. I ride a purple horse while an organ plays music like they dance to in a fancy movie. I have read that some merry-go-rounds in special places have brass rings to grab. That must be the difference between a plain old merry-go-round and a carousel. I pretend I am on a carousel and reach out for the ring each time I pass my dad. He is talking to a woman.
When I get off the merry-go-round, my dad says, “Come over here and meet Jean.”
Jean has curly brown hair pulled up on one side with a barrette and wears a purple and white checked dress. “What a beautiful little girl,” she says, and smiles.
I wouldn’t believe anybody who calls me beautiful. I turn to my dad. “I want to ride the cars.” I have decided to start slow and work up to the big rides.
I ride the cars and a caterpillar that goes over humps. Then my dad buys me a candy apple. He doesn’t mind buying me food. He says I’m too skinny.
He talks to the woman. “Doc the Fish died. You heard about Doc the Fish?”
Jean looks at him like she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
“Doc the Fish,” he says again. “He’s this big fish they found way back in the mine under Trace Mountain, in a pond about four miles in. No telling how long he’d been underground like that. Since caveman times maybe. He turned white after they brung him out.”
“I never heard of that,” she says.
“It was in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Old Mister Denbigh used to keep him in a tank in his office, and then Arthur Lee got him.”
It is the longest I’ve ever heard my dad talk to anybody. But I don’t care about any Doc the Fish. I tug his sleeve. “I want to ride the Scrambler.”
The Unquiet Earth Page 10