“No,” she says, “the governor is in Fairmont. One of his assistants will be back from a meeting in half an hour if you’d like to wait.”
We set and wait for the assistant. That receptionist tells us how much the crystal chandelier weighs, how many prisms of glass is in it, how they clean it one piece at a time, and how long that takes. She tells us who all the dead governors are that have their pictures hung on the wall. She says, “The carpet you’re standing on is the largest piece of seamless carpet in the world.”
Then a young fellow comes in. He says he is on his way to another meeting but he will talk to us for five minutes. He is real neat with a fresh shaved neck and a yellow tie. He shows us in the big office. That governor surely does have a big desk, but they aint nothing on it except a statue of a soldier and a lamp, so I can’t see what he uses all that table top for.
The young man looks real sad when I tell him we need a bridge. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be a priority project,” he says.
“It don’t have to be a big bridge,” I say. “One lane to drive a car over. We’d build it ourselves but the creek is too wide. Hit wants an engineer and concrete. It would help the old people and the folks fetching groceries and the sick people. Somebody gets sick or hurt, we got to carry them a mile to meet the ambulance. We got businesses too, a restaurant and a repair shop and two churches.” I look at Tom. “We got a Catholic church. Some big towns don’t even have a Catholic church. This here is the priest.”
The young man nods his head at Tom. “Father,” he says. “Of course you understand we just don’t have the money. Things are tight all over and the feds are really cutting back the highway money.” Then he looks at his watch.
And that is that. We go outside and set on a bench to eat the sandwiches we brung with us.
Tom says, “You better forget about that bridge, Hassel.”
I am feeling pretty gloomy myself. I brush the bread crumbs off my hands and stand up to leave. Then I recall what I read in the newspaper.
“Long as we’re here,” I say, “they’s something else I been wanting to see.”
I take Tom to the secretary of state’s office where the receptionist gives me a decal of the state flag for the Batmobile’s windshield and a blue plastic pin shaped like West Virginia. Then I ask about the dressed fleas and she points at a glass case over against the wall.
I set my eye to a magnifying glass. They are real fleas all right, stuck on a little card. You can see their pointy black heads, and sure enough, they are wearing little red jackets. One has on trousers, the other has on a blue skirt and you can see her skinny flea legs sticking out underneath of it.
“I swan,” I say, and move over so Tom can take a peek. He don’t look very long and I know he is ready to leave. But when he is done, I look again. It is strange to think them fleas was alive, maybe living on a dog, and Teddy Roosevelt or somebody else old was president. That boy flea is going to pot, you can’t hardly make out his britches no more. But them fleas is still yet a fine accomplishment. I feel real peaceful, like I read about in that Nations of the World that people are in Tibet when they visit a holy place. I make a vow that I won’t never give up. If a fellow can dress two fleas, I can build a bridge.
DILLON, 1986
I tend the graves at the Homeplace in Kentucky, scythe in hand, rooting out the weeds, raking the dirt. My daddy’s grave is sinking some, and Rachel’s and my mother’s have lost their rawness although the granite headstones are shiny and sharp-cut. I try not to think on what has happened to Rachel inside her coffin. I don’t fret about such changes for myself, for I believe there is something beyond this world. But I don’t want her too far ahead of me, and I pray that broken finger will remain so whatever part of me lives on may grab onto it when I lie beside her.
And I cut the grass in Winco bottom where my house once stood, though all that is left are three concrete steps that end in midair. I recall how I walked down those steps on my way to Rachel’s house or held her hand while she came up them. I tend a wild rosebush that grows beside the remains of the wire fence. I cut the red roses and lay them at the corner of the fence where the red fox and the Japanese skull are buried. If I had incense I would burn that too.
Once Jackie found me there, laying the roses. She stared at the flowers on the ground, then at me, and looked surprised.
“I got things buried here,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Things?”
“A Japanese skull your mother brought back from the Philippines. I thought it ought to have a proper burial.”
“Oh,” she said. “I reckon you were right about that.”
“Your mom was young and foolish,” I said. “She didn’t mean anything.”
Jackie smiled. She said, “I like to think of her as young and foolish. I wish I’d known her then.”
I started to tell her about the red fox. I started to tell her who she is. I knew, standing there with her, that she was mine. But she had turned away from me before, like her mother did, and she would be angry I had waited so long. So I was afraid to tell her and turned my face away from her. She went on down the railroad track, on her way to visit Tom Kolwiecki at Number Thirteen. She spends more time with him than with me.
I watched her walk away, her shoulders thin and her hips starting to broaden, like her mother’s did at that age. I thought how time has passed. I recall when you could drive through these mountains and meet a funeral procession, and every car on the road would pull off and wait until the mourners had passed, whether they knew the dead person or not. It was a way to show respect, like those Japanese, the way they bow. Lots of people don’t pull over any more. I would like to know the year and the day when people stopped pulling over, and I would like to know why.
Once a year, on the anniversary, I drive through Jenkinjones and up Trace Mountain where Rachel and I first made love, where Jackie ran from me and I knew she loved the priest. Only I cannot go far now, for a fence stops me halfway up the mountain and beyond lies a flat wasteland, the core of the mountain barely concealed by sawgrass and the sprayed-on green fertilizer that Arthur Lee will call reclamation. I stop at the sign and read the words: PROPERTY OF AMERICAN COAL COMPANY OFFICIAL TRAFFIC ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION. Then I turn and drive back. I will not find the place again until I am dead.
I stop at the foot of Trace and study the pile of bone. Now the slate fills the head of the hollow and has become a dam, holding back the waters of Pliny Branch and sludge from the strip mine. I know the company has been adding to the pile, and yet the water looks closer to the top than before. The rains have been heavy lately. I get out of my truck and walk out across the top of the dam. The bone crunches beneath my boots. The water carries a black scum like skin. It is absolutely still, no insect would dare disturb the oily surface. I stop and listen, kneel and place the palm of my hand flat on the bone. It is warm as flesh.
“So,” I say aloud.
On the way home I stop at the American Coal office in Jenkinjones. The office is no longer in the brick company store, which is a roofless ruin, but in a cinderblock building at the edge of the camp. Inside there is green carpet everywhere and wispy green plants. Certificates cover the wall, reclamation awards from the state. A woman sits at the reception desk.
“I want to see Arthur Lee,” I say.
She takes my name and when she says it in the telephone she listens a moment and looks at me. When she hangs up I say, before she can speak, “I’ll set here as long as it takes. And if he slips out the back, I’ll speak to him on his front porch.”
She picks up the phone again, hits a button, and says something real soft. After a while Arthur Lee opens a door in the back and holds it open. He stands away when I enter and doesn’t offer me a seat.
“I aint any happier to be here than you are to have me,” I say. “It’s about that dam at the head of the hollow.”
“What about it?” he says.
“You got a per
mit for it?”
“I reckon we do.”
“You reckon?”
“Charleston office takes care of that.”
“Sure,” I say. “And even if you don’t have a permit, who’s going to do anything about it.”
He sits at his desk and glares at me, says, “Is that all you come for?”
“Y’all just dumped that bone,” I say. “Just piled it loose.”
“They’s a clay core under the new end,” he says. “I made sure they put it in.”
“What about the old end?”
He looks down at his desk and shuffles some papers. “Don’t know,” he says. “That was started before my time.”
“We had a lot of rain,” I say, “and the water is highest I ever seen it. I been taking note, even if you aint.”
“You think I don’t pay attention? I got a measuring stick in one end of that pond. Besides, it’s holding, aint it?”
I lean over his desk. “I felt that bone,” I say. “It was something there. That bone is uneasy.”
He stands back. “Dillon, you always was a crazy sonofabitch. Don’t you come in here trying to spook me.”
But I see it in his eyes. He knows. He does not like to know, he does not believe it would really happen, he cannot imagine it like he cannot imagine the end of the world so he doesn’t think about it, but I have reminded him and he knows.
“I’m going,” I say, and I turn and leave but already his hand is moving toward the telephone and I know he will call some of the boys and have them take a look at the bone, and then he will call Philadelphia and say he is worried, and they will say there is no money for that and there’s nothing to worry about and how are your production figures this month, Arthur Lee? And they will talk among themselves later, say, That Arthur Lee, he’s getting a little long in the tooth and he didn’t go to one of those fancy business schools, did he?
Whatever else I think of Arthur Lee, he lives here. He will stay awake the nights.
JACKIE, 1986
Dillon called me about the slate dam above Jenkinjones, and I went to look for myself and take pictures. The oldest part had stopped burning and green shrubs grew there. But the slate now stretched across the hollow from Trace Mountain to Peelchestnut, and a lake the size of several football fields had collected behind it. The water was a bluish black and looked solid enough to walk on.
I tried to get a quote from Arthur Lee but he wouldn’t talk, so I ran a thick headline across the page, “Slate Dam Unsafe?” Hassel and Tom called for a meeting at the Felco VFW hall, where people had their say and signed a petition to send to American Coal headquarters in Philadelphia.
About a week after the petition went out, I woke to my telephone ringing on the bedside table.
“Jackie? Jackie? Honey? This is Arthur Lee.”
His voice was so slurred I could barely understand him. I had heard rumors that Arthur Lee was drinking hard, like he did when he was younger.
“Arthur Lee?” I said. “Are you drunk?”
“Naw! Honey, naw! I aint had a drink for twenty year. Not for twenty—” the line banged where he had dropped the phone—“Shit” he said from a distance, then, “Honey, you still there?”
I fell back on the pillow. “I’m still here, Arthur Lee.”
“Honey, I knew your daddy long before you was born. I loved your mother dearly and never raised my voice to her the whole time we was married. I know you never cared for me. But Philadelphia is on my ass, honey. You know how it is. They can always bring in a young man and—”
I interrupted, “So this is about the dam?”
“I’m saying don’t write about it no more. Please. Tell them buddies of yours not to send any more petitions.” He stopped to hiccup. “The boys in Philly say that dam is fine and they don’t want to hear any more about it.”
“American Coal can’t tell me what to print in my newspaper,” I said.
“It aint your newspaper,” he said. “I know the boy in Lewisburg that owns it.”
I took a deep breath. “I won’t tell anybody you called me,” I said. “I won’t tell anybody the shape you’re in right now or the clumsy way you’re trying to threaten my job. But I’ll write what I want to, Arthur Lee, and you can’t tell me different.”
“Honey, your momma was the finest woman I ever knew. She was a lady. She wouldn’t want—”
“Good night, Arthur Lee.”
I hung up.
I wrote several more articles. The newspaper’s owner called and told me he’d had some complaints, but then a Charleston Gazette reporter came to investigate, so the story was out. But nothing happened. Tom sent my articles and pictures to Charleston and Washington. Nothing.
Then we had a dry spell, the water went down, the mines at Davidson announced another big layoff, and people forgot about the slate dam.
KUDZU JESUS 1986
HASSEL
Louelly still testifies in church. Last Sunday she stood up and hollered in tongues for a while, something that sounded like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, then she dropped down into English.
“They will be a miracle,” she said. “They will be a miracle right on Blackberry Creek and Lloyds Fork.”
Preacher said, “What kind of miracle, sister?”
Louelly just shook her head. “I aint been give to know that. But hit will be soon.”
Doyle Ray Lloyd pastors at the Church of God (Prophecy) up near Annadel, and he is hauling for the strip mines during the week. His truck is a black Mack with an orange cross painted on the cab and the name HELLFIGHTER underneath. Doyle Ray has got a CB in the cab so he can witness all day to anyone that don’t turn him off. He is making good money and he takes it for a sign that God has blessed him because that’s what they say on that there “Seven Hundred Club.” They will not hear about the rich man and the eye of a needle.
For a while, Doyle Ray and his wife Sandra lived in a double house at Number Thirteen. Then Louelly’s Ethel got on as a miner at Number Thirteen back when they was still yet hiring and bought the other half of the double house. Doyle Ray has never cared much for Ethel. It goes back to Ethel beating up on him when they was younguns.
Ethel is partial to pink and covered her end of the house with that color of aluminum siding. She said she seen pictures in that Southern Living magazine of pink houses in Florida. She tried to get Doyle Ray to put the same on his half so they would match, but he said pink wasn’t no color for a Christian home. He put up olive green aluminum siding, so it is a funny looking house. You can spy it from across the creek.
Anyway, Doyle Ray put in a double-wide trailer at Winco bottom, near where Dillon’s house used to set, and moved his family into it. His wife claimed she got tired of climbing all the steps after she had her younguns, but we all reckoned they didn’t take to living beside a sister-in-law who worked in the mines and had a half-colored youngun without even being married. And they didn’t care for Ethel setting on her front porch drinking a beer on a summer evening. Besides that, Doyle Ray is driving for a nonunion outfit and Ethel is strong union.
Doyle Ray walks the track to Number Thirteen every clear evening except prayer meeting night. He’ll go see his mother first, because Betty smokes and cusses and aint never been a churchgoer. Doyle Ray thinks his daddy is in Hell and he frets over his mommy.
Then he’ll take out after somebody else, inviting hisself in for a cup of coffee and interrupting whatever television show a body is trying to watch. He’s even been to see Ethel oncet, but she threw him right off her porch. He won’t go see Tom. I do believe he is scared of a priest.
So me and Louelly and Ethel and Toejam, with Brenda hoisted on his back, are on our way to Winco bottom, walking to the Batmobile so Louelly and Ethel can trade for groceries at the Pick-and-Pay. It is one of them pale summer evenings when the heat has been burned away, the gnats are rising, and the cool air feels just right. Kudzu grows thick up the hill beside the track, like a green rug throwed over the maples and dogwood and poplars
.
Off in the distance, Doyle Ray is coming toward us, black Bible stuck under his armpit. He don’t see us because he is looking at the mountainside, then he stops short, drops that Bible right on the ground, and puts his hands to his mouth. He sinks down on his knees and bows his head.
“Lord God almighty,” Ethel says, “Doyle Ray has lost his mind.”
“Hush!” Louelly says. “He seen something.”
When we reach him, first he acts like he don’t know we’re there.
Louelly says, “Doyle Ray?” real careful, like he’s made out of glass and her voice might bust him. He twitches his shoulders.
“Come on, Doyle Ray,” Ethel says.
Doyle Ray looks up. His face is shiny with sweat. “I see the Lord,” he says. “I see my sweet Jesus!”
“You see Jesus?” Louelly says. “Here?”
Brenda says, “Yee-sus!” She throws back her head and laughs.
Doyle Ray points behind us. “I see Jesus in the tree yonder! He’s in the kudzu!”
I look where he is pointing. The kudzu has swallowed up a tree that hangs over the railroad cut back toward Number Thirteen. The tree is so covered up you can’t tell what kind it is. But with the evening light behind it and the leaves taking on darkness, it does look like the head of a man with a big nose and a beard.
Ethel folds her arms across her chest. “Where?”
“It’s the Lord!” Doyle Ray cries. “He’s clear as day. If you can’t see Him, you aint saved.”
“Hit does take after a man’s head,” Toejam says.
Louelly’s face is shining. “Hit’s my miracle,” she says.
“Come on!” Ethel says. “It could be Abraham Lincoln. It could be one of them Smith Brothers off the cough drop box.”
Doyle Ray is furious. “It aint a thing to make light of,” he says. Then he leaves us standing.
When we get back from the Pick-and-Pay, I head straight to see Tom, who has been so down in the mouth I am anxious to cheer him up. He is out on his porch, leaned back in a chair and his feet propped on the bannister, holding a can of beer. Jackie Honaker is setting on the steps with her arms folded across her chest and a hurt look on her face. They don’t even say hello when I come up.
The Unquiet Earth Page 30