“I don’t want anything to happen to you. You’re all I’ve got.”
“Is that so?” he said. But he stubbed the cigarette out on my empty pop can and dropped it inside. He stood up. “I’m going to be there,” he said. “I’m going to watch them dig up them graves. I’ll understand if you don’t want to come.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
The first Saturday in February was a gray day that promised an icy rain. We drove across the Levisa to Kentucky in Dillon’s pickup truck. In the pale light, Dillon looked old. The skin of his face was rough, white and flaking in the cold air, and the muscles of his cheeks and neck had sagged into pouches.
We didn’t talk for a long time, across the old iron bridge at Justice town into Kentucky, dodging the potholes on Pond Creek Road, over the twists of Johnnycake Mountain and down Marrowbone. Dillon asked for a cup of coffee, and I opened the red thermos he’d stuck under the seat.
He sniffed the white curls of rising steam, sipped a while, then said, “You hear from that Tom?”
“Last letter was about a month ago,” I said. “He was pretty sick in September, one of those stomach amoebas that gives you diarrhea for days, but he says he’s all right now. He moves around a lot in case the landowners come after him. He’s got two banana cooperatives going and he’s working with kids, too.”
He’d enclosed a photo, Tom grinning at the camera, surrounded by excited dark-haired children waving their arms, turning to look at him and laugh, so much like we were long ago. I had taped the photo to my refrigerator.
“And you aint seeing nobody else?” Dillon asked.
“I told you before, if I meet somebody I like, and he likes me, I’ll spend time with him. Until that happens, I do just fine on my own.”
“Letters from Honduras won’t keep you warm at night.”
“Is that so? Since when did you start giving advice?”
“You’re kin. I got a right.”
“Yeah? What if I started bossing you about those trashy women from Justice town you sleep with?”
“What do you know about that?” he said.
“I hear. It’s a small town, you know. You better watch yourself, Dillon, you’ll get some social disease.”
“Never you mind.” He actually looked embarrassed. Then he said, “I don’t mean to give you a hard time. I know how you feel about Tom. Maybe I understand how you feel better than you realize.”
“Maybe you do,” I said. “It’s funny, when I was a kid, I used to think my father was the only person who had sex. I couldn’t imagine my mother doing it with someone, or you either for that matter.”
“Your mother raised you to think bad of it,” he said.
“I know. I’m not sure why.”
“She was in a bad marriage with Tony,” he said, “and she was scared.”
“Of what?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well,” I said, “I was always a little scared myself. Maybe because she was. It’s like something I had nightmares about when I was little and I couldn’t quite get rid of them. At least not until Tom. It was different with him. You know what I think? I used to be scared of my dad. I know it’s not natural for a child, but I think I hated him. These last few years though, it’s like I think of you as my dad, and that’s different. I mean, I can even talk about sex with you.”
I thought that would please him, but he frowned and didn’t say anything.
“Dillon,” I said, “were you ever in love?”
He changed the subject.
“I watched a TV show last week,” he said, “on that public station. It was about moving graves. There’s some old church in London where they used to bury people in the basement, and now they’re moving the coffins so they can build something else. Funny how we think like a grave is a permanent thing. But I reckon there’s nothing permanent, not even death.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear about it,” I said, feeling cross because he had brushed me off and brought up just what I didn’t want to think about.
He ignored me. “They opened them coffins,” he said. “Doing some scientific study. Three hundred years ago them people died. They showed on TV what the bodies looked like. Some was dry skeletons. Some still yet had the skin and hair on, all parched and shriveled, and the clothes stained. But most coffins just held this black liquid with the bones.”
“Dillon, it’s our own people we’re—”
“You know what they called it? Body liquor. Aint that some way to think of it? Body liquor.”
“Shut up!” I said fiercely.
“It was right on TV,” he said. “Nobody alive knows them people, you see, so no one cares any more. Get far enough away from a death and it don’t mean a thing.”
“If you don’t shut up,” I said, “you can stop this truck right here and let me out. I’ll thumb home.”
“I’m just preparing you,” he said.
But there was something in him that enjoyed it, that wanted to see those graves opened so he could set eyes once more on whatever remained to be seen. I shrank away from him, pressed against the truck door, and looked out the window.
We parked at the mouth of Scary Creek. A dirt road had been cut into the hillside past the Aunt Jane Place, but we walked the railroad track like we always did. Boulders the size of small houses had toppled down the mountain into the hollow behind the cemetery, and the slope above the hollow was littered with broken tree trunks and mud slides.
The road ran right up to the grave sites. Arthur Lee Sizemore and two other men waited beside a backhoe and a panel truck that would carry the caskets to the Justice Cemetery.
“Dillon,” Arthur Lee said. “Jackie.”
We didn’t answer.
“This will all be done professional,” Arthur Lee said. “I know you aint happy about this. I can’t help that. The company needs this coal, and we done good by you here. Even got new coffins for the old graves, and we didn’t spare no expense on the coffins neither. I’ll treat these here graves like they’re my own kin. Hell, one of them is.”
“Get on with it,” Dillon said.
Arthur Lee waved at the man with the backhoe and sidled over like he would stand and watch with us, but we moved away. He went to stand beside the truck instead.
My mother’s grave was first. The men removed the marble headstone, wrapped it in burlap and hoisted it into the back of the truck. Then the backhoe tore out the dirt alongside the grave. It was brown clay, moist and cold-looking. The backhoe operator was jabbing the blade, methodical and vigorous, like a hungry but self-controlled man going after his evening meal. The second man followed him with a shovel. Watching, I thought, there will be nothing there. My mother is not buried, she went off someplace years ago, and someday she will return or else I will go find her. Deep down, it was what I had believed all along. The harsh scraping of the shovel against metal proved me wrong. When they raised the casket, it was as though she had died a second time and I had just learned of it. I began to shake. Dillon stood perfectly still, his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, but the muscle in his cheek twitched.
The coffin was smooth as new-buried, except for one corner that had rusted the color of dried blood. I glanced at Arthur Lee and saw he was weeping. I cursed him under my breath, a man who would cause himself such pain for the sake of money or pride. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his nose, stuck it back in his pocket, and took out a roll of masking tape and a black marking pen. He knelt beside the coffin, smoothed a strip of tape onto the end, and wrote RACHEL SIZEMORE in large black letters.
Dillon’s thinning gray hair was plastered against his forehead by the winter dampness. His face was deeply lined and set in the clearest expression of hatred and longing I had ever seen. He stared at the dark hole in the ground, then at the coffin in the back of the truck, his body bent slightly forward as if he held himself back with great effort. And watching him I knew there was something of his soul in me, something that disturbed me and yet I
hungered for it. The backhoe gouged out the graves of my grandmother and grandfather; two more coffins came out of the musty ground, and as I saw all my people torn from the earth, I glimpsed something of the future as well and knew everything had come to an end with me, for I would never produce a child unless I met a man who disturbed me as Dillon did and there had been no one except Tom who could touch me that way.
The backhoe reached the edge of the cemetery and stopped at the grave of Rondal Lloyd, Dillon’s father.
“That’s one of the old graves,” Arthur Lee said. He had composed himself and walked toward us again, as though he decided his presence was so offensive he would use it as a weapon. His voice held a hard edge. “Won’t be nothing left of the pine boxes. That’s what we brought these empty coffins for. Wait until you see this. It’s real interesting, like what them archaeologists do.”
He glanced at Dillon as though he expected an outburst, but Dillon ignored him. The backhoe dug alongside the grave as before but more slowly, with shallow, mincing bites. Suddenly a wide streak of dark brown, rich and coarse like a fallen tree limb that disintegrates beneath a pile of wet leaves, cut through the drab clay.
“There he is right yonder,” Arthur Lee called over the engine noise. “Careful now.”
The streak grew to a depth of three feet. The backhoe stopped and the man with the shovel carefully removed the heavy clay on top, uncovered more brown like a pile of damp coffee grounds.
“What is it?” I said.
“It’s the coffin and the body,” Dillon said. “What’s left. They’ll put the whole thing inside that empty coffin.”
I took his hand and he squeezed mine so hard it felt like my fingers would crack. The backhoe scooped up a mouthful of the dark loam and swung round toward a coffin lying open on the ground. The soil fell in with a clatter, and spattered against the white satin lining. The backhoe swung around and dipped up more soil. Then Dillon cried “I see a hand!” and pulled me toward the grave. The backhoe operator glimpsed Dillon moving toward him and hit his brake too quickly. The machine swayed. Some of the soil dropped into the coffin, but a portion of the mortal remains of Rondal Lloyd fell in a shower onto the ground. A skeletal hand landed beside a clump of spargrass.
Dillon said, “Goddamn, Arthur Lee, I’ll kill you sonofabitch,” and he grabbed Arthur Lee by the front of his jacket and dragged him to the ground.
“Let me go!” Arthur Lee screamed. “Leroy, help me!”
Dillon pushed Arthur Lee into a pile of dirt. Arthur Lee tried to stand up and Dillon pushed him back with his foot. Leroy grabbed at Dillon’s arm but Dillon hit him in the mouth and he backed away. The man on the backhoe sat with his mouth open. Dillon picked up a shovel and began flinging the contents of his father’s coffin at Arthur Lee.
Arthur Lee raised his arms while Dillon kept pelting him. “You’re crazy!” he yelled. “You done scattered your daddy all over creation!”
Dillon flung down the shovel and leaped on top of Arthur Lee. He had Arthur Lee around the neck and tried to choke him. Then the two men pulled Dillon away. He kicked out but they were younger men and they pinned him to the ground.
Arthur Lee was clutching his throat and croaking, “I ought to have you up for attempted murder!”
“Do it!” Dillon screamed back.
“I’ll get on the CB and call the goddamn state police right now!”
But Arthur Lee was so whipped out he just fell back against the pile of dirt and lay panting. Dillon quieted down too, and the men loosened their grip on him. He sat up. We were all silent and listened to the distant rush of the river, then I said, “Come on, Dillon. Let’s go home.”
He leaned forward and rested his head on his arms for a moment, catching his breath. Then he said, “It’s yourn, Arthur Lee, land and bones,” like he was tired to death. “Do what you want.”
He got up slowly, stood at the end of the truck and looked inside. “Rachel,” he said, “I wish I could carry you out of here myself, but you see how it is.” Then he went down the road, walking stiffly, without looking back.
We didn’t say a word until we got back to the truck. By then a cold, light rain was falling. Dillon turned suddenly, his face stricken.
“My daddy’s hand! I left it lying!”
I touched his arm and he looked around. “I’ve got it,” I said, “in my coat pocket.”
I drew it out slowly, for it was brittle and the end of one finger had already fallen off. It lay in my own white palms and stained them with dirt.
I said, “You can take it to Winco bottom and bury it with the Japanese skull.”
Dillon reached out and touched the thumb. “I was holding his thumb when he died,” he said. He leaned against the truck and began to wail, a deep guttural sound that frightened me.
I pulled a bandana from his coat, carefully wrapped the hand in it and put it back in my own pocket. I put my arms around his shoulders.
“Get in the truck,” I said. “Here, on the passenger side.”
He didn’t protest when I opened the door and helped him in, as though he were very old or a child, as though I was the strong one. I got in the driver’s side and turned the key he’d left in the ignition. Grapevine Road was dark and wet. I took the curves slowly, pressed the button for windshield wiper fluid, banged on the dashboard to jog the balky heater.
Dillon slumped beside me.
“Do you recall,” I said, “How you used to play that Civil War game with me when I was little? You were the only one who would play it with me.”
After a moment, he said, “I recall.”
“That’s when I first started wishing you were my dad.”
“Pull off the road,” he said.
I swung the truck onto a wide shoulder at the crest of Johnnycake Mountain and turned off the ignition. We listened to the ticking of the engine.
“I am your daddy,” Dillon said.
I held the steering wheel, felt the shock move up my arms. “How can that be?” I whispered.
“I should have told you a long time ago, but your mother was against it. Then there was a distance between us. And what it come down to, I wasn’t sure for a long time. I thought you might be Tony’s and I wasn’t sure I’d want to claim you and it seemed best to let it all go to the grave with Rachel. I don’t know if you can forgive me for that. I wouldn’t forgive it if I was you. But I know you’re mine. I see it in you more and more every day. I saw it in the way you held my daddy’s hand.”
Then he told me how he had pursued my mother, how she had resisted but finally given in, how they had loved one another and torn at one another for years before the final break. He told me about the red fox, and the top of Trace Mountain, and what happened there, of blowing up the bridge and how that drove them apart for good. While he spoke I studied his face and hated it and loved it and saw in it what I had been longing for all my life. The truck cab grew cold but we didn’t turn on the engine. Dillon poured coffee into the thermos cup and we took turns sipping. Once in a while, I placed my hand over the bulge in my coat pocket to warm the bones.
WAITING FOR LECH 1988 – 1989
DILLON, 1988
I have been in a war and I have been in prison. A coal mine is like them both. You are always confined, always expecting a bullet to tear you open or a roof to fall.
I was raised on the stories of the old days. My mother told me how the coal companies came into the mountains and took our land, how our people died in the mines, or of illness or hunger, how they were beaten or shot for joining the union, how they froze in tents, even little children, when the companies turned them out of their houses.
I always expected coal would kill me, like it did my daddy and his daddy before him. But I never had an accident after the roof fall when I was a young man. And although I am short of breath when I climb, the black lung does not seem to bother me as much as it does some, those who suck in air as though their lungs are eating their breath. Probably it is because I laid out all those
years when the company had me on the blacklist. Now I am retired, and I am lucky because my child is a daughter who will not work in the mines. So it seems I have escaped.
But there is no rest. American Coal has been taken over by the International Oil Corporation and they have made Arthur Lee retire. They have laid everybody off, brought in new machines that rip and tear even bigger chunks of land, and hired nonunion miners to run them. I have had my notice in the mail, on the official American Coal stationery with the red, white, and blue stripes at one end and “A Member of the International Oil Family” in small gold letters in the right-hand corner, that says my medical benefits have been cut off. Louella Day has her widow’s notice, and Betty Lloyd has hers.
So it is a strike, though no one here has looked for it. We have put up plywood picket shacks at Jenkinjones and Number Thirteen. We have nailed an American flag to the door frame beside a sign that says POLAND, WEST VIRGINIA.
Jackie is writing about this strike for her newspaper. Together we walk to the new cyclone fence the company has built between Number Thirteen and the tipple. Rolls of shiny barbed wire with sharp curved spurs hang over the fence top like metal vines. A man in a black uniform and sunglasses films us with a video camera from a new guard tower. Another man in black stands at the foot of the tower and watches us through binoculars.
The company has built a barracks inside the fence where the scabs sleep and eat their meals. The scabs are not from around here. They never come outside except to go into the mine. They must be poor men that they will be made prisoners willingly. The only way they can leave is if the company takes them out by helicopter. The helicopters fly low over the houses at Number Thirteen and the noise and vibrations make you feel your veins will pop out of your skin.
Jackie has a folder with her. She takes out a brochure and holds it up. The front says “Property Rights Defense Team. We defend your assets.”
Jackie says, “That’s the guards dressed in black.”
She opens the brochure and reads, “ ‘Our trained personnel are equipped with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, tear gas, and K-9 kennels. We have available, on request, an armored personnel vehicle.’ ”
The Unquiet Earth Page 33