Rachel's Blue

by Zakes Mda

  As the bike thunders away Nana Moira yells after her granddaughter: “You ride the darn thing without a helmet, don’t come crying to me when your brains are splattered all over the pavement.”

  All eyes are on Jason. He hates it when people feel sorry for him. He snaps at the three seniors: “What?” and then goes back to splitting wood. Nana Moira is worried that he may hurt himself because she can hear him splitting with a vengeance that borders on recklessness.

  “She’s been taking lessons from that floozie, Schuyler,” Nana Moira finally says after contemplating her granddaughter’s behaviour.

  “Don’t get too worried, Nana Moira,” says one of the seniors. “At least the boy’s got money. He’s gonna take good care of her.”

  Nana Moira used to resent it when people her age, or even older, called her nana, taking their cue from Rachel when she was a toddler. But she learned to accept it, although occasionally, like now, it jolts her a bit.

  “It’s all flash money,” says Nana Moira dismissively. “A man should work for foundation money instead, so as to set up a family.”

  “Yep,” agrees the senior. “All flash money. Cruising around like he owns Jensen.”

  The seniors are silent for a while. Nana Moira is sewing away. One of the men opens a Skoal Long Cut, takes out a few strings and places them between the cheeks and the gum. He passes it to the other man, who places the tobacco between his upper lip and the gum. They both start chewing rhythmically. They close their eyes as they savour the flavour. And then they spit out a black jet in unison. It splatters way clear off the porch on the paved parking space in front of the building. They applaud. They are in their eighties but they can beat men half their age in any spitting competition. Nana Moira just keeps on sewing away as if nothing is happening around her.

  And then all of a sudden she bursts out: “A mineworker shouldn’t be so skinny. His muscles gotta ripple like a lake when you drop a pebble. Like Jason’s.”

  Jason hears none of this praise. He is behind the building swinging away, the mountain of wood growing in front of him.

  The two men decide in unison that it is much safer not to contribute their opinion on the matter. Instead they take refuge in their Skoal and chew and spit away to their hearts’ content. Nana Moira focuses on her sewing.

  “That boy’s gonna hurt her so bad she won’t know what hit her,” says Nana Moira after a long silence. The seniors respond only by chewing even more furiously, and then ejecting another black jet. One grunts his pleasure, the other one sneezes. No one blesses anyone. Another long silence follows.

  “Who’s gonna stop her if she wanna be a biker-bitch?” Nana Moira breaks the peace again.

  Rachel, however, does not see herself in the light of a tough-acting broad riding on the back of a bike and being anarchic all over the place. She is sitting under a tree in the Wayne Forest demanding answers from her beau. They have a small picnic pack of hot dogs and soda between them.

  He was in a mine accident, he tells Rachel. He was taken out unconscious on a gurney and spent ten days in hospital after a cable snapped sending coal-laden carts whirling uncontrollably. The last thing he remembers was when he pushed workers out of the way, saving a number of them. Only three, including him, were injured. It could have been worse if he had not had the presence of mind to act quickly.

  Rachel feels bad for thinking the worst of a hero who had saved his fellow workers from certain death. But still she wants to know why he didn’t call her or even text when he had regained consciousness at the hospital.

  “I didn’t want to bother you with my personal problems,” he says. “You guys are involved in a big task here of trying to stop fracking. My personal issues count for nothing.”

  Then he goes on about the struggle against fracking companies, and how the people shall finally be victorious. He talks about demonstrations and sit-ins that are planned, of the heroes, mostly women, who have been chaining themselves to equipment and have been arrested. He expresses his wish that one day Rachel will be one of those heroes.

  Rachel would rather be talking about their relationship and where it is going, but there is no stopping Skye Riley when he is on about direct action.

  “I am scared for you,” says Rachel after forcing a word in edgeways. “Your job is dangerous. Ever thought of doing something else?”

  Skye looks at her as if she has uttered the dumbest statement ever.

  “I am a coal miner, Rachel. It is what I do. The men who work in the coal mines will tell you that they wouldn’t do anything else. It is our life. All our relatives for generations have worked in the coal mines. My grandfather was a coal miner, so was my father. My uncles are coal miners. I grew up playing hide and seek in abandoned mines. It is my life. So, don’t be scared for me. You should be scared for your people instead.”

  He goes into a tirade about how her people are in danger because of the skulduggery of fracking companies. They have new ways of spreading their poison in poor communities, as they are planning to do in Jensen Township. He lectures her as if she is in a classroom. Brine, he says, can legally be disposed of on roads in Ohio – all the companies need is a resolution from the city council, the county commissioners or even the township trustees to allow this to happen. In Jensen Township they plan to pass such a resolution. The township trustees will be taking such a vote at their next meeting.

  This is news to Rachel. She is more surprised that Skye, all the way from West Virginia, even knows the days the trustees of Jensen meet at the Township House – the last Tuesday of every month at 5.30 pm. The township will get some money if it allows brine to be spread on its roads, and this will offset some budget cuts. Rachel remembers vaguely hearing some Centre regulars gossiping about the township fiscal officer who was under fire for some bookkeeping errors. Maybe that’s part of the desperation that has led the township trustees to take such a drastic step at the expense of the health of the citizens.

  “They have been lied to,” says Skye. “The companies have given them facts and figures that show that a little brine on township roads is harmless.”

  Rachel is no longer listening. She is clearing the litter from their picnic spot and stuffing it in a plastic bag, making as much rustling and crunching noise as possible.

  “You’re right to be annoyed,” says Skye. “This is happening right here in your township. You should have been vigilant. You should have been the one who alerts Appalachia Active instead of me from the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

  “Is this how it’s gonna be, Skye? It’s gonna be about the people all the time?”

  “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

  “It’s got to be about us sometimes.”

  It dawns on him that he got carried away. He has been told of his one-track mind, and he could kick himself for it.

  “About us, eh? You’re right; it’s gonna be about us.”

  He leads her to the bike, and they thunder away.

  It’s late in the afternoon when they return to the Centre. The first thing that Rachel notices is that Nana Moira’s car is gone, but Jason’s is still parked in the driveway next to Rachel’s. She is, of course, not aware that Nana Moira went home early today to sleep off the pain that she caused her. Jason, on the other hand, is still splitting wood. He is struggling with a piece of wood that has a crotch in it. He uses a steel wedge to split it parallel to the plane of the crotch. The wedge flies out and leaves a point of attachment between the halves.

  Rachel and Skye can hear the sound of the maul as they walk into the building. He doesn’t give it a second thought; she wonders at Jason’s obsessive behaviour.

  Nana Moira did not lock up because Rachel’s car keys are still in her coat where she left it on the chair. Before she left she asked Jason to remind Rachel to lock up if she returns while he is still at the Centre.

  “I’ll wait till she returns,” he promised her.

  He hears the roar of the showy motorcycle and believes that Skye wil
l just drop Rachel and then ride away. As soon as Skye leaves he will talk to Rachel before she drives home. That’s what he was waiting for. To talk to Rachel. She’s got to know how he feels, what her tomfoolery with Skye is doing to him and to Nana Moira and to everyone else who loves her.

  All of five minutes are gone but Jason does not hear the Honda rumbling away. He gives the wood one more whack and then buries the maul in the stump. He dons his T-shirt and then his hoodie and walks to the building. The motorcycle is parked in front of the door, its metallic maroon finish glistening in the light from the window.

  It is through the same window that he sees Skye chasing Rachel around the quilting tables. She is laughing and screeching all over the place. With her long strides she is faster than him. He grabs one of Nana Moira’s unfinished quilts and throws it at her like a cowboy trying to lasso a cow. But she ducks and the quilt drops to the floor. Jason is fuming inside; how dare they treat Nana Moira’s work of art with such disrespect?

  Jason has seen this fooling around before. He used to do it with Rachel in the kitchen during those halcyon Fridays when they baked pawpaw bread.

  Skye pretends he is giving up. He is out of breath and takes a seat. Rachel is off her guard as she walks too close to him. All of a sudden he leaps up and grabs her, screeching and kicking. He plants a kiss on her lips. She melts in his arms. Soon they are stripping each other’s clothes off. Reckless passion has overcome them and they cannot rip them off fast enough. Soon they are completely naked and rolling on Nana Moira’s unfinished quilt on the floor.

  Jason is livid and aroused as he listens to the moans. He has been chopping wood the whole day, now he is chopping it in other ways. They come together in a crescendo of three tortured voices.

  4

  Jason has taken to mopping the floor at the Centre incessantly. He used to mop it once a week without being asked. And this was welcomed by Nana Moira because no one bothered to mop the floor except when the Centre was expecting prospective donors. Even for special occasion lunches and dinners the floor was swept but rarely mopped. Until Jason joined the Centre. But lately he mops every day. The first thing he does when he arrives in the morning is mop the floor with bleached water, and the last thing he does before leaving for Rome Township in the afternoon is mop with a foamy detergent.

  “This ain’t no hospital, Jason,” Nana Moira said on one occasion after she had become tired of shifting her chair from one spot to another. “I don’t wanna be living in no sanitised place.”

  Sometimes members of the Quilting Circle would be sitting at their tables sewing away and laughing at their own jokes, and Jason would suddenly reach for the bucket, the mop, the detergent. He would scrub one particular area on the floor with so much force it bordered on violence. As if he was fighting a stubborn spot that was refusing to be removed. None of the women could understand why he had this expression of anger on his face.

  Even today, on Christmas Eve, Jason is mopping the floor. It is rather annoying to Nana Moira because he is in the way of people who are preparing the place for the Christmas party in the evening. The Centre is buzzing with community volunteers dressing up the Christmas tree with illuminated ornaments, hanging streamers and period posters of square dancers on the walls, and arranging the tables on the sides to make a dance space in the middle.

  “You don’t need to fight the floor, Jason,” Nana Moira says.

  “Just cleaning, Nana Moira. Just wanna keep the place spotless major, it being Christmas and all.”

  Nana Moira can only shake her head and move on to the kitchen to attend to her pies in the oven.

  “Come over here give me a hand, Jason,” she says from the kitchen.

  It is the only way to get him off the mop and out of the way. In a few hours the kids will be here to build their gingerbread houses, and then the party will begin, first for the kids, and then later in the evening for the adults.

  Jason gives the invisible spot a last wipe, and then puts the mop and the bucket away. He joins Nana Moira in the kitchen. She is preparing egg-nog. She mumbles that most of this work should have been done days before but people don’t want to help. All they want is to eat when someone else has prepared the fixings. Even her own Rachel would rather be helping strangers, such as driving Schuyler all over the place like she is her servant, instead of giving her grandma a hand at the Centre. Only Genesis’ boy has been by her side. Only sweet Jesus knows how she would cope without Genesis’ boy.

  “Come on, Nana Moira,” says Jason, “you done fine long before I came here.”

  She is beating eggs, sugar and salt in a large pot and asks Jason to slowly pour the milk into the mix as she is whisking. After that Jason places the pot on the burner, while Nana Moira makes certain that the stove has a very low heat setting.

  “Just keep on stirring until it thickens, Jason,” says Nana Moira. “Then we gonna add vanilla extract and nutmeg.”

  This will be the non-alcoholic version of egg-nog that the kids will enjoy. While it heats on the stove where it will remain at least for an hour, with Jason stirring it occasionally, they set out to create another egg-nog masterpiece, but with alcohol this time. In a large punch bowl they combine the mixture with bourbon, rum and brandy. There is some left in each of the three bottles, so Nana Moira gives them to Jason with the warning: “Don’t get wasted.”

  Jason hides the bottles in the cupboard behind some pots.

  “I’ve folks that hail from Chester Hill that’ll be playing music tonight. You and Rachel gonna play too, won’t you? High time I hear the silly music folks tell me you play.”

  “Me and Rachel ain’t gonna play nothing, Nana Moira.”

  Nana Moira has been aware for some time now that a new coldness has developed between Jason and Rachel. Well, maybe not coldness, but some distance. Some falling out of sorts, though no one talked about it. It began that afternoon, the first time that Nana Moira set her eyes on that damned Skye Riley. She suspects that her granddaughter has been so taken up by the scrawny coal miner from West Virginia that she is spurning the only great thing that ever happened to her, namely Jason de Klerk. Of course, she is not aware that the estrangement emanates from Jason’s side. On the now rare occasions that Rachel has come to the Centre, Jason has refused to talk to her. When she walks in, he walks out, gets into his car and drives away. Every time he looks at her he sees Skye Riley buried between her thighs.

  Rachel, on the other hand, has stayed away from the Centre for different reasons, though they also have to do with Skye. Ever since he told her about the Jensen Township Board of Trustees’ impending vote on allowing fracking companies to cover township roads with brine, she has been animated to action. She organised a few members of Appalachia Active who come from Jensen and neighbouring townships and they mill around the Township Building on County Road 9889, holding placards with huge skulls and chanting slogans. But Rachel has taken her protest to another level. Whereas the rest of the protesters gather only on the days when they heard the trustees would be meeting or having consultations with the residents, she goes there every day and stands outside the building all alone with a placard scrawled: No Poisonous Brine on Jensen Roads. Her one-woman demonstrations have become the talk of the township. The first Nana Moira heard of them was from the women of the Quilting Circle. She was hurt to discover that Rachel was doing things out there that people knew about, and yet she was ignorant of them. A chasm was growing between her and her granddaughter, and soon it would be too wide to bridge. That evening she tried to speak to Rachel about it, but she was uncommunicative. Nana Moira lost her temper and yelled at her.

  “It’s that Skye Riley, isn’t it? You just trying to impress him.”

  She knew she was right when Rachel told her it was none of her business.

  It is true that Rachel hopes Skye Riley will be proud of her. Members of Appalachia Active would be sure to report her dedication to the cause to him. Maybe if he heard she cares just as much as he does for “the people
” he would be more attentive to her desires – particularly the singular desire to spend time with him like normal people who are in a relationship. The last time she saw him was when he came thundering on a bike and left in the evening after a roll in the hay – except the hay was Nana Moira’s unfinished quilt. It’s been weeks since then. They texted each other for a few days. But the texts dwindled off as the days went by. He would see her, he kept on promising. He missed her, he assured her. He was held up by the work at the mine, or by the demonstrations and sit-ins, or by some time spent in a county jail waiting to be bailed out after inciting a mini-riot at a hydraulic fracturing plant or at a mountain top removal mining site.

  Surely her one-woman demonstration in Jensen Township would reach his ears on the distant Blue Ridge Mountains and he would come to her. She was aware that Jason was giving her the silent treatment, but she did not know that it was more than just that she left with Skye that day. Jason needed to understand and accept that she had made her choice.

  “So why won’t you and Rachel play tonight?” asks Nana Moira.

  “We didn’t rehearse nothing,” says Jason. “We don’t play together no more.”

  Nana Moira had not been aware that the estrangement had gone to such an extent. Jason tells her that he now busks alone every Saturday at the farmers’ market. In any event the experiment with Rachel did not work. She was too bent on playing the music of her fathers and grandfathers while he wanted to dabble in experimental sounds. She was often late for performances, and sometimes did not rehearse, mostly because she was attending Appalachia Active meetings and demonstrations, or was driving Schuyler to physio. He complained, he begged, he threatened. Rachel promised that the following week she would be on time and during the week she would make time to rehearse, but things never went down that way. And then Skye Riley came out of the blue and everything changed.