Winning Chance

by Katherine Koller

  Brenda checked the freezer. No chicken wieners or three-quarters-used bag of peas remained. On the wall, a framed snapshot of Brenda in a Klondike hat, left a blank spot. This stung. Why would Kali take it? So she and Chan would make fun of her, the Hat Lady? Brenda chastised herself for thinking so. Maybe they would remember her like an adopted auntie they’d visit again. Or a dupe, easily robbed.

  Her key. Still in the pocket of her anorak, thank goodness. She had lost her spare somewhere in her father’s car where she had cocooned herself their first night apart.

  Brenda could no longer put off checking her purse. Usually it was hidden on the top shelf of the back entry under the heavy Mexican blanket. She’d withdrawn grocery money yesterday because she was on a strict budget and eschewed credit: four twenty-dollar bills, poof. Brenda felt deflated, like the thin Goodwill bag under the window bench. Hardly worth the trip tomorrow. Well, no groceries, either.

  The flashlight! Gone from the bench, its dedicated resting place. Her father’s trusty flashlight, its genial moon-face, eclipsed. Sturdy like the rook, her father’s preferred chess piece. Ever Ready like batteries to last a lifetime. Stolen, never again to shine her way. She flicked on the outside light.

  Her garden, still to be planted, gathered up rain. Rhubarb will be up soon, she thought. Seed potatoes can be halved.

  That drat cap, left on the ledge to add to the Goodwill bag, where was it? Brenda imagined Kali at the transit shelter. The hat hid her bruised eye gazing at Chan, bundled in the cozy sweater and fresh blanket, yellow shoes tied on tight.

  Brenda held her growling stomach with one arm and with the other, the ache augering her heart. She recalled games of chess with her father after a satisfying day puttering outside, stew bubbling on the stove. He had taught her how to make a budget and live simply. But he didn’t prepare her for the loneliness. Or predict she’d abandon the job at Consolidated Parts out of sorrow or that no one at the company ever thought she needed a visit.

  Brenda sank down onto the bench. Deep inside her, as if it needed the strong flashlight out of the way first, came the will to apply for another job. Not Goodwill, she could hear Father scoff, much farther away now. As far away as the moon. No, not Goodwill. One day, she’d find another flashlight there. But not tomorrow.

  She pictured herself at the customer service counter at Safeway, in a smart staff shirt and sensible shoes, helping people, answering questions. Her telephone answering skills could be put to use. Even though they must have their pick of younger women, Safeway hired many waiting for old age security. The store chimed full of life: music and colourful veggies and flowers and customers who came by every week, people she could get to know. Instead of her morning neighbourhood stroll, she could walk to work every day. If she got the job, she would sell her father’s car and take a vacation, maybe with a co-worker, someday. She flipped off the outside light.

  Brenda washed her hands and slid the skin and sparse chicken meat off the bones. She needed voices like Chan’s and even stories and tears like Kali’s. In the pantry she found a carton of chicken stock. After turning down the burner, she ventured outside to cut young chives for flavour. The sky had cleared and the moon, still shy behind parting clouds, promised to be full. Brenda flushed and let her tears fall.

  Chan, splashing in the sink, drooling on her peanut butter spoon, sleeping in the stroller. Kali had treated Brenda’s home like a free-for-all, like Goodwill. Yet Kali acted for the benefit of Chan. Maybe Brenda would see them at Safeway one day. If and if. She would offer Chan a sucker from a basket of treats she kept for children and smile at Kali, who probably wouldn’t recognize her.

  “You are,” she whispered to Chan, to the chives, to herself, and the dark blue sky, “belovèd by the moon.”

  Memory Mine

  There you go again, my old Jim. Whenever you need to get away from the surface, from the skin of life, down you go, into our backyard coal mine. Eight feet down the ladder, nothing like the real mines you worked in for fifty years. I’m glad you’ve hung up your miner’s lamp. When you were sixty or a hundred feet under pushing coal, Starla and I mostly kept busy to avoid loading each other up with worry.

  I liked to be with you down here. When I needed extra coal to bank up the stove, I took my time in the cool below, my way of feeling the earth, feeling the good soil from which you were made, the black coal that made our living. I always felt closer to you down here, too, knowing that if I tapped the coal wall, some vibration would travel, maybe, down the Red Deer River Valley to where you worked.

  You told me this story, the one you’re thinking about right now: the winter day you trudged in the yard from school and your father had already been to the mine to fill his wagon. “Cold spell coming,” he said, pointing out the frantic feeding at your mother’s bird table. “Better get this to the neighbours early.”

  On your way, as dusk fell, the blizzard howled up. The horses whinnied and stopped at a man ahead pulling his wife in a handcart partly piled with potatoes. The young woman sweated and strained in the cold loud dark.

  You steadied the horses while your father and the man hoisted the woman and their little cart into the wagon and you all carried on toward the yellow light of a coal-oil lamp in the window of a farmhouse you’ve never been in before. The men supported the woman, hollering and heaving, while you tied the horses out of the wind.

  The farm wife pulled the oilcloth off her kitchen table and guided the young woman to a side room. Her bent-over husband shoved coal into the stove to boil water then joined the group around the bare wood like the four ages of man: the wizened host, your middle-aged father, the distraught young husband, and you, the preteen wide-eyed kid. You jumped at the screams but the others stoically waited for the firm but gentle hushing, the breathing, the measured cycle of labour. The men joined their own breathing, in simple unison. No one spoke the whole time it took to prepare and drink

  scalding tea.

  While everyone was on their second mug, the young woman settled in the easy chair by the stove, her baby already suckling. The farm wife poured yet more tea and offered biscuits. Your eyes softened at the coal lamp beacon, the warmth and shelter for the birth, the secure hospitality of the farmhouse, the mother and child, content.

  When the storm let up, your father left the farm wife a good measure of coal for free. The young man gathered all the potatoes left in the cart for her, too, hoping they weren’t frozen to the core. You also shovelled a portion of coal into his cart in place of the potatoes. The couple and their baby stayed the night. You and your father headed home.

  “That’s when,” you told me, “I decided to become a miner.”

  Your dad worked you all summer, but took you to the mine for a job the very next fall. The pit boss knew your father from his coal delivery job, a boon in the winter when the farm lay under yard-high wind-polished snow. Your mine clothes blackened but, once the coal dust washed off, your skin remained pale from being under all day. In the wash house, you sang.

  You felt lit up at the mine. I think you were on high alert, aware of the dangers. You said, “Took five years before I was capable, and I learned something every day. The mine teaches you. Your rock sense grows. You do good work, because your life and your friends depend on it. If a guy’s doing shoddy work, the knocks run up and down the line, and by wash time, everybody knows.”

  Fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit, summer and winter. Some guys got so used to the fifty-one degrees that a weekend breeze on the surface would make them sick. You carved out rooms and pillars as you went, sculpting the tunnels, working with the water, the gas, the pressure, the seam.

  You always said “a coal miner needs his brains more than his muscle.” Otherwise, the roof might come down and smash the brains right out of his head. Mostly, you listened. Every sound held meaning. Creaking and cracking, hissing and swishing, footsteps and rock falls. Shots fired, shovels loading, cars rumbli
ng on tracks. The men: singing from the best of them, cussing from them all, praying from none. And always, sharp picks on soft rock, like antennae, testing the tightness of the roof.

  But novice diggers with no right to their own place, they rushed and ranted and plowed beside you. They only smelled money, and it was good money, but strikes, slow-downs, shut-downs, gas leaks, and fires put you out of work more often than you’d like. You saw it happen to them, the ones without pit sense. So did I, every week at the hospital.

  I never would have met you if you hadn’t broken your leg in three places in a cave-in. Noticed you then but sent you home after the casts were set. The next year, a rock fall shattered your collarbone, and I’d sit a while after my shift to help you pass the time. You weren’t like the others, bragging about how many cars you loaded a day, or how much you earned. Instead you told me the story of the young woman who gave birth that night, how coal’s got the light and warmth of the sun trapped inside. I said, “like stardust inside out.” Your eyes clamped upon me then and I knew I’d be yours and you’d be my Jim.

  After that, you only wanted to get back to work and never get laid up again. You thought you needed to be on your feet and earning to court me, but I fell for you before we even spoke, when I pulled dark curls out of your face as you slept off the shoulder pain. Ah, you’re feeling it now, that old injury. I wish I could rub some mint oil on your shoulder for you, your shoulders, your chest, your back that I miss so much.

  I vowed when I married you that you’d never get hurt underground again. And you never did.

  You found this three-foot coal seam when you dug our new well and made this little backyard mine so we’d never be for want. I liked the extra coal in canning season and for jamming and pickling. And to offer families in need, like the gal across the alley with her third baby in two and a half years, in that shack her husband never did insulate, and the nights still so cold.

  You whistled your way home that fine spring evening, birds raucous with delight, wind teasing the lilac blossoms, clouds in the sky shaped to entertain you. After all, you’d been reborn coming up that shaft, soaping away the grime in the wash house. You didn’t know it would be your last day as a miner. You expected a meal, ready for you, and a wife who appreciated more than you could imagine that another blessed evening was about to begin with her husband and daughter.

  The trapdoor to our little backyard mine lay open. You dropped your lunch bucket and ran. You beetled down to me, where I was still clutching the coal scuttle. I must have fallen off the ladder and hit my head. I don’t remember. My sweet Jim, I’m sure I died right away.

  The dust of inside-out stars in our backyard mine is the last air I took. You inhale deep, like you want to breathe all of me in.

  “Ah, Ida,” you say, “you were with me in all the rooms I mined. You were there, in my head. The words I heard were yours. Why can’t I hear you now?”

  Oh, my sweet. We don’t need words anymore. Just breathe. Breathe and remember. Feel me, feel my presence.

  “Dad? Dad, are you in there? I’ve been looking all over the neighbourhood.”

  It’s our darling girl, now a busy mother herself. Oh, Starla, be gentle.

  “Go away and leave me with your mother,” you say.

  For you, the deep peace when the babe was born in the farmhouse was surpassed when our Starla arrived, rushing out of me and into the light. For me, nothing ever compared.

  “Dad, where’s the ladder?”

  “I busted it up.”

  Come home safe, Jim. That’s what I whispered to you through the rock. Every day.

  “I can’t leave you down there all night.”

  “I need to hear her.”

  I loved the smell of the earth. It smelled like you.

  “Dad, you missed supper.”

  Starla will take care of you, Jim.

  “Go home to Henry and the kids. I’ve got my beer, my hard-boileds, my apple.”

  “What about a flashlight?”

  “I got one.”

  “Turn it on. I can’t hardly see you.”

  “Don’t want to waste the battery.”

  “I’m leaving the trapdoor open for air, but it might rain.”

  “Goodnight, Starla.”

  You hear her car door close, the ignition.

  You pull out a box of matches. And three sticks of dynamite. Oh, Jim.

  “Now’s the time, Ida. Blow this up and no one will ever get hurt in here again. I’m sorry I ever dug it out. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  So am I. Starla’s kids, a trio of boys seven, eight, and nine, are curious and nimble enough to get into trouble here, ladder or no ladder.

  You strike the match.

  But there is a light from above, Starla again, peering down with her emergency flashlight. Henry keeps her car equipped. I love Henry for that.

  “Dad, why the match?”

  He would never hurt you, honey. He would never. You are his Starla. Put out the match and tell her, Jim.

  “After marrying your mother, the best moment of my life was the night you were born.”

  “I called Henry. He and the guys from the fire hall are on their way.”

  “You look so much like her.”

  “After we get you out of there, we’re going to fill the mine.”

  “You even sound like her.”

  She is me, now, Jim. Listen to her.

  “Bring up anything you want to keep. Your miner’s lamp?”

  The dynamite. Leave it behind, Jim.

  You drop the lit match. It lands in the bucket.

  “The last thing she touched,” you say, and pick up the coal scuttle, stare at the match burning out.

  “What about her pick axe?”

  The one you made me, light and short enough for me to handle. The boys would love it for their fossil hunts.

  “Got it,” you say, and place it gently in the bucket, the oval of it consuming the points of the pick. I wish I could fold myself into it instead, wrap myself around you every night, coat you in stardust.

  “Here comes Henry,” Starla calls.

  “What’s he got the siren on for?”

  “He likes me to know where he is.”

  Take me. Take me with you, my dear. Can you hear me?

  You run your hands along the coal seam like I did so many dusky afternoons. You touch your hands on your face, your arms, your neck. Feel my fingerprints.

  You’ll never be hurt underground.

  “Dad, do you want a ladder or the harness?”

  Hear me?

  “I hear you, Ida. I hear you!”

  The Exchange

  Molly was the only rider on the squirt-sized bus. The driver slowed down and nodded. So this was it.

  “Lucky you,” she said to the fake leather gym bag. A dollar at the church bazaar, but she got it for half price by shifting her ragged bundle from one arm to the other. Fifty cents, pinched from the Sunday collection basket. The bag, dirty white now. Zipper didn’t even work.

  Molly hefted it and stepped off the bus. Someone barbequed steak. She recognized the smoky smell from the restaurant. The guy at The Keg said tomorrow at eleven, don’t be late, and ditch the bag.

  She turned to the bus driver.

  “When do you go back the other way?”

  “Half hour, across the street.”

  “I’ll be there.” Molly checked her watch. Two dollars at the rummage sale, but small enough to lift. She had to be at work on time.

  Even though it was August she wore her parka because it made her look bigger and she needed it at night. Her lips were chapped from the dirty downtown wind.

  Riverview Close. All she had to do was cross the street to the odd numbers and follow the curve to 21. The river view must be in their backyards.

  S
he put down the stinking bag to change arms at the stone path. Flowers in a wave on one side, the big yellow heads above hers. The late afternoon sun beamed on them, like lamps. They looked happy. The door, the same yellow.

  She hoisted the bag, walking slowly.

  But the birds in the sunflowers flew away. The sound they made, like potatoes on the boil. She held the black metal railing to climb the steps. Flipped up the “Baby Napping” sign to ring the doorbell. Balanced the gym bag on her hip like the sack of apples from Shauna at the food bank.

  The door had a skinny window beside it, so she saw Shauna before Shauna saw her. Apron on, even. Tossed it off to the chair to answer the door. Dressed up, in a skirt. Shoes, too. Like she’s on TV.

  “Yes?”

  “I seen you at church. You gave me apples.”

  “Oh? At the food bank. Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

  “Molly.”

  “What do you need, Molly?”

  “Why do you gotta go to church for anyway?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You got a house with flowers tall as me.”

  “Sunflowers. You like them?”

  “A doctor for a husband. Who goes to church with you. And three healthy kids and a job and you look better than your picture.”

  “My picture?”

  “From the magazine. On the bulletin board.”

  “Oh, at church. I wish they’d take that down.”

  “I took it. I got it for you. Hold this load?”

  “How did you find me? I mean, my address?”

  “Phone book.”

  Eyes on the bag, Shauna started bouncing like she did at church with her own baby. To calm herself. Molly could read fear. Shauna reached in the bag, picked up the broken rattle, shook it for nothing.