Coal Run

by Tawni O'Dell

  “Room Four,” she tells me, and points down a hallway wallpapered in the alphabet.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  The cold, silver-topped exam table of my youth has gone the same way as the pounding bench. It’s been replaced by a padded mint green table. I put the cigars and the clock on the floor beside it, lie down on it, stretch out my legs until my boots dangle off one edge, put my hands behind my head, and study the colorful map of Nursery Rhyme Land on the wall opposite me.

  As a kid I used to want to live there, but as an adult I’ve noticed it’s a miserable place filled with nothing but crime, poverty, and domestic violence.

  There’s Peter Peter trying to stuff his unwilling wife into a giant pumpkin shell, and Jack and Jill taking a vicious tumble down a hill. Bo Peep is sobbing in a field next to a clothesline where the royal maid is having her nose ripped off her face by a gigantic black crow. Old Mother Hubbard gazes piteously at her skeletal dog, while Tom Tom the Piper’s Son has been reduced to stealing pigs. Little Miss Muffet fends off a gruesome spider, and three mice in dark glasses scurry away from a knife-wielding farmer’s wife. Humpty-Dumpty is sunny side up.

  In the middle of the map stands a tattered boot exploding with filthy, screaming children. A haggard old woman holding a wooden spoon chases a few of them.

  The door opens, and Dr. Ed appears in his blue exam coat with a stethoscope draped around his neck and a couple strips of stickers peeking out of his breast pocket.

  “I used to imagine that’s how Reese and Jess Raynor lived,” I say to him, staring directly at the shoe.

  He glances at it on his way to the sink to wash his hands.

  “The shoe is better insulated,” he tells me.

  He walks over holding a tongue depressor.

  “How was the hospital auction?” I ask him.

  “A big success,” he replies. “Your balls were a big hit. Say ah.”

  I open my mouth and stick out my tongue. I try to ask him, “So what do you think about Reese coming back?” but all I hear come out of my mouth is, “Ah-ah-ahahahah-ah-ah-ah–ahahahaha-ah-ah.”

  He has no problem understanding me.

  “I’m not exactly jumping up and down over it. I know he’s going to stay with Jess and Bobbie for a while. I know that’s only going to make a bad situation worse.”

  “Ah-ah-ah-ahahahaha-ah-ahahahaha-ah-ah?”

  “I’ve been their pediatrician since the day Gary was born, and I never noticed any signs of abuse on any of them until Danny yesterday.”

  He removes the tongue depressor and walks over to the garbage can to throw it away.

  “So you’re sure it’s abuse?”

  “Let’s just say I know he didn’t do that running into a wall.”

  “Why would Bobbie protect Jess? I know I don’t know them very well, but Bobbie doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d tolerate someone doing that to her kid.”

  He returns holding an otoscope. He gives my right ear an authoritative tug.

  “A lot of women try to deny it and live with it,” he says, peering inside my head. “They choose to defend the man.”

  “Out of love?”

  “Hell, no. That’s not love. That’s cowardice. Those women don’t have any damn courage.”

  “That’s what I mean,” I say. “That’s not Bobbie. She’s not a coward. Her family went through a lot when her dad was killed. She’s a survivor. And she was always fun. Never down on anything. At least not in front of other people.”

  He moves on to my other ear.

  “Jess lost his job. His unemployment ran out. He hasn’t been able to find anything else steady. He’s got four kids and a wife to feed. He’s under a lot of stress. Financial and otherwise. Just because a guy loses his temper once isn’t reason to write him off as a monster. Maybe that’s what Bobbie’s thinking. But regardless, I don’t want to see it happening again.”

  I think about Jess last night and the way he reacted when I accused him of hitting Danny. I think about the two of them at the junkyard and how comfortable they seemed with each other. I’m not convinced that Dr. Ed is right, but at the same time I feel like we haven’t been told the truth.

  He steps around in front of me and puts his stethoscope in his ears.

  “Unbutton your shirt,” he tells me.

  He puts the stethoscope against my chest.

  “Take deep breaths,” he tells me.

  He leans forward, listening intently.

  “Did Val Claypool come here yesterday?” I ask him.

  He nods.

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “He had his tonsils out when he was five, and he’s allergic to cats.”

  He straightens up and slips the stethoscope out of his ears and back around his neck. He brings out a blood-pressure cuff from one of his pockets and straps it on my arm.

  “Why did he come see you?”

  “He had a tummyache.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Any other reason?”

  “He wanted to talk.”

  “He wouldn’t talk to me. Did he tell you he saw me?”

  “I think he mentioned that.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he saw you.”

  “That’s it?”

  He gives the rubber ball a few squeezes and studies the gauge.

  “What did you expect him to say? ‘I saw Ivan Zoschenko. He’s a fine-looking man. Do you think he’d sign a football for me?’ ”

  “I just meant did you talk about me at all?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No.”

  “Did you talk about why he never came back?”

  He rips the cuff off and walks over to the sink to wash his hands.

  “How’s your knee?” he asks me.

  “Pretty bad,” I reply.

  “Val’s staying in that abandoned house across the road from Bert Falls’s place for a couple days. It’s still in pretty good condition. It has a good roof. Why don’t you go talk to him yourself?”

  He comes walking back toward me, and his eyes light on the box of cigars and the Buddha sitting on the floor.

  “Those are for you,” I tell him. “The clock is from Zo. The cigars are from me.”

  He stoops to pick them up. When he does, I notice some brown age spots on the top of his scalp beneath his white crew cut. The idea that age could ever triumph over Dr. Ed has never occurred to me.

  He must be close to seventy by now—maybe over seventy—but the years have not dulled him or slowed him down.

  The sight of white hair and a few wrinkles never bothered me, but discovering age spots is like noticing the first rust scabs around the door handle of a reliable, beloved vehicle. They don’t command respect or confidence. They can be covered up or ignored, but what they signify is inescapable. He’s starting to corrode.

  I don’t want Dr. Ed to die. I want us to be able to hang out a lot longer.

  He holds up the clock, turning it this way and that, then reads the quote from Confucius inscribed on the back.

  “ ‘The way of the superior man is threefold. Virtuous, he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear.’ ”

  He sets the clock down on the exam table along with the cigars. He opens the box.

  “Don Sebastian,” he murmurs as he takes one of the gold-wrapped cigars and runs it under his nose. “Bless you.”

  He pulls his prescription pad from another pocket. I’m glad to see it. I could use some more pills.

  “One more thing,” I remember to tell him, reluctantly. “I ran into Mike Muchmore last night. He wanted me to talk to you about apologizing to some family that wants to sue you because you gave one of their kids a DTP shot in their home. You had to bribe the dad with beer and chicken.”

  A slight smile crosses his lips, and he chuckles under his breath.

  “Do you know who
he’s talking about?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I’ll take care of it.”

  “It might not be that easy. Muchmore is their lawyer.”

  “Good.”

  “What do you mean, good?”

  “Didn’t you say he asked you to ask me to apologize?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So he wants to avoid litigation, right?”

  “Right,” I say warily.

  “Do you know how much money he’d make in legal fees if they actually sued me? Or even began the process of suing me? He’s trying to help me, not hurt me.”

  “I don’t think he has any interest in helping you. You should’ve heard the things he said about you.”

  “I know what he thinks about me. He’s told me to my face. He thinks I’m loud, vulgar white trash, but he knows I’m a good doctor. I think he’s a self-righteous, conceited, obnoxious ass, but he’s a good lawyer, and it’s good to know a good lawyer.

  “There are certain situations in life where you have to have one whether you want to or not to help make shit go away. They’re like enemas.”

  He puts down his pen and rips the page off the pad with a veteran doctor’s flourish, then folds it and hands it to me.

  “Your blood pressure’s high. Your color’s bad. You have wax in your left ear, and somebody punched you in the face,” he reports.

  He gives me a pat on the shoulder.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he says as he heads for the door, “I have much cuter patients to see.”

  I walk back through the office, grabbing a lollipop out of the basket on his sister’s desk on my way past before she can slap my hand.

  Back at my truck, I unfold the piece of paper and look down at Dr. Ed’s scribbled prescription. It reads “Sober, he is free from making an ass of himself.”

  13

  THE RAYNOR BEAGLES ANNOUNCE MY ARRIVAL WITH A PITCH-perfect blending of their solemn voices. As one tapers off, the other begins its climb to a drawn-out tenor so solid with longing I imagine I could stick my hand into the air above their freckled muzzles and feel the notes twine around my fingers.

  I park my truck on the road. Wet brown-and-green fields rough with winter stubble fall away in waves of hills. A few splotches of red-and-white cow lurch slowly across the top of a rise where one massive, sprawling, gnarled oak has been spared out of respect for its usefulness as a shade tree and its ornery appearance.

  A long, leafless bank of level trees runs behind the house, the mesh of crooked black branches reminding me of the border of mourning lace on the handkerchief Zo gave my mother the day of the miners’ funeral. She held it throughout the entire service but never used it. I knew she wouldn’t. She considered it too pretty.

  The yard has been picked up since I was here on Sunday. The pieces of wood are gone, but the tire tracks remain and the garage door still has a ragged, gaping hole in the middle of it. A clear plastic tarp is tacked over it. One side has already come loose, and the rest of the tarp expands and collapses in the cold breeze with a definite rhythm, like the house is breathing with the help of an oxygen tent.

  I pause before the front door holding Jess’s guns and listen. I don’t hear any sounds coming from inside. Not even a TV. If Bobbie’s home, I know she’s standing on the other side of the door waiting for me to knock. Between the barking dogs and the sound of my truck, she has to know I’m here. She’s trying to decide if she’s here.

  I was sincere when I told Jess at the junkyard that I wanted to help, but after last night at Brownie’s, I’ve begun to doubt that I can help by talking to him. I’ve decided to try talking to Bobbie, which may be even worse than talking to Jess. The other day she wanted to rip my head off.

  But I’ve got a half hour before I’m meeting Jolene at Bert Falls’s place in hopes of finding Val. Jess and Bobbie’s place is on the way. I don’t need more of an excuse.

  I knock.

  Bobbie opens the door immediately and stands there in a tight black T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans cinched around the waist with a rolled-up bandanna, leaning in the doorway, her bare arms folded across her chest and one bare foot with bright blue toenails scratching the top of the other one.

  She stares at me with the calmly vacant yet wholly alert gaze of a cat.

  “What’s that old saying?” she asks me. “ ‘Beware of geeks bearing arms’?”

  “I think it was originally ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,’ but yours makes even more sense.”

  She takes the rifles from me, one in each hand, and props them up in the nearest corner. I don’t return the handgun. She doesn’t ask for it. Chances are she doesn’t know it’s missing.

  “Why’d you take them in the first place?”

  “Things were a little volatile out here.”

  “Volatile?” she says with a slow smile. “Did they teach you that word in deputy school?”

  “No, I already knew it.”

  She pokes her fingers into her coppery hair and gives it a mussed look, like a little boy who just woke up.

  “So what if it was volatile? You think we’re the kind of people who go around shooting each other?”

  “Jess was about to shoot someone.”

  “No he wasn’t. He was going to shoot out our tires so I couldn’t leave.”

  “Oh, right. I keep forgetting about Raynor hospitality: If you’re not leaving with a smile on your face, you’re not leaving.”

  She narrows her green gaze at me and fixes me again with feline scrutiny.

  “Is this some kind of official visit? Because I’ve got nothing to say about what happened the other day. Everything’s fine. Danny’s fine. Jess is fine.”

  “Where is Danny?”

  “With Jess. They’re running an errand.”

  “How can you trust Jess alone with him?” I try to trip her up and get her to admit what really happened, but either she’s too smart for it or she’s been telling the truth all along.

  “He’s fine with Jess. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  She turns on one bare heel and starts to walk out of the room.

  “If you’re here as a blast from the past, you can come have a cup of coffee with me. If you’re here as one of Jack Townsend’s goons, you can close the door on your way out.”

  I think about the guys I work with: the two Chads, both of them young and relatively idealistic; one a clean-cut, good-looking, recruiting poster of a guy, still living at home with his mom; the other a perpetually baffled-looking, premature family man who reminds me of a dog who’s just spent an hour chasing Frisbees each time he comes tromping into the station and flops into the chair behind his desk.

  Stiffy is a solid, compact vault of composure and inner strength that’s enabled him to endure a lifetime of abuse over his name to get to the point he’s at now, where he’s so proud of it he only goes by the one name. All day long, his phone is answered, “Stiffy here.” And Doverspike—though large and loudmouthed—wins a ribbon at the fair almost every year with one of his prize white ducks. “Goons” is one of the last terms I’d apply to them as a group, but I’m not about to waste my breath arguing with Bobbie about this.

  I follow her into the kitchen. It’s a pleasure. She has a great butt.

  As I watch her hips moving and her fingers start to play with her hair again, I feel jealous of Jess.

  I’m jealous of his pretty wife, his devoted kids, his wallet, even his shitbox house. At least it’s got a nice view of the valley.

  Jess’s words at the junkyard surface in my head, and the reality of how my life turned out clashes hard with the old assumption about how I thought my life would turn out, but I remind myself that even when I still had a wide-open future, I never wanted any of this. I don’t want it now either, although I’m the first to admit I don’t know what I do want.

  How can I envy something I don’t want? How can I admire a situation I pity?

  The contrast of conflicting emotions is familiar. It reminds me of how I felt as a kid about
the way people went on with their lives after the explosion.

  Most people, men and women, just kept going. On the surface, at least, they appeared to treat the deaths of all those men as just one more big pothole in their road of life. They didn’t stop and protest or get angry about it. They didn’t try to get it filled in or put a warning sign near it for others. They walked around it and kept going forward.

  I thought they were wrong to feel and act that way. I saw their lack of rage and their failure to cast blame and seek some kind of revenge against some kind of enemy, real or imaginary, as weakness and apathy, yet at the same time I knew that their steadiness and refusal to feel sorry for anybody—least of all themselves—made them braver and more virtuous than I could ever hope to be.

  Bobbie was one of them. Her family really struggled financially. She worked in the kitchen at the high-school cafeteria, and she did it without shame or resentment. She always had an after-school job, and the money she earned was used to buy groceries and winter coats for her little brothers, not records or lip glosses for herself, or nights out at the movies.

  I can’t know what went on inside her, but outside she seemed unaffected. She was never sad or angry. She did well at school. She worked without complaining, and she pursued fun and pleasure without guilt.

  Her kitchen is spotless. A small wooden table, immaculately painted in a glossy white, sits in the precise middle of glowing dark green floor tiles. The backs of the chairs match the floor. The countertops match the floor, too, and the cabinets are white with polished-gold door handles.

  I marvel now as I did on Sunday at how clean and picked up she manages to keep a house with four kids and Jess in it.

  She probably cleans constantly. I’m sure her mother set the example. I’m sure she was like my mother and Zo and most of the other women I knew growing up. They always worked too hard and were always tired, but they never questioned this way of living, because they never knew of any other way to live. Everybody worked all the time, because there was always more work to do.

  Bobbie has this ingrained in her. Jess does, too. Unfortunately, there’s not enough work for either of them to do around here anymore, and they weren’t raised to understand the concepts of wasting time or leisure time.