Coal Run

by Tawni O'Dell

  “So what do you think Randy will do with the house?” Chastity asks as I toss his test into the Randy box. “Do you think there’s any chance they’d move back here?”

  “No. He has a good job in Maryland. He’ll sell the house. The land, too. I’m just afraid he’s going to sell it for strip mining.”

  “Do you think he’d do that?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to think he wouldn’t. Both his parents will spend the rest of eternity spinning in their graves if he does it. J&P’s been after his family for generations for this land. Now they’re going to see their opportunity to pounce. They’re going to know he’s the one who moved away and doesn’t have any more loyalty to this place. And they’ll know he has a wife and two kids to support. They’ll offer him more money than he could make selling it as a home. This isn’t exactly a hot real-estate market out here.”

  She suddenly turns and walks to the window. She pulls back one of Zo’s celery green curtains and looks out at the shadows of the dark hills like giant sleeping bodies huddled under blankets for the night.

  “Destroying this land would be awful,” she says.

  “Yeah. But we all need money.”

  “Too bad we don’t seem to need anything else.”

  She lets the curtain fall. I watch her walk to the fireplace and crouch down in front of it.

  She moves off the balls of her feet onto her knees like she’s about to start praying, but she puts her palms out to the fire instead of clasping them, like she’s caressing God instead of begging him for something.

  The white light from the fire gives her face a porcelain perfection. I think about an angel my mother used to set out at Christmas. She was dressed in layers of stiff golden fabric. Her face was flawless, but beneath her robes every inch of her slim white body was finely fissured with hairline cracks.

  I find a sealed brown envelope in Zo’s drawer. “For Ivan” is written on it in her delicate and careful handwriting.

  Chastity turns her head in my direction and looks up at me. Her eyes are copper in this light. I can just make out the rose-shaped mark on her throat. It’s where I would place my thumb if I were going to kiss her or strangle her.

  She takes off the denim shirt. The shapes of her nipples push against the pink T-shirt.

  I put the envelope down.

  She starts to move toward me, crawling on her hands and knees.

  The various points of faded pain on my body begin to spark and throb again as the heat she generates in me spreads and settles around them.

  My fingers itch at my sides. If I don’t touch a part of her soon, I will have to hurt yet another part of myself to distract my desire.

  I stop breathing as she arrives between my legs and lowers her head.

  “Look what I found,” she says excitedly.

  She pulls out a wooden box from underneath the couch. My breathing starts again, but it can’t possibly keep up with the pounding of my heart. I finish my beer in one long gulp.

  She opens the gold clasp. The box is lined in black velvet. A beauty of a hunting knife with a cut-bone and brass handle and a polished stainless-steel blade about four inches long lies inside it, along with an old, cracked, dusty black leather sheath with a boot clip.

  “I’ll be damned,” I say.

  I lower myself carefully from the couch to the floor in front of the fireplace to sit beside her.

  “That’s Bill’s hunting knife. She gave it to him on their wedding night. See, it’s engraved.”

  I put my hand over her hand holding the knife and tilt it so she can see the words.

  “ ‘Zo and Bill. Always and Forever,’ ” she reads.

  “He wore it all the time in his boot. When they found what was left of his body, it was unidentifiable. Until they found a crushed lower leg with a boot and his knife in its sheath completely unharmed. It was still polished when she took it out.”

  She holds the knife directly in front of her chest between the two dime-size shadows of her nipples. The firelight plays over the blade hypnotically. I watch until it’s hard to tell what is reflection and what is real, if it’s a knife or a solitary flame of steel.

  She’s looking for the masking tape. When she doesn’t find any, she picks up the box and searches it. She turns it upside down.

  “Who’s Judy?” she asks.

  “My mom.”

  I reach for the back of her neck and put my thumb on the pretty birthmark at her jawline and tilt her head back to kiss her throat.

  She doesn’t move except for a slight shudder that takes me back to the last tremor of life I felt in the rabbit Val slaughtered in order to give me its lucky foot before he left for ’Nam. I apply a slow, steady pressure. Her breathing turns ragged. My own takes up the rhythm of her pulsing blood beneath my thumb.

  I drag my lips and my fingers down her throat until I have her breast in my hand. Her nipple nudges against my palm.

  She puts her arms behind her, and her back tenses into an arc. My eyes fix on the curve where her breast dips into the hollow near her armpit. I kiss her there through the fabric of her T-shirt.

  She pulls away, and I think it might be over. She stands up, and panic races through me. She wants a man with a purpose, I remind myself. Not a man who can barely walk who sleeps on his sister’s couch every night. A man who didn’t even give her his free smiley-face cookie from Eat’nPark. I ate it in my truck on the way to the hospital.

  She wants a man like Muchmore, who silently provides quality medical care at great personal expense for women who’ve been beaten into comas by their husbands.

  Then I notice her smiling at me and her eyes eclipsing into disks of black and bronze. She pulls her shirt off over her head while gently swaying her hips and tosses it into one of the boxes packed with Zo’s stuff.

  She unzips her jeans and slides them down her legs, pulls them off her feet, and tosses them, too. They end up in a different box.

  I stare at her standing in front of me, angelically naked, her skin pearlized by the firelight, and let my eyes absorb her curves and shadows.

  I used to view women as a bunch of parts with obscene and silly names, but she is one slow, seamless stroke of flesh with only one name.

  She reaches out her hand to me to help me off the floor. It’s not easy, and there’s no way for me to do it gracefully or to maintain any masculine dignity.

  As she helps me, I watch her and think of a taut, sleek, tawny female jungle cat being approached by a scraggly, scarred, limping old male with one eye missing and his tail dragging on the ground. I hope she’s not thinking the same thing.

  She kisses me, and I close my eyes and consume her through touch like a blind man placing his hands all over a loved one’s face, trying to remember.

  I don’t even realize I’ve undressed when she leads me to the couch and stretches out on it, waiting for me.

  “I can’t do it like that,” I tell her. “My knee,” I start to explain, but she stops me with a look.

  She has me sit on the couch and crawls on top of me and takes me inside.

  I watch her the entire time, unable to take my eyes off the vulnerable body of a woman, so delicate compared to a man’s, yet moving so powerfully beneath my hands controlling me, my pleasure, and my fate.

  She says my name only once. A sort of wild cry.

  I close my eyes and hear my mother’s young voice sounding the same as it rose above the other desperate voices at the smoldering remains of Gertie, calling out my father’s name for the last time.

  I try to make this first time last, and I fail. My surrender is quick and unconditional. I’ve never been afraid to let go before. I’ve always rushed toward the release without investing emotion. This time I fear the place I’m going to, yet I want to be there more than I’ve ever wanted to be anywhere.

  20

  I CAN’T SLEEP. I WANT TO WATCH HER.

  Chastity’s asleep on the couch, naked and perfect as a sculpture, lying on her side with her han
ds tucked beneath her cheek like Zo’s sleeping angel figurine on the fireplace mantel.

  I notice the envelope with my name on it that I found earlier.

  It was licked and sealed at one point, but the adhesive wore off years ago. When I undo the clasp, it breaks off in my fingers.

  Inside are some sheets of paper covered front and back with small, deliberate handwriting in faded blue ink. The pages have been smoothed out flat, but the fold lines are still evident.

  I pick up the top sheet and begin to read.

  December 8, 1968

  Dear Zo,

  How are you? I hope you’re well and your son, too.

  Sorry I haven’t written for so long. Things have been tough. About a week after I wrote you my last letter, we were lead platoon out on patrol going through these low mountains that remind me a lot of the ones back home except the ground here is this slippery red clay crap and back home it’s good old-fashioned dirt and bony. We were heading down into a valley, going along the ridgeline, when all of a sudden we spotted two NVA divisions coming into the valley like an army of ants. We radioed back for assistance, but we knew we only had one company behind us. About 140 men.

  There was a big hill in the middle of the valley and we went for it. We dug in, set up what weapons we had, and basically started dying.

  They tried everything. Machine guns, rockets, rifles. They even set the hill on fire. We just dug holes and let it burn over us, then came back out and kept shooting. Nothing stopped them. Sometimes they’d come at us on a dead run screaming their shit. Other times it would be a very professional, well-controlled assault.

  Water was our biggest problem. Ammo second. Choppers tried making passes on the top of the hill with resupply and taking what wounded they could, but it was crazy. A lot of guys died waiting to be taken out.

  Everyone who managed to survive got wounded. I got shot in the arm. The bullet went in and out and hit the guy behind me—Webster Hicks, a guy from Detroit—in the chest. He took it in the right side, so it looked like he was going to be okay.

  You only get one bandage, so the disadvantage of having the bullet pass through you is you have to make a choice if you’re going to treat the exit or the entrance wound. We decided on the exit because it was more of a mess.

  Hicks was saying about how I slowed down the bullet for him. He actually, seriously thanked me. I heard later he went into shock on the chopper and died.

  Five days into it, the Fourth Marines came in and overran our position, and we got a little breathing room. By then we’d lost over half our platoon. The battle went on for over a month. There wasn’t a single one of us who thought we were going to get out of there.

  The whole time we’re fighting, I kept thinking about back home and trudging off on those freezing cold mornings when it’s still pitch black outside carrying my lunch pail with my extra sandwiches in it in case there’s a cave-in. In case there’s a cave-in? Jesus, did you ever stop to think about that? Of course not. We didn’t because it was just part of our lives, but we were taking sandwiches with us in case we got buried alive and got hungry waiting for the rescue team.

  So I kept thinking to myself I’m used to having a tough job, so I kept telling myself this is my job. It’s my job. It’s my job to defend America, and that’s a good job. What job could be better than that? And that’s what I kept thinking the whole time. This is my job. I blocked out everything else.

  It helped me out on the hill, but now that we’re out of there, the same thoughts are bugging the hell out of me, and I’ll tell you why. I had a good reason for working in the mines. We all did. I was helping take care of my mom and working on my truck. There was this girl I wanted to ask out. I won’t tell you who, ’cause you know her. I didn’t want to do it until my truck was running perfect. I wanted to paint it, too.

  It’s not that different here than back home. It’s a quiet place with lots of hills and quiet people who just want to farm and eat their rice and trade their chickens and be left alone. It reminds me a lot of back home, if home were in a fucking hellhole full of bugs.

  My problem lately is trying to figure out the reason for doing the job I’m doing now.

  I love my country. I’d give my life to protect someone like Mrs. Zoschenko and her kids. Mr. Z gave his life just to get a paycheck. But I’m not so sure exactly what I’m protecting them against by being here. Buddhist monks? Farmers? Little quiet villages surrounded by miles of nothing but rice paddies and jungle? Cute Vietnamese kids with their arms blown off but still smiling at you? Communism? What communism? Where is it?

  It’s hard to believe it. That’s all I’m saying. You don’t see any signs of anything bad here, except us and the VC. It’s too bad when governments decide to go to war they can’t just take their armies and put them in a contained space to fight like a football stadium and not have to fuck with innocent people.

  I don’t know when you’ll get this, but if you get it before Christmas, have a merry Christmas. I hope it’s snowing there.

  ———

  Your friend,

  Valentine Claypool

  Rifleman

  101st Airborne Division

  March 11, 1969

  Dear Zo,

  It was good to hear from you. It sounds like you had a nice Christmas. Thank you for your prayers.

  I just finished eating, and I’ve got some time to write before I go on patrol. We’ve been living on cold C-rations out of our helmets for a month. I can’t even look at the ham and lima beans anymore. We call them snot and nipples. That gives you an idea what they’re like.

  Last time I wrote, I forgot to tell you Lucius took a bullet in the throat when we were on the hill. I saw it happen. He dropped his gun and clapped his hands around his neck and fell to his knees. He started looking around and saw me.

  He tried to say something or, I don’t know, maybe you just make this gargling sound when you get shot in the throat. It was in his eyes, though. He knew what it meant. It wasn’t fair. He should’ve died instantly. That’s what I kept thinking.

  I crawled over to him, and he started shaking his head at me, but I kept going. Jesus. He just sat there on his knees holding his neck, all this blood coming through his fingers and coming out of his mouth, and he wouldn’t die. He wasn’t even weak enough that he had to lie down.

  He bled to death. I sat down beside him and put my arms around him. Eventually he sort of slumped against me, but he still wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t let go of his throat either. It was almost like he didn’t want me to see it. Like he was embarrassed or something.

  Dying is one thing. Knowing you’re dying is another. Maybe I’m a chickenshit, but I don’t want to look death in the face. I want him to come up without me knowing and sit on me.

  A lot of guys died, but he’s bothering me the most. I can’t stop thinking about how long it took him to die and how much time he had to think about what it was going to be like.

  Mr. Zoschenko told me this story once about when he was a prisoner in that work camp in Siberia where he got that wild tattoo.

  He had this Russian friend there named Dmitri who was a political prisoner. He had been caught with some friends at college running a printing press printing pamphlets against Stalin. They were also printing pamphlets against Hitler. I asked Mr. Z if that meant Dmitri was for the Americans, and he said they were against them, too. I asked him who they were for, and he said they didn’t know yet. They only knew who they were against.

  He and Dmitri used to talk a lot about what was the best way to die, since they were pretty sure they were going to die there. There was starving to death. Freezing to death. The radiation poisoning from the uranium. Blood poisoning from a bad tattoo. Committing suicide with a pickax. Throwing yourself off a cliff into the sea. Being beaten to death by a guard in a bad mood or a fellow prisoner in a bad mood. They could never decide which would be the best way to go.

  Dmitri had a girlfriend back home named Alla who he got pregnant, but
he wasn’t able to marry her before he got arrested. This bugged him a lot, because he really wanted to give the baby his name. He was always talking about escaping, and one day he did.

  About a month later, they brought him back. He was in real bad shape. He was almost starved to death and had lost the tips of two fingers to frostbite, and he’d been beaten up bad.

  He told Mr. Z that he had been able to find out about Alla and the baby before he got caught. Alla died in childbirth, and the baby died, too. Mr. Z told him he was real sorry but they were both in a better place now.

  Then Dmitri said, “Rado, I’ve been thinking about our conversations about what is best way to die. I think I know the answer now.” And Mr. Z asked him, “What is it?” And he said, “First.”

  So I’ve been thinking of that story a lot. I keep telling myself Lucius is the lucky one. I think about him being in heaven. Not a clean white heaven with clouds and angels and harp music and nothing to do, but a place where he could just be himself and do what he wanted. Shoot some pool with his dad. Have a couple beers. Paint some houses. He was a house painter before he got drafted. Most of the guys I know would still work a job even in heaven.

  I think about Mr. Zoschenko a lot, too. He was kind of like a dad to me. Sure as hell more like a dad than my real dad, wherever the hell he might be. I think about that painting of that czar he had in the kitchen. It looked like something that should’ve been hanging in a museum, but he had it in his kitchen. Supreme sovereign of our stuff, Mrs. Zoschenko called him. I think about his boy, too. He used to come and hang out with me sometimes.

  I told him I was going to write to him, but I can’t write to a kid. I can’t tell him about this shit, and I can’t lie to him either the way I do to my mom.

  If I don’t make it back, do me a favor and tell him that story his dad told me. Wait until he’s more grown up and can understand it. Thanks.

  Your friend,

  Valentine Claypool

  Rifleman

  101st Airborne Division

  P.S. Dr. Ed sent me a couple bags of lollipops like I asked him. I told the guys I got them to give to the kids whenever we run into them, but they’ve all started calling me Candy-ass anyway.