by Homer Hickam
“Flat land is kind of rare in this state,” Cable allowed. “Everything is either built on top of mountains or between them.”
“Bulldozers and dynamite,” she said. “Anybody ever heard of them?”
“Well, we don’t much like knocking our mountains down,” he said, conveniently ignoring the coal companies who did just that.
She had considered winging into West Virginia on one of her father’s corporate jets but had decided that might be too pretentious. Now she knew she’d made a mistake. She’d packed two bags for her journey, and it soon became evident one was lost. Tired, hot, and still a little scared after the landing, the worst of her New Yorkiness came out as, “I can’t believe you lost my bag!” Her face darkened as she slammed her hand down on the desk. “What kind of airline is this? The service is terrible. I expect you to make it up to me. A full refund, at least.”
“Now, honey . . . ,” Cable interceded. “It isn’t this nice lady’s fault. She’s just trying to help.”
“When we find your bag, we’ll deliver it to you,” the agent assured her.
Song was relentless. She did her own job with one hundred percent efficiency. She expected everyone else to do the same. “You act like I lost my own bag. But you lost it! I need what’s in it. All my cosmetics, and some very expensive clothing.” She shook her head. “This is ridiculous.”
Cable tipped his hat to the agent and steered Song away. “I had more to say to her,” Song protested.
“I think you got your point across.”
“I doubt it. I have a feeling I’ll never see that bag again.” Cable loaded her remaining bag into his bright red Porsche roadster. She was a little surprised. She’d expected him to be driving something like a 1973 Chevrolet pickup.
“Don’t worry about your bag,” he said. “You can get what you need in Highcoal.”
“Can I get Tracie Martyn products?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what that is, but Omar has a little of everything.”
“Omar?”
“He owns the store in town.”
“The store?”
“You only need one store if it’s got everything you need.”
“That is so you, Cable,” Song accused. “Do you not understand the difference between need and want? Or the thrill of shopping?”
He pushed his hat back. “Well, there’s a Wal-Mart over toward Beckley,” he offered.
“All my problems are solved.”
Her sarcasm was lost on Cable. “That’s great,” he said, then made certain she was buckled up and drove the little car out of the airport. She reached into her large handbag and retrieved a scarf to cover her hair.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I was looking forward to seeing your hair flying in the breeze.”
She leaned over and let the wind blow her hair in his face. “Now do you see why?”
“Oh, baby,” he said. “Keep doing that.”
“Don’t be obtuse, Cable,” she said crossly, and bundled the scarf around her hair. She had a headache. Traveling by commercial air nearly always made her sick, one way or the other. Unbelievable. The little airplane she’d flown in on didn’t even have a first class section. Everything was coach, with the seats crammed so close together there was hardly any room to breathe.
“I really do love your hair,” Cable said.
“So you say.” She kept the scarf in place.
Charleston was in a river basin nestled in hills, and Song thought the town was pleasant enough. There were no tall buildings; there was no particular architectural style, just concrete and brick, a town that could be anywhere in flyover country, she supposed. They crossed a wide, blue-green river, which Cable said was named the Kanawha.
“That’s a pretty name,” Song said. “What’s it mean?”
“It means there were Indians that hunted around here a long time ago,” he answered, “and now there’s not.”
Cable pointed across the river to a majestic white building with a glittering, golden dome. “Our capitol building,” he said. “It’s modeled after the one in Washington. The dome is covered with gold leaf. It should have been made out of coal. That’s West Virginia’s gold.”
“Very nice,” Song said absently. She needed her cosmetics. She was going to look like a witch if she didn’t have them.
“Charleston’s a pretty town,” Cable went on, “but wait until you see Highcoal. It puts this place to shame.”
Song searched for something salient to say. “When I told my friends I was going to Highcoal, they all got a good laugh out of it.”
“Did they?” Cable glanced at her. “Why?”
“Well, because it’s a funny name.”
“It’s not funny at all. High coal means the seam is thick enough that a man can stand up, or nearly so. In other words, a miner’s happy when he’s in high coal.”
“I didn’t know miners were ever happy. I thought they were all miserable. That’s all I’ve ever seen on television or in the movies.”
Cable’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth turned down. “Coal miners are some of the happiest people in the world. That’s because we’re engaged in productive work.”
It registered on Song that perhaps she had insulted her husband. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Cable, tell me the truth. Are you sorry I came?”
“Not at all.”
Song pondered his short answers, then asked, “Have you been thinking about us?”
He allowed a short sigh. “Song, the only thing I’ve had a second to think about is that old mine.” He reached across and patted her on the knee. “But everything is going to be all right. You’re going to love Highcoal.”
“I’m just visiting,” she reminded him.
“We’ll see,” he said. “More than one woman’s come to visit Highcoal and never left. We coal miners have a pull on pretty women, you know.”
“A pull? That doesn’t sound too inviting.”
“Trust me,” he answered, then pressed his lips together, the way a man does when he doesn’t want to talk anymore.
Song let it go. Her headache was getting worse. She opened her purse and took some ibuprofen, washed down by water from the bottle resting in the little car’s console. The Porsche droned on, its tires thumping across the expansion joints of the highway, all the louder because of the sudden silence of its passengers. After a few miles on the four-lane that paralleled the river, Cable turned off at an exit ramp that led to a two-lane country road. “This isn’t the fastest way to Highcoal,” he said, “but it’s got the most scenery.”
Song sat back, took a long, cleansing yoga-inspired breath, and told herself to enjoy the drive. After all, summer was in full bloom, the air was warm and smoky, the sky a gorgeous blue, and there was a rainbow riot of happy little wildflowers on the hills. Although in truth all this nature made her a little nervous, she told herself to be content. She was with the man who, for no reason she could exactly discern, loved her. And she loved him. Love would take care of everything. It was their destiny. That’s what Jim Brickman had promised, anyway. But did the singer of romantic songs know where Cable lived? Somehow she doubted it.
When the ibuprofen began to take hold and her yoga breathing began to work, she tried to make conversation above the noise of the blowing wind and the rumble of the powerful engine under the hood. She told Cable she’d heard from some of the people they’d met in St. John. Her father was doing well. Her job was stressful, as usual.
Cable didn’t do much to keep up his end of the conversation except to occasionally point at the scenery, which was essentially hills on top of hills, all covered with a thick forest. For the next two hours, the road kept to the valleys, until it finally arrived at a bullet-riddled sign that said Powhatan County. Someone had added graffiti to the sign that said Coal Miners Do It Deeper. Past the sign, Song saw the road disappeared into the fold
s of a steep mountain. She removed a plastic bottle from her purse and began to spray her legs with it.
“What are you doing?” Cable asked.
“My doctor said these mountains are filled with ticks. He said if I didn’t use this anti-bug spray, I’d be certain to catch Lyme disease.”
“I guess a tick could bite you just as easy in Central Park,” Cable grumped. “Are you ready?’
“For what?” She put the bottle back in her purse.
“The road gets a little curvy after this.”
She thought the road had already been curvy. She faked a smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a New York girl. I can take anything this place has to throw at me.”
He shrugged. “All right. Here we go. Hang on.”
She hung on. Up and over the first mountain they went, then through a narrow, convoluted valley, then up the next mountain, then the next. They began to meet huge trucks, their vast beds piled high with coal. Their massive radiators were like chromed tombstones, and they insisted on taking their side of the road and a good portion of the other. Cable expertly dodged them, while simultaneously dodging potholes and the occasional boulder. A number of deer were complacently grazing along the road. Every mile or so there were deer crossing signs along with other signs that read Dangerous Curves Ahead, Falling Rocks, and Look Out for Coal Trucks.
“Pull over, Cable.” They were on the third mountain crossing, and her voice was barely a croak.
He was focused on accelerating through a curve. “What’s that?”
“Pull over.”
“Why?”
Song grabbed his arm, and her voice dropped in pitch but increased in volume. “I said, pull over !”
Cable pulled over at a scenic overlook but Song wasn’t interested in the view. She flung open the door and ran for a ditch, falling to her knees just as her lunch made a reappearance. There she stayed, oblivious to the dirt besmirching her slacks, until her stomach stopped its spasms. Cable knelt beside her, offering paper napkins and water. She took them, washing her mouth out and wiping her lips.
“Cable,” she said, after emitting a pathetic little groan, “I’m sooo sick! I not only threw up lunch, I think I threw up a kidney! Aren’t there any straight roads in this county?”
Cable gave her question some thought. “Not really,” he concluded.
She climbed back inside the Porsche and clutched her stomach while the world kept spinning. “How much farther?”
“Three more mountains to Highcoal. Four to our house.”
“Your house.”
“Yes. But yours too.”
“I just need to sit very, very still for a while,” she said. “I don’t want to argue. Okay?”
Cable drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while Song sat still. Then she remembered she’d forgotten to call her father to tell him she was okay. She fumbled in her purse until she found her cell phone, then hit the speed dial. After a few seconds, she stared at the phone, which had remained stubbornly mute. “Cable,” she said, “why doesn’t my cell phone work?”
“Probably because there’s no service,” he replied.
Song’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“Serious as a muddy road. I suppose for you, this place seems a bit rural.”
“Rural? Buffalo and Rochester are rural. This is primitive.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“Please,” she begged, “go slow or leave me behind as road kill.”
Cable’s face was a frozen mask as he eased out on the road just in time to dodge a gigantic coal truck that came roaring from around a blind curve fifty feet away. It swept past them with a jarring rumble, and its great horn blasted displeasure at being impeded. Cable just laughed.
“Get on, old son!” he called to the rapidly receding truck. “Get them black diamonds to market!”
Song closed her eyes and tried to think of something pleasant, like her apartment overlooking Central Park. She only lasted six more curves before she had to ask for another stop. Cable would have to pull over three more times before finally stopping at an overlook where there was a rusting metal sign attached to a wooden post. It read, in black letters on white:
HIGHCOAL
UNINCORPORATED
Population 624
“We’re here,” he said.
Song was still holding on to her stomach and her eyes were closed. “Just give me a minute. I’ll come around.” She lifted the bottle of water from the console and chugged, then squinted at the sign. “Six hundred and twenty-four? Is that a misprint?”
“It is now. You make six hundred and twenty five.” He pointed through the bug-spattered windshield. “Now, look. Tell me the truth. Isn’t that just about the prettiest town you ever saw?”
Song looked. What she saw was a row of tired old boxy houses with slate gray roofs lined up along a crooked valley between two steep mountains. She also saw a couple of shabby brick buildings and, slashed into one of the mountains, a nasty looking black area surrounded by a chain-link fence. Behind the fence was a tall derricklike structure from which a gray cloud was rising. Song had never seen a place that looked quite so sad or downtrodden.
“Welcome to Highcoal,” Cable said, his pride evident. “Your new home.”
If there had been anything left in her stomach, Song would have thrown up again. This ugly place wasn’t about to be her home, not now, not ever. For one thing, the road to get to it was cruel and unusual punishment and she meant to cross it only one more time—leaving.
Four
Cable eased the roadster on down the road. Recalling the sign, Song asked, “What does unincorporated mean?”
“It means the town has no elected government.”
“What does it have?”
“Me, I guess. Atlas Energy owns a good portion of the town, so I kind of run things, more or less, with the constable and the preacher, of course.”
“The constable?”
“Hired company gun.” He laughed. “I’m just joking. The constable is sort of a night watchman, although he also watches during the day too.”
“How about the preacher?”
“Preachers are important men in coal towns, honey.”
“I’m an agnostic, you know,” she confided.
His expression reflected his astonishment. “You’re a what?”
“An agnostic, Cable. You know, I’m not religious? Hello? I don’t go to church. I thought about being a Buddhist like my mother, and also because Richard Gere is a hero of mine, but I kept falling asleep reading about it. Anyway, I do yoga. If you have to characterize my religion, call me a Yogist.”
Cable scratched up under his hat. “Funny we never talked about any of this.”
Song put a hand on her stomach. Talking was making her queasy again, but because it was important that Cable understand who she was, she forged ahead. “It’s not funny at all. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a real talk about anything personal. I listened while you talked about coal mining and I guess you listened while I talked about my job. Then, out of the blue, you said let’s go have a vacation in St. John to have a little fun, and of course I agreed. A girl likes to have fun now and again, especially with a stud hillbilly like yourself.”
“Well, we did have fun, didn’t we?”
“We did, Cable,” Song sighed. “We did. But what do we have now?”
“Each other,” he said.
“Let’s pray that will be enough.”
“Do Yogists pray?”
“Shut up, Cable. You’re not half as amusing as you think you are.” Song looked at the approaching row of dilapidated houses and then she saw, walking along the street, her first coal miner—identified by his heavy black boots, filthy coveralls, and a white helmet.
Cable pulled over. “Hey, Bossman! Come over here and meet my new wife! Come on, honey. Get out and say hello to my mine foreman.” He whispered, “Could you take your scarf off so he can admire your pretty hair?”
Song obligingly removed her scarf and climbed out, although her legs were still a bit shaky. She leaned on the car’s fender while Cable brought the man over.
“Bossman, meet Song.”
Song nodded to the man but he didn’t nod back. Instead, he frankly studied her from head to toe, his thin face, small bright eyes, and hooked nose giving him the appearance of a big-beaked bird. Song felt like a bug beneath his steady gaze.
“Not bad, Cable,” he concluded. “She’s cute as a speckled puppy.” Then, without warning, he peeled Song off the fender and gave her a big hug.
Song recoiled at the sour odor of dirt and sweat permeating Bossman’s baggy coveralls. When he let her go, Song looked down at her blouse, appalled to see it smeared with a black, sticky substance.
“Look at what you’ve done!” she screeched. “Do you have any idea how much this blouse cost me?”
“Thirty dollars?” Bossman guessed.
“More like fifty,” Cable said. “She shops in New York.”
“Two hundred dollars and it was on sale!” Song angrily informed them both. “Now it’s ruined!”
Bossman peered at the blouse, then turned and spat out a thick stream of dark liquid. Song watched its trajectory until it landed with a splash, then coagulated in a nasty brown pool in the dirt. She groaned and slapped her hand over her mouth as her stomach protested.
“You was robbed. You ought to go shopping with a Highcoal woman, ma’am,” Bossman said. “They can show you how to get the bargains.”
Song considered a biting reply, something along the lines that no mountain woman could outshop a New York girl, but she lacked the energy. Instead, she shook her head, then climbed back inside the roadster and closed her eyes. Cable and Bossman talked some more, then Cable sat down behind the wheel. “Carsick again, babe?”
Song took a deep breath. “What was that awful stuff that came out of that man’s mouth? It looked like liquid poop!”
“Tobacco juice, honey. Lots of miners chew it. Keeps the dust out of their lungs, so they say. You’ll get used to it.”
“I can’t imagine getting used to something that gross. And what’s this stuff on my blouse?”