The Hollow Ground: A Novel

by Natalie S. Harnett

  Daddy slowed for a turn and pointed at the lowest layer of rock. “Look at that,” he said with a kind of genuine excitement we’d all learned to ignore. “Sedimentary rock. Formed hundreds of millions of years ago. We’re seeing right back into time!”

  When we neared the outer limits of Barrendale the road looped along the edge of a mountain and we looked down into a valley dotted with clusters of small towns. On impulse I belted out, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” but no one joined in and we entered the city in silence.

  Ma sucked her breath. “Place looks worse than I remembered.”

  Daddy didn’t say anything, but he slowed the car and in the rearview mirror I watched his eyes shift suspiciously from side to side as if he thought he was being duped and this wasn’t really his hometown.

  Tree roots had pushed up the bluestone sidewalks on the narrow hilly streets and there wasn’t an even space of ground anywhere to be seen. Steps slumped or tilted. Orangey brown bricks showed beneath the pockmarked, worn-out asphalt and heaps of slag were piled in abandoned lots. There were blocks of empty stores with their names faded from the brick and a grimness to the buildings that made the whole town feel deserted, which in a way it was. Back when the mines and canal and gravity railroad had been thriving, Barrendale had been one of the biggest cities around and the loss of what the town had once been was reflected in every alley and blank storefront.

  “You just remember what we agreed on,” Ma said to Daddy. “What you promised. We both get jobs and save every last penny. We ain’t staying here a minute longer than we have to.”

  “Promises shmomises,” Daddy said, beaming a guilty smile to show he’d been joking.

  I was sitting behind Daddy so I could see Ma’s profile in the passenger seat. She opened her mouth and from the way she held her jaw I could tell she was eager to say some sharp thing. But Gramp had said he was sure to get Daddy a job, so Ma was on her best behavior. Whenever Daddy had any prospects of work she had to at least give the appearance of listening to him.

  We crossed a small bridge over a dinky creek that miles from there grew into the great Lackawaxen River. The bridge divided the main part of the city from the working-class neighborhoods. Many of the houses were narrow and wooden with their faces sitting smack up against the sidewalk. “Miners’ homes,” Daddy explained. “The ones the company owned.” And you could just feel the oldness and all the living that had gone on in those buildings as if the wooden beams and shingles had stories to tell. Other homes had wraparound porches and picture windows and yards bushy with forsythia eager to bloom. Some of the lawns were already a spring green but others were the spiky brown of cut hay. Most of those dead lawns sported holes drilled, we knew, to flush out the fire, a treatment they’d already tried in Centrereach. Here and there between houses we could see West Mountain smoking.

  “The fire is only on the west side of town,” Daddy said to reassure us. “Mostly beneath the mountain. Far from Gram and Gramp’s. And they’ve got it contained. Not like Centrereach.” At Daddy’s mention of Centrereach we all gazed longingly out the window as if Auntie’s house might rise up out of the cool Barrendale air.

  We turned up a long hill and entered a neighborhood where the houses were spaced farther apart. Some houses had gray-and-red-speckled shingles that were supposed to look like red brick. Others were painted white with dark green or black trim. They were all set back from the road with spacious front yards and graveled paths leading up to their front doors. There was something relaxed and well cared for in the tree-lined streets that made us all breathe easier. You could just feel that the fire hadn’t touched here.

  Gram and Gramp’s house was at the top of the hill behind two enormous ash trees. Its shingles were painted yolk yellow and the wide windows of its closed-in side porch glinted in the sun. As Daddy parked in the driveway, he hummed, “Off we go into the wild blue yonder.” Slowly we all got out of the car and then for I don’t know how long just stood there, staring down at the trunk, which had been packed so full it had needed to be tied closed.

  Eventually we heard, “Well, what are you gonna do? Just stand there all day?”

  Startled, we turned toward the porch where we saw Gram hunched. The hump at the top of her spine pushed her head forward like a turtle from its shell. She swung open the door and gazed down at us from the top of the steps. Tightly permed pinkish blond curls haloed her face, which looked as dried up and crinkled as a peach left out in the sun. Coral-colored lipstick was caked into the seams of her thin lips and the whites of her eyes were webbed red. She had on a beige housedress with a pin in the shape of a peacock up by the collar.

  “Good to see you, Mother,” Daddy said.

  Ma pointed at me and accused, “She’s your grandmother. Say something.”

  “Hi, Gram,” I said. I took Brother’s hand. “Brother,” I said, “this is Gram.” Brother looked at Gram as if he expected snakes to slither out her ears.

  Gram held a cigarette to her mouth and inhaled deeply, looking with distaste over first me, then Brother. “Who on earth else would I be?” She briskly turned, craning her head back over her hump, to say, “Come on and keep your voices down. Gramp’s napping.”

  Up the stairs we went, Daddy and Ma pushing me and Brother in first. Inside the porch was a sofa and a bunch of wicker furniture that we walked quickly past to reach the living room where we found an orange plaid couch smothered in plastic and a variety of ceramic statues and doilies perched on the bureau and end tables.

  Gram smashed out her cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a swan. “And don’t you let me catch anyone smoking inside,” she warned. “Gramp’s lungs can’t handle it.” With her finger she swiped at the dresser top and then held her blackened finger up with disdain. “Just so you know, this filth ain’t my fault. Blame all that flushin’ and drillin’, that’s who to blame. Not a woman this side of town can keep her house clean.” Gram clomped into the kitchen and washed her finger in the sink, leaving us to stand huddled in the entry between the two rooms, not certain where to settle.

  “Well, Dolores,” Gram said to the pink and purple violets lining the little shelf above the sink. “I’m lettin’ you come stay in my house. You think you’d be the first to say somethin’. To thank me at least. Not to mention ’pologize for not speakin’ to me all these years.”

  “Apologize?” Ma said, snorting a laugh.

  “Now, now,” Daddy said. “Past’s past, right, Mother?”

  “Can’t argue with that!” Gram exclaimed.

  Daddy looked at Ma, his brow creased in that firm look that often worked on her.

  “Past sure as heck is past,” Ma agreed as if the words were meaningless.

  Daddy clapped his hands. “Now that’s taken care of, let’s get unpacked.”

  Gram pointed at me from where I stood in the entrance to the hall. “Girl, how old are you?” I hesitated and Gram said, “My Lord, are you a nincompoop?”

  “Eleven,” I said.

  “Right on the verge,” Gram said, as if I were about to hurl myself into a pit of evil. “Ain’t fittin’ for a girl that age to share a room with her brother.”

  “She’ll share with me,” Ma said and grabbed my arm, hustling me through the living room and down the hall. When we reached Daddy’s old room that he’d shared with dead Uncle Frank, she pushed me in ahead of her and then loudly shut the door. As soon as we met eyes, we burst out in giggles. Then fingers to mouths, we shushed each other.

  The room was fairly small, the walls painted the pale blue of a winter sky. Beneath a window was a dresser and to the right of that a desk. Up against the opposite wall were bunk beds. Ma sat down on a little wooden chair, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. From the proud glint in her eye as she exhaled, she was probably imagining she blew the smoke right into Gram’s face.

  On a shelf above the desk were sports trophies and photos of Uncle Frank as the county fair king, the dairy king, and of him holding the tro
phies that sat dusty on the shelves. I looked over the photos, having never seen a photo of Uncle Frank before. He didn’t look like Daddy at all. Daddy had shiny black hair, but Uncle Frank was blond with a half smile that made him look like he had something on you, like he knew something you didn’t. A devil-may-care smile, Ma called it. He was taller and broader than Daddy even though he was two years younger.

  “People said he should have been a movie star,” Ma said, “but I never thought he was that good-looking.”

  I’d often imagined Uncle Frank growing up with Daddy, going to work with Daddy in the mine, but he’d looked different from how he did in these photos. But as soon as I tried to remember how I used to picture him, I couldn’t anymore.

  Craning her head around, Ma took in the shelf of photos and awards. “Jesus Christ. Like a shrine to him,” she muttered. “This is where they had us sleep after we was married. Can you believe that? Newlyweds in bunk beds! I still can’t believe it.”

  Ma put out her cigarette by smashing it against the bottom of a paperweight and we unpacked what clothes we had into the dresser and closet. “Don’t go making this out worse than it already is,” Ma said, pointing at my mouth, which had slumped into a permanent frown. “We couldn’t fit Lady Maribel in the car,” she repeated yet again, referring to my porcelain-headed doll with the chipped nose that I’d had forever and that Ma had made me dump in a donation box. “And they got a library right here in town. I bet they got all the books Auntie bought you anyways. Don’t you think I miss what I had to leave too?”

  Ma twirled some of her hair around her finger and then nibbled on the end like a little girl. She talked about the favorite quilt and tablecloths she’d had to leave behind. “You might not see it now but we’re lucky. We didn’t have much to begin with. Imagine if you had a dozen dolls and a dollhouse and a doll carriage. You’d be missing all them, not just one busted-up doll and some books.” Ma stuck her tongue out at me to get a laugh. She always had a backwards way of looking at things that made you think different.

  Daddy and Brother moved their boxes into the basement where they’d be sleeping on an old fold-out couch. “It won’t be that bad down there,” Daddy said to Brother about the basement. “It’ll be like we’re camping out or something. We’ll make a game of it, you’ll see.”

  We were all seated on the plastic-covered furniture in the living room and Brother started pounding at his head with his fist.

  “What’s wrong with this child?” Gram said.

  “Nothing!” Ma said with a twitter at her mouth. Brother was going to be left back this year and his teacher wanted him to go see a psychotherapist, something we weren’t supposed to tell anybody in Barrendale. Ma thought another year of kindergarten was just plain stupid and we all thought head shrinks were for sissies.

  Daddy stood up and brushed at his pants as if they had a bunch of invisible crumbs stuck to them. “Want to say hi to Gramp?” he asked in such a way that we knew we’d better lie or not answer.

  “Don’t you be botherin’ Dad,” Gram said. “He’s ’cuperating and you don’t want to see his temper.”

  “We’re not bothering him, Mother. We’re saying hello.”

  Gramp sat in an old worn-out wing chair in the corner of Gram and Gramp’s bedroom, his feet resting on an upside-down wastepaper basket. I remembered him as a big bulky man but this person was so bony and slender he seemed almost hollow inside. The skin at his cheeks and jaw sagged like a bloodhound. Asleep, he leaned forward and the tip of his tongue stuck out from his mouth and dribbled drool down his chin. His snores were rough and shook his whole body. One of the snores was so loud it shook him awake. He gagged and spit a blob of phlegmy gunk into a tin can between his legs, kept there for that very purpose.

  The smell in the room was a mix of beer sweat, chewing tobacco, and pee. Overlaying those smells was the cloying sweetness of rosewater that Gram kept in a dish on her dresser. I thought back to the wooly mothball smell that had clung to Auntie and reckoned how much better that smell was to stinky rosewater.

  As we stood in front of Gramp, Brother quietly whimpered, probably thinking Gramp was part monster, or part curse. As I stood there, I thought Gramp looked a million years old. He was older than Gram and had had another wife and family long ago. But that wife along with his twin baby girls were whooshed away in a flood. The fact that Gram, Daddy, and dead Uncle Frank were his second family was almost unbelievable to me, except that I knew it to be true.

  I squeezed Daddy’s hand and he squeezed back as he repeated to Brother, “What did I tell you about crying? What did I say?”

  Pointing at Brother, Gramp said, “Boy ain’t … make it…’fraid … Grampa … cripessakes.”

  “Little dope’s got his father in him,” Gram chimed in from the door. “You were as much of a baby at that age, Adrian.”

  “But Brother looks like Ma,” I said and this made everyone laugh, which hurt my feelings since I’d meant it seriously and I didn’t see anything funny about it.

  Gramp wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Boy know … family curse?”

  Even though Brother could be shy, he got a mean streak in him when he was made fun of. His little Ma eyes got big and glossy and his mouth pouted red. He took a step toward Gramp and said, “I know it comes from you.”

  Daddy reached to slap him, but Gramp waved him off. “Curse come … great-great-grandpa.” Gramp turned his head into his shoulder to smother a cough, then he continued. “Molly Maguire. Know they were?”

  Brother clammed up and tilted his chin, same as Ma did when she felt insulted. I went on to brag about the Mollies, the people who fought for the rights of the Pennsylvania Irish mine workers by viciously attacking anyone who took advantage of them.

  Gramp nodded, pleased, and I felt my cheeks flush with pleasure. Gram leaned against the door frame, arms folded. “Brownnose, this one.”

  Gram and Gramp laughed. Worse, Ma and Daddy laughed too and I felt my eyes sting with hurt and betrayal.

  Gramp gripped the armrests, trying to catch his breath. Some sun managed to streak through the curtained window and warm his forehead before getting shadowed out by Gram as she crossed the room to stand by Gramp. “You rest, John,” Gram said. “I’ll tell it.” And Gram went on to tell about the priest, Father Capedonico, who told his parishioners in Centrereach that the Mollies did evil. “What that idiot priest was thinkin’, I’ll never know. ’Course the Mollies attacked him. What did he think they’d do? Thank him? So they waited for him one night and beat him and then you know what that priest did?”

  Gram waited for Brother to answer but he turned his head stubbornly to the wall. Gram flicked his ear with her finger and Brother swatted at her hand like it was a fly. “Well, then,” Gram continued, “I’ll tell you what he did. He not only cursed your great-great-granddad and the other men who did the attack, but he cursed all of Centrereach. ‘In a hundred years,’ he said, ‘not a single building will stand.’ And with the fire they got burnin’ there now, that part of the curse is comin’ true. All you needin’ to come here is proof of that!”

  Gram looked at Daddy for confirmation, but Daddy hadn’t taken his eyes from Gramp. The look on his face recalled how he’d looked when he’d stood on Auntie’s back porch and stared out at the pit that had swallowed her.

  Gram placed her hands on Brother’s shoulders as if she expected him to turn tail and bolt. “But there’s a second curse too,” she added.

  Gramp puffed and wheezed as he pointed from himself, to Brother, to me, then Daddy. “We’re only ones alive … got curse … in our bones.”

  Gramp leaned back, breathing heavy and Gram fussed over him, but he waved her aside. Grunting, he leaned forward until his face was on level with Brother’s. “Thousand time over—” Gramp launched into a coughing fit so hard he brought up blood.

  Daddy finished for him. “Thousand times over your sins will be revisited on your descendants. That was that priest’s curse.” Daddy le
aned toward Brother and wagged his finger. “But the Mollies did what they had to. Don’t you ever forget that. They tried to make a wrong situation right. You can never judge a man bad for that.”

  “Ain’t that the truth!” Gram declared and placed her hand on Gramp’s shoulder, stroking him like a cat. “The thing to remember, boy, is the curse makes us strong. Other folks just live their lives with nothin’ out to get them. But we live knowin’ somethin’s out there waitin’ to pounce.” Gram tapped the side of her head. “And it keeps us sharp. Keeps us on our toes. Almost protects us in a way!” She grunted out a laugh and slapped Brother on the arm to get him to laugh too.

  But Brother didn’t make a sound. He leaned up against Daddy’s leg and his lips scrunched like he had a bad taste in his mouth. I wanted to hug him but I knew Daddy would get mad that I coddled so I just said, “But the curse usually doesn’t strike little kids, so you don’t got to worry about it till you’re all grown-up.”

  Brother’s eyes widened, trying to search out the trick since I’d teased him so often about the curse being the boogeyman in his closet.

  Gram sighed as if in agreement. To Ma, she said, “Don’t know why you two ever moved back to Centrereach.”

  Ma tsked her tongue and left the room, leaving us all to share an awkward silence as we listened to church bells play in the distance. When they finished Gram said that they were playing for the funeral of George Malozzi, one of Gramp’s old buddies, another survivor of the disaster. “We stopped in at the wake earlier. That’s what Dad’s restin’ from.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Daddy said. “He was a good man.”

  “Not many … survivors left,” Gramp said, shutting his eyes.

  “The survivors of the disaster,” I told Brother, showing off still with how much I knew. “The disaster Daddy was hurt in.”

  Gram continued, “Not everyone who should have showed at the wake did. ’Course the fire is what’s on people’s minds nowadays.” Gram walked out and Daddy turned toward the window that framed part of a catalpa tree and a rickety old shed.