The Coal Tattoo

by Silas House

  18 July 1960

  Dear Sister,

  I have run off with Matthew Morgan to get married. We are in love. We are not getting married because we have to. What I’m trying to say is that I am not pregnant, so don’t think that. We’re off to Jellico, where we can get married quick. I guess we will stay down there a couple days. Please do not fret. I know that you will, but just trust in me and believe me when I say this is for the best. This is what I want. Be happy for me. I will miss you terrible bad but soon we will be back together. I will call you from Tennessee later tonight. Until then, pray for me and know how much I love you.

  As always, I remain yours,

  Anneth Gail Sizemore Morgan (!!!)

  Soon Matthew was driving them through the mountains toward Tennessee. She had never been this far away from home before and she kept pointing out things to him. He laughed at her amazement. He tuned the radio to a station out of Knoxville and sang every word along with Buddy Holly on “It’s So Easy.” Anneth knew this song, too, and their voices bled into one like they were meant to sing together.

  “You harmonize good,” he said when the song was over. “You ought to start singing with me.”

  She pulled her legs up beneath her and didn’t bother to smooth her skirt out across her knees. The windows were down and the breeze went up her skirt, cooling her thighs. “I’d love to do that,” she said.

  “You’ll try anything, won’t you?”

  “I sure will,” she said. “I want to do everything in this life that I can. People just set around and talk about doing stuff all the time, but I intend to do everything. I want to sing and dance. And see everything that I can. This life’s too short to set around dreaming and not doing it.”

  He ran his hand down the side of her face. “That’s why I want to marry you,” he said. “That’s why I love you.”

  She scooted across the seat and sat next to him. She laid her head against his shoulder and breathed in his scent as he sped on down the winding road. She felt so comfortable there that she drifted off to sleep without meaning to. She had wanted to experience every moment of this, but the thrill had worn her out. She slept better than she ever had in her life—a deep, black sleep without any dreams.

  Matthew awoke her when Tennessee came into sight. He moved his shoulder up and down to jostle her awake and she sat bolt upright in the seat, unsure of where she was for a moment. It was so strange not to awake at home. She missed the smells of the house, Easter’s coffee, and her warm bedsheets.

  “Look,” Matthew said. “We’re about to cross the state line.”

  They were going up a mountain, and as soon as it leveled off there was a small sign: WELCOME TO TENNESSEE, Y’ALL. The state flag flew from a thin metal pole. As they passed it, Anneth looked back to see the sign welcoming people to Kentucky. Tight painted letters spelled out WELCOME TO KENTUCKY, THE BLUEGRASS STATE, which Anneth thought was funny, since she had never in her whole life seen any bluegrass.

  It was strange to think they were in a whole different state, because it looked just like home. The mountains were big shouldered and black, crowding close to the road in the gathering darkness. Jellico lay in a long, finger-shaped valley that she could look down into. There were several lit church steeples, and houses stood in rows on the mountainside. She could see their windows, rectangles of yellow from the lights inside. There was a drive-in theater down there and she could see the image on the screen. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was playing and Liz Taylor was standing in the bedroom in her black bra and black silk slip hollering to Paul Newman, who was in the bathroom, trying to avoid her. This was the scene where he hobbled around on his crutches and fell. Paul Newman was so good looking that Anneth could barely stand it. And Liz Taylor was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, besides her own mother, who could’ve put anybody to shame. Anneth thought she might get her hair cut like Liz’s when she got back home. Matthew had taken her to the theater in Black Banks just last week to see that movie. She had cried and cried after seeing it, without really knowing why. Matthew didn’t think it was a bit sad. But she did because she saw that it was a movie about people who had dreams that would never come true. That was the worst thing she could think of. The only thing worse, Anneth thought, would be to not have any dreams at all. At least she had her dreams, and now she and Matthew were on the open road and anything could happen.

  The cars sitting before the screen were lost to darkness, but she imagined all the people down there, some of them eating popcorn without taking their eyes away from the movie, others necking in the backseat. Having Paul Newman and Liz Taylor on-screen together would lead anybody to make out. Gradually the winding road led them down into the town. The stores were already closed and dim lights burned behind the plate glass windows.

  “Looks like everything’s closed up. We’ll have to wait till the morning.”

  “What will we do until then?” she asked, genuinely concerned. She thought they would pull up in front of a church and sleep in the car, or something to that effect.

  Matthew laughed. “Get a motel room,” he said. He had just played a show in Hazard and had plenty of money. He kept it rolled up and wound about with a red rubber band in his pocket.

  She sat in the car while he went in to get their room. The light from the neon sign was beautiful to her. She squinted her eyes to get a better look at it. The neon border was the brightest pink—the way she imagined a flamingo to look in real life—and the word inside, VACANCY, was greener than a spring leaf. She had never stayed in a motel before; Easter would die if she found out that Anneth had done so before getting married. But they were going to be married in the morning, after all. Anneth decided that she would sleep with him tonight. It was just one day and it wouldn’t make any difference. Besides, she hadn’t been a virgin for a while now, though she had held off from going to bed with Matthew because somehow he had seemed different from those other boys.

  She wanted to feel Matthew’s hands running up and down her back. She wanted to kiss his eyes and breathe in his scent among the tangled covers of the bed. She wanted to get as close to him as she could. She had gone out with lots of other boys but she always came back to Matthew, and now she wanted to know him better than she knew anyone else in the world.

  THE MOTEL ROOM smelled like stale cigarettes. Anneth tried to open a window but found that they were painted shut. Matthew came up to her from behind and put his arms around her. He slipped his hand inside her blouse and cupped her breast.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Not yet.”

  He kept on, though. He kissed the back of her head and she turned around quickly and put her hands up into his wavy hair. He had used too much Vitalis but she liked the feel of oil in her fingers. She kissed him on the mouth. He walked them backward and fell heavily onto the bed. He leaned down and began to unbutton her dress and she watched his hands as they worked. His fingertips were big and square. He peeled her dress back and then he stopped and looked at her. He ran his hands over the cool silk of her slip.

  “My God,” he said.

  Anneth had thought she would be nervous about her first time with Matthew, but she wasn’t. She could hear the blood drumming in her ears and it seemed as if her heart was going to beat out of her chest, but she wanted to do everything. He undressed in no time, and when he was naked she was embarrassed at first. He lay back and was still for a long time, letting her run her hands down his stomach and up the inside of his thighs, discovering everything.

  She sat up in the bed and pulled her slip over her head. She felt free. It was the freest she had ever felt, to be sitting there with nothing on, the neon light of the motel sign causing their room to glow. She had never been completely naked with anyone before. She would never go farther than her bra and slip, and most everything had taken place in the backseat of a car. Now it seemed she was seeing everything in flashes. She took hold of his hand and stroked his fingers. His mouth was cold on her breast, as if he had been sucking on ice.


  “You have to be easy and take things slow,” she said.

  She was the one who sped things up, though. Her body took over and she let it. She rose up and pushed him back against the head-board. She crawled up onto his lap and wrapped her legs around his waist. He moved his hands up her back and his touch felt like rain on her skin. Chills ran up the backs of her arms. His mouth tasted like cigarettes and Pepsi. She pressed her lips against his until their teeth clicked together. She kissed his neck and then his chest, until she had made her way down his entire body.

  She fell back onto the scratchy bedspread, and as he came down on top of her she said, “I love you,” but it was lost to his moaning. And even when she made these words come out of her mouth, she didn’t know if she believed them. She wanted to, though. She wanted desperately to love him.

  MORNING CAME IN slanted white lines through the window. She awoke to sunlight in her eyes and the sensation of someone standing over her. She put a hand before her face to block the whiteness and saw Matthew standing beside the bed with his hand held out.

  “You’re going to sleep your life away,” he said, and then she saw the rings he held on his outstretched palm. “I snuck out early and was waiting when they opened the jewelry store.”

  She sat up in the bed and he put the rings in her hand. They were just plain rings, like a hundred others she had seen, but they looked beautiful lying there on her palm. She felt the urge to slip hers on but knew this was bad luck.

  “They’re perfect,” she said, and then realized that the sheet had slid off her breasts.

  Matthew reached down and touched her nipple with his knuckle. “You better get ready,” he said.

  She put on her best dress—lavender, with big pearl buttons that ran from neck to hem—and a pillbox hat. She had taken a pair of scissors and cut off the black netting that came down over the bill of the hat, because it looked too old and matronly. Matthew had stopped in London and let her run into a department store to buy a crinoline. She never wore crinolines and she wanted this to be her only excess on her wedding day. She had told the old lady that it was for her wedding and the woman had gone on and on about how she ought to wait and get married proper, with her whole family there.

  “Seems like Jellico is cursed for weddings,” the woman said. “Everybody I know that gets married down there has bad trouble.” Anneth lit a cigarette and just smiled at everything the lady said until she finally gave up. “Well, I’ll give you a discount on account of it’s your wedding day,” she said.

  The crinoline scratched against her legs but she liked the way it looked. It made her feel like a town girl and she danced around in front of the mirror to see how it moved on her.

  As she studied herself, she realized that she finally wasn’t a virgin anymore. She had thought that she had lost her virginity long ago, but truly she hadn’t. She stared at her face and thought she looked different. She felt different. Like a grown woman. She had felt like a woman for years now, but she had only been fooling herself. She loved the sort of cleansed-out feeling she had, the way her breasts ached from Matthew’s working on them, the little patch of heat atop her right shoulder where he had sucked forth a hickey. She put on lipstick and pinched her cheeks for some color.

  They walked down the main street to the little drugstore that sold the marriage licenses. The day was unnaturally perfect, like a day out of a movie. The air was fragrant with summer smells and the ridges were misted with stripes of heat that had not yet moved down into the valley. People on the street were dressed up like they had somewhere important to go. Just as Matthew started to open the drugstore door, Anneth remembered that they had to have blood work done before they could be married.

  “We’ll have to go to the hospital first, won’t we?”

  Matthew pulled a certificate out of his back pocket and smiled. “I’m way ahead of you, baby.” She reached for the paper but Matthew held it high, next to his head, as if making a presentation. “There’s a doctor in Black Banks who’ll sign a blood work if you give him a ten-dollar bill. This way they don’t have to put a needle in that pretty arm.”

  The drugstore was packed with people eating in the green vinyl booths. Waitresses strutted about in smart pink uniforms and little white aprons, holding the coffeepots and loaded trays high above their shoulders as they navigated the crowd. Anneth could hear bacon sizzling on the grill. She sniffed at the burned-toast smell in the air and realized that she was famished.

  There was an old man standing at the big cash register, shaking out the newspaper the whole time he read from it. The light from the bare bulbs overhead made a blinding circle on top of his bald head. Matthew tapped his blunt fingers on the counter and the old man looked up from the paper over his thick glasses. “Hidy,” he said.

  “Morning, buddy,” Matthew said. He called every man he met “buddy,” even if the man was older than him. “I was told this was the best place to get a marriage license.”

  “We’ll sure sell you one,” the man said. “Got your blood-work certificate?”

  Matthew produced the yellow piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to the man without unfolding it. The man eyed it and then looked from it to Anneth a couple of times. He felt below the counter and pulled up a clipboard that had an ink pen attached to it by a long, beaded cord. “Fill this out and we’ll be in business. Just get you a booth and have a bite if you want to.”

  It was nine o’clock in the morning, but Anneth ordered a cheese-burger plate with slaw and fries. The breakfast here was the same that Easter cooked at home—bacon, eggs, home fries, gravy, honey—but she only got to have cheeseburgers on the rare occasion that she had enough money to splurge in Black Banks. Matthew kept telling her to get whatever she wanted—the crinoline, the best room at the motel—so she did. She savored every bite, closing her eyes while she tasted the meat, pickles, lettuce, and tomato. The onion was sweet and full of juice. Matthew had long finished his breakfast before she was even halfway done. He filled out the forms and she put down her burger long enough to sign her name. He smoked one Chesterfield after another and made small talk with the waitress when she approached their table to check on them. He was so friendly he charmed people everywhere he went.

  “You all from Kentucky, huh?” the waitress said. Her name tag identified her as Swella, a name that made Anneth want to burst out laughing. She wanted to ask her where her mother had come up with a name like that.

  “How could you tell?” Matthew said with a smile, knowing their accents gave them away.

  Swella looked him right in the eye while she talked to him, although she hadn’t even glanced at Anneth. “I like the way Kentucky boys talk,” Swella said, and put one hand on her hip. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick and had been sloppily painted so that some of the polish ringed her cuticles.

  Anneth leaned over the table and poked her finger into Swella’s ribs. “Hey, honey?” Anneth said. Swella turned to her, startled. “Can’t you see I’m setting right here?”

  Swella blinked twice without saying a word.

  “I’d hate to have to stomp your ass where you work,” Anneth said. She eased back down in her seat as if completely relaxed.

  Swella turned to twist off, but Anneth grabbed hold of her arm. “And I’m interested in some of that pie, too,” she said, nodding her chin toward the coconut cream sitting beneath a glass dome. “Bring me a piece of that and a cup of black coffee. And do it pretty damn quick.”

  “I swear, girl,” Matthew said, smiling. “You’re a hellcat, ain’t you?”

  “She wasn’t the only one flirting,” Anneth said, and kicked his shin under the table.

  Anneth finished up her pie and coffee while the old man looked over their papers. He sat right down in the booth with them and signed the certificate and pressed a notary mark into the page. He took Matthew’s money and wished them luck.

  “Where’s a good place around here to get married?” Matthew asked.

  “Usuall
y people think of that before getting the license,” the man said. He laughed and chewed on the toothpick lodged between his false teeth. He looked at Anneth while he laughed, but she didn’t smile back. She never laughed out of politeness.

  “That’s why everybody comes to Jellico, buddy,” Matthew said. “Because you don’t have to think first.”

  The man seemed to find this awfully funny. He had to make himself stop laughing before speaking again. “What kind of preacher do you want?”

  Matthew started to say, “It don’t matter a bit,” but Anneth cut him off. She placed both hands flat on the table. “We need a Pentecostal preacher. I want to get married Pentecostal.”

  “I didn’t know you was so religious,” Matthew said.

  “Even sinners have their choice,” Anneth said.

  IN HER GRIEF, Easter dropped the letter and let it drift like a feather onto the creek. She watched it float away over the rocks and then into the quick current. On and on until it disappeared forever. Perhaps it would slide on down the many rivers until it found its way into the ocean. She wanted rid of the words Anneth had left for her. Without the letter, perhaps she could convince herself that Anneth had not run off. She had read it first in the kitchen, where she had found it, then on the back porch, and now, this last time as she stood beside the creek.

  It all made sense, though. She should have known on the day of her own wedding, the way Anneth sulked around the corners of the room, trying her best to look happy but failing miserably. She should have known by the way Matthew brushed Anneth’s hair back out of her eyes, the way he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And more than anything else, she should have known that it would all lead to this in those first strange days after El moved into their little house. Even when Anneth came back to live with them, she had stayed gone as much as possible, or stayed holed up in her room. Easter had thought it was simply because a man had not lived in the house since their father.